PUTIN PANIC: Are We Being Fooled by a Wall of Propaganda?

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STORY AT-A-GLANCE

  • Oliver Stone, an award-winning film director, was the executive producer of “Ukraine on Fire,” a documentary that came out in 2016. Stone also interviewed Russian President Vladimir Putin between 2014 and 2016. The interviews became the documentary series, “The Putin Interviews,” which aired in 2017
  • Stone recently sat down to talk to Lex Fridman about Russian president Vladimir Putin and the Russia-Ukraine conflict
  • “Ukraine on Fire” focused on the Maidan Revolution that began in 2013. After months of peaceful protests against the Ukrainian government’s decision to not sign a comprehensive free trade agreement with the EU, favoring an offer from Russia instead, deadly violence broke out
  • Petro Poroshenko was elected president in a special election in May 2014. According to the official story, Ukrainians were dissatisfied with President Viktor Yanukovych’s “growing authoritarianism,” and his refusal to sign the EU association agreement. Yanukovych and other high-level officials, however, claim the violent revolution was orchestrated by the U.S. for the purpose of regime change
  • Stone speculates that Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine may in part have been influenced by a realization that the U.S. is intent on regime change in Russia and is willing to destroy Ukraine to do it

In the video above, Lex Fridman interviews Oliver Stone about the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Stone, an award-winning film director, was the executive producer of “Ukraine on Fire,”1,2 a documentary that came out in 2016.

Stone also interviewed Russian President Vladimir Putin between 2014 and 2016. The interviews became the documentary series, “The Putin Interviews,” which aired in 2017. So, Stone has some insight into both countries. Fridman, meanwhile, is half-Russian, half-Ukrainian.

Ukraine on Fire

“Ukraine on Fire” focused on the Maidan Revolution3 that began in Kiev in 2013. After three months of peaceful protests against the Ukrainian government’s decision to not sign a comprehensive free trade agreement with the EU, favoring an offer from Russia instead, deadly violence broke out.

Petro Poroshenko was elected president in a special election in May 2014. According to the official story, Ukrainians were dissatisfied with president Viktor Yanukovych’s “growing authoritarianism,” and his refusal to sign the EU association agreement, so they overthrew him.

Yanukovych and other high-level officials, however, claim the violent revolution was orchestrated by the U.S. for the purpose of regime change. Leaked conversations revealed top-level officials discussing how to implement a coup to overthrow Ukraine’s democratically elected government.

You can read more about this and see the film in my previous article, “Ukraine on Fire: 2016 Documentary by Oliver Stone.” The current president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, a former comedian and actor, was voted in in April 2019.

Putin, the Leader and the Man

In this interview, Fridman and Stone primarily focus on Putin — how and what he thinks, based on Stone’s perception of the man — and Russia’s incursion into Ukraine. Stone presents a different side of Putin that many Americans probably have never seen, and explains why Putin’s behavior is, perhaps surprisingly, rational.

The U.S. has a long history of anti-Soviet bias. As noted by Stone, the American stance was that capitalism works and communism doesn’t. Modern Russia is no longer communist,4,5,6 yet the U.S. antagonism against Russia remains, while the U.S. government, ironically, is now doing everything in its power, and beyond, to implement communism here.

Stone notes that Putin is “very much a market man,” and has been very clear that he believes national sovereignty is paramount for world peace and harmonious relations. Putin insists that all nations must be sovereign, “and I believe the United States has never accepted that,” Stone says. The U.S., Stone believes, is far more interested in keeping nations subservient to it and its ideologies.

According to Stone, Putin has a generally good reputation in other countries for being a man who promotes the interests of his country, but not at the expense of others. Keeping the world in harmony, “this has always been in his picture,” Stone insists.

When asked if he thought power had a corrupting influence on Putin, Stone insists that Putin would never last if he were acting as a dictator. The Russian people would not keep him in a position of power — which he has kept, on and off, for about 20 years.

Russia is a functioning democracy, and the people’s displeasure would reveal itself in several different ways. The ballot box is only one avenue by which they exhibit their dissatisfaction. But, apparently, they think Putin’s doing a good job at protecting the country and looking out for its needs.

Fridman, on the other hand, notes he senses a mixture of fear and apathy toward the leadership when he speaks to Russian family and friends, and this concerns him. Stone counters Fridman’s concerns saying he saw “far more freedom in the (Russian) press than what is pictured in the West, and that means different points of view. Russians are always arguing among themselves. I’ve never seen a more contentious country.”

Stone’s Experience With Putin

Part of Putin’s political longevity may have something to do with his ability to stay unruffled. “I never saw him lose his temper,” Stone says, noting that while most Americans tend to be emotional, Putin, in contrast, is calm, rational, balanced, mature and respectful, even under pressure. And, contrary to charismatic dictators such as former Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez, Putin doesn’t try to charm you. He’s a straight-shooter.

All of his interviews with Stone were granted without rules or restrictions. All questions were allowable. Nothing was off the table. Putin also did not request to see any of the work before it was published. “He trusted me,” Stone says.

According to Stone, Putin has “no empire intentions,” and repeatedly expressed his desire to have friendly relations with the U.S. Unfortunately, Putin’s reputation has been tarnished by U.S. media, people acting from a political agenda, those who never met him, never went to Russia and don’t know Russian history. This U.S.-fabricated persona of Putin as an enemy of both his own people and the rest of the world has made such relations difficult.

Stone’s Initial Take on Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine

Stone had a harsher critique against Putin in a March 2022 Facebook post, in which he had the following to say about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine:7

“Although the United States has many wars of aggression on its conscience, it doesn’t justify Mr. Putin’s aggression in Ukraine. A dozen wrongs don’t make a right. Russia was wrong to invade. It has made too many mistakes:

1)underestimating Ukrainian resistance

2)overestimating the military’s ability to achieve its objective

3)underestimating Europe’s reaction, especially Germany upping its military contribution to NATO, which they’ve resisted for some 20 years; even Switzerland has joined the cause. Russia will be more isolated than ever from the West

4)underestimating the enhanced power of NATO, which will now put more pressure on Russia’s borders

5)probably putting Ukraine into NATO

6)underestimating the damage to its own economy and certainly creating more internal resistance in Russia

7)creating a major readjustment of power in its oligarch class

8)putting cluster and vacuum bombs into play

9)and underestimating the power of social media worldwide

But we must wonder, how could Putin have saved the Russian-speaking people of Donetsk and Luhansk?

No doubt his Government could’ve done a better job of showing the world the eight years of suffering of those people and their refugees — as well as highlighting the Ukrainian buildup of 110,000 soldiers on the Donetsk-Luhansk borders, which was occurring essentially before the Russian buildup. But the West has far stronger public relations than the Russians.

Or perhaps Putin should’ve surrendered the two holdout provinces and offered 1-3 million people help to relocate in Russia. The world might’ve understood better the aggression of the Ukrainian Government. But then again, I’m not sure.

But now, it’s too late. Putin has allowed himself to be baited and fallen into the trap set by the U.S. and has committed his military, empowering the worst conclusions the West can make. He probably, I think, has given up on the West, and this brings us closer than ever to a Final Confrontation. There seems to be no road back.

The only ones happy about this are Russian nationalists and the legion of Russian haters, who finally got what they’ve been dreaming of for years, i.e. Biden, Pentagon, CIA, EU, NATO, mainstream media — and don’t overlook Nuland and her sinister neocon gang in D.C. This will significantly vindicate the uber hawks in public eyes.

Pointing out the toxicity of their policies (Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, NATO expansion, breaking nuclear treaties, censoring and omitting crucial facts from the news, etc.) will be next to impossible. Pointing out Western double standards, including Kyiv and Zelenskyy’s bad behavior, will likewise fall on deaf ears as we again draw the wrong conclusions.

It’s easier now to smear those of us who tried to understand the Russian position through these last two decades. We tried. But now is the time, as JFK and Khrushchev faced down the perilous situation in Cuba in October 1962, for the two nuclear powers to walk this back from the abyss. Both sides need to save face.

This isn’t a moment for the U.S. to gloat. As a Vietnam War veteran and as a man who’s witnessed the endless antagonism of the Cold War, demonizing and humiliating foreign leaders is not a policy that can succeed. It only makes the situation worse. Back-channel negotiations are necessary, because whatever happens in the next few days or weeks, the specter of a final war must be realistically accepted and brokered.

Who can do that? Are there real statesmen among us? Perhaps, I pray, Macron. Bring us the likes of Metternich, Talleyrand, Averell Harriman, George Shultz, James Baker, and Mikhail Gorbachev.

The great unseen tragedy at the heart of this history of our times is the loss of a true peaceful partnership between Russia and the U.S. — with, yes, potentially China, no reason why not except America’s desire for dominance.

The idiots who kept provoking Russia after the Cold War ended in 1991 have committed a terrible crime against humanity and the future. Together, our countries could’ve been natural allies in the biggest battle of all against climate change.

In its technical achievements alone, in large scale science, in its rocketry, heavy industries, and its most modern, clean nuclear energy reactors, Russia has been a great friend to man. Alas, in our century so far, man has failed to see or reach for the stars.”

How Does He See It Now?

Now, two months later, how does he feel about the situation? “It’s very hard to be honest about this because the West has brought down a curtain. Anyone who questions the invasion of Ukraine and its consequences is an enemy of the people,” Stone replies. “I’ve never in my lifetime seen such a WALL of propaganda as I’ve seen in the West.”

And, the way European countries are jumping in with NATO suggests they do not, in fact, have sovereignty over their own countries, Stone says. Why hasn’t NATO objected to the massacres taking place in the Donbas region of Ukraine ever since 2014, when Ukraine under Poroshenko took an anti-Russian position as an ally of the United States?

There were death squads, local leadership were being murdered, as were journalists. An estimated 14,000 Ukrainian Russians were killed between 2014 and early 2022 by the Ukrainian military and Nazi battalions,8 and the U.S. has supported it, and continues to do so.

Stone claims the logs of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Special Monitoring Mission in Ukraine show that before Russia’s “invasion” of Ukraine, February 24, 2022, there was heavy artillery coming into the Donbas from the Ukrainian side. According to Russia’s Foreign Ministry, Moscow’s action against Ukraine was a “special military operation” to end the “systematic extermination of the Donbas population.”

Ukrainian forces had built up on the border, and Stone believes Ukraine was actually planning to invade Donbas. Russia then responded by sending forces to the border, but this buildup on both sides has been largely ignored by Western media, which portrayed it as a sudden and unprovoked invasion by Russia.

In other words, we cannot analyze the Russian invasion of Ukraine without taking the Donbas conflict, which has been ongoing since 2014, into account. Stone is convinced that Poroshenko was instructed, from the start of his presidency, to refuse negotiations with Russia, and to maintain a hostile stance.

