GOV/MIL Leftists Call For New "Secret Police" Force To Spy On Trump Supporters (AN ABSOLUTELY MUST-READ THREAD)

marsh

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McConnell tells Education Department to halt proposed curriculum changes relying on 1619 Project

"Families did not ask for this divisive nonsense," states the letter from McConnell and dozens of other congressional Republicans.

By Joseph Weber
Updated: April 30, 2021 - 3:26pm

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is leading an effort by congressional Republicans that demands the Biden administration stop proposed changes to public school curriculum based on the 1619 project, criticized for suggesting the American Revolution was fought to secure slavery.

McConnell and dozens of other Capitol Hill Republicans purportedly plan to send the undated letter Friday to the Education Department, saying the agency’s proposed rule changes put "ill-informed advocacy ahead of historical accuracy."

"Your Proposed Priorities double down on divisive, radical, and historically-dubious buzzwords and propaganda," McConnell writes in the letter, obtained by Politico. "Americans do not need or want their tax dollars diverted from promoting the principles that unite our nation toward promoting radical ideologies meant to divide us.

"Families did not ask for this divisive nonsense. Voters did not vote for it. Americans never decided our children should be taught that our country is inherently evil."

He also suggests in the letter to Education Secretary Miguel Cardona that the administration tried to get the change “quietly” through the Federal Register because any legislative effort would have failed.

The rule changes, or Proposed Priorities, specifically cite the 1619 Project and if approved would tie agency funding to the adoption of 1619-inspired civics and history curriculums, according to Yahoo News.

The 1619 Project was a 2019 feature in the "The New York Times Magazine." The authors also developed accompanying curriculum already been adopted by several public school systems across the country including New York and California.
 

marsh

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Escaping Serfdom

SATURDAY, MAY 01, 2021 - 05:35 PM
Authored by Jeff Thomas via InternationalMan.com,

The concept of government is that the people grant to a small group of individuals the ability to establish and maintain controls over them. The inherent flaw in such a concept is that any government will invariably and continually expand upon its controls, resulting in the ever-diminishing freedom of those who granted them the power.



When I was a schoolboy, I was taught that the feudal system of the Middle Ages consisted of serfs tilling small plots of land that belonged to a king or lord.

The serfs lived a meagre life of bare subsistence and were subject to the tyranny of the king or lord whose men would ride into their village periodically and take most of the few coins the serfs had earned by their toil.

The lesson I was meant to learn from this was that I should be grateful that, in the modern world, I live in a state of freedom from tyranny, and as an adult, I would pay only that level of tax that could be described as “fair”.

Later in life, I was to learn that, in the actual feudal system, some land was owned by noblemen, some by common men. The commoners typically farmed their own land, whilst the noblemen parcelled out their land to farmers, in trade for a portion of the product of their labours.

As a part of that bargain, the nobleman would pay for an army of professional soldiers to protect both the farms and the farmers. Significantly, unlike today, no farmer was required to defend the land himself, as it was not his.

There was no exact standard as to what the noblemen would charge a farmer under this agreement, but the general standard was “one day’s labour in ten”.

This was not an amount imposed or regulated by any government. The nobleman could charge as much as he wished; however, if he raised his rate significantly, he would find that the farmers would leave and move to another nobleman’s farm. The 10% was, in essence, a rate that evolved over time through a free market.

Modern Serfdom
Today, of course, if most countries levied an income tax of a mere 10%, there would be dancing in the streets. And the days of one simple straightforward tax are long gone.

Today, the average person may expect to pay property tax (even if he is a renter), sales tax, capital gains tax, value added tax, inheritance tax, and so on. The laundry list of taxes is so long and complex that it is no longer possible to compute what the total tax level actually is for anyone.

And to this, we add the hidden tax of inflation. In the US, for example, the Federal Reserve has, over the last hundred years, devalued the dollar by 98%, a hefty tax indeed. And the US is not alone in this.

Only 50 years ago, the average man might work a 40-hour week to support a wife who remained at home raising the children. He often had a mortgage on his home but might have it paid off in ten years. He paid cash for nearly everything else that he and his family owned or consumed.

Today, both husband and wife generally must be employed full time. In spite of this, they can’t afford as many children as their parents could, and they generally remain in debt their entire lives, even after retirement. This is significant inflation by any measure.

In contrast, in the Middle Ages, the cost of goods might remain the same throughout the entire lifetime of an individual.

In light of the above, the 10% that was paid by the serfs is beginning to look very good indeed.

However, the great majority of people in the First World are likely to say, “What can you do; it’s the same all over the world. You might as well get used to it.”

Well, no, actually, it’s not.
There are many governmental and economic systems out there and many are quite a bit more “serf friendly” than those in the major countries.

Countries such as the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Bermuda and the Bahamas have no income tax. Further, some have no property tax, sales tax, capital gains tax, value added tax, inheritance tax, and so on.

So how is this possible?

The OECD countries state that it is largely accomplished through money laundering, but this is not the case. In fact, low-tax jurisdictions are known to have some of the most stringent banking laws in the world.

The success of these jurisdictions is actually quite simple. Most of them are small. They have small populations and therefore need only a small government. Yet each jurisdiction can accommodate large numbers of investors from overseas. This results in a very high level of income per capita.

But unlike large countries, the money that is deposited or invested there is overseas money, so it is not captive. Investors can transfer it out overnight if need be.

So, even if the politicians are no better than those in larger countries (generally, they are of the same ilk), they’re aware that, like the noblemen of old, if they attempt to impose taxation, the business will dry up quickly.

In fact, such a free market dictates that the jurisdictions keep on their toes and keep trying to outdo their competitors by being more investment friendly.

Therefore, the politicians in these countries, who might be only too happy to promise entitlements to their constituents, then tax them to the hilt in order to pay for the entitlements, are kept restrained by their own system.

