The Muslim Brotherhood Operative on Facebook’s Content Oversight Board

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PART I

When it comes to Islam, Facebook seems unable to get things right. It has made life more difficult for sober islamocritics such as Robert Spencer, censoring their content, while favoring those who attempt to deflect such criticism with charges of “racism” and “Islamophobia.”

Recently Mark Zuckerberg decided it would be a good thing – Diversity! Inclusivity! — to appoint the Yemeni journalist and political activist Tawakkol Karman to the Content Oversight Board of Facebook, a position where she will be well-placed to protect Islam and Muslims from their critics. It is not only those islamocritics who are up in arms at Karman’s appointment, but a great many Muslims are horrified as well. For Tawakkol Karman is not only a Muslim, but a fervent admirer of the Muslim Brotherhood.

To many around the world, Tawakkol Abdel-Salam Khalid Karman is known as the first Arab woman — and the second Muslim woman — to win a Nobel Prize, for Peace, in 2011. She won the prize for several reasons. First, there is her record of “activism,” which some may find underwhelming. In Yemen, she campaigned against systemic repression by the government, and demanded inquiries into corruption and other forms of social and legal injustice. In 2005, she founded an organization, Women Journalists Without Chains (WJWC), to help train women in media skills, and to promote the work of female journalists in Yemen. WJWC also produces regular reports on human rights abuses in Yemen, so far documenting more than 50 cases of attacks and what it claims are unfair sentences against newspapers and writers. In 2007, Tawakkol began organizing weekly protests in Yemen’s capitol, Sana’a, against government mismanagement. She also shows up regularly at Change Square, where she holds court inside a tent when not haranguing her followers outside.

Karman is not shy about proclaiming her own greatness. At the “Official Website of Tawakkol Karman,” you will find listed (I haven’t corrected the English) some of her Outstanding Achievements:

  • The lady of year 2011 according to the readers and subscribers of Yahoo website;
  • One of the Top 100 Global Thinkers selected by the Foreign Policy Magazine;
  • Among the most strongest 100 Arab women;
  • Awarded the Courage Award by the Embassy of United States of America, Sana’a in 2008;
  • One of the seven women who change the history for the year of 2009;
  • Member of Transparency International’s Advisory Council;
  • Member of High-Level Panel of Eminent Persons on the Post 2015 Development;
  • She granted the honorary degree of doctor of law from Alberta University-Canada

It has been suggested that the main reason she was chosen to share the 2011 Peace Prize with two other women, both from Liberia — the Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Leybah Gbowee, a “peace-and-women’s-rights-activist” – is that the Nobel Peace Prize Committee was that year under pressure to find a Muslim female recipient and Tawakkol Karman fit the bill, checking all the right boxes as a fighter “against governmental suppression” of dissent and as a “promoter of women’s rights.”

What the Nobel Peace Prize committee did not know, or did not care about, was that Karman held a senior position in Yemen’s Al-Islah Party, an affiliate of the Muslim Brotherhood known for its extremist and violent agenda. In 2013, she was a strong supporter of Mohamad Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood member who became, briefly, the President of Egypt. She wrote an article in Foreign Policy about Egypt; her title says it all: “Mohamed Morsi is the Arab World’s Nelson Mandela.”

Aside from being a senior member of the Al-Islah Party, which had strong ties to the MB, Karman also had ties to the Brotherhood’s Yemeni branch, an Islamist movement founded by Abdul Majeed Al-Zindani, a man who appears in Washington’s Specially Designated Global Terrorist list. She claims to have severed those ties to the MB in Yemen, but many wonder whether her move was merely a cosmetic exercise to deceive gullible Westerners.

The story of Tawakkol Karman’s appointment to the Content Advisory Board at Facebook is at Arab News:

Unsurprisingly, Facebook’s choice has prompted outrage on social media networks, with many worried that it will bring the Muslim Brotherhood’s ideas right into the heart of the biggest social networking company in the world.

“She has not denounced the extremist ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood,” Ghanem Nuseibeh, founder of risk consultancy Cornerstone Global Associates, told Arab News.

“On the contrary, there is everything [sic] to believe that she continues to espouse the hate speech that has been a mark of the Brotherhood in general.”

Given her prominent role in the revolution that toppled Yemen’s former leader Ali Abdullah Saleh, Karman’s Nobel Prize is not without merit, say political analysts. But they add that her advocacy of extremist causes can hardly be glossed over.

“Karman was considered a symbol of the Yemeni revolution against the rule of Saleh, but over time she has become associated with intolerance, discrimination and lack of neutrality,” Hani Nasira, a terrorism and extremism expert, told Arab News.

Soon after Karman was awarded the Nobel Prize, she was invited to Doha and [was] personally congratulated by Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, the Muslim Brotherhood leader and preacher of hate, whose fatwas call for suicide bomb attacks and who praises Hitler for “punishing” the Jews.

After conveying to her his message of “support” for the Yemeni people, Al-Qaradawi gave Karman a copy of his book, “Fiqh Al-Jihad,” as a gift.

Such easy rapport with a personality as controversial as Al-Qaradawi calls into question Karman’s political beliefs, despite her ostensible split with the Brotherhood’s Yemeni branch.

It also rings the alarm about the judgement of Facebook, a social networking behemoth that claims to be an unbiased arbiter of international political discourse.

Facebook has never been an “unbiased arbiter” when it comes to Islam. It has consistently privileged defenders of the faith, and made life difficult — by taking down posts or making them impossible to find – for islamocritics. It is not surprising that a Muslim Brotherhood admirer such as Tawakkol Karman would be appointed to Facebook’s Content Oversight Board; Facebook either does not know, or more likely does not care, about Karman’s dangerous liaisons.

“We understand that people will identify with some of our members and disagree passionately with others,” a Facebook Oversight Board spokesperson told Arab News.

“Board members were chosen to represent diverse perspectives and backgrounds that can help with addressing the most significant content decisions facing a global community.”

Would Facebook place a strong supporter of President Trump on the Content Oversight Board, to increase its diversity and inclusivity? Or a supporter of Matteo Salvini in Italy, or of Marine Le Pen in France, or of Victor Orban in Hungary? What about a supporter of Prime Minister Netanyahu? No, I didn’t think so either. They’re all, you see, “extremists.” Unlike Tawakkol Karman.

Facebook declined to respond to specific questions regarding Karman’s links to extremist groups. But clearly the platform has put its credibility on the line by bringing her on board.

Facebook “risks becoming the platform of choice for extremist Islamist ideology,” Nuseibeh, who is also chair of UK-based nonprofit Muslims Against Anti-Semitism, told Arab News.

“With Karman’s appointment, Facebook’s argument that it is an impartial platform is severely weakened. There is no guarantee that Karman will not have a direct editorial influence on what Facebook allows to be published.

“Would Facebook, for example, appoint Aung San Suu Kyi, another Nobel laureate, to arbitrate in disputes over posts related to the Rohingya atrocities in Myanmar?”

Nuseibeh added: “Karman, to much of the world, is what Aung San Suu Kyi is to the Rohingyas.”

Karman’s abrasive personality became evident during the Arab Spring protests, which began with Tunisia’s “Jasmine Revolution” in 2011 before spreading out to other Arab countries including Yemen.

Previous Yemeni protest leaders who had aligned with her called her “dictatorial,” someone who went against the consensus of peaceful movements by urging young protesters to march on in the face of imminent danger.

“She called for that march, the police brutally attacked it and 13 people died,” one protest organizer who declined to be named told Reuters in 2011.

“She didn’t apologize for it and it really upset a lot of people.”

She was willing to sacrifice her young followers – sending them on a march that previous protest leaders opposed because of the “imminent danger” posed to the marchers by the police – for no other reason than to promote herself as a protest leader. Tawakkol Karman, of course, never marched in these protests; that would have been too dangerous.

PART II

Tawakkol Karman is a supporter of Qatar, the Arab world’s staunchest supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood, and of Turkey, which under President Erdogan has become the other main promoter of the Brotherhood’s agenda..

In recent years, Karman’s utterances have tended to hew closely to the party line of her two leading patrons, Qatar and Turkey, while being reflexively critical of the actions of Saudi Arabia.

For instance, in an interview with the Saudi daily Al Riyadh in 2015, Karman praised the Arab coalition and its role in restoring the UN-backed government in Yemen.

She called it a “savior” and posed for a picture with President Abd-Rabbo Mansour Hadi, who she described as “the legitimate leader of the country.”

At that time she was supporting Saudi Arabia and UAE in the help they gave the internationally recognized government in Sana’a, led by Abd-Rabbo Mansour Hadi. But that did not last long.

A few years later, she suddenly changed her tone to accuse Saudi Arabia and the UAE of committing war crimes in Yemen, and demanded the toppling of regimes in Egypt and Bahrain.

It was no coincidence that all the four countries she denounced happened to have cut diplomatic ties with Qatar on June 5, 2017, for its refusal to abandon support for extremists.

She turned on Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, and Bahrain for the same reason: all four had cut ties to Qatar, because that state had consistently shown support for the extremist Muslim Brotherhood, whose cause was also dear to Tawakkol Karman’s heart. Had Facebook known of her passionate attachment to the MB, would they have had second thoughts about naming her to the Content Oversight Board? One likes to think so.

“Karman’s loyalty to, and association with, governments that flout all norms of democracy, such as Qatar and Turkey, deprives her of any claim to neutrality and objectivity,” Nasira said.

Her political rhetoric encourages extremism, divisiveness and shunning of those who disagree with her current loyalties.

Numerous posts on her Twitter handle and Facebook page attest to her desire to see specific Arab governments destabilized and toppled.

She has called on Bahraini, Algerian and Tunisian citizens to revolt against their governments, and accused the Egyptian army of being full of terrorists.

Again, Karman is consistent in her support of the Muslim Brotherhood. Bahrain, Algeria, and Tunisia have all come down hard on the MB, and therefore, in her view, the people of those countries must overthrow their governments, and the rulers she deems insufficiently “Islamic” in their views. The Egyptian army, which is engaged in a endless battle with MB, is described – in Karman’s customary hyperbole – as “being full of terrorists.” The Egyptian army is ruthless, all right, in its pursuit of MB members, but no one could fairly describe it as “being full of terrorists.”

“Saudi Arabia should be worried. All the Gulf countries should be scared, except for Qatar,” Karman can be heard saying in an undated video clip broadcast by Yemen TV.

The Gulf Arabs should be “worried” about what? Karman means they should be worried about popular uprisings, for according to her, except for Qatar, they have lost the support of their people. No evidence is presented for this. There have been no popular protests against the governments in Saudi Arabia (save for a small group of Shi’a, who briefly rioted eight years ago), the Emirates, Kuwait, Oman, or elsewhere among the Gulf Arab states. There have been violent protests in Qatar, however, in 2019, by the migrant workers who could no longer stand the abuse they endured from their employers, nor could they tolerate the widespread practice of employers withholding their wages. Qatar’s reputation for such mistreatment apparently doesn’t bother that Nobel-winning “rights activist” Tawakkol Karman. As long as Qatar supports the MB, its abuse of foreign workers doesn’t concern her. Besides, those discontented foreign workers in Qatar are not Arabs, and Tawakkol Karman is both an Islamist and an Arab supremacist.

Karman’s unremitting hostility towards Saudi Arabia and the UAE has made her almost a natural choice for stewardship of the Qatari-funded and Turkey-based Belqees TV station.

The consensus view of many Middle East political observers is that Karman is an Islamist activist who is firmly embedded within regional and international networks backed by Qatar and Turkey.

“Karman is an extremely divisive figure whose judgement is severely impaired by her many years of (harboring) extreme political bias,” says Nuseibeh.

As for Facebook, the company “has only one choice to make and that is to sever all ties” with Karman, he told Arab News.

“If it doesn’t, Facebook would be on the side of promoters of hate speech, extremism and anti-Semitism.”

Facebook likely had no knowledge of Tawakkol Karman’s connection to Qatar and to the Muslim Brotherhood when it offered her a position on the Content Oversight Board. It’s a company worth $600 billion, but it couldn’t spare the money or take the time to conduct due diligence on Karman before appointing her to such an important post. It might have taken a Facebook employee five minutes – no more – to conduct an online search that would have revealed the disturbing sympathies of Tawakkol Karman for the Muslim Brotherhood. The company had decided it would be a good idea to have a Muslim and, even better, a Muslim woman – More Diversity! More Inclusivity! — on the Content Oversight Board as one of Facebook’s internal censors. Karman fit the bill. And she had won a Nobel Peace Prize. Mark Zuckerberg knows that Nobel Peace Prize winners are, by common consent, among our Great and Good. Yes, I grant you, there is Arafat… That’s all Facebook knew about her – Muslim, female, Nobel winner — and that was apparently all it needed to know. Muslim, female, Nobel winner — what’s not to like?