“This is very, very dangerous,” Stone says. Zelensky, also, has maintained this stance since 2019. “The whole world is being hurt by this, and no one is calling it out.”

Stone believes Putin realized that the U.S. is intent on regime change in Russia, and are willing to destroy Ukraine to do it. So, he took action. Fridman suggests the Ukraine conflict may in reality be a proxy war between Russia and the U.S., and Stone seems to agree with this theory. But that still doesn’t give us any greater insight into this war. Putin could have surrendered the Donbas and offered safe harbor for the refugees. He chose not to, but why we don’t know.

Whatever the reason, Stone is convinced that it was a calculated move — and not one based on the misuse of power. He also points out that Zelensky had mentioned bringing in nuclear weapons into Ukraine shortly before Russia’s invasion, which could have set off alarms and influenced Putin’s decisions.

Stone also warns that the U.S. is more than capable of a nuclear and/or chemical false flag. A small nuclear device could be set off in the Donbas, and even if it didn’t make sense, the propaganda machine would automatically blame it on Russia. Of course, Russia also has a significant nuclear arsenal, which could be brought to the fore.

“Can we walk back from the brink of nuclear war?” Fridman asks. “Yes,” Stone replies. “What do we need to walk it back?” Stone replies:

“Reason. Reason, and then diplomacy. Talk to the guy. Mr. Biden, why don’t you calm down and go talk to Mr. Putin in Moscow. And try to have a discussion without falling into ideologies.”

Sources and References

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

Yesterday’s Lie and Tomorrow’s Consequences

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“Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor” – Exodus 20:16

Lying itself, while morally wrong, isn’t a crime.  Apparently, as of May 31, 2022, lying to the FBI isn’t either.

Was anybody really surprised that Clinton attorney Michael Sussman was found not guilty of the crime of lying to the FBI about then-candidate Trump’s involvement with Russian intelligence?  The Soviet Union was famous for kangaroo courts, where verdicts were decided before any evidence was presented, but consider the following about a trial that just concluded in this nation’s capital:

  • The Obama-appointed judge, through his wife, had direct ties to another corrupt FBI official.  She was the attorney representing Lisa Page (lover of Peter Strzok), the FBI lawyer directly involved in opening the so-called counter-intelligence operation “Crossfire Hurricane,” which targeted then-candidate Trump.  Should this particular judge have been trusted to preside blindly over justice in this particular case?  Common sense says “No.”
  • Three jurors were bona fide Hillary Clinton donors, and another an AOC donor.  Yet another was on the same sports team as Sussman’s daughter.  Does this sound like an unbiased jury who could weigh the facts impartially and render an honest judgment?  Obviously not.

Why did the prosecution accept three (four? five?) clearly biased jurors who were unlikely to find any fault with Team Clinton and their acolytes?  Furthermore, could a federal court in the heart of the swamp ever render an unbiased verdict?  In our opinion, based on the judge, jury, and venue, the fix was in from the very beginning.  It was an American kangaroo court, brought to you by the Clintons and the DC swamp.

Tomorrow’s Consequences

Given the circumstance of the trial, Michael Sussman’s stamp of innocence by a federal court was a fait accompli.  Yet what kind of a message does this verdict send to the country at large?  Sure, there is the continued talk among conservatives about a two-tiered legal system, where Republicans are accused of crimes they never committed and must spend their own money to defend themselves against specious claims, while Democrats commit political crimes without consequence.  This, sadly, is something we’ve come to expect since the election of President Trump in 2020.  But there’s something else about this decision that few people have realized.

The evidence in the case was clear enough.  Sussman brought the FBI cooked-up information on Trump on behalf of the Hillary campaign.  With his national security background, he claimed to be acting as a concerned member of the bar.  Facts suggest otherwise.  This verdict sends a very clear signal without any historical parallel that we’re aware of: You can now lie to the FBI with impunity!

The jury and the judge apparently did not appreciate the dangerous implications of the verdict.  It is clear that even with the reputation, honor, and integrity of the FBI on the line, a federal judge won’t hold you to account if you’re connected to the right party.  Lying to FBI agents should not be tolerated, much less normalized by a federal court, for anybody.  But here we are today.

Imagine a future scenario (one which happens every day): an individual comes to the FBI with information, and offers testimony under oath.  The individual fabricates all or parts of his story.  After many weeks of investigations (and wasted resources), the agents – who relied on this testimony – recognize that it is, by design, wholly or partially untrue, and confront the informant.  What prevents the lying informant who deceived the FBI from invoking the Sussman verdict as a defense?  As precedent from a federal court?

Regardless that half of the country doesn’t trust the FBI, they are still officially the nation’s premier law enforcement agency.  They handle the country’s most serious criminal investigations, including human trafficking, terrorism, espionage, and transnational organized crime.  Although the past several years have highlighted corruption at the upper echelon, we still depend on the Bureau’s rank and file to keep us safe and defend our homeland.  The point of the trial was, at least in part, defending the integrity of the FBI.  It totally failed.

Still, we remain hopeful that this attack on the FBI and on truth itself will not stand for long.  We’re confident that when it’s politically convenient – for example, when a future defendant in a similar case is a Trump supporter – the judge and jury will reverse this shambolic precedent based on the defendant’s political affiliation alone, and throw the book at them.  For in today’s federal justice system, facts and evidence need not apply, and don’t matter anyway.

©Wallace Bruschweiler & William Palumbo. All rights reserved.

Black Lives Matter’s Goal to ‘Disrupt’ the Nuclear Family Fits a Marxist Aim That Goes Back a Century and a Half

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Black Lives Matter’s goal fits a Marxist paradigm that stretches all the way back to Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.

The organization Black Lives Matter has removed from its website a page that included language condemning America’s “Western-prescribed nuclear family structure.”

The page, titled “What We Believe,” included various public policy positions unrelated to police brutality and police reform. The Washington Examiner discovered on Monday the page had been removed.

“Page Not Found. Sorry, but the page you were trying to view does not exist,” the page now reads.

The Wayback Machine archived the page, however, and it contains a lengthy description of the organization’s tenets and objectives. Among the views expressed is a desire to “disrupt” the traditional family structure.

“We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and ‘villages’ that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable.”

According to the Examiner, BLM did not respond to the paper’s request for comment, so it’s unclear if the page was deliberately removed.

Whatever the case, BLM’s endorsement of this language should come as little surprise. As Brad Polumbo has shown, there are effectively two Black Lives Matter phenomena: the Black Lives Matter™️ organization and “black lives matter” as an informal movement.

The latter involves people fighting in good faith for police reform who believe African Americans suffer disproportionately from police violence. The former, Black Lives Matter™️, is an organization co-founded by Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza, and Opal Tometi that has roots in Marxism.

“We actually do have an ideological frame[work],” Cullors said of her organization in 2015. “We are trained Marxists. We are super-versed on, sort of, ideological theories.”

As I pointed out in a 2017 article, Karl Marx was interested in abolishing much more than just private property. In The Communist Manifesto, Marx and his associate Frederick Engels defend attempts by Communists to abolish the traditional family.

“Abolition [Aufhebung] of the family! Even the most radical flare up at this infamous proposal of the Communists,” Marx wrote. “On what foundation is the present family, the bourgeois family, based? On capital, on private gain. In its completely developed form, this family exists only among the bourgeoisie.”

Marx and Engels proceeded to compare the nuclear family to public prostitution, before explaining why it was natural and desirable for the institution to “vanish.”

“The bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course when its complement vanishes, and both will vanish with the vanishing of capital,” Marx and Engels wrote. “The bourgeois clap-trap about the family and education, about the hallowed co-relation of parents and child, becomes all the more disgusting, the more, by the action of Modern Industry, all the family ties among the proletarians are torn asunder, and their children transformed into simple articles of commerce and instruments of labour.”

From where does this hostility to the family stem? Marx and Engels offered clues.

“The modern family contains in germ not only slavery (servitus), but also serfdom, since from the beginning it is related to agricultural services,” Engels wrote in The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, quoting Marx. “It contains in miniature all the contradictions which later extend throughout society and its state.”

The hostility to the traditional family did not die with Marx and Engels, however. One of the first steps the Bolsheviks took after seizing power was to begin a decades-long struggle to abolish marriage and weaken the traditional family.

“The issue was so central to the revolutionary program that the Bolsheviks published decrees establishing civil marriage and divorce soon after the October Revolution, in December 1917,” writes Harvard historian Lauren Kaminsky. “These first steps were intended to replace Russia’s family laws with a new legal framework that would encourage more egalitarian sexual and social relations.”

A 1926 article from The Atlantic, written by a woman living in Russia at the time, describes these efforts in detail. The term “illegitimate children” was abolished, and a law was passed that allowed couples to divorce in “a matter of a few minutes.” Legislation was introduced to eliminate distinctions between legal wives and mistresses, including granting property rights to the unmarried consorts.

“Chaos was the result,’ the Russian woman wrote. “Men took to changing wives with the same zest which they displayed in the consumption of the recently restored forty-per-cent vodka.”

About a half century later, the Chinese Communist Party introduced a different version of state-enforced family orchestration. It’s “one-child policy” (1979–2015), the most extreme population planning policy in world history, placed limits on the number of children Chinese families could have.

Decades before the policy went into effect, Party Chairman Mao Zedong (1893–1976) famously explained why it was necessary for the state to manage family procreation and the labor stock.

“(Re)production needs to be planned. In my view, humankind is completely incapable of managing itself,” Mao said. “It has plans for production in factories, for producing cloth, tables and chairs, and steel, but there is no plan for producing humans. This is anarchism—no governing, no organization and no rules.”

Even today the aversion to the traditional family remains strong in socialists. A 2019 article in The Nation titled “Want to Dismantle Capitalism? Abolish the Family” offers a glimpse of the modern socialist critique of the institution.

“We know that the nuclear private household is where the overwhelming majority of abuse can happen,” author Sophie Lewis explains. “And then there’s the whole question of what it is for: training us up to be workers, training us to be inhabitants of a binary-gendered and racially stratified system, training us not to be queer.”

For true believers of collectivism, there’s little question that private family matters are also state matters. Socialism requires collective control of resources, and humans are the ultimate resource. This is why the traditional nuclear family, which places authority in the hands of parents rather than the community, is an affront to so many socialists.

The scholar Robert Nisbet has explained that the family is one of the three pillars of authority outside the state, along with the church and civic organizations. All three of these institutions offer humans something essential to the human experience: community.

Nisbet believed all three pillars served as important checks on centralized political power, which is why Nisbet saw the decline of the family, church, and civic organizations in America as an ill omen for liberty.

“…the quest for community is an impulse that stems from human nature. All yearn for participation and for a sense of belonging within a cause or body greater than the single person,” Nisbet wrote in The Quest for Community: A Study in the Ethics and Order of Freedom (1953). “If the desire for community cannot be filled in church, in family, in neighborhood, or in locality, then it will be filled instead by the central State.”

