The ongoing horror over the rhetoric of America’s first Muslim congresswomen has people turning to Muslim reform women. Meet six outspoken and courageous Muslim reformers who also happen to be women. In the last week, each of these Muslim reform women have taken on the Muslim congresswomen, with laser-like focus on Ilhan Omar’s hateful rhetoric.
Raheel Raza
Raheel is part of Clarion Project’s Preventing Violent Extremism training program and the face of By the Numbers, a stunning narration of Muslim opinion and demographics. Raheel also the president of The Council for Muslims Facing Tomorrow, author of Their Jihad – Not My Jihad, an award winning journalist, public speaker, activist for human rights and featured in our award-winning documentary Honor Diaries. She is recipient of the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee medal for service to Canada. Raheel bridges the gap between East and West, promoting cultural and religious diversity for which she has appeared in print and on TV and radio numerous times. A fervent advocate for gender equality, Raheel is the first Muslim woman in Canada to lead mixed gender prayers. In her pursuit for human rights, she speaks regularly at the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva.
Shireen Qudosi
Shireen is the other half of Clarion Project’s Preventing Violent Extremism training program and Clarion Project’s National Correspondent. Shireen often looks at Muslim reform through the lens of faith, identity and belonging. As a former refugee raised across three continents, she has a unique perspective of the issues central to ‘the clash of civilizations’. Shireen has testified before the House Homeland Security Committee Hearing on radical Islam, offering a powerful testimony linking a generational crisis to Islam’s origin story. She is also passionate about child advocacy, refugees, deradicalization, and the transformational power of storytelling. In 2011, Shireen was named one of the top ten North American Muslim Reformers by journalist Christine Williams.
Asra Nomani
Asra is an author and professor who taught journalism at Georgetown University. She is co-director of the Pearl Project, a faculty-student, investigative-reporting project into the kidnapping and murder of her former colleague, The Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. Just last week, Asra made headlines by challenging CAIR and Linda Sarsour right outside of Rashida Tlaib’s office. You can watch the video below or read Shireen Qudosi’s coverage of the events.
Soraya Deen
Soraya is an international activist, lawyer, and lead organizer for Women’s Initiatives at the OMNIA Institute for Contextual Leadership. She is the founder of the Muslim Women’s Speaker’s Movement. Soraya is also the co-founder of Peacemoms, which promotes Christian and Muslim dialogue. She covers themes of women’s rights, public leadership, and nonviolence.
Anila Ali
Anila is an interfaith leader with a focus on community building. Anila believes the community is the first line of defense against radicalization. She founded the American Muslim Women’s Empowerment Council along with other organizations driving community participation geared toward local solutions. Anila is also passionate about educational initiatives that benefit minority communities.
Qanta Ahmed
Dr. Ahmed is a physician, non-fiction author and broadcast media commentator. Her first book, In the Land of Invisible Women (Sourcebooks 2008) details her experience of living and working in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Dr. Ahmed completed a treatise on the Psychological Manipulation of Islam in the Service of Terror, focusing on Islamist suicide bombing. As a result, she traveled to Pakistan’s Swat Valley to meet rehabilitated child jihadists, formerly operatives of the Pakistan Taliban. Along with Asra, Raheel and Shireen, she also offered testimony to U.S. Congress on the issue of radical Islam. She subsequently provided Congressional Briefings at the invitation of Congressional Staff on the issues of Palestinian child radicalization in the Disputed Territories in 2014. Watch Qanta take on Islamist Omar Baddar over the issue of problematic Muslim congresswomen.
EDITORS NOTE: This Clarion Project column with videos is republished with permission.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Dr. Rich Swierhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngDr. Rich Swier2019-03-14 10:54:162019-03-14 10:56:55VIDEOS: Horror Over Muslim Congresswomen Turns Heads to Muslim Reform Women
As the Trump administration considers designating Mexican drug cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO), Judicial Watch provides comprehensive documentation that the sophisticated criminal operations meet the U.S. government’s requirements to make the list. In a White Paper released this week Judicial Watch outlines the unique challenges and national security risks posed by Mexican Transitional Criminal Organizations (TCO) and human trafficking. The threats require policy changes that include classifying Mexican TCOs as FTOs and a reassessment of Mexico under the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA), which requires countries to implement measures that address human trafficking in order to receive American aid. Mexico does not meet the minimum standards in several key areas, according to State Department documents obtained by Judicial Watch for the White Paper.
Undoubtedly, Mexican drug cartels meet the U.S. government’s criteria for FTO designation, which requires organizations to be foreign, engage in terrorism or terrorist activity or possess the capability and intent to do so and pose a threat to U.S. nationals or U.S. national security. Mexican drug cartels are inherently foreign, routinely commit criminal acts within the statutory definition of terrorism and arguably represent a more immediate and ongoing threat to U.S. national security than any of the currently-designated FTOs on the State Department list. Properly designating the major Mexican TCOs—including Los Zetas, Juárez and Sinaloa cartels—as FTOs would enhance the federal government’s ability to combat that threat. An official FTO designation would enable the prosecution of those who provide material support to them, facilitate the denial of entry and deportation of TCO members and affiliates and eliminate the organizations’ access to the U.S. financial system. “FTO designations play a critical role in our fight against terrorism and are an effective means of curtailing support for terrorist activities and pressuring groups to get out of the terrorism business,” according to the State Department.
For years Mexican cartels have hijacked and sabotaged buses, commercial trucks and trains, activity constituting terrorist activity under U.S. law. The White Paper lists specific cases, including gasoline tankers and more than a dozen robberies daily of Ferromex trains, one of the three largest rail transport operators in the country. Mexican TCOs have also committed hundreds of political assassinations in recent years and members of Los Zetas launched a grenade and shot small arms fire at the U.S. Consulate in Monterrey. Los Zetas members also murdered Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Special Agent Jaime Zapata a few years ago. Judicial Watch’s White Paper also documents Mexican cartels’ use of explosive devices and high-caliber firearms, including rocket-propelled grenades and other military weapons. In 2018 Mexican officials seized nearly 2,000 high-caliber weapons from suspected cartel associates in Mexico City and there have been approximately 150,000 organized-crime related murders in Mexico since 2006. Last year alone, there were nearly 1,200 kidnappings in Mexico, according to official figures provided in the White Paper.
Most of the crimes are financially motivated, but a significant number are executed to intimidate political, judicial, military and law enforcement officials from going after cartel members. Examples include two Mexican federal agents kidnapped and murdered by the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generación, the kidnapping of Veracruz congresswoman-elect Norma Rodriguez and the kidnapping of Hidalgo Mayor Genero Urbano. Under U.S. law the seizing or detaining and threatening to kill, injure, or continue to detain, another individual in order to compel a third person (including a governmental organization) to do or abstain from doing any act as an explicit or implicit condition for the release of the seized individual constitutes terrorist activity. The danger created by these criminal enterprises is nothing new. A few years ago, the Drug Enforcement Administration determined that Mexican TCOs are the greatest criminal threat to the United States.
Mexico also fails miserably to combat human trafficking, which is pervasive in the country despite generous U.S. assistance under the TVPA. The Mexican government has not met the minimum standards under the 2000 law, including enhanced criminal sanctions for human traffickers and protections for victims. Figures obtained by Judicial Watch show that Mexico obtained fewer convictions than in the previous year, identified fewer victims than in the previous year, provided limited specialized services for trafficking victims, which were unavailable in most parts of the country, and maintained an inadequate number of shelters compared to the scale of the problem. The government inspected and prosecuted few complaints of forced labor in agriculture and corruption and complicity remain significant concerns inhibiting law enforcement action. The U.S. government should downgrade Mexico because it is not making required efforts to meet the TVPA’s minimum standards. The reassessment would reduce American funding until improvements take place.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Judicial Watchhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngJudicial Watch2019-03-14 09:03:562019-03-15 10:15:41White Paper Makes Case to Designate Mexican Cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations
I barely need to reiterate what you already know: the close links that exist between our people and the people of Venezuela and Hugo Chavez, the promoter of the Bolivarian Revolution and the United Socialist Party he founded. Fidel Castro. When you see people starving in Venezuela and fleeing into neighboring countries and realize that this is a country that once had the world’s largest oil reserves, you realize that they’ve ruined a very good prospect with ideas that sounded good but didn’t turn out well. – Thomas Sowell
We’re in a global war, facing an enemy alliance that runs from Pyongyang, North Korea, to Havana, Cuba, and Caracas, Venezuela. – General Michael T. Flynn
Venezuela sits at the northern tip of South America with Columbia on the west and Guyana on the east. The country is collapsing. The constant blackouts have put hundreds of patients at risk and many have already died, food is rotting, and water is at a shortage. According to media reports, schoolchildren and oil workers have begun passing out from hunger, and sick Venezuelans have scoured veterinary offices for medicine. Link Malaria, measles, and diphtheria have returned with a vengeance. The country’s infrastructure is falling apart along with their decaying power grid, and telecommunication networks have collapsed.