Are there downsides to living in a low-tax jurisdiction? Yes.
As most of them are small but require a very high standard of living in order to attract investors, they must import virtually all goods needed by residents. This means a higher cost of all goods, as compared to the cost in a country that produces such goods. However, the wage level is also higher, which tends to balance out the equation.

But there are also upsides.

Those who move to such a jurisdiction find that after the first year there (when the basics such as cars, televisions, etc., have been paid for), all further income that has been saved from taxation is beginning to get deposited in the bank.

At some point, the deposit level becomes great enough that investment becomes advisable. And as low-tax jurisdictions tend to be naturally prosperous, there is generally no limit to the opportunities for investment within the jurisdiction.

There is a further benefit to living in a low-tax jurisdiction that tends to become apparent over time. Any government that depends on major investments from overseas parties must, of necessity, be non-intrusive and non-invasive. Such a government stays out of people’s business, eschews electronic monitoring and most certainly is not given to SWAT teams crashing down doors for imagined wrongdoing.

Benjamin Franklin famously said, “Nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.”

He was correct, but the level of tax can vary greatly from one country to the next.

And just as important, the level of government intervention into the affairs of its citizenry varies considerably. In a country where the level of tax is low, the quality of life is generally correspondingly high.

A thousand years ago, noblemen, from time to time, became overly confident in their ability to keep the serfs on the farmland and demanded taxes beyond the customary “one day’s labour in ten”. When they did, the serfs of old often voted with their feet and simply moved. Today, this is still possible.

If the reader presently contributes more than one day’s labour in ten to his government, he may wish to consider voting with his feet.
 

marsh

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Clyburn: Schools Will Produce ‘Ignorant People’ if They Listen to McConnell’s Push Against 1619 Project

IAN HANCHETT1 May 2021970

On Saturday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Weekends with Alex Witt,” House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-SC) reacted to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) letter to the Department of Education criticizing the 1619 Project and other curriculum items by saying that if schools “were to follow his lead, they’ll be turning out a lot of ignorant people.”

Clyburn said that America is great “because we have always been able to repair our faults” like slavery and segregation.

When the interview turned to McConnell’s letter on the 1619 Project, Clyburn said, “I used to teach history. I study history every day, and I would tell my kids — the students in my class, I would tell them all the time, look, don’t bring these dates to me. 1619 is a date when black folks were introduced to this country and we know that. Am I not supposed to know that? 1492 wasn’t the year that this country was discovered. That’s when Columbus found his way here. Native Americans were here all the time. We should put history in the proper perspective. And you don’t do that by ignoring the facts. McConnell ought to be ashamed of himself. If the schools down in Kentucky were to follow his lead, they’ll be turning out a lot of ignorant people. And I would hope that we would do what is necessary so everybody will put history in its proper context. George Santayana admonished, if you fail to learn the lessons of history, you’re bound to repeat them. We need to learn history, learn the lessons of history, and work on doing what is necessary not to repeat certain things about our history so that we can avoid all these pitfalls going forward. Mitch McConnell needs to come on board.
 

marsh

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Velshi: Republicans ‘Using Race as a Political Weapon’ by Opposing 1619 Project

IAN HANCHETT1 May 2021236

On Saturday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Velshi,” host Ali Velshi argued that Republicans are “using race as a political weapon” by opposing the 1619 Project.
Velshi said, “244 years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, structural racism continues to disproportionately segregate communities of color. And this week, following President Biden’s first address to Congress, Republicans sent the party’s only black senator to reject the ongoing debate about racism in America.”

After playing a clip from Scott’s speech, Velshi stated, “Now, the argument that America is not a racist country is one President Biden and Vice President Harris agreed with this week following Sen. Scott’s rebuttal, but the reality is the party is using race as a political weapon, and that’s his own party, Tim Scott’s party. For example, Senate [Minority] Leader Mitch McConnell and 37 Republican senators are looking to take the next step in a culture war against the 1619 Project, which aims to reframe American history to include the ugly first chapter of slavery in America.”

He later added, “Tim Scott can try and prove on the merits that America is not a racist country. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris said the same thing this week. The issue isn’t whether America is a racist country. It’s whether there are racists in power in America and what should be done about it.”
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Eric Greitens: Joe Biden Is Out of Touch with ‘Core American Values’
12AP Photo/Jeff Roberson 1619907725133.png
KYLE MORRIS1 May 202150

Former Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens, a Democrat turned Republican, joined SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Saturday to discuss President Joe Biden’s recent address to Congress and how conservative Americans should get involved.

“It is just another example of how truly radical this leftist agenda has become and how far Joe Biden is from core American values,” Greitens told host Matt Boyle of Biden’s joint address to Congress. “Something that really stood out to me about the speech was when he talked about Nancy’s [Nancy Pelosi’s] second drive-by impeachment after January 6, and he said it was the greatest attack on American democracy since the Civil War.”

“I’m sitting there thinking to myself, ‘Does he not remember 9/11 when over 3,000 Americans were killed?'” Greitens continued. “Does he not remember the thousands of Americans who later perished in the global war on terrorism? Does he not remember Pearl Harbor when over 2,400 Americans were killed and the hundreds and thousands who gave their lives in World War II?”

“It just shows you how warped the left’s perspective has become,” he added.

“This is what happens when you have leftists who try to erase American history, led by Joe Biden who clearly doesn’t remember it or has become so, so twisted by a leftist political ideology.”

Greitens continued, reflecting on his career as a Navy SEAL and the many lives given for this country, stating Biden is “detached from what is happening on the front line.” Greitens also blasted Biden for his handling of the southern border crisis, asserting he “has turned America’s border over to Mexican drug gangs and cartels.”

To combat the left’s agenda, Greitens said, “Patriots must step forward.”