As an unswerving supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood, Karman certainly is a promoter, as Ghanem Nuseibeh says, of “hate speech, extremism, and antisemitism.” Simply take a look at the best-known MB website, that of Hamas, which is the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, for prompt confirmation of its “hate speech, extremism, and antisemitism.” Or consider Tawakkol Karman’s warm meeting in Doha with Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, whose fatwas call for suicide bomb attacks and who praises Hitler for “punishing” the Jews.

Is that what Mark Zuckerberg wants on his Content Oversight Board? Someone who admires a man who calls for suicide bomb attacks and praises Hitler for “punishing” the Jews? Or will there be signs of sanity yet, and an invitation withdrawn, from the head office at 1 Hacker Way in Menlo Park?

COLUMN BY

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

11 More Cases in Which Responsible Gun Owners Saved Lives

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In recent weeks, several instances involving the reckless use of firearms dominated national headlines. In one case, a Georgia man tragically lost his life when armed civilians crossed the line between defensive necessity and vigilantism.

But such headlines tell only one side of the story. Every day, many law-abiding and responsible Americans use their firearms lawfully to defend their lives, liberty, and property.

In fact, as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention concluded in 2013, almost every major study on the issue has found that Americans use their firearms in lawful self-defense between 500,000 and 3 million times a year.

These instances of proper defensive gun use provide an important but often unreported counterbalance to the national conversation.

In these trying times, we must turn to the greatest document in the history of the world to promise freedom and opportunity to its citizens for guidance. Find out more now >>>

For this reason, The Daily Signal has been publishing a monthly series highlighting some of the news stories of defensive gun use that you may have missed—or that might not have made it to the national spotlight in the first place. (Read accounts from 2019 and 2020).

The lawful defensive uses of guns below represent only a small part of the many stories we found last month. You can explore more examples by using The Heritage Foundation’s Defensive Gun Use Database, an interactive map that allows users to find recent defensive gun uses from all over the country quickly and easily.

  • April 2, Wolf Creek, Oregon: A homeowner was forced to defend himself with his firearm after confronting a man who was firing guns on the homeowner’s property. The intruder—who previously had been convicted of attacking a family member with a samurai sword during an argument—threatened the homeowner. Police said the homeowner acted in lawful self-defense when he shot and killed the man.
  • April 4, Chicago, Illinois: A doorbell camera captured a homeowner’s incredible defense against two armed, masked men who brazenly tried to rob the residence in broad daylight. The video shows that when the homeowner answers the door, two would-be robbers force their way inside. A struggle ensues off-camera, and the homeowner is next seen chasing down and fighting with one of the intruders on his front lawn. When the homeowner returned inside, police said, he found the second intruder pointing a gun at his wife and children. The homeowner retrieved his own gun from a safe, then shot and killed the assailant in defense of his family.
  • April 8, Asheboro, North Carolina: A homeowner, leaving for work, discovered that two of his vehicles had been ransacked during the night. As he went back inside to alert others in the house, he heard noises inside the garage and grabbed his firearm to investigate, police said. The homeowner discovered an intruder sitting in the front seat of one of his cars. He held the burglar at gunpoint until police arrived.
  • April 11, Fredericksburg, Texas: A woman came to her fiancé’s defense by shooting and killing an intruder who had brutally assaulted him in the couple’s home, police said. The woman begged the intruder to stop as he beat her fiancé and put him in a chokehold, but to no avail. As her fiancé began to lose consciousness, the woman retrieved a handgun and fatally shot the intruder.
  • April 17, Gaffney, South Carolina: When a homeowner asked a man to leave his property, he became irate, pulled out a handgun, and threatened the homeowner. The homeowner retreated, grabbed a rifle from inside the house, and again told the man to leave. The intruder then opened fire on the homeowner and five others, including a small child, police said. He fled when the homeowner defended himself and his household with the rifle. Police later arrested and charged a suspect.
  • April 18, Fairfield, Connecticut: A homeowner, awakened by his barking dogs in the early morning, was confronted by a machete-wielding intruder. He fled when he realized the homeowner was armed, police said.
  • April 20, Sacramento, California: A robbery suspect led multiple law enforcement officers on a chase through two counties, at times driving the wrong way and endangering other motorists. The suspect eventually crashed the car and ran through a residential neighborhood. Police said he approached an elderly homeowner sitting on his back patio and the homeowner, fearing for his life, shot and wounded him.
  • April 22, Las Vegas, Nevada: Local prosecutors determined that a concealed-carry permit holder acted in lawful self-defense when he shot and killed a man who fired a gun at him. The permit holder and a woman were eating fast food in a parking lot when the man, apparently angry over a failed gun purchase earlier in the day, randomly chose to vent his frustrations on them. Police said the man began shooting at the permit holder, who hid behind a trash can and returned fire with at least 11 rounds.
  • April 24, Lexington, Kentucky: A man who was the subject of active arrest warrants for robbery and domestic violence broke into his ex-girlfriend’s home and opened fire on those inside, police said. An armed resident returned fire, killing the ex-boyfriend and ending the threat long before police could have arrived.
  • April 24, Des Arc, Arkansas: Two inmates at a county jail attacked their guards, stole their keys, and escaped. Authorities captured one inmate within minutes, but the other—in jail on capital murder charges—was on the run for more than eight hours, police said. When the escapee finally was captured, it wasn’t by law enforcement but by armed citizens who found him hiding in an abandoned car.
  • April 29, Yoder, Colorado: A couple relied on the Second Amendment to defend themselves from four armed attackers who police believe mistook the couple’s legal hemp farm for an illegal marijuana operation. Hundreds of rounds reportedly were fired in a shootout, and the four intruders eventually fled.

It’s true that gun owners sometimes overstep the lawful bounds of the Second Amendment, and the failure to act responsibly with firearms can have devastating consequences.

But it’s equally true that, for countless Americans, the lawful defensive use of firearms has been the only thing standing between them and the devastating consequences of crime.

Whether it’s a woman rescuing her fiancé from certain death, or armed citizens unexpectedly helping to end a cross-county manhunt, it’s clear that the right to keep and bear arms plays a vital role in promoting public safety and protecting individual rights.

COMMENTARY BY

Amy Swearer

Amy Swearer is a senior legal policy analyst at the Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation. Twitter: .

A Note for our Readers:

This is a critical year in the history of our country. With the country polarized and divided on a number of issues and with roughly half of the country clamoring for increased government control—over health care, socialism, increased regulations, and open borders—we must turn to America’s founding for the answers on how best to proceed into the future.

The Heritage Foundation has compiled input from more than 100 constitutional scholars and legal experts into the country’s most thorough and compelling review of the freedoms promised to us within the United States Constitution into a free digital guide called Heritage’s Guide to the Constitution.

They’re making this guide available to all readers of The Daily Signal for free today!

GET ACCESS NOW! >>

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

Tale of 2 States: New York’s COVID-19 Death Toll Far Greater Than Florida’s

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Florida and New York are states with similar population sizes, but dramatically different approaches to the COVID-19 pandemic.

New York has almost 30 times as many coronavirus-related deaths as Florida, with a heavy concentration among senior citizens, according to numbers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, gained praise in the media for his performance in press conferences if nothing else, while Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, has been heavily criticized in media reports.

When can America reopen? The National Coronavirus Recovery Commission, a project of The Heritage Foundation, is gathering America’s top thinkers together to figure that out. Learn more here>>>.

In these trying times, we must turn to the greatest document in the history of the world to promise freedom and opportunity to its citizens for guidance. Find out more now >>

New York has had about 348,000 COVID-19 cases and more than 28,000 deaths as of May 17, according to the CDC. Florida, meanwhile, had about 46,000 cases and 2,000 deaths.

The population of New York state is 19.5 million, while Florida is home to 21.5 million.

“Gov. DeSantis understands Florida and knows how to interpret data and use science to guide the state during this health care pandemic,” the governor’s communications director, Helen Aguirre Ferre, told The Daily Signal in an email. “He worked quickly to protect the vulnerable, increase testing, promote social distancing, support hospitals and protect health care workers, and prevent introduction [of the virus] from outside of the state.”

Ferre added:

When the media was howling because there were folks on the beach, Gov. DeSantis prohibited visitations to assisted living facilities and nursing homes. In addition, Gov. DeSantis prohibited nursing homes and long-term care facilities to [allow] COVID-19 patients who were discharged from hospitals to be returned to their facilities.

He established COVID-19 dedicated nursing homes. In addition, he required comprehensive screening of staff and vendors entering these long-term care facilities. Testing and contact tracing was a priority for all Florida residents in addition to providing precious PPE [personal protective equipment]. Impeding those who were fleeing from other states where there was community spread of this virus was also important.

In New York, senior Cuomo administration officials contend that the federal government was too slow to ban European flights that primarily stop at major airports in New York or New Jersey.

From January through March, about 13,000 flights came through these airports from European locations carrying about 2 million passengers, the officials told The Daily Signal on background.

New York also does more testing for the coronavirus than other states, which is one reason the recorded rates are higher, they said. Add to that, New York City has the most dense population in the United States.

New York and Florida have a similar percentage of total COVID-19 deaths among those 65 and older. Seniors made up 83% of deaths in Florida, 77% in New York.

“In general, on a statewide basis, Florida is doing much better than New York,” Norbert Michel, director of the Center for Data Analysis at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal. “Florida has much fewer deaths and deaths per capita and per 100,000 than New York; this fact holds even if you remove New York City from the state data, though the differences are much smaller.”

The high fatality rate in New York City from the coronavirus skews the statewide numbers, he said.

Florida also is doing better during the pandemic across every category of those 45 and older, as the New York death toll is 15 to 20 times higher than Florida across every category, Michel said.

“Regardless, the death rates by age are worse in New York. If New York City is the primary driver of high death totals and high death rates, then the same comparison still applies; the only thing that would change is that we would have to say New York City is doing much worse than Florida,” Michel said.

Cuomo also has faced criticism for a March decision, later reversed, to send patients back to nursing homes after they tested positive for COVID-19.

“Florida and New York had very different protections for nursing home patients,” Michel said. “The nursing home policy [in New York] was insane. The state was basically sending someone to an early grave. … If it is the case that the infection was already widespread before anyone knew about it, the state was still literally sending people back into it.”

To help free up beds in hospitals in late March, the New York state Health Department issued an order to nursing homes: “No resident shall be denied re-admission or admission to the [nursing home] solely based on a confirmed or suspected diagnosis of COVID-19.”

The Long Term Care Community Coalition in New York opposed the Cuomo policy of sending COVID-19 patients back to nursing homes.

Similarly, the American Medical Directors Association, in a March 26 statement, said: “Unsafe transfers will increase the risk of transmission in post-acute and long-term care facilities, which will ultimately only serve to increase the return flow back to hospitals, overwhelming capacity, endangering more healthcare personnel, and escalating the death rate.”

Cuomo administration officials said residents returning to nursing homes after testing positive for the virus were quarantined from other residents, following federal guidelines for them to be kept in separate facilities with different caretakers from the rest of the population. A total of 12% of the state’s fatalities were from nursing homes, a Cuomo administration official said. 

“It was one of the giant red herrings of all time,” the official told The Daily Signal. “I would take our state law over any state law that says you can discriminate [against] potentially the most feeble, at-risk, vulnerable people in our society.”

In early May, The New York Times reported that 1,600 previously undisclosed deaths occurred in New York nursing homes, bringing the total number of deaths at nursing homes to almost 5,000.

One more factor: Cuomo didn’t order the New York City subway to be sterilized on a nightly basis until early May, even though the first COVID-19 cases were reported March 1.

Another Cuomo administration official contended that new cleaning policies were in place March 3, two days after the state’s first confirmed coronavirus case.

New York is unique among U.S. cities in having a subway that operates around the clock; closing it was not an option. As more people stayed home more often, however, it was feasible to close down for nightly sterilization beginning May 5, the official said.

COVID-19 deaths in New York City total 1,403.72 per 100,000 for those ages 75 and older, according to the city’s data. The death rate drops to 560.85 per 100,000 for those 65 to 74; 171.49 for ages 45 to 64; and 18.4 for ages 18 to 44. The rate is 0 for those under 18.

Although New York City has more people living in close proximity than any other American city, specific policies played a role in the death toll for both the city and state, said Arpit Gupta, an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute who co-authored a report with recommendations for reopening New York City.

