VIDEO: The Push is On to Extend One of the Federal Government’s Worst Pandemic Power-Grabs

Nobel-Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman famously quipped that “nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.” If only he’d known how apt this would prove during a pandemic.

Of course, Friedman didn’t mean to suggest that expansions of government power and control over the economy are never rolled back or repealed. Just that we ought to be wary of promised “temporary” programs or interventions, because there will inevitably be a strong push for their perpetuation. We’re witnessing this phenomenon play out in real time as politicians in Washington push to—yet again—extend the federal government’s halt on evictions nationwide.

The so-called “eviction moratorium” in question was initially implemented by Congress in March 2020 and then drastically, unilaterally expanded by the Centers for Disease Control in September 2020. (Yes, under the Trump administration.) It made tenants below a certain income threshold immune from eviction even if they did not pay their rent, so long as they provided written notice and cited certain excuses. Landlords who violate the moratorium were threatened with fines of up to $100,000 and jail time. They were, however, still allowed to evict tenants under a narrow set of circumstances, such as tenants who engaged in criminal activity or endangered public safety.

After the Biden administration took control in January 2021, it once again extended the supposedly “temporary” nationwide dictate. The moratorium is supposed to lapse on Saturday, July 31. Yet Washington politicians are again mobilizing to renew the order.

President Biden has called on Congress to pass legislation expanding it, after the Supreme Court suggested that it cannot be renewed unilaterally. Meanwhile, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has said that “extending the eviction moratorium is a moral imperative.” As I write this newsletter, Congress is considering legislation to extend it.

But despite politicians’ lofty rhetoric, renewing this drastic measure would be an enormous mistake.

For one, the so-called moratorium was always a constitutionally suspect power-grab. Just think about this: The director of the CDC, an unelected bureaucrat, cited one vague law to unilaterally issue a mandate essentially seizing millions of landlords’ properties and subjecting those properties to unpaid occupation.

It’s as if the CDC ruled that anyone could go to a grocery store, fill up their cart, and walk out without paying. It effectively canceled peoples’ contracts and seized their property. It did so without even providing them the “just compensation” required by the Takings Clause of the Constitution.

“CDC inserting itself into private rental contracts, effectively transferring control of private property from the lawful owner to the renter, is possibly the most socialist action our government has taken in decades… and without an act of Congress!” Congressman Thomas Massie lamented on Twitter. “Rental contracts are governed by state law. There is no federal authority to overturn them. The CDC order is an affront to the rule of law.”

“CDC does not have the authority to do this,” Senator Rand Paul similarly wrote at the time. “It’s dangerous precedent and bad policy.”

So, from the get-go, the eviction moratorium was a bad idea and a dangerous power-grab. But it also created an economic catastrophe and unfairly burdened an entire class of Americans.

Contrary to popular misconception, landlords are not all rich people or mega-corporations. Many are middle-or-working-class Americans who own one or two small properties, or perhaps even just own a multi-family home and rent out the part they don’t occupy. Oftentimes, rental properties are these peoples’ retirement investments and crucial to their long-term financial security.

The federal government basically commandeered their investment, forced them to give it away for free, and left them to deal with the catastrophic results.

This has had perverse unintended consequences. For example, a few months ago I interviewed one landlord, libertarian policy analyst Jen Sidorova, who has left several of her rental units empty given the moratorium.

“I had to basically bail out my own property because [my renters] knew they could just stay and not pay,” she said. “I have one tenant [out of four units] that is still paying. For the two units I have vacant, I actually am not renting them out. I think that’s another problem with the moratorium: Landlords are going to hold their units because there’s no way in [expletive] I can afford supporting other people.”

So, too, the moratorium has left an enormous $21 billion tab in unpaid rent built up. Whenever the order finally expires, crushing bills will come due. They will either bankrupt delinquent renters, leave landlords in the lurch, or, unfortunately, be passed on to taxpayers via a bailout.

The longer the eviction moratorium continues, the more this dysfunction magnifies. Of course, that only gives politicians more incentive to expand it into perpetuity to avoid having to face the fallout from their poor policy decisions. The ultimate loser from such cowardice, though, is American taxpayers. Remember that next time you hear the word “temporary” attached to a proposal for a new government program.

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RELATED VIDEO: The CDC’s ‘Eviction Moratorium’ Is Hurting Landlords Like Me

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

Gender Ideology Run Amok

The following is adapted from a speech delivered on April 27, 2021, in Franklin, Tennessee, at a Hillsdale College National Leadership Seminar.


In 2007, America had one pediatric gender clinic; today there are hundreds. Testosterone is readily available to adolescents from places like Planned Parenthood and Kaiser, often on a first visit—without even a therapist’s note.

How did we get to this point? How is it that we are all supposed to pretend that the only way you can know I’m a woman is if I tell you my pronouns? How did we get to an America in which a 13-year-old in the State of Washington can begin “gender affirming” therapy without her parents’ consent? How did we get to an America in which a 15-year-old in Oregon can undergo “top surgery”—elective double mastectomy—without her parents’ permission? And what can we do about it?

To understand how we got to this point, it is useful to begin by considering gender dysphoria—the feeling of severe discomfort in a person’s biological sex. Gender dysphoria is certainly real. It is also exceedingly rare. It afflicts about 0.01 percent of the population, most of whom are male.

For nearly 100 years of diagnostic history, gender dysphoria typically began in early childhood, between the ages of two and four, and usually involved a boy who insisted that he was not a boy but a girl. Children afflicted are insistent, consistent, and persistent in the feeling that they are in the wrong body. It is by all accounts excruciating—I’ve talked to many transgender adults, most of them biological males, who describe the relentless chafe of a body that feels all wrong.

Historically, this has been the classic presentation of gender dysphoria. When these children were left alone—when no one intervened medically or encouraged what we today call “social transition”—over 70 percent of them naturally outgrew their gender dysphoria. Most of those who outgrew it became gay men. Those who did not outgrow it became what used to be known as transsexuals. They did not believe they were women, but they felt most comfortable presenting themselves as females.

Today, however, we don’t leave these children alone. Instead, the moment children seem not to be perfectly feminine or perfectly masculine, we label them as “trans kids.” Teachers encourage them to reintroduce themselves to their classes with new names and new pronouns. We take them to therapists or doctors, nearly all of whom practice so-called affirmative care—meaning they think it is their job to affirm the diagnosis of gender dysphoria and help the children medically transition.

The typical first step in treatment administered to these kids is puberty blockers, which shut down the part of the pituitary gland that directs the release of hormones catalyzing puberty. The most common of these drugs is Lupron, whose original purpose was the chemical castration of sex offenders. To this day, the FDA has never approved this drug for halting healthy puberty.

One has to wonder why a parent or a doctor would take measures to stop a child’s puberty, given that even a child with genuine gender dysphoria would most likely outgrow that condition if left alone. Some argue that it is traumatizing to let children go through the puberty of the sex to which they do not wish to belong. But in many cases, puberty seems to have helped children overcome gender dysphoria. The truth is that there is no satisfying answer, given that scientists have no way of predicting which children will outgrow the dysphoria on their own and which won’t.

Proponents of “affirmative care” also argue that allowing puberty to occur is dangerous, because suicide rates for trans-identified youth and trans adults are very high. Therefore, they say, we need to start treating children with gender dysphoria as soon and as dramatically as possible.

