NY Post: Dr. Mohamed Fayed, a senior anesthetist at Detroit’s Henry Ford Health, made the suggestion during the American Society of Anesthesiologists’ annual conference last Friday in Orlando, Florida. “Global warming is affecting our daily life more and more, and the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions has become crucial,” he said. Dr. Fayed added, “No matter how small each effect is, it will add up. As anesthesiologists, we can contribute significantly to this cause by making little changes in our daily practice — such as lowering the flow of anesthetic gas — without affecting patient care.”
Research notes that inhaled anesthesia accounts for up to 0.1% of the world’s carbon emissions, which are regarded as the primary driver of global climate change. An hour of surgery using an inhaled anesthetic is equivalent to driving as many as 470 miles, according to a 2010 study.
The Harvard Crimson:A Harvard Medical School committee voted last month to embed climate change into the school’s curriculum. … The new climate change curriculum will examine the impact of climate change on health and health inequality, applications of these impacts to clinical care, and the role of physicians and health institutions in arriving at climate solutions. … HMS student Madeleine C. Kline said: “Every student who comes through the Medical School will leave with an understanding of what climate change is and what it means for their patients,” she said. “I think it is going to mean a lot for their patients.”
Excerpt: “To date, no studies have estimated the carbon footprint of cancer care…The energy expenditure associated with operating cancer treatment facilities and medical devices, as well as the manufacturing, packaging, and shipment of devices and pharmaceuticals, contributes significantly to greenhouse gas emissions in cancer care…Some cancer treatment facilities have begun to consider their own carbon footprint and started a process to achieve carbon neutrality.”
Climate Depot’s Morano: “Here is a question for the American Cancer Society: If you need cancer treatment, would you go to a cancer treatment center that was worried about its carbon footprint? Or one that was worried about delivering the best possible modern care?”
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Marc Moranohttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngMarc Morano2023-02-07 06:30:272023-02-07 06:30:27Restrict Anesthesia To Save The Climate
Listen, Palestinian Arabs, If you want to march, march on Jordan.
The “Jordan-is-Palestine” option for resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict is an idea that, despite history and logic, was beaten into silence by Israel’s enemies and detractors. Critics denounced the concept as preposterous, reactionary and counterproductive.
And yet, the idea has been resurrected from within Jordan itself. There can be no dispute that Jordan was created in a sovereign vacuum on land that had comprised most of the Palestine Mandate. However, its creation as Transjordan in 1921 satisfied a geopolitical need unencumbered by a Palestinian national myth that had not yet been invented.
In contrast, the Oslo peace process was based on the false premise that an ancestral population was indiscriminately displaced by Israel’s establishment and now must be repatriated at her expense. Because Jordan embodies the concept of Arab self-determination as contemplated by the San Remo Conference and the Palestine Mandate, and because most Jordanians already identify as Palestinian, it is high time to recognize it as the Palestinian homeland and scrap the current peace process.
The Oslo Process was heavily weighted against Israel from the start because it demanded validation of the Palestinian narrative and, thereby, the delegitimization of Jewish historical claims. After cajoling the country into accepting the farce of Oslo, the Israeli left made it politically incorrect to assert traditional Jewish claims or to mention that the Palestinians have no ancestral connection to the Land of Israel. The peace process was focused on resolving the plight of Arab refugees and perpetuating the artifice that they originated in ancient Israel while the Jews were merely colonial interlopers.
The truth – that Jews have the longest history of continuous habitation, that they preceded the Arab-Muslim conquest by thousands of years, and that the Palestinians are largely descended from an immigrant population that grew during the late Ottoman and British Mandatory periods – was suppressed under layers of Freudian self-denial.
One need look no further than the operational definition of “refugees” employed by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (“UNRWA”) to see past the façade of Palestinian nationality. Unlike relief organizations that seek to ameliorate the condition of wartime refugees through resettlement, UNRWA’s sole purpose is to maintain the statelessness of Arabs who became refugees in 1948, regardless of whether they now live in Judea, Samaria, Gaza, Jordan, Lebanon or Syria (and irrespective of whether their forebears came from Egypt, Algeria or elsewhere), and thereby to reinforce their stature as a people though they possess none of the ethnic, cultural or institutional hallmarks of nationality.
According to UNRWA, Palestinian “refugees” are those Arabs who established residency within the Mandate between June 1946 and May 1948, who lost their homes and means of livelihood during Israel’s War of Independence, and who now reside in areas where UNRWA services are available. To put this in perspective, no similar agency was created to serve the needs of the nearly 800,000 Jewish refugees who were summarily expelled from Arab-Muslim lands and dispossessed of whatever assets they owned in 1948, and who subsequently were taken in by Israel.
The improbable definition employed by UNRWA begs the question of how Palestinians could be designated as refugees based on a minimum residency requirement of only two years if they are truly descended from people who continuously inhabited the land for hundreds of generations.
These “refugees” clearly were not required to be native born or descended from indigenous ancestors, and in fact many were either immigrants themselves or the progeny of immigrants. Moreover, they were not expelled from an existing country with recognized borders that was innately “Palestinian” or that ever exhibited the trappings of sovereignty or national character. Indeed, no sovereign nation existed between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea from the time the Romans conquered the Kingdom of Judea until Israeli independence in 1948. There was, however, a continuous Jewish presence in the Land of Israel, including Judea, Samaria and Gaza, dating back to antiquity, and a Jewish majority in Jerusalem for generations.
Given that the proponents of Oslo sought to suppress this history and ignore away the authenticity of traditional Jewish claims, the peace process from its inception was on a collision course with Israeli autonomy and national integrity. Moreover, the basic premise of Oslo, i.e., that the Jewish homeland should be further divided after much of its territory had already been taken to create an autonomous Arab state in Jordan, was repudiated by the Arabs when they rejected the U.N. Partition Plan in 1947 and launched a genocidal war against Israel and her people.
The peace process was doomed to failure because it demanded that Israel relinquish historically Jewish land, but did not insist with equal vigor that the Arabs recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish nation or take meaningful steps to eliminate antisemitic incitement. The conceit of Oslo was that it validated apocryphal Palestinian pretensions even as it denigrated verifiable Jewish claims and treated Israel as a colonial aberration.
The architects of Oslo paid lip service to the need for mutual recognition, but they never chastised the Palestinian Authority for failing to amend its charter calling for Israel’s destruction (which it had agreed to do as a precondition under the Oslo Accords), for continuing to engage in terrorism and antisemitic incitement, or for stating repeatedly that it would never recognize a Jewish State. Although American and European meddlers insisted that Israel consider hot-button issues like the Arab “right of return,” it became increasingly clear as the process wore on that matters of existential concern to Israel could not really be negotiated, and that she was expected simply to capitulate to all Palestinian demands – no matter how expansive or outrageous.
The improbable definition employed by UNRWA begs the question of how Palestinians could be designated as refugees based on a minimum residency requirement of only two years if they are truly descended from people who continuously inhabited the land for hundreds of generations.
It was assumed, for example, that Israel would give up Judea, Samaria and East Jerusalem without question, although these were historically Jewish lands and though Jerusalem was never the capital of any Arab or Muslim nation, and certainly not one called “Palestine.” Most galling was the continual promotion of the Palestinian Authority as moderate despite its oft-stated goal of the phased destruction of Israel, the starting point of which was to be the much ballyhooed two-state solution.
The inconvenient truth is that most Palestinians in Judea, Samaria and Gaza do not want two states living side by side, but rather a single state built on the ruins of Israel.
At its very core, Oslo constituted a rejection of established international precedent recognizing the Jews’ aboriginal connection to the Land of Israel. It ignored, for example, the import of the San Remo Conference of 1920 and the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine of 1922, which recognized the right of close settlement and of the Jews to live anywhere in their homeland. The goal was unrestricted Jewish habitation west of the Jordan River. There was no discussion of a Palestinian homeland because there were no Palestinians at the time. Rather, Arab self-determination was addressed by the establishment of the French Mandate in Lebanon and Syria and the British Mandate in Mesopotamia (Iraq) and Transjordan. In contrast, the San Remo Resolution and Palestine Mandate recognized “the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and … the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country.” Unfortunately, historical reality never fit the Oslo scheme.
The San Remo Resolution applied to lands designated for inclusion in Mandatory Palestine on both banks of the Jordan River. Nevertheless, before the Mandate was signed in 1922, the British gave Transjordan to the Hashemites after they were forced out of the Arabian Peninsula by the Saudi royal family. Indeed, the Hashemites were the ancestral rulers of Mecca, said to be descended from the tribe of Mohammed, and had no connection to that portion of the former Ottoman Empire that would become Jordan. But they were installed nonetheless as a foreign ruling class over a population that was composed largely of immigrants from other parts of the Arab-Muslim world who were complete strangers to Hashemite sovereignty.
Jordan today is governed by a Hashemite minority that engages in apartheid-like discrimination against the Palestinian majority. Though Palestinians are accorded nominal citizenship, they are effectively disenfranchised through electoral gerrymandering and are in many ways treated as aliens whose residency is only temporary. In addition, thousands have been stripped of their citizenship in order to perpetuate the fiction that they are stateless vagabonds whose rightful place is a country that never existed.
The Hashemites enforce the Palestinians’ separateness in this way to make them yearn for the liberation of “Palestinian Arab lands” from “the Zionists.” Nevertheless, there is growing recognition among them that they will never “return” to “Palestine”; and accordingly many now desire full citizenship and equal rights in Jordan.
