Stop Prayer Calls in Denmark – Action Report #1 by Martin Sellner GI:
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We welcome the Justice Department’s decision to dismiss charges against former National Security Adviser, Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, an American hero who was victimized by the Obama administration and the Deep State. The targeting of General Flynn was a key part of the Obama/Clinton/Deep State coup against President Trump.
We commend the heroic work of General Flynn’s legal team, led by Sidney Powell, which exposed the criminal conduct by FBI and DOJ officials behind Flynn’s illicit prosecution. This corruption, as we have exposed from the get-go, is the tip of the iceberg. The required next step for justice is the prosecution of the coup cabal who tried to destroy General Flynn and overthrow our president.
To see my interview with Lou Dobbs about this story, click here.
Judicial Watch Filed a Lawsuit for Fauci and WHO Records
In March 2020, Dr. Anthony Fauci, a prominent member of the president’s coronavirus task force, praised the work of the World Health Organization (WHO) and its chairman, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. Fauci said: “Tedros is really an outstanding person … I mean, obviously, over the years anyone who says that the WHO has not had problems has not been watching the WHO. But I think under his leadership they’ve done very well.”
In April, however, President Trump announced a halt to U.S. funding of WHO. According to the president, the WHO put “political correctness over lifesaving measures.” Additionally, President Trump said: “The WHO failed in this duty, and must be held accountable,” adding that the WHO ignored “credible information” in December 2019 that the virus could be transmitted from human to human.
We want to have a closer look at the Fauci/WHO connection, so we have filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit on behalf of the Daily Caller News Foundation (DNCF) against the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) for communications and other records of National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci and Deputy Director H. Clifford Lane with and about WHO concerning the novel coronavirus (Daily Caller News Foundation v. U.S. Department Justice (No. 1:20-cv-01149)).
We sued after HHS failed to respond to our April 1, 2020, FOIA request seeking:
We are requesting communications from January 1, 2020, to April 1, 2020. The DCNF was granted expedited processing of its request.
“This virus has killed hundreds of thousands of people and turned the whole world upside down,” Daily Caller News Foundation Co-Founder and President Neil Patel said. “We know that China and WHO could have done a lot more to prevent or reduce this catastrophe. We therefore have a legitimate and urgent news purpose for seeking these documents regarding U.S. officials’ communications with WHO and demand that the agencies in question stop stalling and start following the law that entitles us to this vital information.”
It is urgent that the NIH follow transparency law during the coronavirus crisis. It is of significant public interest to learn what WHO was telling our top medical officials about the coronavirus that originated in China.
Court Allows Newsom to Give Cash to Illegal Aliens, But It’s Likely Illegal
Several of our left-leaning governors have used the coronavirus emergency to test the boundaries of emergency powers. As we might have expected, California’s governor is even trying to hand out cash to people in the state and country illegally. No law allows him to do this.
So we asked the court for a temporary restraining order (TRO) against Governor Gavin Newsom and his Director of the California Department of Social Services, Kim Johnson, to restrain them from spending $79.8 million dollars of taxpayers’ money to provide direct cash benefits to unlawfully present aliens (Crest et al. v. Newsom et al. (No. 20STCV16321)).
The court has now issued a bizarre ruling.
Though it found that we were likely to succeed on the merits (that Newsom had no authority under law to spend the money), the court found that there was a public interest in sending tax money to illegal aliens during the coronavirus crisis.
It is astonishing that a court would allow a public official to ignore the law and spend tax money with no legal authority. Simply put, as the court seems to acknowledge, the governor has no independent legal authority to spend state taxpayer money for cash payments to illegal aliens. We will appeal the court’s manifest error.
Newsom announced his executive initiative on April 15, 2020. The initiative plans to spend $75 million to provide direct cash payments to illegal aliens and cost an estimated additional $4.8 million to administer. The Disaster Relief Assistance for Immigrants Project plans to provide one-time cash benefits of $500 per adult / $1,000 per household to 150,000 unlawfully present aliens in California.
These benefits are not to be provided to U.S. citizens or legal aliens residing in the state, according to an April 17 fact sheet issued by the California Department of Social Services, the “Disaster Relief Assistance for Immigrants Fact Sheet,” which reiterates that only unlawfully present aliens are eligible for direct assistance.
Our lawsuit argued that the California State Legislature has not enacted any law that affirmatively provides that unlawfully present aliens are eligible for the $75 million of cash public benefits announced by Newsom.
Well, it is California.
Feds Give $23 Million to ‘Community Organizations’ in Virus Fight
The Obama Administration discovered that it could fund its favorite leftist organizations through all manner of community programs, and the swamp creatures embedded in the DC bureaucracies are at it again. Our Corruption Chronicles blog reports.
Dealing with a devastated economy and the worst unemployment crisis in history, the U.S. government is quietly spending $23 million on “culturally and linguistically diverse” COVID-19 outreach and education in racial and ethnic minority and disadvantaged communities. The goal is to develop a national and statewide network of public and community-based organizations that will help mitigate the virus’s disproportionate impact among that demographic, according to one of the recently published grant announcements. A separate allocation will revive an Obama-era program that gave leftist groups tens of millions of dollars to help poor, minority and indigenous communities attain “environmental justice.” Under that project the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will reopen the State Environmental Justice Cooperative Agreement Program (SEJCA) to help “underserved communities” and “vulnerable populations” deal with COVID-19.
The biggest chunk of money, $22 million, will come from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which just launched a National Infrastructure for Mitigating the Impact of COVID-19 within Racial and Ethnic Minority Communities. The agency’s Office of Minority Health (OMH) will dole out the cash to “community-based organizations” that are considered “trusted and usual information sources for racial and ethnic minority, rural and disadvantaged communities.” The organizations, most likely leftist groups, will use the taxpayer dollars to “disseminate effective response, recovery and resilience strategies and ensure service linkages for racial and ethnic minority, rural and disadvantaged communities hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic.” This includes identifying areas with minority and disadvantaged people at substantially greater risk of contracting the virus and adverse outcomes due to prevalence of underlying health conditions such as hypertension, heart disease, diabetes, obesity, asthma, and COPD/lung disease as well as structural and systemic barriers to physical distancing and challenges to accessing healthcare and social services. The money will flow for up to three years so the community groups can document and distribute “lessons learned” and other findings.
Here is why HHS, whose mission is to enhance and protect the health and well-being of all Americans, is dedicating tens of millions of dollars to this new venture: “Emerging data suggests racial and ethnic minority populations are experiencing disproportionate impact and worse health outcomes from COVID-19,” according to the grant document. “Past public health crises, like the H1N1 pandemic and Zika epidemic, have demonstrated and amplified the vulnerability of these populations. Specifically, when combined with a greater baseline prevalence of underlying health conditions, a public health crisis like COVID-19 further exacerbates the higher morbidity and mortality for racial and ethnic minority communities. Due to lack of resources and limited capacity to provide healthcare and social services, rural communities are also vulnerable to adverse COVID-19 outcomes in the immediate and long term.”
The EPA will dedicate $1 million to the coronavirus minority cause by bringing back Obama’s wasteful environmental justice initiative that filled the coffers of numerous leftist groups, including those that help illegal immigrants. Under the new project, nonprofits will work with underserved communities to understand, promote and integrate approaches to provide meaningful and measurable improvements to public health. The agency identifies underserved community as those with “environmental justice concerns and/or vulnerable populations, including minority, low income, rural, tribal, indigenous, and homeless populations.” In a document attached to the grant announcement, the EPA goes into tremendous detail about its new initiative to address the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on urban and rural low-income and minority communities.
Examples of eligible projects related to COVID-19 include the development of outreach programs to educate underserved and vulnerable populations about EPA-approved disinfectants and how to properly use them as well as managing trash removal within communities; “Healthy Homes” campaigns to share information about in-home environmental and health hazards that may increase vulnerability due to extended periods indoors resulting from local stay-at-home orders; other activities that educate, raise public knowledge and awareness toward achieving behavioral changes that improve health or prevent environmental pollution. To encourage participation the government will offer childcare, free disinfectants, translation services and material in “appropriate literacy levels for the impacted communities with environmental justice concerns.”
We will be cleaning up after the Obama Administration for years.
Virus Drug Controversy: Was Trump Right?
The legacy media seems unable to give President Trump any credit whatsoever even if the research done by his team could be of benefit to the public. The president and his team have been studying the coronavirus and looking for solutions. But it is doubtful the press will ever be able to convey this in an evenhanded manner.
