Book Review: Freedom Fighter

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Joanna Palani. Photo: Instagram.

As I write this book review, the United States sponsored International Conference on Peace in the Middle East has opened in Warsaw, Poland. This is fortuitous because America has been militarily involved in the Middle East, especially since 9/11/2001.

I have read many books about the Middle East but none have been as profound as that written by a 26-year old Kurdish woman named Joanna Palani titled “Freedom Fighter. My War Against ISIS on the Frontlines of Syria.” Joanna Palani’s perspective on peace in the Middle East is unique and based upon her personal experiences as a child, as a young girl and as a woman.

We must listen to what she has to say.

A Woman At War With Everyone

Joanna was (and in her heart still is) a soldier who served with the Women’s Protection Units (YPJ) in Iraq and Syria fighting against Daesh (ISIS). Joanna writes, “We [the YPJ] believe that women and men are equal, so we fight together for the freedom of the Kurdish people and the destruction of ISIS.”

Joanna was born in 1993 in a UN refugee camp outside of Ramadi, Iraq. At the age of 3-years old she and her Sunni Muslim family were relocated to Denmark. Joanna writes, “In Kurdish culture we celebrate the group – the family, the community, and the clan – instead of the individual, and the rules of the clan are the rules by which we live.” From 1996 to 2010 Joanna was raised and schooled in Denmark. It was in Denmark that she began her quest to become the equal of men.

Losing One’s Virginity

Joanna, as a Sunni Muslim girl, was raised to believe that the most important thing was her virginity. During her powerful story we learn how she lost her virginity in countless ways.

She lost her virginity because she rebelled against the strict Sunni Muslim beliefs of her father and her family. For this she was verbally abused, beaten, starved and eventually left her family to escape the oppressive culture in her home. Joanna writes, “Everything we do right, our father takes credit for. Everything we do wrong, our mother takes the blame.”

Joanna lost her virginity as a girl when she became a fighter (Peshmerga) in 2011. At the age of 18 Joanna went to Syria to join the Kurdish battalions that supported the Free Syrian Army volunteers fighting the regime of Bashar al-Assad.

Joanna writes, “In the Middle East, most people consider a girl able to have sex as an adult after her first period. A ‘woman’ is normally a married person who has had sex, whereas a ‘girl’ has not had sex.” Joanna lost her virginity to become a woman when she had an out-of-wedlock relationship with one of her commanders referred to as “R” in her book. “R” later abused her. She left “R.” For this she was later called a whore, prostitute and even shunned by some of the women in the YPJ. Women, and men, whom she had fought shoulder-to-shoulder with to free Syria from Daesh either rejected her or took sexual advantage of her.

Joanna lost her virginity when she was betrayed by her clan, friends, lawyer, the Danish police and Danish secret service (PET), and by thousands on her social media sites.

Finally, Joanna lost her virginity to Denmark, her beloved adopted country, which took her passport, tried her, found her guilty and put her in prison twice for going to Syria to fight for women’s rights and freedom. Something she knew was right to do but the current Danish laws find to be illegal.

Joanna’s Conclusion

When I finished reading Freedom Fighter. My War Against ISIS on the Frontlines of Syria the below quote came to mind:

Fate whispered to the warrior, “You cannot withstand the coming storm.” And the warrior whispered back, “I am the storm.”

Joanna ends her book with this:

I do think women should be armed, as part of a wider democratic and equality movement. I do believe women are entitled to defend and protect themselves with weapons from ideologies that seek their absolute destruction, because what other choice do we have?

It was not death that haunted me on the battlefield, it was my life. I don’t regret anything I’ve done: there is no longer an Islamic State, and there is no longer a caliphate, so we achieved our aims – we won. My prize is to be alive still: to see what age I will actually make it to, and to find out how else I can spend my life.

I strongly recommend reading “Freedom Fighter. My War Against ISIS on the Frontlines of Syria.”

As American Revolutionary Army General John Stark said, “Live Free or Die. Death is not the worst of evils.” Live free Joanna, live free! We need you to tell your story far and wide!

Another Illegal Alien Arrested in Gruesome Murder

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You have probably seen this news about another illegal alien killer, however I’m mentioning it because the sensational aspects of the case have made it news around the world.

The victim was beautiful and her body was stuffed in a suitcase and dumped in the woods making the news apparently more interesting to the mainstream media than the Reno, Nevada case I reported recently where four older Americans were killed in their homes by another illegal alien creep—a story that didn’t get nearly the coverage this one is getting.

The man alleged to have murdered the young and beautiful Valerie Reyes is in the country illegally as a visa overstay.

From the Washington Times,

Suspect in suitcase death in U.S. illegally, authorities say

A man accused of killing his ex-girlfriend and dumping her body in a suitcase in Connecticut is a citizen of Portugal who has been in the U.S. illegally for more than a year, federal authorities said Wednesday as the victim’s loved ones gathered for her funeral.

Javier da Silva Rojas
Rojas and his victim.

Javier Da Silva Rojas, who had been living in New York City, was taken into custody Monday and charged with kidnapping resulting in death in the killing of 24-year-old Valerie Reyes, of New Rochelle, New York. The charge carries the possibility of the death penalty.

Da Silva, also 24, entered the U.S. on May 8, 2017, through the Visa Waiver Program and was required to leave by Aug. 5, 2017, Immigration and Customs Enforcement said in a statement.

If you are interested in reading more about the alleged killer, simply search his name and you will see stories about the murder everywhere.

We spend a lot of time talking about “the Wall,” but the feds need to do more to round-up visa overstays and get them the heck out of the country!  Why not let the President know how you feel about the need for greater enforcement!

RELATED ARTICLE: Former U.S. Counterintelligence Agent Charged With Espionage on Behalf of Iran

EDITORS NOTE: This Frauds, Crooks and Criminals column with images is republished with permission. The featured image by Gentle07 on Pixabay.