“Because of the failure of many Republicans to really investigate election integrity and election fraud, because of the failures of RINOs in the swamp to step up for President Trump, many patriotic Americans and conservative Americans, right now, are feeling hopeless,” Greitens said. “What we need to recognize is that courage is contagious, and courage comes when we take action.”

Greitens also suggested people should “get involved at a local level” and maybe “run for their local precinct” to fight for the values they believe in.

“There are more people in America who believe in common sense than the craziness of the left,” Greitens said. “There are more people in America who are patriots than there are radicals.”

To listen to Greitens’ full interview with Breitbart News, click here.
https://soundcloud.com/breitbart%2Ffmr-gov-eric-greitens-r-mo-may-1-2021 View: https://soundcloud.com/breitbart/fmr-gov-eric-greitens-r-mo-may-1-2021
16:13 min
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment
  • May 1, 2021
“Free expression” activists call on Biden to create an online disinformation task force
Somewhat contradictory.
A coalition of different organizations has called on President Joe Biden to create a disinformation task force, which will come up with solutions to censor online “misinformation” – paradoxically, “without limiting free expression.”

Like many who have used the pandemic to increase and justify censorship, the coalition referenced what it says is the spread of falsehoods surrounding COVID-19 and its vaccines and the 2020 presidential election.

“We are writing as a coalition of human rights, free speech, democracy, and technology organizations to urge the creation of a federal interagency Disinformation Defense and Free Expression Task Force with domestic policy leadership,” the letter to Biden by the coalition reads.

“The prevalence of deceptions, propaganda, and conspiracy theories related to the 2020 election, COVID-19, and the recent Capitol insurrection illustrates the clear and present threat that disinformation poses to our democracy and national security,” the letter, which was provided to Axios, adds.

In the letter, the group acknowledges that cracking down on disinformation could unintentionally lead to the suppression of freedom of expression.

“However, we are equally mindful that solutions adopted in moments of crisis can themselves pose significant dangers to our fundamental freedoms,” they wrote.

The letter was signed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, SimplySecure, the Center for Democracy and Technology, Pen America, Free Press, Access Now, Common Cause, the Center for American Progress, and Voto Latino.

“We know that fighting disinformation also means remaining vigilant against censorship and other threats to free expression,” said Matt Bailey, director of Pen America’s Digital Freedom Program. “We also know that disinformation itself is a profound threat to free speech, because it prevents the robust exchange of ideas and sows distrust and polarization.”
 

marsh

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Is Coke Rethinking Woke?

By DAN MCLAUGHLIN
April 30, 2021 6:50 PM
james-quincey-coca-cola.jpg
Coca-Cola Company CEO James Quincey speaks during an interview with CNBC on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange in New York City, December 9, 2019. (Brendan McDermid/Reuters)Why the soft-drink giant is pulling back from its left-wing posturing.

Conservatives who are tempted to despair over the abrupt shift of major corporations into engines of left-wing culture war might want to take a look at Coca-Cola. Recent developments suggest that Coke is rethinking woke.

Coca-Cola has been creeping in a more woke direction for a while. In March 2020, the company blasted U.S. Soccer for making legal arguments in the equal-pay lawsuit filed by the women’s team, a lawsuit the women soon lost in court. In June 2020, Coca-Cola announced that it was suspending advertising on Facebook and Instagram, joining a coalition of left-wing advocacy groups “as part of a campaign forcing the social media network to more stringently police hate speech and disinformation.” The boycott was openly directed at Facebook’s refusal at the time to censor posts by Donald Trump. Coca-Cola CEO James Quincey issued a “Where We Stand on Social Justice” manifesto:
[W]e must put our resources and energy toward helping end the cycle of systemic racism…We will invest our resources to advance social justice causes. We will use the voices of our brands to weigh in on important social conversations. For example, today we are announcing $2.5 million in grants from The Coca-Cola Foundation for the Equal Justice Initiative to assist advocates and policymakers in the critically important work of criminal justice reform; the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in support of the “Policing Reform Campaign;” and the National Center for Civil and Human Rights to deliver a platform to bring people together for powerful conversations that matter and inspire social change and their current “Campaign for Equal Dignity.”
Yet, the company’s concern for justice is decidedly one-sided: for all its activism in the U.S., it lobbied against a bill that would ban products made with forced labor in China’s Xinjiang province.

Coca-Cola grabbed headlines in February of this year for the company’s “diversity” initiatives. Most notoriously, leaked slides from a training program commanded Coca-Cola employees to “try to be less white.” Then, the company issued strict requirements to its outside counsel to mandate the selection of lawyers on the basis of race:
Coca-Cola’s new general counsel Bradley Gayton recently announced a new set of diversity guidelines for outside counsel. Under these guidelines, outside counsel will commit that for any new matter “at least 30% of each of billed associate and partner time will be from diverse attorneys, and of such amounts at least half will be from Black attorneys.” If outside counsel fails to meet the commitment over two quarters, it will incur “a non-refundable 30% reduction in the fees payable for such New Matter going forward until the commitment is met.”
At the time, NR contributor Ed Whelan walked through some of the legal and practical problems with this heavy-handed approach.

When the Georgia elections law passed in late March, Coca-Cola CEO James Quincey blasted it as “unacceptable,” and appeared to be under pressure from left-wing activists to go further: “In recent weeks, activists staged a ‘die-in’ at Coca-Cola’s museum in Atlanta. Bishop Reginald Jackson, an influential Atlanta pastor, used a bullhorn on the street to call for a boycott of Coca-Cola.”

Republicans noticed, and began to push back. On April 6, Rand Paul and Donald Trump called for boycotts of Coke (although Trump was subsequently spotted with a Diet Coke on his desk). Several legislators in Coca-Cola’s home state of Georgia pulled Coke products from their offices, and Ted Cruz asked on Twitter, “I wonder who the largest institutional purchasers of @CocaCola are? Do they all agree with #WokeCoke radical politics?”

