Medical research rapidly adopts ‘systemic racism’ as truth, risking its scientific credibility

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Rejection used to be common for medical sociologist Thomas LaVeist when he tried to get his research published on the effects of racism on the health of black people. “Now,” said the 60-year-old dean of Tulane University’s School of Public Health & Tropical Medicine, “I have those same journals asking me to write articles for them.”

LaVeist’s experience illustrates the dramatic transformation in medical research, accelerating in the past few years. While few would dispute that black Americans are more prone to chronic health problems and have shorter life expectancies than whites, the medical community generally sought answers in biology, genetics and lifestyle. Research, like LaVeist’s, that focused on racism was frowned upon as lacking rigor or relevance, an amateurish detour from serious intellectual inquiry.

Today medical journal editors are clamoring for a racial lens and apologizing for what they call their past moral blindness. In recent years, and especially since Black Lives Matter protests erupted last year, systemic racism has been transformed from a fringe theory to a canonical truth.

Medical researchers are now able to offer a sweeping socio-political explanation for racial health disparities by citing the hundreds of peer-reviewed articles authored by LaVeist and a host of others, thus conferring upon the study of systemic racism the imprimatur of scholarly authority and even settled science.

Systemic racism used to be a hypothesis. Now it’s a dogma

This year, top officials at the National Institutes of Health issued an apology to all who have suffered from structural racism in biomedical research. The NIH, the nation’s largest funder of biomedical research, announced that it is dedicating US$90 million to the study of health disparities and structural racism, engaging in more than 60 diversity and inclusion initiatives, and committing “every tool at our disposal to remediate the chronic problem of structural racism.”

In an August special issue dedicated to racial health disparities, the prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association stated that systemic racism is a scientific fact beyond dispute, and disagreeing on this point is “wrong,” “misguided” and “uninformed.” Systemic racism is a reality to be assumed in medical research rather than a sociological hypothesis to be tested by skeptical researchers.

Deemed incontestable, systemic racism provides the political rationale for “dismantling” — in the words of no less an authority than the National Institutes of Health — the social institutions and cultural standards that, according to the framework’s advocates, were constructed and are maintained to uphold white supremacy.

The consequences of ignoring this new prime directive for racially focused research were made abundantly clear this year when the top two editors of JAMA were pressured to resign after the organization ran a podcast that questioned whether systemic racism explains health disparities between blacks and other Americans.

“When JAMA sends a call for paper on structural racism, when the NIH director sends out an apology letter for racism in the NIH and when the CDC for the first time uses the term ‘racism,’ these are highest-level determinants of what research will be done in coming years in this country,” said Shervin Assari, an associate professor of family medicine and urban public health at Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science in Los Angeles, one of four historically black medical schools in the nation.

“This is the first time the NIH has issued a call for research on structural racism. This is the first time JAMA fires an editor who said something wrong about racism,” said Assari, who has published more than 350 papers on race, social determinants and health equity. “Now NIH is paying good money to the best researchers in this country who are competing to understand how structural racism works, rather than if it exists.”

Systemic racism, generally unseen but known by its perceived effects, doesn’t directly cause diabetes, hypertension or depression, but it purportedly creates the living conditions in which chronic conditions opportunistically thrive, advocates say. Such living conditions include unsafe neighborhoods, aggressive policing, substandard schools, discriminatory workplaces, inferior medical care and the resulting stress, despair and self-destructive behavior, the theory states.

Advancing health care equity

To institutionalize its new policy, JAMA is revising its peer review standards and diversifying its ranks to advance health care equity, a term that refers to narrowing or even eliminating racial health disparities in chronic conditions and life expectancies. Similar steps are being adopted throughout the medical profession — by the cluster-hiring of minority applicants, hiring of diversity and equity officers, and training staff on “white privilege,” implicit bias, microaggressions, and allyship.

A lead editorial in the August special issue, co-signed by 15 people, including JAMA’s newly installed executive editor and executive managing editor, along with other JAMA leaders, said all medical journals are morally obligated to assume systemic racism as a fact and document this fact in their research.

“At this point in the arc of medicine and scientific publication,” JAMA stated, “it is crucial for all journals to fulfill renewed editorial and journal missions that include a heightened and appropriate emphasis on equity and publication of information that addresses structural racism with the goal of overcoming its effects in medicine and health care.”

A moral panic sweeps through medicine

This rapid turn of events has blindsided traditional doctors, who are put off by the intense focus on race and the strong rhetoric.

“The spectacle of the gatekeepers of medical publications announcing a political blueprint that medical authors must follow — or else — is pretty breathtaking,” Thomas Huddle, who retired this year as professor at the medical school at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, said by email.

“The medical gatekeepers are in the grip of a moral panic,” said Huddle, who has published on medical ethics and edited several medical journals. “The JAMA convulsion over the podcast was positively Maoist in its fervor for achieving moral correctness and purging the impure.”

It’s an open secret that some find the systemic explanation to be nothing more than leftist polemic, while others are skeptical it convincingly explains everything it claims to explain. These skeptics worry about the career implications of publicly dissenting from the new orthodoxy, but it’s not inconceivable that blaming an entire national culture for racial disparities will prompt independent scholars and conservative think tanks to produce opposing research that explores black-on-black murder, racial disparities in IQ testing and other taboo subjects.

The dramatic transformation sweeping through the health care profession is not happening in a vacuum. It mirrors social justice movements committed to exposing structural racism that allegedly pervades education, criminal justice, the arts, hard sciences and other domains of U.S. society. Activists in those fields, as well as medicine, talk of dismantling white supremacy and other “structures” that operate by means of race-neutral laws and colorblind norms that cause racial and gender power imbalances and harm non-white groups.

Displacing the scientific method

Skeptical physicians say that medical journal editors are essentially replacing the scientific method with a political ideology, namely critical race theory, and leaving little room for alternative explanations — such as personal agency or cultural differences.

“There’s a tremendous amount of groupthink,” said Stanley Goldfarb, a former dean for curriculum who taught about kidney disease at the University of Pennsylvania medical school before retiring this summer. “If you don’t agree with all that, you’re a bad person.”

“This is an argument that you’re not allowed to have — that’s the problem here,” said Goldfarb, who has served on the editorial boards of three medical journals and was editor-in-chief of a nephrology journal.

Racial health disparities underlie the four-year gap in black-white life expectancy in the United States. The factors that contribute to this disparity include chronic conditions, unintentional injuries, suicide and homicide, which is the leading cause of death for black males aged 44 and younger. Scholars committed to the systemic racism explanation blame the disproportionately high crime rates in poor black neighborhoods on discrimination, substandard schools and other manifestations of systemic racism.

Is there overwhelming evidence?

The body of research into racial health disparities has broken into the mainstream after establishing credibility through the time-honored system of academic citations and referrals. Since LaVeist began his work in the 1990s, a small stream of articles has swelled into a critical mass that now allows medical researchers to assume systemic racism as a proven fact and cite the evidence in footnotes, as established knowledge, instead of arguing the case each time.

“When the weight of the evidence becomes so overwhelming that we reach consensus, we no longer continue to question whether or not [it is true],” LaVeist said. “We don’t question gravity anymore because the consensus is that gravity is a thing.”

One of the JAMA articles in the August special issue found that the major health care spending disparity is that whites spend more on dental, pharmaceutical, and outpatient care, while blacks spend more on emergency room and inpatient hospital care, suggesting that black people are more likely to be uninsured and otherwise lack access to routine medical care.

Instead of detailing the precise reasons that may explain this gap, the authors invoke previous articles: “There are many mechanisms that have already been identified that explain how structural racism shapes health and healthcare.”

In a phone interview, the lead author, Joseph Dieleman, associate professor of health metric sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle, said: “These are taken as a given by us. These are not to be debated, or being tested, in our analysis.”

Health Affairs, dubbed by a Washington Post columnist as “the bible of health policy,” is redoubling its focus on systemic racism, anti-racism, and equity, not only in its published content but also in attending to the racial makeup of its published authors and reviewers.

“We acknowledge that the dominant voices in our work are those with power and privilege,” Editor-in-Chief Alan Weil wrote in January. “Even as we have dramatically increased the volume of our content focused on equity, the narrative has primarily been written by those in power. We vow to change this.”

Weil, who was trained in critical legal theory, a precursor to critical race theory, as a Harvard law student in the 1980s, said in a phone interview that the concepts of merit and quality are often used to maintain power and privilege, and these structures must be examined for bias.