“I would point to large, dense cities in Asia such as Seoul, Taipei, Tokyo, and in Hong Kong,” Gupta told The Daily Signal. “Density is not destiny. Those cities made policy decisions that New York didn’t that have contributed to the death toll we’ve seen.”

As of May 13 in Florida, COVID-19 had claimed the lives of 53 people ages 45 to 54, or 0.24 per 100,000; 138 ages 55 to 64, or 0.64 per 100,000;  296 ages 65 to 74, or 1.4; 391 ages 75 to 84, or 1.82; and 378 ages 85 and older, or 1.8.

In New York state as of May 13,  COVID-19 had killed 1,267 people ages 45 to 54, or 6.5 per 100,000; 3,039 ages 55 to 64, or 15.6 per 100,000; 4,818 ages  65 to 74, or 24.7; 5,603 ages 75 to 84, or 29; and 5,881 ages 85 and older, or 30.2.

COLUMN BY

Fred Lucas

Fred Lucas is the White House correspondent for The Daily Signal and co-host of “The Right Side of History” podcast. Lucas is also the author of “Tainted by Suspicion: The Secret Deals and Electoral Chaos of Disputed Presidential Elections.” Send an email to Fred. Twitter: @FredLucasWH.

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Pill Pushers Exploiting COVID-19 to Promote Risky Telemedicine Abortions

A Note for our Readers:

This is a critical year in the history of our country. With the country polarized and divided on a number of issues and with roughly half of the country clamoring for increased government control—over health care, socialism, increased regulations, and open borders—we must turn to America’s founding for the answers on how best to proceed into the future.

The Heritage Foundation has compiled input from more than 100 constitutional scholars and legal experts into the country’s most thorough and compelling review of the freedoms promised to us within the United States Constitution into a free digital guide called Heritage’s Guide to the Constitution.

They’re making this guide available to all readers of The Daily Signal for free today!

GET ACCESS NOW! >>

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

Obamagate — How Obama administration apparently weaponized intel agencies for political attacks

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There is strong evidence that President Barack Obama’s administration improperly weaponized U.S. intelligence agencies in multiple and shocking ways against Donald Trump and other political enemies.

It appears the Obama administration did this in a number of ways, including: fraudulently obtaining Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants to spy on American citizens; promoting the Democratic National Committee-funded dossier assembled by former British spy Christopher Steele that was filled with lies about Trump; politicizing intelligence analysis; leaking intelligence; and spying on political opponents and journalists.

In the period when he was a presidential candidate and president-elect, Trump and his aides seemed to have been the major targets of this misuse of American intelligence for political purposes. But they were not the only targets.

It is imperative to uncover the extent of the Obama administration’s abuse of U.S. intelligence for political purposes. This must include a full list of every American unmasked from intelligence reports – Trump aides, members of Congress, and ordinary Americans – and who made these requests.

It would be irresponsible for the intelligence community and Congress to turn a blind eye to this abuse simply because it happened years ago. Wrongdoing by the Obama administration in this scandal – which President Trump has dubbed “Obamagate” – must be exposed to ensure such actions never take place again.

This week’s revelation that an astounding 39 Obama administration officials – including then-Vice President Joe Biden – made 53 requests to unmask incoming Trump National Security Adviser Michael Flynn’s name from National Security Agency phone intercepts between Election Day on Nov. 8, 2016 and Jan. 12, 2017 was a bombshell.

The stunning revelation regarding Obama administration spying on Flynn by secretly recording his conversations with the Russian ambassador to the U.S. at the time appears to confirm allegations by President Trump and his supporters of a broad effort by the Obama administration to weaponize intelligence to undermine the Trump presidency shortly before it began.

Flynn was simply carrying out his duties by making contact with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the transition period after Trump was elected president. It is perfectly routine for incoming members of a new presidential administration dealing with foreign affairs to contact foreign officials to introduce themselves before taking office.

Making this worse, the 53 unmasking requests by Obama administration officials are probably the tip of the iceberg of the Obama administration’s abuse of National Security Agency intelligence to target Trump aides.

House Intelligence Committee ranking member Devin Nunes, R-Calif. confirmed this in a Fox Business interview this week on “Lou Dobbs Tonight” when he said the Flynn unmasking scandal is “even worse than this” because “a whole lot” of other Trump associates were unmasked.

With this in mind, it is frustrating to see former Obama officials, the mainstream media and some former intelligence officials brush off the Flynn unmasking requests by claiming such requests are “normal and routine” and that all relevant rules and laws were complied with.

As a former CIA officer who helped process requests to unmask the names of U.S. citizens from National Security Agency reports, I know that unmasking requests are not normal and routine. And I believe these requests raise serious civil rights and legal issues that have not yet been addressed.

From my 25 years working in U.S. government national security jobs, I know how sensitive and rare unmasking requests are.

Names of U.S. citizens mentioned in U.S. intelligence reports – often National Security Agency communications intercepts – are redacted because under U.S. law, America’s foreign intelligence services are normally not permitted to spy on U.S. citizens.

Although senior U.S. officials are permitted to ask for the identity of a redacted name in an intelligence report (an unmasking request), such requests are unusual and the requestor must have a “need to know” the identity of the U.S. person to understand the foreign intelligence information or assess its importance.

When the request is approved, the unmasked identity is released only to the person who requested it – not to everyone who might have seen the original version of the report.

For example, during my time at the State Department from 2001-2006, Deputy Secretary Richard Armitage made about 100 demasking requests. Then-Under Secretary of State John Bolton only made 10 in four years.

Ironically, Senate Democrats made Bolton’s unmasking requests an issue during his 2005 nomination to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations by falsely claiming these requests were improper and made to intimidate people and gain political advantage.

Then-Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., said at the time that unmasking requests were “rarely requested” and made “infrequently” by “non-career political appointees such as Mr. Bolton.”

An April 14, 2005, New York Times article said this about unmasking requests in connection with the Bolton confirmation hearings: “The identities of American officials whose communications are intercepted are usually closely protected by law, and not included even in classified intelligence reports. Access to the names may be authorized by the N.S.A. only in response to special requests, and these are not common, particularly from policy makers.”

The above statements about the rarity of unmasking requests are consistent with what I witnessed during my government career. In addition, the National Security Agency tightened the rules in 2005 on unmasking because of the controversy over such requests caused by the Bolton hearing.

The Obama administration, however, appeared to weaken the unmasking rules.

The Obama administration expanded access to National Security Agency information in February 2016 and on January 12, 2017. Both changes appeared to allow larger numbers of government officials to have access to unmasked names of Americans in intelligence reporting.

Even more troubling was a major rollback by the Obama administration in rules protecting members of Congress from unmasking requests.

I know from my five years on House Intelligence Committee staff of longstanding sensitivity by lawmakers that U.S. intelligence agencies could be used by the executive branch to spy on a president’s political enemies. For this reason, until 2013 there were strict limits to keep members of Congress out of intelligence reporting and to prevent unmasking their names.

Under a policy in effect in the 1990s, unmasking requests of the names of members of Congress were extremely limited and generally had to be reported to the House and Senate Intelligence Committees.

According to the Wall Street Journal, these rules were tightened further with “a 2011 NSA directive [that] required direct communications between foreign intelligence targets and members of Congress to be destroyed, but [gave] the NSA director the authority to waive this requirement if he determines the communications contain ‘significant foreign intelligence.””

However, in 2013 the Obama administration significantly weakened rules on unmasking the names of members of Congress from intelligence reports. The requestor’s reason could now merely be “to fully understand the intelligence.”

Rules on notifying Congress also were weakened. National Security Agency officials henceforth would notify Congress when members were unmasked from intelligence reports “as appropriate” and would determine “whether and to what extent congressional notification would take place.”

The Obama administration appeared to take advantage of these rules changes in 2015 when it obtained private conversations from National Security Agency reports of U.S. lawmakers who opposed the Iran nuclear deal in meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The rule changes on unmasking the names of members of Congress have a direct bearing on the Obama administration’s unmasking of Trump aides.

Since there no longer was a prohibition on using U.S. intelligence agencies to spy on members of Congress, Obama officials probably reasoned there was nothing to prevent them from spying on members of a presidential campaign or an incoming presidential administration. This helps explain the hundreds of unmasking requests regarding Trump aides in 2016 and early 2017.

So what should happen now?

In addition to an investigation of spying on American citizens by the Obama administration, all Obama administration rule changes making it easier to unmask the names of members of Congress and ordinary Americans from intelligence reports need to be reversed immediately.

There also should be a requirement in the law restricting when U.S. officials can unmask the names of members of a presidential campaign or incoming administration from intelligence reports or otherwise spy on them. These rules should include a requirement for congressional notification if such spying is deemed necessary in the future.

Finally, I want to know why career intelligence officials cooperated with unmasking Trump campaign and transition officials at the request of the Obama administration.

Since the prohibition on spying on American citizens and keeping the names of U.S citizens out of intelligence reports are cardinal rules of the U.S. intelligence community, how could career intelligence officers agree to process hundreds of these requests? Why did none of them file complaints with their inspector general or the congressional intelligence oversight committees?

The hundreds of unmasking requests of Trump campaign and transition officials made by the Obama administration were in no way routine and necessary. I believe carrying out these unmasking requests was a huge ethical lapse by dozens – maybe hundreds – of U.S. intelligence community employees that must be addressed by the White House and the leaders of our intelligence agencies.

Originally published by Fox News

COLUMN BY

About Fred Fleitz

Fred Fleitz is President and CEO of the Center for Security Policy. He recently served as a Deputy Assistant to President Trump and Chief of Staff to National Security Adviser John Bolton. He previously worked in national security positions for 25 years with CIA, DIA, the Department of State and the House Intelligence Committee staff. Read his complete bio here. Follow Fleitz on Twitter @fredfleitz.

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

YouTube bans content that contradicts WHO on Covid-19, despite its track record of misinformation

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The policy represents a betrayal of the pioneering platform’s founding principles.

YouTubers are being silenced if they don’t agree with the United Nations on public health. As The Verdict reports:

YouTube will ban any content containing medical advice that contradicts World Health Organisation (WHO) coronavirus recommendations, according to CEO Susan Wojcicki.

Wojcicki announced the policy on CNN on Sunday. WHO is an agency of the UN, charged with overseeing global public health. The Verdict report continues:

Wojcicki said that the Google-owned video streaming platform would be “removing information that is problematic”. She told host Brian Stelter that this would include “anything that is medically unsubstantiated”.

“So people saying ‘take vitamin C; take turmeric, we’ll cure you’, those are the examples of things that would be a violation of our policy,” she said. “Anything that would go against World Health Organisation recommendations would be a violation of our policy.”

While the decision has been welcomed by many, some have accused the streaming giant of censorship.

To be clear, for American YouTubers, this kind of censorship is not a violation of their constitutional right of free speech. The First Amendment protects citizens against government censorship, and YouTube is a private platform. Were the US government to force the private owners of YouTube to continue broadcasting certain videos against their will, that would be much more a violation of the First Amendment.

While YouTube’s decision is not unconstitutional, it is unwise, exhibiting far too much deference to central authority in general and to WHO especially.

The World Health Organization is far from infallible. Its handling of information throughout the coronavirus emergency has been a long string of failures. As policy analyst Ross Marchand has recounted here on FEE last week, WHO failed to raise the alarm as the coronavirus rapidly spread through China during the crucial early period of the global crisis in January of this year. Then, as Marchand wrote:

The global bureaucracy uncritically reported that Chinese authorities had seen “no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus” on January 14, just one day after acknowledging the first case outside of China (in Thailand). WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus praised Chinese President Xi Jinping for his “political commitment” and “political leadership” despite these repeated, reprehensible attempts to keep the world in the dark about the coronavirus.

President Donald Trump recently announced that the US would cease its funding of WHO over its many coronavirus-related failures.

And it is not just American conservatives who have been critical. As FEE’s Jon Miltimore wrote:

Our World in Data, an online publication based at the University of Oxford, announced on Tuesday that it had stopped relying on World Health Organization (WHO) data for its models, citing errors and other factors.

This raises an interesting question: would YouTube censor Oxford if it posted a video on the coronavirus issue with recommendations based on data that contradicts WHO’s?

As Miltimore wrote, “Recent reports suggest US intelligence agencies relied heavily on WHO in its national assessment of the COVID-19 threat.”

This is gravely concerning because bad information leads to bad policies. This is true not only for government policy (like mayors, governors, and heads of state deciding to largely shut down the economy in their jurisdiction), but for the policies of private decision-makers like doctors, business-owners, and individuals making decisions about the health and overall lives of themselves and their families.