Then, a funny thing happened. On April 10, dozens of corporate chieftains met to consider sanctions against Georgia. Instead, they ended up issuing a vaguely worded statement about voting rights that did not even mention the state. And Coca-Cola, along with fellow Georgian behemoth Delta Air Lines, was conspicuously absent from the list of signatories. Instead, on April 14, the company issued a decidedly conciliatory statement:
We believe the best way to make progress now is for everyone to come together to listen, respectfully share concerns and collaborate on a path forward. We remain open to productive conversations with advocacy groups and lawmakers who may have differing views. It’s time to find common ground. In the end, we all want the same thing – free and fair elections, the cornerstone of our democracy.
Then, on April 21, the next shoe dropped: Gayton, the general counsel, abruptly left after just eight months on the job, taking “a $4 million sign-on payment and a monthly consulting fee of $666,666” to transition into a “strategic consultant role.” That’s a rather expensive way to rid yourself of a senior corporate officer who has spent less than a year with the company.

On April 27, Law.com’s Corporate Counsel reported that Monica Howard Douglas, Gayton’s replacement and a 17-year veteran of Coca-Cola’s legal department, refused to discuss Gayton’s resignation, but told the company’s legal department that Gayton’s departure meant a “pause” on the company’s controversial diversity initiatives:
Douglas reportedly offered a few hints about the fate of Gayton’s diversity plan, though concrete details remain elusive…When asked about Gayton’s diversity initiative, Douglas indicated that Coca-Cola was “taking a pause for now” but would likely salvage some parts of the plan, the source said. Douglas didn’t provide any additional details about what would remain and what would be scrapped, according to the source. “She said she … plans to use some of it, but everything is being evaluated. They plan to adopt some of his strategies and passions. Everything was, ‘More to come,’” the source added.
Neither Douglas, nor Gayton, nor Coca-Cola is talking to the media about any of this right now, but read the tea leaves: Within a span of three weeks, the company came under public fire from prominent Republicans, swiftly de-escalated its rhetoric on the Georgia law, saw its general counsel hastily resign, and saw his replacement declare a “pause” on his most heavily criticized efforts. It certainly looks as if Coca-Cola has reached a corporate decision to pull back from a partisan and ideological posture that actively antagonized half the country, including the state government of where Coca-Cola is headquartered.

Most big companies do not insert themselves into so many hot-button political debates in such a short span, and not every large company has equally large direct competitors, as Coca-Cola does. But there should be a lesson here for conservatives. Companies may drift into wokeness in order to avoid conflict with the squeaky wheels on Twitter and in the world of left-activism, but they are fundamentally risk-averse. The people pushing Coca-Cola to the left are extremely loud, but there are not really that many of them. If conservatives fight back, we can convince more companies to stay out of culture-war politics and partisanship.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Stanford Student Government Candidate Says ‘White People Need To Be Eradicated’

APRIL 29, 2021 By Gabe Kaminsky

In several tweets dug up from last year, a Stanford University sophomore running for reelection in student government made racist comments against white people, notably saying that “white people need to be eradicated.”

Stanford College Republicans found the tweets posted by Gabby Crooks and began circulating them on social media. Stephen Sills, a junior at Stanford and the president of the organization, told The Federalist, “Racism in any form is obscene, and there’s a moral obligation that students need to know this stuff before they vote.”

“[Y]es I think white people need to be eradicate yes I will go feral over mediocre white men we exist,” Crooks tweeted in July of 2020.

Gabby-2.png


“….why do white people think everything is about them??” Cooks wrote a week later.
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Below are additional tweets by Crooks that the College Republicans located.
“why did I see vinnie hacker tryna fly outside my window ya’ll n-ggas let spicy white get to these crackers’ heads.”

“not my mom walking in on me watching a video about unlearning christian homophobia and getting mad….girl do i potentially have news for you.”

unnamed.png


“[W]hite tears live stream,” Crooks tweeted.
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“[N]ot a passionate amerikkka lover in my IR class….. I thought ya’ll were joking,” Crooks said, spelling America with three K’s in reference to the Ku Klux Klan.
Gabby-1.png


The Stanford College Republicans has continued to post additional tweets it has uncovered that are written by the student government candidate. Crooks has received an endorsement from the Stanford Student Daily Editorial Board, but the newspaper did not respond to a request for comment asking if it stands behind this decision. The Stanford Student Daily, a publication with a far-left slant, published an op-ed in February that said the Stanford College Republicans should be removed from campus.

While Sills noted that the College Republicans often look for things student body representatives have said to inform others on candidates and their histories, the group’s president said this was “the first big discovery that we sort of had regarding a student body leader.”

“I think it is reflective of the sort of cultural context that we live in — where anti-white racism is growing increasingly prevalent and mainstream,” Sills said. “Especially on college campuses, where it is ideologically taught that its acceptable to be racist to white Americans because of this false narrative that you can only be racist if you have power.”

The Federalist emailed Crooks but did not receive a response.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Will Whites Support A Globalist American Empire That Picks Fights Abroad and Wars Against Them At Home?

JAMES KIRKPATRICK • APRIL 27, 2021


The American Ruling Class is deliberately attacking the country’s core demographic group at just the same time that it is picking fights with major powers like Russia, China, and even Turkey. The Biden Administration is demonizing whites as the main domestic threat and is developing a complicated racial caste system that punishes whites for their mere existence. Currently, an indebted, belligerent, imperialist U.S. is being propped up by naïve, well-meaning whites. But unless whites are treated better within this bizarre postmodern imperium, they will cease to identify with it and will focus on building alternatives here at home.

Of course, we must give credit where credit is due—Joe Biden is supposedly going to end America’s longest war, something President Trump tried but failed to achieve [Biden tells Americans ‘we cannot continue the cycle’ in Afghanistan as he announces troop withdrawal, by Anne Gearan, Karen DeYoung, and Tyler Pager, Washington Post, April 14, 2021]. Yet even this claim requires skepticism. Biden’s action leaves open a door for renewed commitment if there is violence this spring [Joe Biden Isn’t Ending the War in Afghanistan, by Branko Marcetic, Jacobin, April 16, 2021].