Yet there are no good long-term studies indicating that puberty blockers cure suicidality or even improve mental health. Nor are there studies that show puberty blockers are safe or reversible when used in this manner.

What we do know is that puberty blockers prevent the development of secondary sex characteristics, sexual maturation, and bone density. Indeed, because of the inhibition of bone density and other risks, doctors don’t like to keep children on puberty blockers for more than two years.

We also know that in almost every case when a child’s healthy puberty is medically arrested, placing the child out of step with his or her peers, that child proceeds to cross-sex hormones. And when puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones are administered to a girl, she becomes infertile. She may also have permanent sexual dysfunction given that her sex organs never reach adult maturity.

Given this, the claims made by so many doctors and gender activists today that these medical transition measures for children are safe and reversible—that they are a “pause button,” without serious downsides—are not only dishonest, but destructive. We would not accept this sort of glib salesmanship in any other area of medicine.

Trans Identification among Teenage Girls

As I mentioned, for the nearly 100-year history of scientific study of gender dysphoria, it has been diagnosed almost exclusively in young children, and mostly in boys. But over the last decade, large numbers of teenage girls have begun to claim they have gender dysphoria.

Prior to 2012, in fact, there was no scientific literature on gender dysphoria arising in teenage girls. Dr. Lisa Littman, then a Brown University public health researcher, used the phrase “rapid onset gender dysphoria” to refer to the subsequent sudden spike in transgender identification among teenage girls with no childhood history of gender dysphoria.

This spike is not unique to America—we see it across the Western world. To offer just one statistic, there has been a decade-to-decade increase of over 4,400 percent in the number of teenage girls seeking treatment at the United Kingdom’s national gender clinic. Across the West, teen girls are now the leading demographic claiming to have gender dysphoria.

What is behind this is social contagion—the spread of ideas, emotions, and behaviors through peer influence, one more instance of teenage girls sharing and spreading their pain. There is a long history of social contagion with this demographic—anorexia and bulimia are also spread this way. And we know that teen girls today are in the midst of the worst mental health crisis on record, with the highest rates of anxiety, self-harm, and clinical depression.

The teen girls susceptible to this social contagion are the same high-anxiety, depressive girls who struggle socially in adolescence and tend to hate their bodies. Add to that a school environment where you can achieve status and popularity by declaring a trans identity. Add to that the teenage temptation to stick it to mom. Also add the intoxicating influence of social media, where trans activists push the idea that identifying as trans and starting a course of testosterone will cure a girl’s problems. Put those together, and you have a fast-spreading social phenomenon.

I’ve spoken to families at top girls’ schools who attest that 15, 20, or in one case 30 percent of the girls in their daughter’s seventh grade class identify as trans. When you see figures like that, you’re witnessing a social contagion in action. There is no other reasonable explanation.

These teen girls are in a great deal of pain. Almost all of them have at some point dealt with an eating disorder, engaged in cutting, or been diagnosed with other mental health comorbidities. And now they’re being allowed to self-diagnose gender dysphoria by a medical establishment that has decided that its job is to affirm and agree with trans-identified adolescents.

Turning a Blind Eye

You may not know the name Keira Bell. She is a young woman in the U.K., very troubled in adolescence, who was rushed to transition in her teen years and came to regret it. She underwent double mastectomy and spent years on testosterone, only to realize that her problem had never been gender dysphoria. She sued the U.K.’s national gender clinic, and last December, after the High Court of Justice examined her case and the claims of similarly situated plaintiffs, she won.

The Court examined the medical protocols applied to Keira Bell—protocols identical to the ones we have in the United States—and was horrified that a young girl had been allowed to consent to begin a process of eliminating her future fertility and sexual function at an age, 15, when she could not possibly have gauged that loss.

Hailed as a “landmark case” by The Times of London, The Economist, and even The Guardian, Bell’s victory was widely viewed as a serious condemnation of the effort to fast-track teen girls to gender transition. One of the appalling things the Court noted was that the national gender clinic had been unable to show any psychological improvement in the adolescents it had treated with transitioning hormones.

If, as I suspect, you haven’t read or heard about the Keira Bell case, that’s because America’s legacy media decided to pretend the case didn’t happen. Similarly, they continue to ignore or dismiss the stories of the thousands of “detransitioners”—young women who underwent medical transition, later regretted it, and attempt to reverse course. A lot of the treatments these girls have undergone are permanent, but they do what they can to try to reverse some of the effects.

Thus it is that in the United States, this crisis among teenage girls gets treated as a political issue—a conservative issue—rather than a medical one. And so perhaps the greatest medical scandal of our time is dismissed as a conservative preoccupation.

The Assault on Women’s Sports and Safe Spaces

No discussion of gender ideology can ignore the ongoing movement to eradicate girls’ and women’s sports and protective spaces. Many or most of the people pushing this are not transgender themselves. But they are activists, they are energized, and they seem to be winning.

This movement promotes dangerous bills like the Equality Act, which would make it illegal ever to distinguish between biological men and women—and thus to exclude a biological male from a girls’ sports team or a women’s protective space, whether it be a restroom, locker room, or prison. We have these laws now in California and in the State of Washington—and as you might imagine, one result is that hundreds of biological male prisoners, many of them violent felons, have applied to transfer to women’s units.

For activists pushing this, it is not enough to create unisex bathrooms, a separate category for trans-identified athletes, or separate safe zones in prisons for trans-identified biological men. No, they are working to abolish all women’s-only spaces and they want to abolish them now.

The common thread running through these topics is that the truth is being obscured by gender ideology. Lies are told about the risks of the transition treatments administered to young children, both to play down the dangers of those treatments and to exaggerate the degree to which those treatments are known to be helpful. Lies are told about the researchers and journalists who attempt to report on the crisis of social contagion among teenage girls undergoing transition treatments. And lies are told about the movement to eradicate women’s protective spaces.

The gender ideology behind these lies is a sibling of critical race theory. While critical race activists are teaching kids that they are largely defined by their skin color, gender activists are teaching kids that there are a great many genders, and that only they know their true gender. And just as families who object to racial indoctrination in schools are told that their denials of racism are proof of racism, young women who object to biological males participating in girls’ sports are told that their objections are proof of transphobic bigotry.

These mendacious dogmas have corrupted our K-12 schools, our universities, and our legacy media, as well as our scientific journals and our medical accrediting organizations—the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association, etc. To give you a sense of how far things have gone, I was informed late last year by a member of the National Association of Science Writers—an association of journalists with scientific backgrounds—that a member of the association’s online forum had been expelled for mentioning my book on the transgender social contagion among teenage girls. He hadn’t even read my book. He just mentioned that it sounded interesting, and for that he was banned as transphobic.

Similarly, endocrinologists, psychiatrists, pediatricians, and researchers who are concerned about the risks of gender interventions report that they struggle today to get their research published. And public and private funding of research is almost entirely restricted to researchers who promote gender transition and downplay the risks.

There are phalanxes of young doctors now, many of them in pediatrics or child psychiatry, who are open about their belief that their primary job is “social justice.” They unreservedly celebrate the increase in transitioning treatment of young people and are inexcusably complacent about the risks of those treatments. The Washington Post recently quoted some of these doctors to the effect that puberty blockers are fully reversible—which is not something that any honest doctor can claim to know. We simply don’t have the data to know whether puberty blockers are fully physically reversible when applied to halt healthy puberty—and they are certainly not psychologically reversible. We’re seeing a startling politicization of medicine and science, which is symptomatic of a larger woke corruption of American society.