Democrats Are Experts At Fear & Loathing

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I am on the We Train Democrats email list. The National Democratic Training Committee is training their members to loath. They loath Republicans in general and President Donald J. Trump in particular.

Fear & Loathing

How do I know this? Because they are using loathing to fundraise.

National Democratic Training Committee

On Valentine’s Day 2019 I received the following from We Train Democrats in an email titled “💔 I hope you have a TERRIBLE day, from: Me.”

Folks, Valentine’s Day is supposed to be filled with love and affection. It’s a time when we tell those we care about how much they mean to us.

But we are so disgusted by Donald Trump that we decided to send him an Anti-Valentine’s Day card. So we can let him know JUST how much we loathe him.

CLICK HERE TO DONATE AND SIGN OUR ANTI-VALENTINE’S DAY CARD TO DONALD TRUMP >>

Here’s the card:

Mr. President, I wanted you to know that while I spend my Valentine's Day thinking of my loved ones, that America LOATHES you. You are the worst President we have ever had and you have broken the heart of our Nation. So I'm donating $3 today to send you this ANTI-VALENTINE'S DAY CARD, so you know exactly how real Americans feel about you.

Loathing leads to fear. Loathing is visceral. Loathing leads to hate. Hate can lead to violence. Violence can lead to tyranny. Tyranny can lead to oppression.

The opposite of peace is not war. Rather the opposite of peace is fear.

One cannot be at peace if one is fearful of a person, policy or political party. One cannot be at peace if one fears losing their job, their healthcare, their benefits, their livelihood, their home, car, friends or family. Fear is a powerful force to bring out the best or worst in people. Fear can be good in that one learns to not walk down a dark alley at night for fear of being attacked. One learns fear in not sticking your hand in the jaws of an alligator.

The National Democratic Training Committee is focused on teaching their members to fear President Donald J. Trump. Why? because President Trump does not think like them. It’s not America that loathes the President, it’s the members of the NDTC. The NDTC is teaching fear and loathing.

The National Democratic Training Committee understands this all to well. They consistently use fear and loathing to raise money.

John 14:27 [KJV]

Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.

Happy Valentines Day!

RELATED ARTICLE: HATING VALENTINE’S. Why Islamists and the radical Left loathe the Day of Love.

EDITORS NOTE: The images in this column are courtesy of the NDTC. The featured image is by Pixabay.

PODCAST: Rebels without a Clause

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By FRC Director for Religious Advocacy, Alexandra McPhee

Imagine that one day you sit down for a job interview. You are prepared to answer your interviewer’s questions and demonstrate your qualifications for the position. Then imagine getting asked a question that has nothing to do with whether you are qualified for the job. In fact, the question has to do with something very personal — your faith.

You have just imagined the job interviews for 10 presidential nominees and their experience before the United States Senate. Not only were they questioned about their faith — they were questioned publicly and by senators who had every intention of casting them in a negative light based on their answers.

FRC’s new Issue Brief, Rebels Without a Clause: When Senators Run Roughshod Over the “No Religious Test” Clause of the U.S. Constitution, catalogs a disturbing trend by senators of interrogating nominees about the particulars of their beliefs or affiliations that demonstrate a hostility towards religion. The questions go beyond a reasonable inquiry into whether the nominee can remain impartial if faced with circumstances that conflict with her personal values. They aim to paint the nominee as discriminatory, partial, and incapable of faithfully carrying out her official duties.

Regardless of the political party of the senator, the nominee’s religious beliefs, or the particular office, these questions deter qualified candidates from pursuing public office at a time when we need them most. Faith and religion, after all, are often the foundation of integrity and character. The hostility and mistrust of religion that underlies these questions threaten to create a deficit of true leaders who are often such great role models because of their faith.

Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah), who’s been an outspoken opponent of this harassment, talked about that with Tony on Tuesday’s “Washington Watch.” “I think the two words you used to describe it are accurate: ‘disturbing’ and ‘dangerous.’ …I have never until the last few months seen, on any regular basis, questions like this come up… It’s much easier to castigate somebody or to make someone feel or look isolated if you focus on their religious belief about something being a sin. It’s one of the reasons I think [questions about sexual morality] are so wildly inappropriate.”

As people like Senator Lee continue to draw attention to this flagrant display of bias against certain religious beliefs, we hope more elected leaders will understand that voters will not tolerate attacks against qualified candidates in exchange for fleeting political gain.

Tony Perkins’ Washington Update is written with the aid of FRC senior writers.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Hillary Clinton: A Clear and One Percent Danger

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EDITORS NOTE: This FRC column with images and podcast is republished with permission.

Texas: ACLU Using Legal Intimidation Tactics to Stop Voter Roll Purge

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As we reported here at the end of January, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton asserted that as many as 95,000 non-citizens are registered to vote in the state.

voter-fraud

The ACLU is now attempting to stop any purging of the list by filing lawsuits against the Texas Secretary of State, the Director of Elections and county officials!

From the Houston Chronicle,

Several civil rights and voting advocacy groups sued Texas officials and five county elections administrators on Monday over an advisory urging counties to review the citizenship status of thousands of voters flagged as possible non-citizens.

The ACLU of Texas, along with the Texas Civil Rights Project, Demos and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, filed the lawsuit against Texas Secretary of State David Whitley and Director of Elections Keith Ingram, alleging that their recommendations discriminate against naturalized citizens. Also named in the suit are the election administrators in Galveston, Blanco, Fayette, Caldwell, and Washington counties, who sent out notices threatening to cancel voter registrations based on the list. [This is the type of intimidation the ACLU relishes—going after local officials.—-ed]

In a Jan. 25 advisory, Whitley asked local elections offices to look into the citizenship of 95,000 people on the voter rolls. Since then, the list has been cut by nearly 20,000 names — registered voters who were identified as citizens.

This sounds very reasonable to me, but it sent the ACLU around the bend!