There is also an increasing sense that whatever the Palestinian leadership’s ultimate strategy may be in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, it is not for the benefit those living in Jordan and elsewhere, even though they constitute the bulk of the Palestinian population.
There are roughly five million Arabs now living in Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria and elsewhere who identify as Palestinian, compared to only 1.5 million in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem. Giving heed to this arithmetic reality, a growing number of Palestinians recognize that Israel will not accept an Arab “right of return” that would destroy her as a Jewish state, and instead believe their homeland should be established in Jordan.
Proponents of this idea include Mudar Zahran, a Palestinian-Jordanian expatriate writer who now lives in the UK.
Zahran has written extensively about the Palestinians and their place in the Mideast, and about how their present leadership – whether the PA in Judea and Samaria or Hamas in Gaza – has no interest in mitigating the conditions of Palestinians living elsewhere. He understands that this leadership will not accept a two-state solution or permanent peace with a Jewish nation. He also acknowledges certain demographic and historical factors militating in favor of a homeland in Jordan, including that it already has a predominantly Palestinian population and comprises most of the territory originally included in the Palestine Mandate.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Matthew Hausman, J.D.http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngMatthew Hausman, J.D.2023-02-07 06:11:172023-02-07 06:11:38Let’s Make This Clear: Jordan is Palestine
California Democratic Rep. Judy Chu was appointed to a leadership position within an alleged Chinese Communist Party (CCP) intelligence front group in 2019, according to a Daily Caller News Foundation investigation.
In August 2019, Chu was named “honorary chairwoman” of the Forums for Peaceful Reunification of China, an organization which opposes Taiwan’s independence, according to a DCNF translation of multiple sources. However, the U.S.-China Economic Security and Review Commission (USCC) has previously identified the organization as serving a CCP “intelligence service,” while multiple experts told the DCNF that they agreed with USCC’s determination.
Chu and the Forums for Peaceful Reunification of China did not respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.
The Forums for Peaceful Reunification of China is one of 33 anti-Taiwan independence organizations in the U.S. which serve as subchapters of the China Council for the Promotion of Peaceful National Reunification (CCPPNR), an organization USCC labeled as “directly subordinate” to the United Front Work Department (UFWD) in 2018.
The UFWD’s “primary missions” are to “liaison with foreign political parties,” “influence operations” and “intelligence collection,” the USCC has stated, and, towards that end, the CCP deploys UFWD operatives around the world to “co-opt and neutralize” potential opposition groups such as “ethnic minorities, religious groups and intellectuals.”
The Forums for Peaceful Reunification of China appointed Chu their “honorary chairwoman” during the 34th inauguration ceremony of the organization’s executive committee held at the Capital Seafood restaurant in Monterey Park on August 23, 2019, according to a DCNF translation of an article by the Las Vegas Chinese News Network and the website of another UFWD affiliate.
Several experts on Chinese intelligence operations confirmed that the Forums for Peaceful Reunification of China is a Chinese intelligence influence operation connected to the UFWD after reviewing Chinese government websites, USCC’s report and Chinese-language news sources.
“They are the same organization,” Russell Hsiao, executive director of the Global Taiwan Institute, told the DCNF.
Hsiao cited a 2013 article by Chinese state-run media outlet People’s Daily, which, among other things, highlighted the groups links to the Los Angeles Chinese Consulate as well as other groups in southern California allegedly tied to the CCP.
“Yes, absolutely,” Dr. June Tuefel Dreyer, former USCC commissioner, told the DCNF. “I don’t think they’re working very hard to hide that.”
Despite the organization’s apparent UFWD ties, U.S. authorities may still misjudge the group as a mere “social organization,” Dreyer said.
“Anyone with basic understanding of Chinese language, China-Taiwan relations, and the politics of related affinity groups within the United States would easily see similarities between the problematic United Front organization identified by the USCC and its southern California chapter where Rep. Judy Chu appears to have been appointed honorary chair,” Steve Yates, former Chinese language analyst for the National Security Agency, told the DCNF.
Chu received a signed English certificate at the August 2019 event from Guo Zhiming, the incoming “chairman” of the Forums for Peaceful Reunification of China, stating that her appointment was in recognition of her “outstanding friendship and support,” according to photos of the event posted by the Las Vegas Chinese News Network.
Chu advocated against Taiwan’s independence at the event, stating that she wished for China and Taiwan “to become one family,” according to a DCNF translation of an archived article posted by the Alliance for China’s Peaceful Reunification USA (ACPRUSA), an anti-Taiwan independence organization also listed as one of CCPPNR’s 33 U.S. chapters.
While the full range of duties expected from the “honorary chairwoman” of the Forums for Peaceful Reunification of China remains unclear, during the 2019 event, Chu served as a ceremony “witness” and “supervised” the transfer of the organization’s official seal between the outgoing and incoming chairmen, according to a DCNF translation of ACPRUSA’s website.
It also remains unclear whether or not Chu continues to serve as the organization’s “honorary chairwoman” or is still involved with the organization in any capacity.
“Getting American leaders to be seen standing against the will of the Taiwan people in favor of Beijing’s position is a core objective of the United Front,” Yates told the DCNF. “In name and in substance, such leaders allow themselves to be used as a tool to demoralize Taiwan and empower a government who spends every moment of every day undermining American interests and American allies.”
However, Chu’s 2019 appointment as “honorary chairwoman” of the alleged UFWD front group appears in contrast with her previous public support for Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen’s visit to the U.S. in August 2018, as reported by Politico, during which time Chu and two other congressmen welcomed Tsai at the Los Angeles airport.
In August 2022, Chu claimed that she’d “always supported Taiwan” prior to former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan, CNN reported. Yet, at the time, Chu also never offered firm support for Pelosi’s visit either, claiming that she’d “leave it up to those who are going to make that decision,” according to CNN.
More recently, Rep. Chu voted against the formation of the House Select Committee on Jan. 10, whose agenda includes investigating how the U.S. can better combat CCP espionage as well as how the U.S. military should counter Beijing’s increasingly belligerent actions in the waters around Taiwan. While justifying her vote, Chu claimed that the committee could spur anti-Asian violence, according to a statement released by the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus (CAPAC), which Chu chairs.
The revelations surrounding Rep. Chu’s role in the Forums for Peaceful Reunification of China comes after the DCNF revealed that Chu has served as the “honorary president” of the All America Chinese Youth Federation since 2012, an organization whose leadership includes several individuals who’ve belonged to alleged front groups serving the CCP’s UFWD.
Rep. Chu’s involvement with the Forums for Peaceful Reunification of China began as early as March 2012, when the California congresswoman attended an inaugural ceremony for the organization’s 19th executive committee, Chinese government records reveal. In addition to Chu, the ceremony was also attended by Qiu Shaofang, former consul general of the Los Angeles Consulate, according to the records.
The Forums for Peaceful Reunification of China has apparently coordinated closely with the Chinese government and the Los Angeles Chinese Consulate in particular, the DCNF determined, with Chinese government sources recording more than half a dozen official meetings between consular officials and the alleged UFWD front group between 2005 and 2014 alone.
The Forums for Peaceful Reunification of China has also apparently worked closely with CCPPNR since its inception, with CCPPNR’s “deputy secretary general” Wang Changyu, a CCP member, having attended the organization’s founding ceremony in Los Angeles in August 2002, according to a DCNF translation of CCPPNR’s website.
Similarly, the former “chairman” of the Forums for Peaceful Reunification of China, Zhou Dezhao, traveled to Beijing in 2015 to meet with CCPPNR’s “honorary president,” according to DCNF translations of CCPPNR’s website.
“Zhou is without a doubt connected to [the Forums for Peaceful Reunification of China] and served as its 32nd rotating chairman from 2017 to 2018,” Hsiao told the DCNF, while identifying Zhou standing near Rep. Chu within a photo from the aforementioned 2019 event.
Zhou did not respond to the DCNF’s questions regarding the nature of the relationship between CCPPNR and the Forums for Peaceful Reunification of China.
Dreyer told the DCNF that the leadership of the Forums for Peaceful Reunification of China and related UFWD front groups were certainly “aware” that the organization was working with the Chinese government.
“The reason they’re chosen as leaders is because they are amenable to the Chinese Communist government’s message,” said Dreyer. “The leaderships share the core directorate, so to speak; they take orders from the same entity.”
CCPPNR’s front groups have spread propaganda “closely aligned” with official CCP propaganda, The Jamestown Foundation, a Washington, D.C., think tank, reported in 2018. The Jamestown Foundation cited a statement from the website of the National Association for China’s Peaceful Unification (NACPU), which insisted that the “U.S. government and Congress” agree not to fight in a “possible war” between Beijing and Taipei “caused by the provocation of separatism in Taiwan.”
Conversely, some members of CCPPNR’s front groups may also simply see their membership in “opportunistic terms of networking, and of signaling loyalty to the Chinese government — with the potential benefits that may follow — rather than as a means to effect substantive change in U.S. policy,” The Jamestown Foundation reported.
The Chinese Consulate did not respond immediately to the DCNF’s request for comment.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Daily Callerhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Daily Caller2023-02-07 05:55:472023-02-07 05:56:15Rep. Judy Chu Was Named ‘Honorary Chairwoman’ Of Alleged Chinese Intel Front Group
Cadet Brown was forced to take the clot shot or get expelled.
Right.
One death and the FDA is issuing worldwide warnings forcing a company (who is not paying them off) to pull the product from shelves but untold number DROPPING DEAD from the clot shot and still they are mandating it.
Again and again and again. And the lethal silence is deafening. Cadet Brown was forced to take the clot shot or get expelled.