Now, there’s something I make a point of saying whenever I speak, and I say it for the simple reason that it is true: transgender adults are some of the soberest and kindest people I have met in my work as a journalist. Many of them seem to have been helped by transition, and they are leading admirable and productive lives. They have no desire to harm women or to push transition on children. The gender ideology activists do not represent them.

My understanding of freedom includes a belief that society should allow adults to make consequential decisions about their lives, which includes choosing to undergo sex reassignment surgery. And whenever I am asked by a transgender adult, I use his or her chosen name and pronouns. This seems to me the courteous and the right thing to do. But—and this is a big but—I never lie. This means I never say, and I will never say, that trans women are women. I think reciting this lie leads, as we are seeing, to unjust and dangerous consequences for women and girls. It is not courteous or right to parrot these lies. It is the cowardly surrender of women’s welfare to the woke gods. And it is wrong.

I’m also often asked why it is that the gender ideology activists are doing what they are doing. What possible justification could there be, for instance, for telling small boys that they might be girls and small girls that they might be boys? My best guess at an answer occurred to me while talking to detransitioners. I heard repeatedly from these young women that while they were transitioning, they were angry and politically radical. They often cut off relations with their families, having been coached to do so online by gender activists. Related to this, if you look, you’ll notice a disproportionate number of gender-confused people among the ranks of Antifa in cities like Portland.

In other words, chaos is the point, and these troubled girls become prey for those who seek to recruit revolutionaries. Just as the destructive objective of critical race theory is to divide Americans racially, that of gender ideology is to disrupt the formation of stable families, the building blocks of American life.

So what do we do about it? How do we push back? First and foremost, we must oppose the indoctrination of children in gender ideology. There is no good reason for it, and it does real harm. We can absolutely insist that all children treat each other kindly without indoctrinating an entire generation in gender confusion.

Second, we must overcome our squeamishness and speak the truth in public. Wherever we find ourselves, we must refuse to recite lies. And we must always clearly distinguish between transgender Americans, generally wonderful people, and the ideological transgender movement, which seeks to warp children and weaken families.

This is a movement that would turn our children against themselves because its advocates know there is no greater harm—no quicker way to bring America to its knees—than by driving our children to do themselves irreversible damage. The people pushing this ideology have gotten a head start on us by perhaps a decade. But now I think they have awakened a sleeping giant. The success of my book is one indication. The many state legislatures that are now debating these issues is another.

These are our kids and grandkids. Our future depends on our winning this fight.

COLUMN BY

Abigail Shrier

Abigail Shrier is a journalist and author. She received her A.B. from Columbia College, where she was a Euretta J. Kellett Fellow; her B.Phil. from the University of Oxford; and her J.D. from Yale Law School, where she was a Coker Fellow. A member of the Board of Advisors of the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism, she has written for numerous publications, including City JournalNewsweek, RealClearPolitics, The Federalist, the New York Post, and The Wall Street Journal. She is the author of Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters.

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

Goal of Critical Race Theory Is to Set Up ‘Dictatorship of the Anti-Racists’

Culture critic Dr. James Lindsay, author of Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity–and Why This Harms Everybodytold Breitbart News last weekend that the goal of Critical Race Theory (CRT) is to set up a “dictatorship of the anti-racists” in the same way Karl Marx wanted to set up a dictatorship of the proletariat.

Lindsay defined Critical Race Theory as “the belief that systemic racism was created by white people to be the fundamental organizing principle of society”: “In other words, they think about race and racism the same way that the Marxists thought about capitalism — [that] it’s the fundamental superstructure that organizes all of society.

“And everything has to be thought about on those terms, everything has to be thought about in terms of the power dynamics generated by race and racism, just the same way that Marx thought about the power dynamics created by the bourgeoisie and capitalism,” he added

“White people or ‘whiteness’ becomes the mark of the bourgeoisie, it’s exactly the same ideology,” Lindsay explained of CRT. “Critical Race Theory is trying to build a dictatorship of the anti-racists to march us through a ‘racial socialism,’ into an ‘equity’ phase that’s a racial communism,” in the same way “Marx was looking to build a dictator of the proletariat to march us through socialism as a transitional stage to communism.”

Lindsay also warned that CRT champion and intellectual fraud Ibram X. Kendi “wants to build a department of anti-racism that’s above the branches of government, backed by a constitutional amendment that gives it absolute authority.”

“Dictatorship of the anti-racists. That’s what the goal of Critical Race Theory is,” Lindsay warned.


Critical Race Theory

5 Known Connections

Founded by the late Derrick Bell, critical race theory is an academic discipline which maintains that society is divided along racial lines into (white) oppressors and (black) victims, similar to the way Marxism frames the oppressor/victim dichotomy along class lines. Critical race theory contends that America is permanently racist to its core, and that consequently the nation’s legal structures are, by definition, racist and invalid. As Emory University professor Dorothy Brown puts it, critical race theory “seeks to highlight the ways in which the law is not neutral and objective but designed to support white supremacy and the subordination of people of color.”

To learn more about Critical Race Theory, click here.

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

Guilty until Proven Innocent

If you think China and North Korea are the only countries with “political prisoners,” think again. According to some conservatives in Congress, some of the January 6th rioters have been held in jail for months under what they consider abusive conditions. At a press conference earlier this week, Republicans warned about the possible mistreatment of some defendants and demanded that they be treated fairly.

“If they’re guilty, they need to be charged accordingly,” Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) told the Washington Times, “but they need to be treated just like any other criminal.” Stories continue to circulate that even the “nonviolent trespassers” have been put in solitary confinement for several hours a day. “Sadly, two systems of justice exist in America today,” Congressman Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) (a former state judge) argued, “one for former President Trump along with those who support or don’t hate him, and the other for everyone else.” His colleague, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) agreed. “To my knowledge, none have been charged for insurrection, so I don’t consider them insurrectionists.”

And yet, their cases are being closely guarded by the DOJ, whose attorney general, Merrick Garland, refuses to answer basic questions from these congressmen about their status. Gohmert, who joined Tony Perkins on “Washington Watch” this week, argues that Biden’s top law enforcer “is only about seeking to please the Democrats. He has no interest in being fair and judicious as the attorney general. It’s really unfortunate. We’ve been begging for answers… We’re not looking into specific cases. We’re just wanting to know, is it true about the abuse that’s been going on?”

Nothing but crickets in return, Gohmert shook his head. He and three other members went to the D.C. jail where some of the defendants are being held and explained that they were congressmen and wanted to ask a few questions. “A lady in uniform came out and said that we were trespassing, and that we had to get out. And I said, we’ve shown our ID for members of Congress. We’re allowed to be here. We have to do oversight to know whether we ought to cut off funding for this facility or keep funding it. We need to know and we haven’t gotten an answer.”

Incredibly, a supervisor came over to the group — a sergeant — and she walked past them to make a phone call outside. So, the four members of Congress followed her outside to ask their questions, and “she double back[ed] around, went into the facility and locked the doors. I’ve never seen anything like [it]. It’s unreal,” Gohmert said.