“We’re just talking about — forgive the language that is used by the believers — interrogating ourselves,” Weil said.

Systemic racism, a core tenet of critical race theory, doesn’t have a settled definition but it has broad applicability. One of the peculiar features of systemic racism is that the mechanism is not evident to those who are not initiated into the theory, but ubiquitous to its acolytes.

Are disparities always a result of racism?

For best-selling and award-winning author Ibram X. Kendi, whose writings are considered essential reading at some medical schools, any disparity can signify racism. The concept can refer to all manner of disparate outcomes —  in murder rates, arrest rates, life expectancies, education levels, school discipline, household income, standardized tests scores and grades — even in the fact that black people are nowhere to be seen in the corridor portraits of medical school dignitaries and are under represented in symphony orchestras.

“There is no ‘official’ definition of structural racism,” states a recent article in The New England Journal of Medicine.  “All definitions make clear that racism is not simply the result of private prejudices held by individuals, but is also produced and reproduced by laws, rules, and practices, sanctioned and even implemented by various levels of government, and embedded in the economic system as well as in cultural and societal norms.”

One line of attack against the status quo is the movement to eliminate long-accepted practices to promote merit and excellence that, according to activists, operate as colorblind mechanisms to produce unequal outcomes: gifted and talented programs, gifted schools, and admissions tests for elite high schools, as well as standardized test scores for university admission. In medicine, the U.S. Medical Licensing Examination test is changing from a graded score to pass/fail to help minority students, while Northwestern University and its Feinberg School of Medicine are promoting diversity by eliminating a six-decade-old Honors Program in Medical Education.

Still, the concept provides special challenges for medicine. Unlike bacteria, for instance, systemic racism is an invisible force that can only be measured indirectly, by its perceived effects. Nevertheless, LaVeist is convinced that systemic racism is the best explanation for racial health disparities because the correlation of race and health is consistent across numerous studies for multiple chronic conditions.

“We cannot make direct causal inferences. The best we can do is look at plausible causality,” LaVeist said. “What we have is a case where once you’ve ruled out all of the plausible explanations, the only thing left is systemic racism.”

LaVeist and Weil agree that health and other disparities can have other causes than systemic racism, and good scholarship should be cognizant of other potential variables. LaVeist said that without allowing for other factors, people of color would have no free will, but it is important to note that African American culture is also shaped by white racism.

One of LaVeist’s early co-authored papers that was rejected by several journals before finding a publisher concluded that black people who experience rudeness at the hands of white people have longer life expectancies if they blame systemic racism, or some other external factor, for being treated disrespectfully.

An implication of the study: Even if the rude behavior by the white person isn’t caused by racism or an external factor, it’s strategically beneficial for black people to attribute the rudeness to someone else’s racism, boorishness or insensitivity, rather than blaming themselves.

“Yes — racism, or some other external attribution,” LaVeist said. “If you make an external attribution, that is going to be healthier than you thinking, ‘Oh they’re right, I am a bad person, I deserve to be mistreated.’”

Assari specializes in the study of “diminished returns” in quality of life and health that black people and other marginalized groups experience as they gain education and income in U.S. society. His research contends that black people reap fewer benefits — such as income and health — as they rise in education, compared to white people, which he attributes to structural racism. He has written half of the 300-some academic papers on that subject cited by the National Library of Medicine.

He makes connections that would not be self-evident to someone who lacks training in his specialty. One of his recent papers, published in the Journal of Health Economics, says that Americans are less likely to smoke as their income level rises. But that rule doesn’t hold for high-income Chinese Americans, who are more likely to smoke as they generate more income.  So Assari postulates that upwardly mobile Chinese Americans resort to nicotine as a means of coping with the anti-Asian bias they encounter in this country’s elite institutions.

Yet, he also said that even though the anti-racist movement seems invincible now, overweening claims about systemic racism will eventually invite scholarly criticism, especially if equity policies and interventions now being implemented fail to deliver results.

“I think there will be a very strong backlash against critical race theory very soon,” Assari said. “I don’t think it is sustainable. And it is falsifiable. So there would be an anti-CRT movement among other group of social scientists.”

Nevertheless, Assari said systemic racism is a reliable theoretical framework because it parsimoniously explains the marginalization of many racial groups.

“This is one model which explains many of our observations,” Assari said.

“A theory is [reliable] when an observation or assumption holds regardless of the context, setting, place, population, design, sample. It is replicated many times across a diverse group of settings, age groups, resources, and outcomes.”

LaVeist said segregation, much of it rooted in historical practices such as redlining and Jim Crow, is the primary driver of disparities. Poor neighborhoods are generally more polluted, closer to highways and industrial zones, and have less access to quality restaurants, grocery stores, public schools, and green spaces. Such environments tend to breed despair, which leads to crime and an overly aggressive police response.

The constant stress of dealing with these hassles and micro-aggressions wears on the body, research into health disparities says, echoing arguments made by critical race theorists in the 1980s. One medical paper, published in The Lancet in 2017 and cited more than 1,500 times as of November, says that residential segregation is the foundation of structural racism, and notes that “growing research is linking interpersonal racism to various biomarkers of disease and well-being, including allostatic load, inflammatory markers, and hormonal dysregulation.”

There are those who say the medical establishment is not going far enough in this research direction.

“Opportunistic scientific carpetbaggers”

The STAT News health information website reported in September that anti-racism and equity have become so trendy that “white scholars are colonizing research on health disparities.” According to the STAT investigation, white researchers are caught up in “a gold rush mentality” and “rushing to scoop up grants and publish papers.” The white scholars are replicating work done by black researchers without giving sufficient credit, a new form of exploitation practiced by “health equity tourists” and “opportunistic scientific carpetbaggers.”

One of the worst offenders: JAMA’s August special issue on health disparities. “Not one of the five research papers published in the issue included a Black lead or corresponding author, and just one lead author was Hispanic,” STAT reported.

Weil sympathizes with these concerns and said Health Affairs is creating a mentorship program to help scholars of color get their papers published in the journal. Weil, who said about 5% of submitted papers are accepted for publication at Health Affairs, is confident that dismantling power and privilege won’t necessitate compromising standards of excellence, and he considers such criticisms to be “generally false and intentionally inflammatory.”

“Equitable representation should be the outcome of an equitable process, not the jerry-rigged result of a change of standards for one group — that is not where we want to be,” Weil said. “So if the fix here is an equitable outcome by lowering standards for a certain group, our readers will notice, and that’s not the end point I’m looking for.”

Weil’s biggest concern is not that the anti-racist movement in medical research will go too far, but that the momentum and resolve will fizzle out.

“I think it’s very hard to tell where you are on a swinging pendulum when you’re in the middle of it,” he said. “I am much more concerned that this will become a rote exercise where everyone genuflects to anti-racism but does nothing about it, than I am that this is an overcorrection.”

This has been republished from RealClearInvestigations with permission.

COLUMN BY

John Murawski

Award-winning journalist and versatile writer who has covered complex, highly-regulated industries, including health care, energy and artificial intelligence. My articles have appeared in such national… More by John Murawski

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

Millions of Children Targeted by the FDA

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When the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) okayed the current Pfizer “vaccine,” it is not a vaccine, rather a bioweapon, according to overwhelming and mounting evidence backed up by testimony from many physicians, scientists, and virologists. It signed a potential death warrant for millions of children across the globe.

Dr. Richard L. Fleming, PhD, M.D., J.D., contacted the Federal Drug Administration concerning the safety and efficacy of the Covid “vaccine” and was assured by them, in words to the effect, “that it was everything a vaccine should be – very pristine.” However, it appears that Dr. Fleming was somewhat dubious of the FDA claims. So, he and his team went into action with tests to either confirm or reject its claim.

The results: Surprise! Surprise!

I’ll let him tell you about that. If he is correct in the findings, which I have no doubt of, it bodes very ill for the children of the world. One report stated that it could amount to as many as 28 million affected. Click here.

Let me just give you a few highlights of what Dr. Fleming stated.

According to Dr. Fleming, he and his team tested the vaccine that the FDA said was, in words to the effect, “everything a vaccine should be – very pristine” What they found was totally different.

Beginning with dropping a saline solution on a blood sample – the blood didn’t change, but after adding the Pfizer vaccine the blood became pale which meant that the oxygen and or the hemoglobin had been removed/extracted from the red blood cell. This would indicate (which he explains) that this “vaccine” would destroy the red blood cells, therefore preventing the blood from delivering enough oxygen throughout the body.