The secretary of state can’t remove voters from the rolls, but county elections officials can. Whitley has instead recommended that counties send notices to the people they flagged as possible non-citizens, giving them 30 days to prove they’re eligible to vote by presenting a birth certificate, passport or certificate of naturalization. If they don’t respond, their registrations will be canceled by the county voter registrar.

Whitley’s list drew from documents people submitted to the Department of Public Safety when they were applying for drivers licenses. Non-citizens, such as temporary residents, asylum seekers and refugees, can get a Texas drivers license but can’t register to vote unless they become U.S. citizens.

Whitley said the list includes 58,000 people who have cast ballots in Texas elections.

More here.

As I have said on several previous occasions, if you are looking for something to do, get involved with your local board of elections and see how they are handling this issue of determining who is a citizen eligible to vote.  See if they are working to at least purge the dead people!

EDITORS NOTE: This Frauds, Crooks and Criminals with images is republished with permission. The featured photo is by Element5 Digital on Unsplash.

Florida Facing A Complete Assault Weapon Ban In 2020

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Florida, the state with some of the strongest Second Amendment protections in the country, may be facing the reality of voters putting a full-on assault weapons ban into the Florida Constitution — bypassing a Republican-controlled Legislature that has resisted any such moves even after last year’s Parkland school massacre.

Gail Schwartz, the aunt of one of the students killed a year ago at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, held a press conference Monday to announce a petition drive she is spearheading to put a constitutional amendment on the Florida ballot in 2020 that would ban “assault weapons.” Her group is forthrightly named Ban Assault Weapons Now.

The language of the proposed amendment defines an assault weapon as “semi-automatic rifles and shotguns capable of holding more than 10 rounds of ammunition at once, either in fixed or detachable magazine, or any other ammunition-feeding device.” Such a broad ban could presumably capture everything down to a revolver, as it has an “ammunition-feeding device.”

“Try explaining to your children that they’re never going to see their cousin again,” Schwartz said, hitting the emotional buttons that are essential to restricting Second Amendment rights. “That’s not a conversation that anyone should ever have to make.”

Schwartz said that she believes her nephew — 14-year-old Alex Schachter — might be alive today if Nikolas Cruz did not have access to such a deadly weapon. Cruz killed 17 students and teachers at Parkland as an on-campus Broward County deputy hid outside. Schachter was one of the very first victims of Cruz, so it seems unlikely his life would have been spared if Cruz only had access to non-semi-automatic weapons.

Each mass shooting is used to evoke the necessity of getting guns out of the hands of Americans. A ban on what the media frequently calls “military-style” semi-automatic rifles — which basically means scary looking guns, regardless of relative lethality — has been a goal of gun control advocates nationally since a temporary federal ban expired in 2004.

In Florida, the push has been particularly fierce since the massacre at Orlando’s Pulse nightclub, where 49 people were killed in 2016. But school shootings elicit the most emotional response for obvious reasons.

So Florida Democrats have been pushing hard for an assault weapons ban. But they are a minority in the Republican-controlled Legislature and their efforts go nowhere.

Last year Democrats tried to attach an assault weapons ban to the larger school safety bill that was ultimately passed in response to the Parkland shooting, which included armed security on school campuses. But the amendment failed, gaining only two Republican votes.

In fact, Florida Republicans annually consider the opposite direction, proposing bills to allow conceal-carry permit holders to carry on college campuses.

However, a direct-to-voters constitutional amendment bypasses the Legislature. Florida now has a 60 percent threshold for amendments to make it into the state constitution. But last November, all but one proposed amendment met that, and that one had 58 percent. Given the media coverage and the number of mass shootings in the state, it would be foolish to think that such an amendment could not pass.

“I think there is a better chance of getting a citizens initiative on the ballot than getting the current Legislature to seriously entertain an assault weapons ban,” said Florida League of Women Voters President Patricia Brigham. Naturally, the “nonpartisan” League supports the ban.

She is right.

Possibly the larger hurdle is actually getting the proposed amendment on the ballot. That means gathering 766,200 legal signatures, which requires spending several million dollars to paid signature-gathering organizations.

The assault weapons ban campaign collected $439,888 as of the last filing date on Dec. 31. It will take a lot more and the question politically is whether Democrat organizations actually want to ban assault weapons, or whether they prefer to run on the issue of assault weapons so they can keep forcing Republicans to defend assault weapons used in mass shootings.

Polling on the issue in Florida is heavily dependent on the length of time between mass shootings. Right after the Parkland shooting, a Florida Atlantic University poll found that nearly 70 percent of Floridians support an assault weapons ban. But the same poll six months later found only 51 percent favored. How it would fare in the midst of a presidential election during heavy voter turnout is the question.

We may find out.

EDITORS NOTE: This The Revolutionary Act column is republished with permission. The featured image is by Pixabay.

For What Robot Did Jesus Die?

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Recently, amazing claims have been made about robots. One of them is that people will start to fall in love with robots. Another is that Artificial Intelligence (AI) will one day eclipse man. There is even the claim that AI will one day eclipse God.

Writing for zdnet.com, Greg Nichols (2/8/19) penned an article, “Robot Love: Why romance with machines is a foregone conclusion.” The subtitle is “Sex robots are sold for physical pleasure, but emotionally fulfilling relationships with machines is closer than you may think.”  It’s incredibly dehumanizing for creatures made in the image of God to engage in such mechanical acts.

Is that “love”? I reached out to Dr. Robert J. Marks for a comment on the idea of falling in love with robots. Marks is the Director of The Bradley Center for Natural & Artificial Intelligence at Baylor University.

Marks told me via email: “Those proclaiming that exclusive truth lives totally in naturalism are constrained to a sadly narrow view of the world. In their constrained silo, love and romance must have a materialistic explanation. But computers, including AI, are limited. They are all constrained to follow programmed instructions called algorithms. Things nonalgorithmic are not computable. Human creativity, sentience, consciousness and qualia are not computable. Can anyone write code to explain to a computer your true sensory experience of enjoying hot buttered sweet corn? Sex with a human-appearing robot can be simulated, but love and romance are not computable. Those married to the love of their lives for forty years like me know this.”