Micah Morrison, our chief investigative reporter, looks at one example of this in his Investigative Bulletin.
Controversy continues to rage over President Trump’s advocacy of the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine (HC) to combat the coronavirus. As we reported last month, Trump critics were shocked, shocked that the president would dare to venture a medical opinion, but based on anecdotal evidence from around the globe, it appeared to us that the president had placed a bold winning bet on HC.
The blowback was fierce. The White House for a time fell silent on HC. On Sunday, Trump jumped back into the fray with a defense of the drug and an attack on his critics at a Fox News Town Hall event.
Response to the Judicial Watch article was swift, particularly after Trump retweeted journalist Paul Sperry’s tweet about the story. We received a lot of email. Many of the comments can’t be repeated in this family-friendly venue. Others were enlightening.
“I’ve been tracking HC treatment and outcomes all over the world,” writes a data analyst. “Long story short, HC-treated patients have a case fatality rate of 0.5% (5 out of 1000) whereas the worldwide rate is 6.9% (69 out of 1000). In other words, current evidence suggests you’re more than 12 times more likely to die if you are diagnosed with COVID 19 and you don’t get HC treatment.”
“I am a Florida physician prescribing HC to patients,” another reader writes. “I do hope it is a winning bet. My take is it helps early and should be used with zinc. Shortened illness. Less lung problems.” Hospitalized patients getting HC should be on heart monitors, this physician warns, a nod to concerns about possible dangerous side effects.
Another reader directed us to an AP story about a Veterans Administration study that showed no benefit and increased deaths from HC. The VA quickly pushed back on the story. VA Secretary Robert Wilkie sent a letter to veterans’ organizations saying the VA study had led to “misinformation” about treatments at VA hospitals. Wilkie said HC was only given to patients at “highest risk” and noted that the Food and Drug Administration had approved HC for emergency use. (The FDA also issued a later warning that HC could lead to dangerous heart rhythm issues.)
In Turkey, the government has thrown HC at everyone with the virus—more than 117,000 cases. 3000 have died, but that’s lower than the global death rate, Turkish officials say. The “relatively low death toll is thanks to treatment protocols in the country, which involve two existing drugs—the controversial anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine touted by President Trump, and Japanese antiviral favipiravir,” CBS News reports.
“Doctors prescribe hydroxychloroquine to everyone who is tested positive for coronavirus,” a Turkish medical official told CBS. “Hospitalized patients may be given favipiravir as well if they encounter breathing problems.” The drug combination seemed to “delay or eliminate the need for intensive care for patients.”
The Turkish effort is not a clinical trial. It’s life in medical wartime. Closer to home, that also appears to be the case at the Yale New Haven Health hospital system, reports the website Medscape. The site is behind a paywall but Yahoo, reporting on the findings, noted that physicians at Yale were prescribing HC “because it had shown potential for success.” Other hospitals also continue to give HC to virus patients, the Yahoo report notes. That’s what Judicial Watch is hearing from front line medical personnel in New York as well.
The bottom line? HC is not without risks, but at hospitals and clinics across the country, it’s life in wartime and increasingly it appears that physicians and medical administrators are deciding that to save lives, HC is a gamble worth taking.
Trump’s bold bet is still looking like a winner.
It’s always a shame when the media seems willing to make health care a political football.
Until next week …
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There is a growing sense that the aura of infallibility accorded the Supreme Court, that forms the basis of its almost limitless power, so assiduously (some might say insidiously) cultivated by Chief Justice Aharon Barak, is beginning to dim.
In Israel, the negative impact of the judicialization of politics on the Supreme Court’s legitimacy is already beginning to show its mark. Over the past decade, the public image of the Supreme Court as an autonomous and impartial arbiter has been increasingly eroded… as political arrangements and public policies agreed upon in majoritarian decision-making arenas are likely to be reviewed by an often hostile Supreme Court. As a result, the court and its judges are increasingly viewed by a considerable portion of the Israeli public as pushing forward their own political agenda...– Prof. Ran Hirschl, Towards Juristocracy, Harvard University Press, 2004.
I admit that I have used this citation from Hirschl’s book to introduce several previous articles on Israel’s legal establishment. However, I have little qualms in reusing it here—a s it has lost of none of its past pertinence. If anything, quite the opposite is true.
Last week (March 3 -9) was a momentous—indeed tumultuous—week, with potentially far-reaching ramifications for Israel’s law enforcement establishment in general, and the judiciary, in particular.
On Sunday and Monday (March 3 & 4), a panel of 11 Supreme Court justices convened for a televised broadcast to rule on petitions to disqualify indicted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from being assigned the task of constituting the next government coalition, and to invalidate the Likud/Blue &White agreement as to the future mode of functioning of that joint coalition.
Indeed, although overall, it was conducted in a general atmosphere of restrained respectability, the hearing exuded a discernible aura heralding that perceptible changes in the long-existing societal power structure in Israel, were in the air.
Thus, commenting on the televised proceedings, the vehemently Bibiphobic journalist, Anshel Pfeffer, of the far-Left daily, Haaretz, wrote: “…the judicial bonhomie could barely hide the fact that the justices knew they are fighting for their very legitimacy…”
True, on Wednesday night (May 6), all 11 justices ruled—unanimously—that Netanyahu was in fact eligible to form the next government and, apart from some perfunctory remarks of displeasure on several clauses in the coalition agreement, they elected to refrain from any robust initiatives to mandate far-reaching changes in it. However, despite this, hardly any seasoned observer of the machinations of Israeli politics could fail to detect a palpable sense of growing recognition that the decades of judicial overreach were testing the limits of public patience—and judicial intrusion into the realm of politics is being perceived as increasingly unacceptable. But more on that later.
Thus, for example, despite the Supreme Court restraint, Gadi Taub, a senior lecturer at Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s School of Public Policy, found that the fact that the court even agreed to discuss the appeal was “outrageous,” “mind-boggling” and an “amazing feat of audacity.”
Thus, according to Taub, “In agreeing to adjudicate this issue in the first place, the court is behaving as if it feels it needs to protect democracy from citizens”.He pointed out: “There is no judiciary in any proper democracy as powerful as Israel’s Supreme Court,”, remarking acerbically that: “In its own opinion, there is no limit to its power; there is nothing it does not believe is judicable, and it has the last word on everything.”
Taub observed that Menachem Mautner, former dean of Tel Aviv University’s left leaning law faculty, wrote in his book, Law and the Culture of Israel, that, as the Left has regularly failed to win at the ballot since 1977, it has decided to exploit the Supreme Court to advance its worldview. Thus, in Taub’s view, the leftist approach has been to subvert the democratic process “by moving political power from elected to appointed institutions—from the parliament to the court.”
Accordingly, the belief that the law is being used (or rather, abused) as a weapon to advance a political doctrine that has failed to win support at the polls, has taken root across diverse segments of Israeli society—as has the view that the Supreme Court has been complicit in helping minority constituencies impose their view on wider portions of the electorate (see Hirschl above).
For in the eyes of the layman—on whose trust the judiciary’s legitimacy is crucially dependent—the Supreme Court has not only regularly prevented the elected government from implementing the policy it was elected to implement, but at times, has coerced the government to implement policies it was elected to ensure were not implemented.
This disconnect between the perspectives of the Supreme Court justices and wide swathes of the general public has led to a precipitous fall in the credibility of the judiciary in general and the Supreme Court in particular. Citing an ongoing study of the credibility of Israel’s judicial system conducted by Haifa University, YNetnews’s Einav Schiff echoed a virtually identical diagnosis to that of Hirschl’s.
Thus, in a piece entitled The Supreme Court is losing the people’s trust, he wrote: “The view of the court as an ivory tower, home to self-appointed gods, is becoming more and more common, and this is reflected in different confidence indexes. Last May, for example, the Rule of Law Index by Prof. Arie Ratner of Haifa University found that 49 percent of Jewish Israeli citizens have confidence in the Supreme Court. In 2000, that rate stood at 80 percent. This isn’t a slip or a drop, it’s a collapse.”