I have listened to this video several times and each time I learn more about the importance of the blood. But it shouldn’t be any surprise for God’s Word tells us that “Life is in the blood.”

Additionally, Dr. D.C. Jarvis, in one of his books on arthritis tells us that there are three ways that acid enters the blood.  After naming the ways, he names what monitors this and if and when excess acid enters which would change the PH balance from 7.2 to the lower or acid side.  Then the excess is kicked out and distributed throughout the body to form a bed of immunity that no virus or other various organisms can live in.

The ill which this jab bodes for the millions of children is only a miniscule tip of the iceberg compared to the heartbreak of the millions of families throughout the world. We cannot imagine more than a smidgen of their total suffering in the years to come, especially when it dawns them, that it was all a big lie. And as a result of being uninformed or misinformed, or maybe in some cases, just being completely ignorant of what was happening, they failed in their greatest responsibility to protect their children.

Children of our Past

This is absolutely heartbreaking for me. There are many children across this land which we haven’t seen for many years that my wife, Polly, and I have a connection with. For about 20 years, after I retired from International Paper Company, we were employed as house parents in Children’s Homes.

This resulted in our entering into a new life, for we looked not only as a new life but as an extra life given to us by God. We were entering into something that prior to this we had no idea or cognizance of the fact that there were many children, through circumstances not of their making, who were now having to adjust to a mode of living in which they were removed from family.  Other than occasional visits, their daily lives had dramatically changed.

We went into this new venture having successfully reared three grown children of our own who were now creating their own lives. As such, we believed that we had the experience and qualifications to become house parents to ten to twelve children in a children’s home.  The reality was…we weren’t…we only thought we were. We now know that it is very doubtful that anyone is really qualified for the position of house parents in a children’s home.

We were into this for over three years before becoming comfortable and in, what we considered, complete command of what we were responsible for. We now know that “what we considered’ was not correct. We were never in complete command; there were so many things we didn’t teach them.

Nevertheless, we were blessed with what agape love is all about, love that continues even when it is not returned. I had never considered that at some time I would love children who were not my own as much as if they were mine. These children, especially a group of girls we spent six years with, tunneled their way into our hearts so that it was almost unbearable when we decided to leave.

I believe this was the saddest day of my life. When I walked out the back of Phillips Cottage, AT Palmer Home for Children, after the gathering of Polly and I in the living room for prayer and the bidding of goodbye to the girls. I looked back over my shoulder and saw that they had followed me, I suppose to maybe say goodbye once more before I drove off.

As I watched them, I realized that they were all weeping. So, I had to return to them to try and give them some comfort, but I needed comfort myself. I spent a few minutes hugging and talking to them while, at the same time, I was weeping along with them. Finally, I said, “Well, girls, I need to leave, momma Polly has already left, and I don’t need to let her get too far ahead of me.”

Thinking back on this time, I remember Dr. Waldron, the CEO of Palmer Home for Children, was waiting for me by my truck.  I was heartbroken and continued weeping when he said to me, “When you get about 15 or 20 miles down the road, you’ll began to feel a lot better.”

Our love for those children never diminished, and we still think about them today.

In the following weeks and years, I continued to be very concerned for our girls. I wrote a little booklet about the time we spent with them entitled, “Precious Journey.” At the end I voiced my concern and dread for their future. I think I stated it something like this, “We are very concerned about the future of our girls. I think of Krystal, she was the oldest, she will soon cross the threshold into adulthood what will she do, where will she go? I envision her vaulting upon the back of a wild steed and grasping a handful of the horse’s mane and charging into God’s thunderstorm of life.”

This was about 22 years ago, and the concern we had for them at that time can’t be compared to the concern we have now, with all the murdering of people under the pretense of fighting a virus that according to mounting, overwhelming evidence doesn’t even exist.

Boosters

But what chills me to the bone is what they are doing and planning for today’s children. I pray for them, but I know by the testimony of many doctors and scientists that these bioweapons called ‘vaccines” are engineered and designed to either kill or seriously injure. My prayer is that they know that faith in God is their only refuge.

Now the White House is urging Americans to undergo booster shots to help prevent the spread of new strains when they originally told us the vaccine would protect us from all strains. This reveals how urgent and determined the forces behind the Plandemic have become. They are aware that time is of an essence – they need to proceed with their depopulation goal and most people are unaware of their plans.

Implicit in this “urging of Americans by the White House to undergo COVID booster doses to help prevent the spread of new strains,” actually means “the booster will bring forth new strains of the virus.” This third jab is one of the biggest lies coming from the very depths of Hell by the stakeholders. Foolish Americans and most of our medical personnel will agree to once again be government guinea pigs.

For us to understand the true meaning of it we must perceive it 180 degrees from how they intend for us to see it.  For us to see the truth of it, we must read it like this, “The White House is urging Americans to undergo COVID booster doses to aid in the spreading of death throughout the world.”

By interpreting this esoterically, we can see that the injection of the current jab, the bioweapon called a “vaccine,” isn’t killing people fast enough.  In order to speed up the operation, i.e., the global objective, for decreasing the earth’s population by 91.7%, a bioweapon booster shot is designed to accomplish what the former two-jab bioweapon, failed to bring to fruition.  These are the expectations of the stakeholders behind the Great Reset, represented by Dr. Fauci, Bill Gates, Klaus Schwab and others too numerous to list.

Listen to Mike Adams as he excoriates the FDA for their endorsement of murderous vaccine atrocities against children.

According to Brian Shilhavy, Editor of Health Impact news, the flames of “COVID fear” are being stoked again, as the Big Pharma Globalists unleash their new plan to increase profits, and exert more tyrannical control over populations by using corporate media and puppet politicians in an attempt to extend the false “COVID pandemic.”

Within just a couple of days after announcing that a “new variant” had been discovered in Africa, Big Pharma has now promised the world that they are rushing to rescue everyone with new drugs and new vaccines to fight this “deadly new variant.”

But Big Pharma is not rushing to rescue anyone.  Reality is that it is rushing to implement provisions which will kill millions of people across the globe.

Listen to Mike Adams as he explains how the cover story of the “Nu” (Omicron) variant plays into accelerating a wave of “vaccine” deaths. Link  According to Adams, the omicron “variant” media hysteria is pure fiction. It’s nothing but a 1984-style Orwellian psychological terrorism operation that has been engineered to keep the populations of the world enslaved and obedient while terrorist governments carry out their global depopulation/genocide programs.

I agree with him on most everything he presents. There is one part of his presentation, however, that I disagree with, and that is where he speaks of the danger from the variant and what we can do in defense against it, when it only exists in the minds of the people that are targeted.

To my mind, based on the evidence thus far, the only way there is any danger from it is when one takes the vaccine in defense of it. That is the purpose and strategy behind the omicron “variant” media hysteria – to develop a climate of fear.  And fear does not come from God, it is a weapon of the devil.

Conclusion

Please share this article in as many ways as possible. There are millions of people who continue to believe that the COVID-19 jabs, as well as the boosters, are a defense against the “COVID” virus and variants. According to all evidence submitted by multiple physicians and scientists, the virus has a 99.8% recovery rate which is lower than the seasonal flu.  If we fall for their lies and consider them to be the truth, the result will be the same as if their lies are the truth – and the “pandemic” will exist, but it will be foisted upon us via their spike protein clot shots.

©J.W. Bryan. All rights reserved.

Covid Lies: Mainstream Media Are The Enemy

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If the media were doing their jobs as so-called journalists, then the government attack on Liberty in the name of COVID would never have happened. Thus, a high school student in California is treated like a pariah by the media as she fights for her religious rights while retaining her ability to simply go to class.

In this edition of The Ledger Report, Graham Ledger speaks with constitutional attorney Paul Jonna about his young client and her struggle to say “no” to the vax and still go to school.

Please subscribe free to The Ledger Report by clicking here: www.GrahamLedger.com

EDITORS NOTE: This The Ledger Report video is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Navy SEAL’s Death a True Tragedy

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“To be a successful soldier, you must know history.” – George S. Patton Jr.

Last Saturday in Virginia a Navy SEAL Commander fell to his death from a helicopter he was fast roping down from. Cmdr. Brian Bourgeois, 43, leaves a wife and 5 young children. He was the commanding officer of SEAL Team 8.