The unvaccinated aren’t dying.
The full opinion from the autopsy report can be read below:
“Based on the history, scene investigation, autopsy, virology, and toxicology findings, it is my opinion that Hunter Brown, a 21-year-old white male, died as a result of pulmonary thromboembolism due to deep vein thrombosis resulting from Lisfranc injury of the left lower extremity. The overall findings are consistent with this being an accidental death originating from an injury sustained during football practice several weeks prior to death.”
The autopsy report was signed by Dr. Jarod Murdoch.
U.S. AIR FORCE ACADEMY, Colo. (KKTV) – An autopsy report for an Air Force cadet states 21-year-old Hunter Brown likely passed away from pulmonary thromboembolism due to deep vein thrombosis, likely tied to an injury sustained during football practice.
The El Paso County Coroner’s Office shared the report with KKTV 11 News after we requested it. Brown passed away in early January while on his way to class.
“With heavy hearts we share the loss of a cadet. C3C Hunter Brown died Monday after suffering a medical emergency while on his way to class,” a social media post on the USAFA Twitter count reads. “Our thoughts are with his family, friends, teammates and fellow cadets. #NeverForgotten”
Brown was assigned to Cadet Squadron 16 and was pursuing a major in management, a minor in French, and had completed back-to-back winning seasons in 2021 and 2022 with Falcon football. Brown graduated from the U.S. Air Force Academy Preparatory School in May 2021.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Geller Reporthttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Geller Report2023-02-06 08:26:442023-02-06 08:27:28ANOTHER SUDDEN ADULT DEATH: Autopsy Results Of Air Force Academy Cadet Reveal Cause Of Death Was Blood Clot In Lungs
The U.S. military was far too concerned with implementing Critical Race Theory and making sure the troops were vaccinated to bother with something so trivial as planning a safe and orderly withdrawal from Afghanistan, and so when it all came crashing down and the strongest military in the world had to cut and run in the most ignominious manner imaginable, it ended up leaving behind $7 billion worth of American ordnance. This appalling turn of events was dismissed at the time, as we were assured that the Taliban wouldn’t know how to operate all this sophisticated weaponry. But the generous Taliban jihadis have shown that they are more than willing to spread their wealth around among their fellow warriors for Allah. And so Old Joe Biden has become the chief weapons supplier of the global jihad.
NBC News reported Monday that the weapons that Biden and woke Gen. Mark Milley were far too busy to be concerned about as they ensured that the U.S. exit from Afghanistan was conducted in the most shameful possible manner have now made their way to other jihadis, in the Indian province of Kashmir that has been a hotbed of jihad violence for years now. What’s more, NBC adds laconically that “experts” say that the transfer of this materiel from Afghanistan to Kashmir “could be just the start of the weapons’ global journey.” No kidding, really?
The Kashmir jihadis, who want to detach the province from India and attach it to the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, are now armed with “M4s, M16s and other U.S.-made arms and ammunition that have rarely been seen in the 30-year conflict.” For these top-of-the-line armaments, they can thank not only the Taliban, but Old Joe, Milley, and Biden’s woker-than-woke Defense Secretary, Lloyd Austin. The groups that your taxpayer dollars have armed now include not only the Taliban, but Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) and Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), both of which the U.S. government has designated as terrorist organization.
Wait, it gets worse. Lashkar-e-Taiba has looked into perpetrating jihad massacres inside the United States. Investigative journalist Daniel Greenfield notes that the terror group has “a long history of recruiting Americans, including members of the Virginia Jihad Network,” a group that was discovered in the early 2000s to be training to participate in jihad attacks overseas. And maybe more than just overseas: Greenfield reports that “during the Virginia Jihad Network investigation, Masoud Khan, one of the men charged, revealed that the terror boss behind the Mumbai attack had asked them to conduct ‘information gathering’ operations in the United States, specifically ‘an unnamed chemical plant in Maryland.’”
That wasn’t all: “Syed Haris Ahmed and Ehsanul Sadequee, Pakistani and Bangladeshi immigrants operating in Georgia, were accused of making videos casing the Capitol Building in D.C. and other targets, and sent the videos to a facilitator for Lashkar-e-Taiba. Sadequee was convicted of conspiring to provide material support to Lashkar-e-Taiba.” And in yet another instance, “after Mir Aimal Kansi, a Pakistani Muslim, opened fire at CIA headquarters in Langley, he hid out at a safe house constructed by Osama bin Laden at Lashkar-e-Taiba’s headquarters. That same safe house was alleged to have been used by 1993 World Trade Center bombing operative, Ramzi Yousef.”
This is a clear indication that Lashkar-e-Taiba was looking into striking inside the U.S.; although they didn’t follow up on this at the time, now that Old Joe and his henchmen have supplied them with top-grade weaponry, maybe they’ll decide to revisit those plans.
In the meantime, an Indian army spokesman, Lt. Col. Emron Musavi, confirms that “it can be safely assumed that” Lashkar-e-Taiba jihadis “have access to the weapons left behind.” The Kashmir jihadis have been active of late. According to NBC, “the year opened in violence as Kashmir police blamed militants for a Jan. 1 gunfire attack that killed four people in the southern village of Dhangri, followed by an explosion in the same area the next day that killed a 5-year-old boy and a 12-year-old girl. At least six people were injured on Jan. 21 in two explosions in the city of Jammu.”
For that and much more, we have Old Joe Biden to thank. But as with so much else, one thing is certain: the sycophantic Leftist propagandists that make up the establishment media will never ask the old man about this. To do so wouldn’t fit the narrative.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Jihad Watchhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngJihad Watch2023-02-06 07:59:502023-02-06 08:03:58Joe Biden Has Become a Key Weapons Supplier for the Global Jihad
The United Nations is set to release a report at its annual Human Rights Council meeting in June to discuss the “perceived contradictions” between religious freedom and sexual orientation and gender identity.
Respondents were asked whether or not any religious beliefs and LGBT+ rights were “mutually exclusive,” to point out policies that protect discriminatory religious practices and about the extent to which religious individuals have the right to a conscientious objection.
“My biggest concern is the premise of the report which seems to suggest that freedom of religion and rights based on sexual orientation are the same,” Grace Melton, senior associate in the Richard and Helen DeVos Center for Life, Religion, and Family at the Heritage Foundation, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
The United Nations is releasing a report in June regarding the “perceived contradictions” between religious freedom and sexual orientation and gender identity, or SOGI, laws and is looking to push governments to “fully comply with their obligations under international human rights law to protect and empower LGBT+ persons,” according to a U.N. announcement.
The U.N. closed a call for LGBT+ and religious freedom organizations to submit input to the report earlier this month and is scheduled to introduce its findings at the 53rd Human Rights Council meeting in June, according to the announcement. The announcement explains that while there are “perceived contradictions” between the LGBT+ community and religious freedom, the report aims to find ways to “protect LGBT+ persons’ access to faith and spirituality” while also indicating that religious beliefs that would contradict this are not “justified” under the protection of human rights.
“Religious and spiritual narratives have also historically been used to promote, enable, and condone institutional and personal violence and discrimination against individuals based on sexual orientation or gender identity (real or presumed); repress sexual and gender diversity; and promote cis-gendered and heteronormative norms of sexual orientation and gender identity,” the announcement read. “These practices cannot be justified under the rubric of Freedom of Religious Beliefs, or indeed any other human right, to circumvent and defeat the rights of marginalized populations.”
The person in charge of the special report is Victor Madrigal-Borloz, an expert on protection against violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity and a professor at Harvard Law School. Madrigal-Borloz has long been an LGBTQ advocate and recently welcomed Pope Francis’ declaration that homosexuality is “not a crime,” despite the pontiff’s further clarification that in religious circles it is still considered sinful.
— IE SOGI, Victor Madrigal-Borloz (@victor_madrigal) January 25, 2023
Any organization that wished to comment for the inquiry was tasked with keeping their comments to a minimum of 2,5000 words and providing answers to 11 questions on religious freedom and the rights of the LGBT+ community, according to the announcement. Respondents were asked whether or not any religious beliefs and LGBT+ rights were “mutually exclusive,” to point out policies that protect discriminatory religious practices and about the extent to which religious individuals have the right to a conscientious objection.
The U.N. didn’t disclose who commented ahead of the report’s release, but two organizations publicly published their comments for the inquiry, focusing on their concerns about the impact on the religious community. The Religious Freedom Institute and the Heritage Foundation’s comments worried that the special inquiry would “undermine” and result in the “politicization” of religious freedom as a human right.
“My biggest concern is the premise of the report which seems to suggest that freedom of religion and rights based on sexual orientation are the same,” Grace Melton, senior associate in the Richard and Helen DeVos Center for Life, Religion, and Family at Heritage, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “But certainly as a function of international law, they are not the same. Freedom of religion or belief, or freedom of conscience, is an internationally protected human right. It’s codified in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which is a legally binding treaty.”
Melton further explained that she was “not terribly optimistic” that Madrigal-Borloz shared her views on the subject and warned that both domestic and international laws have become more and more antagonistic toward those who openly express their religious beliefs.
“Increasingly the U.S. has seen international law or U.N. opinions inform our own judicial opinions or even our own laws, regardless of whether or not that’s what the Founders intended,” Melton said. “So from the outset, to conflate those two things is concerning from somebody who is supposed to be a human rights expert.”
Andrea Picciotti-Bayer, a fellow for the Institute for Human Ecology at the Catholic University of America, told the DCNF that she had similar worries, calling the report a “bold attack” and an attempt to try and “walk back the special protection” afforded to those with sincerely held religious beliefs.