However, even bringing the troops home is certain to be coupled with a movement to bring Afghani “refugees”—and their resentments and grievances—to America [The US Must Help Afghans Who Helped It, by James Schwemlein and Earl Anthony Wayne, The Diplomat, April 8, 2021]. To make a comparison to black Americans’ “Double V” campaign in World War II, symbolizing Victory in war and increased Civil Rights, white Americans today get to suffer a “Double L”—losing wars overseas and Constitutional rights at home.

The unwinnable war abroad ends in a debacle that will probably bring the Taliban back to power and saddle America with refugees. Those who think such refugees will be filled with gratitude need only reference our experiences with the Hmong, the endless waves of Central Americans, or, for that matter, Rep. Ilhan Omar. Bottom line: we have been defeated abroad and occupied at home.
Moreover, it seems we’re not stepping back from unnecessary military intervention but merely pivoting. The Globalist American Empire is preparing to take on China over “human rights” [EXCLUSIVE Biden will push allies to act on China forced labor at G7 – adviser, by Trevor Hunnicutt and Andrea Shalal, Reuters, April 23, 2021] Yet simultaneously, Biden also wants China to help with the amorphous and undefinable goal of preventing “climate change.”

Chinese leaders have no reason to actually go along with anything that would hurt its economy. [China’s Solar Dominance Presents Biden With an Ugly Dilemma, by Ana Swanson and Brad Plumer, New York Times, April 20, 2021]. Any “partnership” on tech would also lead to further American vulnerabilities thanks to America’s ridiculous policy of giving Chinese nationals access to national security secrets. It’s not surprising these Chinese side with their real country. So America is simultaneously approaching China as beggar and belligerent, and I doubt Beijing will respond with anything other than contempt.

Furthermore, China is furthering its partnership with Russia [China and Russia UNITING to test Biden: Putin and Xi seeing how US responds, by Marco Giannageli, Express, April 25, 2021]. Russia recently terrified Europe with a buildup on the Ukrainian border before coolly withdrawing forces and proclaiming it was all just an exercise [Putin Is Keeping the West Guessing and That’s Just Fine With Him, by Henry Meyer and Irina Reznik, Bloomberg, April 24, 202]. President Putin has also warned of a tough and “asymmetric” response if the United States continues to pressure his country [Putin threatens ‘asymmetric’ and ‘tough’ response to US sanctions, by Max Seddon and Henry Foy, Financial Times, April 21, 2021].

Russia is weak compared to the United States, but a united Russian-Chinese bloc would be a formidable foe [The US has been getting ‘its ass handed to it’ in war games simulating fights against Russia and China, by Ryan Pickrell, Business Insider, March 8, 2019]. Why pick this fight?

Of course, one check on the Russian/Chinese bloc would be Turkey. I suspect Turkey’s vocal support for Ukraine in the recent crisis is one reason Putin may have backed down [Turkey’s Erdogan voices support for Ukraine amid crisis, DW, April 10, 2021]. Yet the Biden Administration has just insulted Turkey by recognizing the Armenian genocide. To be clear, it was genocide. And decisive Western action against Turkey because of its weaponization of the “refugee” flow into Europe has been due for some time. However, one must ask what this declaration is really worth [Why Biden’s Armenian Genocide Declaration Really Is a Big Deal, by Charlie Mahtesian, Politico, April 24, 2021]. Washington was nowhere to be found when Turkish-backed Azerbaijani forces successfully defeated Armenia in a recent war [In Azerbaijan, Winning the War in Nagorno-Karabakh Was Easier Than Reconciling With Armenia, by Ann Simmons, Wall Street Journal, January 29, 2021]. This latest action will simply push Turkey’s Recep Erdogan into closer ties with Russia [Biden puts Erdogan under high pressure, The Arab Weekly, April 23, 2021].

It’s hard to imagine a more unlikely alliance than one between China, Russia, and Turkey, all of which have serious territorial and diplomatic grievances against each other. Incredibly, Washington seems to be creating it.
Internationally, this means America needs to be strong. However, the Biden Administration is deliberately undermining America’s own moral position, with the new ambassador to the UN helpfully explaining to the world that America is inherently racist [Why does Biden let the UN ambassador tell the world the US is racist? By Quin Hillyer, Washington Examiner, April 17, 2021]. If that’s so, why should China or Russia suffer American lectures about “human rights?”

Washington is also gearing up for increased repression against whites. While studiously ignoring a staggering nationwide crime wave, Regime Media outlets and think tanks are circulating dubious reports about supposedly soaring white “domestic terrorism.” This provides the justification for the military to hunt for “extremists” in its own ranks [Pentagon report warns of threat from white supremacists inside the military, by Dan DeLuce, NBC News, February 25, 2021]. The American military’s readiness is already questionable [GAO report sees U.S. military readiness slipping, by Mike Glenn, Washington Times, April 8, 2021].

Making the military “woke” will hardly prepare it to meet a serious challenge from serious countries [The Meaning of the Woke Military, by Frank Bennett, American Mind, March 25, 2021].

Where does this leave American whites? The case of Army Sgt. First Class Jonathan Pentland is representative. Doing what we are supposed to do in the post #MeToo world, Pentland “listened and believed.” A woman wanted help, so he confronted a mentally ill man in the neighborhood. In a normal society, this would not be a story, unless was about how Pentland did the right thing.

However, because Pentland is white and the man he confronted is black, the Army instantly turned on Pentland and denounced him. It is currently groveling and saying Pentland’s behavior doesn’t reflect “Army Values” [White Fort Jackson soldier charged in altercation with a Black man to be prosecuted in civilian courts, by Sarah Sicard, Army Times, April 23, 2021]

That’s probably right; whatever it is that the Army brass does these days, it has nothing to do with protecting Americans.