The cause of the training accident is not as yet released. We are not sure if the rope detached from the chopper or what. It is being investigated and we await the outcome of that investigation.

One thing is 100% certain. America is in a worse place with his passing. It is missing a patriot, a true son of this Constitutional Republic. A man who put this country first every time. A man who fought for our freedoms and liberties. A man, who despite the current Commander in Chief, put honor and flag before all. A man who unlike most politicians and political military leadership put 100% faith and belief in the Oath he swore and lived it daily.

This man gave just over 20 years of selfless service to this nation, doing the work 99.99% of people could not nor would do.

Many of you know I have friends in Special Operations forces. I served in Rhodesia in a Spec Ops group on operational service from 1973 – 1980. We were good but couldn’t hold a flame to these guys. America is blessed to have such fine men ready to drop everything in a second to defend us.

The Special operations community is small. It is tight. They are all mourning today.

A friend of mine was the CO of SEAL Team 8 and knew him personally. At that time Cmdr. Brian Bourgeois was his Lt. in Iraq. I want to quote my friends words here as they are heartfelt and need hearing by you all.

“He was a hell of a good guy. He was one of my LTs in Iraq. No job too hard, he exemplified “Message to Garcia.” It was a privilege to have known and worked with him. He represented the best of all uniformed service members and was highly regarded as one of our best SEALs.”

I lost friends in Rhodesia in the war and understand what my friend is going through. We feel guilt. Guilt that it was not us. A realization that it also very well could have been. A realization about immortality.

“For some it takes days. But a real man will never let his fear of death overpower his honor his sense of duty to his country and his innate manhood. Battle is the most magnificent competition in which a human being can indulge. It brings out all that is best and it removes all that is base.” ― George S. Patton Jr.

Today I ask all of my readers to please put their hands in their pockets and donate at the link I have placed below. There is no amount of money that will help heal the pain his family is going through. Money however, is a necessary evil when a bread winner is removed suddenly. Show your support for this man and your appreciation for all he achieved and did on your behalf.

PLEASE CLICK HERE TO DONATE TO THE BOURGEOIS FAMILY FUND

“To all his brothers I am reminded of this expression. “How can the dead be truly dead when they still live in the souls of those who are left behind?” From a poem called “The Heart is a Lonely Hunter”, by Carson McCullers.

Please feel free to hit the like button and comment here. Share this widely. America has lost another favorite son. Honor his life.

©Fred Brownbill. All rights reserved.

BLM Leader Abdullah: Jussie Smollett Race Hoax Trial a ‘White Supremacist Charade’

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In a statement released on Wednesday, Melina Abdullah, leader of the Los Angeles chapter of the domestic terrorist movement Black Lives Matter (BLM), denounced the trial of accused race hoaxer Jussie Smollett as a “white supremacist charade.”

“In an abolitionist society, this trial would not be taking place, and our communities would not have to fight and suffer to prove our worth,” Abdullah declared. “Instead, we find ourselves once again being forced to put our lives and our value in the hands of judges and juries operating in a system that is designed to oppress us, while continuing to face a corrupt and violent police department who has proven time and again to have no respect for our lives.”

By “abolitionist,” Abdullah means the abolition of police departments in American cities, an absolutely insane idea which BLM supports, but which the vast majority of black Americans do not because they would be the most victimized by the absence of law enforcement.

“In our commitment to abolition, we can never believe police, especially the Chicago Police Department (CPD) over Jussie Smollett, a Black man who has been courageously present, visible, and vocal in the struggle for Black freedom,” the race huckster ranted.

The truth, which everybody including Abdullah and Smollett himself knows, is that the 39-year-old, narcissistic actor is guilty of manufacturing a race hoax to boost his celebrity profile and to garner sympathy as the “courageous” victim of racist Trump supporters. Abdullah defends him because the truth is irrelevant to BLM’s war on American institutions, like the police, that stand in the way of the organization’s neo-Marxist agenda.

Melina Abdullah

Abdullah’s driving force is a view of the United States as a racist country that systematically oppresses non-whites, particularly blacks. “The system of white supremacist, heteronormative, patriarchal capitalism,” she contends, “constantly betrays us” and “is set up to keep us oppressed.” Most notable is Abdullah’s contempt for the American criminal-justice system, which she views as a thoroughly racist institution. Arguing that police departments nationwide should be abolished and replaced with community-based public safety teams, Abdullah has likened police officers to “former slave catchers” who still seek “to return enslaved people to their alleged owners.”

To learn more about Melina Abdullah, click here.

EDITORS NOTE: This Discover the Networks column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Judicial Watch: New Fauci Agency COVID Records Reveal Information about NIH Research into the Coronavirus

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(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that it received 221 pages of records from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) which include a grant application for research involving the coronavirus that was submitted in 2018. The grant application appears to describe “gain of function” research involving RNA extractions from bats, experiments on viruses, attempts to develop a chimeric virus and efforts to genetically manipulate the full-length bat SARSr-CoV WIV1 strain molecular clone. 

The documents were obtained by Judicial Watch through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit for records of communications, contracts and agreements with the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The lawsuit specifically requests records about National Institute of Health (NIH) grants that benefitted the Wuhan Institute of Virology. 

On January 27, 2020, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) official David Morens emailed Chief of Staff Greg Folkers in a heavily redacted thread, writing:

[S]ome background on our support of the Ecohealth group (Peter Daszak et al), which has for years been among the biggest players in coronavirus work, also in collaboration with Ralph Baric, Ian Lipkin and others. [Redacted].

NIAID has been funding Peter’s group for coronavirus work in China for the past 5 years through [grant] R011R01A|110964: “Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence.” That’s now been renewed, with a specific focus to identify cohorts of people highly exposed to bats in China, and work out if they’re getting sick from CoVs.… Collaborators include Wuhan Institute of Virology (currently working on the nCoV) and Ralph Baric. The results of the work to date

include:

  • [Redacted]
  • Discovered Swine Acute Diarrheal Syndrome Virus (SADS-CoV) killing >25,000 pigs in Guangdong Province (Published in Nature)
  • Found SARS-related CoVs that can bind to human cells (Published in Nature), and that cause SARS-like disease in humanized mouse models.
  • [Redacted]

Also, prior to the above R01, Peter’s folks worked under an R01 with Eun-Park as Program Officer on viral discovery in bats, and originally identified SARS-CoV as having a likely origin in bats (published in Science).

Folkers forwards the message to Anthony Fauci and others.

In a “Notice of Award” dated July 13, 2020, the NIH increased the amount of NIH money going to Peter Daszak’s firm, EcoHealth Alliance, by $369,819 with a project period that runs from June 1, 2014, through June 30, 2025, for Daszak’s project “Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence.”

EcoHealth was to receive $637,980 in each of the years 2019 through 2024 under the grant.

The award’s writers specifically direct funds “for activity with Wuhan Institute of Virology in the amount of $76,301” and “for activity with Institute of Pathogen Biology [located in China] in the amount of $75,301.” Funds also went to the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. The award’s writers also indicate that research associated with the award was also being conducted at East China Normal University in China and to Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore. The specialists overseeing the award note that, “This award may include collaborations with and/or between foreign organizations.” The specialists also note that award grantees using “Highly Pathogenic Agents” “may warrant a biocontainment safety facility of BSL3 or higher.” The grantee is also required to report “Any changes in the use of the Agent(s) or Toxin(s) including its restricted experiments that have resulted in a change in the required biocontainment level, and any resultant change in location.” The NIH Grants Management Specialist overseeing the award was Shaun W. Gratton and the NIH Program Official was Erik J. Stemmy. Of the 17 “Senior/Key Personnel” assigned as researchers on the project, seven worked at Chinese institutions.

The site locations in an EcoHealth grant application submitted November 5, 2018, for coronavirus research included EcoHealth Alliance in New York City, the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and the Institute of Pathogen Biology in Beijing, China. Among the “aims” listed, the applicants write, “We will sequence receptor binding domains (spike proteins) to identify viruses with the highest potential for spillover which we will include in our experimental investigations.” In the third “aim”, they continue “We will use S protein sequence data, infectious clone technology, in vitro and in vivo infection experiments and analysis of receptor binding to test the hypothesis that % divergence thresholds in S protein sequences predict spillover potential.”

In a description of the Wuhan lab, the writers of the application note that, “The Wuhan Institute of Virology is a World Health Organization collaborating center” and had a “long-time (>15 years) partnership with EcoHealth Alliance.”