It’s unclear why Black Lives Matter™️ scrubbed the anti-nuclear family language from its website. What’s clear, however, is that its previously stated goal to “disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure” fits the Marxist paradigm that stretches back a century and half.

Perhaps the removed page reflects a change of heart. On the other hand, it could simply be a tactic to conceal its Marxist roots. As Dan Sanchez and I wrote in a recent FEE article, in recent decades purveyors of socialism have shown a tendency to shun the Marxist label even while embracing its ideals.

”There are a lot of people who don’t want to call themselves Marxist,” Eugene D. Genovese, an eminent Marxist academic, told The New York Times in a 1989 article on the mainstreaming of Marxism in US universities.

We don’t know for certain why many individuals and groups advocating doctrines rooted in Marxism tend to reject the Marxist label—Cullors’s 2015 confession that she and Garza are “trained Marxists” appears to be a mistake of candor—but it seems likely adherents have gleaned a basic truth once observed by the writer Upton Sinclair.

“The American People will take Socialism, but they won’t take the label,” Sinclair observed in a private 1951 correspondence with fellow socialist Norman Thomas.

Many people and organizations of good faith support the black lives matter movement because they believe all people deserve equal treatment and due process before the law.

But Americans should be careful to not confuse the broader black lives matter movement with Black Lives Matter™️, an organization whose goals may be antithetical to freedom and family—even if they no longer say so.

AUTHOR

Jon Miltimore

Jonathan Miltimore is the Managing Editor of FEE.org. His writing/reporting has been the subject of articles in TIME magazine, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Forbes, Fox News, and the Star Tribune. Bylines: Newsweek, The Washington Times, MSN.com, The Washington Examiner, The Daily Caller, The Federalist, the Epoch Times.

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

4 Catastrophic Climate Predictions That Never Came True

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Current climate predictions can be terrifying if you don’t know about the previous dire climate claims that amounted to nothing.

If you’re under 50, there’s a good chance you’re expecting to see climate change create chaos and death in your lifetime. Scientists and pundits seem so certain we’re headed for global collapse and their predictions can be terrifying—especially if you’re young enough not to remember the last dozen times they predicted imminent collapse and were wrong. In each case, claims of impending environmental disaster were backed by allegedly irrefutable data and policymakers were encouraged to act before it was too late.

Global Cooling

The Prediction: Top climate specialists and environmental activists predicted that “global cooling trends” observed between WWII and 1970 would result in a world “eleven degrees colder in the year 2000 … about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.” Bitter winters and floods from “delayed typhoons” would trigger massive drops in food production, followed by widespread famine.

The Prophecies:

  • Newsweek Magazine’s “The Cooling World” Peter Gwynne April 28, 1975 
  • Time Magazine’s “A New Ice Age?” April 28, 1974
  • BBC’s Nigel Calder International Wildlife magazine, 1975
  • Betty Friedan in Harper’s magazine, 1958
  • University of California at Davis professor Kenneth Watt, Earth Day 1974

What Actually Happened: Global cooling trends didn’t continue unabated, and temperatures stabilized. Within a few years, the same alarmists were predicting a life-threatening rise in temperatures, presaging many of the same dire effects on plant and animal life. Those new predictions were continually revised as their “near certainty” collided with the truth year after year, but prophets seem unchastened by their abysmal historical accuracy. Newsweek issued a correction to the 1975 article in 2006.

The Great Die-Off

The Prediction: More women having babies in the developing world was expected to exceed the “carrying capacity” of the earth, experts were certain. “Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supply we make,” Ehrlich said. “The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years [1970-1980].” Ehrlich predicted that between 1980 and 1989, some 4 billion people, including 65 million Americans, would perish in the “Great Die-Off.” This would lead to “an utter breakdown of the capacity of the planet to support humanity.”

The Prophecies:

What Actually Happened: Motivated by the urgent call for population control and fears of famine, India and China performed millions of forced abortions and sterilizations. But the number of people at risk of starvation dropped from 25 percent to 10 percent globally as genetically modified seeds and advances in irrigation improved crop yields. Far from the Great Die-Off, the global population nearly doubled while agricultural capacity soared and rates of starvation plummeted. Ehrlich’s star has continued to rise, though his signature predictions were nonsense, and now holds an endowed chair in Population Studies at Stanford. The millions scapegoated by his fear-mongering have not fared as well.

The Prediction: Ecologists and environmentalists claimed that the buildup of nitrogen, dust, fumes, and other forms of pollution would make the air unbreathable by the mid-1980s. They predicted all urban dwellers would have to don gas masks to survive, that particle clouds would block the majority of sunlight from reaching earth, and that farm yields would drop as dust blotted out the sun.

The Prophecies:

What Actually Happened: When these doomsayers were pronouncing the imminent death of our atmosphere, the rate of air pollution had already been falling for most of the world, usually in the absence of dedicated policy changes. Developments like air filtration, as well as an overall decline in household pollutants (like the smoke from cooking with coal or wood) greatly reduced the health risks of the particles that remained. Increased adoption of fossil fuels and electricity grids, rather than traditional stoves, accelerated the improvements.

75 Percent of Species Will Go Extinct

The Prediction: Alleged experts in biology and zoology predicted that of all species of animals alive in 1970, at least 75 percent would be extinct by 1995. They blamed human activities like hunting and farming for shrinking wild habitats and cited pollution and climate change as key drivers of the new extinctions. Paul Ehrlich claimed “[By 1985] all important animal life in the sea will be extinct.”

The Prophecies:

What Actually Happened: You may have noticed that earth has not lost three-quarters of its 8.7 million species, and indeed total biomass continues to grow. 99 percent of all species that have ever existed are already extinct, and natural rates of extinction predict we might lose anywhere from 200 to 2,000 species per year without any human intervention. Since 2000, we’ve identified fewer than 20.

The language surrounding these various environmental disasters sounds much like Wednesday night’s town hall, and yet each thesis has faded from public consciousness, and the fear-mongers faced no accountability for their misplaced alarmism. Before we make unprecedented sacrifices to fight a climate phantom, let’s review the credibility of claims that the end is near—but really, this time.

AUTHOR

Laura Williams

Dr. Laura Williams  teaches communication strategy to undergraduates and executives. She is a passionate advocate for critical thinking, individual liberties, and the Oxford Comma.

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

The New York Times Explains Why Mask Mandates Don’t Work

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The New York Times concedes that mask mandates are ineffective—as President Biden fights to reinstate them.

Throughout the pandemic, few things incited more discord than the mandated use of facemasks as a preventative measure to reduce the spread of Covid-19.

At various times, merely questioning the effectiveness of masks or mask mandates could result in a social media suspension, as when Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) received the boot from YouTube for citing research that suggested cloth masks were ineffective at containing Covid (something CNN admitted months later).

While mask mandates have largely receded across the US, arguments over their effectiveness have not.

On Tuesday, President Biden’s Justice Department asked a federal appeals court to overturn a District Court judge’s order that declared the government mask mandate on airplanes, buses, and other transit unlawful, stating that the CDC had not sought public comment prior to the order and failed to adequately explain its reasoning.

The Justice Department’s timing could be inauspicious.

The same day the DOJ’s appeal was filed, The New York Times published an article that explores the ineffectiveness of mask mandates. David Leonhardt, a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer, begins by exploring an apparent paradox involving masks observed by epidemiologist Dr. Shira Doron of Tufts Medical Center: “It is simultaneously true that masks work and mask mandates do not work.”

The idea that mask-wearing is effective but mask mandates are not does indeed seem like a paradox. But Leonhardt accepts the evidence that masks can mitigate the spread of Covid even as he provides copious evidence suggesting that mask mandates are ineffective.

In U.S. cities where mask use has been more common, Covid has spread at a similar rate as in mask-resistant cities. Mask mandates in schools also seem to have done little to reduce the spread. Hong Kong, despite almost universal mask-wearing, recently endured one of the world’s worst Covid outbreaks.

Advocates of mandates sometimes argue that they do have a big effect even if it is not evident in populationwide data, because of how many other factors are at play. But this argument seems unpersuasive.

After all, the effect of vaccines on severe illness is blazingly obvious in the geographic data: Places with higher vaccination rates have suffered many fewer Covid deaths.

While the idea that masks work while mask mandates do not might seem like a paradox, there’s actually a very simple explanation for the phenomenon (though it’s not the only explanation).

As Leonhardt notes, it’s quite possible that people who choose to wear masks wear them differently than people who are required to wear them.

“Airplane passengers remove their masks to have a drink. Restaurant patrons go maskless as soon as they walk in the door. Schoolchildren let their masks slide down their faces. So do adults: Research by the University of Minnesota suggests that between 25 percent and 30 percent of Americans consistently wear their masks below their nose.

“Even though masks work, getting millions of people to wear them, and wear them consistently and properly, is a far greater challenge,” Steven Salzberg, a biostatistician at Johns Hopkins University, has written.

Means and Ends

There’s an adage popular among libertarians: good ideas don’t require force. It’s a good line, but it’s also important to remember that force also yields dismal results.

Humans tend to forget this, but it’s an idea that Leonard Read took seriously. In his 1969 essay “The Bloom Pre-Exists in the Seed,” Read argued that one could reasonably predict the ends of a given action based on the means employed.

Examine the actions—means—that are implicit in achieving the goals.

Implicit in the collectivistic approach…is the masterminding of the people…The control of the individual’s life is from without. [But for] an individualist…what is valued above all else [is] each distinctive individual human being.

Any conscientious collectivist, if he could…properly evaluate the authoritarian means his system of thought demands, would likely defect.

However lofty the goals, if the means be depraved, the result must reflect that depravity.

This is why Read believed it was important to focus on means first, and ends second. Unfortunately, as a society we increasingly take the opposite approach—and we saw ample evidence of this during the pandemic, including with mask mandates.

To be sure, this is not the only explanation for the apparent paradox involving the alleged effectiveness of masks and the alleged ineffectiveness of mask mandates.

Any thinker worth his salt will tell you if you have a paradox, the first thing you should do is check your premises. It’s more than possible that one of Leonhardt’s premises—masks work, mask mandates don’t—is wrong. (Considering that prior to and during the pandemic the World Health Organization, the US Surgeon General, and the CDC all expressed doubt about the effectiveness of masks in preventing the spread of respiratory viruses, I’m betting on the former being wrong over the latter.)

Whatever the case may be, it’s safe to say Leonard Read would have been one of the few voices in the wilderness during the pandemic warning that non-pharmaceutical interventions (lockdowns, mask mandates, etc.) would achieve little and would likely cause serious harms—and he would have been right.

Read knew the bloom pre-exists in the seed, and that means the use of force, sooner or later, is likely going to yield rotten fruit.