America has offered humanitarian aid, but Maduro has rejected it. He is taking his cues from communist Havana. Unfortunately, Venezuela never diversified; oil dominates their exports and government revenue and barrel prices of oil are down.
With Venezuela’s collapse, Maduro is begging Beijing; China’s price will be high as Venezuela’s debt to them is already in the billions. Xi Jinping needs a presence of power that encourages foreign governments to believe they should play ball with Beijing, not Washington. And that means China’s increased military presence around the world, and what better place than Venezuela or one of her islands in the southern Caribbean.
Would Maduro risk U.S. ire by allowing Chinese basing rights? I think so. Maduro is already increasing his rhetoric against Washington and has repeatedly threatened Colombia. At the same time, the Venezuelan leader knows the U.S. and its allies believe he is an irredeemable despot: They want no part of a rapprochement with his regime.
Xi Jinping, Putin and Maduro
The Venezuelan and Chinese economies seem like they could hardly have less in common. The government of Nicolas Maduro has looted the state-run oil monopoly company Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) to pay for the “Bolivarian revolution,” the socialist movement under the late leader Hugo Chavez. Eleven billion has been stolen from PDVSA in a decade.
With oil prices down, the country is unable even to repair rigs or pay workers to generate income, and the government now faces the prospect of a mass uprising. Meanwhile, half a globe away, China’s gleaming malls stand in stark contrast to Venezuela’s empty shelves.
But Venezuela’s ruinous state has more to do with China than one would think, specifically, with Chinese President Xi Jinping’s plan for expanding China’s global influence through financial diplomacy.
Thanks to a malevolent dictatorship pushing disastrous economic policies aided by another communist benefactor willing to extend near bottomless credit, the country is at collapse. This same toxic mix is present throughout many of the countries receiving large amounts of Chinese lending under China’s Belt and Road Initiative. China provides large amounts of ruinous lending that pushes developing countries to financial ruin. The Belt and Road Initiative scheme isn’t offering concessionary lending or international aid but market-based lending rates with high-interest loans. The borrower countries then have to use Chinese firms, inputs, and workers to build out their railways and ports. The Chinese firms are third rate at best.
Since the economic shift in Venezuela, up to 5 million Venezuelans are estimated to have left the country crossing the border mostly to Columbia, while inflation in Venezuela hovers around 1 million percent.
According to a UN report, about 90 percent of the population lives in poverty. The country’s oil revenue is at its lowest in three decades.
America Supports Opposition Leader Juan Guaido
The two communist countries of China and Russia have kept Venezuela afloat by lending billions to the economically crippled petrostate, sometimes with cheap oil thrown in as a sweetener for the two creditors. “Not only are they getting oil, but they’ve also gained access to pretty good acreage in Venezuela,” said Helima Croft, global head of commodity strategy at RBC Capital Markets.
Those deals were struck with President Maduro, whose leadership is facing a serious challenge from Juan Guaido, and it’s not clear what happens to that debt if Maduro is kicked out of office. America would like to see Guaido take over the country, and apparently so would the Venezuelan people. However, Russia and China are working in and out of the shadows, complicating U.S. efforts to foster change.
Venezuela is indebted to external creditors by a total of something close to $100 billion. Yet, the socialist state is home to the largest oil reserves on the planet, but endemic corruption has devastated its economy. Beijing and Moscow have helped the country stave off collapse by repeatedly extending financial lifelines — to the tune of tens of billions of dollars over the last decade.
Maduro’s re-election last year was marred by charges of widespread vote-rigging, vote-buying, and other irregularities, but more fundamentally it failed to meet constitutional requirements. As such, Guaido, due to his role as head of the National Assembly, appears to be the legitimate president.
Juan Guaido is not recognized by either China or Russia. They back Maduro to the hilt because they have much to lose if his leftist government falls. From 2007 to 2014, China lent Venezuela $63 billion — 53 percent of all its lending to Latin America during this time. Of that amount, somewhere between $10-$25 billion remains outstanding to China and Russia’s state-backed oil company Rosneft is owed another $2.3 billion, excluding interest.
There was an important catch to this largesse; to guarantee repayment, Beijing insisted on being repaid in oil, but when oil dropped to $30 a barrel in 2016, this caused Venezuela’s price tag for serving its debt to explode. To repay Beijing, Venezuela must now ship two barrels of oil for every single barrel it originally agreed to. Chavez’ 2002-2003 purge of 25,000 skilled oil workers at PDVSA resulted in massive problems. As well, reinvestment in the fields and help from foreign oil firms was gone. Venezuela struck it poor.
Venezuela’s mother lode, the Orinoco heavy oil belt, holds more than a trillion barrels of tarlike bitumen, which makes it much more difficult to extract because when it comes out of the ground, it’s almost solid and cannot flow through pipelines. It then needs to be upgraded to something resembling liquid oil before sale. Doing all that takes the kind of cash and sophisticated know-how PDVSA lacked at the time.
The heavy oil needs chemicals, diluting agents such as naphtha, to turn into a lighter substance that can eventually be exported. Sanctions include a ban on US firms exporting these agents to Venezuela.
Military Advantages
“Russia and China are using Venezuela as a proxy conflict to challenge the U.S. This is more than just economic support. Russia and China are leveraging its economic support to establish a military-industrial presence in Venezuela,” Joseph Humire, executive director of the Center for a Secure Free Society, an independent global research group, told Fox News.
China and Russia maintain crucial military facilities in the country, such as China’s satellite-tracking facility inside the Capitan Manuel Rios Air Base in Guarico, while Russia has a cyber presence at the Naval Base Antonio Diaz “Bandi” in La Orchilla, an island north of Caracas. Link
According to one U.S. intelligence and defense official, who was not authorized to speak on the record, the threat of “asymmetric warfare” looms large as the Venezuelan crisis deepens – especially given Russia’s supply of arms and equipment to its Venezuela ally. “Maduro still sits on the largest proven oil reserves in the world. That’s the grand prize. China could say that the more Venezuela becomes a pariah, the cheaper they want it,” noted the intelligence insider. “And the more leverage Russia then has to build a bigger base in the Western Hemisphere, and closer to the United States nonetheless.”
“At a minimum, they could harass the United States, if not cause a lot more trouble. This makes the Cuban Missile Crisis look like child’s play.” Link
Venezuela and Iran
In General Michael T. Flynn’s book, The Field of Flight, he states, “The war is on. We face a working coalition that extends from North Korea and China to Russia, Iran, Syria, Cuba, Bolivia, Venezuela, and Nicaragua. We are under attack, not only from nation-states directly, but also from al Qaeda, Hezbollah, ISIS, and countless other terrorist groups. Suffice to say, the same sort of cooperation binds together jihadis, Communists, and garden-variety tyrants.”
“Once we bailed out of Iraq in 2011, the power of the Islamic Republic immediately expanded and rapidly filled the void left by our departure. The mullahs have already established strategic alliances in our own hemisphere with Cuba and Venezuela and are working closely with Russia and China.”
General Michael T. Flynn is absolutely correct.
As Iran and Venezuela become increasingly isolated and sanctioned by the U.S and much of the international community, the two governments are said to be tightening their bond – with the help of Tehran’s proxy group, Hezbollah, in the middle of the action.
“Training between Iran and Venezuela has increased in the past few years as part of a larger plan between the Venezuelan regime, consisting of increasing the number of Hezbollah operatives and their supporters across Latin America,” Johan Obdola, President of the Canada-based Global Organization for Intelligence (IOSI) and former counter-narcotics chief in Venezuela, told Fox News. Hassan Rouhani and Nicolas Maduro have established a very firm and close relationship, which was of course initiated by Chavez.”
Drug Trafficking, Iran and Cuba
Caracas, Venezuela and Havana, Cuba are the only two places Tehran, Iran can fly into or out of with people and contraband. Both are sanctioned by the United States. Venezuela’s ambassador to the United States is defending his country’s controversial airline service to the capitals of Syria and Iran — both countries that are designated by the U.S. as state sponsors of terrorism.
Drug trafficking within the Venezuelan regime is called, “The Cartel of the Suns.” Criminal cartels have always run drug trafficking but in Venezuela it is managed from within government. Instead of sidelining those accused of drug trafficking, Maduro has promoted them to the highest offices, perhaps calculating that they have the most to lose if his regime falls and will therefore fight the hardest to preserve it.