In his “personal statement” in the grant application, Dr. Peter Daszak writes about his “20+ years of NIH-funded research.” Among his awards, Daszak notes he was a 1999 recipient of the CDC’s “Meritoriouos service award,” had a species of centipedes named after him (“Crytops daszaki”), as well as having a “new parasite species” named after himself (“Isospora daszaki”), and is an elected member of the Kosmos Club in Washington, DC. He also says he’s a member of the U.S. “National Institute of Medicine” which he abbreviates as “NAM.” In his “Contributions to Science,” Daszak notes, “Collaborating with virologists in China, we have isolated and characterized SARS-like CoVs from bats that use the same host cell receptor (AACE-2) as SARS-CoV.”

In a personal biography section of the above grant application, Dr. Shi Zhengli, head of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, notes that one of her ongoing research projects, with a duration of January 1, 2018, to December 31, 2021, and sponsored by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, involves, “Evolution mechanism of the adation [sic] of bat SARS-related coronaviruses to host receptor molecules and the risk of interspecies infection.”

Prof. Ralph Baric of UNC-Chapel Hill also has his biographical information listed in the grant application, and this includes his participation in a 2015 workshop relating to “Trends in Synthetic Biology and Gain of Function and Regulatory Implications”, a 2015 China-US workshop involving “Challenges of Emerging Infections, Laboratory Safety, and Global Health Security,” and participation in a 2014 working group on “Risks and Benefits of Gain of Function Research.” Among Baric’s “major accomplishments” cited was a study involving “reconstruction of civet and bat CoV from in silico sequence, the first reported recovery of recombinant bat viruses, and characterization of host range phenotypes in vitro and in vivo.” Baric writes that “Several CoV infectious cDNA clones are available in the lab, including SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV, conventional human and model CoVs, and several bat CoVs with pandemic potential.”

In the “Application for Federal Assistance,” for the project “Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence,” the costs for the first year (2019-2020) of the EcoHealth Alliance project application totaled $736,996.

The second year (2020-2021) costs total $712,441.

The third year (2021-2022) costs total $712,441.

The fourth year (2022-2023) costs total $712,441.

The fifth year (2023-2024) costs total $712,441.

However, in July 2020, HHS wrote a letter to EcoHealth Allince regarding funding:

[T]he NIH has received reports that the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), a subrecipient of EcoHealth Alliance under R01AI110964, has been conducting research at its facilities in China that pose serious bio-safety concerns and, as a result, create health and welfare threats to the public in China and other countries, including the United States.

We have concerns that WIV has not satisfied safety requirements under the award, and that EcoHealth Alliance has not satisfied its obligations to monitor the activities of its subrecipient to ensure compliance.

Therefore, effective the date of this letter, July 8, 2020, NIH is suspending all activities … until such time as these concerns have been addressed to NIH’s satisfaction.

[ … ]

Among the budget items in the EcoHealth grant application, was one for supplies for “bats trapping” and “viral transport media.” The total salary, wages and fringe benefits to be paid to the “Senior/Key Person” over the 5-year project totaled $1,118,565.00.

[ … ]

The NIAID funds to be allocated to the Wuhan Institute of Virology for this project for each of the years 2019-2020, 2020-2021, 2021-2022, 2022-2023, and 2023-2024 was $76,301, or a total over five years of $381,505.

The Wuhan Institute of Virology’s role in the project, overseen by Dr. Shi Zhengli would include “running RNA extractions for 1,000 bats per year (two samples per bat: rectal and blood) in each year of the project,” costing $6,214 per year. The Wuhan Institute of Virology also requested “support for in vitro experiments using pseudoviruses carrying the spike proteins … or live viruses in cell lines of different origins, binding affinity assays between the spike proteins … and different cellular receptor molecules, and humanized mice experiments.”

In a discussion of their research to date, the grant applicants wrote, “In collaboration with Ralph Baric (UNC), we used the SARS-CoV reverse genetics system … to generate a chimeric virus with a mouse-adapted SARS-CoV backbone expressing SHC014 S protein with 10% sequence divergence from SARS-DoV S. This chimera replicated in human airway epithelium, using the human ACE2 receptor to enter cells … Thus, SARS-CoVs with diverse variants of SL-CoV S protein without deletions in the RBD can use human ACE2 as receptor for cell entry.” [Emphasis in original]

In a discussion of the rationale of one of the aims of the project, the applicants write, “we aim to expand the known diversity of SARSr-CoVs by over 125 strains, targeting 10-25% S protein divergence that we predict infers high spillover risk and evasion of immune therapeutic and vaccine efficacy.” They continue, “We will … construct chimeric SARSr-CoVs using the WIV1 backbone and these S genes as done previously.” They go on, “Construction of chimeric SARSr-CoV viruses: infectious clones with the S gene of novel SARSr-CoVs and the SARSr-Cov WIV1 genome backbone using the reverse genetic system developed in our previous R01.”

In a section titled “P3CO Research”, the applicants write: “Recognizing the implementation of new gain of function research guidelines under P3CO [Potential Pandemic Pathogen Care and Oversight], SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV are subject to these guidelines, and as such, reverse genetic studies are subject to review … Importantly, we are not proposing to genetically manipulate SARS-CoV over the course of this proposal. However, we are proposing to genetically manipulate the full length bat SARSr-CoV WIV1 strain molecular clone during the course of the proposal, which is not a select agent, has not been shown to cause human infections, and has not been shown to be transmissible between humans.” [Emphasis in original]

In an October 31, 2018, letter from the director of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Dr. Yangyi Wang, to Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth Alliance, requesting permission to take part in the NIAID funded project, he tells Daszak:

Understanding and preventing exposure and transmission of zoonotic diseases from wildlife to humans remains a high priority for prevention of pandemics. In our discussion with EcoHealth Alliance, we have agreed to participate in activities that will strengthen the ability of China and other countries in the region to respond to epidemic disease outbreaks – particularly those of animal origin. To assist in this study, we will provide participating laboratories in China with human samples both new and archived and support research in bat coronaviruses.

We at Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, look forward to our continued collaborations with the EcoHealth Alliance team and working further on this worthwhile study.

“These records are proof positive that US tax dollars were dishonestly used by Fauci’s agency to fund ‘gain of function’ coronavirus research,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.

In August, Judicial Watch obtained records from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) which include an “urgent for Dr. Fauci” email chain which cites ties between the Wuhan lab and the taxpayer-funded EcoHealth Alliance. The government emails also report that the foundation of U.S. billionaire Bill Gates worked closely with the Chinese government to pave the way for Chinese-produced medications to be sold outside China and help “raise China’s voice of governance by placing representatives from China on important international counsels as high level commitment from China.”

In July, Judicial Watch obtained records from NIAID officials in connection with the Wuhan Institute of Virology revealing significant collaborations and funding that began in 2014. The records revealed that NIAID gave nine China-related grants to EcoHealth Alliance to research coronavirus emergence in bats and was the NIH’s top issuer of grants to the Wuhan lab itself.

In June, Judicial Watch announced that it filed Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuits against the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) and the State Department for information on the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the origins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

Also in June, Judicial Watch obtained records from HHS revealing that from 2014 to 2019, $826,277 was given to the Wuhan Institute of Virology for bat coronavirus research by the NIAID. 

In March, Judicial Watch publicly released emails and other records of Fauci and Dr. H. Clifford Lane from HHS showing that NIH officials tailored confidentiality forms to China’s terms and that the WHO conducted an unreleased, “strictly confidential” COVID-19 epidemiological analysis in January 2020. Additionally, the emails reveal an independent journalist in China pointing out the inconsistent COVID numbers in China to NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases’ Deputy Director for Clinical Research and Special Projects Lane.

In October 2020, Judicial Watch uncovered emails showing a WHO entity pushing for a press release, approved by Fauci, “especially” supporting China’s COVID-19 response.