A few years ago, when stories were coming out along the lines that AI was a potential threat to humanity, I interviewed Dr. Marks on the radio.

For example, I asked him about this quote from Stephen Hawking about AI: “The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race.” Marks responded, “Well, I think it’s actually just hyperbole. And I think that people who say these sorts of things need to go back to the fundamentals and understand what computers can’t and can do.”

Marks observed, “A computer will never be creative. It will never have consciousness. It will never have understanding. It only does what you tell it to do….They will never have a soul. They will never have an understanding of what they do. They will never have a consciousness. Computers can only do something which is algorithmic….a fancy word for recipe. You have to give a computer step-by-step instructions on doing something, just like a recipe.”

But all of these claims get us back to a core issue: What is a human being and why do we have intrinsic value? For what robot did Jesus die?

In my opinion, over-glorifying man-made machines is just a symptom of a godless worldview—that sees humanity as a glorified animal or a chemical machine, as opposed to a special creation of God, who made us in His image.

In his book, The Death of Humanity (2016), history professor Dr. Richard Weikart writes: “As many intellectuals have abandoned the Judeo-Christian sanctity-of-life ethic in favor of secular philosophies, we have descended into a quagmire of inhumanity. Some today view humans as nothing more than sophisticated machines or just another type of animal. For them, humans are nothing special—just another random arrangement of particles in an impersonal cosmos.” This is the view of evolutionary materialists, who believe life is merely a chance product of time and material.

Going even further, AI will one day replace God, according to some. Dan Brown, author of the anti-Christian novel, The DaVinci Code, says:  “Humanity no longer needs God but may with the help of artificial intelligence develop a new form of collective consciousness that fulfils the role of religion. Are we naïve today to believe that the gods of the present will survive and be here in a hundred years?” But no robot has risen from the dead, so I predict that 100 years from now, Jesus Christ will still be worshiped all over the globe.

Robots may be great tools, but they are no substitute for humanity, no substitute for God, and no substitute for love.

Perhaps Allan Sherman, the singing humorist (“Hello, Muddah, Hello, Faddah”) had the best idea. In 1963, he did a song called “Automation”: “I thought automation was keen, / Till you were replaced by a ten ton machine….  / You’re a girl who’s soft, warm and sweet / But you’re only human, and that’s obsolete…./ How could I have known, when the 503 / Started to blink, it was winking at me, dear / I thought it was just some mishap, / When it sidled over and sat on my lap / But when it said ‘I love you’ and gave me a hug, dear,  / That’s when I pulled out its plug!”

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is by Pixabay.

Time For A National Debate on Socialism

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At the February 5th State of the Union address, President Trump threw down the gauntlet to Democrats by declaring, 

“America was founded on liberty and independence, and not government coercion, domination, and control. We are born free, and we will stay free. Tonight, we renew our resolve that America will never be a socialist country.” 

Needless to say, this was not well received by Democrats who have been moving the party in that direction for quite some time. However, this needed to be said as it opened the doors for a long-overdue discussion on the differences between capitalism and socialism, something that schools simply do not teach anymore. Not surprising socialism is being embraced by millennials who do not understand the difference between the two and think it is cool and politically correct to embrace it. They do not grasp the fundamental difference between the concepts of “earning” something as opposed to “free stuff” (entitlements). Whereas one promotes industrious behavior and pride in workmanship, the other promotes a dependency on others, specifically government, thereby encouraging a master/slave mentality.

I have been discussing the differences between capitalism and socialism for some time now, but it wasn’t until the president made his SOTU address that this came out. Shortly thereafter, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat-Socialist from New York, introduced her “Green New Deal” legislation. Although it is being peddled as a way to eliminate the carbon footprint from the atmosphere by 2030, it is written with grandiose statements and little specifics. It is a kluge of ideas that is really a manifesto to implement socialism in the United States.

In terms of pollution, she wants the elimination of all fossil fuels and replaced by “clean energy,” presumably electricity. This would affect not just passenger automobiles, but farm equipment, trucking, public buses, ships (both cargo and passenger), and air transportation. This obviously will affect transportation, particularly the elimination of airplanes, the production of food, and the price and shipment of goods across the country. Domestically, she wants to see high-speed rail replace air service. Further, her bill calls for ALL buildings, including existing structures, to be retrofitted to adopt new energy guidelines. The cost for this would be astronomical and require a bloated government bureaucracy to implement it.

Not surprising, there is no mention in the legislation as to how these changes are to be funded, nor what effect it will ultimately have on the environment. Basically, it is a “pie in the sky” idea to implement a social utopia that is generating enthusiasm only among environmental activists. As a piece of legislation, it is written rather primitively. Even mainstream Democrats are leery of it.

That is only a portion of the bill though. There is wording in it which truly reveals its intent to implement socialism, to wit:

“Ensuring a commercial environment where every businessperson is free from unfair competition and domination by domestic or international monopolies;”

“Providing all people of the United States with – high-quality health care; affordable, safe, and adequate housing; economic security; access to clean water, clean air, healthy and affordable food, and nature.”

“Ensuring that the Green New Deal mobilization creates high-quality union jobs that pay prevailing wages, hires local workers, offers training and advancement opportunities, and guarantees wage and benefit parity for workers affected by the transition.”

“Guaranteeing a job with a family-sustaining wage, adequate family and medical leave, paid vacations, and retirement security to all people of the United States.”

There is much more along these lines, but you get the picture. Quite frankly, what she is proposing is even larger in scope than LBJ’s massive “Great Society” legislation from the 1960’s, something we are still healing from.

Here is the point: Not only would her proposal bankrupt the nation, it would transform its very essence thereby running the country right into the ground, just as it has to other countries, most recently Venezuela. It may sound nice to naive millennials, but it would plain and simply be a disaster to the country.