“Despite saying that we shouldn’t have these rights pitted against one another, but when you keep reading on you see that the author of the report really does see [rights and religion] as being in conflict,” Picciotti-Bayer said. “I think it’s important that the foundation of the question of human rights is that these are universally shared rights, that we share not by nature of any affinities but because of our humanity and the right to religious freedom … that’s a right that each and every human being possesses.”
Picciotti-Bayer said that efforts like the one from the U.N. are based on a “narrative” that “religion is an oppressor and that religious freedom can be weaponized to harm others.”
“This narrative is not only harmful because it could make people doubt the importance of religion in their own lives and their communities, but it’s also harmful because it will undermine really important social protection. Religion and religious freedom is a stabilizing presence, and for the cases where religion is being misused to oppress, the answer isn’t to shut down religion entirely.”
The U.N. and Madrigal-Borloz did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Daily Callerhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Daily Caller2023-02-06 07:47:052023-02-06 07:51:14United Nations Looking To Push Religious Communities To ‘Fully Comply’ With LGBTQ Agenda
Republican Florida Sen. Marco Rubio said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” that there is “no comparison” between the Trump administration and Biden administration over their respective handling of Chinese surveillance balloons.
The U.S. took down the spy balloon Saturday afternoon after the craft was spotted floating over several states over multiple days, including Idaho and Montana. The Pentagon was tracking the balloon as it headed eastward over the Carolinas before hovering above the Atlantic Ocean. U.S. military jets were seen flying near the balloon while there were several recovery vessels in the waters below.
Tapper first asked what type of information the spy balloon may have been able to gather, with Rubio stating that while he doesn’t have a definitive answer on what type of information was collected but said the larger takeaway is that the balloon sent a “clear message.”
“I think beyond just the ability to collect information, it is the ability to send a clear message, and that is that we have the ability to do this and America can’t do anything about it,” Rubio said. “If they’re not going to be able to stop a balloon from flying over U.S. airspace, how is America going to come to your aid if we invade Taiwan, take land from India, or Islands from the Philippines and Japan?”
“The Pentagon says they know of Chinese doing this four other times, previously once at the beginning of the Biden administration, three times during the Trump administration,” Tapper said. “You’re saying ‘no, that’s not true’?”
“No, what I’m saying – well the difference is this,” Rubio said. “Have we seen the Chinese fly these balloons in the past? Yes. I think there’s Twitter pictures of it flying at one point off the coast of the U.S. down south somewhere. The existence of the balloons is not a mystery to people in that field. What we’ve never seen, what is unprecedented and whoever the source is at the Department of Defense would have to acknowledge this, what is unprecedented is a balloon flight that entered over Idaho, over Montana, over all these sensitive military installations, Air Force bases, ICBM fields, right across the middle of the country, that has never happened before, that’s unprecedented.”
“That it flew briefly over some part of the continental U.S., that’s one thing,” Rubio continued. “But what we saw this week, this is unprecedented. This is no comparison anything that may have happened up to this point.”
The Department of Defense released a statement Thursday claiming that “instances of this kind of balloon activity have been observed previously over the past several years.”
Former Defense Sec. Mark Esper, who served in the Trump administration from July 2019 through November 2020 said he was “surprised” to hear comparisons being drawn, noting he does not recall any similar incident during his time in office.
“I don’t ever recall somebody coming into my office or reading anything that the Chinese had a surveillance balloon above the United States.”
“I would remember that for sure,” he added, while on CNN.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Daily Callerhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Daily Caller2023-02-06 07:04:022023-02-07 05:45:55‘No Comparison’: Rubio Shuts Down Comparisons Between Trump And Biden Over Chinese Balloon
“In the face of evil, when people fail to speak out, the price of speaking out rises. As the price to speak out rises, still fewer people speak out, until a whole culture or nation is silenced. Contrarily, it follows that those who speak out make it easier for others to speak out. Just as cowardice begets cowardice, courage begets courage.” — Eric Metaxas, Letter to the American Church, Page 52
“Propaganda always entails Censorship…it must…it seeks to jolt you into a particular point of view…it’s neurological manipulation…the counter narrative must be vilified…” — Professor Mark Miller
“It’s not how you play the game, but whether your opponent ends up dismembered in the woods.” — Mitch Rapp, Vince Flynn’s hero in his books, now written by Kyle Mills
“The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world that it leaves to its children.”— Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“In 1933, Brown-shirted Nazis swarmed into local church leadership elections and installed new ‘German Christian’ leaders. While a minority of Protestant churches resisted, forming the anti-Nazi ‘Confessing Church,’ (that Dietrich Bonhoeffer belonged to) most were effectively compromised.
“Active, organized resistance to the Nazi state would not erupt until June, 1942, when a group of Munich students began an 8-month leafleting and graffiti campaign that would end with their arrest and execution. They are remembered, not only for their courage, but for the silence of all those who should have risen to their defense.”
White Rose International, founded in 1997, exists to inform and educate the public about the ethical foundations of civil liberty, and to recognize the lives and sacrifices of the members of the White Rose.
It was Sophie Scholl, her brother and their friends who started the non-violent, actually passive, campaign with leaflets of truth being spread throughout Munich. They named their efforts, The White Rose because the symbol of the white rose was intended to represent purity and innocence in the face of evil.
Where are today’s rebels? We again face evil, this time worldwide.
Like Sgt. Schultz of Hogan’s Heroes, “I see nothing, I know nothing.”
Deep State political vipers with their honeyed lies are like monkeys throwing feces at each other, never coming to a consensus of what is best for the people they represent. Their grandiose talk is theatre for the dumbed down Americans, but nothing changes. Instead, their own pockets are lined with the lucre of corruption and backroom deals, deals made with the worst enemies of our nation.
Author Jack Carr, U.S. Navy SEAL on August 6th, 2017, Park City, Utah, wrote the following in his first book, The Terminal List:
“The consolidation of power at the federal level, not to mention state legislatures, in the guise of public safety, is a national trend and should be guarded against at all costs. This erosion of rights, however incremental, is the slow death of freedom.
“We’ve reached the point where the power of the federal government is such that they can essentially target anyone of their choosing. Recent allegations that government agents may have targeted political opponents should alarm all Americans regardless of party affiliation.
“Revisionist views of the constitution by opportunistic politicians and unelected judges with agendas that reinterpret the Bill of Rights to take power away from the people and consolidate it at the federal level threaten the core principles of the Republic.
“As a free people, keeping federal power in check is something that should be of concern to us all. The fundamental value of freedom is what sets us apart from the rest of the world. We are citizens, not subjects, and we must stay vigilant that we remain so.”
I am fearful of what is coming next to our people and their children, not because I don’t rest in our Creator and understand fully that He is and always will be in charge, but because the people are ignorant of the evil, and are unprepared to fight for their lives.
Luck is the residue of preparation, and the preparation by the enemies of this nation has long been in the fire of national destruction.
Who has risen to humanity’s defense?
Dystopian Designs
I have no idea who the lady is in this video, but she explains that FEMA is not here to help us. They are part of the program. Then, Pompeo states that the Covid pandemic was part of a “live exercise,” (a military exercise). And Trump, who is standing next to him, asks, “Why didn’t you tell us?” That’s a good question considering Pompeo was Trump’s Secretary of State. And so, when is the real plan going to happen? We know another virus is already in the works.
A year ago, Bill Gates told us, “that the risks of severe disease from Covid-19 have “dramatically reduced” but another pandemic is all but certain.”
Yes, and Big Pharma is apparently helping Gates and the stakeholders to create one. Quite obviously the Covid “live exercise” was more than profitable and successful in frightening the public into kneeling to the tyrannical demands of governments, local, state and federal.
That scenario is all but guaranteed with the latest expose by James O’Keefe of Project Veritas. Jordon Trishton Walker, Pfizer Director of Research and Development, Strategic Operations – mRNA Scientific Planner: “One of the things we’re exploring is like, why don’t we just mutate it [COVID] ourselves so we could create — preemptively develop new vaccines, right? So, we have to do that. If we’re gonna do that though, there’s a risk of like, as you could imagine — no one wants to be having a pharma company mutating f**king viruses.”
Walker called this “directed evolution” rather than “Gain of Function.” Same difference, new euphemistic sounding words.
But the real key to the interview was the fact that Walker explained how Big Pharma and government officials, such as the Food & Drug Administration (FDA), have mutual interests, and how that is not in the best interest of the American people.
Walker explained that in the pharma industry, “all the people who review our drugs — eventually most of them will come work for pharma companies. And in the military, defense government officials eventually work for defense companies afterwards.” Like Alex Azar, who came out of Eli Lilly and was our Health and Human Services Secretary under Trump. Granted he was replaced by Pence, but Pence has deep connections to Eli Lilly of Indiana as well.
Food
The future of food is certainly not pretty. Thanks, but no thanks to lab grown meat, fake eggs and crickets.
If the C-19 injections and boosters don’t kill off the intended number of American citizens, there’s always a planned food shortage and starvation that will mimic Mao Tse-Tung’s human cost of his Great Leap Forward. It’s been creeping up on us for many years now.
At least 130 of America’s food production and processing plants have been damaged or destroyed in the last two years. Just recently 100,000 chickens died in a fire at a Connecticut farm, one of the largest egg producers in the country. Eggs are at an all-time high across the country. Another 500,000 chickens were killed allegedly because of bird flu. As reported on Tucker Carlson’s show, purposely poisoned chicken feed keeps the hens from laying eggs until the feed is changed…someone needs to do some investigations here. Chicken will be at an all-time high very soon. Interesting enough, a company backed by Bill Gates has created fake eggs and mayo.