AUTHOR

Jon Miltimore

Jonathan Miltimore is the Managing Editor of FEE.org. His writing/reporting has been the subject of articles in TIME magazine, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Forbes, Fox News, and the Star Tribune. Bylines: Newsweek, The Washington Times, MSN.com, The Washington Examiner, The Daily Caller, The Federalist, the Epoch Times.

EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. This article was adapted from an issue of the FEE Daily email newsletter. Click here to sign up and get free-market news and analysis like this in your inbox every weekday.

CULTURAL ROT: The Left’s War Against Guns But Not Criminals

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“I respect the culture and the tradition and the concerns of lawful gun owners. At the same time, the Second Amendment, like all other rights, is not absolute.” – Joseph Robinette Biden Jr., June 2, 2022, White House

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.“ –  Second Amendment, U.S. Constitution

The “broken glass theory” in criminology states that visible signs of crime, anti-social behavior and civil disorder create an urban environment that encourages further crime and disorder, including serious crimes.

When you allow crime you get more crimes. Worse, if you idolize any criminal then you are, by definition, wanting and encouraging more people to become criminals.

Joseph Robinette Biden Jr., his administration, Democrats in Congress and the Democratic Party have made gun control front-and-center issue for the 2022 midterm election. At the same time they are breaking more and more glass as they do so.

Tuesday, May 31st, 2022 on MSNBC, Democrat Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) said that after last week’s deadly shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, “gun violence protection is going to be on the ballot” in the upcoming midterm elections.

Gun violence protection is code for draconian gun control. 

At the same time Biden and Democrats continue to make convicted felons and criminals, like George Floyd, into virtual martyrs. George Floyd is the epitome of a broken glass.

Before and since the Uvalde Massacre there has been an ongoing effort to idolize criminals and criminality.

On May 25th, 2022 Barack Hussein Obama tweeted the following:

What Obama has done is make it a priority to demonize the police while elevating a convicted felon into a cult idol. If you are black and a criminal then you’re idolized by the likes of Barack Hussein Obama. This fits the narrative of the Black Lives Matter movement and their goal to instill the myth that black lives matter more than any and all other lives.

Their combined messaging is that no matter how evil blacks are the police are far worse.

Another example is that of Democrat Stacy Abrams. Discover the Networks reported,

Stacey Abrams serves as a board member and governor of a UPS family foundation that has repeatedly voiced support for defunding and abolishing the police, according to Fox News.

Georgia gubernatorial candidate Abrams has tepidly tried to distance herself from the #DefundThePolice movement in the past, but she’s still listed as a board member and governing person at the Seattle-based Marguerite Casey Foundation, which tweeted #DefundThePolice as recently as March of this year and #AbolishThePolice as recently as February.

The foundation has also tweeted support for abolishing law enforcement and prison systems. On Feb. 11, the group shared a story about the “Prison Industrial Complex in Atlanta” and tweeted “#AbolishthePolice.” The foundation also hosted an event in early February titled, “Becoming Abolitionists—A History of Failed Police Reforms & Vision for True Public Safety.”

In October 2021, the foundation held a book giveaway event promoting a book of essays called Abolition For The People: The Movement For A Future Without Policing & Prisons by cop-hating communist Colin Kaepernick.

Abrams has received at least $52,500 in income from the far-left foundation, according to her financial disclosures. Her campaign told Fox News Digital that Abrams does not hold the same views as the foundation.

If I wanted more school massacres

Democrats Introduced Bill to Get Police Out of Schools – Despite Slaughtered Children

If I were against law and order and didn’t care about the deaths of the 19 children and 2 adults massacred by 18-year-old Salvador Ramos I would:

  1. Make public schools gun free zones and not allow principals, law enforcement officers, teachers to be trained and armed to defend themselves and their students.
  2. I would use every school shooting to make America a gun free zone, using the myth that guns kill people, not evil people kill people.
  3. I would use people like Golden State Warriors basketball Coach Steve Kerr who “joined dozens of Oakland Unified School district parents and students who are calling for the district to dismantle its internal police force.”
  4. I would shout from the roof tops and in front of news cameras and from the school house to the White House “gun control, gun control, gun control and more gun control.”
  5. I would use filmmakers like Michael Moore to state on television, “We will not acknowledge that we are a violent people, to begin with. This country was birthed in violence with genocide of the native people at the barrel of a gun. This country was built on the backs of slaves with a gun to their backs to build this country into the country that we got to have. We do not want to acknowledge or two original sins here that have a gun behind the ability behind our ability to become who we became.”
  6. I would create a black idols like racist propagandist Joy Reid who called for Canada, and Mexico to build walls in response to U.S. mass school shootings.
  7. Then I would get actors like Rob Reiner to blame the killing of innocent children by a deranged boy on my political opponents. I would put these word into Reiner’s mouth, “The blood of every child that dies of gun violence in this country is on the hands of the Republican Party.”
  8. Of course, I would have my evil servant from CNN Wolf Blitzer to state without proof that guns are “weapons of mass destruction” and are too easy to get in America. “Every time there is an incident like this, you hear about efforts to deal with mentally unstable people who can certainly go out there and buy a weapon of mass destruction, go out there and buy a gun or rifle or some sort of assault-type weapon and go to there and eventually start killing wonderful, wonderful, people,” Blitzer blathered for me, the devil.
  9. I would have the president of these United States call for totally disarming American citizens while the blood of the 19 Uvalde, Texas children is still fresh, the flags at half staff and their young  bodies not yet put in consecrated ground.
  10. Finally, I would have Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. unveil his Anti-Policing Policy on May 25, 2022, the 2nd anniversary of George Floyd’s death. Just a few days after a boy named Salvador Ramos massacred 19 children and two teachers.

The Bottom Line

Worshiping evil doers and making a cult image of George Floyd, as though he were god in the black community, will have the continuing effect of more crime the black communities. For example like in these top five deadliest cities:

  1. St. Louis, Missouri with 64.54 murders per 100,000 residents,
  2. Baltimore, Maryland with 58.27 murders per 100,000 residents,
  3. Birmingham, Alabama with 50.62 murders per 100,000 residents,
  4. Detroit, Michigan with 41.45 murders per 100,000 residents,
  5. and Dayton, Ohio with 34.18 murders per 100,000 residents.

To understand please read Chicago: 75% of Murdered Are Black, 71% of Murderers Are Black

Nothing says it all or better than this tweet by Jason Whitlock and his take on cops at the Uvalde Massacre school shooting,

Whitlock is stating the absolute truth, “When your culture makes George Floyd the hero, real heroes stand down. Cultural rot has consequences.”

If you want more crime, anti-social behavior and civil disorder then simply demonize the police and idolize the criminal.

You then will create an urban environment that encourages further crime and disorder, including serious crimes like murder, rape and human trafficking.

Biden’s border crisis is the epitome of the broken glass theory. Want more crime then let the criminals cross the border, for each individual, regardless of age or reason, who crossed our borders illegally is a criminal and has broken our American glass window.

©Dr. Rich Swier. All rights reserved.

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The Mass Shooting and Liberal Utopian Society

Nancy Pelosi’s Husband Paul Charged with Possession of Child Pornography and Crack Cocaine

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We have been reporting on how the media will not cover news that is negative or sheds a bad light on Democrats, but they are quick to report propaganda about those who aren’t Democrats.

This includes the Memorial Day weekend from hell for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her husband. Initially it was reported that Nancy’s husband Paul was arrested for DUI following a car crash.

Now we learn there’s more, much more, to Paul’s story.

The Vancouver Times reported,

Paul Pelosi, the 82-year-old husband of U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, was re-arrested this weekend for possession of child pornography and crack cocaine. The MSM reported on the first arrest, but not the second arrest.

Sources indicate Pelosi paid off the prosecutor’s office to keep the second arrest “off-the-books.”

[ … ]

Pelosi was originally released on bail, but was re-arrested after police found child pornography on his phone, as well as crack cocaine and pipes in his car. The child porn and drugs were not found during the initial search.

It appears that some social media sites aren’t covering this story either.

But this isn’t new news, no pun intended. In an October 16, 2021 Conservative Brief article titled “Assistant To House Sergeant At Arms Arrested On Child Pornography Charges“ Carmine Sabia reported:

House Speaker and Democrat California Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s House of Representatives just got rocked by a child sex scandal.

The Assistant to the Sergeant at Arms for the House has been arrested and hit with charges on ten felonies related to possessing child pornography.

Stefan Bieret, 41, was charged after police executed a search warrant on his home in Burke, Virginia, on Thursday, Fairfax Police said on its website.

“A 41-year-old man has been arrested and charged with ten felonies related to the possession of child pornography. The investigation began when the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) was notified of a potentially illicit image being uploaded to a Dropbox account. NCMEC notified the Northern Virginia Washington, D.C. Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force of this CyberTipline lead. The owner of the Dropbox account was determined to reside in Fairfax County. Detectives from our Major Crimes Bureau’s Missing and Exploited Persons Squad were notified in August and assumed the investigation. Detectives executed a search warrant on the Dropbox account and discovered additional images of child sexual abuse material,” the police department said.

“Subsequent search warrants led detectives to the identity of the owner of the Dropbox account as Stefan Bieret, 41, of Burke. Yesterday, detectives executed a search warrant on his home and recovered multiple electronics. Bieret was arrested and charged with ten counts of possession of child pornography. He was taken to the Fairfax County Adult Detention Center and held without bond,” it said.

Read more.

Democrats and their supporters like Harvey Weinstein, Jeffery Epstein, Gisselle Maxwell, Bill Clinton, Hunter Biden and Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. appear to be “minor attracted persons”, a.k.a. pedophiles and pederasts.

When the legacy and social media are silent the children suffer.

©Dr. Rich Swier. All rights reserved.

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VIDEO: Massive Corruption in the FBI

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I joined Kara McKinney on OAN’s Tipping Point to discuss FBI involvement in any number of terror attacks in the United States.

The massive evidence of corruption in the FBI that has come to light since 2015 only confirms that the organization is desperately corrupt, working against the American people, and in immense need of serious reform. If that reform is not forthcoming, it should be disbanded. In 2015, ISIS targeted me and other American civilians in an attack on U.S. soil for exercising our constitutional rights. All the evidence points to the fact that instead of protecting us, the FBI agent involved was egging on the attackers. Did Obama’s FBI want to make an example of those who supposedly insulted the prophet of Islam after Obama had said “the future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam”? The FBI could have dispelled these suspicions immediately, but instead completely stonewalled our requests for information. The archives on this and other cases must be opened – and the whole place fumigated.

In 2015, a free speech symposium I organized, was the target of the the first Islamic State (ISIS) attack on U.S. soil. A “60 Minutes” special on CBS subsequently revealed that an undercover FBI agent accompanied the terrorists in a separate car as they approached the Center. Many questions remain unanswered regarding his role in the attack and the FBI’s responsibility to forewarn in such cases. (Editor’s note: ISIS is also known as Islamic State, ISIL, and Daesh.)