Knowing this, Republicans are excited by her proposal as they see it as a key for political victory in 2020. For Democrats, it becomes a hot potato. On the one hand Democrats are cognizant Ms. Ocasio-Cortez is the darling of the main stream media and the un-official spokesperson of the party, but on the other hand, they know the Green New Deal is political poison.

All of this is going to cause people to become educated in the true nature of both capitalism and socialism which is long overdue. Whereas, the Far Left likes to characterize capitalism as evil, the reality is it very much akin to Darwin’s “Natural selection” whereby products and services evolve in order to successfully compete. It provides the individual with the ability to assume risk, work hard to succeed, and enjoy the fruits of their labor. Socialism is the opposite. In other words, nobody loses, everyone goes home with a trophy, and the state owns your ideas, inventions and innovations. This is why I say capitalism is more “natural” to mankind.

The New Green Deal is a 10 year national mobilization initiative which would transform America more than just cleaning up pollution, but changing our perspectives on work, initiative and inventiveness. Her “New Green Deal” is a clever subterfuge to distract from her real objective, social re-engineering of the United States and, to be brutally frank, it is just plain scary. The more people understand this, the more they will turn their backs on the legislation. This is why I welcome a national debate between capitalism and socialism. Ignorance of the two is going to destroy this country.

No wonder Republicans refer to Rep. Alexandria Ortega-Cortez as “The gift that keeps on giving,” as she has become the key to recapturing the House of Representatives in 2020.

Keep the Faith!

RELATED ARTICLE: Trump Says Venezuela Crisis Marks ‘Twilight Hour of Socialism’

EDITORS NOTE: This Bryce is Right column with images is republished with permission. All trademarks both marked and unmarked belong to their respective companies. The featured image

How Tech Giants Are Banning True Speech About Biological Sex

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Like a strong cocktail that promises a quick buzz, social media offers us instant gratification that can be hard to resist.

But just as alcohol disguises the smell of chemicals, social media hides the bitter poison of identity politics—a poison that increasingly dominates the content we read.

This toxic cocktail is killing our freedom to speak the truth. And sadly, some of the world’s most powerful companies are siding against freedom and truth.

Twitter’s latest move against free thought came in the form of a ban on “misgendering” and “deadnaming.” This essentially means users who use pronouns and names that align with a person’s biology rather than their professed gender identity will be punished.

This is a victory of feelings over facts. Big tech is enabling identity politics to dominate the virtual public square—and it’s even aiding its takeover of the real one, too.

Take the United Kingdom. In England, police have already used tweets to investigate and arrest citizens for referring to individuals according to their biology rather than transgender ideology. In two separate incidents, police responded to complaints against women from men who identify as women.

Police arrested Kate Scottow at home in front of her children and then held her in a jail cell for seven hours after transgender activist Anthony Halliday (aka Stephanie Hayden) accused her of “misgendering” him.

Halliday/Hayden also seemed to suggest that transgender activists ought to “[storm] into” a parish church to ask “robust questions” of a priest’s wife who has opposed transgender ideology.

View image on Twitter

Police also went after a 74-year–old woman named Margaret Nelson. The reason: She posted two statements on Twitter that didn’t accord with transgender ideology: “gender is fashionable nonsense” and “in life or in death, trans women are not women, no matter how many times you say it’s so.”

Forced to Speak Untruths

In the novel “1984,” George Orwell coined the phrase “Big Brother is watching” to refer to the government. Today, he’d have to include social media companies as enforcers.

Twitter’s ban on “misgendering” and “deadnaming” crosses a red line. Twitter users should be able to choose what pronouns and names they use for each other. When Twitter punishes users for misgendering and deadnaming, the company pressures us to speak untruths.

Princeton University professor Robert George has warned, “Ordinary authoritarians are content to forbid people from saying things they know or believe to be true. Totalitarians insist on forcing people to say things they know or believe to be untrue.”

Social media companies’ embrace of identity politics has led to biased enforcement of content standards that favors transgender activists.

In Canada, for instance, feminist journalist Meghan Murphy testified before the Canadian Senate against the notorious Bill C-16, which added “misgendering” to the human rights code and criminal code in May 2017. In August 2018, Twitter told her to delete tweets that referred to a biological man, Ryan Kreut (who self-identifies as a woman named Lisa), as a man.

Then, last November, Murphy tweeted several rhetorical questions: “How are transwomen not men? What is the difference between a man and a transwoman?” She referred to transgender activist Jonathan Yaniv according to his biology. In the past he had filed lawsuits against female beauticians who refused to give him “bikini waxes.”

Twitter classified these statements from Murphy as hateful and permanently shut down her account. Yaniv then bragged that he was personally responsible for getting Murphy banned from Twitter.

Murphy is now suing Twitter over the ban.

Companies like Twitter clearly see themselves as defending transgender individuals. But they are much more passive about enforcing “hateful conduct” policies when it comes to protecting women from transgender activists.

Trans activists frequently target Murphy and others by name, referring to them as trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs). A website called terfisaslur.comdisplays tweets like “All TERFs deserve to be shot in the head.” “All TERFS need to cease existing. Wipe them from the earth.”

Transgender activists have also targeted Kaeley Triller, co-founder of Hands Across the Aisle, a coalition of women opposed to transgender ideology, on Facebook by posting her home address and violently threatening her children.

“Ironically,” Triller says, “the least ‘safe spaces’ in the history of the world are spaces where speech is censored and dissent is punished. If people are not safe to disagree, they are not safe at all.”

Social media companies could be protecting women from the violent, graphic, and threatening content against feminists documented at terfisaslur.com, but instead, Twitter is “protecting” those who identify as transgender from the “hateful conduct” of those who simply say that we are born male and female.