RELATED ARTICLE: Los Angeles Unified School District Fires 400+ Employees Who Haven’t Been Vaccinated

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

Hamas-linked CAIR’s Zahra Billoo: ‘Zionist synagogues’ behind ‘Islamophobia’

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Billoo’s claims about “Zionists” being behind “Islamophobia” are rich in light of the fact that year after year, there are far more anti-Semitic hate crimes than there are anti-Muslim hate crimes, and of course many Muslims are the perpetrators of many of those anti-Semitic hate crimes. In 2000, the year before the 9/11 attacks, the FBI noted 33 anti-Islamic hate crimes; in 2001, that number skyrocketed to 546. That’s 546 too many, but a bit of perspective is in order: also in 2001, there were 1,117 anti-Jewish hate crimes. These were not, mind you, all violent incidents: the FBI report explained that “A review of the total offenses (11,451) demonstrated that intimidation was the most frequently reported hate crime, accounting for 37.9 percent of the total. Destruction/damage/vandalism made up 26.4 percent; simple assault, 18.8 percent; aggravated assault, 10.8 percent. The remaining offenses accounted for 6.1 percent of the total.” Intimidation can be just saying something rude, or something perceived as rude.

In 2002, the number of anti-Muslim hate crimes fell sharply, to 170; the number of anti-Jewish hate crimes held steady at 1,039. And so it has been every year since then. In 2018, there were 225 anti-Muslim hate crimes, and 896 anti-Jewish hate crimes; in 2019, there were 219 anti-Muslim hate crimes, and 995 anti-Jewish hate crimes. In 2020, anti-Muslim hate crimes decreased by 42%.

Yet Billoo would have you believe that Jews are targeting Muslims. It’s a total inversion of reality. Muslim hostility to Jews goes back to the Qur’an. The Jews in the Qur’an are called the strongest of all people in enmity toward the Muslims (5:82); they fabricate things and falsely ascribe them to Allah (2:79; 3:75, 3:181); they claim that Allah’s power is limited (5:64); they love to listen to lies (5:41); they disobey Allah and never observe his commands (5:13). They are disputing and quarreling (2:247); hiding the truth and misleading people (3:78); staging rebellion against the prophets and rejecting their guidance (2:55); being hypocritical (2:14, 2:44); giving preference to their own interests over the teachings of Muhammad (2:87); wishing evil for people and trying to mislead them (2:109); feeling pain when others are happy or fortunate (3:120); being arrogant about their being Allah’s beloved people (5:18); devouring people’s wealth by subterfuge (4:161); slandering the true religion and being cursed by Allah (4:46); killing the prophets (2:61); being merciless and heartless (2:74); never keeping their promises or fulfilling their words (2:100); being unrestrained in committing sins (5:79); being cowardly (59:13-14); being miserly (4:53); being transformed into apes and pigs for breaking the Sabbath (2:63-65; 5:59-60; 7:166); and more. They are under Allah’s curse (9:30), and Muslims should wage war against them and subjugate them under Islamic hegemony (9:29).

It’s also important to note that when she talks about “Islamophobia” as a “well-funded conspiracy, a well-funded project…to marginalize us,” she is engaging in the illegitimate conflation for which the term “Islamophobia” was devised. The term “Islamophobia” is an illegitimate conflation of two distinct phenomena: crimes against innocent Muslims, or discrimination against them, neither of which is ever justified, and honest analysis of the motivating ideology of jihad terror, which is always necessary. Islamic advocacy groups and their Leftist allies have been insisting for years that such analysis, too, constituted “Islamophobia.” And they mean to silence it and force the West to adopt what are in essence Sharia blasphemy restrictions. The sinister Zahra Billoo is speaking in service of that agenda.

Zionists are behind Islamophobia, US police brutality – CAIR official

by Michael Starr, Jerusalem Post, December 6, 2021:

“Zionist synagogues,” the Anti-Defamation League, Hillel and other Jewish organizations are “enemies” who are part of a conspiracy behind Islamaphobia [sic], American police brutality, and US border control, according to a speech made by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) San Francisco executive director and former Women’s March board member Zahra Billoo.

“When we talk about islamophobia, we often think of the vehement fascists… but I also want us to pay attention to the polite Zionists, the ones that say ‘let’s just break bread together,’” said Billoo on November 27 at the American Muslims for Palestine’s (AMP) Annual Convention for Palestine in the US.

According to Billoo, the reason that these organizations were coming after Muslims is that they are afraid that Muslims advocate for Black Lives Matter, police accountability, homelessness, against poverty, for the environment and “a free Palestine.” Consequently, they “must come after us,” said Billoo.

“We need to pay attention to the Anti-Defamation League, we need to pay attention to the Jewish Federation, we need to pay attention to the Zionist synagogues, we need to pay attention to the Hillel chapters on our campuses.”

Billoo works for CAIR, a “nonprofit, grassroots civil rights and advocacy organization” that is “America’s largest Muslim civil liberties organization.”

Later in the speech, Billoo called on attendees to oppose the organizations she previously described as “the polite Zionists.”

“Oppose the vehement fascists, but oppose the polite Zionists, too. They are not your friends… When we talk about Islamaphobia and Zionism let’s be clear about the connections.”

AMP describes itself as “a national education and grassroots-based organization” seeking to spread information about Palestinians. Billoo’s remarks came at their 14th annual convention, themed “On the Road to Free Palestine.” The conference took place in Chicago from November 25-27.

Billoo advised the AMP convention to “know your enemies,” which were “the Zionist organizations” and “the foreign policy organizations who say they’re not zionists but want a two-state solution.”

The reason that Billoo described them as enemies was the assertion that Zionist organizations were behind the propagation of Islamophobia and various ills afflicting the United States.

Throughout her speech, Billoo referred repeatedly to the connection between Islamophobia and Zionism, claiming that “Islamophobia is a well-funded conspiracy, a well-funded project — A well-funded project to marginalize us.”

“We have to connect the dots between the organizations that promote Zionist agendas materials marketing and legislation are the same ones that want to ban Muslims, are the same ones that want to pass anti-sharia legislation,” she said.

She explained that the Israeli military trained police officers in the United States to “kill unarmed black men, women and children.” Further, the technology “used at the US-Mexico border is the same technology used at the apartheid wall.”…

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

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Biden Will Eventually Cancel College Debt, And So Enrich The Squad

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Tax-sucking Congressional socialists continue to pressure kinda sorta President Biden to cancel at least $50,000 in student debt via executive order. Despite the enormous strain other Democrat policies have had on hard-working American families, this bailout to college grads will almost assuredly happen because this presidential anomaly’s handlers cannot or do not want to stand up to the radical left for long.

There are endless problems with this, which were well hashed out when Sen. Bernie Sanders made this college grad bailout a hallmark of his campaign.

First, the fairness issue. Millions of Americans over many generations, myself and wife included, paid off student debt from college over the years. And now this crop of entitled college kids want a bailout, even as a college degree has diminishing value — and no real value in several degree areas.

Second, the $1.6 trillion price tag is just another completely irresponsible load of national debt on a system that may not be far from buckling from already existing astronomical debt.

But there is also a little known element: Many of the most outspoken proponents of canceling student debt themselves have substantial college debt. They would directly benefit financially from their vote. If there was such a thing as a conflict of interest in Congress, this would be at the top of the list. But such unabashed corruption is simply accepted in D.C.

Make no mistake, every dollar of this debt will fall to the federal government, which is eventually paid by American taxpayers.

As members of Congress, these folks pull down $174,000 in taxpayer money, plus gold-plated benefits that literally no other Americans get. And now they also want taxpayers such as coal miners, convenience store clerks, maids, lawn service guys, roofers, road workers, pavers, pool installers, along with bankers, lawyers, doctors and business owners, to pay off their college debt. In fact, they want to force them to.

It’s all pretty unconscionable on a moral level, but also the sheer chutzpah of socialists who supposedly want to help the little guys by spreading the wealth, demanding the little guys help pay off debts they can clearly afford to pay off themselves. A $174,000 annual salary makes them 5 percenters, making more than 95 percent of Americans — who they want to pay off their debt. This puts the lie to the whole schtick. Like every socialist ever in power, they simply want more for themselves.

And it’s right out there in plain sight. For instance, Democrat Rep. Rashida Tlaib owes $70,000 in college debt for her law degree and is one of the biggest proponents for Biden to sign away $50,000 with an executive order, as many, such as Senate President Chuck Schumer and Sen. Elizabeth Warren along with a bundle of others, say he has the authority to do so. (Obviously Constitutional authority is not what they are referring to.)

To blunt the obvious corruption in her position, Tlaib struggles up onto her self-righteous high horse and claims she didn’t become a lawyer to make money or buy “bougie cars,” but she went into the nonprofit world and worked as a lawyer for the good of the community. For that oh-so noble reason, her debts should be forgiven. (Probably should point out that many non-profits make more than most business owners or average lawyers, so, ah, no.)