Regardless of the Biden administration cover-up, Gohmert vows, “We’re going to keep pushing… And of course there’s the media sycophants, but there’s [also] other media and even [Senate Majority Leader Chuck] Schumer (D-N.Y.) and [Senator Dick] Durbin (D-Ill.) have asked in recent weeks, are these people being treated fairly? So we’re making headway by bringing attention to this, and we’re just going to keep making noise until the demands get more people involved and finally they can’t ignore the requests we have. So we’ll see what happens. But we’re not giving up.”

EDITORS NOTE: This FRC-Action video is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

The Washington Post: New China Virus [COVID] Strain Not Increasing Deaths

Which prove the mask paranoia is just that. Mass non-compliance. All together now.

The central question, looking ahead: Will the pandemic be less deadly?

Washington Post

Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicate that some 5,600 fully vaccinated people have been hospitalized while coronavirus-positive — though a quarter of them were there for other reasons and learned they had asymptomatic infections once tested in the hospital. When compared with the more than 2 million new hospitalizations this year, that’s a tiny fraction — just as the number of deaths among the vaccinated is a tiny percentage of all covid-related deaths.

This is the goal: Individuals will get vaccinated so that everyone is less likely to get infected, and in the unlikely event that a vaccinated person is infected, the prognosis is significantly better. So, with 69.4 percent of American adults having received at least one dose of a vaccine, we might expect a greater percentage of new infections to avoid hospitalization or death.

Since the current surge in cases began at the beginning of this month, the number of hospitalizations and the number of patients sent to the intensive care unit has tracked with that surge. The number of deaths, though, hasn’t.

When overlaid, we see that the pattern for deaths is, so far, not tracking with cases and hospitalizations.

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

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Secret Iran Plans to Hack Infrastructure in Western Countries Revealed

Ever since Joe Biden began dropping Trump’s sanctions against Iran, disturbing news has been emerging about Iran’s emboldening in numerous areas. Now comes news that “five secret documents allegedly showing Iranian plans to hack infrastructure in Western countries, including in Europe.” Leaked documents that were obtained by Sky News were “actual internal planning documents for Unit 13, the cyber unit of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.” Iran has been developing a cyber army  of highly trained specialists and hackers since 2010.

If successful, Iran’s ability to hack into Western infrastructure is worrying, especially given the billions now freed up for the Iranian regime’s expansion.

Secret Iran hacking plans against West revealed

by Yonah Jeremy Bob, Jerusalem Post, July 27, 2021:

Five secret documents allegedly showing Iranian plans to hack infrastructure in Western countries, including in Europe, were publicized by Sky News late Monday night.

Although there have been reports of such hacks by Iran and others in the past, it is unusual for a media organization to obtain actual internal planning documents for Unit 13, the cyber unit of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Some of the potential hacks the IRGC cyber group might be planning would target a cargo ship’s ballast water system, which could cause irreparable damage, according to the report.

The ballast water system helps balance a ship in certain circumstances by pumping water into special tanks. Tampering with the system could harm this crucial process.

Another Iranian plot might be to hack the automatic tank gage of certain gas stations, which could stop the flow of gas or, in a worst-case scenario, cause an explosion, the report said.

The 57 pages of documents also described attempts to hack maritime communications devices.

Sky News interviewed UK Defense Secretary Ben Wallace, who talked more generally about the kind of threats described in the documents. He said the allegations were serious and did not deny them.

The documents described early stages of planning for a cyberattack, but they did not clarify how far along the plans were, an anonymous source said in the report.

It was unclear who leaked the documents, but the leak appeared to be designed to embarrass Tehran before European countries to potentially influence their views on a range of issues regarding Iran…..

COLUMN BY

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

VIDEO: CDC/Facebook Collusion on Censorship?

Is it any wonder that Americans don’t trust the CDC or Facebook to deliver accurate information? And is it any surprise that your Judicial Watch caught these two organizations colluding to control the flow of news and opinion about Covid-19?

We learned a lot about the behind the scenes, inappropriate friendship of this government agency and this private company after we sued.

We received 2,469 pages of documents from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which reveal that Facebook coordinated closely with the CDC to control the Covid narrative and “misinformation.”

In addition, social media companies gave more than $3.5 million in free advertising to the CDC.

We received these documents in response to our Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Health of Human Services (No. 1:21-cv-00625)) lawsuit for:

Any and all records of communication between CDC officials and/or employees and employees, agents, and/or representatives of Google, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube concerning, regarding, or relating to COVID-19 related content on company platforms. Such records include, but are not limited to, any advice or instructions issued on disinformation re COVID-19.

The documents show little daylight between the CDC and Big Tech on Covid-19 messaging and misinformation:

  • In an email exchange beginning on January 26, 2020 with the subject, “Data for Good | CDC intros,” a Facebook representative sends the “FB coronavirus narrative” to the CDC.

It states the following:

Facebook is taking a three pronged approached to the global response for the coronavirus:

Limit misinformation and other harmful content on our platforms.  Our third-party fact-checkers have been rating information on this topic as false, including the APPolitifactAFP Hong KongRapple IQ in the Philippines. As a result, we show people who come across that false content accurate information from our fact-checking partners and strong warning labels. We also send notifications to people who already shared this content alerting them that it’s been fact checked.

Provide accurate and helpful information on our platforms to our partners. Partners are already using our platforms to share accurate information about the situation, including on Pages. We have also provided ad credits to the World Health Organization and the Philippines’ Department of Health to enable them to run coronavirus education campaigns on Facebook in-region, which we will continue to do. We’re continuing to explore additional steps we can take, including dedicated information modules on relevant search queries and improved search ranking.

Empower partners with data tools. We’re sharing aggregated mobility data and high resolution density maps with various partners (e.g., National Tsinghua University (Taiwan); Harvard School of Public Health) to help inform forecasting models for the spread of the virus as part of our broader Data for Good program. We’re exploring doing this with a broader set of partners (e.g., WHO, US CDC) and also helping partners understand how people are talking about the issue online through tools like Crowdtangle to inform their efforts.

This email exchange continues on showing more coordination on messaging between the CDC and Facebook.

  • The CDC was given over $3.5 million of free advertising on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.
    • In a March 8, 2020 email, a Facebook representative sends four ad credits totaling $2 million to the CDC for the purpose of supporting “messaging related to coronavirus.”

On March 14, 2020, then-CDC Chief Operating Officer and Chief Strategy Officer Sherri Berger emails Facebook to thank them for the $2 million.

“On behalf of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and by the authority delegated to me through Section 231 of the Public Health Service Act (42 U.S.C. Section 238), as amended, thank you for Facebook’s non-monetary gift of advertising credited with an estimated value of $2,000,000.  The gift will be used by CDC’s COVID-19 response to support dissemination of critical public health messaging.  Thank you!”