In this context, I personally find the Biden Administration’s authorization for embassies to fly the homosexual-rights Rainbow Flag on the same pole as the American flag almost commendable. It honestly shows the world what the Globalist American Empire is really all about [Biden admin. grants ‘blanket authorization’ to fly Pride flag at embassies, by Conor Finnegan, ABC, April 23, 2021].

The Rainbow Flag has real moral significance to our rulers. Burning an American flag isn’t even news; burning a pride flag, or a BLM sign, is a “hate crime.” That’s because “Americans” no longer really have an identity, while the Coalition of the Oppressed do, along with powerful interests willing to back them with money, legal protection, and officially-sanctioned violence.

Indeed, I expect that this is just the beginning. The BLM flag will probably be next at embassies (Marjorie Taylor Greene’s efforts notwithstanding). And the Pride flag, if anything, will be changed because the current one isn’t inclusive enough. [Why Many LGBT People Have Started Using A New Pride Flag, by Jamie Wareham, Forbes, July 12, 2020].

Decades ago, in what seems another lifetime, I remember the feeling of personal outrage after the September 11 terrorist attacks. It wasn’t just that my country was attacked, but my cities and my friends.

In the years since, many of my friends served in Afghanistan. None I know thought they accomplished anything politically.

Now, the same blustering military chiefs who insult whites are preparing to admit defeat (though they won’t call it that) in America’s longest war.

Rather than feeling anger or shame at this national humiliation, instead I feel something like schadenfreude against them—along with righteous indignation on behalf of the countless patriots used up and spat out by a System unworthy of their sacrifice.

Corporate America, the Deep State, the journalists, and the military leadership have all made it very clear that they hate whites and want to replace them [These Key Similarities Between Lenin’s Red Terror and America’s Woke Culture Reveal Left’s Blueprint for Complete Takeover, Revolver, April 15, 2021]

Why should we try to save them from their own follies or defend their System, especially when they seem so determined to start more unnecessary wars?

We’re already being punished by having to pay taxes to subsidize our dispossession.

The only war what’s left of the Historic American Nation needs to worry about is the one being waged against it at home.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Safe Spaces Are Creating A Generation Of "Snowflake Tyrants": Dr. Everett Piper

SATURDAY, MAY 01, 2021 - 09:45 PM
Authored by Tom Ozimek and Joshua Philipp via The Epoch Times,

Dr. Everett Piper, author of “Grow Up: Life Isn’t Safe But It’s Good,” told Epoch TV’s “Crossroads” Program that cancel culture’s relentless demand for safe spaces is making America’s youth emotionally fragile, less able to cope with hardship, and more prone to advocating for an ever bigger government role in allaying insecurity and providing safety at the expense of liberty.



Piper, who served as president of Oklahoma Wesleyan University for 17 years, said that his earlier warnings, that coddling America’s youth by acquiescing to demands for “safe spaces” and “trigger warnings” would lead to a sad and dangerous infantilization of the American spirit, are increasingly coming to pass.
“The ‘snowflakes’ have graduated,” Piper said.
“And they now have jobs at Google and Amazon and Apple and Twitter and even Major League Baseball, where they’re carrying their cancel culture, their demands for safety, into our country at large, and they’re silencing everyone who disagrees with them. This is ideological fascism, it is not intellectual freedom.”
Piper’s complaint about “snowflakes” having a growing impact on the political tenor of major American corporations is part of what Republicans—and conservatives more broadly—have started to more vocally criticize as “woke capitalism,” or big business’s embrace of progressive positions on issues like LGBTQ and voting rights.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), fumed in a Sunday op-ed in The New York Post that “corporate America eagerly dumps woke, toxic nonsense into our culture, and it’s only gotten more destructive with time,” adding, “today, corporate America routinely flexes its power to humiliate politicians if they dare support traditional values at all.”


Ranking member Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) questions witnesses during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington on Feb. 23, 2021. (Drew Angerer/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)

“Multinational firms threaten boycotts over pro-life legislation. Cowardly sports leagues pull events out of states that dare pass legislation they don’t like. Firms like Delta parrot woke talking points, even as they cut deals with China, lending Beijing legitimacy and funding as it commits genocide in Xinjiang,” Rubio wrote, referring to the atrocities committed against the Uyghur community by the Chinese Communist Party, and to Major League Baseball pulling an event out of Georgia in protest against the state’s new election integrity law.

A lobbying and communications outfit with deep ties to GOP leadership argued in a memo in mid-March that the rise of “woke CEOs embracing avant-garde social agendas” is fueling a populist surge in the Republican Party that threatens to upend its longstanding pact with big business.
“These campaigns will be met with the same strength that any other polluter should expect,” Rubio wrote, suggesting that “woke” corporations would face Republican backlash for their activism.
Much in the same tone, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) on April 20 called for the Republican Party to reduce its financial dependence on big companies, while urging the breakup of some mega-corporations that exert too much power on American politics and seek “to run our democracy.” Already, Hawley has introduced the Bust Up Big Tech Act and the Trust-Busting for the Twenty-First Century Act, which would strengthen antitrust enforcement to pursue the breakup of dominant, anticompetitive firms.
“A small group of woke mega-corporations control the products Americans can buy, the information Americans can receive, and the speech Americans can engage in. These monopoly powers control our speech, our economy, our country, and their control has only grown because Washington has aided and abetted their quest for endless power,” Hawley said in a statement.

Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) looks on during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on voting rights on Capitol Hill in Washington on April 20, 2021. (Evelyn Kockstein/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)

Piper said that, at its core, corporate “woke-ism” was a phenomenon closely related to and fueled by the “demand to be comfortable rather than have your character built.”
“This trigger warning ideology, this demand for safety in the academy rather than being challenged, this demand to be comfortable rather than have your character built. This is not a recipe for maturity. It’s a recipe for childishness and perpetual adolescence,” he said.
“We’ve set aside the higher values, the higher ideas, the higher ideals of freedom and liberty,” Piper said. “We’ve allowed our freedom to be stolen from us because as children, we want to cower in the corner and demand that we be safe. And we’ve been willing to do that at the expense of essentially everything that the western civilization has stood for, and that is individual liberty.”
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

A nation without police: The coming madness
Exclusive: Patrice Lewis predicts more private security for the rich, more crime victimizing the poor

Patrice Lewis
By Patrice Lewis
Published April 30, 2021 at 7:28pm

Law enforcement in our nation is facing a "perfect storm."

Stupid politicians are listening to stupid anarchists who want license to rampage across urban areas without repercussions. Law enforcement is under violent siege as they battle these monsters night after night, month after month. Police are leaving the profession in droves; not just because of the working conditions, but because stupid city governments refuse to support them.

The result is a massive police shortage across the country, especially in large blue cities. Police departments are also facing a recruiting crisis because qualified individuals are deciding they wouldn't touch the law enforcement profession with a 10-foot pole.

"It's the perfect storm," said a spokesman for the Philadelphia Fraternal Order of Police. "We are anticipating that the department is going to be understaffed by several hundred members, because hundreds of guys are either retiring or taking other jobs and leaving the department."

The former commissioner of the New York Police Department (NYPD) stated, "No police officer should work in a jurisdiction where they do not have the support of those they work for. Beginning today, I will no longer recommend young people consider the NYPD as a career."

What would a world without police look like? Predictably, there's a website with that name which explores that very topic. Reading it is like reading every liberal utopian buzzword in an urban dictionary.

"We live in a society where almost every social problem – from noisy neighbors to broken taillights – has become a point of police intervention," the website begins. "The result is an epidemic of harassment and violence. But what if we found other ways to solve our issues? What if we rolled back police power, and abolished the institution entirely? Here you are invited to think and act with other visionaries, and find ways to achieve a police-free world. … Police violence stems not just from bad apples or bad attitudes, but from what police must be and do in America. The only way to stop the violence is to abolish the police, and transform the conditions that gave rise to them. … Cops don't just kill. They patrol schools, hospitals, and public transit. … In all these spaces, they enforce white supremacy and protect property and commerce over human life. … We're not fighting for a new police – nicer, more diverse, with better training than their predecessors – nor even a new justice system. We're fighting for a world without police." [Emphasis in original.]

So let me get this straight. If Portland abolishes its police force, Antifa would peacefully go home? If Seattle abolished its police force, BLM would dissolve itself? In any urban center across America, abolishing police forces would mean universal peace and harmony? Rapes would cease? Armed burglaries would stop? Murders would become nonexistent? Looting would never happen? Really?
I realize reality is very, very difficult for the progressive mind to grasp, but let me try.

During 2020 and early 2021 – when policing efforts were decreasing everywhere because of defunding and attrition – cities saw the steepest increase in homicides in American history. Tragically, the bulk of these murders happened in low-income communities that already disproportionately suffer increased crime.

"President Biden's criminal-justice policies stand to exacerbate the ongoing crime wave while ignoring its causes," notes Tyler Durden . [Emphasis added.]

Sensible people are blasting the trend to defund the police as the madness that it is. Former Arizona police officer Brandon Tatum (who is black) slammed the notion in a BBC interview. "President Biden is an idiot in my personal opinion," stated Tatum. "We don't have a problem with racism in our country; we have a problem with people not following the law. We also have a problem with politicians making up things so they can get reelected. And that's exactly what has been happening. That's why you never see anything change. They're lying to us. … They're just making things up in my personal opinion, and they're riding a wave of dead black people in order to make money and get political leverage."

We only have to look at the societal carnage for places that have already defunded or severely reduced their police. Minneapolis is the classic example, a city that saw a 105% increase in shootings and a 70% increase in homicides last year. It also had off-the-charts increases in auto theft, carjacking, robberies, aggravated assaults and arson. Faced with a wave of violent crime and a shortage of officers, it seems Minneapolis is regretting its decision to defund the police. Social workers just don't have the same abilities or training as an armed law enforcement officer when a violent crime is in progress.

What do the citizens of Minneapolis (or any other similarly affected urban area) think about this? Perhaps readers can chime in with their thoughts.

Don't think African-Americans are in favor of abolishing the police, either. In fact, 61% percent of African-Americans do not want the police defunded, while "nearly 90% of black Americans agreed that reforming the criminal justice system, increasing accountability within law enforcement, and raising awareness about its potential for abuse will be more effective in the long run. … These aren't the numbers 'Defund the Police' activists like to report." In another poll, 70% of African-Americans believe their local police are doing a good job.

Are you listening, liberals?

Sadly, the American left is likely to get its wish. Policing is no longer a viable career. In urban centers all across America, law enforcement officials are resigning, quitting, or retiring in droves, no longer willing to put their lives on the line when city governments do little but mock them. Younger people will avoid entering a field where they will be hated and despised their entire professional career. The inevitable result of this defund-the-police madness is that the wealthy will pool their resources and hire private security, and the poor will suffer as always.

"The crime waves many cities, including Minneapolis, are suffering were completely predictable and totally avoidable," notes PJ Media. "City councils acted rashly to appease activist mobs. In every single case, it was Democrats who made the terrible choice to gut their police departments and turn their cities over to chaos and violence."

When America becomes a lawless, anarchist country, will progressives learn their lesson? Of course not.