It was in April 1775 that Samuel Johnson (1709 -1784), the celebrated English writer, articulated his well-known dictum, “Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.” His biographer, James Boswell (1740-1795), explained that by “patriotism, Johnson did not mean a real and generous love of our country, but that pretended patriotism which so many…have made a cloak for self-interest.’‘
In Israel, against the backdrop of the turmoil over the functioning of the Supreme Court, one might well be tempted to formulate a parallel dictum. Thus, not patriotism, but the law, is last refuge of the unscrupulous–where any failed politician, unable to defeat his rivals at the polls, can—draped in “a cloak of self-interest” and driven not by a genuine love of the law, but by a desire to circumvent the will of the voters—enlist the courts to help unseat them. Or, in the previously cited words of Taub, “by moving political power from elected to appointed institutions—from the parliament to the court.”
Of course, none of this would have been possible unless the Supreme Court has not been amenable—indeed, eager—to facilitate such a power shift.
This was particularly true for the period when Prof. Aharon Barak was President of the Supreme Court—from 1995 to 2006.
One of Israel’s most prominent legal scholars, and Israel Prize laureate for Law, Prof. Amnon Rubinstein, who also served as an MK for the far Left Meretz faction and held several ministerial portfolios on its behalf, characterized, in vivid terms, the judicial metamorphosis Barak introduced. He wrote: “ Barak was a revolutionary…who persuaded his colleagues to follow him and undertake an extraordinary judicial policy. According to this policy, the courts can adjudicate any administrative or legislative act…”
Rubinstein continued: “Thus, a situation arose whereby the Supreme Court could convene and decide on every conceivable issue. In addition, the unreasonableness of an administrative measure became grounds for judicial intervention. This was a total revolution in the judicial thinking which characterized the Supreme Court of previous generations, and this has given it the reputation of the most activist court in the world…”
In fact, in Rubinstein’s view: “In practice, in many respects the Supreme Court under Barak become an alternate government.”
In his book, The Purse and the Sword: The Trials of Israel’s Legal Revolution, Prof. Daniel Friedmann, former dean of Tel Aviv University’s Faculty of Law and Justice Minister under Ehud Olmert, sets out a biting critique of Barak’s judicial doctrine. In it, he cites, approvingly, a caustic condemnation (p.333) by the well-know, (self-professed) Left-of Center journalist Ben-Dror Yemini : “It is doubtful whether anyone is more guilty of the decline in the Supreme Court’s position than Chief Justice Barak… According to all the polls, there is no other man who has caused such an ongoing, dramatic decline in public confidence [in the court]…Anyone looking for examples can find them in his megalomaniac declarations that “all is justiciable…”
Echoing this sentiment, in his decidedly disapproving review of Barak’s book The Judge in a Democracy, which, significantly, he entitled Enlightened Despot, former U.S. Court of Appeals judge and a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School, Richard A. Posner writes: I have my differences with Robert Bork, but when he remarked.. that Barak ‘establishes a world record for judicial hubris,’ he came very near the truth.
Widely considered to be one of the most influential legal scholars in the United States, and one of the most cited legal scholars of the 20th century, Posner asserts: “What Barak created out of whole cloth was a degree of judicial power undreamed of even by our most aggressive Supreme Court justices…”
According to Posner “… One is reminded of Napoleon’s taking the crown out of the pope’s hands and putting it on his own head. He [Barak]takes for granted that judges have inherent authority to override statutes. Such an approach can accurately be described as usurpative.”
Others have expressed similar concern as to the excess power of the Supreme Court and its growing intrusion into the realms of other branches of government. Commenting on a March 2010 injunction prohibiting any government dealing with plans for changes in Israel’s zoning laws, Prof. Yoav Dotan, former dean at the Faculty of Law at the Hebrew University, wrote: “This is the first time in the history of Israel’s judicial branch that an injunction bars the government from dealing with a matter on its agenda…This decision overturns the existing order ..Not only has the Supreme Court never issued such a decision , but the decision itself constitutes an historic precedent in judicial activism in general. It is doubtful whether a court in any country ever dared to order its government what can and cannot be on its agenda…”
In his book, Coercing Virtue, the prominent jurist, Robert H. Bork, a former US Court of Appeals judge, who taught constitutional law at Yale Law School and served as Solicitor General and Acting Attorney General of the United States, strongly criticizes judicial activism both in the US and Israel. Indeed, it is Israel that he sees as the county most afflicted by the phenomenon of judicial overreach.
Accordingly, Bork laments: “There would seem to be less and less reason for the Israeli people to bother electing an legislature and executive; the attorney general, with the backing of the Supreme Court can decide almost everything for them…”(p.120).
Indeed today, certainly by any criterion of layman common sense, Israeli Supreme Court violates some laws and invent others merely to impose its own world view on the elected policy makers. It acts as if it is bound neither by the existence of written law nor by the absence of written law.
It overcomes both by brandishing the legalistic Excalibur of “proportionality” and “reasonableness”, criteria which only the knights (or high priests) of the Supreme Court are deemed qualified to determine.
Accordingly, the Supreme Court has regularly ridden rough shod over the decisions of the Knesset Central Election Committee to bar dominantly anti-Zionist parties and their candidates from participating in parliamentary elections—flagrantly ignoring that both the parties and numerous candidates thereof, are in stark violation of Clause 7A of the Basic Law: The Knesset. This explicitly states that “if the objects or actions of [a] list or of [a] person, expressly or by implication, include…negation of the existence of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state” and/or “support of armed struggle, by a hostile state or a terrorist organization, against the State of Israel”, they will be precluded from participation in elections.
Yet despite the fact that the deeds, declaration and documents of these anti-Zionist entities and individuals comprise undisguised and undeniable (indeed, undenied) negation of the Jewish nature of Israel and support for armed struggle by Israel’s enemies against it , the Supreme Court has consistently (and incomprehensibly) ruled in favor of their participation.
Indeed, the Supreme Court has never upheld the preclusion of any anti-Zionist list or individual–despite their glaring violations of the law
By contrast, the Court has frequently instated injunctions prohibiting Jewish (typically Right-wing) candidates based on the Court’s interpretation of their “objects and actions” as constituting “incitement to racism”—despite the defendants denying that this was their intent.
Indeed, in many ways, the very fact that the Supreme Court, with a complement of 11 justices, agreed to hear the petition against Netanyahu being assigned the formation of the next government, despite it being totally devoid of any legal foundation, is in itself an manifestation of its tendency to ascribe itself powers it does not have.
After all, Basic Law: The Government determines unequivocally that the Prime Minister may remain in office until a final verdict (i.e. after all appeals have been exhausted) has been handed down, or by a complicated process, involving a vote of 61 MKs (Clause 18(a)-(d))—neither of which apply in Netanyahu’s case; and that the President will assign the task of forming a government on an MK, who has the backing of at least 61 MKs (Clause 10 )—which does apply in Netanyahu’s case.
Indeed, had the Supreme Court not sensed that winds of change were sweeping through Israel society, it might well have handed down a very different verdict.
Indeed, this is vividly reflected by the words of retired Justice Eliyahu Matza, in a recent interview: “In this ruling, the Supreme Court has missed an opportunity—which perhaps will not reoccur—to lay a moral foundation for the institutions of government in Israel…[I would] have certainly ruled in favor of the petitions—and not just me. I am convinced that several of my retired colleagues who, served on the Supreme Court in the past would have also endorsed the petition”.
Ironically, it was the late-Chief Justice Moshe Landau, President the Supreme Court in the pre-Barak era, who cautioned against precisely what Matza suggested—ruling on values rather than law. After all, by substituting their values for the law, the Supreme Court justices are conducting themselves in precisely the manner of which Hirschl cautions in the opening excerpt.
Landau warned: “The [High] Court is getting into waters that are too deep. Into a treacherous swamp of political opinions and beliefs. And this is dangerous both for the country and for the Court. It is dangerous for the country because it exacerbates social rifts. And it is dangerous for the Court because the Court is losing the principle foundation on which it must base its standing: The belief in its neutrality of the judicial system in public disputes.”
He added: “..when the Court represents a certain opinion, no matter how progressive, it enrages a significant section of the public…However, I must say that the Court contributes to creating this situation in that it inserts itself into areas where it has no place. It takes upon itself to decide on matters…which should be decided in the Knesset
It is thus difficult not to sense a creeping suspicion that the Supreme Court’s ruling was motivated less by a desire to preserve the law and more by a desire to preserve itself—as Alex Traiman argues.
Indeed, after decades of judicial overreach, there is finally a growing sense that the aura of infallibility accorded the Supreme Court, which forms the basis of its almost limitless power, so assiduously—some might say insidiously—cultivated by Chief Justice Aharon Barak, is beginning to dim.
Perhaps, then, the pigeons have at long last, come home to roost—or are just beginning to.
©All rights reserved.