  • In an email exchange between August 10-11, 2020, the CDC’s Sherri Berger emails Facebook again to thank them for another $1 million in ad credits with a similar message to that on March 14, except she adds: “This gift will be used by the CDC’s COVID-19 response to distribute scientifically accurate data, guidance and risk communication information on COVID-19 to a broader audience.” In an email exchange on August 25, 2020, Facebook makes CDC officials aware that of their recent gift of $1 million in ad credits, $529,207.42 remain.
  • In a heavily redacted email exchange on March 17, 2020, a Twitter official offers the CDC advertising in the form of Twitter’s Promoted Trend and Promoted Spotlight Trend, which have approximate values given as $75,000 and $150,000.
  • In an email exchange beginning March 16, 2020, a Google representative offers the CDC free video advertising on YouTube.  In the exchange, they claim to not be able to assign a dollar value to this advertising. The CDC’s official acceptance document for this advertising, which they value at $0, Sherri Berger states: I understand that Google LLC may be a vendor and/or lobbyist employed and that Google LLC’s employees may be registered lobbyists.  Providing the gift will not prevent Google LLC or its affiliates from supplying products of services to CDC in the future; CDC, however, is under no obligation to accept future services from Google LLC or its affiliates.
  • In a February 27, 2020 email, a Facebook representative offers to put CDC officials in contact with WhatsApp in order to establish auto-responses to FAQs about coronavirus in that communications platform.

These documents show that Facebook and the CDC are joined at the hip on managing the ever-changing Covid-19 “narrative” – which includes censorship of alleged “misinformation.”

I suspect there is more to be found on this topic and Judicial Watch’s investigators and litigators will continue to expose the behind-the-scenes censorious machinations between Big Government and Big Tech that are  a threat to both the truth and your First Amendment rights.

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

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U.S. COVID Deaths at Lowest Level Since March 2020

Far more people were dying from COVID-19 months ago as we were winding down restrictions than are dying today as some call to reinstate them.


If you judged the US’s current COVID-19 situation only by the headlines, you’d come away thinking that we’re spiraling back into pandemic disaster. Localities like Los Angeles County and St. Louis have reimposed mask mandates on their citizens, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention just revised its “guidance” to say that, actually, fully vaccinated individuals should still wear masks in certain situations. Meanwhile, mainstream media coverage of the rise of the “Delta variant” is soaked in alarmism.

Yet at the same time that all this alarm is mounting, the actual number of COVID-19 deaths is at a nadir. Harvard Medical School Professor Martin Kulldorff pointed this out on Twitter, writing that “In [the] USA, COVID mortality is now the lowest since the start of the pandemic in March 2020.”

He shared this graph from OurWorldInData which clearly shows how COVID deaths per million are at, relatively speaking, extreme lows. Far more people were dying from COVID-19 months ago as we were winding down restrictions than are dying today as some call to reinstate them.

Now, some would cite rising COVID-19 case counts or hospitalizations in certain parts of the country as evidence that the pandemic is indeed once again spiraling out of control. But many COVID-19 cases recorded as positive are either asymptomatic or come with very mild symptoms—especially the cases confirmed among vaccinated individuals—so high case counts are not necessarily proof of a serious problem. Hospitalizations are concerning, yes, but primarily insofar as they lead to high numbers of deaths, which, thankfully, is not the case so far with the Delta variant.

Others would say that deaths are a “lagging indicator” that come in several weeks after the increased spread of the disease. But the Delta variant has been spreading in the US for months now, and deaths have remained relatively flat, in part due to widespread vaccination.

“It is striking that COVID mortality is at such low levels despite the fact that we are seeing an increase in cases of late,” Stanford Professor of Medicine Dr. Jay Bhattacharya tells FEE. “By immunizing the elderly and many other vulnerable people, we have provided them with excellent protection against severe disease in case they get infected. Also contributing is widespread natural immunity from recovered COVID patients. Though cases may rise, deaths will no longer follow in proportion.  We have effectively defanged the disease with our successful vaccination rollout.”

So, there’s simply no reason to expect the long downward trend in deaths shown in the above graph to suddenly spike upwards. And we can’t make public policy based on worst-case scenarios.

That’s right: despite all the alarmism and clamor for renewed restrictions on our liberty, there’s not really been a resurgence in the state of the COVID-19 crisis itself.

“We should be declaring a great and resounding success,” Bhattacharya told FEE in conclusion. “The COVID emergency is over. We still need to take COVID seriously, and there are still vulnerable people here and abroad left to vaccinate. But we can start to treat it as one disease among many that afflict people rather than an all-consuming threat.”

Of course, proponents of big government and government officials themselves will be the last ones to acknowledge the reality that the most dangerous phase of this pandemic has long since come to an end in the US. Why? Because the rhetoric of “emergency” and “crisis” is the government’s favorite tool to use in expanding and maintaining its power over our lives.

“‘Emergencies’ have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have eroded,” as Nobel-Prize-winning economist Freidrich Hayek put it. “And once they are suspended it is not difficult for anyone who has assumed emergency powers to see to it that the emergency will persist.”

Examples of this timeless truth abound throughout history up until present day: from the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II to the now-permanent infringements on our civil liberties after 9/11 to the sweeping expansion of government control during the COVID-19 pandemic.

But, whether politicians like it or not, the COVID-19 crisis is largely over. So don’t fall for cynical arguments from power-hungry individuals who want their “emergency” powers to become permanent.

COLUMN BY

Brad Polumbo

Brad Polumbo (@Brad_Polumbo) is a libertarian-conservative journalist and Policy Correspondent at the Foundation for Economic Education.

EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. Like this story? Click here to sign up for the FEE Daily and get free-market news and analysis like this from Policy Correspondent Brad Polumbo in your inbox every weekday.

CNN’s Cuomo: Unvaccinated Americans Ignorant, Arrogant

Wednesday on CNN, network anchor and blowhard hypocrite Chris Cuomo declared during his handoff to fellow anchor Don Lemon that Americans who are still unvaccinated against the COVID-19 virus are ignorant and arrogant, with a “misplaced sense of righteous indignation.”

“Part of the metric here is ignorance, but part of it is also arrogance, this misplaced sense of righteous indignation, and resistance that they believe is a false manifestation of freedom,” Cuomo blathered. “This is not an issue of freedom.”

Fact check: yes, it is.

“Of course, you have freedom to make choices about your own body,” he continued. “Let’s put to the side the irony that so many of these people don’t want to afford that freedom to women.”

First, let’s put aside his lie that the pro-life position denies women choices about their own bodies. Being pro-life is about saving the bodies of unborn children.

“But what we’re saying is,” Cuomo added, “does it mean it’s the right choice?”

In other words, Cuomo believes you have the right to make choices about your own body as long as you make the choice Democrats want you to make.


Chris Cuomo

7 Known Connections

Characterizing Donald Trump & His Supporters As Racists & Bigots

In December 2016, Cuomo explained that Donald Trump had won the recent presidential election on the strength of support from many white people who were feeling “victimized” by Islam, and who had the attitude that “now it’s our turn.” On a later occasion, Cuomo said that Trump’s campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again,” “was always a call to go back to times when you didn’t have the kind of progress you have, you didn’t have the inclusiveness you have, things were simpler and harsher.”[8]

Asserting that President Trump “sees diversity as a minus” and favors “a policy of exclusion,” Cuomo in January 2018 told White House deputy press secretary Raj Shah that the Trump administration was engaged in “a pretty intentional effort to make illegal immigrants – as you call them – monsters.” He also falsely stated that illegals “are incarcerated at lower rates than the rest of the population,” and he grossly misrepresented a DHS report as one “which fictionalizes the risk of terror that is represented by people who come into this country illegally,” “make[s] them all into villains,” and “says [that] basically three out of four of them may be terrorists.” “If you were really worried about who’s killing people in the name of terror in this country, you’d be focused on white supremacists,” added Cuomo. “That’s your biggest threat.”[9]

To learn more about Chris Cuomo, click here.