Indeed, WHO’s misinformation early in the crisis squandered the most precious part of the world’s prep time, which likely crippled the public’s responses and may have cost many lives.

YouTube risks compounding that tragedy by now insisting that the public’s response to the coronavirus emergency conforms even more strictly with WHO’s dubious pronouncements. Wojcicki wants to protect WHO’s recommendations from contradiction. But WHO’s recommendations are necessarily informed by WHO’s information, which has proven to be extremely suspect. Sheltering untrustworthy pronouncements risks amplifying their dangerous influence.

So, it is ironic that YouTube justifies this policy in the name of protecting the public from dangerous misinformation.

It is true that many videos contradicting official pronouncements are themselves full of medical quackery and other misleading falsehoods. But, censorship is the worst way to combat them.

For one, censorship can actually boost the perceived credibility of an untruth. Believers interpret it as validation: evidence that they are onto a truth that is feared by the powers-that-be. And they use that interpretation as a powerful selling point in their underground evangelism.

Censorship also insulates falsehoods from debunking, allowing them to circulate largely uncriticized in the dark corners of public discourse.

This makes censorship especially counterproductive because it is open-air debunking that is one of the most effective ways to counter misinformation and bad ideas. As Justice Louis Brandeis expressed in a US Supreme Court opinion, the ideal remedy for bad speech, “is more speech, not enforced silence.”

Again, YouTube has a right to set the terms of service of its own website. But the general principle applies here as well: the truth has a much better fighting chance with a proliferation of competing voices than with inquisitorial efforts to circumscribe discourse within a narrow orthodoxy.

Moreover, WHO’s track record of misinformation is not exceptional among government organizations in neither its degree of error nor in its disastrous impact. Governments and the experts they employ not only get things wrong but have frequently proven to be fundamentally wrong-headed on big questions.

To take another example in the realm of public health, it is increasingly widely recognized that the high-carb, low-fat diet recommendations, as depicted by the the USDA’s “Food Pyramid,” and successfully promoted for decades to the population by the US government and the most respected authorities on dietary science and epidemiology, was basically backward. Science journalist Gary Taub tells the whole story of bad science, corrupt influence, and obtuse orthodoxy in his book Good Calories, Bad Calories.

Again, bad information leads to bad advice which leads to bad choices. So how much illness and even death was caused by generations of Americans uncritically swallowing “official” diet advice and by Americans largely only having one choice on the “menu” of diet advice?

The more we centralize decision-making and the management of actionable information, the wider the scope of the damage caused by any single error. But if we let a thousand errors bloom along with a thousand truths, any single error will be circumscribed in its damage and more likely to be corrected through experience and counter-argument.

Champions of policies like YouTube’s like to cast the issue in simplistic terms: as a black-and-white battle between respectable experts and wild-eyed crackpots. But the issue is more complex than that.

It is just as often a matter of overweening technocrats making pronouncements on matters that are way beyond them in complexity, that involve factors that fall way outside their domain of expertise, and that drastically impact the lives of millions or even billions. For example: a few dozen epidemiologists, with limited understanding of economics and a great many other relevant disciplines, holding sway over whole economies.

It is also a matter of dissenting experts being silenced along with the actual crackpots.

And, perhaps most fundamentally, it is a matter of weakening the individual’s ability to discern between truth and falsehood, good advice and bad, by denying them the responsibility and practice of doing so in the first place—of turning self-reliant, free men and women into irresponsible wards to be led by the nose like dumb, deferential livestock by their “expert” caretakers.

That is not where we are, but that is the direction that the rigid enforcement of centralized orthodoxies tends toward.

Let’s choose a different direction. YouTube, do better. Trust your users more. Treat them like human beings with all the capacities for learning, growth, discourse, and cooperation that are the distinctive glories of being human.

After all, that is what made you great in the first place. Your very name is derived from your original faith in the individual. YouTube (a crowd-sourced, individual-driven, pluralistic platform) is what made the boob tube (centralized, institutionalized, and homogenizing broadcast television) largely obsolete. As such, you had a starring role in the internet’s democratization of information and learning.

Don’t betray that legacy. Not now. Not when we need open platforms for the free flow of information and discourse more than ever.

COLUMN BY

Dan Sanchez

Dan Sanchez is the Director of Content at the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) and the editor-in-chief of FEE.org. He co-hosts the weekly web show FEEcast, serving as the resident “explainer.” … More by Dan Sanchez.

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

Rigid Lockdowns vs. Relative Freedom: A Tale of Two Southern Governors

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How do you explain the vastly different approach to the pandemic from two red states with similarly low coronavirus impact?

In North Carolina, Gov. Roy Cooper has adopted the policy premise that anything done in the name of safety from the coronavirus trumps all other interests, including economic, religious, or other health considerations. Despite comparatively low numbers in the Tar Heel state, the ninth most populous state in the United States, and with no evidence of the healthcare system being overwhelmed, North Carolina has been in full lockdown for over a month.

It matters not if you live in the mountains or on the coast—rural or urban—all residents are required to shelter in place. Despite the crippling effect COVID-19 has had on the $25 billion tourism industry, the devastation to the small business community, and over a million job losses, “thou shalt not work” unless the good governor has deemed you “essential.”

In Mississippi, Gov. Tate Reeves has operated under an alternative premise: that medical safety is a major consideration, but so is allowing people to protest, or to fish, or to earn a living. The governor in the Magnolia State has taken a lot of heat for being slow to slam the economy shut and quick to discuss reopening it. He has also caught a lot of flak for allowing counties and cities to determine what works best in their own communities and for refusing to tell Mississippi churches how to conduct their affairs. Like North Carolina, Mississippi has relatively low numbers of COVID-19 deaths and no apparent strain on the healthcare system, despite having a very high rate of citizens with obesity, heart disease, and diabetes.

Small businesses are on life support across both states. Jobless claims have risen to historic levels in the state of the Dogwood and in the state of the Magnolia—now higher than during the financial crisis. Medical advisers in both states are giving warnings and covering all their bases at daily briefings as they stand beside their respective governors. There is no question that both governors have taken this disease seriously and offered intelligent advice about how we should protect ourselves. So, how do you explain the vastly different approach to the pandemic from two red states with similarly low coronavirus impact?

The difference is in the tone, in the language, and in the viewpoint of how best to mitigate risks and protect citizens. Cooper’s instincts are to restrict the personal freedoms of his citizens; Reeves’ instincts are to protect the personal freedoms of his. Cooper believes shutting down businesses won’t lead to shortages of food and paper products and that denying the constitutional rights of his residents won’t lead to a citizen uprising. (Note citizens are staging weekly protests at the state capital and the governor’s mansion in Raleigh.) By contrast, Reeves has moved to open retail shops, acknowledged the rights of protestors to peacefully assemble at the Capitol, and refused to accept the premise that we must choose between prudent healthcare measures and protecting our economy.

In the state of Michael Jordan, hospitals are losing revenue and laying off personnel because the governor won’t allow the treatment of non-coronavirus patients. In the state of Archie Manning, elective procedures have begun again because the governor recognizes cancer surgeries are pretty “essential” to the patient.

History will judge how these two governors, and the other 48, managed this pandemic. But as data comes in, it’s looking like the quarantines will not prevent us from getting sick. It appears we’re basically delaying the inevitable infection rate. As these long days go by, the models continue to indicate initial predictions were vastly overstated. However, the data on the destruction of our economies and on the hopes and dreams of our citizens may be far worse than ever imagined.

The American economy is the greatest in the world because of all of the interconnected and voluntary exchanges that take place every day, in every community. It remains to be seen if this economic miracle of free enterprise can survive the kind of body blows delivered by the heavy hand of government—especially by the kind of authoritarian governors who seem hellbent on taking a sledgehammer to our economies when a scalpel would have been more useful.

COLUMN BY

Jon L. Pritchett

Jon L. Pritchett is president and CEO of the Mississippi Center for Public Policy, the state’s non-partisan, free-market think tank. Prior to his work in public policy, he worked as an investment banker, executive, and entrepreneur over a 28-year career in private business.

Ed Tiryakian

Ed Tiryakian is the chief strategist and managing director of Argentum Group; a former first vice president at UBS/Paine Webber, serving on the President’s Council. Ed is starting his 10th year at Duke University as a visiting associate professor, teaching corporate finance and business economics at Duke University and is a Contributing Fellow at the Publius Institute.

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

VIDEO: Rep. Ilhan Omar’s Daughter calls American Soldiers ‘Bitches’ who are ‘killing innocent children abroad’

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As a combat veteran of the Vietnam War I have lived through this type of dangerous rhetoric. I have seen this before and it is ugly and wrong for many reasons. We Vietnam veterans were also called “baby killers” by those protesting the war. This young girl is being clearly influenced by her mother. It is a very sad and dangerous situation given that her mother is a U.S. Representative.

The following video was posted on Twitter by Isra Hirsi the daughter of Rep. Ilhan Omar.

CLICK ON THE PHOTO OF ISRA HIRSI TO WATCH:

https://twitter.com/thecjpearson/status/1261701137608163332?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1261701137608163332&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thegatewaypundit.com%2F2020%2F05%2Frep-ilhan-omars-daughter-calls-american-soldiers-bitches-killing-innocent-children-abroad-video%2F

For more articles about Rep. Ilhan Omar please CLICK HERE.

RELATED ARTICLE: Rep. Ilhan Omar’s Daughter Calls American Soldiers ‘Bitches’ Who Are ‘Killing Innocent Children Abroad’ (VIDEO)

PODCAST: What Does Facebook’s New Oversight Board Mean for Conservative Posts?

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Facebook recently announced the first 20 members of its new oversight board. The role of the board is to guide Facebook through decisions on what controversial content should be allowed to stay up or be deleted.

Michael McConnell, professor and director of the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School and a co-chair of Facebook’s oversight board, joins the podcast to discuss what the institution of the board may mean for conservatives and how he plans to work alongside the liberal members of the group.

We also cover these stories:

  • President Donald Trump is critical of Obama administration officials who “unmasked” his former national security adviser, Michael Flynn.
  • Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina is stepping down from his chairmanship of the Senate Intelligence Committee while his stock sales are investigated.
  • Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell criticizes Democrats’ $3 trillion coronavirus package.

The Daily Signal Podcast is available on Ricochet, Apple Podcasts, Pippa, Google Play, or Stitcher. All of our podcasts can be found at DailySignal.com/podcasts. If you like what you hear, please leave a review. You can also leave us a message at 202-608-6205 or write us at letters@dailysignal.com. Enjoy the show!

In these trying times, we must turn to the greatest document in the history of the world to promise freedom and opportunity to its citizens for guidance. Find out more now >>

Virginia Allen: I am joined by Michael McConnell, professor and director of the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School and a co-chair of Facebook’s new oversight board. Professor McConnell, thank you so much for being here today.

Michael McConnell: It’s a pleasure.

Allen: To begin, can you just tell us a little bit about the mission and purpose of Facebook’s oversight board and how you came to be one of the four co-chairs of the board?

McConnell: The mission and purpose is that, over the years, Facebook has become the leading platform of communication around the world. And with that have come controversies and problems: What gets posted? What comes down? And the company realized that it was not a good thing for any one entity, even itself, to be making these important free speech decisions.

What they decided to do was to create an outside board of independent-minded people with experience in free expression issues to give a second look to the decisions made by the company about content moderation.

So if you post on Facebook and Facebook decides to take your message down, then you can come to the oversight board for a second opinion on that. And Facebook has agreed that it will comply with the oversight board’s decisions.

Now, as for me, I don’t exactly know, nobody really tells you where your own name comes from, but I do teach freedom of speech and religion and press right in Facebook’s backyard at Stanford.

So I guess in Silicon Valley, when you’re talking about issues of that sort, my name would come up pretty quickly. I’m also a former federal judge, so that probably also attracted some favorable attention.

Allen: Well, we’re certainly glad to see you on the board. You have said that Facebook has one of the most influential roles to play in deciding what can and can’t be said in our culture today. That’s a little scary, but I think that you’re absolutely right.

How does Facebook saying this is or is not something that you can say on our platform threaten free speech in general?

McConnell: Facebook from the beginning has had some restrictions. It is a platform that’s supposed to be a good place for families, and so it’s had, for example, an anti-nudity policy, quite rigid anti-nudity policy from the beginning. And other issues have come up over time.