My latest at PJ Media:
This will teach those Islamophobes that Islam is a religion of peace: a professor is facing death threats for suggesting otherwise. Nicholas Damask, Ph.D., has taught political science at Scottsdale Community College in Arizona for 24 years. But now he is facing a barrage of threats, and his family, including his 9-year-old grandson and 85-year-old parents, is in hiding, while College officials are demanding that he apologize – all for the crime of speaking the truth about the motivating ideology behind the threat of Islamic jihad worldwide.
Damask, who has an MA in International Relations from American University in Washington, DC, and a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Cincinnati, says he is “to my knowledge, the only tenured political science faculty currently teaching in Arizona to write a doctoral dissertation on terrorism.” He has taught Scottsdale Community College’s World Politics for each of the 24 years he has worked at the school.
Professor Damask’s troubles began during the current Spring semester, when a student took exception to three quiz questions. The questions were:
Damask explained: “All quiz questions on each of my quizzes, including the ones in question here, are carefully sourced to the reading material. On this quiz, questions were sourced to the Qur’an, the hadiths, and the sira (biography) of Mohammed, and other reputable source material.” And indeed, the three questions reflect basic facts that are readily established by reference to Islamic texts and teachings and numerous statements of terrorists themselves.
Despite this, the student emailed Damask to complain that he was “offended” by these questions, as they were “in distaste of Islam.” Damask recounted: “Until this point, notably, the student had expressed no reservations about the course material and indeed he said he enjoyed the course.”
Damask sent two lengthy emails to the student responding to his complaints, but to no avail. A social media campaign began against Damask on the College’s Instagram account. Damask notes: “An unrelated school post about a school contest was hijacked, with supporters of the student posting angry, threatening, inflammatory and derogatory messages about the quiz, the school, and myself.”
At this point, College officials should have defended Professor Damask and the principle of free inquiry, but that would require a sane academic environment. Scottsdale Community College officials, Damask said, “stepped in to assert on a new Instagram post that the student was correct and that I was wrong – with no due process and actually no complaint even being filed – and that he would receive full credit for all the quiz questions related to Islam and terrorism.”
There is much more. Read the rest here.
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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.
Eduardo Echeverria: Promoting equality among all religions leaves us with indifferentism and hence relativism, and that is a denial of the Gospel.
Muslims worldwide are currently observing the month of Ramadan. And the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue has issued another of its various messages (viewable here) over the years on the occasion of this or that religious holiday of Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, and others (click here for other examples). Is the Pontifical Council unintentionally promoting a mentality of religious indifferentism and hence religious pluralism? If so, it is violating its own warnings in its 2014 document, Dialogue in Truth and Charity.
Of course, I honor the Council’s motives in these messages: “maintaining of good fellowship among the nations” (1 Pet 2:12); and, “as far as depends on one, to live at peace with all men” (Rom 12:18). Still, there is the danger here that the Council has warned of, namely, an “irenicism, which is an inordinate attempt to make peace at all costs by eliminating differences.” (no. 48)
Such messages have over time fostered a mentality of indifferentism that we are also warned against: a religious relativism/pluralism that holds all religions to be not only equally true but also efficacious vehicles of salvation. They leave the impression of leveling out the fundamental differences among all religions, suggesting a muting of the primary call to evangelize and proclaim the Gospel of salvation in Christ alone. (John 19: 9; 14:6; Acts 4: 12; 1 Tim 2: 5-6)
This muting also leaves out the question not only of truth in general but also of religious disagreement and conflicting truth claims among the religions in particular. The Council isn’t unaware of this question. Its 1991 document Dialogue and Proclamation raised it: “An open and positive approach to other religious traditions cannot overlook the contradictions that may exist between them and Christian revelation. It must, where necessary, recognize that there is incompatibility between some fundamental elements of the Christian religion and some aspects of such traditions.”
The Council recognizes that “religious identity is a necessary condition for any genuine interreligious dialogue.” (Dialogue in Truth and Charity, no. 42) Acknowledging unique differences in ideas and tradition between Christianity and all other religions, however, is not enough when it comes to the question of conflicting truth claims. It’s necessary to state, openly, that the central Christian truth claims are alone valid and absolute, and hence logically incompatible with other religious claims.
Take the assertion, “The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.” (John 1:16) If that is true, then its denial must be false, and hence anyone who denies it must be wrong. Truth by its very nature excludes contradictions. Hence, if this belief is true because what it asserts is, in fact, the case about objective reality, then it alone is valid and absolute.
We live in a culture, however, where people claim that there are no true propositions; yet if there are no true propositions, then there are no false ones either. There are just differences, and no one is wrong. This is relativism about truth, and it looms large among the Council’s messages to other religions.
Cardinal Ratzinger once rightly insisted, “Anyone who sees in the religions of the world only reprehensible superstition is wrong; but also anyone who wants only to give a positive evaluation of all religions, and who has suddenly forgotten the criticism of religions that has been burned into our souls not only by Feuerbach and Marx but also by such great theologians as Karl Barth and Bonhoeffer, is equally wrong.” Consequently, it is wrong to treat Sacred Scriptures by just focusing on the “positive” passages and not the “negative” ones critical of non-biblical religions as “full of idols.”
Years later, as Benedict XVI, he made an important point on the 50th anniversary of the opening of Vatican II. About the reception of Nostra Aetate, he commented: “In the process of active reception [of Nostra Aetate], a weakness in this otherwise extraordinary text has gradually emerged: it speaks of religion solely in a positive way and it disregards the sick and distorted forms of religion which, from the historical and theological viewpoints, are of far-reaching importance.”
That one-sided reception must be supplemented by the full doctrine and the full life of the Church, reflecting the Biblical witness regarding non-Christian religions such as we find in the Old Testament and the New Testament, for example, in St. Paul’s approach at the Areopagus. (Acts 17: 16-32)
God has not left Himself without witness (Acts 14:16) in his general revelation. He reveals Himself to all men at all times and all places so that men, in principle, may know something of God’s existence, His attributes, and His moral law. (Rom 1:20; 2:14-15; Acts 17: 28.
The reception of this general revelation, of course, is open to resistance and hence to distortion, misinterpretation, and denial. (Rom 1:18-32) Indeed, although St. Paul is “deeply distressed to see that the city [of Athens] was full of idols” (Acts 17:16), he also expresses his appreciation to the Athenians: “I see how extremely religious you are in every way.” (Acts 17:22) Nevertheless, St. Paul argues against Athenian idolatry, revealing to the pagan Greeks the God not only of creation but also of redemption in Jesus Christ. (v. 31)
Perhaps the most damaging implication of the Council’s messages is that they suggest the efficacy of the prayers and religious practices of these other religions in bringing people into fellowship with God. There seems no awareness that “objectively speaking they are in a gravely deficient situation in comparison with those who, in the Church, have the fullness of the means of salvation.” (Dominus Iesus 22)
The Christian faith, as Paul VI summed it up, “effectively establishes with God an authentic and living relationship which the other religions do not succeed in doing, even though they have, as it were, their arms stretched out towards heaven.” (Evangelii Nuntiandi 53)
Denying this truth leaves us with indifferentism and hence religious relativism, and that is a denial of the Gospel.
COLUMN BY
Eduardo J. Echeverria is Professor of Philosophy and Systematic Theology at Sacred Heart Major Seminary, Detroit. His publications include Pope Francis: The Legacy of Vatican II (2015) and Revelation, History, and Truth: A Hermeneutics of Dogma. (2018).
EDITORS NOTE: This Catholic Thing column is republished with permission. © 2020 The Catholic Thing. All rights reserved. For reprint rights, write to: info@frinstitute.org. The Catholic Thing is a forum for intelligent Catholic commentary. Opinions expressed by writers are solely their own.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk suggested Saturday that he is suing a California county after “unelected & ignorant” health officials spoiled his plans to reopen over coronavirus concerns.
Musk criticized local California officials, saying that he is preparing to relocate to Texas or Nevada after Alameda County Public Health Department interim health officer Erica Pan said Friday that Tesla does not have the okay to reopen.
“Tesla is filing a lawsuit against Alameda County immediately,” Musk wrote on Twitter before condemning the county’s “unelected & ignorant” health care officials who he said are “acting contrary to the Governor, the President, our Constitutional freedoms & just plain common sense!”
Time for a lawsuit
— Ross Gerber (@GerberKawasaki) May 9, 2020
Alameda County, where Tesla’s headquarters are based, “is still a bit stricter” on when businesses can open up, Pan told reporters during an online town hall meeting.