The Eclipse of Women’s Rights

For a brief moment during the #MeToo movement, it seemed that women were ascending the identity politics hierarchy. But as PayPal founder Peter Thiel predicted, when conflict comes between identity groups, the solution will be brokered in a way that most benefits the left as a coalition, not any particular group.

Twitter and Facebook’s double standards are proving Thiel correct. Transgenderism is making war on feminism, and feminists are losing out.

Identity politics is poisonous to freedom. It divides Americans up by ethnicity, race, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, etc., and ranks us in a hierarchy based upon degrees of “victimization.”

This is deeply out of step with America’s founding, which championed the legal equality of each citizen based on inalienable natural rights. It is also out of step with the way most Americans developed their identities—from their families, religious communities, and civic groups.

But as our society has become more atomized, identity politics has filled the void and offered an alternative kind of social identity—albeit a toxic one.

The Marxist struggle, which originally was seen as a struggle for power between economic classes, has been recast as a struggle between social identity groups. Individual guilt, virtue, and responsibility are replaced with collective guilt, virtue, and responsibility. And because this scheme treats the group as the fundamental unit of responsibility and agency, individual freedoms become irrelevant. At worst, they are seen as tools that “oppressors” can use to exploit the “oppressed.”

We should not be surprised, then, when incidents of identity politics seem to reveal a totalitarian streak. Identity politics doesn’t just produce a grievance culture, it produces a vengeance culture—one that never ends and can never be resolved.

When students and faculty who hold unpopular views are shouted down or even physically assaulted, we are witnessing the fruit of a tree that is rotten to the core. 

Identity politics requires the jettisoning of America’s constitutional heritage. It would ultimately replace ordered liberty with a society in which freedoms are enjoyed only by those who have earned them through victimization.

Tech Giants Driving the Train

Twitter, Facebook, and Apple are among 107 major companies that have endorsed federal legislation that would make “misgendering” a punishable offense. Named the “Equality Act,” this bill is anything but.

State and local bureaucrats have already used similar laws and policies to derail the careers of people like high school teacher Peter Vlaming and professor Nicholas Meriwether at Shawnee State University because they referred to students according to biology and not gender ideology.

These laws give government control over our freedom to speak and think according to the truth. The Equality Act would extend that to all 50 states.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the great Russian writer who survived life in the Soviet gulag, once told the Nobel Prize Committee: “One word of truth shall outweigh the whole world.”

As big tech seeks to restructure both our virtual and brick-and-mortar public squares according to the frame of identity politics, now more than ever, we must fight for the freedom to use language to speak the truth.

COMMENTARY BY

Portrait of Emilie Kao

Emilie Kao

Emilie Kao is director of the Richard and Helen DeVos Center for Religion & Civil Society at The Heritage Foundation. Twitter: @EmilieTHF.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column with images is republished with permission. The featured image is by Pixabay.

Red Flag Gun Laws Turn Due Process on Its Head

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Americans should resist the trend of assumed guilt and demand elected officials end this assault on our constitutional rights.

Red flag laws have spurred quite a bit of controversy. This legislative movement seeks to create a process to remove firearms from the homes of people who are rumored to be dangerous to themselves or others. The proponents of such laws cite this as a possible way to help combat mass shootings and suicides. However, the truth is far more damning.

The 5th & 14th Amendments of the U.S. Constitution mandate that no one shall be “deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law.” Although this should be clear to anyone with a basic comprehension of English, it’s often ignored by judges and politicians. Depriving people of a constitutional right before a trial and without charges tramples on the notion of innocent until proven guilty and severely erodes the core values of justice.

Proponents of red flag laws argue due process is respected by allowing the deprived to appeal to the courts to reinstate their rights. However, this backward process would imply that the Second Amendment is a privilege, not a right. Furthermore, state agents finding cause for a warrant and subsequently seizing private property while denying access to a constitutional right seem to be a perfect setup for a kangaroo court system. There is a serious risk that citizens found guilty of nothing and charged with no crime will be paying expensive fees to petition the courts to restore what should be their constitutionally guaranteed rights. Such concerns aren’t just wild superstitions. Our nation’s history of the corrupt process of civil asset forfeiture gives ample reason to believe the aforementioned outcome is more likely than not.

If the open assault on our rights and criminal justice system wasn’t reason enough to reject red flag laws, one should note the paternalistic tone of the advocates. Proponents are selling these bills as a way to reduce suicides. But let’s take a step back and think about the core of this argument. We have authority figures claiming they need the means to deny you of your constitutional rights in order to protect you from yourself. This disturbingly authoritarian doublespeak implies that some of our elected officials believe that people can’t be trusted with their rights. This clear attempt to coax ordinary citizens into surrendering their rights should be rejected as the degradation of free society that it is.

Americans should also pay very close attention to states that have implemented these laws. In places like Maryland and Florida, success isn’t measured in lives saved. Intuitively, it’s impossible to determine how many lives were saved or if lives were ever truly at risk; thus the only practical measure of success for such a law is the number of guns seized and people denied their rights. Americans should resist the trend of assumed guilt and demand elected officials end this assault on our constitutional rights.

This article was reprinted from Intellectual Takeout.

COLUMN BY

Raheem Williams

Raheem Williams

Raheem Williams is an active economist who has worked for numerous liberty-based academic research centers and think-tanks. He received his B.A. in economics at Florida International University and his M.A. in financial economics from the University of Detroit Mercy. He is the founder of “The Policy,” a forum that promotes public policy dialogue across socio-economic levels.

RELATED ARTICLE: The Role of Mental Illness in Mass Shootings, Suicides

EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column with images is republished with permission. Image credit: U.S. Air Force Photo/Tech. Sgt. Thomas Dow

VIDEO: Fence and Sensibility

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With all of the uproar over late-term abortion, it’s easy to forget that Congress is juggling other crises — including the one on our southern border. With the clock ticking down to another government shutdown, both parties have been hunkered down, trying to cobble together an immigration bill before time runs out on Friday. Yesterday, negotiators announced that they’d finally struck a deal. But agreeing to a compromise is one thing — getting the president to support it is another.