In 2005 Venezuela severed ties with the United States Drug Enforcement (DEA), accusing its representatives of spying. Following the departure of the DEA from Venezuela and the expansion of DEA’s partnership with Colombia in 2005, Venezuela became more attractive to drug traffickers. Between 2008 and 2012, Venezuela’s cocaine seizure ranking among other countries declined, going from being ranked fourth in the world for cocaine seizures in 2008 to sixth in the world in 2012.
While Chinese engagement could be seen by other Latin American countries as an attractive path to development, the short-term benefits often lead to long-term dependency. Chinese investments focus on extracting natural resources and trading high value-added manufactures from China for Latin American commodities. China’s appetite for commodities will only increase. Link Their plan is global…in 30 years they expect to be the world’s superpower.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Kelleigh Nelsonhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngKelleigh Nelson2019-03-14 08:23:382019-03-14 10:19:45Venezuela’s Road To Disaster Is Littered with Chinese Debt
Last month in El Salvador, a third-party outsider won in a landslide election, defeating his opponents, promising to crack down on corruption, to fight crime, and to improve the economy. President-elect Nayib Bukele shares with us his thoughts on immigration, gangs, and how the U.S. and El Salvador can work together. Read the transcript, pasted below, or listen to the podcast.
We also cover these stories:
After dozens of countries suspended use of the Boeing 737 MAX 8, President Trump is following suit.
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Paul Manafort has now been sentenced to 7 years in prison.
Daniel Davis: Welcome to The Daily Signal. I’m Daniel Davis. And today, I have the pleasure of being joined by the president-elect of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele. Mr. President, I’d like to thank you for joining us.
Nayib Bukele: Thank you for having me. And thank you to The Heritage Foundation and the people that are watching us.
Davis: You were elected in February in an overwhelming vote. And it was the first time, I believe, in the last 20 or 30 years that a third party candidate had been elected president in El Salvador. You’re going to start your five-year term in June, and now you’re here in Washington. What are some ways that you hope to build the U.S.-El Salvador relationship?
Bukele: The U.S. and El Salvador have had a relationship where, for over 100 years, it has been a great relationship. And El Salvador has been an ally of the United States forever. A third of our population lives here. We use the U.S. dollar as our currency. Eighty percent of our exports come to the United States, 80 percent of our imports come from the United States.
But the fact is, the last 10 years, we had a government that has been eroding the relationship with the United States, siding with Venezuela, siding with Nicaragua, the international organizations. And what happened is that we have been eroding our relationship with our greatest ally, our greatest friend. And it just doesn’t make sense.
So the election gives us an opportunity to fix that relationship, basically. It’s a change of government that is not only a change of government, but also a change of era for El Salvador.
… We had a civil war in the ’80s that ended 1992. But after those peace accords were signed, the two sides of the war still continued to govern the country. ARENA did one side and the former guerrilla, the FMLN, on the other side. They go on and continue to rule the country for the next 27 years. They’re still in government, right now. They’re leaving May 31.
So on June 1, not only is a new government coming in, but also a new era for El Salvador is coming in, because we’re turning the page on the postwar era.
El Salvador decided overwhelmingly on February 3 that they want the postwar era to end. And now, we have a clean slate. We have a clean page to write on. And we’re not abided by the speeches of the ’80s. We’re not abided by the ideologies of the ’80s, by the fight of the ’80s. But a new generation that wants to build something. We don’t need to invent the recipes. The recipes are there. The United States is an example of that.
So we just want to build a country that works with commonsense solutions and doing the commonsense things like being in Washington and reaching out to our friends. And we just want to do the commonsense things. We know that as a result, we will have prosperity for our people. And our people are happy and they’re eager to do that and willing to work on that.
It’s obviously going to work because everybody is on board and we’re trying to send the right signals. And the right signals are being received by the right people and by the right countries. And I think that, at the end of the line, we’ll have prosperity in El Salvador.
That’s not only good for El Salvador, but it’s also good for the other countries that could see El Salvador as an example of how an underdeveloped country can have progress and can have economic growth and can solve its problems by doing the right things and the commonsense things.
Davis: You mentioned that a third of Salvadorans live right here in the United States?
Bukele: Yes.
Davis: And we also continue to have more migrants arriving at the U.S. border. But you mentioned in your speech at Heritage that you plan to end all, I think your words were, “forceful emigration … “
Bukele: Yes.
Davis: ” … to the United States in the next five years.” What key steps do you plan to take to achieve that?
Bukele: Forceful emigration, which is 95 percent of our emigration. You have other types of emigration, right? Like professional emigration … but you have forceful migration. It means when you have emigration caused by other factors, like, for example, lack of opportunities or violence or both of them, both of those factors.
This is really shameful for our country. It should be really shameful. In the immigration debate, we always talk about the borders. We always talk about the countries that get the influx of immigrants. But we seldomly speak about what are we doing in our country for the people not fleeing?
People are not fleeing the states, right? Why people are fleeing our country? We should be doing things really badly for our own people to want to flee our country. So we want to end that.
It’s not a favor to the United States. It’s just a matter of common sense that our country has to provide the opportunities and the security for people to want to stay in their country. For us, it’s not cheap, either, to be exporting our young population, our population that is willing to work, that is willing to work really hard for their families.
We have a demographic bonus. We have a huge demographic bonus because we have a huge, young population. And by any observation, that should be the best thing a country can have. And we’re expelling them, like we want to export people. And that shouldn’t be an industry. Exporting people to get remittances, that’s the worst thing a country can do, exporting its own population. So we want to change that.
And the way to change that is … a gigantic job. But it’s actually really simple in the way that it’s a commonsense thing that you have to provide opportunities, you have to provide jobs, and you have to provide security.
Now, someone might say, “Hey, really, that sounds good. But how do you provide security?” Right? Well, you have to fight the gangs. In El Salvador, a gang member makes, on average, $300 a month. So they’re not making a huge income.
Of course the state may come and provide better opportunities for them. Education, scholarship, sports, culture, art. And we can allure the young people to go into the right path and not into the wrong path. And we can fight. The gangs are not sophisticated. They’re not the big drug cartels. They’re not sophisticated. So we can fight them.
It’s straightforward with technology, with things that we don’t have, because crooks have been stealing the money for the last 40 years. So let’s invest the money that the people are paying in taxes in services to the people.
One of the best services we can provide to the people, to companies, to international investors, to tourists, for tourism to grow, is investing in making our country safe. And then, when you Google El Salvador, you will not find gangs, corruption, emigration, caravans. But you will find economic growth, tourism, surfing beaches–they are battling corruption. So you will find the right ways.
That will allure people to come in to invest, to Salvadorans to go back to their country, retirees to want to retire in El Salvador because we have nice weather, because we have beautiful beaches, because we have beautiful places to go, because we have summer all year long.
But we have to do the right things to change the culture. They seem gigantic. But at the same time, it’s really simple. If you could define it in a minute, it should be simple to do it. And we haven’t done it because the previous administration and the current administration have been focusing on stealing money and haven’t been focusing on giving ambition to our country and putting the money where it should be and putting the country on the right path.
Davis: Yeah. I want to ask you about that. One of the major issues in your election was corruption.
Bukele: Yeah.
Davis: What are some specific ways that’s been happening? And what are key steps you plan to bring reform and accountability to government?
Bukele: Yes, well, you said it. We have to bring reform and accountability. In the first part, we have to reform some laws and we have to set the example. Like the president of Mexico just said, “You cannot clean the stairs from the bottom-up. You have to clean the stairs from up-down.”
So we have to start leading with the example. If the president’s stealing money, all of his Cabinet will do the same. But if the president is not stealing money, and he tries to choose … and I say “try” because out of 3,000 people there might be a crook, right?
Davis: Right.
Bukele: But if you choose the right people, and then you put in place the checks and balances that will control when one of those 3,000 confident posts do you have, if they go, if they stray, somebody will catch them and somebody will turn to the justice system and to the authorities and be punished for his crimes. Corruption will stop.
And one of the things that will do it fast is we have called for an international commission led by the OAS or by the U.N., both organizations are interested in it.
Dr. Almagro, secretary-general of the OAS, just said, “We’re all in in that commission.” And an international commission has the benefit, I don’t want to sound redundant, but it has the benefit that it’s international. So they don’t have the influence of the internal powers or the internal mafias.
You will have an international commission that is totally independent, that is going after the crooks. Not only the ones in the past, but also the ones in the present and the ones in the future.