The undercover agent, alias ‘Steven Jane’, had been communicating with jihadists Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi through encrypted messages for some time. According to “60 Minutes,” a few weeks before the attack he urged them to “Tear up Texas.” Simpson responded, “bro, you don’t have to say that … you know what happened in Paris … so that goes without saying. No need to be direct.”

The mastermind behind the Garland attack, Erick Jamal Hendricks, was also communicating with the FBI as well as with Ibrahim Simpson, who along with Nadir Soofi opened fire on the event.

Hendricks made it clear that he was an ISIS supporter and spoke of using acres of land to train recruits, the agent said.

“My work is for Allah. It is my full-time job,” said Erick Jamal Hendricks, making it clear once again what jihad violence is all about. It’s ironic that he said it to an FBI agent, with the FBI committed to the claim that Islam is a religion of peace that has nothing to do with terrorism. Did the agent try to convince Hendricks that he was misunderstanding Islam?

Obama’s FBI knew about impending attack and did nothing. They wanted us dead.

While I do believe that undercover FBI agents have to play along with the jihadis they’re dealing with, because in order to be in an informant you have to have credibility, it’s a whole other thing if you’re encouraging and cheering on the proposed murder of Americans who are standing in defense of the freedom of speech, and then not doing anything about it. Why did the FBI only have one agent there? And not a team waiting for them to shoot back?

Fast forward to Uvalde.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

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

The Mass Shooting and Liberal Utopian Society

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I pray all Americans, to include pastors, will follow the example of the pastor that penned the article and speak out. Col. Harry Riley

In the last two weeks, there have been two mass shootings in the United States, and the second took place this week at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. These shootings have reignited the regime’s already intense desire for a disarmed populace. Even before the bodies of the dead children had been removed from the school, our mentally diminished President spoke to the nation, demanding that rifles (which he is not even able to accurately describe) be confiscated across a 330 million person country spanning an entire continent. This despicable man, and the legion of sociopathic ghouls arrayed behind him, are clearly overjoyed that there is a classroom full of young children lying dead in Texas. They don’t actually care about the anguish of parents who will never see their child grow up. Their deaths are merely a political prop for the most evil people on the planet.

The Mass Shooting and Liberal Utopian Society

MAY 27, 2022

A Feature, Not a Bug…

by Pastor Andrew Isker

It is hard to fully comprehend just how totalitarian such designs are. But these are the very same sadistic freaks who successfully locked those 330 million people in their homes for weeks or months, and then (mostly successfully) restricted their ability to provide for their families if they refused to get an extremely dangerous mRNA injection that does not even accomplish its intended purpose. All you are to them is a guinea pig or a rat in a social experiment. You do not matter. Your children do not matter. You only exist to provide them with power.

You must understand that school shooters and other mass shooters are an extremely acute symptom of the disease that horribly afflicts the American nation. You live in an incredibly sick society, and since you are born into it and live in it every day, you go about your life mostly unaware of just how dreadful things really are. It is imperative for the people who manufacture the inversion of reality that you perceive everything through the lens of the now. This is why “The Current Thing” has such memetic power: it attacks reality distortion at its source, where obsession over what is, right now, cuts you off from any sense of historical perspective. In the case of mass shootings, the exclusion of historical perspective keeps the masses from noticing that mass shootings are a very recent phenomenon and that decades ago, when the United States had vastly more liberal gun laws, and anyone could even purchase fully automatic submachine guns in the mail, this never happened. The question you should ask is, why not? What exactly was different about America 90 years ago compared to today?

The answer to that question is fairly obvious. Modern American society is a factory for psychopaths. The young man in the North American Continent is planted in a field fertilized by atomization, loneliness, and hopelessness. Many have never met their father, and most do not have anything remotely close to a “good relationship” with him. Most have no meaningful connection to the community in which they live, nor even the nation they inhabit. In school, they are social outcasts, driven to niche internet communities for the only semblance of human interaction in their lives. They are marinated in hardcore pornography from before they have even reached pubescence. They know (or at least perceive) that they will never know the love of a flesh-and-blood woman. They are on the kind of pharmacological cocktail that any premodern society would only ascribe to witchcraft and demon possession. They have nothing to live for and no one who loves them. Given how many young men our nation is producing like this, the question we ought to be asking is not “why does this happen?” but rather “why does it not happen a lot more?”

America is an incredibly sick nation. There is a spiritual sickness that pervades everything like a dark cloud. The people who dominate every institution in our nation have held this power for at least sixty years. For these sixty years, they have treated this nation as a grand social experiment. They have made the natural family, the very bedrock of human civilization, an antiquated, outdated institution that we have progressed beyond. They have financialized and commodified all of human life, uprooting people from their homes and extended families, and making them mercenaries chasing after a rapidly devalued dollar. They have exported the industry of the nation impoverishing the heartland of the country and leaving them to languish in despair. They actively cheer the deaths and replacement of the hated population, while at the same time denying this was ever their intent. They have introduced racial and ethnic strife, and in the chaos actively undermined rule of law. Sixty years of full-spectrum control by utopian social engineers have transformed the most affluent society in human history into hell on earth.

This did not happen by accident. These people are motivated by a deep hatred of humanity. Like the geriatric that currently occupies the Oval Office who well represents them, they simply do not care how much people suffer. You might think the progressive is merely mistaken, deluded by ideology. This is not the case. They have had more than sixty years to see the full extent of human misery their ideology produces when applied to the healthiest and most prosperous conditions. They know what they are doing.

But what is to be done? The utopian bugmen that dominate our nation must be overcome. You must personally re-capture the same spirit of Christian America that built a great nation. You must do all within your personal sphere of influence to rebuild the things that our enemies have destroyed. You must rebuild churches dominated by liberals and weak-willed conservatives. You must rebuild neighborhoods and communities with people who, like you, love the nation that their great, great-grandparents built and who want to worship the same God who gave them such strength. You must devote your life to both retaking what institutions you can, and creating alternatives for the institutions you can’t. It is not simply enough to decry that the libs have ruined everything—of course they have, they are like cancer! You must have a vision for your people, you must provide for them the thing they have taken away: hope for the future. We can again have the world that the liberal globalist regime has destroyed. A world where the fear of the Triune God pervades the land and not hopelessness and despair. You can have a world where things like mass shootings never happen again, but you must devote yourself to a life of repentance, faith, and an unquenchable passion for the true, good, and beautiful things God has given.

AUTHOR

ANDREW ISKER

Andrew Isker is the pastor of 4th Street Evangelical Church in Waseca, MN. He is a graduate of Minnesota State University and Greyfriar’s Hall Ministerial Training School, and he has served churches in Missouri, West Virginia, and Minnesota. He is the author of the forthcoming book, The Boniface Option. Andrew, his wife Kara, and their five children reside in his hometown of Waseca, MN.

He can be found on Gab @BonifaceOption.

©Pastor Andrew Isker. All rights reserved.

Anti-Semitism on the Rise

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Anti-Semitism is increasing in modern America—as we continue to jettison our Christian past and move further down the road of secularism and socialism.

Gary Bauer notes: “Sadly, anti-Semitism is on the rise in New Jersey and in New York City. The Times of Israel reports that anti-Semitic incidents in New York City, which is dominated by the left, are up 300% in the first quarter of 2022 compared to the first quarter of 2021.”

Scott Phillips is the leader of Passages to Israel. As a Christian, his goal is to foster good relations between Christians and Jews. One of the ways he does this is to help bring young Christians on visits to Israel.

On a radio segment, Phillips told me, “Over the past few years, we’ve been seeing a rise in anti-Semitism….In essence, Jews in America are afraid to be outwardly Jewish.”

I discussed with Phillips some of the moves against Israel in America today—including BDS, which stands for Boycott, Divest, and Sanction. In effect the left is trying to treat modern Israel as if it were South Africa in the 1980s, with apartheid in full sway.

The left has a constant drumbeat against the nation of Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East. Muslims, and far left activists have found common cause in hating Israel and wanting to see its demise.

High tech communications exacerbates the problem, says Phillips. He told the Christian Post: “I think the rise in social media, in Twitter, all of these types of things, that groups and people that espouse these views have a platform.”

The irony of anti-Semitism in America is the way our nation’s founders worked to create a safe haven for all, including Jews.

In the 1630s, Rev. Roger Williams, a Puritan leader who didn’t get along with fellow Puritans in Massachusetts, created the colony of Rhode Island, specifically as a haven of conscience.

William Penn expanded this idea territorially when he created the colony of Pennsylvania—a “holy experiment,” where people could practice their faith without fear of punishment.

Christians by-and-large founded America for religious freedom—and extended that religious freedom to others, including Jews.

George Washington did much to promote freedom for all, including Jews.

I got to visit Savannah, Georgia recently, and I stood in front of the Jewish synagogue that dates back to 1733. Washington wrote that synagogue a letter on June 14, 1790.

There is a plaque in front of the building with a portion of that letter.

Wrote Washington: “May the same wonder-working Deity, who long since delivering the Hebrews from their Egyptian Oppressors planted them in the promised land—whose providential agency has lately been conspicuous in establishing these United States as an independent nation—still continue to water them with the dews of Heaven and to make the inhabitants of every denomination participate in the temporal and spiritual blessings of that people whose God is Jehovah.”

In short, Washington is saying, the God of the Bible, who delivered your ancestors out of slavery in Egypt, now allows us all freedom in this new land. As Dr. Peter Lillback (author of George Washington and Israel) told me, “he is indicating that the God of the Bible has blessed the American cause.”

George Washington also wrote a letter to the synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island.

In this missive dated August 17, 1790, he notes: “The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind…a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship.”

He goes on to quote his favorite Bible verse—Micah 4:4—which provides a metaphor for what America should be: a place where “every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and figtree, and there shall be none to make him afraid.”

Rabbi Daniel Lapin made some great observations in our 2006 D. James Kennedy Ministries television special, What If Jesus Had Never Been Born?

He commented: “No country in the last two thousand years has provided the same haven of tranquility and prosperity for Jews as had the United States of America. And, this is not in spite of Americans being Christian; it is because of it. You might say that America’s Bible belt is the Jewish community’s safety belt.”

Lapin adds, “I fear for life in America if, heaven forbid, we ever find ourselves in a post-Christian society. Because what will come in its place is not a benign neutrality, but a very sinister form of secularism. And it is one in which life will have diminished value.”

Sadly, recent evidence indicates that may be exactly where the left, with its anti-Christian and anti-Jewish sentiment, is trying to take us.

©Jerry Newcombe, D.Min. All rights reserved.