They have what they call the Facebook Community Standards, which is an elaboration of their policies and what can and can’t be expressed. It’s right on the net. You can look it up and read the Community Standards for yourselves. Many of those, though, are, as you would expect, somewhat vague and subject to different kinds of interpretation, so that leads to many controversies.

Now, as a mechanical matter, first there’s the use of AI and algorithms to find some kinds of impermissible content. … I’m not much of an empirical guy, but I think something like 80% or 90% of this is elimination of bots, which are artificially-generated posts that aren’t coming from human beings at all, and AI is pretty good at identifying bots.

But in addition to that, Facebook has three different monitoring centers around the world, each of them having about 10,000 employees who review the posts and see whether they comply with Facebook Community Standards.

Then on top of that, someone who doesn’t like the decision that Facebook has made has the right to appeal it within the company, and they would get a yes or no answer, but no explanation.

That’s where it rested or has rested up until now.

And the idea of the oversight board is to give people an opportunity to appeal these decisions to a group of independent outsiders who will take another look, make a decision, and this time actually provide an explanation or rationale in writing so that people can find out why their post was up or why it was down, and we’ll be able to evaluate whether the decisions are being made on a reasonable and a neutral, ideologically and culturally neutral, basis.

Now, the difficulty of this is that the volume is so immense, with billions of posts and hundreds of thousands of controversies.

Obviously, the oversight board, we’re all going to be working part time. We can’t begin to look at all of the appeals. So one of our tasks is going to be to figure out how best to select from that mass of possibilities the cases to focus attention on.

So we’re going to have a committee, a case selection committee, that looks at a large number of these cases quite quickly and superficially, and then identifies the ones that will have the most impact.

We could talk about the criteria for that, but the main point is that even once we’re up and running, not every dispute can go to the board, and we’re only going to be able to decide a tiny fraction of the appeals.

Allen: … [It’s] interesting to hear some of that background. I do want to ask just about how we kind of as conservatives should be viewing this board, because here at The Heritage Foundation, we’ve experienced Facebook pulling down our content over wording that they saw as objectionable, and later they did restore that content. But this is a pattern that we see with Facebook.

So with the implementation of the oversight board, are you optimistic that conservative groups and individuals will be treated impartially on the platform?

McConnell: We’ll see, but it’s my hope that this is going to be one of the major contributions of the board, is to bring a kind of ideological neutrality to these decisions.

It’s hard to know exactly what the source of all these problems has been, but you think of Facebook as a profit-making company and it responds to consumer pressure, and it just so happens in this world that the most pressure, the loudest, noisiest voices tend to be those who are advocating censorship, and often of censorship of people on the conservative side of the spectrum. And companies respond to the squeaky wheel.

It’s my hope that when an outside group that has pledged to be ideologically neutral and objective then takes a look at this—and in a more deliberative way where we don’t really care about Facebook as a company, what we care about is the charge to promote freedom of expression in a neutral way—I’m hoping that this board will have the effect, maybe not in every single case, and I’m sure no one is going to agree with all of the decisions, but overall to have a more even-handed and fair-minded and certainly more transparent system.

Allen: Yeah. Do you know how the board anticipates handling hate speech issues, for example? These are issues that can often involve pretty complicated matters. So let’s say that someone posts a cartoon that is making fun of Islam in a Muslim-majority country, how would the board deal with that?

McConnell: I can’t speak to any specific question because that’s what we’ll be deciding. Hate speech is both a real problem, on the one hand, but also an extremely slippery concept on the other. And if it’s interpreted to include merely being offensive or annoying or insulting, then freedom of speech values are really seriously compromised.

Now, you mentioned the Muhammad cartoons episode, and it is interesting that several members of the board had real-world experience with that particular controversy.

One of the co-chairs, Helle Thorning-Schmidt, who was the prime minister of Denmark when that controversy was going on, she defended the publication of those cartoons, even though part of the result of that were some deaths from people being attacked by people offended by the cartoons.

And yet, her reaction was that freedom of speech demands … the ability to publish things of that sort, even if they are offensive to some people.

There was another member of the board from the Middle East itself who publicly defended the publication of the cartoons, which was really quite an act of courage.

Allen: Yeah, absolutely. Gender identity is another controversial issue that, obviously, we see come up quite a lot in the news, with some activists arguing that using someone’s birth gender instead of their adoptive gender is hate speech. Twitter has already banned misgendering people. How do you anticipate Facebook handling this issue and similar ones?

McConnell: I don’t know. That might very well be a particular case that comes up, and I can’t anticipate how my colleagues and I will be deciding particular questions.

Allen: Yeah. … That’s very fair. We’ll wait and see.

Well, yourself and John Samples, the vice president of [the Cato Institute], are really the only known figures on the political right among the first 20 board appointees. Are you confident that your views and opinions will actually be heard?

McConnell: Well, let me tell you, I don’t intend to be sitting around as a potted plant. If my voice is not heard, I won’t be around for very long. I won’t put up with it.

Allen: I like it. Straightforward answer.

The board is internationally very diverse, and it represents countries from all over the world. And some, such as the Free Speech Alliance, have raised concerns about this, saying that the board will be unable or unwilling to embrace America’s First Amendment ideas of free speech. Is this a concern that you have?

McConnell: I think that anyone needs to be concerned, because it is true that the American understanding of freedom of speech is often more expansive than that elsewhere. But the two points about it, one is that, politics and ideology and free speech around the world are complicated.

So there are quite a few people, even on the board, and I really mean people around the world, who live under authoritarian regimes that are hostile to freedom of speech. And their politics of the dissidents may not be very similar to the politics of American conservatives, but they, in many cases, are as passionately committed to freedom of expression as any of us may be.

And we have members of the board who grew up under extremely adverse, even totalitarian, circumstances. And for them, freedom of speech is part of what they live and breathe.

The second thing about this is that these influences can both go both ways. And I understand that there are those who worry that the less libertarian notions of freedom of speech that we often see around the world will influence speech in the United States through this board. But it’s my hope that it will be the other way around, that this will be an opportunity for American free speech values to have a platform and to become more influential abroad.

Allen: Considering just that diversity among the oversight board, are you confident that the board will be able to really act and rule in unity in those situations where it really matters, on important issues around free speech?

McConnell: I don’t know. It’s really something we have to see. I see this board as an experiment rather than a panacea, and a couple of years from now, ask me that question again, and I can give you more of my reaction.

I do think that there are grounds for hope, though, because although there is a tremendous diversity of all kinds of dimensions among the members of the board, I think that they all do have in common some very serious commitment to freedom of expression within the cultures from which we all come.

And I hope and think I have reason to hope that that is going to play out and that the board will be able to work together for a world in which people can speak and also be safe.

Allen: How do you hope to influence your fellow board members to maybe more so embrace those principles or free speech for those who might just be a little bit more apprehensive to do so?

McConnell: Oh, I’ll need a little prayer for that. I have been an advocate for freedom of speech and freedom of religion my entire adult life. I have carried this message even within American academia, which is no less homogeneous than some of the environments we’ll be working in here.

I really believe that John Milton and John Stuart Mill and Thomas Jefferson had it right when they argued that the suppression of free opinion, [the] suppression of error, as John Milton would call it, is not good for human beings and for society. And if that’s right, then maybe the message will carry.

Allen: Yeah. Now, you said very clearly earlier, which I appreciated that, if your views and opinions are not really, I guess, taken seriously and upheld on the board that you wouldn’t stick around. But considering the fact that you are one of the only figures on the board that is conservative, are you at all worried about other board members trying to push you out?

McConnell: No, it never occurred to me.

Allen: OK, good. I’m glad to hear that.

I know that some conservatives are concerned that Facebook essentially has created the oversight board to be almost like a shield for themselves, so that they won’t have to necessarily take that brunt of when there is kind of questionable action taken. Do you think that there’s weight to this argument?

McConnell: Well, I don’t really care what Facebook’s motivation is. What I care about is that this is a mechanism for a second look and for contradicting Facebook when it is improperly taking material down. And that’s what really matters.

Allen: Yeah. I want to ask you one other content question. In our generation, increasingly we constantly see a lot of memes on the internet, and sometimes those memes can be quite crude. They use kind of various types of humor and content that can be offensive.

So how do you anticipate really navigating humor as a factor when you’re considering what stays up, what comes down, what’s constituted as hate speech, what’s not?

McConnell: I think it’s going to be hard. Not just humor, but satire, too, and deliberate exaggeration. … Especially in the United States, this is part of the way we communicate, through humor and satire and exaggeration. And to treat all of these things as if they were just straightforward statements of fact would just be a massive misunderstanding of the social phenomenon.

I do worry that, around the world, these things … are different norms and different understandings. And while I think that it’s essential that the same standards of freedom of speech are applied everywhere, I do think it’s important for the board to be culturally sensitive, so that something that might be understood to be a satire in the United States, a similar thing might not be understood as that elsewhere.

We need to make sure that we are as culturally literate as possible, so that we understand the meaning of these communications in the context where they occur. It’s not going to be easy.

Allen: Yeah. It’s certainly a challenge. Now, what are two or three things that you hope the board can implement over the course of the first year or so that will really empower Facebook users to feel comfortable exercising their free speech rights on the platform?

McConnell: First of all, I think it’s going to be very helpful to have some explanations of reasons. I think one of the biggest frustrations for Facebook users is that it’s been such a black box, that no one really knows why one thing is up and why something else is down. And the oversight board is going to explain the reasons for what we do.

… Whether you like the decisions or not, I just think getting reasons is going to be a big advantage.

Second thing is, I think that, at least I hope, that the board is going to be independent-minded enough to be able to take a step back from all of the kind of noise and pressure of the moment.

Social media is plagued by a kind of mass hysteria that is deeply contrary to both liberty and just to rationality. And I do hope, and I really do when I say hope, I’m very hopeful that this board is going to be able to separate itself from that and not to succumb to that.

Let’s see, a third thing? This is probably not on the immediate agenda, but something that I would like to see us do eventually is to take a look at the fact-checking process.

We will not be in a position ever to overrule fact-checking on each individual piece, but I think we might be able to, and I hope we’ll be able to, do some auditing of the fact-checking process and see how it’s going.

I think there are serious concerns that fact-checking is biased and perhaps not always as factual as it is made out to be. I think the principle of fact-checking is a very good idea, but if political bias is smuggled in in the name of fact-checking, we all are made much worse off as a result.

And we would need to look at this objectively and not just … assume that it’s so problematic, but also not assume that just because people call themselves fact-checkers, that they’re necessarily all that interested in the facts.

Allen: Professor McConnell, what would you say to conservative Facebook users who, frankly, are worried that the oversight board in the long term will mean more censorship of their content on Facebook?

McConnell: I don’t actually understand why it would. I think that the overwhelming sort of institutional drive here is going to be the opposite. That the demands for more censorship are powerful out in the world of Facebook’s customers.

I think that to have a process which is focused on deliberation is going to be a calming influence for that. I don’t see why it would be an aggravating influence. …

I also think that if people look at the records of the members of the board, not with a point of view of what is their politics, but rather from the point of view of what has been their stance on freedom of speech, that people should be reassured. Conservatives should be among those who are reassured.

I am now old enough, gray hair and all, … to remember when sort of left progressives used to be—part of their orthodoxy was to defend freedom of speech, even for people that they disagreed with. That, I think, has been going away. It’s been diminishing in power in the United States and elsewhere, but it isn’t gone. It isn’t absent. It is still a very respectable and somewhat common view.

I think that many members of this board, even if you can look at them and say, “Well, I don’t like their politics,” … are going to be standing up for freedom of speech for people that they don’t necessarily agree with.

Allen: Professor McConnell, thank you. I just really appreciate hearing your insight and your perspective. I think this is incredibly helpful, and I hope it’s a great resource for all of our listeners, so thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate it.

McConnell: Thank you for the chance.

PODCAST BY

Virginia Allen

Virginia Allen is a news producer for The Daily Signal. She is the co-host of The Daily Signal Podcast and Problematic Women. Send an email to Virginia. Twitter: @Virginia_Allen5.

A Note for our Readers:

This is a critical year in the history of our country. With the country polarized and divided on a number of issues and with roughly half of the country clamoring for increased government control—over health care, socialism, increased regulations, and open borders—we must turn to America’s founding for the answers on how best to proceed into the future.

The Heritage Foundation has compiled input from more than 100 constitutional scholars and legal experts into the country’s most thorough and compelling review of the freedoms promised to us within the United States Constitution into a free digital guide called Heritage’s Guide to the Constitution.

They’re making this guide available to all readers of The Daily Signal for free today!