“I can’t say I’m happy,” President Trump said this afternoon. “I can’t say I’m thrilled.” It’s no wonder. The compromise includes less than a quarter of the $5.7 billion he requested for the wall. At just $1.3 billion, the administration would have enough money for 55 miles of fencing — not the 200 it wanted. In a small concession by Democrats, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) wouldn’t have to cap the number of illegal detainees it holds. But by and large, the deal doesn’t include any meaningful immigration reform — not even to the DACA program.

“I would hope that there won’t be a shutdown,” Trump said before making it clear, “I am extremely unhappy with what the Democrats have given us.” At a rally in Texas last night, the president hinted that executive actions were still on the table to finish the other 150 miles of fencing. “Just so you know,” he told the crowd in El Paso, “we’re building the wall anyway.”

That would come as relief to the dozens of sheriffs and other law enforcement who showed up on the Hill yesterday to demand better immigration enforcement. “We are at wits end on this,” said Sheriff Thomas Hodgson. “This really is a catastrophe.” Over the weekend, two national sheriffs groups delivered letters to the House and Senate warning them that if they put a limit on detainees, most of these offenders would go out “and commit more crimes.” As for cutting ICE funding — an agenda near and dear to the likes of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) — the sheriffs warned, don’t even think about it. “They put our people at risk just to take care of their political agenda,” Hodgson argued.

Elsewhere, the deal is hardly a House Freedom Caucus dream either. Democrats aren’t being “serious” about border security Chair Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) fired back. Even after hearing about the needs from people on the ground, he points out, liberals still think they know better. “Border Patrol came in to brief the conference. They gave their top-three priorities. And the conferees have said ‘zero money for those top three priorities.’ How can you be serious about securing our border if the very people that are experts on securing it say, ‘These are our top three priorities, we need money,’ and yet they’re saying, ‘zero dollars for that?'”

When it comes to a dollar figure for the wall, Meadows said there’s plenty of room for improvement. “Honestly, when you look at 0 to 5.7, somewhere in the middle would be a $2 billion to $3 billion range,” he said. “But it’s not as much just the dollar amount. It’s the flexibility in how to spend it.”

For now, President Trump insists he’s “considering everything.” One thing he won’t have to worry about is the country’s support. CBS polling showed Americans solidly in the administration’s camp on this issue. Seventy-two percent who watched the State of the Union agreed with the president’s ideas on immigration. And fortunately, those ideas didn’t include political surrender.

For more on the debate, check out FRC’s Ken Blackwell on Fox Business last night.

Tony Perkins’ Washington Update is written with the aid of FRC senior writers.

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2018 Headlines, 2019 High Stakes

EDITORS NOTE: This FRC column with video and images is republished with permission.

Is the Party over for Dem Extremists?

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Rep. Roger Marshall (R-Kans.) isn’t the only one asking himself, “What’s happened to our nation when the president of the United States has to ask legislators to save babies from being murdered?” Overwhelming majorities of pro-choicers are just as startled as he is.

Too often over the past 46 years, the issue of abortion has been reduced to a political issue. Very little thought has gone into the coarsening of America’s collective conscience, which has brought us to this point today — where leaders not only look away, but advocate and defend infanticide. Fortunately, what we’ve seen in the last few weeks is that the hardening of our country’s heart hasn’t extended much beyond the party’s leaders and militant abortion activists.

When AUL and YouGov put the Democrats’ infanticide agenda before the public, Americans were universally horrified. Large majorities in the country already objected to third-trimester abortions (79 percent) and birth day abortions (80 percent) — but it was tough to find anyone who thought leaving newborns on a metal table to die was just another “personal decision” between a woman and her doctor. On the question of legal infanticide, 82 percent said absolutely not.

If those numbers don’t make Democrats cringe, maybe these will. Of “pro-choicers,” 77 percent agree with the Republicans’ push to protect abortion survivors. Another 66 percent percent aren’t on board with abortions in the third trimester, and 68 percent disagree with any law that destroy a baby on its due date. Throw in the taxpayer-funded part of these procedures — another piece of the Democratic platform — and the Left’s abortion agenda is a one-way ticket back to the political minority.

If you think I’m exaggerating, look at Governor Andrew Cuomo’s (D-N.Y.) most recent approval ratings. After eight years of high marks, the bottom is falling out for the man who made the disastrous decision to put New Yorkers at the tip of the pink spear. In the weeks since he led the charge to kill babies at the moment of birth, Cuomo’s favorability rating has taken a beating, dropping to 43 percent from 50 — the lowest ever recorded since he took office in 2011. He also had an almost double-digit decline in his performance ratings, with only 35 percent now agreeing that he’s doing an “excellent” or “good job.”

Contrast that with President Trump, who, after doubling down on the culture of life, is enjoying the highest approval rating (52 percent) since 2017. One man embraced the outer limits of abortion extremism. The other used his most important speech of the year to passionately reject it. You do the math.

Making matters worse for the Left, every day that a Republican walks to the floor of the House and demands a vote on the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act is a reminder of just how fanatical Democrats are. On Monday, they got another glimpse when Rep. Mark Walker (R-N.C.) took his turn asking for unanimous consent on the bill. He, like three Republicans before him, was denied. And while most liberals aren’t exactly knocking down the doors of the press to talk about their wildly controversial stance, some Democrats are saying enough for everyone.

“There is zero place for politicians to be involved in these very complicated medical decisions, and they should only be made between a woman and her doctor — period, full stop,” Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) insisted. So that’s what killing is now? A “medical decision?” Listen, if Democrats want to get the government out of the health care business, conservatives are all for it. If there’s “zero place” for Congress in medicine, then by all means — let’s do away with Obamacare, insurance regulation, health care mandates, Medicare, and Medicaid. Personal decisions shouldn’t need public funding. But that’s the hypocrisy of the Left. Democrats don’t want taxpayers to have any input in health care — they just want them to foot the bill.