But it is classic socialist philosophy: Individuals are not responsible for the consequences of their actions, which parenthetically is why they favor releasing criminals based on skin color and not actions. They want the communal whole, via government, to pay for their consequences.

It’s not just Tlaib. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rep. Ilhan Omar both have substantial college debt and are vocal proponents of wiping out all college debt. There may be others. Since that is not going to happen in Congress, they favor Biden’s pen.

Two-face socialist authoritarians just being true to themselves.

EDITORS NOTE: This The Revolutionary Act column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. Like us on Instagram and Like Rod’s new Youtube channel.

Pam Geller – Biden Regime is a “Cacophony of Chaos”

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In case you missed this, Joe Hoft of Gateway Pundit interviewed me on The Joe Hoft Show. Listen to the segment:

The left has all but crushed the opposition and the our freedom of speech is becoming a distant memory. They must be roundly and stuningly defeated.

Listen to the segment before it’s removed.

And please consider giving generously to Geller Report. We are unwavering in our mission to bring you the news the enemedia and the Democrat party of treason are deliberately censoring.

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©Pamela Geller. All rights reserved.

Are You Ready for Nuclear War Over Ukraine?

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“Do you know we don’t rule out first-use nuclear action?” So said Senator Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) while outlining what measures the U.S. could take against Russia over Ukraine, at whose border Moscow has been massing troops. The senator’s office later clarified that this comment related to American policy in general and not specifically to Russia. While this is actually believable (Wicker made a loose comment), what’s unbelievable is that we’re even considering a military confrontation with Moscow over something that does not at all involve a U.S. national interest.

Moreover, what else Wicker said, during a recent interview with Fox News host Neil Cavuto, is not reassuring. To wit: “Well, military action could mean that we stand off with our ships in the Black Sea and we rain destruction … on Russia military capability,” the Independent related him as stating. “It could mean that we participate, and I would not rule that out, I would not rule out American troops on the ground.”

Making it worse is that the Biden Administration and the Establishment in general are all-in on this Dr. Strangelove foreign policy. As Secretary of State Tony Blinken’s spokesman, Ned Price, has put it, “If Russia chooses to fail to deescalate…we and our allies would be prepared to act. We would be prepared to act resolutely.”

Equally troubling is that geniuses in both parties are pushing to have Ukraine become part of NATO, with its “an attack on one is an attack on all” policy. This means that if Russia then invaded Ukraine, the U.S. and Western Europe would be obligated to intervene militarily. WWIII, anyone?

For his part, Russian president Vladimir Putin has said that NATO troop and weapons deployment to Ukraine is a “red line” for him. Of course it is. Just as we couldn’t back down during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, Russia wouldn’t back down on Ukraine. The same is true of China vis-à-vis Taiwan.

Like it or not, you must tread softly in another great power’s backyard. Enter it and refuse to back down, and war will almost assuredly result because that power can’t realistically back down. Doing so would mean losing face and sending the ultimate message of weakness. For if you can be pushed around at your own doorstep, in what way can’t you be dominated?

Despite this, our chicken hawks insist on playing chicken with a nuclear power over…what? Few ask what the national interest is, and no one explains. We do hear bloviating about Ukraine’s “sovereignty” and border integrity from the same people who’ve made our border a sieve-like conduit for a southern invasion, as Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson pointed out last night. These people also talk about defending “democracy” while having stolen an election here and undermining our republic with unconstitutional policy and two-tiered justice.

Then, last year, sociopathic congressman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) actually said that we aid “Ukraine and her people so that we can fight Russia over there, and we don’t have to fight Russia here.” Perhaps Schiffty has been watching the flick Red Dawn too much. (He should note that in the film’s remake, in 2012, the Chinese troops invading American soil were digitally altered post-production to appear North Korean in deference to Beijing, our main geopolitical rival.)

In other words, if you thought there couldn’t be anything as irrational as our coronavirus policy — where authorities insist on reordering civilization over a pathogen that more than 99.9 percent of the infected will survive — welcome to our Russia policy. We’re acting as if a nation with an economy one-eighth the size of China’s is today’s Roman Empire and we’re Gaul; our “cure” of military intervention in its backyard would definitely be worse than the disease, too. Russia is now the COVID-19 of geopolitics.

To be clear, none of this concerns whether you love, hate or are indifferent about Putin. It’s not about whether Russia is right or wrong on Ukraine. It’s about applying Just War Doctrine and, again, recognizing that you can only do so much at a great power’s doorstep.

An aside: Note that both our world wars, along with the Korean and Vietnam conflicts, began under Democrat administrations. And having in power detached-from-reality leftists who can’t judge human nature, as we do today, is always dangerous.

In fact, if they stay at the helm long enough, their folly may provide for their voters a harsh object lesson in how there really are things worse than white privilege, microaggressions and sexual constraints.

Below is an excellent Tuesday Tucker Carlson Tonight segment on the Russia-Ukraine folly.

Contact Selwyn Duke, follow him on MeWe or Parler, or log on to SelwynDuke.com.

©Selwyn Duke. All rights reserved.

Teacher’s Union Official’s Facebook Post Says People With Religious Vaccine Exemptions Deserve To Die

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Suggests GOP Commit Mass Murder

A National Education Association (NEA) Board of Directors member and English teacher at a Pennsylvania high school posted to Facebook that she thought unvaccinated individuals with religious exemptions deserved to die, according to a screenshot of the post obtained by the social media account Libs of Tik Tok.

Mollie Paige Mumau took to Facebook to condemn all individuals who have not been vaccinated due to religious exemptions, accusing this group of “hiding behind religious exemptions because they don’t want anybody to tell them what to do,” according to a screenshot of her post. Mumau said religious exemptions to the COVID-19 vaccine are “such BS” because “people tell you what to do all the time and you do it.”

Mumau appeared to refer to a specific person in her comment, writing “he and his ilk deserve whatever comes their way, including losing jobs, getting sick, and perhaps dying from this virus. But in the meantime, he’s going to put all the people around him in danger.”

“I don’t know why the GOP doesn’t just take those guns they profess to love so much and just start shooting all of their constituents who think this way,” Mumau wrote. “It would be quicker and ultimately safer than putting me and my friends and family at risk.”

General McLane School District (GMSD) confirmed to the Daily Caller News Foundation that it does employ a woman named Mollie Mumau at General McLane High School, according to Sarah Grabski, director of communications and administrative services for GMSD. Grabski said the district could not legally discuss any personnel actions right now but that Mumau is not currently in its buildings.

“The district is aware of a potentially inappropriate social media comment by a staff member,” GMSD said. “The district will investigate the matter and act accordingly. In all situations, the district’s utmost concern is the safety of our students and staff.”

The NEA did not respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.

COLUMN BY

KENDALL TIETZ

Education reporter.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller News column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

U.S. Trade Deficit Falls Sharply For First Time In 6 Months

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‘U.S. imports continue to face port delays.’

The U.S. trade deficit narrowed considerably in October, with exports in energy and commodities offsetting a slight jump in imports, the Commerce Department announced Tuesday.

October’s trade deficit fell by 17.6% to $67.1 billion in October, marking a significant drop from September’s record-setting $81.4 billion, the Commerce Department reported. Tuesday’s figure is the smallest since the deficit narrowed to $66.2 billion in April, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Economists surveyed by the WSJ anticipated a deficit of $66.9 billion in October. Imports grew by 0.9% to $290.7 billion, while exports surged by 8.1% to 223.6 billion.

The narrowed deficit highlights strong global recovery in demand after the U.S. came out of the COVID-19 pandemic faster than the rest of the world, Tyler Goodspeed, an economics fellow at the Hoover Institution, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

“Relative to the rest of the world, the U.S. had been much farther along in its recovery, so I think the jump in exports reflects demand in the rest of the world is starting to catch up and the impact of the Biden administration’s 2021 stimulus starting to dissipate,” Goodspeed said.

“Meanwhile, U.S. imports continue to face port delays,” Goodspeed said.

Over 100 vessels were anchored at Los Angeles and Long Beach ports with billions of dollars of goods sitting idle and unable to enter the U.S. market in October, according to the Marine Exchange of Southern California, the WSJ reported.

The Commerce Department report showed that crude oil exports grew by $1.2 billion while food, feed and beverage exports grew by $2.1 billion.

While the deficit has grown considerably over time, exports are expected to continue growing, increasing sentiment headed into 2022, Mahir Rasheed, U.S. economist at Oxford Economics, told the DCNF.