RELATED ARTICLE: AP: Unvaccinated fed workers punished with masks, testing, travel restrictions

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

SHOCKING: U.S.FALLS FAR SHORT Of Second-Quarter GDP Growth Projections

The American economy was literally shut down. We should be breaking all records and forecasts. But the Democrats have imposed economy and freedom killing restrictions on us all. Communist China, who dropped the COVID bio-weapon , is doing gangbusters. Thanks to the Democrats.

We’ve been overthrown.

U.S. Falls Far Short Of Second-Quarter GDP Growth Projections

The American economy missed second-quarter GDP growth projections by a significant margin.

By Daily Wire, July 29, 2021:

According to data released by the Department of Commerce on Thursday, the annualized GDP growth rate rose to 6.5% between April and June of this year. Although improving from 6.3% in the first quarter of 2021, the metric fell short of the 8.4% Dow Jones estimate.

According to a press release from the Bureau of Economic Analysis:

The second-quarter increase in real GDP reflected increases in consumer spending, business investment, exports, and state and local government spending that were partly offset by decreases in inventory investment, housing investment, and federal government spending. Imports, a subtraction in the calculation of GDP, increased.

The increase in consumer spending reflected increases in services (led by food services and accommodations) and goods (led by other nondurable goods, notably pharmaceutical products).

The increase in business investment reflected increases in equipment (led by transportation equipment) and intellectual property products (led by research and development). 

CNBC notes that investment and savings rates dropped in the second quarter:

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

Quick note: Tech giants are shutting us down. You know this. Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Adsense, Pinterest permanently banned us. Facebook, Google search et al have shadow-banned, suspended and deleted us from your news feeds. They are disappearing us. But we are here. We will not waver. We will not tire. We will not falter, and we will not fail. Freedom will prevail.

Subscribe to Geller Report newsletter here — it’s free and it’s critical NOW when informed decision making and opinion is essential to America’s survival. Share our posts on your social channels and with your email contacts. Fight the great fight.

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‘CDC Has Destroyed Their Credibility’

Another great American institution co-opted and decimated and weaponized by the Democrat communist party.

Senator Ted Cruz blasted the CCP-Democrats, ““[T]he Democrats have from the beginning of this pandemic, treated it as a matter of politics,” he said. “From the shutdowns we saw all over the country, to the schools that were closed, and the kids that were hurt, to the jackbooted thugs that went persecuting people of faith, who were going to church and singing in church, we saw a political agenda instead of common sense to keep us safe. And I got to say that culminated yesterday in the CDC’s absurd decision that people who have been vaccinated must nonetheless wear masks when inside. And that decision, Sean, that’s not science. That’s politics. It’s pure politics.”

“More than 26,000 parents chose to participate in this [mask]  study, and more than half reported that the masks were giving children headaches and making it difficult for them to concentrate,” she said. “And more than a third of them cited other effects — increased reluctance to go to school unhappiness, malaise, depression, anxiety, drowsiness, fatigue, impaired learning.”

“Due to multiple limitations, this study cannot demonstrate a causal relationship between mask-wearing and the reported adverse effects in children,” the website Research Square states. “Most of the respondents were parents, and the survey was distributed preferentially in social media forums that, according to the authors, ‘criticize the government’s corona protection measures in principle.’ The limitations of the study include sampling bias, reporting bias and confounding bias as well as lack of a control group. The use of masks, together with other precautionary measures, significantly reduces the spread of COVID-19 and is considered safe for children over the age of two years old.” (study here)

Ted Cruz: ‘CDC Has Destroyed Their Credibility’

By: Jeff Poor, Breirtbart News, July 29, 2021:

Wednesday, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) decried the continuously shifting guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to the Texas Republican, given contradictions of the CDC over the last year, it has “destroyed” its own credibility.

“[T]he Democrats have from the beginning of this pandemic, treated it as a matter of politics,” he said. “From the shutdowns we saw all over the country, to the schools that were closed, and the kids that were hurt, to the jackbooted thugs that went persecuting people of faith, who were going to church and singing in church, we saw a political agenda instead of common sense to keep us safe. And I got to say that culminated yesterday in the CDC’s absurd decision that people who have been vaccinated must nonetheless wear masks when inside. And that decision, Sean, that’s not science. That’s politics. It’s pure politics.”

“You know what? Yesterday, ‘vaccines work.’ Today, they still work, but as a political matter, the Democrats decided they want to control your lives,” Cruz continued. “They want everyone to wear a mask. And my view is real simple — we shouldn’t have federal government mandates on COVID. That means no mask mandates, that means no vaccine mandates, that means no vaccine passports. This should be a question of individual choice. Now look, personally, I’ve gotten the vaccine. My family’s gotten the vaccine. That’s the choice we’ve made. But I also believe in individual freedom and responsibility.”

“It’s your choice to decide what’s right for you, what’s right for your family, and you don’t need a bunch of meddling bureaucrats from Washington setting a mandate and deciding you have to do this, to go to work, to go to school, to get on a plane to live,” he added. “And this Democratic Party, you know, the CDC has destroyed their credibility. A year and a half ago, the CDC was one of the most respected scientific organizations in the world, and they allowed themselves to be politicized with Dr. Fauci at the helm of the politicization. And right now, their credibility is in tatters because they behave more like an arm of the DNC than an actual, serious, medical and scientific organization.”

RELATED ARTICLES:

FORCED SCHOOL MASK MANDATE: ‘It Isn’t Based In Science’, DeSantis’s Office Blasts CDC Over K-12 In-School Mask Edict

CHILD ABUSE: “Biden” Good with Kids Wearing Masks at School Again

L.A. County Sheriff Refuses to Enforce County’s Renewed Mask Mandate

A Group Of Parents Sent Their Kids’ Face Masks to A Lab for Analysis. Here Are All The Diseases They Found.

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

Quick note: Tech giants are shutting us down. You know this. Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Adsense, Pinterest permanently banned us. Facebook, Google search et al have shadow-banned, suspended and deleted us from your news feeds. They are disappearing us. But we are here. We will not waver. We will not tire. We will not falter, and we will not fail. Freedom will prevail.

Subscribe to Geller Report newsletter here — it’s free and it’s critical NOW when informed decision making and opinion is essential to America’s survival. Share our posts on your social channels and with your email contacts. Fight the great fight.

Follow me on Gettr. I am there, click here. It’s open and free.

Remember, YOU make the work possible. If you can, please contribute to Geller Report.

PayPal, MasterCard, Banks Act Against Dissenters from Leftist Agenda — Including Foes of Jihad Terror

What’s coming has been absolutely clear for quite some time. And it’s coming fast now. If they can do it to me, they can do it to you. And they will.

Second Class Citizens: The 5 Stages of Financial Blacklisting

by Allum Bokhari, Breitbart, July 27, 2021:

After years of censoring conservatives without admitting to political bias, PayPal appears to have formally abandoned political neutrality, entering into a partnership with the far-left Anti Defamation League (ADL) and law enforcement to track and suppress the activities of the alleged far right.

Breitbart News first sounded the alarm on the rise of financial blacklisting in 2018, an opinion which was then shared by liberal organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Since then, progressive activists have launched well-funded campaigns aimed at payment processors, and credit card companies, aimed at cutting the political right off from payment and banking services — essentially an effort to reduce them to the status of second-class citizens.

Here were some key stages on the road to financial blacklisting.