To her credit, at least Gillibrand will cop to her radicalism. Others in the increasingly crowded 2020 field refuse to even talk about abortion. But they don’t have to. The Democratic platform says it all.

Tony Perkins’ Washington Update is written with the aid of FRC senior writers.

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EDITORS NOTE: This FRC column with images is republished with permission.

VIDEO: In The UK Misgendering Gets You Thrown in Jail — Coming to America?

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British citizens are being handcuffed and jailed for posting on Facebook about transsexuals. Is the same thing coming to the USA?

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EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is from Pixabay.

Fight Corporate Sexploitation Now! Watch Video of 12 American Sex Exploiters

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Watch the reveal of the 2019 Dirty Dozen List – which names 12 mainstream contributors to sexual exploitation in America.

The Furies in Congress

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In ancient Greek mythology the Furies are the three goddesses of Vengeance, Jealousy, and Anger. They are the daughters of Mother Earth Gaia and her son Father Sky Uranus.

The Furies are infamous for taking vengeance on men and punishing all crimes including breaking the rules of society by striking the offenders with madness.

The Furies in ancient mythology dispensed vigilante justice and were the “guardians of the law when the state had not yet intervened or did not exist, or when the crime was a crime of ethics and not actual law.” Here is the problem – we don’t live in ancient Greece and we are not characters in a mythological story. We live in the United States of America, the greatest experiment in liberty and individual freedom the world has ever known.

For 242 years our Constitution has been the supreme law of the land that provides the national frame of government and rules of society to guide American life. Our Founding Fathers envisioned ordered liberty based on individualism, personal responsibility, and the meritocracy. Their economic principles included property rights, free markets, and sound money.

In the last several decades the radical left has engaged in a culture war against the United States that seeks to undermine the Constitution and replace it with a “living document” that would support collectivism aka socialism.

The Furies in Congress Cortez, Tlaib, and Omar are the spawn of the radical leftist narrative that embraces liberalism’s dogmatic tenets of political correctness, moral relativism, and historical revisionism. These three women were elected by a segment of the American electorate who embrace radical leftism’s orthodoxy.

The new secular religion Leftism embraces the antisemitism of Islamic sharia law, the Marxist hatred of American capitalism, and the misandry (hatred of men) of the ancient Greek Furies. The Leftists in Washington have common cause to collapse America’s representative republic but what are they offering to replace it? This is where the Leftist alliance collapses.

The Furies are divided!

The secular radical leftists want to replace our Constitution with socialism. The sharia compliant Muslims want to replace our Constitution with religious sharia law. 

If Cortez, Tlaib, and Omar, the anti-American Furies who represent the leftist Democrat party, successfully implement their anti-American, pro-socialist, antisemitic, pro-Muslim policies what will happen in the future? There is no place for non-Muslim socialists in supremacist Islamic sharia law. The multiculturalism of the Left is pure fiction – the left is a house divided. 

The Leftists and the Islamists are too arrogant to recognize that the globalist elites are pulling their strings and using the Furies and their foolish supporters to create the social chaos necessary to make America ungovernable and to overthrow President Trump. For globalists, socialism is not the endgame – it is a stepping stone toward one world government. Socialism is the necessary transitional infrastructure required to impose an internationalized new world order that the globalist elite intend to rule under the auspices of the corrupt United Nations.

The ancient Greeks understood madness and so do the globalist elites who are doubling down and coordinating their efforts to drive the public toward madness by indoctrinating them to accept the fiction that collectivism will provide the social justice and income equality they promise. 

Only a child or someone completely out of touch with objective reality could continue to believe the disingenuous claims that socialism provides income equality. A rational adult looks at the disaster that is Venezuela.

Only a child or someone completely out of touch with objective reality could continue to believe that sharia law provides social justice. A rational adult looks at the totalitarian regimes that rule Iran and Saudi Arabia.

The Furies in Congress symbolize the effectiveness of the Leftist culture war on America. They are the goddesses of Vengeance, Jealousy, and Anger that provide the foundation for the collectivism that robs the public of its wealth, ordered liberty, and its Constitutional freedoms. Socialism is secular collectivism where the government rejects the meritocracy and has the power to rob some citizens and reward others at will. Islamism is religious totalitarianism – both are a return to feudalism where the government has complete power over its enslaved serfs.

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Photo: Facebook

The radical Left was seriously emboldened by Obama’s two terms in office. His personal assault on the Constitution continues with his seditious resistance movement, the emboldened Furies in Congress, and their aging swamp leader Nancy Pelosi. In a shocking display of female servitude during President Trump’s State of the Union address the white-clad Stepford wives of Nancy Pelosi rose up when she lifted her fingers and sat down when she lowered them.

Is this what Women’s Lib has become? Women zombies who do the bidding of a woman instead of a man?

It was a disgusting demonstration by women who apparently have lost all sense of humanity and do not recognize that late term abortion especially during or after birth is MURDER!! The leftist Dems have redefined infanticide just as they have redefined honor killings – they deny that both are murder. There is no honor in murdering infants or in murdering women who disobey men. Why would any woman in America see these pathetic lackeys as role models?

It is absolute insanity for Americans to relinquish the extraordinary freedoms guaranteed by our Constitution in exchange for the empty promises of Leftism. Free stuff is never free and freedom is not a part of supremacist Islamic sharia law. Equality rejects being a master and being a slave equally.

Equality rejects the madness of the Furies and their Congressional offerings of socialism and sharia law. Equality rejects the vigilante justice offered by radical leftist social justice warriors and sharia police.

Equality demands that America’s silent majority no longer remain silent. The majority of Americans who embrace ordered liberty and the freedoms of our Constitution must protect and defend it so that America never becomes a socialist country or an Islamic republic. 

Let freedom continue to ring!

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the Goudsmit Pundicity. The featured image is by Pixabay.