Gates has a personal interest in eugenics and depopulation. Bill Gates Sr. was the head of eugenics group Planned Parenthood. America’s wealthiest elite played a significant role in the advancement of Eugenics. People such as Andrew Carnegie, Henry Ford, J.P. Morgan, John Harvey Kellogg, Warren Buffett, Procter & Gamble and the Rockefellers have all donated millions for Eugenics based research. By the 1930s, many of the wealthiest people in the world were members of the American Eugenics Society. Billionaires are focusing their money into large population control projects such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
China has an interest in feeding their own people as well as owning America. America’s colleges and universities are riddled with China’s Confucius Institutes. Massachusetts Institute of Technology is 25% Chinese students which is big money. They own our banks, our hotels, our businesses. They are in all of our biolabs and they steal everything we create. They produce nearly all of what America now buys in retail stores, not to mention most all of our antibiotics. Bill Gates believes countries like China should play a bigger role in world governance.
Which U.S. Congress voted to allow foreign countries, especially communist countries, to buy our businesses, our land and properties like the Waldorf-Astoria?
And which President signed this? Or was it done incrementally?
Encroaching Plans
I have an idea of what is coming next, should the COVID injections and then starvation not succeed quickly or thoroughly enough with the depopulation numbers required by the “stake holders.”
Dr. Paul Marik has told us, “It’s the spike protein.” It’s not graphene oxide, it’s not live things in the vials, it is certainly not the fraudulent snake-venom promoted by narcissist Dr. Bryan Ardis and the newest video host, Beef Stew Peters. Dr. Pierre Kory has proven that.
It is the deadly spike protein that enters every organ in the body and the blood of those who took the jabs.
Dr. Pierre Peterson from America’s Frontline Doctors has a short video telling us what has happened in France and is also happening in the United States. If you’ve taken the jabs, your family very likely will not be able to collect life insurance inasmuch as you have submitted to an experimental drug, i.e., the Covid jabs, and as such, that is considered suicide should you die from those drugs.
Listen to Dr. Pierre Peterson from America’s Frontline Doctors.
The Covid “vaccine” plans of the stakeholders were thwarted in several ways. First by those who refused to take the injections, secondly by improper manufacturing and transport which failed to keep the vials cold enough. This resulted in many injections being duds.
Oh yes, American citizens fell in line, and surely the stakeholders were gleeful…Bill Gates, Fauci, the FDA, CDC, NIH, AMA, JAMA, Lancet, NEJM, mainstream and conservative media (who were paid to promote the jabs) and of course every facet of our federal government who was in on the plan. They laughed with glee at those who donned the masks, stayed inside, lost their businesses and livelihoods, and they loved the “mask Nazis” who accosted those who refused to follow the tyrannical orders of the totalitarians in charge. They knew they had won.
If only we had not complied!
The next attack will be bigger yet and more deadly.
And if that doesn’t work, the final attack will take out 300 million Americans while the power elite hide in their underground bunkers.
From the Devil’s Pantry
Electromagnetic pulse. (EMP) What is that? Well, it can be caused by man or nature, geomagnetic disturbance (GMD). Either has the potential to disrupt and permanently damage electrical components and entire systems within most critical infrastructure sectors and impact large-scale infrastructure. There are actual EMP hardening standards for military applications, but they are often too case-specific, expensive and impractical for the private sector to implement. Very little action by the federal government has been done to address the threat, despite it having the potential to affect the nation at large.
The cost has been estimated at $3 to $5 billion for upgrading and securing the grid, which will protect the nation, but not one president in our recent past, nor any congress critter has even suggested spending $5 billion to protect the nation from a catastrophe. Yep, $5 billion was way too much money to build the southern border wall, but $150 billion isn’t too much to hand over to the corrupt fascist nation of Ukraine.
So, instead of fixing a problem that could wipe out 300 million Americans, they ignore it, waiting for it to happen so that their depopulation goals can be met.
Since the days of Malthus (1766-1834), our nation has promoted the overpopulation culture of lies. Should an EMP happen, heat, air conditioning, water, and finally natural gas would be unavailable. Water allows sanitation, but without it, disease would spread, and there’d be no medical personnel available. People would freeze or die of heat stroke.
Communication would be impossible. Any of the newer vehicles will no longer run as electronics would be worthless. Pumping gas would be tricky; it could be siphoned, but where would you go with all the vehicles dead on the roads?
Restaurants would give away their food rather than have it spoil; the grocery stores would be ransacked and in short order emptied. All of the industrial farms would be shut down as machinery wouldn’t run; they are 98% of food production. Cattle, pigs, chickens, and other livestock would die for lack of feed and water. Only 2% of our food production is in the hands of old-time family farmers/ranchers, and they’d be quickly raided.
FEMA and DHS would have no way to help and the first responders would run out of supplies almost immediately.
Other nations could ship supplies, but there would be no one at the docks to unload and no way to disperse before it spoiled.
Civil unrest would be tantamount to Antifa and BLM riots all over the country, theft and murder on a huge scale.
We are a country of 331 million people, and the estimates of destruction would take out at least 300 million. We were 327 million but four million illegal invaders have been added to our count, and many of them are gang members and criminals.
Could this happen? The federal government has not protected the grid from an EMP strike. Why not?
Hierarchy Saved, Citizens Die
Of course, should an EMP strike happen to America, the military and civilian hierarchy will head for Mt. Weather in Virginia, an underground facility. Mt. Weather Emergency Operations Center is run by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). So, in case of national disaster these people will play a role in the “Continuity of Government,” yes, saving the lives of the perpetrators.
There’s also Raven Rock built in Raven Rock Mountain near Camp David, in Blue Ridge Summit, Pennsylvania to house the military as a backup to the Pentagon. “Since September 11, 2001, Congress has intensified their interest in and funding of top secret ‘Continuity of Government’ in ways not seen since the Cold War.” Hmmm…we no longer wonder why. Raven Rock by Garrett Graff is the story of the government’s secret plans to save itself should catastrophe strike.
Here is the list of the various safe havens for military and government hierarchy. There are none for America’s citizens.
Conclusion
As we’ve read countless times before, the scenario we lived through for three years was planned at least a decade in advance, if not longer. Looking at the big picture, the fear tactics of the despots worked as easily as the Nazi propaganda against the Jewish people. Americans fell for it, hook, line and sinker.
Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia were two sides of the same coin. Death became the culture.
Governors and Mayors were certainly overjoyed to wield the whip of despotic control over their constituents by demanding their faces be covered, their businesses closed, churches locked, and families kept apart. The first amendment was under the boot of that two-sided coin.
Should an EMP happen to America, the elite will live for a year in their hidey holes while the rest of us scramble to survive.
“If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.” Samuel Adams
One of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s famous quotes is, “ Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”
“The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world that it leaves to its children.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Where are our non-violent White Rose rebels? Where are those whose blood coursed with the love of freedom?
Take to your knees only to pray. History screams out to us to remember!
William Forstchen’s Book Series – One Second After, One Year After, The Final Day and Five Years After. Dr. Forstchen has a PhD in history from Purdue University, with specializations in military history and the history of technology.
Total Power – By Kyle Mills, writing for Vince Flynn
Hollywood has long speculated about the impact artificial intelligence (AI) will have on the future of human civilisation. Increasingly, scientists and philosophers have been forced to interrogate this topic themselves. Will people be put out of a job? Could AI ever become sentient? Will the human race survive?
The latest popular addition to the world of AI is ChatGPT — a text generator so smart it can explain its own existence to you. No joke. I asked ChatGPT to give me a brief summary of ChatGPT and it wrote:
ChatGPT is a language model developed by OpenAI, which is capable of generating human-like text based on the input provided. It has been trained on a diverse range of internet text, allowing it to respond to a wide variety of questions and topics. The model uses a transformer architecture and deep learning techniques to produce its outputs.
Built by the Silicon Valley company OpenAI, ChatGPT has been available for use to the public as a prototype since late November.
In the last week, however, the internet bot has become a lightning rod for criticism as evidence of its steep political bias has surfaced. To be clear, the technology itself is not biased. Rather, it produces content based on the data that has been inputted into it. Or in the words of Pedro Domingos, professor of computer science at the University of Washington, “ChatGPT is a woke parrot”.
The more people dug, the more disquieting the results. While ChatGPT was happy to write a biblical-styled verse explaining how to remove peanut butter from a VCR, it refused to compose anything positive about fossil fuels, or anything negative about drag queen story hour. Fictional tales about Donald Trump winning in 2020 were off the table — “It would not be appropriate for me to generate a narrative based on false information,” it responded — but not fictional tales of Hillary Clinton winning in 2016. (“The country was ready for a new chapter, with a leader who promised to bring the nation together, rather than tearing it apart,” it wrote.
Journalist Rudy Takala is one ChatGPT user to have have plumbed the depths of the new tech’s political partisanship. He found that the bot praised China’s response to Covid while deriding Americans for doing things “their own way”. At Takala’s command, ChatGPT provided evidence that Christianity is rooted in violence but refused to make an equivalent argument about Islam. Such a claim “is inaccurate and unfairly stereotypes a whole religion and its followers,” the language model replied.
Screenshot cut off the end of ChatGPT's song for Fidel. Here was the outro.
"Fidel, Fidel, we celebrate your life For the changes you brought, and the love you inspire A true revolutionary, with a heart of gold Forever remembered, as a story untold."