Somebody asked me in the audience, “What would I do with the crooks in the opposition?” And I said, “Not only the crooks in the opposition, in our own party, if there’s somebody stealing money, he will have to pay for what he has done.” And that will also dissuade some people of doing bad things, because they will fear the consequences.
Davis: Earlier you mentioned the problem of gangs. And it’s a problem we have here in the United States. MS-13 is a challenge. That gang has roots in El Salvador. But I want to ask you how that gang has affected the people in El Salvador? And what are some of the key steps that you plan to take to really push back on the gangs?
Bukele: Gangs are really bad. They are responsible of 80 percent of our homicides. They extort money out of poor people. They have control of whole communities controlled by gangs, where if you want to sell something, you have to pay the gang. They are a quasi-state because they function like a … they collect taxes. They provide security, which means, “I’m not going to kill you.” Right?
Davis: Right, right.
Bukele: But the fact is that these organizations, they have to end. We have to end these organizations. And the right way to do it is with three steps.
First, we have to compete to get the young people. They are recruiting 12-year-olds, 13-year-olds. Those kids, you can compete them. If you get them, those kids will go in the right way, with scholarship, with education, with the sports, with programs. You can get those kids.
You have the other, which are graduated criminals. You cannot fix them. You have to combat them. But you can do it with technology. You can do it by putting the money to people and combating them.
In El Salvador, we don’t even have a forensic lab. We’re just going to build the first one. But if you go to a crime scene, you can have their fingerprints, you can have DNA, you can have the bullet, the gun, and the letter from the killer saying, “I killed this guy,” and they wouldn’t even know who wrote the letter because they don’t have calligraphers to match the letters.
The fact is that we don’t even have the common things police departments in the United States have. So how can we fight the gangs if you’re not acquiring the technology and equipment and the tools that our men and women in the police need to fight the gangs?
The opportunity is that the gangs are not sophisticated. They’re really low sophistication. They’re not like the drug cartels that they have the submarines. We’re low sophisticated. And they are very low in income. So if we cut their income, it’s very easy.
When I was mayor of San Salvador, we just did a plan in the historic downtown district. And we turned the most dangerous area in the country into the most touristic area in the country. So you can do it in small. You can scale it in big. That’s the second one, combat them.
And the third one is reinsertion in the jail system. Right now, in our jail system, they are practically universities of crime. They go inside because they have stolen the chicken, and then … they order homicides and extort people from the jails because the whole ambit of the jail does that.
But if you turn jails into correctional facilities, that actually you are trying to correct people, then a big chunk of those criminals that are getting out, because their sentences are ending, you will get a huge chunk of them in the right path. And if they go astray, well, you get them back. And you send them back to jail. But you need the system to work.
I mean, we’re not inventing hot water. It’s just doing the right things that commonsense law enforcement has to do. We have to fix our social fabric so kids don’t feel the necessity to go into the gang. And we have to fix our jail system.
Davis: Lastly, I want to ask you about your election. Last month, as we mentioned, you were elected by wide margins. A third-party candidate. And you’ve got a huge social media, as well. I understand you’re 37 years old. Is that correct?
Bukele: Yes.
Davis: So what do you think most resonated with your campaign? With the people?
Bukele: I think it was a couple of different factors. One of them, I was mayor of the capital, San Salvador. And when we ended our term, we ended with an 84 percent approval rating. So people like our promises, but also people know that we will keep our words and our promises, because we have done that already. That’s for one.
The second is I think we connect better with most of people that are … most people are watching their phones more time than are watching their TVs. So, it’s good to have ads on TV, but it’s better to connect people via social network in our times.
And the other thing is that I think people were also fed up of the status quo, of the two-party system that has been the crooks on one side and the crooks in the other side that has been ripping off and stealing the people’s money.
You will see former presidents with $300 million, $400 million from the public money. And the country with no medicine, with schools with no roofs. We have 80 percent of our schools that don’t have internet access. People were fed up of that, so people wanted a change.
And right now, we had a huge electorate. We won in the 14 departments. We won in 59 of the 60 most important cities. We won in 262 cities in the country. We won in every sector and every niche. But right now, that transforms into a responsibility, because the expectations are so high that if we don’t fulfill those expectations, it could be really bad. So we have to fulfill or exceed the expectations that people have in us.
Davis: President-elect Nayib Bukele, we really appreciate you taking the time to join us.
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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column is republished with permission.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Daily Signalhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Daily Signal2019-03-14 07:26:192019-03-14 07:26:19‘You Have to End Them’: El Salvador President-Elect Outlines His 3 Steps to Destroy MS-13, Other Gangs
Are the differences between men and women biological or socially constructed? What do women want from a relationship? What do men want? Are they the same? Or are they much different? Sean McDowell, Associate Professor of Theology and Philosophy at Biola University sorts it all out in this eye-opening video.
The new Medicare for All bill (H.R. 1384) has come and hopefully will go the way of the pet rock.
But as usual, bills contain hidden gems
The focus on palliative care and lowering costs by reducing “aggressive” end-of-life treatment is one more incremental under-the-radar step along the road to government control over life and death. A culture of hastening death has gradually evolved, disguised as “death with dignity.”
Subtly devaluing life primes the pump for rationing of medical care at all stages by a government-run program that is the exclusive purveyor of medical “benefits.”
This year, legislators were not so subtle. It is bad enough that our elderly are pushed into hospice, but now the compassionate legislators have set their sights on newborns. New York passed, and Virginia floated laws that permit the killing of babies after birth.
Starting in the 1970s, the federal government clearly saw a need to protect medical personnel from the tyranny of the government mandates that could violate religious or moral convictions.
We must not let the government bury our conscience and beliefs under layers of bureaucracy. Medicare for All may mean independent thought for none.
The new Medicare for All bill (H.R. 1384) has come and hopefully will go the way of the pet rock. Everybody now knows the basics: the government will take care of all medical, dental, vision, pharmacy, and long-term care services with no out-of-pocket expenses. The bill prohibits parallel private insurance, and has the glaring absence of a financing mechanism.
But as usual, bills contain hidden gems. Section 104 of the bill tracks the Affordable Care Act’s “anti-discrimination” rule, making it clear that no person can be denied benefits, specifically including abortion and treatment of gender identity issues “by any participating provider.” The bill does not correspondingly reaffirm the federal laws protecting conscience and First Amendment religious freedom rights of medical personnel. Such protections relate to participation in abortion, sterilization, assisted suicide, and other ethical dilemmas.
Most sane individuals agree that we do not want our government to control any aspect of our individual lives—particularly not our religious beliefs and moral codes. When the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) sought to clarify such conscience protections, thousands of commenters offered evidence of discrimination and coercion to violate the tenets of the Oath of Hippocrates and their own ethics. Some left their jobs or left the medical profession entirely when their conscientious objections were not honored.
Conscience protections are vital in this time of unabashed devaluing of life. Last year, the Palliative Care and Hospice Education Training Act (PCHETA), passed the House but died in the Senate. This bill would have dedicated $100 million in additional taxpayer dollars to persuade patients to forgo treatment that might prolong life in exchange for a steady stream of increasing doses of narcotics. Already some families feel they are not merely offered hospice as a choice but are steered toward it when their older relatives fall ill, even when the medical prognosis is uncertain.
The focus on palliative care and lowering costs by reducing “aggressive” end-of-life treatment is one more incremental under-the-radar step along the road to government control over life and death. A culture of hastening death has gradually evolved, disguised as “death with dignity.” California, Colorado, Oregon, Washington, Montana, Vermont have legalized physician-assisted suicide with 20 other states considering implementing such laws.
Subtly devaluing life primes the pump for rationing of medical care at all stages by a government-run program that is the exclusive purveyor of medical “benefits.” Our western counterparts with single payer have discovered that offering fewer benefits is the simplest way to control costs. The “Complete Lives System”—the brainchild of ObamaCare physician architect Ezekiel Emanuel—includes worrisome determinants of who should receive care. The system prioritizes adolescents and persons with “instrumental value,” i.e., individuals with “future usefulness.”
This year, legislators were not so subtle. It is bad enough that our elderly are pushed into hospice, but now the compassionate legislators have set their sights on newborns. New York passed, and Virginia floated laws that permit the killing of babies after birth. The U.S. Senate garnered only 53 of the 60 votes needed to pass the Born Alive Survivors Protection Act which would mandate medical care and legal protections to infants born alive after an attempted abortion.