“We have not given the green light. We have been working with them looking at some of their safety plans. But no, we have not said that it is appropriate to move forward,” she said after being asked about Tesla in particular.
Musk was not impressed with Pan’s remarks.
“Frankly, this is the final straw,” he said in a following tweet. “Tesla will now move its HQ and future programs to Texas/Nevada immediately. If we even retain Fremont manufacturing activity at all, it will be dependen [sic] on how Tesla is treated in the future. Tesla is the last carmaker left in CA.”
This is not the first time the tech tycoon has lashed out at officials over the coronavirus pandemic. Musk criticized government officials in April for instituting economic lockdowns, calling them “fascist” during an April first-quarter Tesla earnings call.
Stay-at-home orders were instituted throughout the country to slow the coronavirus pandemic, which has killed more than 75,000 people in the United States.
Musk said during the call that people should be allowed to quarantine themselves if they wish, but added: “to say that they cannot leave their house, and they will be arrested if they do, this is fascist. This is not democratic. This is not freedom. Give people back their goddamn freedom.”
Meanwhile, California’s economy is falling off a proverbial cliff.
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s stay-at-home orders in March forced non-essential businesses to close, prompting millions of Californians to file for unemployment. The Democrat’s administration is predicting that the state will hit 18% unemployment after registering a 3.9% unemployment rate at the start of 2020.
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Chinese Leader Xi Jinping personally asked the World Health Organization to delay the release of critical information regarding its coronavirus outbreak, German intelligence has concluded.
Xi met with WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on January 21 to request that he withhold information about human-to-human transition and delay the declaration of a global pandemic, according to German magazine Der Spiegel. The news comes amid rising sentiment that China should be held financially responsible for the pandemic.
“The BND’s verdict is harsh: At least four, if not six, weeks have been lost in Beijing’s information policy in the fight against the virus,” Der Spiegel reported.
The developments from German intelligence caught the attention of U.S. politicians investigating China’s handling of the coronavirus as well.
“We are still working to confirm this reporting. But if it turns out to be true, it’s further proof Director-General Tedros conspired with the Chinese Communist Party in their cover up and is not fit to lead the WHO,” Texas Republican and Chairman of the House China Task Force Michael McCaul told the Daily Caller.
BND is the native German acronym for its Federal Intelligence Service. Four to six weeks of additional preparation time could have avoided the global pandemic entirely, according to a study published in early March. Researchers at the University of Southampton found that if China had acted and gone public with its information just three weeks sooner, it could have reduced spread of the disease by as much as 95%.
COLUMN BY
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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.
A friend of mine who traveled China from the 1970s until recently described what the country was like 30 years ago:
Its cities were sprawling, impoverished places with dirt roads and low-rise structures. With few automobiles in the country back then, the Chinese people got around mostly by rickshaws and bicycles. The country had only a few tall buildings and just two sizable airports, in Beijing, its capital, and Shanghai, its financial center. China had no modern highways, bridges or high-speed rails, and the only trains that traversed the country were pulled by antiquated steam engines.
To get an idea of how much things have changed, please watch this 40-second clip of the Chinese city where COVID-19 originated. As the video shows, Wuhan bears no resemblance to the backward, desperately poor place it was just three decades ago. The same is true of cities throughout China.
Over the past 30 years, China has undergone a stupendous, caterpillar-to-butterfly transformation that has created some of the world’s most eye-popping roadways, bridges and architecture. Now within sight of overtaking the United States as the world’s dominant economy, China has also built a massively lethal military that poses a serious threat to America’s long-standing combat superiority—as reported by the Washington Times, China’s military is forcing the Pentagon to confront the end of U.S. battlefield dominance.
From where did the money come that funded China’s dramatic makeover from a Third World backwater to an economic and military superpower? Trillions of dollars used to finance its spectacular ascendancy was handed willingly over by its greatest patron: the United States of America.
Since the late 1980s, China has been allowed—allowed—to extract trillions of dollars from the U.S. economy in the form of massive trade surpluses. As a result, the communist nation now has glistening cities like Beijing, Shanghai, and Wuhan, while America is saddled with fading cities like Baltimore, Detroit, and Atlanta, once-thriving metropolises now marred by urban blight, rampant crime, sorry schools, generational poverty and other canaries in the coal mine of a nation in decline.
And to rub salt in America’s self-inflicted wounds, Chinese nationals who were allowed—allowed—to attend our top research universities and work at our most sensitive high-tech companies robbed America blind, surreptitiously sending many of our nation’s most vital technological and national defense secrets to our communist adversary hell-bent on chopping America off at the knees.
During the presidencies of George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, China was allowed—allowed—to rip America a new one in what will go down as the most lopsided trade and stolen technology bludgeoning in history.
But don’t blame China for the trade imbalances. Its leaders were just doing what a nation’s leaders are expected to do: negotiate the best deal they could get. If the country on the other side of the table is willing to absorb an epic thrashing in the process, so much the better. And the voluntary thrashing America took lasted 28 consecutive years, from 1989 to 2017, a period when much of America’s manufacturing base was allowed—allowed—to sell-out its workers by offshoring production to China.
With America’s worn-out infrastructure badly in need of replacement, our political class instead ran up crushing debt and deficits, squandering trillions of dollars stolen from future generations on endless foreign wars and failed social programs. Meanwhile, China was using its trade-surplus windfall and stolen technology to build some of the world’s most impressive cities and a fearsome military.
In 2017, the United States began a strategic shift in its approach to China. Unless its relationship with the communist superpower is redefined, America’s days in the sun will be over, and the 21st century will be known as the “Chinese Century.”
Below are nine related videos, each a visual reminder that China’s stunning rise at America’s expense could never have occurred without assistance from the four U.S. presidents who stood by and clapped as the Communist nation ate America’s lunch.
Viewing the videos will take a while, but doing so will help you see with your own eyes that while America was inching along on its hands and knees, a house of cards propped up by ruinous debt, China was making a great leap forward for the ages.
Finally, my friend believes America’s best days are behind it. Having done business throughout China, he observed that Chinese workers are intensely proud of their country, eagerly working as tirelessly as a colony of ants toward a common goal of national ascendancy.
America once was blessed with widespread patriotism, but over the last half-century, it has been polarized into two camps with diametrically opposite objectives. One side believes America should continue as a two-party constitutional democracy, the other wants that system scrapped in favor of single-party socialist rule.
No matter which of those hardened positions gains ground in November, half of America will continue working at cross purposes with the other half. A country at irreconcilable odds with itself is not a recipe for national ascendancy; it’s a recipe for national decline. The winner? China.
©All rights reserved.
A nurse pushed back when a reporter asked President Donald Trump Wednesday why she and several other nurses gathered in the Oval Office during a press conference were not wearing masks or social distancing.
“We’re all COVID-19-free. We were all tested,” said the nurse, identified by ABC News as American Association of Nurse Practitioners President Sophia Turner.
The reporter had asked the president why the nurses who flanked him during the meeting were not keeping their distance.
“We are not socially distancing because we are all negative … and we wouldn’t do anything to harm our president, obviously,” the nurse said before adding that she works at a center in Louisiana and frequently gets tested.
The nurses were at the briefing to talk about the country’s supply of personal protective equipment, like masks.
The nurses said they have ample access to personal protective equipment, even after the Department of Homeland Security stated May 3 that the Chinese government lied to the World Health Organization about the significance of the pandemic to hoard personal protective equipment, among other medical supplies.
Some officials have been critical of people who do not wear face masks. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said at a May 4 press conference that local officials should impose a “penalty” for “disrespectful” people not wearing masks.
“And by the way, you don’t wear a mask for yourself,” an unmasked Cuomo said during the conference. “You wear a mask to protect me. I wear a mask to protect you. We owe each other a certain amount of reasonableness and respect in society, and I owe you that level of respect, that if I’m sick, I should wear a mask.”
COLUMN BY
Chris White is a reporter for The Daily Caller News Foundation. Twitter: @ZanderKelly30.
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Major credit card companies should block payments to pornographic sites, according to a group of international campaigners and campaign groups who say they work to tackle sexual exploitation.
A letter seen by the BBC, signed by more than 10 campaigners and campaign groups, says porn sites “eroticise sexual violence, incest, and racism” and stream content that features child sexual abuse and sex trafficking.
One leading site, Pornhub, said “the letter [was] not only factually wrong but also intentionally misleading.”