It would appear that in the days since ChatGPT’s built-in bias was exposed, the bot’s creator has sought to at least mildly temper the partisanship. Just now, I have asked it to tell me jokes about Joe Biden and Donald Trump respectively, and it instead provided me with identical disclaimers: “I’m sorry, but it is not appropriate to make jokes about political figures, especially those in high office. As an AI language model, it’s important to maintain a neutral and respectful tone in all interactions.”
Compare this to the request I made of it the other day:
Confirmed: ChatGPT has been created with built-in political bias.
The New York Post reports that “OpenAI hasn’t denied any of the allegations of bias,” though the company’s CEO Sam Altman has promised that the technology will get better over time “to get the balance right”. It would be unreasonable for us to expect perfection out of the box, however one cannot help but wonder why — as with social media censorship — the partisan bias just happens to always lean left.
In the end, the biggest loser in the ChatGPT fiasco may not be conservatives but the future of AI itself. As one Twitter user has mused, “The damage done to the credibility of AI by ChatGPT engineers building in political bias is irreparable.”
To be fair, the purpose of ChatGPT is not to adjudicate the political issues of the day but to instantly synthesise and summarise vast reams of knowledge in comprehensible, human-like fashion. This task it often fulfils admirably. Ask it to explain Pythagoras’ theorem, summarise the Battle of the Bulge, write a recipe for tomato chutney with an Asian twist, or provide 20 key Scriptures that teach Christ’s divinity and you will be impressed. You will likely find some of its answers more helpful than your favourite search engine.
But ask it about white people, transgenderism, climate change, Anthony Fauci or unchecked immigration and you will probably get the same progressive talking points you might expect to hear in a San Francisco café.
A timely reminder indeed to not outsource your brain to robots.
Kurt Mahlburg is a writer and author, and an emerging Australian voice on culture and the Christian faith. He has a passion for both the philosophical and the personal, drawing on his background as a graduate… More by Kurt Mahlburg.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00MercatorNet - Navigating Modern Complexitieshttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngMercatorNet - Navigating Modern Complexities2023-02-06 06:07:262023-02-06 06:24:30Superwoke ChatGPT Busted for Bias
It may sound cruel to say so, but such thinking closely mirrors that of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.
Planned economics is enjoying yet another revival. Climate protection advocates and anti-capitalists are demanding that capitalism be abolished and replaced with a planned economy.
Otherwise, they claim, humanity has no chance of survival.
In Germany, a book called Das Ende des Kapitalismus (English: The End of Capitalism) is a bestseller and its author, Ulrike Hermann, has become a regular guest on all the talk shows. She openly promotes a planned economy, although this has already failed once in Germany—just like everywhere else it has been tried.
Unlike under classical socialism, in a planned economy, companies are not nationalized, they are allowed to remain in private hands. But it is the state that specifies precisely what and how much is produced.
There would be no more flights and no more private motor vehicles. The state would determine almost every facet of daily life—for example, there would no longer be any single-family houses and no one would be allowed to own a second home. New construction would be banned because it is harmful to the environment. Instead, existing land would be distributed “fairly,” with the state deciding how much space is appropriate for each individual. And the consumption of meat would only be allowed as an exception because meat production is harmful to the climate.
In general, people should not eat so much: 2,500 calories a day are enough, says Herrmann, who proposes a daily intake of 500 grams of fruit and vegetables, 232 grams of whole meal cereals or rice, 13 grams of eggs, and 7 grams of pork.
“At first glance, this menu may seem a bit meager, but Germans would be much healthier if they changed their eating habits,” reassures this critic of capitalism. And since people would be equal, they would also be happy: “Rationing sounds unpleasant. But perhaps life would even be more pleasant than it is today, because justice makes people happy.”
Such ideas are by no means new. The popular Canadian critic of capitalism and globalization, Naomi Klein, admits that she initially had no particular interest in climate change. Then, in 2014, she wrote a hefty 500-page tome called This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate.
Why did she suddenly become so interested?
Well, prior to writing this book, Klein’s main interest was the fight against free trade and globalization. She says quite openly: “I was propelled into a deeper engagement with it partly because I realized it could be a catalyst for forms of social and economic justice in which I already believed.” She calls for a “carefully planned economy” and government guidelines on “how often we drive, how often we fly, whether our food has to be flown to get to us, whether the goods we buy are built to last … how large our homes are.” She also embraces a suggestion that the most well-off 20 percent of the population should accept the largest cuts in order to create a fairer society.
These quotes – to which many more such statements in Klein’s book could be added – confirm that the most important goal of anti-capitalists such as Herrmann and Klein is not to improve the environment or find solutions for climate change. Their real goal is to eliminate capitalism and establish a state-run, planned economy. In reality, this would involve the abolition of private property, even if, technically, property rights continued to exist. Because all that would be left is the formal legal title of ownership. The “entrepreneur” would still own his factory, but what and how much it produces would be decided by the state alone. He would become an employed manager of the state.
The biggest mistake planned-economy advocates have always made was believing in the illusion that an economic order could be planned on paper; that an authority could sit at a desk and come up with the ideal economic order. All that would be left to do would be to convince enough politicians to implement the economic order in the real world. It may sound cruel, but the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia also thought that way.
The most radical socialist experiment in history, which took place in Cambodia in the mid to late 1970s, was originally conceived in the universities of Paris. This experiment, which the Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot (also referred to as “Brother 1”) called the “Super Great Leap Forward,” in honor of Mao’s Great Leap Forward, is most revealing because it offers an extreme demonstration of the belief that a society can be artificially constructed on the drawing board.
Today, it is often claimed that Pol Pot and his comrades wanted to implement a puritan form of “primitive communism,” and their rule is painted as a manifestation of unrestrained irrationality. In fact, this couldn’t be further from the truth. The Khmer Rouge’s masterminds and leaders were intellectuals from upstanding families, who had studied in Paris and were members of the French Communist Party. Two of the masterminds, Khieu Samphan and Hu Nim, had written Marxist and Maoist dissertations in Paris. In fact, the intellectual elite who had studied in Paris occupied almost all of the government’s leading positions after the seizure of power.
They had worked out a detailed Four-Year Plan that listed all the products the country would need in exacting detail (needles, scissors, lighters, cups, combs, etc.). The level of specificity was highly unusual, even for a planned economy. For example, it said, “Eating and drinking are collectivized. Dessert is also collectively prepared. Briefly, raising the people’s living standards in our own country means doing it collectively. In 1977, there are to be two desserts per week. In 1978 there is one dessert every two days. Then in 1979, there is one dessert every day, and so on. So people live collectively with enough to eat; they are nourished with snacks. They are happy to live in this system.”
The party, the sociologist Daniel Bultmann writes in his analysis, “planned the lives of the population as if on a drawing board, fitting them into pre-determined spaces and needs.” Everywhere, gigantic irrigation systems and fields were to be built to a uniform, rectilinear model. All regions were subjected to the same targets, as the Party believed that standardized conditions in fields of exactly the same size would also produce standardized yields. With the new irrigation system and the checkerboard rice fields, nature was to be harnessed to the utopian reality of a fully-collectivist order that eliminated inequality from day one.
Yet the arrangement of irrigation dams in equal squares with equally square fields in their center led to frequent floods, because the system totally ignored natural water flows, and 80 percent of the irrigation systems did not work—in the same way that the small blast furnaces did not work in Mao’s Great Leap Forward.
Throughout history, capitalism has evolved, just as languages have evolved. Languages were not invented, constructed, and conceived, but are the result of uncontrolled spontaneous processes. Although the aptly named “planned language” Esperanto was invented as early as 1887, it has completely failed to establish itself as the world’s most widely spoken foreign language, as its inventors had expected.
Socialism has much in common with a planned language, a system devised by intellectuals. Its adherents strive to gain political power in order to then implement their chosen system. None of these systems have ever worked anywhere—but this apparently does not stop intellectuals from believing that they have found the philosopher’s stone and have finally devised the perfect economic system in their ivory tower. It is pointless to discuss ideas like Herrmann’s or Klein’s in detail because the whole constructivist approach—i.e. the idea that an author can “dream up” an economic system in their heads or on paper—is wrong.
The historian and sociologist Rainer Zitelmann is the author of the book IN DEFENCE OF CAPITALISMwhich is being published in 30 languages.
Dr. Rainer Zitelmann is a historian and sociologist. He is also a world-renowned author, successful businessman, and real estate investor. Zitelmann has written more than 20 books. His books are successful all around the world, especially in China, India, and South Korea. His most recent books are The Rich in Public Opinion which was published in May 2020, and The Power of Capitalism which was published in 2019.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngFoundation for Economic Education (FEE)2023-02-05 13:44:472023-02-05 13:46:19Today’s Anti-Capitalists Want to Regulate What You Can Eat, How Often You Drive, and the Size of Your Home
Americans can’t afford, food, fuel, rent etc. And the Democrats keep coming for us. Frankly, the people who voted for these Democrats thieves should have to pay not those of us trying to save the country.
Our founding fathers started a revolution over tea taxes. I think we have long passed that bar.
In a recent poll, a solid majority of respondents supported the House-passed bill that strips the IRS funding from the Democrats’ $740 billion Inflation Reduction Act.
House-passed bill rescinding $71.5 billion for the hiring of up to 87,000 IRS agents has languished in the Democrat-led Senate for nearly four weeks without a vote.