1. Crowdfunding Sites Target Conservatives 

The first sign that conservatives were going to be financially blacklisted came in 2015, when GoFundMe — a major platform for raising small donations online — shut down a fundraiser on its platform for a Christian bakery in Washington State, which was facing a large fine due to its refusal to serve a gay wedding. Later examples of conservative crowdfunding campaigns being shut down include Kickstarter’s decision in 2018 to ban a fundraiser for Swedish academic Ann Heberlein over her book examining the correlation between mass immigration into Sweden and a steep rise in sexual assaults in that country between 2012 and 2017.

2. Patreon cracks down on independent creators

Patreon, a service that allows people to charge recurring subscription fees, was once the gold standard in an ecosystem of online creators that sold content directly to their fans without going through any third party. Its descent into political bias became widely apparent in 2017, when it banned independent journalist Lauren Southern in 2017 over her work documenting left-wing NGOs smuggling immigrants into Europe via the Mediterranean. In the following two years, reportedly under pressure from credit card companies, it would purge even more conservative and independent creators, including the British critic of progressivism Carl Benjamin. In response to Benjamin’s ban, top Patreon earners Jordan Peterson and Dave Rubin announced plans to boycott the platform.

3. Mastercard and Discover blacklist Islam critics Robert Spencer, David Horowitz 

The theory that Patreon was banning creators due to pressure from credit card companies attracted some more evidence in late 2018, when Visa and Mastercard cut off payments to David Horowitz’s Freedom Center. Horowitz later had the service restored, but Islam critic Robert Spencer reported that he too was blacklisted by Mastercard, blaming it on pressure from far-left activists. In 2020, Visa also blacklisted Gab, the free speech friendly social network that offers users an alternative to the far-left content moderation of mainstream platforms like Facebook and Twitter….

RELATED ARTICLES:

‘Did Muhammad Exist?’ zooms to #1 bestselling book in two categories

Middle East Forum Founder describes designation of Jihad Watch as ‘violent extremist’ as ‘repugnant & absurd’

UK Muslim publication says Christian stabbed at Speakers’ Corner ‘is known for insulting the Prophet’

UK: Social workers turned blind eye as 15-year-old raped, forced into Islamic marriage and domestic slavery

Social media giants’ Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism classifies Jihad Watch as ‘violent extremism’

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

What the Nazis had in common with every other collectivist regime of the 20th century

One hundred years ago—on July 29, 1921—Adolf Hitler became the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party.


This week marks an infamous centennial. One hundred years ago—on July 29, 1921—Adolf Hitler assumed the leadership of the National Socialist German Workers Party, better known as the Nazis. It became his vehicle to power.

Note the formal, official name of the party. It was not the National Capitalist German Workers Party. It was not the National Free Market German Workers Party. Nor was it the National Christian German Workers Party. Yet a century later, claims that Nazis were capitalist or Christian or both—though preposterous—are still occasionally heard.

Though Hitler quoted Scripture early in his career when it was politically convenient (he lied often, incidentally), he also said the Bible was “a fairy tale invented by the Jews.” He appointed many vehement anti-Christians to high office; arrested, jailed, tortured and killed many priests and pastors; denied that Jesus was a Jew and even ordered a “new Bible” stripped of all references to Jews and Jewish history.

Baldur von Schirach, head of the Hitler Youth, certainly got the memo. “The destruction of Christianity was explicitly recognized as a purpose of the National Socialist movement,” he said, as noted in evidence produced at the Nuremberg trials and in this video.

In a story on the Nazi bible, London’s Daily Mail reported:

Hitler admired the ceremony and majesty of the church—he admitted as much in Mein Kampf—but hated its teachings, which had no place in his vision of Germanic supermen ruling lesser races devoid of ‘outdated’ concepts such as mercy and love. But he knew the power of the church in Germany and even he could not banish it overnight. He was even forced to abandon the systematic murder of the handicapped and insane before the war when outspoken bishops began to speak against it. Instead, his plan was to gradually ‘Nazify’ the church beginning with a theological centre he set up in 1939 to rewrite the Holy Bible.  

In the real Bible, Matthew 7:16 famously declares, “By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles?” What Hitler and Nazism produced—genocide, warfare, state control, and endless evil in many forms—constitutes the very antithesis of the teachings of Jesus.

The lie that Nazism was capitalist instead of what the Nazis themselves said it was (namely, socialist) derives from the fact that the Hitler regime did not engage in wholesale or widespread nationalization of businesses. In the Third Reich, you might retain legal title to a factory but if you did not do as the Nazis ordered, you would be, shall we say, dispatched.

Writing in his magnum opus, Human Action, Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises explained that Nazism was “socialism under the outward guise of the terminology of capitalism”:

The second pattern [of socialism] (we may call it the Hindenburg or German pattern) nominally and seemingly preserves private ownership of the means of production and keeps the appearance of ordinary markets, prices, wages, and interest rates. There are, however, no longer entrepreneurs, but only shop managers (Betriebsführer in the terminology of the Nazi legislation).

These shop managers are seemingly instrumental in the conduct of the enterprises entrusted to them; they buy and sell, hire and discharge workers and remunerate their services, contract debts and pay interest and amortization. But in all their activities they are bound to obey unconditionally the orders issued by the government’s supreme office of production management. This office (The Reichswirtschaftsministerium in Nazi Germany) tells the shop managers what and how to produce, at what prices and from whom to buy, at what prices and to whom to sell. It assigns every worker to his job and fixes his wages. tell prices and from whom to buy, at what prices and to whom to sell. It assigns every worker to his job and fixes his wages. It decrees to whom and on what terms the capitalists must entrust their funds.

Market exchange is merely a sham. All the wages, prices, and interest rates are fixed by the government; they are wages, prices, and interest rates in appearance only; in fact they are merely quantitative terms in the government’s orders determining each citizen’s job, income, consumption, and standard of living. The government directs all production activities. The shop managers are subject to the government, not the consumers’ demand and the market’s price structure.

Does that look like capitalism to any thoughtful, honest person with no agenda but the truth? Hardly.

As I wrote in The Only Spectrum that Makes Sense, Lenin, Mao, Pol Pot, Castro, Hitler, Mussolini were all anti-capitalist peas in the same socialist, collectivist pod:

They all claimed to be socialists. They all sought to concentrate power in the State and to glorify the State. They all stomped on individuals who wanted nothing more than to pursue their own ambitions in peaceful commerce. They all denigrated private property, either by outright seizure or regulating it to serve the purposes of the State.

Michael Rieger argues that some of the confusion about how to label Nazi economics stems from socialism’s ever-shifting varieties. Socialists are notorious for claiming “this is it” when they’re just writing or daydreaming about it and then claiming “that wasn’t it” when it flops. Rieger writes:

The wide variance between utopian socialism, communism, national socialism, and democratic socialism makes it remarkably easy for members of each ideology to wag their fingers at the others and say, “That wasn’t real socialism.” However, there is one common thread in each of these definitions of socialism. From Saint-Simon to AOC, all self-described socialists have shared the belief that top-down answers to society’s problems are superior to the bottom-up answers created by the free market.

Rather than admit that Nazism was socialist and disastrous, diehard socialists declare “that wasn’t socialism.” It would be more honest if they just said, “Oops.” But they typically react the same way (in vehement denial) to failed socialist experiments everywhere, from the Soviet Union to Venezuela.