GET ACCESS NOW! >>

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal podcast is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

White House Challenges Left’s Pandemic Playbook Narrative

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The White House pushed back on the media narrative that the Obama administration left behind a pandemic “playbook” for the Trump administration.

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said Friday that the playbook from the Obama administration was an insufficient packet of paper, and that the Trump administration’s own pandemic response exercise in 2019 exposed its shortcomings.

On Thursday, Dr. Rick Bright, a senior adviser at the National Institutes of Health who filed a whistleblower complaint against President Donald Trump, told a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on health that the administration should have known more about the coronavirus.

As a result, Bright said, “we were not as prepared as we should have been.”

In these trying times, we must turn to the greatest document in the history of the world to promise freedom and opportunity to its citizens for guidance. Find out more now >>

“We missed early warning signals and we forgot important pages from our pandemic playbook,” Bright said. “There will be plenty of time to identify gaps for improvement.”

Much of the mainstream media, including CNN, Politico, and PBS, ran with the narrative that the Obama administration left a pathway for the Trump administration to better handle the coronavirus.

That wasn’t the case., McEnany said during the Friday press briefing.

“Some have erroneously suggested that the Trump administration threw out the pandemic response playbook left by the Obama-Biden administration,” McEnany said, holding up documents from the podium. “What the critics fail to note, however, is that this thin packet of paper was replaced by two detailed, robust pandemic response reports commissioned by the Trump administration.”

“In 2018, the Trump administration issued our pandemic crisis action plan,” she said, adding:

Further, from August 13th to the 16th, the Trump administration conducted the Crimson Contagion 2019 Functional Exercise. This was a pandemic simulation to test the nation’s ability to respond to a large-scale outbreak.

In January of 2020, [the Department of Health and Human Services] issued the Crimson Contagion 2019 Functional Exercise after-action report. This exercise exposed the shortcomings in legacy planning documents, which informed President Trump’s coronavirus response.

COLUMN BY

Fred Lucas

Fred Lucas is the White House correspondent for The Daily Signal and co-host of “The Right Side of History” podcast. Lucas is also the author of “Tainted by Suspicion: The Secret Deals and Electoral Chaos of Disputed Presidential Elections.” Send an email to Fred. Twitter: @FredLucasWH.

RELATED ARTICLES:

‘Operation Warp Speed’ Seeks COVID-19 Vaccine by January

This Nonprofit Empowers African American Community During COVID-19

Failures of an Influential COVID-19 Model Used to Justify Lockdowns

Feed the Heroes Delivers a Hot Meal to DC’s Hospital Workers, First Responders

RELATED VIDEO: Hopkins: Britain, Boris and Lethal Socialized Healthcare.

A Note for our Readers:

This is a critical year in the history of our country. With the country polarized and divided on a number of issues and with roughly half of the country clamoring for increased government control—over health care, socialism, increased regulations, and open borders—we must turn to America’s founding for the answers on how best to proceed into the future.

The Heritage Foundation has compiled input from more than 100 constitutional scholars and legal experts into the country’s most thorough and compelling review of the freedoms promised to us within the United States Constitution into a free digital guide called Heritage’s Guide to the Constitution.

They’re making this guide available to all readers of The Daily Signal for free today!

GET ACCESS NOW! >>

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

Unfit To Print Episode 52: Biden Busted In Flynn Unmasking Scandal

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RELATED ARTICLES:

‘Grossly Incompetent’: Trump Fires Back At Obama’s Criticism Of Leadership During Coronavirus

Republican Strategist Explains What Trump Should Do About Obamagate And China

EXCLUSIVE: Don Jr. Reacts To ‘Hollywood’ Howard Stern Takedown

These Are The Republicans Who Want To Continue Spending After The US Debt Passes $25 Trillion

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller video is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

California Begins Handouts to Illegal Aliens on Monday, May 17, 2020

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I guess you can argue that California does that all the time, but this is a new monetary handout due to the Chinese virus.

Thanks to reader Nancy for sending me the news.

Some of the usual ‘religious’ nonprofits will be responsible for passing out the payola.

From Cal Matters:

Financial help for California’s undocumented immigrants starts Monday

California’s undocumented immigrants can begin applying Monday for disaster relief payments of up to $1,000 per household under Gov. Gavin Newsom’s coronavirus emergency assistance plan.

Since the announcement was made, many undocumented immigrants have been waiting for information to apply as soon as the application period opened. In April, Newsom announced a one-time, $75-million fund for undocumented adults who are not eligible for other forms of government assistance, such an unemployment benefits and federal stimulus checks. A qualifying undocumented adult can receive $500, with a maximum of $1,000 per household.

California has more than two million undocumented immigrants. Nearly one in ten workers is undocumented.

With the funds spread among so many people, most families will not receive the funding. Applications are approved on a first-come, first-served basis, until the money runs out.

“In the best case scenario, these funds would reach one in 10 people,” said Unai Montes-Irueste, director of communications with United Ways of California.

[….]

Montes-Irueste of United Ways of California — which has helped undocumented immigrants without bank accounts during the pandemic — said it is important for people to know where to get help and avoid being scammed.

Called the Disaster Relief Assistance for Immigrants Project, the $75 million in state funding will be distributed to 12 organizations throughout California.

More here.

See the list of who is passing out the taxpayer dollars. Catholic Charities and Jewish Family Services are on the list.  I’m guessing they get to keep a cut for their ‘administrative’ costs.

Update!  Don’t miss Montgomery County, MD being sued for handing out money to illegal aliens.

EDITORS NOTE: This Frauds, Crooks and Criminals column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Pipes vs. Pipes in the New York Times

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In the past, Daniel Pipes has been scrupulously strict in being “policy agnostic”, avoiding any action-oriented prescriptions to achieve his prescribed “Israeli Victory”; yet in his NYT piece, he robustly negates specific measures—such as annexation—to achieve precisely that goal  

A week ago, as per the Cabinet’s proposal, the Knesset passed by a decisive two-thirds majority the Golan Heights law. Now you are once again priding yourselves on punishing Israel…What kind of talk is this, ”punishing Israel?” Are we a vassal state of yours? Are we a banana republic? Are we 14-year-olds who, if we misbehave, we get our wrists slapped? Let me tell you whom this Cabinet comprises. It is composed of people whose lives were marked by resistance, fighting and suffering…You will not frighten us with punishments. He who threatens us will find us deaf to his threats…You have no right to “punish” Israel – and I protest at the very use of this term. – Prime Minister Menachem Begin’s statement to the United States Ambassador, Samuel W. Lewis, rebutting US threats to punish Israel for extending Israeli law—and effectively its sovereignty– to the Golan Heights, December 21, 1981.

What matters is not what the goyim say, but what the Jews do —David Ben Gurion, Israel’s first Prime Minister (1886 – 1973).

Present opportunities are not to be neglected; they rarely visit us twice–Voltaire, French writer & philosopher (1694 –1778).

A little over a week ago, Daniel Pipes, President of the Middle East Forum, set the cat well and truly among the pigeons.

Pipes’s puzzling and perturbing publication

Pipes, the initiator of the commendable initiative, known as the Israel Victory Project  (IVP), published a New York Times opinion piece, entitled, Annexing the West Bank Would Hurt Israel, which many saw as cutting sharply against the grain of the very principles at the heart of that initiative.

It is not difficult to understand the flurry of consternation that the article aroused—not only regarding its content but also as to its medium of publication.

After all, one assumes that the lion’s share of the readership of the stridently anti-Israel NYT is hardly in need of persuasion against any annexation by Israel of territory in Judea-Samaria. Indeed, one might be well excused for thinking that had Pipes, a longstanding supporter of Israel, penned a piece forcefully endorsing Israeli annexation, the paper would have been unlikely to run it.

Thus, it was anything but surprising that the NYT editors seized on his article to denigrate Israel and publish an accompanying photo—entirely unrelated to the content—showing a bleeding and prostrate Palestinian “demonstrator”, allegedly injured in a protest against the pernicious Israeli “settlements”.

Accordingly, it would appear that if Pipes’s goal was to dissuade the public from pushing for such annexation, he could have undoubtedly found a more appropriate and less superfluous vehicle with which to do so.

Countermanding the components for Victory

I have long been an ardent supporter of much of Pipes’s work in general and of his IVP project in particular, which I have described as an “enterprise that has the potential to be a positive paradigmatic game-changer [regarding] the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

Indeed, the far-reaching importance that I ascribe the IVP is reflected in the fact that I have devoted five INTO THE FRAY columns to it: The Israel Victory Caucus Kudos and Caveats; The Congressional Israel Victory Caucus – Actionable alternatives; Precursor for victory – A diplomatic “Iron-Dome”; Why Palestinian statehood obviates Israeli victory; and Israel Victory Initiative – Quo vadis?

Pipes engaged with two detailed responses –Achieving Israeli victory with Martin Sherman; and Could a Palestinian state be acceptable…eventually?—addressing the points I raised in them.

In the final analysis, the greatest contribution of the IVP is that it changes the frame of reference for the debate on the “Palestinian” issue, by recognizing the futility and foolishness of conventional wisdom, which advocates a process of ongoing concessions to, and appeasement of, the Palestinian-side as a sine qua non for the resolution of the conflict.

Instead, it calls openly for the need to break the collective will of the Palestinian-Arabs to continue their struggle against Israel, even explicitly endorsing the use of harsh coercive measures to do so, if necessary. Accordingly, anything that fosters the Palestinians’ perspective that Israel can be compelled to bow to their wishes, would appear to countermand the very essence of the IVP.

Five plus one…

In his NYT article Pipes declares: “I strongly oppose Israel annexing any of the West Bank, and I do so for six main reasons”.

Five of these relate to the risk of riling both friend and foe—the Trump administration, the Democrats, the EU, the Israeli Left, and the Arabs. The sixth relates to the exacerbation of the demographic threat, potentially entailed in including large numbers of additional Arabs residents in the permanent population of Israel-if Israeli sovereignty was extended to include the areas of Judea-Samaria in which they live.

Thus, Pipes counsels: “Don’t toy with Mr. Trump’s temper, don’t infuriate Democrats and Europeans, don’t alienate Arab leaders, don’t inflame Palestinians, don’t radicalize the Israeli Left, and don’t add Palestinian citizens to Israel.”

Let me begin at the end – with Pipes demographic concerns.

Of course, the extent of this “danger” is highly dependent on the territories envisaged as having sovereignty extended over them. Clearly, if this is confined to the sparsely populated Jordan Valley and the Jewish settlements beyond the 1967 Green-Line, then, the additional Arab population entailed is minimal.

However, Pipes does not confine his disapproval of annexation to the densely populated areas of Judea-Samaria, but opposes annexing any territory beyond the 1967 Green Line, leaving us to speculate why he should be so categorical in this regard.

Dealing with demography…or not?

However, as I myself have long warned of the perils of partial annexation for reasons other than demography, I must address the danger inherent in annexation in a wider format.

Unlike many of my fellow advocates of extending Israeli sovereignty over all of Judea-Samaria, I am indeed gravely concerned at the implications of permanently including a large Arab-Muslim population within the frontiers of a sovereign Jewish nation-state. I am not reassured by prevailing favorable trends in fertility rates, which show Jewish rates closing in on, and even outstripping those of the Arabs—since even a sizeable minority will make Israel untenable as a Jewish nation state.

It is for this reason, I have—for the last two decades—been advocating the launching of a large-scale initiative for the incentivized emigration (evacuation-compensation) of the Arab population of Judea-Samaria and Gaza. Not only is this “Humanitarian Paradigm” the only “non-kinetic” policy blueprint that allows Israel to address both its geographic and demographic imperatives for it to endure as the nation-state of the Jewish people, but it can be shown to be the most humane of all options if it succeeds, and the least inhumane, if it does not. 

Sadly, however, despite ample documented evidence—both statistical and anecdotal—of a widespread desire among Palestinian-Arabs to seek better and more secure lives elsewhere, Pipes has been loath to consider this policy option, asserting that “Sherman’s ‘funded emigration paradigm’ cannot be central to the Israel Victory Project”.

So, in principle, Pipes eschews annexing even sparsely populated areas that would not really exacerbate the demographic burden, on the one hand, and eschews adoption of policy prescriptions that would address the demographic burden if more densely populated areas were annexed, on the other.

Sadly, such timidity hardly seems to resonate well with the call to impose recognition of defeat on the Palestinian-Arabs.

Should disapproval prevent pursuit of national interests?

As for Pipes’s five remaining reservations, these can all be summarized as implying that potential disapproval from allies and/or antagonists is a sufficient impediment to preclude the pursuit of national interest—even when there is broad national consensus on such pursuit.