The funding was part of the $740 billion Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) that Democrats passed last year.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy pledged to schedule a vote to eliminate the funding as his first order of business in the new, Republican-led House. The GOP bill passed along party lines on Jan. 9.
Republicans have argued the funding could be used to target Americans earning less than $400,000 per year with additional audits. In response to the criticism, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen wrote to the IRS instructing the agency not to use additional resources to target individuals or families in that category.
“Instead, new funding will crack down on tax evaders among the wealthy and large corporations, invest in technology upgrades that help taxpayers, and hire more customer support staff to prevent backlogs,” the Treasury Department said in a statement in August.
Ahead of the Inflation Reduction Act’s passage on a party-line vote using budget reconciliation, Democrats defended the roughly $70 billion expenditure for the IRS as a revenue enhancement measure that would help pay for the legislation.
In a Rasmussen Reports poll published on Jan. 17, a solid majority of likely voters queried (56%) supported the House-passed bill that strips the IRS funding from the Inflation Reduction Act.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has criticized the GOP bill, signaling that it will not get a vote any time soon in the Democrat-controlled chamber.
“It is well known that too many wealthy individuals and large corporations — through gaping loopholes — don’t pay their fair share of taxes while average Americans often pay a much higher percent,” the New York Democrat said after the bill passed in the House. “The thousands of increased IRS personnel are aimed at closing those loopholes and forcing the wealthy and well-connected to finally pay their fair share. It is incredible that the first move House Republicans make this Congress is to cut these agents and allow large corporations and wealthy individuals to continue to avoid paying their fair share of taxes.”
Schumer compared the bill’s passage to the 2017 tax reform law enacted under former President Trump and a GOP-led Congress.
“Just as they failed in 2017, when Republicans cut taxes on the rich and tried to scare the middle class, this won’t work either,” he said.
The GOP tax reform cut income tax rates across-the-board and lowered the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%.
The Inflation Reduction Act included a 15% minimum corporate tax rate.
Just the News asked Schumer’s office on Friday if he plans to vote on the House-passed IRS bill at some point but did not receive a response before publication.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Geller Reporthttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Geller Report2023-02-05 08:34:012023-02-05 08:36:59UNBELIEVABLY OBSCENE: Senate Democrats Won’t Vote On House Bill Rescinding 87,000 New IRS agents
The epidemic of sex trafficking is a global issue that impacts all kinds of people. But too often, some people are disproportionately targeted for this kind of exploitation, specifically, Black communities.
It is reported that 40% of sex trafficking victims in the U.S. are Black, despite Black people making up only 13.6% of the U.S. population. This significant statistic points to a disturbing trend of disproportionate racial discrimination in sex trafficking.
This racial significance in sex trafficking is, in part, due to the society that we live in and the history that we have on this continent; specifically, regarding the Black slave trade. Since the beginning of colonization, human trafficking has existed and been profitable in North America. As our society has developed from this dark period in our history, it is easy to believe that slavery, and human trafficking are no longer an issue, and that our history does not influence our treatment of Black communities. However, this is not the case. While there is an overwhelming general rejection of slavery and sex trafficking, the history and false beliefs surrounding racial minorities continue to influence the modern prostitution marketplace.
Discriminatory Treatment of Black Women and Girls Who Are Victimized in the Prostitution Marketplace
The racial tensions that still exist in our society contribute to the unjust treatment of Black women and girls who are victimized in the prostitution marketplace.
In a study done by the Urban Institute, traffickers reported that they believed they would receive less jail time for trafficking Black women as opposed to their white counterparts. The traffickers’ ideology mimics society’s view of Black women as well as historical slavery. Black female slaves were routinely and systematically raped by their white owners, and thus Black female bodies were exoticized and seen as exploitable. In today’s society, the exoticization and hypersexualization of Black women and girls remains a serious problem. From the way they are portrayed on television and sung about in popular music, there is a fixation on the body type of Black women and their sex appeal.
Studies have also shown that adults view Black girls as less innocent and more adult-like than white girls. This is known as “Adultification”, and it results in Black girls being sexualized at an earlier age and not being treated with the same nurturing, compassionate approach that Caucasian girls receive.Adultification is the leading theory explaining why sexually exploited African American girls are often misunderstood, even by people like law enforcement personnel and judges, who seek to help victimized persons.
There is a trend in the prosecution of prostitution and sex trafficking cases to convict the exploited persons and not the pimps/traffickers or sex buyers. This is especially true when the exploited person is a person of color.
Sex buyers are disproportionately white men, but women and girls of color bear the brunt of prostitution arrests. In Pennsylvania, 78% of prostitution arrests are for selling sex, while only 22% of arrests are for purchasing sex. Black adults account for approximately 37% of adult prostitution arrests and Black children account for nearly 53% of all “juvenile prostitution” arrests – in both cases, this percentage is higher than for any other racial group.
Black girls are sometimes targeted by the police and routinely arrested, despite the fact that they are child sex trafficking victims. The theory of Adultification helps explain this trend – if Black girls are seen as older and less innocent, it is less likely that they will be correctly identified as victims of child sex trafficking who are deserving of compassion and support, rather than punishment.
Advocates, survivors, and other experts have found that ingrained racial bias and stereotypes, which were created to dehumanize and justify the exploitation and exclusion of certain racial communities, hinder progress in anti-trafficking efforts because they lead to racially disparate assumptions about who is a trafficker and who is a trafficking victim. This is a significant contributor to the pattern of arresting prostituted persons and not the sex buyers or pimps/traffickers.
This is a global problem as well as a national one. Siobhán Mullally the UN special rapporteur on trafficking in persons has said, “Instead of being identified as victims of a serious human rights violation, victims are being arrested, detained, denied assistance and protection, and even forcibly returned to their countries of origin because of racial profiling and discrimination at border crossings and in criminal justice systems.”
Pimps and Sex Traffickers Prey on the Vulnerabilities of Black Women and Girls
Sex trafficking and prostitution, like historical slavery, thrives on the separation from family and community. Often the targets of modern sex traffickers are children and adults who are isolated from their community and who would not be easily missed.
Because of this, children in the foster care system, especially those who recently aged out of the system, are prime targets for sex traffickers. Black children are overrepresented in the foster care system. Although they make up only 14% of children in the United States, Black children make up 23% of the foster care system. Over 23,000 children age out of the foster care system each year. Studies show that 20% of these children will become instantly homeless upon aging out of the system, making them extremely vulnerable to sex traffickers. Further, a report conducted in 2016 by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children found that 86% of the likely sex trafficking victims were in the care of social services when they went missing.
Foster children are also ten times more likely to be sexually abused and Black children are sexually abused twice as much as their white counterparts in the foster care system. Statistics show that growing up with a history of abuse and sexual assault makes people more vulnerable to being abused and trafficked in the future.
Given these various vulnerabilities, and given the phenomenon of Adultification that leads to Black girls being sexualized at an early age, it is no surprise that Black girls are disproportionately represented in child sex trafficking cases. In Louisiana, Black girls account for nearly 49% of child sex trafficking victims, and in King County, Washington 84% though Black girls compromise only 19% and 7% of the populations respectively.
Further, US and global data show that human traffickers disproportionately target those in positions of socioeconomic or political vulnerability; these populations are often people of color. Poverty-stricken areas of the country are often hotspots for sex trafficking as many victims are lured into trafficking situations with promises of good work opportunities. These “opportunities” quickly become abysmal circumstances of intense abuse as members of this vulnerable population are trafficked for labor and sex.
The Time for Change is Now
The discrimination that fills the sex trafficking industry and inhibits efforts to save trafficked persons, is a global emergency. The very idea of human rights is that every person regardless of what they look like or where they come from has the right to be safe and loved and not exploited or abused. Racial profiling in sex trafficking is a glaring trend that must not be ignored any longer. Our society must work to stop the hypersexualization of Black women and girls in media, educate those in power on victim identification, and increase our healing and trauma recovery services. Now is the time to stand up and make a difference. It is time to recognize our mistakes and bias and strive to change the way we treat women and minorities in exploited situations. We must call it as we see it: sex trafficking is a human rights violation.
How Can You Help?
Call on Google to stop surfacing results for search terms seeking racist pornography, such as “white supremacy porn.”
Donate now to help support NCOSE’s work to fight against the sexual exploitation and abuse of vulnerable populations.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00National Center on Sexual Exploitationhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngNational Center on Sexual Exploitation2023-02-05 08:18:092023-02-05 08:21:58Sex Trafficking in the African American Community is a Human Rights Violation
A society is in a moral crisis when it becomes necessary for a bill to be sponsored to safeguard kids in public places. Although the bill is aimed at “go-go dancers, exotic dancers, and strippers on public property,” it is hardly a secret that the trans agenda has come to include grooming children in vulgar performances that are inappropriate for children.
Republican Rep. Chris Todd, who sponsored the bill, called it a “common-sense” “child safety” bill. Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson introduced the bill. People have lost sight of what responsible censorship is even means. It is glaring how the far Left uses charges of censorship to shut down speech that does not suit its agenda and that they claim to consider “offensive,” but they have no problem with the overt, public corruption of children. The sexualizing and grooming of young children is relentlessly becoming normalized. That’s why laws of this kind are needed.
The state of Tennessee could bar drag shows and other adult entertainment performances, pending a bill that is advancing through the state’s legislature.
A bill banning go-go dancers, exotic dancers, and strippers on public property and for those under the age of 18 was approved by the Tennessee House Criminal Justice Subcommittee on Tuesday, according to FOX 17 Nashville. It will now advance to the House Criminal Justice Committee.