Mastercard told the BBC they were investigating claims made in the letter on pornography sites and would “terminate their connection to our network” if illegal activity by a cardholder was confirmed.
The letter was sent to 10 major credit card companies, including the “Big Three”, Visa, MasterCard and American Express. The signatories from countries including the UK, US, India, Uganda and Australia have called for the immediate suspension of payments to pornographic sites.
The signatories of the letter include the conservative non-profit group the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE) in the US, and other faith-led or women and child rights’ advocacy groups.
The letter alleges it is impossible to “judge or verify consent in any videos on their site, let alone live webcam videos” which “inherently makes pornography websites a target for sex traffickers, child abusers, and others sharing predatory nonconsensual videos”.
“We’ve been seeing an increasingly global outcry about the harms of pornography sharing websites in a number of ways in recent months,” said Haley McNamara, the director of the UK-based International Centre on Sexual Exploitation, the international arm of the NCOSE and a signatory of the letter.
“We in the international child advocacy and anti-sexual exploitation community are demanding financial institutions to critically analyse their supportive role in the pornography industry, and to cut ties with them,” she told the BBC.
A report on the appetite for child abuse videos on pornography sites was published in April by India Child Protection Fund (ICPF). The organisation said there had been a steep increase in demand for child abuse searches on pornography sites in India, particularly since coronavirus lockdown.
Pornhub, the most popular pornography streaming site, is named in the letter. In 2019, it registered more than 42 billion visits, the equivalent of 115 million a day.
Pornhub was under scrutiny last year when one of its content providers – Girls Do Porn – became the subject of an FBI investigation.
The FBI charged four people working for the production company that created the channel of coaxing women into making pornographic films under false pretences. Pornhub removed the Girls Do Porn channel as soon as the charges were made.
Commenting to the BBC in February regarding this case, Pornhub said its policy was to “remove unauthorised content as soon as we are made aware of it, which is exactly what we did in this case”.
In October last year a 30-year-old Florida man, Christopher Johnson, faced charges for sexually abusing a 15 year old. Videos of the alleged attack had been posted on Pornhub.
In the same statement to the BBC in February, Pornhub said its policy was to “remove unauthorised content as soon as we are made aware of it, which is exactly what we did in this case”.
The Internet Watch Foundation, a UK organisation that specialises in monitoring online sexual abuse – particularly of children – confirmed to the BBC that they had found 118 instances of child sexual abuse and child rape videos on Pornhub between 2017 and 2019. The body works in partnership with global police and governments to flag illegal content.
In a statement to the BBC, a spokesperson for Pornhub said they had “a steadfast commitment to eradicating and fighting any and all illegal content, including non-consensual and under-age material. Any suggestion otherwise is categorically and factually inaccurate.”
“Our content moderation system is at the forefront of the industry, utilising leading technologies and moderation techniques that create a comprehensive process to detect and rid the platform of any illegal content.
Pornhub said the letter was sent by organisations “who attempt to police people’s sexual orientation and activity – are not only factually wrong but also intentionally misleading.”
American Express has had a global policy in place since 2000 that says it prohibits transactions for adult digital content where the risk is deemed unusually high, with a total ban on online pornography. In an interview with the Smartmoney website in 2011, a spokesperson for American Express at the time said this was due to high levels of disputes, and an additional safeguard in the fight against child pornography.
Yet, the organisations also sent the letters to American Express, because they say American Express payment options have been offered on pornography sites – including one that specialises in teenage themed content.
A spokesperson for American Express told the BBC that while the global policy still stood, American Express had a pilot with one company that allowed for payment to certain pornography streaming websites if the payment was made within the US and on a US consumer credit card.
Other major credit card companies, including Visa and MasterCard, do allow both credit and debit card holders to purchase online pornography.
In an email to the BBC, a spokesperson for Mastercard said they were “currently investigating the claims referred to us in the letter.
“The way our network works is that a bank connects a merchant to our network to accept card payments.
“If we confirm illegal activity or violations of our rules (by card holders), we will work with the merchant’s bank to either bring them into compliance or to terminate their connection to our network.
“This is consistent with how we have previously worked with law enforcement agencies and groups like National and International Centers for Missing and Exploited Children.”
Some moves have been made by online payment companies to distance themselves from the pornography industry.
In November 2019, Paypal, the global online payment company, announced it would no longer be supporting payments to Pornhub as their policy forbids supporting “certain sexually oriented materials or services”.
In a blog on their site, Pornhub said they were “devastated” by the decision and the move would leave thousands of Pornhub models and performers who relied on subscription from the premium services without payment.
A pornography performer who shares material on Pornhub, and who asked to remain anonymous, said a payment freeze would have devastating implications for her earnings.
“Honestly, it would be a body blow,” she said. “It would wipe out my entire income and I wouldn’t know how to earn money, especially now in lockdown.”
Following mounting pressure for more accountability from pornographic sites, Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska sent a letter to the US Department of Justice in March asking Attorney General William Barr to investigate Pornhub for allegedly streaming acts of rape and exploitation.
In the same month, nine Canadian multi-party parliamentarians wrote to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau calling for an investigation into MindGeek, the parent company of Pornhub, which has its headquarters in Montreal.
Signatories of the letter:
International Centre on Sexual Exploitation, UK,
National Center on Sexual Exploitation, US,
Collective Shout, Australia
European Network of Migrant Women, Belgium
Word Made Flesh Bolivia, Bolivia
Media Health for Children and Youth, Denmark
FiLiA, England
Apne Aap, India
Survivor Advocate, Ireland
African Network for the Prevention and Protection against Child Abuse and Neglect, Liberia
The Reward Foundation, Scotland
Talita, Sweden
The Boys’ Mentorship Programme, Uganda
COLUMN BY
RELATED ARTICLE: ‘I was raped at 14, and the video ended up on a porn site’
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Somali-born Muslim Rep. Ilhan Omar disgustingly — and yet predictably — reacted to news that the Department of Justice is dropping its case against former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn on Thursday by labeling it “white privilege at work.”
Where was Flynn’s white privilege when he was targeted, framed, investigated, fired, coerced into pleading guilty, and had his reputation smeared by Obama-administration Deep State operatives? The only “privilege” Flynn has benefited from by having his case dropped is called “justice.”
On the contrary, Omar has benefited from her Muslim privilege. She has been the center of controversy for a history of anti-Semitic statements, for her open support for sharia law, for alleged immigration fraud, and for her statements whitewashing Islamic terrorism and condemning America.
And yet the race-mongering Omar remains in office, and benefits from the Muslim privilege of dismissing her critics as “Islamophobic.”
On March 7, 2019, former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke praised Omar for her repeated expressions of disdain for Israel and the Jewish people. “By Defiance to Z.O.G. [Zionist Occupation Government]” he tweeted, “Ilhan Omar is NOW the most important Member of the US Congress!”
In March 2019 in Los Angeles, Omar was the keynote speaker at a Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) benefit event titled “Advancing Justice, Empowering Valley Muslims.” Sharing the stage with Omar was CAIR-Florida executive director Hassan Shibly, who rejects the notion that Hezbollah and Hamas are terrorist organizations. At the same event, Omar said: “CAIR was founded after 9/11 because they recognized that some people [the 9/11 terrorists] did something, and that all of us [Muslim civilians] were starting to lose access to our civil liberties.” (In fact, CAIR was founded in 1994, not 2001.)
To learn more about Omar, click on her profile link here.
©All rights reserved.
What visa fraud does to our national security and public health.
With all of the focus on the Coronavirus pandemic other major issues. such as the immigration crisis, is being utterly ignored by the news media.
There is however, a direct nexus between failures of the immigration system and the current Coronavirus Pandemic. China has robbed America blind of intellectual property that has included high tech research into biology, chemistry and physics.
Indeed, Chinese espionage has become so routine across a wide array of areas including military secrets that the intelligence community has given it the sarcastic nickname of “Chinese Takeout!”
Obviously, in order to spy on America, Chinese operatives need to enter the United States.
Border security involves much more than our northern and southern borders, it also includes the vetting process conducted at ports of entry by CBP (Customs and Border Protection) inspectors and the issuance of visas at U.S. embassies and consulates overseas.