RELATED ARTICLE: Leftist and Muslim Jew-Haters Protest NY Times & Israel, Try to Hijack Al Jazeera Christian Reporter’s Death In The Cause of Islam

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Bill Gates’ Latest Attack, Now Targeting Moms

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STORY AT-A-GLANCE

  • Bill Gates appears to be behind the push to stop breastfeeding and encourage uptake of BIOMILQ, a cell-cultured “human milk” made in a lab, along with other varieties of fake food
  • Nearly every large meat and dairy processor/manufacturer has also acquired or developed plant-based meat and dairy substitutes
  • This “protein” industry convergence is jeopardizing the resilience of the food system and reducing genetic diversity of livestock and crops
  • When you factor in soy production as well as the use of conventional energy sources, lab-grown meat may be worse for the environment than conventionally produced chicken and pork
  • There are signs that the fake meat industry may be failing before it ever gets off the ground; shares of Beyond Meat lost $6 billion since March 2020 due to weak sales growth
  • To save the planet and support your health, skip all the fake meat alternatives and opt for real food that’s being raised using regenerative, grass fed methods

Fake food is being poised as a panacea to end world hunger and food shortages, but there’s nothing miraculous about synthetic, lab-made food. It can’t compare to food that comes from nature in terms of nutrition or environmental protection, and as we’re seeing with the mysterious infant formula shortages, when you’re dependent on fake food, your very survival is also dependent on the handful of companies that manufacture them.

With parents getting desperate in the search for infant formula, it’s eye-opening that campaigns haven’t been started to encourage new mothers to breastfeed — the best food for infants and one that also happens to be free and readily available in most cases. If you haven’t read my article on the best workaround for infant formula for those that are unable to breast feed, it is on Substack.

In the video above, you can watch a concerning timeline about why this may be, as Bill Gates appears to be behind the push to stop breastfeeding and encourage uptake of BIOMILQ, a cell-cultured “human milk” made in a lab,1 along with other varieties of fake food.

Bill Gates’ Formula for Disaster

In June 2020, Bill Gates announced startup company BIOMILQ, which is using biotechnology to create lab-made human milk for babies. Using mammary epithelial cells placed in flasks with cell culture media, the cells grow and are placed in a bioreactor that the company says “recreates conditions similar to in the breast.”2

This synthetic lab-made breast milk replacement raised $3.5 million in funding from Gates’ investment firm Breakthrough Energy Ventures.3 Gates has also contributed at least $319 million to the media,4 including The Guardian, allowing him to control and dictate what they print. The day after the Gates Foundation paid The Guardian its annual funding in May 2022, it released a hit piece on breastfeeding titled, “Turns out breastfeeding really does hurt — why does no one tell you?”5

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) offers also seized 588 cases of infant formula from Europe in April 2021 because it lacked appropriate nutritional labeling. In February 2021, CBP officers said they inspected 17 separate shipments of infant formula from Germany and The Netherlands, leading to a warning against buying infant formula online from overseas.

At the time, Keith Fleming, CBP’s acting director of field operations in Baltimore, Maryland, said in a news release:6

“Consumers should be very careful when contemplating the purchase of items over the internet from an international source, because they may not get what they expect. People expect that the products they purchase comply with existing U.S. health and safety laws and regulations and they’ll be safe for them or their family. That’s not always the case.”

While warning Americans against purchasing infant formula from overseas, in February 2022 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced bacterial contamination at the Abbott Nutrition’s Sturgis, Michigan facility,7 which is behind the current infant formula shortages. While Gates is clearly behind the push to stop breastfeeding and encourage BIOMILQ in lieu of breastmilk or formula, the formula shortages highlight the risks of consolidated food production.

Abbott Enriched Shareholders While Formula Sickened Babies

Corporate consolidation is rampant in the U.S. baby formula market, of which 90% is controlled by four companies. Abbot is among them, responsible for 43% of baby formula production in the U.S.8 Yet, according to a whistleblower filing from October 2021, equipment at the company’s Sturgis facility was “failing and in need of repair.”

Pitting and pinholes reportedly existed in a number of pipes, allowing bacterial contamination. Leadership was aware of the failing equipment for up to seven years before the February 2022 outbreak, according to the whistleblower’s report.9

With equipment in need of repair, and a bacteria outbreak in their formula sickening babies, Abbott used its massive profits from 2019 to 2021 to announce a lucrative stock buyback program.10 According to The Guardian:11

“Abbott detected bacteria eight times as its net profits soared by 94% between 2019 and 2021. And just as its tainted formula allegedly began sickening a number of babies, with two deaths reported, the company increased dividends to shareholders by over 25% while announcing a stock buyback program worth $5bn.”

Speaking with The Guardian, Rakeen Mabud, chief economist for the Groundwork Collaborative, added, “Abbott chose to prioritize shareholders by issuing billions of dollars in stock buybacks instead of making productive investments.”12

Big Meat and Dairy Companies Dominate Fake Meat Industry

The increasing number of plant-based fake foods and lab-grown meat companies give the illusion that consumers are getting more choices and the food industry is becoming less consolidated. However, there are still relatively few firms that are controlling the global grab for “protein” markets.

In a research article published in Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems, Philip Howard, a faculty member in the department of community sustainability at Michigan State University, and colleagues explain how this “protein” industry convergence is further jeopardizing the resilience of the food system and reducing genetic diversity of livestock and crops:13

“Recent years have seen the convergence of industries that focus on higher protein foods, such as meat processing firms expanding into plant-based substitutes and/or cellular meat production, and fisheries firms expanding into aquaculture. A driving force behind these changes is dominant firms seeking to increase their power relative to close competitors, including by extending beyond boundaries that pose constraints to growth.

The broad banner of “protein” offers a promising space to achieve this goal, despite its nutritionally reductionist focus on a single macronutrient. Protein firm strategies to increase their dominance are likely to further diminish equity in food systems by exacerbating power asymmetries.”

Tyson and Cargill, two of the largest meat processors in the world, for instance, have invested in fake meat company Memphis Meats, which also has backing from Bill Gates and Richard Branson. Other billionaires invested in fake foods include Sergey Brin (Mosa Meat), Peter Thiel (Modern Meadow) and Marc Benioff (Eat Just).

“These companies wouldn’t be making these investments if they didn’t expect that the intellectual properties held by these start-ups will lead to monopoly profits,” Howard notes.14 In “The Politics of Protein,” a report from the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food), Howard explains:15

“Nearly every large meat and dairy processor/manufacturer has also acquired or developed plant-based meat and dairy substitutes, establishing footholds in a market that is growing approximately 20% per year.

More than a dozen of these firms have also invested in start-ups that are attempting to commercialize lab-grown meat and fish. Meanwhile, Vanguard and BlackRock — two of the world’s biggest asset management firms — have investments in almost all the largest meat, dairy, and animal feed companies.”

It is important to understand why all of these fake meat products are an absolute metabolic disaster relates to the fact that they are using vegetable fats to replace animal fats. Not only are they devoid of important vitamins like vitamin A and vitamin K2, but they are loaded with the dangerous omega-6 fat linoleic acid LA.

In some cases they contain up to 10 to 20 times the amount found in meats, which will radically contribute to diseases like diabetes, obesity, cancer and heart disease.

Lab-Grown Food Is an Environmental Catastrophe

The push for fake food is being made on the platform that it will somehow save the environment from the ravages of factory farming, which has devastated the environment with its concentrated animal feeding operations and monocultures. But this, too, is misleading.

In February 2021, the Good Food Institute (GFI), a nonprofit group behind the alternative protein industry, released a techno-economic analysis of cultivated meat, which was prepared by consulting firm CE Delft.16 In it, they developed a model to reduce the current costs of cultured meat production down to a point that would make it economically feasible in full-scale plants by 2030, a model they said is “feasible.”

In attempting to create cultured meat on the scale that would be necessary to feed the world, logistical problems are numerous and, possibly, insurmountable. There are waste products — catabolites — to deal with, as even cultured cells excrete waste that is toxic.

And, the oxygen and nutrients available must be adequately distributed to all the cells — something that’s difficult in a large reactor. Stirring the cells faster or adding more oxygen may help, but this can cause fatal stress to the cells.17

The environmental “benefits” are also on shaky ground when you factor in soy production as well as the use of conventional energy sources. When this is factored in, GFI’s life-cycle analysis found that cultured meat may be worse for the environment than conventionally produced chicken and pork.18,19

Farmer and historian John Lewis-Stempel also points out that the world’s farmers already produce enough food for the global population: “[A]ny discussion of global food policy needs to begin with one plain fact: there is … no actual food shortage. Already, the planet’s farmers produce enough food to cater for the projected 10 billion humans of 2050. The problem is waste and distribution.”20

Yet, the push for the creation of fake protein sources continues. In the foreword to Navdanya International’s report “False Solutions That Endanger Our Health and Damage the Planet,” Vandana Shiva also details how lab-grown foods are catastrophic for human health and the environment, as they are repeating the mistakes already made with industrial agriculture:21

“In response to the crises in our food system, we are witnessing the rise of technological solutions that aim to replace animal products and other food staples with lab-grown alternatives. Artificial food advocates are reiterating the old and failed rhetoric that industrial agriculture is essential to feed the world.

Real, nutrient-rich food is gradually disappearing, while the dominant industrial agricultural model is causing an increase in chronic diseases and exacerbating climate change. The notion that high-tech, “farm free” lab food is a viable solution to the food crisis is simply a continuation of the same mechanistic mindset which has brought us to where we are today — the idea that we are separate from and outside of nature.

Industrial food systems have reduced food to a commodity, to “stuff” that can then be constituted in the lab. In the process, both the planet’s health and our health have been nearly destroyed.”

Signs the Fake Meat Industry Is Stalling

For all of its fanfare, there are signs that the fake meat industry may be failing before it ever gets off the ground. Shares of Beyond Meat, for one example, lost $6 billion since March 2020 due to weak sales growth and has resorted to partnering with PepsiCo to release a plant-based jerky product.

“My analysis is the launch will do very little to increase the company’s fortunes,” writes business development consultant Victor Martino in Just Food.22 He argues that the “plant-based meat revolution” is just a PR stunt, a narrative that’s set to implode:23

“The fact is, despite increased product availability in terms of brand choices and added retail outlets, plant-based meat sales stalled in 2021, recording zero growth, according to recent research from SPINS, data commissioned and released by The Plant-Based Foods Association and The Good Food Institute.

According to the research, the total annual sales of plant-based meat in the US remained stable at $1.4 billion. That’s a continuation of the 1.4% share of total meat category sales.”

Shares of Beyond Meat and Oatly, a plant-based milk substitute, have lost more than half their value in 2022,24 but this isn’t to say that their executives are suffering. Beyond Meat’s former chief growth officer Chuck Muth sold shares valued at more than $62 million from 2019 to 2021, while Biz Stone, a current board member and Twitter co-founder, has made millions on Beyond Meat stock.25

The fact remains that when private companies control the food supply, they will also ultimately control countries and entire populations. Biotech will eventually push farmers and ranchers out of the equation and will threaten food security and human health. In other words, the work being done in the name of sustainability and saving the planet will give greater control to private corporations while weakening the population.