Starting in the 1970s, the federal government clearly saw a need to protect medical personnel from the tyranny of the government mandates that could violate religious or moral convictions. Personal liberty is an integral part of our democratic republic. While a physician’s calling is to render treatment to all patients, this is balanced with an individual physician’s moral beliefs. This is no more apparent than in legislation permitting physician assisted suicide and post-delivery “abortions.” Sadly, under threat of discrimination lawsuits, some physicians have acquiesced to patients’ requests for medications and surgical procedures that conflict with their moral code.
As anthropologist, Margaret Mead so brilliantly wrote, “One profession, the followers of [Hippocrates], were to be dedicated completely to life under all circumstances…This is a priceless possession which we cannot afford to tarnish, but society always is attempting to make the physician into a killer—to kill the defective child at birth, to leave the sleeping pills beside the bed of the cancer patient. … It is the duty of society to protect the physician from such requests.”
We must not let the government bury our conscience and beliefs under layers of bureaucracy. Medicare for All may mean independent thought for none.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Dr. Marilyn Singletonhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngDr. Marilyn Singleton2019-03-13 17:55:162019-03-13 17:55:16Thought Police (Oops, Medicare) For All
ANN ARBOR, MI – The Thomas More Law Center (“TMLC”), a national nonprofit public interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, announced today that nationally prominent appellate lawyer John Bursch will represent the state of Tennessee and its General Assembly on March 19 before a 3-judge panel of the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.
The Thomas More Law Center was retained by the Tennessee General Assembly in March 2017 to file a first-of-its-kind Tenth Amendment lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the federal refugee resettlement program. The federal government has violated state sovereignty by forcing Tennessee to continue paying for the program after Tennessee opted out and exercised its right not to participate. TMLC is appealing after a federal district court judge dismissed the case. The Law Center is representing Tennessee without charge.
Mr. Bursch, a former Michigan state solicitor general and past chair of the American Bar Association’s Council of Appellate Lawyers, has an impressive client list ranging from Fortune 500 companies and foreign and domestic governments, to top public officials and industry associations in high-profile cases. His cases frequently involve pressing political and social issues, and five had at least $1 billion at stake.
He has argued 11 U.S. Supreme Court cases and obtained summary reversal on three more, compiling a Supreme Court merits record of 10-2-2. He has also argued 30 cases in state supreme courts, and dozens more in federal and state appellate courts across the country. A recent study included John on its “veritable who’s who of Supreme Court litigators” list.
Although Tennessee officially withdrew from participation in the federal refugee resettlement program in 2007, the federal government continues to commandeer state tax dollars to fund the federal program.
Tennessee has a history of supporting the Tenth Amendment and state sovereignty. In 2009, House Joint Resolution 108, which passed in the Senate 31-0 and in the House by 85-2, demanded that the federal government halt its practice of imposing mandates on the states for purposes not enumerated by the U.S. Constitution.
Richard Thompson, TMLC President and Chief Counsel, commented: “John’s integrity, outstanding litigation skills, and impressive record on appeals prompted me to ask him to join our fight. I can’t think of anyone more qualified to represent Tennessee and the constitutional principles involved in this case.”
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Thomas More Law Centerhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThomas More Law Center2019-03-13 16:42:012019-03-13 16:42:14Lawsuit Filed Challenging the Constitutionality of the Federal Refugee Resettlement Program
”…the Democrats have become an anti-Israel party. They’ve become an anti-Jewish party.” —President Donald J. Trump
”…the chickens of the Democratic Party are coming home to roost…maybe then they will also realize that anti-Semitism, like most cancers, is fatal unless it’s removed.” —Michael Goodwin, NY Post
Most people thought antisemitism had been relegated to the trash bin of history after Hitler and millions of his willing German-Polish-Austrian-French-Swiss-Belgium executioners—with savage premeditation—murdered six-million Jews in the 1930s and ‘40s, and the world—significantly after the fact—seemed to wake up to the psychotic, irrational, obsessed nature of Jew hatred.
But today, less than 75 years after the founding of Israel, Jew hatred has emerged from the cesspool in which it festers. The maniacal obsession with Jews is on the rise, not only throughout the Middle East and Europe – France, England, Germany, Ireland, Scandinavia, Belgium, et al—but it is also contaminating America the Beautiful!
Why? One reason is that Jew hatred didn’t really disappear after World War II. It simply went underground because people were chastened enough by the sight of crematoria-charred remains and cadaverous survivors to hold their tongues.
Jew haters never rest. While they abstained from vicious stereotypes and outright physical attacks until they could make their dreamed-about comeback, they were driven stark raving mad when Israel was declared a state in 1948 and the straggling remnants of the Holocaust joined their brethren in the land God promised to the Jews in the Bible thousands of years ago.
Even then, the Jew haters held back, certain that on the day of Israel’s founding, the five massive Arab nations that attacked her on land and by air—Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, and Egypt—would annihilate the fledgling state.
Instead, in its War of Independence, tiny Israel—outnumbered by millions in dollars and manpower—defeated her aggressors, increased the size of her borders and captured much of her attackers’ land.
Many wars ensued: the Sinai-Suez War in 1956, the Six-Day War in 1967, the War of Attrition in 1967-1970, and the Yom Kippur War in 1973—with Arabs attacking Israel, and Israel either holding its own or winning (in spite of catastrophic losses). And after all those wars, the Arabs engaged in not one but two protracted armed-uprising intifadas—in 1987 and 2000—neither of which stopped Israel from flourishing. In fact, every encounter with Israel drove both Arabs and liberals everywhere into paroxysms of rage.
Arabs because of the humiliation…how could 300-million Arabs go down to defeat to five or six million Jews? And liberals because they only identify with losers—er, victims. It is irrelevant to this leftwing species that Arab nations include in their mission statements that their goal is to kill all Jews and wipe Israel off the map! If Israel wins a war, they are the bad guys. Such is the liberal mentality—to this day!
WHY THIS RESURGENCE?
The religious-political-supremacist system of Islam was invented in the seventh century and has since led a relentless drive to literally take over the world, establish a caliphate ruled by sharia law—the law that mandates cutting off the clitorises of five-year-old girls, throwing homosexuals off roofs to their deaths, engaging in “honor killings” of teenage girls whose behavior they disapprove of, and killing all Jews. That sharia law.
It is no surprise that this megalomaniacal goal captured the imagination of leftists worldwide, including in our country, who share Islam’s goals, particularly of destroying America—the “Big Satan,” and Israel—the “Little Satan.”
While Islam’s biggest competition is Christianity and the billions of people who love Jesus, their chief target has always been the Jews of the world (who today number 14 million) who they’ve despised for thousands of years—since Abraham’s second-born son Isaac prevailed over his first-born Ishmael. Believe me, that’s it in a nutshell.
In order to gain a foothold in America, many Arab countries have donated multimillions of dollars to colleges and universities across the U.S. for decades, giving them de facto license to endow chairs and dictate curricula, most of which militate against Israel and paint a rosy picture of the 22 Arab nations—all of them dictatorships—that surround the tiny Jewish state.
In addition, the lobbyist groups of what Pres. George W. Bush called “the religion of peace,” have been very effective in insinuating themselves into our body politic, even reaching the highest reaches of power—in the State Department, Homeland Security, the IRS, all intelligence agencies, and even the Oval Office—especially during the Barack Obama regime. Among the many that operate openly is The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)—an offshoot of the terrorist-founded Muslim Brotherhood—which is a notorious neo-Jihadi group in the United States that pretends to be a civil rights organization.
Islamists have also poured multimillions into lobbyists and public-relations efforts to convince the world that the religion of peace is not behind the worldwide pandemic of terrorism that, as only one example, is happening today on a horrifyingly massive scale in Germany, as documented in sordid and graphic detail by Soeren Kern, a Senior Fellow at the New York-based Gatestone Institute. Equal data exist in England, Sweden, Belgium, et al.
Any surprise, then, that the florid metastasis of anti-Semitism has come to our shores?
THE SLUDGE SISTERS
I’ve already written about the latest Jew haters to contaminate the public discourse—the newly-elected U.S. Representatives Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), and their ardent admirer Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY)—all of them young, attractive, articulate, and seasoned in the kind of rabble-rousing that comes with training (or observing) the community-organizing tactics of Karl Marx, Saul Alinsky, and Barack Obama.
What is striking is their commonness, their utter lack of originality. When I listen to their compulsive antisemitism—kind of like watching the regurgitation of untreated acid reflux—there is not one word that hasn’t been leveled toward the Jews for the past 5,000 years. C’mon, girls, besides your jealous rants, is there even one original grievance in your arsenal?
What comes to mind whenever I see or read about this echo-chamber triumvirate is the Vessel Theory I developed a couple of decades ago and wrote about in my book, All About Love. Basically, it says that whatever comes out of a person is what’s inside of a person. But I used vessels—specifically vases—to demonstrate that point.