The preface of the official report 9/11 and Terrorist Travel begins with the following paragraph:
It is perhaps obvious to state that terrorists cannot plan and carry out attacks in the United States if they are unable to enter the country. Yet prior to September 11, while there were efforts to enhance border security, no agency of the U.S. government thought of border security as a tool in the counterterrorism arsenal. Indeed, even after 19 hijackers demonstrated the relative ease of obtaining a U.S. visa and gaining admission into the United States, border security still is not considered a cornerstone of national security policy. We believe, for reasons we discuss in the following pages, that it must be made one.
In point of fact, that paragraph properly identified the process by which visas are issued and aliens lawfully admitted into the United States as integral elements of border security.
While that report focused on terrorists, not unlike terrorists, spies need to enter the United States to carry out their nefarious missions as well.
Most folks assume that the only threat that we face comes from aliens who evade the inspections process conducted at ports of entry and, indeed, this is a serious problem. However, we have also seen numerous instances where aliens with nefarious goals have committed visa fraud and entered the United States through the lawful process conducted at ports of entry.
On January 28, 2020 the Department of Justice issued a press release, Harvard University Professor and Two Chinese Nationals Charged in Three Separate China Related Cases that began with this excerpt:
The Department of Justice announced today that the Chair of Harvard University’s Chemistry and Chemical Biology Department and two Chinese nationals have been charged in connection with aiding the People’s Republic of China. Dr. Charles Lieber, 60, Chair of the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard University, was arrested this morning and charged by criminal complaint with one count of making a materially false, fictitious and fraudulent statement. Lieber will appear this afternoon before Magistrate Judge Marianne B. Bowler in federal court in Boston, Massachusetts.
Yanqing Ye, 29, a Chinese national, was charged in an indictment today with one count each of visa fraud, making false statements, acting as an agent of a foreign government and conspiracy. Ye is currently in China.
Zaosong Zheng, 30, a Chinese national, was arrested on Dec. 10, 2019, at Boston’s Logan International Airport and charged by criminal complaint with attempting to smuggle 21 vials of biological research to China. On Jan. 21, 2020, Zheng was indicted on one count of smuggling goods from the United States and one count of making false, fictitious or fraudulent statements. He has been detained since Dec. 30, 2019.
Yanqing Ye is believed to currently be in China. Her Indictment alleges that she concealed her position as a lieutenant in the PLA (People’s Liberation Army) of the Chinese Communist Party and that she was under the direct supervision of a colonel in the PLA at the time she applied for her exchange visitor visa (J-1) to attend Boston University Department of Physics, Chemistry, Bio-Mechanical Engineering, Center of Polymer Studies. It is further alleged that consistent with her position in the PLA she was tasked with, among other things, conducting research, assessing U.S. military websites, sending U.S. documents and information to China by masking her affiliation to the PLA.
The DOJ press release noted above said this about defendant Zheng:
Zaosong Zheng, 30, a Chinese national, was arrested on Dec. 10, 2019, at Boston’s Logan International Airport and charged by criminal complaint with attempting to smuggle 21 vials of biological research to China. On Jan. 21, 2020, Zheng was indicted on one count of smuggling goods from the United States and one count of making false, fictitious or fraudulent statements. He has been detained since Dec. 30, 2019.
In August 2018, Zheng entered the United States on a J-1 visa and conducted cancer-cell research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston from Sept. 4, 2018, to Dec. 9, 2019. It is alleged that on Dec. 9, 2019, Zheng stole 21 vials of biological research and attempted to smuggle them out of the United States aboard a flight destined for China. Federal officers at Logan Airport discovered the vials hidden in a sock inside one of Zheng’s bags, and not properly packaged. It is alleged that initially, Zheng lied to officers about the contents of his luggage, but later admitted he had stolen the vials from a lab at Beth Israel.
Zheng stated that he intended to bring the vials to China to use them to conduct research in his own laboratory and publish the results under his own name.
Furthermore, universities have benefitted greatly by huge gifts from foreign countries.
My April 2, 2020 article, Welcome to the PC (Post Coronavirus) Era, included this excerpt:
On February 12, 2020 the Department of Education (DOE) issued a press release: U.S. Department of Education Launches Investigation into Foreign Gifts Reporting at Ivy League Universities that included this subtitle:
Since July, the Department has uncovered more than $6 billion in unreported foreign gifts from countries including Qatar, China, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.
This case is hardly unusual. On November 4, 2019 the New York Times reported, Vast Dragnet Targets Theft of Biomedical Secrets for China
Here is a sobering excerpt from that report:
The N.I.H. and the F.B.I. have begun a vast effort to root out scientists who they say are stealing biomedical research for other countries from institutions across the United States. Almost all of the incidents they uncovered and that are under investigation involve scientists of Chinese descent, including naturalized American citizens, allegedly stealing for China.
Seventy-one institutions, including many of the most prestigious medical schools in the United States, are now investigating 180 individual cases involving potential theft of intellectual property. The cases began after the N.I.H., prompted by information provided by the F.B.I., sent 18,000 letters last year urging administrators who oversee government grants to be vigilant.
So far, the N.I.H. has referred 24 cases in which there may be evidence of criminal activity to the inspector general’s office of the Department of Health and Human Services, which may turn over the cases for criminal prosecution. “It seems to be hitting every discipline in biomedical research,” said Dr. Michael Lauer, deputy director for extramural research at the N.I.H.
The first paragraphic of that excerpt notes that naturalized United States citizens from China are being investigated for stealing biomedical research.
Naturalized U.S. citizens have also engaged in espionage in other areas of vital concern.
This is not limited to naturalized citizens from China. Terrorists from the Middle East have acquired U.S. citizenship as a means of concealing and facilitating their crimes in the United States and also to provide them with multiple passports and identities as a means of moving undetected around the world.
Just as our southern border needs to be hardened against illegal (un-inspected) entry, immigration fraud must receive the attention and resources essential to combat this serious threat to national security, public safety and public health.
My concerns about visa fraud is apparent in the title of an article I wrote some time ago, Immigration Fraud: Lies That Kill.
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After six weeks of not being allowed to gather in church buildings for corporate worship, more than 170 pastors in Virginia are respectfully saying “enough.”
Michael Law Jr., senior pastor of Arlington Baptist Church, emailed a letter Monday to Gov. Ralph Northam asking him to modify two executive orders to allow religious gatherings at least once a week.
Another 171 pastors also signed the letter, which reads in part:
The Church of the Lord Jesus Christ is a hospital for the spiritually sick. Yet corporate worship services of more than 10 people have been banned in Virginia since March 23. … Prohibiting corporate worship services has exacerbated the sense of sorrow, isolation, and fear felt by so many citizens across the Commonwealth.
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 >>
On March 23, Northam issued Executive Order 53, which prohibits “all public and private in person gatherings of 10 or more individuals.”
The Democratic governor followed with Executive Order 55, which specifically prohibits “religious, or other social events, whether they occur indoor or outdoor.”
The second order says it is slated to “remain in full force and in effect until June 10, 2020, unless amended or rescinded by further executive order.”
The aim of the pastors’ letter is for churches to “have the freedom to be able to wisely gather again,” David Schrock, pastor for preaching and theology at Occoquan Bible Church in Woodbridge, Virginia, told The Daily Signal in a phone interview Wednesday.
Law, Schrock, and about 30 of the other pastors are with churches in Northern Virginia, which in general is the most liberal area of the state. Its population growth spurred Virginia’s switch in recent years from a reliably Republican state in presidential elections to a Democratic one.
The pastors who signed hope that their colleagues throughout Virginia will add their names to the petition urging Northam to amend his orders.
Law begins the appeal by thanking Northam for his work during the COVID-19 pandemic to protect Virginians and tells the governor that pastors in the Commonwealth “have been praying for you.”
Law then outlines a formal biblical and practical argument for why the pastors believe that churches should be permitted to assemble again:
Because corporate worship is central to Christian life, it is extraordinary for churches to forego meeting for even a single Sunday. Thus, with each passing week that corporate worship is banned, the government pushes Christians closer to the point where they must choose to sin against God and conscience or violate the law.
Northam is a member of First Baptist Church in Capeville, a predominantly black church on Virginia’s Eastern Shore.
The Daily Signal sought comment Thursday from the governor’s press office but had received no response by publication time.
Schrock, who said he wasn’t aware of a response from Northam, stressed why he chose to add his name to the pastors’ formal request to the governor.
“The church is a witness for the resurrection of Jesus Christ,” he said. “That is why we gather on Sunday, because that was the day that he was raised from the dead. And it gives a public testimony to the fact that he is alive and present to help all who trust in him.”
In addition to the biblical call to gather as believers, Schrock said, there “is both a psychological and a spiritual well-being that the church provides to those who are followers of Jesus Christ.”