To save the planet and support your health, skip all the fake meat alternatives and opt for real food that’s being raised the right way instead. When you shop for food, know your farmer and look for regenerative, biodynamic and/or grass fed farming methods, which are bringing you truly sustainable food for a healthy population and planet.

Sources and References

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

The Fatal Flaw in Israeli Strategic Thinking

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One of the reasons that the conflict with the Palestinian-Arabs has dragged on for years, is that Israel has failed to conceptualize the conflict correctly. Failed comprehension has brought failed policy.

Poll: 23% of Arab Israelis would support Arab invasion in Israel– i24NEWS Headline, May 15, 2022.

Paradoxically, perhaps an incident that most vividly illustrates the indelible Arab enmity for the Jews is an event, which begins with a display of Arab goodwill—indeed, gallantry—towards a Jew.

In Mid-June 2020, an Arab construction worker, Mahmoud Abu Arabian, on hearing a woman’s cries for help, rushed to her aid to find her under brutal attack by her boyfriend, stabbing her multiple times. At considerable risk to himself, he managed to overcome the (Jewish) attacker and extricate the wounded (Jewish) woman, who was rushed to hospital, where doctors managed to save her life.

Following her recuperation, Abu Arabian stated that he would have liked very much to visit her, but refrained from doing so because of the disapproval of his social circles, who frowned upon his actions of rescuing a Jewish woman and saving a Jewish life.

To a large degree, this episode affirms the dour findings of a recent poll, which indicated that a massive majority (75%) of Israeli-Arabs reject the right of the Jewish people to sovereignty and the status of Israel as the nation-state of the Jews, while only a quarter acknowledged this. Even more ominously, when asked as to their response in case of an Arab attack on Israel, almost a quarter answered that they would support the Arab aggressors, while over half would remain neutral, refraining from supporting Israel. Only fractionally more than a quarter (26%) would support Israel.

Inert lack of loyalty or latent disloyalty?

These findings, grave as they are, are not—or should not—be unexpected. After all, Israeli Arabs voted almost monolithically for parties that promote an anti-Zionist agenda, with over 80% voting for either the Joint List or the Islamist United Arab List (Ra’am). Indeed, even a cursory glance at the official platforms of either of these dominantly Arab parties will reveal a rejection of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people that is both unabashed and undisguised.

Significantly, this somewhat disheartening situation comes after Israel’s Arab citizens have enjoyed full civilian rights for well over half a century (since the lifting of martial law in 1966). Indeed, since then they have generally enjoyed living standards markedly higher than those in Arab countries (with the exception, perhaps, of those blessed with petro-riches), and certainly more personal liberties than anywhere in the Arab world—making Arab reticence in supporting Israel against potential Arab aggression even more puzzling and perverse.

It matters little if the previously cited poll is not entirely accurate. For even allowing for significant imprecision, one thing is jarringly evident. A considerable portion of the Israeli-Arab population not only has no allegiance to their country of residence, but a sizeable segment thereof would be actively complicit in an enemy assault on it.

Indeed, there is, thus, little alternative but to reconcile oneself to the fact that for the indisputable majority of Israeli-Arabs, the attitude towards Israel ranges from an inert lack of loyalty to a latent disloyalty, waiting for an opportune moment to manifest itself.

An archetypical zero-sum game.

This failure of the Israeli establishment to grasp the scale and scope—the depth, intensity, and durability—of Arab rejection of Jewish sovereign statehood among Israeli-Arabs is reflected not only in its domestic policy but in its foreign policy vis-à-vis external Arab adversaries—particularly the Palestinian-Arabs, allegedly the root of the Arab-Israeli dispute.

In this regard, it is perhaps worthwhile to recall the wise dictum of eminent social psychologist, Kurt Leven, who observed: “There is nothing so practical as a good theory.” After all, action without comprehension is a little like swinging a hammer without knowing where the nails are—and just as hazardous and harmful. In this regard, good theory creates an understanding of cause and effect and hence facilitates effective policy.

Accordingly, to devise effective policy to contend with abiding Arab enmity, Israel must correctly conceptualize the conflict over the issue of Jewish sovereignty in the Holy Land.

The unvarnished truth is that—correctly conceptualized—the conflict between the Jews and the Palestinian-Arabs over the control of the Holy Land is a clash between two rival collectives, with irreconcilable foundational narratives.

They are irreconcilable because the raison d’etre of the one is the preservation of Jewish political sovereignty in the Holy Land, while the raison d’etre of the other is the annulment of Jewish political sovereignty in the Holy Land—thus generating irreconcilable visions of homeland.

As such, the conflict between the Jews and the Palestinian-Arabs is an archetypical zero-sum game, in which the gains of one side imply an inevitable loss for the other.
It is, therefore, a clash involving protagonists with antithetical and mutually exclusive core objectives. Only one can emerge victorious, with the other vanquished. There are no consolation prizes!

Grudgingly accepted or greatly feared?

Consequently, as a clash of collectives, whose outcome will be determined by collective victory or defeat, it cannot be personalized. The fate of individual members of one collective cannot be a deciding determinant of the policy of the rival collective—and certainly not a consideration that impacts the probability of collective victory or defeat.

Thus, Israel’s survival imperative must dictate that it forgo the pursuit of warm and welcoming approval from the Arabs. For the foreseeable future, this seductive illusion will remain an unattainable pipe-dream. Rather, Israel must reconcile itself to the stern, but sober, conclusion: The most it can realistically hope for is to be grudgingly accepted; the least it must attain is to be greatly feared.

Any more benign policy goals are a recipe for disaster.

To underscore the crucial importance of this seemingly harsh assessment, I would invite any prospective dissenter to consider the consequences of Jewish defeat and Arab victory. Indeed, a cursory survey of the gory regional realities should suffice to drive home the significance of what would accompany such an outcome.

Accordingly, only once a decisive Jewish collective victory has been achieved, can the issue of individual injustice and suffering in the Arab collective be addressed as a policy consideration. Until then, neither the individual well-being nor the societal welfare of the opposing collective can be considered a primary policy constraint or

After all, had the imperative of collective victory not been the overriding factor of the Allies’ strategy in WWII, despite the horrendous civilian causalities that it inflicted on the opposing collective, the world might well have been living in slavery today.

In weighing the question of the fate of individual members of the opposing collective, it is imperative to keep in mind that, while there are doubtless many Palestinian-Arabs with fine personal qualities and who wish no one any harm, the Palestinian-Arab collective is not the hapless victim of radical terror-affiliated leaders. Quite the opposite. It is, in fact, the societal crucible in which they were forged, and from which they emerged. Its leadership is a reflection of, not an imposition on, Palestinian-Arab society.

The conclusion is thus unavoidable: The Palestinian-Arab collective must be considered an implacable enemy—not a prospective peace partner…and it must be treated as such.

©Martin Sherman. All rights reserved.

Was the Uvalde Massacre a Drug Cartel Warning to Border Agents to Back Off?

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“The individual who murdered 19 elementary school children and two of their teachers on May 24, 2022, at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas is responsible for his actions and crimes, as are all the shooters who have attacked the American public in recent years.” – The Soufan Center

Did Salvador Rolando Ramos act alone or did he have a plan, was he on a specific mission and was there a financial sponsor?

On May 24, 2022, 18-year-old Salvador Rolando Ramos fatally shot nineteen students and two teachers, and wounded seventeen other people, at the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. Earlier in the day, he shot his grandmother in the forehead at home, severely wounding her.

QUESTIONS: Who, what, where, when, why and how?

The answers to who, what and where are crystal clear: Salvador Rolando Ramos; Uvalde Massacre; and May 24, 2022.

What isn’t clear is the why and how.

Like us, Steve Bannon on the Uvalde School killer asked, “How’d he get the guns? Where did he get the cash?” Bannon goes on to say that, “this kid was well trained.”

Why and How

As of 2017 (and likely still today), the Sinaloa Cartel is overall the most active drug cartel involved in smuggling illicit drugs into the United States and trafficking them throughout the country.

According to The Border Report:

A federal judge has sentenced a Fort Hancock [Texas] rancher to 38 years in prison for letting Mexican criminals use his property as a smuggling corridor for drugs and unauthorized migrants.

[ … ]

On Aug. 14, 2020, a search warrant was executed at Morales’ ranch. Authorities found four undocumented migrants there and testimony at trial indicated Morales had been involved in migrant smuggling since November 2019.

[ … ]

The search also turned up 11 firearms and 1,833 rounds of assorted ammo. Morales faced the firearm charges because of a 2009 conviction in the Southern District of New York involving a charge of conspiracy with intent to distribute more than 5 kilograms of cocaine. He was sentenced to 50 months in prison (four years and two months) for that.

We know that the Biden administration is not enforcing our border laws and hampering the U.S. Border Patrol from stopping the flow of illegals, drugs and humans being trafficked across our Southern border. We know that drug cartels have become more active since Biden took office and their ability to influence neighborhoods, towns, cities and even states has increased dramatically.

Given where Ramos lived, just 75 miles from the Mexican border it’s possible that he was approached or sponsored by cartel members to carry out the massacre at Robb Elementary School.

The city of Uvalde is largely Hispanic and cartel members may already be in the city. These cartels may have an interest in and may be monitoring the families of Border Patrol agents who live there.

How Did Ramos Afford the guns and ammunition?

According to The Independent, “Salvador Ramos legally bought two AR-15 rifles and 1,657 rounds of ammunition for his 18th birthday.” Ramos’ 18th birthday was May 18th, 2022. Remember the shooting was on May 24th, 2022.

According to Indeed.com the average salary at Wendy’s where Ramos worked as a crew member is $12.66 an hour or $506.40 per week.

Ramos posted pictures of the two rifles he purchased on social media here. One of these two rifles was a DDM4, made by Daniel Defense, which starts at a price of $1,870.00. These rifles are AR-15s retail for $1,870 plus tax—the same amount and model number listed on the receipt Ramos reportedly sent via Yubo. So both rifles cost approximately $3,740 plus tax. One of the rifles has an EOTECH XPS2 Holographic Weapon Sight which on Amazon costs a minimum, depending on the model, of $577.00. Ramos purchased approximately 1,657 rounds of ammunition.  The cost of 1,657 rounds of 5.56 caliber ammunition is approximately $3,144.00.

So let’s break it down:

Two AR-15 rifles = $3,740.00
One EOTECH XPS2 site = $577.oo
Ammunition = $3,144.00

TOTAL = $7,461

So,  Ramos who makes $506.40 a week spent at least $7,461 on these two rifles and ammunition within a three day period. NOTE: This does not include the semiautomatic pistol he carried.

The Bottom Line

We’re wondering if this attack was orchestrated by one of the drug cartels to send a message to all border patrol agents, many who live with their families in Uvalde, not to mess with them by killing their children.