FEE’s director of content, Dan Sanchez, generated numerous affirmations when he recently tweeted this:

Cases of socialism they don’t like: “Not true socialism.” Cases of capitalism they do like: “Not true capitalism.” Socialists always lose on economics, so they try to win with word play.

Ask yourself this: Does the following statement sound like something a socialist would say or something a free-market, capitalist advocate would espouse?

The good of the community takes priority over that of the individual. But the State should retain control; every owner should feel himself to be an agent of the State; it is his duty not to misuse his possessions to the detriment of the State or the interests of his fellow countrymen. That is the overriding point. The Third Reich will always retain the right to control property owners. 

That was Adolf Hitler in a 1931 interview with Richard Breiting. He said essentially the same thing a hundred times or more, and it is exactly what he carried out in practice. And it is as socialist as it gets. Nothing capitalist or free market about it.

A century ago today, a megalomaniac began his rise to political power. The world suffered unspeakable catastrophe at the hands of that very anti-Christian and anti-capitalist monster. Do not be gullible or foolish enough to suggest he was otherwise.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

COLUMN BY

Lawrence W. Reed

Lawrence W. (“Larry”) Reed is FEE’s President Emeritus, Humphreys Family Senior Fellow, and Ron Manners Global Ambassador for Liberty. Reed served as president of FEE from 2008-2019 after serving… More by Lawrence W. Reed

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

Wokeness: A Grave Risk to America’s Military [Video]

Wokeness is destroying American military might from within its own ranks, and it’s doing so more effectively than any foreign enemy ever could.

Entrepreneur Bill Walton had a long discussion about wokeness in the US military with the Center’s Senior Analyst for Strategy J. Michael Waller and LTG William G. Boykin USA (Ret), one of the original combat commanders of the Army’s elite Delta Force.

The conversation ran as Episode 144 of the Bill Walton Show as “Wokeness: A Grave Threat to America’s Military.”

“Our military should be about readiness, and its mission must be winning the nation’s wars,” said General Boykin. “There is nothing more important on the battlefield than cohesion – which wokeness undermines. You win wars because of cohesion, not because of technology.”

Waller, a civilian who has worked with the Army for decades, has noticed generations of careerist, rank-climbing officers “brown-nose,” in his words, their way to the top by going along with what used to be called political correctness, becoming politically correct themselves, and since have broken out as “woke.”

Wokeness, Waller says, is not so much an ideology as it is an attitude. Wokeness is the political and cultural extremism and intolerance of a small but militant minority that is forced on the normal majority. Wokeness requires mainstream leaders of an established institution to become servile to the extremists, to protect them, and ultimately to serve as their enforcers.

“Woke,” Waller says on the Bill Walton Show, “is a pretty loose term but it really stands for an extremist, intolerant point of view that’s constantly changing. You can’t appease it, you can’t please it, you can’t compromise with it. It’s absolutist and if you disagree with it at all or don’t go along, the woke people will destroy you. They’ll destroy you personally, they’ll destroy you professionally, they will ruin your family life. They will make sure that you can never advance in any places where they have influence.”

video of the conversation appears on YouTube, with the audio available on Spotify.

EDITORS NOTE: This Center For Security Policy video is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Saving Our National Hyde

Watch out whenever a politician says, “I’m a devout Catholic, but…” Whatever follows the “but” shows where their true allegiance lies. So it is with President Joe Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who are out of step with their Church’s teaching. Both have expressed a desire to see abortion rights extended, even up to the moment of birth—which is infanticide.

Now they even want to repeal the Hyde Amendment, a 40-year old congressional measure that blocks federal funding for abortions.

Writing for Lifenews.com, Micaiah Bilger notes, “The Hyde Amendment is a longstanding, bipartisan measure that prohibits taxpayer funding for elective abortions in Medicaid and other federal programs. Pro-life researchers estimate it has saved at least 2.4 million babies from abortion, and polls consistently show that a strong majority of Americans support it.”

Nancy Pelosi opposes the Hyde Amendment despite her claim of being a “devout Catholic.” Why? Because “it’s an issue of fairness and justice for poorer women in our country.”

It seems to me the “devout Catholic” line is gratuitous and aims to deceive the gullible.

Both Pelosi and Biden could be labeled “cafeteria Catholics.” “I’ll take this part of the Church’s teaching, but not that part.”

I remember my long-time pastor (in the conservative Presbyterian tradition), Dr. D. James Kennedy, once said that the Christian Church in all its forms has stood against abortion from the very beginning of the Church to the present (with a few exceptions among liberal “Christians”) and has always provided loving alternatives. But today, since the Left has made abortion a political issue, the Church is “preaching politics” when speaking out against abortion. No, we’re not. We’re speaking out on behalf of Judeo-Christian morality.

Meanwhile, support for Henry Hyde’s Amendment has waned among Democrat legislators. But not all, thankfully. Last week (7/21/21), Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Roger Wicker (R-MS) wrote to the Senate Appropriations Committee: “Recent public polls show almost 60% of Americans oppose or strongly oppose using taxpayer dollars to support abortion. Both Democrat and Republican presidents have signed the Hyde Amendment into law. It has passed through both Democrat and Republican-controlled Congresses, and it was upheld by the Supreme Court in 1980. Repealing this provision would eliminate over 40 years of bipartisan precedent.”

The amendment is named after the late U.S. Congressman Henry Hyde (R-IL), who died in 2007.

I interviewed Henry Hyde for Christian television in 1987 about abortion and the Constitution. He told me, “There is no constitutional justification for Roe v. Wade. No one had ever seen a right of privacy or whatever other distortion the Court found to justify its decision.”

 

And here we are all these years later, and the Left is working overtime to squash the Hyde Amendment, which I think first and foremost honors the conscience rights of those who oppose abortion. It’s bad enough to have fellow Americans killed by abortion willy-nilly, but to force us who disagree with abortion to pay for it? That’s far worse.

Should Jews have to pay for measures that would destroy Israel? No.

Should Blacks have to pay for the misguided “work” of the KKK? No.

Should Christians have to pay for abortions, which they find morally repugnant? No.

Conscience rights, which correlate with religious liberty, are paramount.

The Left doesn’t seem to care about conscience rights. But conscience rights were very important to George Washington and other founding fathers.

After the War for American Independence, the father of our country wrote a letter to the Quakers of Pennsylvania. Quakers are pacifists who don’t believe in picking up arms, even for national defense. Washington said to them, in effect: We could have used your help here in the recent war, but in America we honor and respect your rights of conscience.

James Madison, who played a critical role in the framing of the Constitution, said, “‘The equal right of every citizen to the free exercise of his religion according to the dictates of his conscience’ is held by the same tenure with all our other rights” (Memorial and Remonstrance, 1785).

Sam Adams, a key founding father who helped light the spark for independence, wrote, “As neither reason requires nor religion permits the contrary, every man living in or out of a state of

civil society has a right peaceably and quietly to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience” (The Rights of the Colonists, 1772).

And on it goes.

Amazingly, after decades of a barrage of propaganda in favor of abortion from Hollywood and the media and politicians, a large majority of Americans still want to see this bipartisan measure remain in force. Even if they are “pro-choice,” most Americans favor saving the Hyde Amendment. I vote in favor of saving our national Hyde. I can think of 2.4 million reasons why.

©Jerry Newcombe. All rights reserved.