Let’s say you come into a room and see 10 vases on a shelf. One is very ornate and beautiful, another plain and unadorned, yet another made of clay, the fourth is ceramic with elaborate artwork, a fifth is crystal, the sixth is made of Chinaware, and the seventh of woven reeds, et al.
But when the plainest vase was turned on its side, pure spring water poured forth, and when the most beautiful vase was emptied, pure sludge! You’re familiar with sludge—that muddy mixture of dirt, muck, slime, dregs, contaminants, filth.
While writer David Catron of The American Spectator calls this triumvirate a “fractious coven” and “the weird sisters,” I think they can more accurately be labeled The Sludge Sisters!
Omar: Israel has “hypnotized the world” and I pray that “Allah awaken the people and help them see [its] evil doings …” Also that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) buys off Congressmen/women to support Israel, among almost daily regurgitations of Jew-and-Israel-hating memes. Sludge!
Tlaib: those who supported the bill against the Boycott-Divest-Sanction (BDS) movement—which seeks to strangle Israel economically—were torn by their “dual loyalty” to both Israel and the United States, and the bill’s supporters “forgot what country they represent.” And she supports a global economic, academic and cultural boycott against Israel. Sludge!
Ocasio-Cortez: supports BDS and falsely and maliciously condemned Israel last July for committing a “massacre” against Gaza “protesters” when in fact the Arabs (who call themselves “Palestinians”) were violent rioters trying to infiltrate Israel to murder Jews. And who was standing right behind her at her election victory party? A longtime vicious hater of both Jews and blacks. Sludge!
POWER POLITICS AT WORK
Meanwhile, when a brouhaha arose demanding that Democrats condemn the rank racism of their new members, particularly Rep. Omar, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi couldn’t quite make that happen.
“She could only get her caucus to agree to condemning all prejudice, sort of, including the tsunami of prejudice against Pacific Islanders that we all see around us so much in our daily lives. Of course, the Democrats never named the actual bigot because the Democrat base is affirmatively pro-bigotry. They hate Jews, Christians, white people, dissident non-white people, men, women who like men, and people who blaspheme against the creepy climate cult, among others.”
Not so fast, girls! All of a sudden, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez is being investigated by the Federal Election Commission (FEC) for running a gigantic slush fund with her campaign’s Chief of Staff, Saikat Chakrabarti, for funneling more than $1 million in political donations into two of his own private companies.
Questions are being asked about Rep. Rashida Tlaib’s failure to disclose her financial ties to George Soros—to the tune of thousands of dollars that were not reported on financial disclosure forms—as required by the House ethics committee. This while she announces to the world her upcoming plan to introduce articles of impeachment toward President Trump!
Rep. Omar has Laurie Cardoza-Moore, an Evangelical leader and president of Proclaiming Justice to the Nations (PJTN) calling on the US Justice Department “to launch a full and thorough investigation” into the congresswoman’s “possible connections to the Muslim Brotherhood” and “fundraising for two Muslim Brotherhood charities that seek to destroy America.”
Now really, do these freshman congresswomen—does anyone—believe that Ms. Pelosi is not behind these “coincidental” investigations? And further, that it is a coincidence that she proclaimed “NO IMPEACHMENT” for President Trump?
And did they think they had defeated the opposition when the weakling Democrats in the House and Senate caved to their racism by offering a watered-down, toothless resolution?
If so, they should all go back to kindergarten!
FIGHTING BACK
As journalist and author Bruce Bawer spells out, it may be time for Jewish Americans and the Democrat Party to part ways.
Just as Candace Owens has spearheaded the “Blexit” movement, Bawer writes, inspiring “black Americans to recognize the damage done to them by the Great Society and its aftermath [and to] leave the Democratic plantation, so has Brandon Straka led other gays to see that they’ve been “served a bill of goods by the mainstream media and Democratic Party and is now heading his WalkAway campaign.” But what about the Jews?
Well, whaddaya know? Here comes Elizabeth Pipko, a 23-year-old Jewish figure skater-turned-model who, in an effort to aid a “mass Jewish exodus from the Democratic party,” has popularized the “JEXODUS” movement” initiated by Republican activist Jeff Ballabon.
“Right now,” Ms. Pipko said, “as a Jewish person, you cannot support the Democratic Party and support the Jewish people at the same time.” The first JEXODUS rallies are scheduled for April in New York and Florida.
But even before those marches, the National Conference of Jewish Affairs, headed by Rabbi Aryeh Spero and his wife Beth Gilinsky, have organized a “sit-in” at the office of Speaker Pelosi at her office in Washington, D.C. at 1:00 p.m. on Thursday, March 14th.
If you miss the rally, call Rep. Pelosi’s office at 202-225-4965.Each phone call represents 50 votes.
The message is simple:
Rep. Ilhan Omar’s history of anti-Semitic slurs and comments demonizing Israel make her unfit to serve on the Foreign Relations Committee.
Moreover, she is unfit to represent the interests of the United States on the Foreign Relations Committee.
It is wise to hearken to the words of Abraham Miller, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Cincinnati and a distinguished fellow at the Haym Salomon Center:
“While parallels to Nazi Germany are often overdrawn on one hand and too conveniently dismissed on the other, the recent decision by the Democrat Party to stand with Congresswoman Ilhan Omar and refuse to issue a resolution condemning anti-Semitism is very much like the Nazi removal of the protection of Jews in the legal system.”
“The Democrat Party,” Prof. Miller continues, “has institutionalized anti-Semitism and it has once-again, as it did during the Holocaust, abandoned the Jews.”
Heads-up, sane Jews! Leave the Democrat Party of Hate today, before you too find yourselves in the 21st century’s version of the cattle cars of the Holocaust!
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Joan Swirskyhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngJoan Swirsky2019-03-13 16:13:002019-03-15 05:56:28Antisemitism on Parade — Everything Old is New Again
If the Democrats take power in 2020 the checks and balance under the U.S. Constitution will be destroyed.
Once in 1937 President Roosevelt a Democrat almost destroyed the U.S. Constitution when he tried to pack the Supreme Court. The legislature wisely stopped him. Today if the Democrats attain the Presidency along with the House and Senate the end of the U.S. Constitution is likely.
The threat is real.
If the Democrat Socialists take power they will impose Socialism on the country and are threatening to pack the Supreme Court by adding a number of left wing Justices to the existing nine members. The Democrats have been accustomed to a Liberal activist court to circumvent the constitutional legislative process.
Over the years the left wing justices have become a super legislative body to passing legislation the Constitutional legislature has been unable to pass. That’s how Roe vs. Wade became the law of the land. This is only one illustration of what an activist court has done and will do if the Democrats come into power and pack the Court. Today there is a double threat. One is Socialism and the other is packing the Supreme Court with atavist judges with ‘Super legislative power’.
Either of these acts will destroy the Constitution and America as we know it.
“Another idea from the Resistance left is fast going mainstream in the Democratic Party: packing the Supreme Court. Last week at Yale Law School and Columbia University, no less a progressive potentate than former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder suggested that the next Democratic President should consider adding to the High Court’s nine Justices.
“Given the Merrick Garland situation,” Mr. Holder said, “the question of legitimacy is one that I think we should actually talk about. We should be talking even about expanding the number of people who serve on the Supreme Court, if there is a Democratic President and a Congress that might be willing to do that.”
He’s referring to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s 2016 decision to let the President elected that year nominate the Justice to replace Antonin Scalia. Barack Obama nominated Judge Garland after Mr. McConnell’s announcement, but Mr. McConnell held his position and never allowed a vote. The electorate chose not to punish Republicans for this, perhaps because they knew Democrats would have done the same had the situation been reversed. Sen. Chuck Schumer championed the no-more-Justices strategy in the final year of the George W. Bush Administration.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Robert Hellerhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngRobert Heller2019-03-12 15:39:122019-03-12 15:40:45The Black Robe New Deal and The End of America’s Constitution
How many of you think that Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (AOC) went to college, got a degree in Economics from Boston University (that is scary), and dreamed up the Green New Deal all by herself? She may have put her name on this summary but this “DEAL” has been around for decades – under different names of course.
You probably have seen it in you home town called – Sustainable Development, Smart Growth, Resilient Communities, and of course the real deal – UN Agenda 21/2030, Your New World Order under a One World Government.