“While trade balance is still $25.5 billion larger than its pre-pandemic level, we expect stronger export growth and moderation in import volumes to keep the deficit stable next year after reaching multiple record highs in 2021,” Rasheed said.

“However, the Omicron variant is a key downside risk that threatens to distort trade flows by slowing the global recovery in early 2022,” Rasheed said.

Meanwhile, inflation measures continue to soar throughout the country, with the Consumer Price Index reaching a 30-year high in October.

December’s inflation data is scheduled for release on Dec. 10. Economists surveyed by the WSJ expect that figure to hit a four-decade high due to growing energy costs, increased vehicle prices and surging rent.

COLUMN BY

HARRY WILMERDING

Contributor.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Edwards: Not ‘Fair’ for Media to Cover Both Sides Objectively

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Monday on MSNBC’s Deadline, former Rep. Donna Edwards lamented that it was not “fair” the media acts like there are two equal sides when covering politics because Republicans are destroying democracy and favoring “authoritarianism.”

Edwards said, “I mean, for the last five years, you have been covering the demise of democracy as we have seen all the guardrails pulled down from the Republican Party. The challenge that we have is that it isn’t just that Republican people or those who consider themselves Republican voters have steered toward authoritarianism. It’s that there are no leaders or few leaders in the House and the Senate, in the Congress of the United States, who are willing to take another view and a different direction.”

What nonsense. Republicans steering toward authoritarianism? The fact is, it is the Democrat Party, controlled by the radical left, that is careening toward totalitarianism.

Edwards continued, “I don’t think it is fair for journalists to do the one side versus the other side. There really is one side here. One is democracy. One is upholding democratic and constitutional conventions. The other is authoritarianism. There is no middle ground there. So we can’t cover it as though somehow, you know, one side is equivalent to the other side. I think that is where we have been challenged over these five last years.”

And there you have it: Democrats don’t believe journalists should fairly and objectively cover both sides of the issues. They want journalists to be fellow activists in demonizing and de-legitimizing their evil political opponents. We all know this has been happening anyway for years, but here is a former congresswoman openly advocating for a partisan, biased approach to reporting the truth.

Donna Edwards

75 Known Connections

In a June 2020 interview with MSNBC’s Joy Reid, Edwards was asked about the significance of President Donald Trump choosing to hold a political rally “a day after Juneteenth, so close to the Greenwood section [site of the 1921 Greenwood massacre] in Tulsa,” Oklahoma. The congresswoman replied:

“Well, you know, I think it’s not a secret what Donald Trump is both intending to say to black people but also what he’s really saying to his hardcore white supremacist base, and that is that he’s willing to sow chaos and destruction even as he’s running for president and in terms of race to win this election…. It strikes me that on this Juneteenth, of course, it’s not an accident that, one, he wanted to hold it on the 19th, but that he is so near the Greenwood massacre. He pretends not to know anything about this history, but he does. And what I would say is that I think he’s trying to sow chaos on the streets, and he wants the threat of that so that he can allow his Trumpian base to come out in the worst way. And so I get worried for us that we have a president of the United States who has no regard for human life, who has no regard for our history, and who is willing to go to the absolute lowest common denominator, not even a common one, in order to sow his political seeds and for his own political gain.”

To learn more about Donna Edwards, click here.

EDITORS NOTE: This Discover the Networks column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

THE NEW GESTAPO: Feds Are Investigating Trump’s New Media Company While They Ignore Hunter Biden’s Laptop and Shady Deals with China, Russia, Ukraine

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The new Secret Police or more fitting, the new Gestapo.

The fact is hundreds of millions of freedom loving people will flock to Trump’s new freedom platform. Watch what happens to Twitter and Facebook.That’s why they must stop him (and you).

Feds Are Investigating Trump’s Media Company While They Ignore Hunter Biden’s Laptop and Shady Deals with China, Russia, Ukraine

By Jim Hoft, Gateway Pundit, December 6, 2021:

President Trump stood up for the people and against the regime.

Now he must be punished.

The Security and Exchange Commission is now investigating President Trump’s upcoming media venture.  According to Business Insider the SEC has requested documents about “meetings of the partner company’s board of directors, “policies and procedures relating to trading,” identification of certain investors, and copies of communication between the partner company and Trump’s new organization.”

Donald Trump’s new social media company forecasts it may have 81 million users by 2026, or nearly 7 million more people than voted for him in the last U.S. presidential election.

The projection was filed on Monday with securities regulators by the company trying to bring Trump Media & Technology Group to the stock market. The company, Digital World Acquisition Corp., said over the weekend that it has lined up $1 billion in promised investments for the former president’s new venture from a group of unnamed institutional investors, and it filed a copy of the presentation used to pitch investors and analysts.

The filing also said that the deal has attracted some scrutiny from regulators. Digital World Acquisition, which is often referred to by its trading symbol of “DWAC,” said it is cooperating with “the preliminary, fact-finding inquiries” by the Financial Industry Regulation Authority and the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The Financial Industry Regulation Authority, or FINRA, asked in late October and early November for a review of trading in its stock before the Oct. 20 merger deal was announced. That announcement sent shares of DWAC surging from $9.96 to $94.20 in just two days as Trump supporters and investors looking to make a quick buck piled in. The shares have since pulled back to roughly $43.

At the same time the federal government is ignoring Hunter Biden’s laptop, his illegal drug use and orgies, and his several shady deals with China, Russia and the Ukraine.
Democrat privilege.

WARNING CLICK HERE FOR GRAPHIC SCREEN SHOTS FROM HUNTER BIDEN’S LAPTOP

RELATED ARTICLE: New Audio Found On Hunter Biden’s Laptop Reveals Conspiracy to Get Rid of Trump (AUDIO)

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

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19 Republican Senators vote to give Biden $13 billion to resettle unvetted Afghan evacuees in the US..

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If you wanted to destroy the country, what would you do differently from what Congress and Biden’s handlers are doing? No one knows how many jihadis are among these people; they’re largely unvetted. But the key part of this story is at the end: “The data revealed also that most Afghan arrivals in the U.S. live on welfare.”

That’s the goal. Create a group of people that is utterly dependent upon the government, and will keep on voting for those who will keep the gravy train going.

The List: 19 Senate Republicans Give Biden Over $13B to Resettle Unlimited Flow of Afghans Across Their States

by John Binder, Breitbart, December 3, 2021:

President Joe Biden’s massive Afghan resettlement operation, with no end date, has been funded by Congress to the sum of more than $13 billion thanks to 19 Senate Republicans who helped advance the plan.

Late Thursday evening, House Democrats and Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) passed a government funding bill that will keep the federal government operating through mid-February. In the bill is more than $7 billion in funding for the Biden administration to resettle an unlimited number of Afghans across the United States.

In the Senate, 19 Senate Republicans joined Senate Democrats to send the bill to Biden’s desk — now authorizing, in total, $13.3 billion for the administration to resettle Afghans after 49 House and Senate Republicans voted in September to fund the resettlement operation $6.4 billion.

These 19 Senate Republicans who backed the bill are:

  • Roy Blunt (R-MO)
  • Richard Burr (R-NC)
  • Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV)
  • Bill Cassidy (R-LA)
  • Susan Collins (R-ME)
  • John Cornyn (R-TX)
  • Lindsey Graham (R-SC)
  • Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS)
  • John Kennedy (R-LA)
  • Mitch McConnell (R-KY)
  • Jerry Moran (R-KS)
  • Lisa Murkowski (R-AK)
  • Rob Portman (R-OH)
  • Mike Rounds (R-SD)
  • Marco Rubio (R-FL)
  • Richard Shelby (R-AL)
  • Thom Tillis (R-NC)
  • Roger Wicker (R-MS)
  • Todd Young (R-IN)

In the bill, Afghans and other foreign nationals are identified as “individuals at risk” who can take part in “relocations” to the U.S. “as a result of the situation in Afghanistan.”

Senate Republican support for Biden’s Afghan resettlement operation comes even as Republican voters are deeply opposed to the plan, multiple polls have shown. The latest Pew Research Center survey shows that 63 percent of GOP voters oppose the plan.

In addition, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has admitted that “not all” Afghans are being vetted through standard in-person interview procedures.

“We are not conducting in-person, refugee interviews of 100 percent individuals,” Mayorkas told lawmakers last month during a hearing….

The data revealed also that most Afghan arrivals in the U.S. live on welfare.

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