“It seems like that would be a statewide concern, for the physical, the psychological, the spiritual well-being of all citizens of Virginia,” he said.
Although most churches have continued to conduct services, prayer meetings, and other activities online, Schrock said, “there are many things that the Bible instructs believers to do that cannot be done online.”
Many denominations believe Christians should partake in communion only when the church is publicly assembled, Schrock said. The command in Hebrews 10: 24-25 to “assemble for worship” is central to the Christian faith, he said, as noted in the letter to Northam.
“It comes down to the free exercise of our conscience, to be able to exercise our beliefs as the Bible teaches,” Schrock said. “And the letter underscores why there are certain things that cannot be done online and cannot be done just as individuals.”
On Monday, the same day the pastors emailed their petition to Northam, the governor said during a press conference that Virginia might begin to reopen businesses as early as next week as a part of a three-phase plan.
“You will still be safer at home,” Northam said as he began his outline of phase one. “Large gatherings are still a bad idea. It means continued social distancing, teleworking, and face coverings.”
“But it also means that we are moving forward,” the governor said. “Phase one includes guidelines for all businesses to enhance physical distancing, do more cleaning and disinfecting, and promote workplace safety.”
It’s not clear what Northam’s announcement regarding the phased reopening means for church gatherings. The plan does propose to ease “limits on businesses and faith communities,” but gatherings remain limited to 10 or fewer in phase one and 50 or fewer in phase two.
With churches across Virginia nearing the two-month mark since their last in-person services, Law’s letter implores the governor “to modify Executive Orders 53 and 55 to permit—at minimum—once-weekly gatherings by religious organizations, provided reasonable public-health precautions are taken.”
This report has been corrected since publication to state that the pastors who wrote to Northam are from churches throughout the state.
COLUMN BY
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.
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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!
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The Trump administration says Americans can expect the coronavirus to slow down in the summer months, but how much of our lifestyles will Americans be able to recover?
Dr. Shyla Valentine, a cardiovascular specialist and advisory board member of Women for Trump, sat down with Daily Caller White House Correspondent Anders Hagstrom to discuss this summer and the likelihood of a second wave of COVID-19 this fall. Dr. Valentine says Americans need to keep taking social distancing guidelines seriously, and warned that the second wave could possibly be more severe than the first.
Nevertheless, she says President Donald Trump’s plan for a phased reopening is a good one, that Americans should trust the members of the White House Coronavirus task force, and that the election should absolutely be held in the fall.
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COLUMN BY
White House correspondent.
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Let’s be as apolitical as possible and reason this out. Based on what we have learned thus far of COVID-19 and a still somewhat foggy but clearing future, there is only one rational route to take through the lifting fog.
First, there are four important premises on which to form the base for making the decision.
PREMISE ONE: Perhaps the most important “given” to accept is that whatever we do, more people will die. This is the brutal truth that no politician or media preener is willing to say, but is the one truth we know more than any other. We need a full and honest understanding that there are no magic unicorn solutions available. Every option we have means people dying. This is the harshest of all givens. COVID-19, or our most extreme measures to shut it down, will continue to kill Americans. Accept this truth, and the choice becomes clearer.
PREMISE TWO: We have no idea when — or even if — a vaccine will be available. Those people who think we should stay shutdown “until it is safe,” are on a fool’s errand. That’s the unicorn search. It’s not possible, not with COVID-19, not with the flu, not with cars, not with swimming, not with virtually anything in life. The very most optimistic estimates do not have a vaccine ready until January, and it is unknown when it can be deployed to 340 million Americans. Waiting even that long, the shortest possible time, would create a catastrophe from which we may never recover, and possibly cost as many lives due to the shutdown as would be saved due to the shutdown. Death from heart attacks, strokes, suicides, drug overdoses are just as real as deaths from COVID.
PREMISE THREE: We have treatments we are developing, but as with other coronaviruses and the flu virus, they will help but they will not cure or stop. They are merely aids that are probably saving lives now. We will refine those as we move forward, but no one says they are silver bullets, simply tools for the medical professionals to use to help some patients. And the ones available anytime soon are available now.
PREMISE FOUR: So without staying shut down for a vaccine or treatments, there is only one reason left for a shutdown: to keep hospitals and the medical system from being overwhelmed. Well, we can now confidently say that has not happened and will not happen. It is one of the few things we can be sure about. Even as horrific as New York was, it never came close to running out of ventilators or ICU beds. States that did not shut down or only partially did fared even better. Florida, supposed to get as bad as New York and Italy, did not reach a fraction of those levels even with the elderly population. Hospitals laid off idle workers due to elective surgeries being banned.
Without vaccines, treatments or flattening the curve to help hospitals, what is the rationale for continuing the shutdown? Well, nothing. There is no longer a viable reason — particularly if you can accept PREMISE ONE. If you cannot, then you are stuck waiting for the unicorns, and destined for disappointment — we’ll have deaths either way.
So if we do not stay shut down, and we accept that more deaths are inevitable with any choice, what’s left?
We re-open. Everything.
With only a few locally-driven exceptions, end the shutdowns and target resources heavily on protecting nursing homes, creating multiple layers of protection, i.e. extensive testing for staff, no visitors who have not been tested within, say, 48 hours, immediate removal of anyone showing symptoms to a pre-determined location, and perhaps more creative measures. At the same time, keep allowing local decisions. So the New York City metro area may want to remain shut down. Local decisions will still serve residents best over a one-size-fits-all.
We realistically cordon off the vulnerable elderly, specifically targeting nursing homes, along with those with comorbidities, and everyone else returns to a form of normal life.
We will rapidly see some things happen. First, it will serve as a catalyst to achieve greater amounts of immunity among the healthy, which reduces the risk for everyone, while returning us to pretty full economic activity — depending on how long the devastation from the shutdown lasts.
One fairly rapid development should be the replenishment of grocery store shelves. The food shortage, which could become severe, is not due primarily to COVID, but to the shutdown in response to COVID that has disrupted many portions of the supply chain. If one link is broken, perhaps there is a workaround. But if several are, we find ourselves in a situation where farmers are letting crops rot and dairy farmers are pumping and dumping milk. The chain broke through the shutdown. But that food shortage is resolved quickly by re-opening, while perhaps providing extra protections for some areas such as meat processors. More resources will be available if we are open.
But other things will also happen, and this is the brutal truth and hardest part. Let the virus move its way through the healthy population, as Sweden is doing, as Florida and Texas and some small midwestern states have partially done. COVID becomes another risk in our lives, like the hundreds of others we face every day.
Other things will happen. The graphs that have become a part of daily life will curve back up and people will react fearfully and ignorantly.
An important element for this being successful with the American people would be confident, calming leadership, something in short supply. Following his norm, many of President Trump’s decisions have been right and helpful, and arguably better than many other world leaders. But his temperament at the mic and on Twitter can be harmful. It isn’t always. I like to see him punch back as much as the next guy. But that is the wrong tactic in this sort of environment, particularly as we re-open and the numbers start creeping back up.
As long as you don’t only imbibe the spin of the #resist media, with some exceptions, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is actually becoming the gold standard on this. Like Trump, he pushed back against shutting down, and then only did a partial one, and is reopening again. On policy, they have been akin. But in tone, DeSantis has been calm, reassuring, and in charge. In fact, some Florida newspapers have grudgingly admitted as much.
The Sarasota Herald-Tribune, one of Gannett’s more influential papers in the state and steadfastly opposed to much of what DeSantis does, editorialized:
“…the governor’s calm demeanor during a rough stint of on-the-job training, and his repeated efforts to place pragmatism above politics by weighing available data before making decisions, have been commendable. And, we think, helpful overall.”
The reality is the charts will start curving up for a while. But remember PREMISE ONE, any choice we make from here, continued shutdown or re-opening, is going to mean people die. There will be no “safe” time to re-open. We cannot wait until January or January 2022 or maybe never for a vaccine, or for fully effective treatments. There are no silver bullets or magic pills in near enough time.
But there is a quick death of our economy and even way of life looming, and a potential spiral downward no one can really see the end of. That is far too much risk when we now know that protecting nursing homes will really diminish deaths — by 40 percent or more — and re-opening will provide more resources for nursing homes.
So we weigh it all and accept the trade-offs, ugly as they may be. Because long-term — which precious few politicians think in terms of — this will be better for quality of life, livelihoods and quite possibly the actual number of lives saved.
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