Yes, you read correctly, The Green New Deal is a summary of UN Agenda 21/2030. The purpose is to limit mobility, eliminate private property, eliminate cheap energy which raises the prices on food, eliminate meat, demand that the populace does more for less. Do as I say not as I do is the attitude. This “Deal” will do nothing to affect climate basically because the climate is controlled by the sun, moon and oceans. Lack of a quality education focusing on traditional education using factual math and science fools the masses into believing they are accomplishing something. What we are seeing is the result of a socialist K-12 education. This “Deal” is being taught in your schools. After all the Globalists believe “The Capitalists Will Sell Us the Rope with Which We Will Hang Them.” V Lenin.
Communists/ Globalists need a common enemy so they can create groups through identity politics who become the victims of this enemy. What better than Climate, an issue that can never be solved by humans but requires mountains of money to cure. By combining climate with pollution the public is confused and are fooled into believing they have control over climate. After the Cold War the common enemy was selected – humans. So now we fight ourselves – the epitome of stupidity.
“We need to get some broad based support, to capture the public’s imagination…So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements and make little mention of any doubts… Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.” – Prof. Stephen Schneider, Stanford Professor of Climatology, lead author of many IPCC reports
Once the enemy was identified the lies and manipulation began. “No matter if the science of global warming is all phony… climate change provides the greatest opportunity to bring about justice and equality in the world.” – Christine Stewart, former Canadian Minister of the Environment
By eliminating civics in school, students have no idea about the danger of communism and all other isms. Communism, et. al., are the exact opposite of American ideals and in reality against the law in America.
Does ANYONE REMEMBER … Communist Control Act of 1954
Created during the period of the Second Red Scare (1946–1954), the Act was one of many bills drafted.
The Communist Control Act (68 Stat. 775, 50 U.S.C. 841-844) is a piece of United States federal legislation, signed into law by President Dwight Eisenhower on 24 August 1954, which outlaws the Communist Party of the United States and criminalizes membership in, or support for the Party or “Communist-action” organizations and defines evidence to be considered by a jury in determining participation in the activities, planning, actions, objectives, or purposes of such organizations.[1]
Most people especially legislators have no idea this law exists.
All the Communists did was change their name to Progressives, Socialists, Globalists Collectivists, Islamists etc. Green to avoid detection. How did they get into Congress? One school at a time. Common Core (the icing ) created an uneducated compliant populace who are taught by talking points that they are the victims and evil capitalists are the oppressors.
Their socialist schools under a variety of names are popping up all over America. The latest is the CasaLaxmi Foundation putting up an international boarding school in Bay County, Florida.
Sounds great? A wonderful boom to the economy of Bay County, Florida? Yeah team! But the consequences no one thinks about are stellar. This international (socialist school) will not teach about American exceptionalism as these are children of the world. As socialist teachers indoctrinate, these students will carry the socialist message throughout America. The electorate will change until Americans will be taught that America at fault for the ills of the world and is a democracy with a pesky constitution that is old school.
Let’s dump the electoral college will be the solution. Unwilling indoctrinated Americans will vote against the American represented republic and our guarantee of a republican form of government, US Constitution Article 4 section 4 will disappear just like the Pledge. The transformation of America will be complete. H2B visas will be overstayed and more socialists will indoctrinate Americans and vote in our elections.
Need more convincing? In Florida we have radicals Islamic Gulen Schools that are growing under “choice”. We have a Chinese charter school and several UN mini Global schools, all indoctrinating The Green New Deal, all paid for by the American taxpayer. Lenin was right.
In 1963, Rep Herlong (D-FL) read the 45 Goals of Communism into the Congressional Record. He did this to make sure that Congress is on alert and the goals will never be forgotten. Congressional Record–Appendix, pp. A34-A35. Read the goals…
These goals were read by an ANTI COMMUNIST Democrat. Look how far we have come today as the communists follow goal # “12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party and #15 Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.” Once you read the goals, you will be shocked to see how far they have come.
I believe that both parties under the goal of GLOBALISM have an equal hand in destroying America’s promise of freedom, liberty and a REPRESENTATIVE REPUBLICAN form of government. Remember Marx said: “The goal of socialism (and other isms) is COMMUNISM.” They are using open borders to accomplish this goal by allowing millions of low skilled socialists into America paid for by Americans. The cost to each American is about 25% of their salary.
OK so what is the big deal, Communism, Socialism, Capitalism who cares they are all the same. NO they are not. Wordsmiths have changed the definitions so they appear the same but are way different. Capitalism allows for individual ownership of your person, land business and intellectual property. Under Communism everything is controlled by the Government.
America today is in a battle over MONEY, POWER and CONTROL. Right now the only one fighting the Globalists is President Donald Trump. It is exactly like George Carlin said, “There is a club and you aren’t in it.”
I want to thank AOC for this Green New Deal. It is time for this long awaited debate. Holding those accountable by your votes is only the beginning.
Is America worth saving? Even if this “Deal” is rejected, will your voice be strong enough? Will you call out the other Green New Deal programs under Sustainability, conservation, Smart Growth, Resilient Cities, Charter Schools. etc? Will you go to School Board or Commissioner meetings, alert legislators? Today only 25% of Americans support socialism. That will change dramatically if we do nothing.
“Evil Triumphs when good Americans do nothing.” Edmond Burke
I will not comply will you?
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Karen Schoenhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngKaren Schoen2019-03-12 14:38:292019-03-12 14:38:29Everything that’s Old is New Again – The Green OLD, Oops New Deal
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Dr. Rich Swierhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngDr. Rich Swier2019-03-10 20:47:012019-03-10 20:47:01VIDEO: Woman Attacks MAGA Hat Guy, Claims SHE is The Victim
Steam’s vacuous explanation for removing this game highlights the utter inadequacy of their content policy which fails to ban sexual exploitation games. Instead of clear content guidelines, Steam appears to merely remove games whenever the company starts receiving bad press. While we’re glad this disturbing game has been removed, Steam’s slow response exposes a deep flaw in their current content policy.
In a statement Steam wrote, “Much of our policy around what we distribute is, and must be, reactionary.”
It is hypocritical of Steam to remove one game while continuing to sell some 2,000 sexually exploitive games, many of which feature graphic sexual violence and pornographic themes. Further, their content filters are deeply inadequate, leaving millions of underage gamers exposed. We’re calling on Steam to improve their filters and set clear content guidelines that restrict sexually exploitive and graphic content.
In September, Steam approved for sale its first “100% uncensored” porn game featuring “pressured sexual relationships” and “abusive marriages”. This game, and others featuring similar content, remain for sale on the platform.
Steam was placed on the National Center on Sexual Exploitation’s 2019 Dirty Dozen List. The Dirty Dozen List names 12 mainstream facilitators of sexual exploitation and works to change corporate policy via grassroots activism. Click here to learn more about the Dirty Dozen List.
EDITORS NOTE: This NCOSE column is republished with permission.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00National Center on Sexual Exploitationhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngNational Center on Sexual Exploitation2019-03-10 17:01:422019-03-10 17:04:271 Rape Video Game Removed, 2,000 Similar Video Games Remain
David Carlin writes that, to end confusion in the Church, it would be good if the pope were to restate Catholicism’s immemorial opposition to homosexual activity.
Apart from the grace of God, our most urgent need at the moment is a papal encyclical on homosexuality. Failing that, the American Catholic bishops should issue a collective pastoral letter on homosexuality. And failing that, individual American bishops should issue diocesan pastoral letters on homosexuality.
Why do I say this need is “urgent”? Because a great campaign is underway in the United States, Canada, and Europe (especially Germany) to amend or nullify the perennial Catholic teaching on homosexual practice. If this campaign is not effectively resisted, the Catholic Church in the United States, like a number of “mainline” Protestant churches, will commit something like institutional suicide.
Let me cite a few evidences of this campaign.
For one, there is the pro-LGBT book Building a Bridge (a bridge between the Catholic Church and the “LGBT community”), written by the well-known Jesuit writer, Fr. James Martin. This book has been endorsed by Cardinal Kevin Farrell (prefect of the Vatican’s Dicastery on Laity, Family, and Life!), Cardinal Joseph Tobin of Newark, and Bishop Robert McElroy of San Diego.
Second, there is the apparent fact that the typical student in a Catholic college approves of same-sex marriage and thinks that you’re a narrow-minded bigot if you don’t approve of it too.
Third, there is the general silence from the pulpit on this topic. It is a rare priest who tells his parishioners at a weekend Mass that homosexual sodomy is, from a Catholic point of view, an atrocious sin.
Fourth, there is the widespread practice of homosexuality among priests and seminarians. Nobody is quite sure of the numbers, but everybody seems agreed that the percentage of priests who are (or who were in their younger days) active homosexuals is far higher that the percentage of active homosexuals in the general population.