We know that Ramos had two high end weapons plus 30 magazines of 5.56 NATO ammunition worth thousands of dollars. He worked in a minimum wage job at Wendy’s and some part time work with his uncle it’s unlikely he could have saved up enough to pay for the guns and ammunition.

We know that Ramos won two gun battles with law enforcement officers that went on for 12 minutes before he entered the school. The Wall Street Journal reported:

The gunman behind the mass shooting at an elementary school here lingered outside the building for 12 minutes firing shots before walking into the school and barricading in a classroom where he killed 19 children and two teachers, authorities said in a news conference Thursday laying out a new timeline of events.

He had to have had some training to do what he did without remorse.

As we understand it he got into two gun fights before entering the school. In both cases the law enforcement officers were wounded.

We also understand he had a protective vest.

BTW, Cartel members are ruthless and immoral just like Ramos.

Also, how did Ramos know that there was a door open at the school? Did he or someone else recon the school?

There are many questions about Salvador Rolando Ramos and his motive for the Uvalde massacre.

It’s not a secret that the most powerful drug cartels worldwide are based in Mexico. Sinaloa Cartel and Jalisco New Generation Cartel are the two most dominant and dangerous, according to DEA’s reports.

We know Ramos was a loner and did not get along with his classmates and has been characterized as a bully.

In a September 2017 study on Gangs and Children The American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry found, “Some children and adolescents are motivated to join a gang for a sense of connection or to define a new sense of who they are. Others are motivated by peer pressure, a need to protect themselves and their family, because a family member also is in a gang, or to make money.”

Some of these conditions apply to Salvador Rolando Ramos. This is what we must be looking at not Ramos’ choice of weapon.

©Dr. Rich Swier. All rights reserved.

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Rep. Jim Jordan: Hillary Peddled ‘False Info’ About Trump to Media, FBI

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Tuesday on Fox News Channel’s The Faulkner Focus, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) weighed in on the ongoing trial of corrupt, failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s former campaign lawyer, Michael Sussmann, arguing that the Clinton campaign “peddled” “false information” about then-presidential candidate Donald Trump in the Steele dossier to the media and FBI because “they were out to get President Trump.”

“I think Sussman lied. I think it is material,” Jordan asserted. “Whether a D.C. jury will convict him, you know, only the good Lord knows. But I think the big takeaway is what we learned a few days back when we learned that Secretary Clinton told Sussman to take information — false information — to the press that was also then taken to the FBI. I mean, step back and think about this. This is the former secretary of state; this is the former first lady; this is the former …  United States Senator from the state of New York and candidate for one of the major parties for President of the United States, and she is encouraging a false narrative to be taken to the press, and, of course, it was also taken to the FBI.”

He added, “I mean, I think that is huge — so much so that the former attorney general called it seditious.”

Seditious, indeed.

Hillary Rodham Clinton

286 Known Connections

Clinton Says “You Cannot Be Civil” With Republicans

In the aftermath of the Democratic Party’s failed attempt, in the fall of 2018, to use specious sexual assault charges to block the confirmation of President Trump’s nominee to the Supreme Court, Brett Kavanaugh, CNN’s Christiane Amanpour asked Mrs. Clinton to comment on various recent instances where leftist protesters had disrupted the Senate’s Kavanaugh hearings, had tried to intimidate Republican senators, and had engaged in acts of lawlessness to vent their rage. Mrs. Clinton replied: “You cannot be civil with a political party that wants to destroy what you stand for, what you care about. That’s why I believe, if we are fortunate enough to win back the House and or the Senate, that’s when civility can start again. But until then, the only thing that the Republicans seem to recognize and respect is strength.”

To learn more about Hillary Clinton, click here.

RELATED ARTICLE: Abrams is Board Member, Gov. of #AbolishThePolice Foundation

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

How Bureaucracy May Have Cost Lives in Uvalde

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Rescue delayed can be rescue denied.

Why did they wait?

That question must haunt the families of the nineteen children and two adults who were massacred in Uvalde, TX last week in light of recent revelations about the police response.

Accounts of what happened have been shifting and inconsistent. But, according to a timeline published by the Associated Press, while children were trapped with the killer in two adjoining classrooms, as many as nineteen armed officers waited in the hallway outside for over an hour before a rescue was finally executed.

During that time, some of the trapped children called 911, begging for police to be sent in. On one of those calls, gunshots could be heard.

“Roland Gutierrez,” reports The New York Times, “who represents the area in the State Senate, said the family of one of the children killed told him that their daughter had been struck by a single bullet to the back and had bled to death. ‘It is possible she could have been saved, if they had done their jobs,’ Mr. Gutierrez said.”

Just as “justice delayed is justice denied,” rescue delayed can be rescue denied.

A harrowing video circulating online shows family members desperately pleading (some of them screaming) with officers outside the school to rescue their children. Two officers seem to have one man detained on the ground.

Again, why did they wait? The question has undoubtedly baffled many around the world, especially parents of young children. Such a delay seems unfathomable.

While “why it happened” is even less certain than “what happened,” certain reports about the police response raise important considerations about government delays in general that may be relevant to this troubling question.

It is important to remember that all government law enforcement agencies are bureaucracies. And all bureaucracies have certain behavioral tendencies owing to their institutional structure and the incentives that structure generates.

The great economist Ludwig von Mises analyzed these tendencies and incentives in his 1944 book Bureaucracy.

In that book, Mises identified “slowness and slackness” as among the inherent features of government bureaucracy that no reform can remove.

We have all experienced the “slowness and slackness” of government bureaucracy: with the post office, the DMV, the public school system, etc. That’s why the animated movie Zootopia had sloths working at the DMV and everyone got the joke. And police bureaucracies are no exception to this reputation.

Why is this so? In part, it is due to another indelible feature of bureaucracy: that it is, as Mises wrote, “bound to comply with detailed rules and regulations fixed by the authority of a superior body. The task of the bureaucrat is to perform what these rules and regulations order him to do. His discretion to act according to his own best conviction is seriously restricted by them.”

Sometimes a delay is simply due to the fact that the government employee is too tied up in red tape to respond in a timely manner. The timely response may be outright prohibited by the rules. Or the delay may be owing to Kafkaesque procedural mazes that first must be navigated or chains of command that must be climbed for permission.

This may have been a major factor of the possibly deadly delay in Uvalde. According to The New York Times, command on the scene,

“…fell to the chief of a small police department created only four years ago to help provide security at Uvalde’s eight schools. Its chief, Pedro Arredondo, had ordered the assembled officers to hold off on storming the two adjoining classrooms where the gunman had already fired more than 100 rounds at the walls, the door and the terrified fourth-graders locked inside with him, the state police said. (…)

Officers were told, under Chief Arredondo’s direction, that the situation had evolved from one with an active shooter — which would call for immediately attacking the gunman, even before rescuing other children — to one with a barricaded subject, which would call for a slower approach, officials said.

That appeared to be an incorrect assessment, according to the state police director, Steven McCraw: Gunfire could sporadically be heard inside the rooms, including on continuing 911 calls by the children.”

The Times also reported:

“The degree to which some law enforcement officers on the scene disagreed with the decision to hold back became more apparent on Saturday, as more became known about their frustrations in the protracted chaos of Tuesday’s shooting.

Specially trained agents from the Border Patrol, who arrived more than 40 minutes after the shooting had begun, had yelled for permission to go in and confront the gunman. ‘What is your problem?’ they asked, according to an official briefed on the response.”

If any officer on the scene earlier harbored a similar disagreement, it may not have made a difference, because “his discretion to act according to his own best conviction,” to use Mises’s words, would have been seriously restricted by “pedantic observance of rigid rules and regulations”

Again, Mises considered such features of bureaucracy to be unreformable. Why? He argued that it is the only way that a government bureaucracy can be made at all accountable to the public. A bureaucrat with a free hand is even more dangerous than a bureaucrat with his hands tied.

“If one assigns to the authorities the power to imprison or even to kill people,” Mises wrote, “one must restrict and clearly circumscribe this power. Otherwise the officeholder or judge would turn into an irresponsible despot.”

“Ultimately,” reports the Times, “the police officers assembled outside won permission to enter the classroom. A team of tactical officers from the Border Patrol and local police agencies breached the door and killed the 18-year-old gunman, Salvador Ramos, after he had killed 19 children and two teachers inside.”

The officers who confronted and killed that murderer of children did a magnificently heroic deed. But we have to wonder whether any of those deaths were due in part to bureaucratic delay—to the need for officers on the ground to “win permission” to save lives? We may never know. And even if so, are such delays unavoidable when it comes to responding to crime? Mises seemed to think so, believing that “coercion and compulsion” (including policing) must necessarily be delegated to government, and so is unavoidably bureaucratic.

Whether he was right about that or not, Mises argued that the problem with bureaucracy is not that we have failed to reform it, but that we have overextended it far beyond what he, as a classical liberal like America’s Founders, regarded to be its proper domain of protecting rights.

Instead, bureaucracy has encroached on matters that properly belong in the hands of families and the market: institutional domains that don’t require rigid rules and regulation to stay accountable.

Families tend to be held accountable by human nature: like the familial love that drove Uvalde parents Jacob Albarado and Angeli Rose Gomez to immediately race to successfully rescue their children themselves, at the risk of their own lives and in defiance of the officials.

And in the market, producers are held accountable to consumers by the pursuit of profit and the avoidance of loss: market dynamics that help keep places like amusement parks and retail stores for the most part expeditious and safe.

Governments have recourse to neither familial love nor profit and loss, and so must resort to what Mises called “bureaucratic management,” which is inherently slow and less responsive to its “customers,” even when those “customers” are literally begging for prompt service, like the Uvalde parents who begged for government agents to rescue their children.

Mises characterized the blob-like tendency of modern bureaucracy to absorb more and more of human life as a march toward totalitarianism.

“It is quite correct,” he wrote, “as the opponents of the trend toward totalitarianism say, that the bureaucrats are free to decide according to their own discretion questions of vital importance for the individual citizen’s life. It is true that the officeholders are no longer the servants of the citizenry but irresponsible and arbitrary masters and tyrants. But this is not the fault of bureaucracy. It is the outcome of the new system of government which restricts the individual’s freedom to manage his own affairs and assigns more and more tasks to the government.”

For example, our system of compulsory schooling has assigned educating and securing our children for most of the day to the government. And to the extent that private gun ownership is regulated, we have still further restricted the individual’s freedom to protect his own family and more fully entrusted the security of his children to the government.

Parents should realize that, as the appalling delay in Uvalde may exemplify, bureaucracies are institutionally unworthy of that trust.

This article was adapted from an issue of the FEE Daily email newsletter. Click here to sign up and get free-market news and analysis like this in your inbox every weekday.

AUTHOR

Dan Sanchez

Dan Sanchez is the Director of Content at the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) and the editor-in chief of FEE.org.

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

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