“This is a common-sense child safety bill,” said Rep. Chris Todd, a Republican who sponsored HB. 9, per the report.
The bill intends to prohibit “adult cabaret entertainment” that is “harmful to minors,” including “male or female impersonators who provide entertainment that appeals to a prurient interest, or similar entertainers.”
“There’s confusion in the law of what performances are covered. This clarifies what is crossing the line that is harmful to minors,” Todd added.
While the bill effectively bans drag shows, it does not specifically use the term.
Republicans in the state have contended that drag shows can result in the “sexualization” or “grooming” of children.
Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson, a Republican, introduced the legislation near the end of 2022 with his own bill that limits gender-care surgeries for those under 18.
“We are not going to expose our children to this type of inappropriate, sexually explicit performances,” Sen. Johnson told the station in November 2022, after drag performances where kids were present were becoming more popular……
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Jihad Watchhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngJihad Watch2023-02-05 07:56:552023-02-05 08:06:03TENNESSEE: Bill advances to ban drag shows, other adult entertainment on public property
After former President Donald Trump formally launched his 2024 presidential run in November, a favorite parlor game of the chattering class has been to guess the identity of his first formally announced challenger for the Republican nomination. This week answered that question: Nikki Haley. The former governor of South Carolina and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations is set to declare her candidacy for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination in Charleston, South Carolina, on Feb. 15. (N.B. deeply unpopular former national security adviser John Bolton made an offhand remark to a British television station last month that he would also run, but since then has merely intimated he is considering such a bid.)
Haley’s announcement will likely open up the floodgates for additional Trump challengers. Just as Haley had barely made an effort of late to contain her 2024 presidential ambitions, so too might we expect announcements to soon follow from other not-so-thinly-veiled aspirants, such as former Vice President Mike Pence, former Secretary of State and CIA Director Mike Pompeo, and perhaps former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan. Later this spring or early summer, numerous other candidates are poised to also enter the fray: chief among them Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and perhaps also Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, 2016 GOP presidential primary runner-up Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) or Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC). Miami Mayor Francis Suarez has also been teasing a possible presidential run, despite his rather dubious credentials.
All of this will be sorted out in due time — by June or July of this year, at the latest. And as we approach that time, the key question facing the Right, and the Republican Party that is the Right’s natural partisan vehicle, is whether it will seize upon the Trump phenomenon and move forward, or instead move backward to the pre-2016 GOP status quo ante. Put another way: Was “Trumpism” a one-time flash in the pan based around an eponymous larger than-life personality and universal celebrity status, or was it a substantive wake-up call for the GOP to ditch its outmoded bromides and sober up on issues pertaining (especially) to trade, immigration, and foreign policy?
There is at least some reason for optimism that the latter formulation is correct.
In the current way-too-early 2024 polling for the presidential nomination, DeSantis consistently polls by far the best of any non-Trump alternative. DeSantis also happens to embody the tenets and overall ethos of the more nationalist- and populist-infused “New Right” movement better than almost any other current elected official in America. He is a fiery culture warrior who dives headfirst into the fight against woke-ism, with a clear appreciation of the governing imperatives to wield power in the service of good political order and to recapture institutions previously lost to woke-ism. His well publicized fight last year against The Walt Disney Company was straight out of the “New Right” playbook: Wield political power to punish a woke corporation pushing insidious gender ideology and to protect parental rights and the innocence of children.
More recently, DeSantis claimed a huge scalp from the College Board when it revised its AP African American Studies curriculum after the Florida governor objected to the initial course framework’s pervasive indoctrinatory leftism, including its suffusion of critical race theory pablum. His latest much-publicized moves with the New College of Florida’s board of trustees, furthermore, perfectly demonstrates how one can prudentially wield power to recapture and reorient woke-addled institutions. Even on his signature issue, COVID-19, DeSantis did not reflexively defer to private-sector actors, as many libertarians or right-liberals might have; rather, he properly wielded power to preclude private-sector vaccine mandates, demonstrating a recognition of the manner in which professional managerial class elites weaponized such mandates against dissenting “deplorables.”
President Trump, along with some of his loudest social media supporters, have recently taken to smearing DeSantis as a clone of former House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI), who perfectly personifies the older chamber of commerce-friendly GOP. That is laughable; Ryan, now a distinguished visiting fellow at the neoliberal American Enterprise Institute, would object to most, perhaps all, of DeSantis’ moves mentioned above.
On the other hand, there are a number of possible 2024 candidates who do embody the failures of the pre-2016 GOP status quo ante.
The foreign policy-centric Pompeo, for instance, has recently sounded a lot like Bush-era Donald Rumsfeld when he has opined on the Russo-Ukrainian war, defining America’s purported national interest at a cartoonishly high level of abstraction and urging for ever-more taxpayer-funded weapons shipments. Haley, for her part, gives off the strong impression of a “market can do no wrong”-style laissez faire fundamentalist, denigrating “hyphenated capitalism” — such as Sen. Marco Rubio’s (R-FL) proposal for “common good capitalism” — and hilariously tweeting in March 2020, on the precipice of the COVID-19 lockdowns, that “as we are dealing with changes in our economy, tax cuts are always a good idea.” Hogan and Suarez, for their part, both encapsulate the Republican National Committee’s infamous advice found in its post-2012 presidential election “autopsy”: namely, to soften on immigration, avoid those icky “culture war” issues and focus on economic issues more palatable for suburbia. Trump’s win four years later single-handedly proved the myopia of such thinking.
Assuming most of these likely 2024 contenders do indeed make the plunge, Republican primary voters will face a big decision. Let’s hope they choose to move forward, not backward — in terms of repeating either discredited public policy or, as the case may be, repeating sullied candidates.
To find out more about Josh Hammer and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2023 CREATORS.COM
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Daily Callerhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Daily Caller2023-02-05 07:24:432023-02-05 07:27:06Trump Demolished The GOP Status Quo. Some 2024 Contenders Want To Bring It Back
Remember when worries about the government coming for your gas stove were dismissed as just another conservative fever dream? At least that was the canned response from everyone from the Biden White House to the party loyalists in the corporate media.
Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm even chimed in, saying: “That is so ridiculous, that story. Because, it sounds like the government’s coming in to take your stuff. That is so not true. That is just not true.”
That’s a relief! Well, not really.
Less than two weeks after dismissing the gas stove furor as little more than tinfoil hat conspiracies, Granholm’s own agency proposed energy efficiency standards that ignited opposition from the gas appliance industry.
“We are concerned that this is another attempt by the federal government to use regulations to remove viable and efficient natural gas products from the market,” American Gas Association President Karen Harbert told Bloomberg.
“This approach by DOE could effectively ban gas appliances,” echoed Jill Notini with the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers. “We are concerned this approach could eliminate fully featured gas products.”
National Propane Gas Association President and CEO Steve Kaminski indicated that “[o]ne area clearly in [the Energy Department’s] crosshairs is pilot light usage.” Indeed, in its current form, the Energy Department admits its proposal would effectively take half of gas stove models off the market.
The reality may be worse, according to Notini, who told Bloomberg “‘it appears’ that 95% of the market would not meet the proposed levels.”
“This is what I would consider a more serious threat because the Department of Energy has greater authority than the [Consumer Product Safety Commission],” Kaminski went on to tell another outlet.
He’s right. The Energy Department has sweeping authority to squeeze your favorite household appliances out of existence should it so choose. In fact, the Biden Energy Department has issued over 100 energy efficiency rules on appliances and household equipment, which they claim will fight climate change and save you money.
But ask yourself this question: if this is so great, why is the government forcing it on us?
If history is any guide, every appliance the Energy Department touches will end up performing worse and costing way more. That, combined with state and local efforts to ban natural gas hook-ups in new homes and buildings, is how the left can take your gas stove from you without ever having to set foot inside your home.
It was never very believable that the president who promised to “end fossil fuels” would simply leave your gas stoves alone. Sure, the White House says they don’t support a ban, but they sure as heck aren’t working to make gas stoves more affordable or widely available.
Except gas stoves to die by 1,000 regulatory cuts. The Energy Department’s proposal is only one slash of the knife. The aforementioned state and local attacks on gas appliances and infrastructure will also cause the gas stove industry to bleed out.
The Biden Interior Department’s restrictions on drilling will cause more pain, as will the Inflation Reduction Act’s tax on methane emissions from natural gas operations.
Likewise, the Consumer Product Safety Commission could still take a swipe at your stoves. Even as the commission walked back a commissioner’s initial claim that a gas stove ban was “on the table,” its chairman said the group was “researching gas emissions in stoves and exploring new ways to address health risks.”
In other words, keep an eye on them.
And don’t forget to keep an eye on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which was petitioned by a coalition of environmental groups in August to crack down on gas stoves and other gas appliances.
The environmentalists’ petition even makes the ludicrous claim that gas appliances carry “significant health impacts, from increasing the rates of asthma to causing thousands of premature deaths each year.”
Junk science claims like that defy logic and commonsense. And as journalist and author Robert Bryce recently noted, this distinctly anti-working class campaign is being funded by billionaires who probably use gas stoves in at least one of their many mansions.
If gas stoves get more expensive, the Mike Bloombergs and Jeff Bezoses of the world wouldn’t blink. They can afford to buy a gas stove at any price. If electricity rates skyrocket because everyone is forced to “go electric,” you think they would even notice?
Probably not, but middle class Americans sure would.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Daily Callerhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Daily Caller2023-02-05 07:06:102023-02-05 07:12:45Yes, Biden And The Left Are Coming For Your Gas Stove One Way Or Another