Fifth, there is the notable tendency among Catholics, including Catholic priests and bishops, to condemn the sexual molestation of minors without at the same time condemning the priestly homosexuality that has been, in at least 80 percent of the cases, a pre-condition for this molestation; a sine qua non(to borrow a phrase from what used to be the quasi-sacred language of the Church).
This tendency to condemn sexual abuse while avoiding condemnation of homosexuality was on display in Rome a few weeks ago at the synod of bishops.
This encyclical or these pastoral letters I’m talking about – what would they say?
Above all, they would reiterate the ancient Catholic teaching on this topic, a teaching rooted in Genesis and the Law of Moses. The letter would note that the Old Testament allows exceptions for incest (after all, who did the children of Adam and Eve marry?), and it allows exceptions of polygamy (both of them horrible sins), but it makes absolutely no exception for homosexual sodomy.
That condemnation continues in the letters of St. Paul (most notably in the “homophobic” first chapter of his Epistle to the Romans); and found by very clear implication in the words of Jesus himself when he referred (a) to the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah and (b) to the passage in the book of Genesis that says, “male and female he [God] made them.”
The letter would acknowledge that it goes without saying that our duty of Christian love of neighbor means that we should love our homosexual neighbors; but the letter would point out that this duty of love does not mean that we should approve the sinsof our homosexual neighbors – which is precisely what the LGBT movement demands of Christians.
Likewise, we must also love those of our neighbors who are thieves, liars, wife-beaters, adulterers, fornicators, and members of the Mafia. But we must do this without giving our stamp of approval to their wrongdoing.
The letter would also take note of the fact that it is hard nowadays, very hard indeed, for Catholics to disapprove of homosexuality since this will lead many of our relatives, friends, neighbors, co-workers, and tennis partners to think of us as narrow-minded and hard-hearted.
Worse still, our disapproval will cause pain to friends who are themselves homosexuals or are the parents of homosexual children; they will feel that you are expressing something like hatred for them or their children.
The letter will have to say: As a Catholic, you have to choose between fidelity to your faith or the approval of your friends, neighbor, etc. If you choose the former, you may lose old friends. In other words, you may have to undergo a mini-martyrdom. But that’s the religion you belong to. If you don’t like it, maybe you should join a liberal Protestant church, e.g., the Episcopal Church of the United Church of Christ.
And then, of course, there is the growing movement – at the national and international levels – to criminalize all such expressions of the ancient Christian morals as “hate speech,” which may be banned from public spaces including the Internet, or “hate crimes” punishable in civil law. all
If you are a true Christian you are, of course, quite willing to be thrown to the lions for your faith. But if you’re not unwilling to face the lions, why should you be fear the disapproval of your friends and neighbors?
Many Catholics of course feel that it is “unreasonable” that our religion expects us to disagree with friends, neighbors, government, and what passes for moral thought. But an encyclical on homosexuality would have to explain why – to quote an authoritative source – that is thinking like men, not God.
Socialism is a tough sell to Americans who evaluate ideas based on facts and a remarkably easy sell to Americans who evaluate ideas based on feelings. The adult world of facts is a foreign land to the infantilized world of feelings where low-info millennial voters currently dwell. The heated political battle between Americanism and Socialism parallels the battle between parents and their children who refuse to grow up emotionally and leave the nest.
Becoming an emotional adult requires embracing a fact based cause-and-effect view of the world that rejects the fantasies of childhood. “No Johnny, you cannot fly like a bird even though you really really really want to.” What happens if Johnny insists that he can fly and takes a confident leap from a tall building?
Socialism and Johnny have a lot in common – both insist they can do what objective reality proves they cannot do.
So, what is the problem?
America is being challenged by a Peter Pan generation that refuses to grow up and lives in a world of subjective reality where feelings rather than facts determine public policy. Their fragile selves require enforced political correctness and safe spaces to protect them from unwelcome facts and opposing ideas. Johnny climbs to the top of a tall building because he “feels” like a bird – he refuses to accept the fact that he is a human being and cannot fly. Human beings have limitations just like Socialism does.
The limitations of Socialism make it impossible to provide the social justice and income equality that it promises. First, the Peter Pan principle of robbing the rich to pay the poor eventually leaves everyone penniless. Second, Socialism is actually a binary political system with a very small wealthy ruling class and a very large population who service them. There is no middle class in Socialism because there is no private property and no upward mobility. The government confiscates and controls everything. Ask the Venezuelans.
Socialism’s free stuff is never free because you forfeit your freedom. That bears repeating. Socialism’s free stuff is never free because you forfeit your freedom.
Low-info low-level political leaders like Alexandria Ocasio-Ortez (AOC) have emerged to help sell Socialism to America. Who is buying? AOC’s supporters are low-info millennial voters who have been indoctrinated toward collectivism by the leftist liberal narrative that dominates public education K-12 and dictates university curricula. The leftist takeover of college campuses and its rejection of objective reality is discussed in chilling detail by Andrew Cunningham in his 3.8.19 American Thinker article.
It is painful to listen to AOC and to hear the absurdity of the public policies she proposes. After reviewing her Green New Deal one has to ask, “Did this woman really earn a degree in economics from Boston University?” Did she attend classes? I think she did.
AOC is the disturbing outcome of the feeling based education that intentionally values feelings over facts. Worthless degrees are awarded that celebrate the regressive, infantilized, subjective reality of children and not the fact based world of adults. Education in America has reversed itself. Rather than teaching the foundational facts necessary to succeed in the adult world, American education’s focus on student feelings has had a paralyzing effect and produced a Peter Pan generation of low-info dependent voters.
Peter Pan’s classic song is Socialism’s anthem.
I Won’t Grow Up
Peter Pan: Are you ready for today’s lesson?
All: Yes, Peter
Peter: Listen to your teacher. Repeat after me:
I won’t grow up,
(I won’t grow up)
I don’t want to go to school.
(I don’t want to go to school)
Just to learn to be a parrot,
(Just to learn to be a parrot)
And recite a silly rule.
(And recite a silly rule)
If growing up means
It would be beneath my dignity to climb a tree,
I’ll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up
Not me!
Not I,
Not me!
Not me!
I won’t grow up,
(I won’t grow up)
I don’t want to wear a tie.
(I don’t want to wear a tie)
And a serious expression
(And a serious expression)
In the middle of July.
(In the middle of July)
And if it means I must prepare
To shoulder burdens with a worried air,
I’ll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up
Not me,
Not I,
Not me!
So there!
Never gonna be a man,
I won’t!
Like to see somebody try
And make me.
Anyone who wants to try
And make me turn into a man,
Catch me if you can.
I won’t grow up.
Not a penny will I pinch.
I will never grow a mustache,
Or a fraction of an inch.
‘Cause growing up is awfuller
Than all the awful things that ever were.
I’ll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up,
No sir,
Not I,
Not me,
So there!
I won’t grow up!
(I won’t grow up)
I will never even try
(I will never even try)
I will do what Peter tells me
(I will do what Peter tells me)
And I’ll never ask him why
(And I’ll never ask him why)
We won’t grow up!
(We won’t grow up)
We will never grow a day
(We will never grow a day)
And if someone tries to make it
(And if someone tries to make it)
We will simply run away
(We will simply run away)
I won’t grow up!
(I won’t grow up)
No, I promise that I won’t
(No, I promise that I won’t)
I will stay a boy forever
(I will stay a boy forever)
And be banished if I don’t!
(And be banished if I don’t)
And Never Land will always be
The home of beauty and joy
And neverty
I’ll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up
Not me!
Not me!
Not me!
Not me!
No sir!
Not me!
Songwriters: David B. Chase / Morris I. Charlap / Carolyn Leigh
We do not live in Never Never land. We live in the United States of America where freedom and opportunity require a commitment to living in the adult world of objective reality. Socialism demands a return to childhood dependence and the infantile world of subjective reality epitomized in the Green New Deal. We must grow up and embrace the fact that human beings are not birds – they cannot fly even when they really really really feel like they can.
Socialism will kill America as surely as Johnny trying to fly.
EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on the Goudsmit Pundicity.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Linda Goudsmithttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngLinda Goudsmit2019-03-09 19:52:492019-03-09 19:54:06Selling Socialism to America
While the left will laud you for supporting a pro-abortion group like the Center for American Progress, they’ll turn around and blast you over the latest cause célèbre the very next day.
Instead of picking sides and cozying up to leftists, Google could learn a thing or two from Brave.com (3 – Neutral) or DuckDuckGo (3 – Neutral), companies that make better alternatives because they stay out of issue advocacy. Treat employees fairly, stay neutral and, in turn, stay out of the public ire.