Paradoxically, Pipes’s dire warning as to the grave consequences of annexation closely echo—even outdo– those of the most vehement opponents of his Israeli Victory paradigm.

Indeed, in a short BESA paper, entitled The Jordan Valley Annexation Dilemma: A Realistic Approach, Col (res.) Dr. Raphael Bouchnik-Chen, formerly a senior analyst in the IDF’s Military Intelligence dismisses the merits of these warnings, writing:  “Similar warnings were aired by think tanks and left wing politicians with respect to previous Israeli initiatives, such as applying Israeli sovereignty to the Golan Heights (1981), uniting Jerusalem (1967), and even declaring Jerusalem the capital of Israel (1949) and moving the government’s ministries to Jerusalem (1951)”, adding: “As David Ben-Gurion said in 1955, ‘Our future doesn’t depend on what the Gentiles will say, but on what the Jews will do.’”

With regard to the Jordan Valley (and secure access routes to and from it) there is broad political and public consensus as to its crucial importance for Israel’s defense. In fact, in the current Knesset, there would probably be a majority of around 70 (out of 120) supporting a decision to annex/extend Israeli sovereignty over it—greater than that which supported the 1981Golan Heights Law.

Unfounded fears

It should be recalled that the passage of that law was accompanied by harsh threats of punitive action by the US administration, far less favorably disposed to Israel than the present one.  These were gruffly rebuffed by then-PM Menachem Begin (see introductory excerpts), without resulting in any lasting damage to Israel. Today, Israeli control over the Golan is largely taken as an immutable given by the vast majority of the population. Indeed, this is reflected in the party platform of the self-professed “centrist”—and viscerally anti-Netanyahu—Yesh Atid, which proclaims that it “strongly opposes any negotiations regarding the Golan Heights which is an inseparable part of the State of Israel.”

In fact, every time an assertive decision has been taken, whether by Israel itself, or by one of its allies (such as the Trump administration’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, its moving of the US embassy to the city, and its recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan), it has been greeted with howls of protests and salvos of threats as to imminent conflagrations that will set the Mid-East and beyond ablaze   because of it. As a general rule, they have all proven unfounded.

Moreover, with regard to Pipes’s concern over any irate reaction from Trump to annexation, there appears little room for alarm.

“Annexation is an Israeli decision…

Thus, Al Jazeera recently reported that the US State Department declared “…we have made consistently clear, we are prepared to recognise Israeli actions to extend Israeli sovereignty and the application of Israeli law to areas of the West Bank that the vision foresees as being part of the State of Israel…”.

This was in no way a one-time expression of this explicit message. Indeed, it echoed precisely the same sentiment articulated by US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo: “As for the annexation of the West Bank, the Israelis will ultimately make those decisions…That’s an Israeli decision.”

He reiterated this sentiment on his visit last week to Israel, asserting: “…in the end – this [annexation] is an Israeli decision. They [Israel’s leaders] will have both the right and the duty to make a decision on how they intend to do it.”

Earlier, the US envoy to Israel, Amb. David Friedman, assured Israel that the United States is ready to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Jordan Valley and Israeli settlement in Judea and Samaria in the coming weeks. He stressed that the key element in applying Israeli law to these areas is that Israel must be the one to make the move. He pointed out it not the US that is declaring sovereignty but the Israeli government. Once it does, the US would be ready to recognize it.

Cold political calculus–The Evangelical & Visegrad factors

But perhaps the most compelling reason for haste in annexing territory is not supportive statements from Administration officials, but cold political calculus.

Clearly if Trump is unseated in the November presidential elections, there is almost certain to be a sea-change in US support for annexation by Israel, as envisioned in the Trump plan.

But even if he wins, the rationale for pre-election annexation remains strong.

After all, Trump’s reelection is heavily dependent on the support of the Evangelical community in the US, who are enthusiastic supporters of Israel and strongly favor annexation. Accordingly, even if Trump were angered by Israeli unilateralism, as Pipes suggests, he would be far more constrained in any punitive measures against Israel prior to the election, than he would after them—when their support would no longer be relevant for reelection.

An additional factor, militating in favor of prompt annexation, is the EU and its current decision-making process, which with few exceptions require that decisions be made by unanimous consensus. Thus, as several of the Visegrad EU members (such as Hungary and the Czech Republic) are likely to veto imposition of sanctions, the imminent prospect of such measures is currently very remote. However, there are ongoing discussions to change the requirement of unanimity for several measures including the imposition sanctions, to a system of qualified majority voting. Accordingly, it would seem that it would be in Israel’s interest to act before such a change can come about.

True, there are talks on finding some areas, in which to punish Israel that do not require consensus, such as excluding it from a series of funding and cooperation projects on education and science, but the damages such moves might exact are hardly equivalent to the benefits of winning sovereignty over the Jordan Valley. Likewise, such projects are more than likely to suffer from exclusion of Israel, and of any Israeli contribution to them, which may well work against the adoption—and certainly, the extended enforcement—of such measures.

The Sunni states & perception of Israeli strength

Pipes’s worry of damage to the quasi-covert ties with the Sunni states in the Arabian Peninsula seems similarly misplaced—or at least overstated. Indeed, there is ample evidence of increasingly sour relations between Saudi Arabia(see here, here, here, & here) and other Gulf states (see here & here). But the growing view of the Palestinian-Arabs as a failed, dysfunctional entity is only one element in the emerging rapprochement between these states and Israel. The other is the fear of Shi’ite Iran, its military prowess, and in particular, its nuclear program,. So, it is both the growing disaffection with the Palestinians, and the common threat from Tehran that is driving this nascent alliance. Nothing could undermine the Sunni view of Israel as an ally of value more than the perception of it being forced to bow to the Palestinians’ will and to back away from the pursuit of its own security.

As for Pipes’s concern over the adverse effects that annexation may have on the stability of its Eastern neighbor, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, it is difficult to conceive of anything that would destabilize that country more than an irredentist statelet abutting its western frontier. And although it is true that Israel’s long term strategists should relate to the Hashemite dynasty as having a “limited shelf-life”, nothing is likely to make the prospect of such a statelet more remote than the extension of Israeli sovereignty to the Jordan Valley—which would indeed probably obviate its establishment permanently.

Losing the Left?

Pipes frets that annexation will “alienate Israel’s Left, … lead … to a vicious political battle and probably to a contingent of Israeli Zionists turning anti-Zionist, with some Israelis leaving the country in disgust”. In many ways, this is an extraordinary contention to raise.

It is especially so from someone like Pipes, who has explicitly suggested inflicting far harsher coercive measures on the Palestinian-Arabs. Indeed, he has explicitly condoned “dismantle[ing] the PA’s security infrastructure,” prescribing: “ Should violence continue, reduce and then shut off the water and electricity that Israel supplies. In the case of gunfire, mortar shelling, and rockets, occupy and control the areas from which these originate.”

These are hardly measures that would win endearment of those whom Pipes fears alienating…

Moreover, it seems to imply that any minority can hold the majority ransom by getting in a huff and threatening to disengage. This is little more than advocation capitulation to the tyranny of the minority –and in this case, a tiny minority. Indeed, after almost three decades of being proved disastrously wrong, the Oslowian Israeli Left (Labor & Meretz) comprise a mere 5% of the current Knesset—with polls predicting even less for the future. Significantly, Labor, the party, which wrought Oslo upon the people, and was  once the hegemonic force in the country, has all but been obliterated from the political arena.

One wonders, therefore, why Pipes displays so much caring sensitivity for such a marginalized and mistaken minority.

But “minority tyranny” aside, it is telling that Pipes implies there is an “asymmetry of allegiance” to Israel and Zionism between Left and Right. After all, when the Government of Israel imposed a policy, which the Right in Israel opposed fiercely—abandoning flourishing communities, laying waste to years of creative and industrious Zionist endeavor, disinterring Jewish graves and effectively exiling thousands of dedicated citizens—no-one threatened that Right-wing Israelis would “leave the country in disgust”. Not even when all the trauma and tragedy they predicted came about!

Disaffected Democrats

Pipes cautions: “…annexation would alienate and weaken Israel’s diminishing number of friends in the Democratic Party”. He may well be right (i.e. correct) but if Israel can only retain the support of Democrats by allowing them to dictate policy, and by compelling it to forgo the pursuit of its national interests—as it perceives them—one might well ask what the point is of that support.

Indeed, it would be intriguing to learn what Victory-compliant instruments of policy Pipes prescribes for Israel to avoid disaffecting the likes of Reps. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib and the other members of the notorious “Squad”, who seem to dominate large swathes of the party today.

After all, the point is not to acquire support by subordinating one’s own policy to the ill-will of others, but to acquire that support by persuading others of its merits.

It is here that Israel has been hopelessly remiss in presenting its case to the world in general, and to the American public and polity, in particular. After all, one of the most perverse political paradoxes that prevails today is why anyone professing to subscribe to liberal democratic values—as does the Democratic Party—support the establishment of yet another homophobic, misogynistic Muslim majority tyranny, which is what a future Palestinian state would certainly be. Indeed, no two-stater, however avid, has ever presented a persuasive claim why it would be anything else.

So perhaps the thrust of Israel’s endeavor to acquire/prevent losing support among members of Democratic Party is to convince them —and their constituencies—that by opposing annexation and endorsing Palestinian statehood they are in fact touting tyranny—and undercutting all the values they purport to espouse.

Pipes vs. Pipes?

Pipes’s NYT piece—and his strident opposition to annexation—are a conundrum-both substantively and methodologically.

Substantively, because it is hard to conceive of any single measure that would bring home to the Palestinian-Arabs that they have lost—and that the goal they have been aspiring to for decades has been irretrievably eliminated. Indeed, it difficult to think of an initiative that Pipes should endorse more heartily.

Methodologically, the conundrum is even more perplexing. After all, Pipes has been assiduously strict in being “policy agnostic”, avoiding action-oriented prescription to achieve victory—at least as far as the US-based component of the initiative is concerned. Indeed, when pressed to operationalize his formula for Israeli victory, he retorted: “…my goal is to change the foundation of U.S. policy, not to work out Israeli tactics…”, adding “I am an American foreign policy analyst, not an Israeli colonel”.

Yet despite this, while eschewing endorsement of any specific Israeli action, Pipes takes a very robust stance in negating specific courses of action —annexation and incentivized Arab emigration—designed to achieve his  prescribed victory, leaving his readers somewhat baffled as to why…

In conclusion, it was Pipes who astutely pointed out that: “the fact that [Palestinian] identity is of such recent and expedient origins suggests that [it] is superficially rooted and that it could eventually come to an end, perhaps as quickly as it got started.”

Perhaps the surest way to bring about that end is significant annexation of territory in Judea-Samaria—and with it, the achievement of Israeli Victory.

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‘AUDACITY OF GROPE’: FLASHBACK: Here’s Jon Stewart Making Fun Of Biden For Sniffing Girls

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Former Comedy Central host Jon Stewart once did a segment poking fun at then-Vice President Joe Biden for his propensity to uncomfortably touch and sniff women.

The February 2015 segment on “The Daily Show” featured Stewart, along with then-Daily Show “Senior White House Correspondent” Samantha Bee, cracking jokes in between footage of Biden’s many awkward public appearances with members of the opposite sex.

Introducing the segment as “Joe Biden: You Only Have One F#@King Job!”, the former Comedy Central host jokingly told Biden that his mission as vice president is a “simple” one, “You show up!”

“We’ve already seen, that remorse about lady touching is the one thing Joe Biden will not feel,” he quipped.

After playing footage of several odd encounters, Stewart pretended to put soap in his eyes to wash out the image of Biden putting his head uncomfortably close to a young girl.

“Aaaaah! I can still see it! Aaaaah!” he panned. “What could you possibly be saying to her?”

Stewart called it a “Senate right of passage” for “Delaware Joe” to feel “up one immediate member of your family” before giving Biden credit for being “good on women’s issues in general.”

“It’s the moments with actual women he seems to have a problem with,” he said.

Later in the segment, Stewart switched to Bee, who pretended to come “from a one on one interview with Vice President Biden.”

The Hill’s Joe Concha pointed out that virtually no comedian would “dream of doing this now.”

RELATED ARTICLE: Protester Screams At Joe Biden: ‘Answer For The Women And Children You Groped!

List of Flynn ‘unmaskers’ – here’s what happened and what it means

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Originally published by Fox News

The list released Wednesday by acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell of top Obama officials who asked to “unmask” former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn’s name from NSA reporting is the latest bombshell in the story of how the Obama administration weaponized intelligence to undermine and destroy the incoming Trump administration.

But it also suggests this conspiracy began earlier and was much broader than previously believed.

By releasing this list, Grenell did a great service to his country to protect the principle of the peaceful transfer of power. But the intelligence community needs to release much more information to get to the bottom of this conspiracy. This should include information on the content of the NSA reports and which officials made unmasking requests of them.

Intelligence officials also need to provide a broader list of all unmasking requests made by senior Obama officials during this time period because it is likely that other Trump campaign and transition officials also were targeted.

Names of U.S. citizens mentioned in U.S. intelligence reports, often NSA communications intercepts, are blacked out (minimized) because, under U.S. law, America’s foreign intelligence services are normally not permitted to spy on U.S. citizens. Although senior U.S. officials are permitted to ask for the identity of a blacked-out name in an intelligence report (an unmasking request), such requests are unusual and the requestor must have a “need to know” the identity of the U.S. person to understand the foreign intelligence information or assess its importance.

When the request is approved, the unmasked identity is released only to the person who requested it, not to everyone who might have seen the original version of the report.

For example, during my time at the State Department from 2001-2006, Deputy Secretary Richard Armitage made about 100 demasking requests. Then-Under Secretary of State John Bolton only made 10.

The list released today is of 39 top Obama officials who made 53 requests to unmask Lt. Gen. Flynn’s name from intelligence reports between election day (Nov. 8, 2016) and Jan. 31, 2017.  While many of the requesters were Obama political appointees who resigned by Jan. 20, 2017, some were career officers at CIA, the Pentagon and other agencies.

The most stunning thing about this list is that the vast majority of these requests were dated between Dec. 14 and 16, which was before Flynn’s Dec. 29 phone call to Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. An NSA intercept of this phone call was the basis of the Jan. 24, 2017, FBI interview with Flynn when two FBI agents used this intercept to entrap Flynn into lying about the call.

FBI Director James Comey broke protocol by not informing White House lawyers that he planned to send FBI agents to meet with Flynn. The FBI agents discouraged Flynn from having a lawyer present and didn’t read him anything like the Miranda warning.

Flynn was targeted for unmasking at least two weeks before the Dec. 29 phone call. …  This may indicate Flynn and other Trump transition officials were being targeted for unmasking as part of a fishing expedition to find dirt on them to undermine Trump’s presidency.

Flynn did not make any phone calls during this period to Kisylak until Dec. 22, 2016. He did meet with Kislyak on Dec. 1 at Trump Tower in New York. This may mean the unmasked mid-December intelligence that mentioned Flynn could have been a phone conversation by Kislyak with someone else. It also could have involved some matter involving Flynn, possibly with another country.

This means Flynn was targeted for unmasking at least two weeks before the Dec. 29 phone call and the vast majority of these unmasking requests did not include intercepted conversations of Flynn having allegedly inappropriate conversations with Kislyak. This may indicate Flynn and other Trump transition officials were being targeted for unmasking as part of a fishing expedition to find dirt on them to undermine Trump’s presidency.

In addition, there were only seven unmasking requests by seven officials after the Dec. 29 Flynn-Kislyak phone call – by Vice President Biden, then Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, Obama Chief of Staff Denis McDonough and other career officials. Since the information in this intercept leaked to the press, these seven officials are suspects for this criminal act.

Other significant observations: U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power made the most unmasking requests for Flynn’s name – seven. Clapper made three. No one else made more than two.  Power, who reportedly made an astounding 260 demasking requests during her time as U.N. ambassador, testified in 2017 that most of these requests were made in her name but she did not request this information. I believe Power and assume someone at the NSC, who was not authorized access to demasking information, made these requests in her name. The intelligence community needs to disclose who this person was.

Also interesting is the cluster of requests to demask Flynn’s name by Biden and others between Jan. 7 and Jan. 12, 2017, and the timing of these requests.

On Jan. 5, Biden, Comey, Clapper, CIA Director John Brennan, National Security Adviser Susan Rice and Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates met with Obama. In the meeting, Obama appeared to direct these officials to withhold Russia-related intelligence from the incoming Trump administration.

The next day, President-elect Trump received a misleading and incomplete briefing on the fraudulent Steele Dossier and Russian meddling in the 2016 election by Clapper, Comey, Brennan, and NSA Director Mike Rogers.

Over the next few days, there were seven high-level requests for Flynn’s name to be unmasked from NSA reporting. My guess is that this was not a coincidence and that a single intelligence official or NSC staff member suggested that these senior officials ask to see this information as part of a larger effort to target Flynn. The intelligence report in question probably concerned Flynn’s Dec. 29 phone call with Kislyak and would be used to entrap Flynn by the FBI on Jan. 24.

The lists of requesters to unmask Flynn’s name from intelligence reports after the 2016 election is not a smoking gun, but it does strongly suggest some coordinated effort by senior Obama officials to get target Flynn and undermine the incoming Trump administration.

COLUMN BY

About Fred Fleitz

Fred Fleitz is President and CEO of the Center for Security Policy. He recently served as a Deputy Assistant to President Trump and Chief of Staff to National Security Adviser John Bolton. He previously worked in national security positions for 25 years with CIA, DIA, the Department of State and the House Intelligence Committee staff. Read his complete bio here. Follow Fleitz on Twitter @fredfleitz.

RELATED VIDEO: Fleitz: “I would like to see justice for General Flynn”

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Both Parties Have Unleashed The Beast On America

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The Founding Fathers understood. The monster must be imprisoned, shackled and padlocked in multiple ways. If it is not securely and soundly constrained, it will break free and terrorize the countryside. We see their increasingly ignored forewarnings brightly highlighted in draconian shutdown orders.

The monster of course is government, by nature a truly monstrous being. This gongs in the ears of Americans who have not been taught history, or refuse to learn from it. But from the beginnings of time, governments under kings, queens, emperors, chieftains, despots and potentates of every stripe have caused more death and misery than all of the famines, plagues and catastrophes of nature.

The history of the 20th century alone is soaked in the blood of governments terrorizing their own citizens, quite apart from the wars of conquest they embarked on. Mao, Stalin, Hitler, it is often forgotten or ignored, were the heads of government and could have accomplished none of their genocides against their own people without a gigantic government accountable only to itself. Pol Pot, Ho Chi Minh, Castro and a host of others did the same on a smaller scale.

This is the history of big and unaccountable governments. Always. The most enlightened government in history to its time, the British Empire, still allowed its own citizens few individual rights, and those it granted and it removed. It ran press gangs to snatch even its own people out of pubs and dives for essentially slave sailors on its ships.

As often as not, the most tyrannical governments were those supposedly “protecting” us — from potential invaders, from religious heresy, from poverty, from “others” such as Jews. Their dictatorial powers frequently derived from the people’s fears, our fears. Such as fears of a deadly virus. Perhaps fears of “catastrophic” climate change.

But it always ends the same. Pick your empire (run by governments, all) and the rights-crushing, soul-sucking terror that follows the squashing of individual rights is inevitable. Only the scale differs.

Until 1776, that is, when for the first time in the history of mankind, a nation created a government by and for the people, not for itself. It created a government on the principles that all of mankind is created in the image of God and therefore has rights emanating from God, not from government. These rights were inherent to all mankind and government was to play the role of ensuring those rights were not encroached upon — mostly by constraint as a government, including an American government, would be the largest threat.

As history had taught Madison, Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, Washington and the rest, the government monster would always be a threat to those rights, to the individual’s liberty that comes from God. It was by its nature monstrous, and so while it had to exist, it had to be imprisoned, locked up deep in a vault far from the people and with no ability to terrorize the American citizenry.

And the Framers created such a prison by establishing a separation of powers. Creating three equal branches of government that would harness human nature’s lust for power to keep each in check, while also creating a strong state’s rights system that would further act to keep the federal government in check.

This system was brilliantly designed by the Framers to imprison the monster away from the people by creating constant friction within the government and between the government and the states. Over the course of the centuries, we’ve seen how marvelously it has preserved individual rights and freedoms and created a magnificent Shining City on a Hill.

However, we have steadily been loosening the chains on the monster, slowly freeing it from these restraints while at the same time providing it with weapons to use against the American people. The courts have done this through extra-Constitutional rulings. Congress has done this through legislation. Presidents have done this through executive orders. And to a degree, each branch has allowed the other to take these powers — Congress giving the most away.

And we the people allowed it all. It was all in our power to stop, but we let it slip away. Why? How did human nature turn this power over? More human nature, but within a changing dynamic.

The Framers almost universally agreed that this arrangement of freedoms and representative democracy was only fit for a Christian and moral people. It’s not clear we are either of those things anymore. We’re certainly not nearly as much as we were in 1776, or even 50 years ago. The loosening of the chains on the government monster has occurred in part because we lost the knowledge, through purposely lacking education, of why the cell was locked in the first place.

Part of the calculation is political expediency on the part of politicians who, with the growth and power of the monster and decline in Christian influence and morals, find more prestige and financial gain from being in office, and so re-election trumps all other considerations. Therefore Congress, filled with people of declining moral character, reflecting the country, has foisted off on the presidency or the courts the tough decisions that can have political blowback. The power and prestige far outweighs doing the right thing for the nation.

This has been bi-partisan. Each party is culpable as it attempts to gain control of the reins of power to bend the monster to its will. Democrats openly seek to free the beast, while Republicans tend to only slow the pace at which it is freed. And the American people are responsible for electing these people. They truly are representative. They are a reflection of us — a nation of people who are increasingly forgetting the monster behind the locks.

But in doing so, both parties representing the people who chose them, feed the monster while loosening its bonds, and it grows and grows and grows until the monster itself is the one in control — unbending and willful itself, unbound to the people or even the parties.

This is not a warning of where we are heading. We are here.

The monster is loose on the American people. It is not completely free, but the locks are off and it’s chain is long and weakening. It is shutting people into their houses, telling them what they can and cannot say. Stopping them from going to places of worship. If it is not re-imprisoned very soon, we the people will be incapable of restraining it. At that point, the great American experiment ends. The greatest power for good on earth, will cease to be that nation anymore. And the world will descend into the bloody chaos of unchained monsters and enslaved peoples around the globe.

No this is not our future. This is our present. And we’ve almost missed it. The creep has been so steady, we are as frogs in warming water. It has been going on a long time.

When the monster disapproved of the choice of the American people for president, it reacted via its nature and sought to devour that choice. As is being unveiled more every day, what we saw was a concerted, coordinated effort through different parts of government, from the FBI, CIA and other intelligence agencies, to the State Department, Justice Department and individual federal judges blocking presidential actions to the pliant FISA court. Or consider the mini-tyrants unveiled in the COVID shutdowns, or the IRS targeting political opponents of the former President, or the NSA broadly spying on everyone to the shock of many in Congress.

Readers may bristle at this, but they are all part of the monsters. Not all of the individuals, of course. Not by a long-shot. But in measuring the actions they have taken to destroy the people’s choice, it is difficult to dispute that, as organizations, they are part of terrorizing the American people and threatening the representative government bequeathed to us by the Framers.

Republicans and conservatives reactively, and not inaccurately, blame Democrats and the media working in conjunction with Democrats inside government to explain this. Yes. There’s plenty of truth to that. We’ve reported much of it on this site. However, this is the reality: Neither Democrat politicians nor the media were part of the launch of the Russia collusion hoax played on the American people. That was launched and steered entirely by the monster — acting on its own.

That is the key piece of evidence.

The other reality is that if a Democrat president ever moves against the goals and desires of the monster, the beast unleashed will do what it deems necessary to undermine, block or destroy that president. Right now, it has allies in the Democratic Party and media. But remember, the previous president willingly used the FBI and courts to pursue journalists in the AP and at Fox News that it did not like. The media glanced away because they perceived themselves on the side of the titular head of the monster — oddly, what they considered the right side of history. But the monster is greater than any president now, and certainly greater than a media that has burned down trustworthiness with the American people.

The monster is not loyal to any party or people. It is for itself. Period.

It is not clear that President Trump truly understands the depth of the threat to the American future. But he might. He certainly does more so than other politicians in Washington. But he cannot re-imprison the beast by himself. I don’t think he knows how to. He needs an iron-backboned Congress that also sees the desperate need to chain up the monster, even at great political risk. And he needs to keep appointing judges and justices who will rule on the Constitution and who also see the threat of leviathan unleashed.

If we do not bend history back and remember why the monster was chained in the first place, we will pay a very steep price.

EDITORS NOTE: This Revolutionary Act column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. Like The Revolutionary Act on Facebook