God help us all, but especially those living in urban areas.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment
[/URL]

RPS board declares Black Lives Matter 'government speech'

www.kaaltv.com


The Rochester Public Schools board voted unanimously Tuesday evening to make several phrases and images, including "Black Lives Matter," government speech, meaning the school can't be held liable for allowing those views while not allowing opposing views.
www.kaaltv.com

RPS board declares Black Lives Matter 'government speech'

Rachel Mills
Updated: April 27, 2021 10:11 PM
Created: April 27, 2021 09:42 PM

(ABC 6 News) - The Rochester Public Schools board voted unanimously Tuesday evening to make several phrases and images, including "Black Lives Matter," government speech, meaning the school can't be held liable for allowing those views while not allowing opposing views.

"So here with adopting the messages that you're adopting as government speech, you're saying these are the messages that we're communicating as a school district and by doing that we're not also creating a forum to allow other types of speech to enter the forum," John Edison, the RPS board attorney said.

By declaring certain phrases involving the Black Lives Matter movement as government speech, the board is protecting itself from legal action because it is allowing one type of speech, but not any speech in opposition to those phrases.

But it's not just "Black lives matter," in Rochester schools, speech concerning "Brown lives matter," "Indigenous lives matter, "Stop Asian hate", as well as the pride flag, are now all declared official government speech.


RPS board declares Black Lives Matter 'government speech'


"It is not about telling students what to think and what they can and cannot say, but it does give our district and our staff the authority to speak out about these lives that matter," Jean Marvin, RPS board chair, said.

Rumors circulated online suggesting RPS was asking teachers to remove "Black Lives Matter" messages from classrooms. That's why the board took action - passing the formal resolution.

"I feel incredibly sorry that anyone had to feel that way and that there was any question of our commitment to equity in that respect," Dr. Jessica Garcia, RPS board director, said.

Another key issue on the agenda was whether to renew the district's contract with the Rochester Police Department for another year. RPD provides five officers to the district to work in schools as community resource officers.

"They may not keep us safer because they keep the shooter away, but because they know our students and they are able to de-escalate bad situations before they become situations that other law enforcement needs to get involved in," Marvin said.

Some board members opposed having armed officers interacting with students.
"We're offering an easement for those who might not have been involved with the criminal legal system otherwise. We're facilitating that pipeline," Garcia said.

The board did narrowly vote to renew its school resource officer contract for another year, but some board members said it's only until they can find another solution.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

In Effort to Bypass Spy Warrants, Biden Admin to Partner with Private Firms to Surveil So-Called ‘Domestic Terrorists’ Online

By Cristina Laila
Published May 3, 2021 at 1:09pm
deep-state-1.jpg

The Biden Administration will be partnering with private firms to surveil “domestic terrorists” online.

In other words, since the Biden Admin can’t spy without a warrant or probable cause/ongoing investigation, they will outsource it to the private sector.

The Department of Homeland Security can only browse through open social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook etc. and cannot assume false identities to infiltrate private messaging apps.

However, there is a plan in the works to circumvent the Department’s limits so the government can monitor online chatter in private messaging apps like Telegram.

“If [the DHS] can find willing external partners that would help provide access to private groups on these encrypted apps, DHS and its federal partners, including the FBI, would be able to legally identify potential domestic terrorists and access information that could inform investigative efforts,” a source familiar with the effort told CNN.

CNN reported:

The Biden administration is considering using outside firms to track extremist chatter by Americans online, an effort that would expand the government’s ability to gather intelligence but could draw criticism over surveillance of US citizens.
The plan being discussed inside DHS, according to multiple sources, would, in effect, allow the department to circumvent those limits. A source familiar with the effort said it is not about decrypting data but rather using outside entities who can legally access these private groups to gather large amounts of information that could help DHS identify key narratives as they emerge.

By partnering with research firms who have more visibility in this space, the DHS could produce information that would likely be beneficial to both it and the FBI, which can’t monitor US citizens in this way without first getting a warrant or having the pretext of an ongoing investigation. The CIA and NSA are also limited on collecting intelligence domestically.
Last month it was reported the law enforcement arm of the US Postal Service is secretly monitoring and collecting Americans’ social media posts, according to documents obtained by Yahoo News.

The spying program is known as iCOP, or Internet Covert Operations Program and involves goons trolling through social media sites to look for “inflammatory” posts – and then sharing the information with other government agencies.

Last we checked, “inflammatory” language was covered by the First Amendment.
The Biden Admin is using the might of the US government, and now partnering with the private sector, to target anyone who disagrees with the regime (Trump supporters/conservatives).
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

EXC: A Top U.S. Teacher Training Org Is Partnered With A Chinese Communist Group Promoting ‘Socialist’ Nursery Rhymes.
The Erikson Institute – one of America’s premier graduate schools training teachers and influencing classroom curricula – is engaged in a “long-term cooperative relationship” with a Chinese Communist Party group overseeing the regime’s Communist Youth League and publishing books including “nursery rhymes embodying the core values of socialism” and magazines praising Xi Jinping and Karl Marx, The National Pulse can reveal.

The Erikson Institute offers academic programs and degrees for educators and social workers and notes “individuals who influence early childhood policy and create programs for children and families, including government officials, program administrators, advocates, and grant foundation officers” rely on the group’s research.

In 2017, however, the Erikson Institute signed a partnership with the China Children’s Press & Publication Group (CCPPG).

Chinese Communist Party Consul General Hong Lei attended the event, praising the “long-term cooperative relationship” as representing “a new channel of cultural and educational exchange” between the parties involved.

CCPPG publishes the official magazine of the Young Pioneers of China, a branch of the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League.

The communist rag’s mission statement instructs readers to “Serve the Young Pioneers organization, meet the needs of team cadres” and develop an “active grassroots level.” The publishing house also runs the Young Pioneers of China central news website in addition to over a dozen other Chinese Communist Party-run newspapers and magazines for children such as China Youth Daily.

Additionally, CCPPG has published “Think Like A Great Mind – Karl Marx For Young Readers,” which carries out the government-stipulated goal of “disseminating and upholding the doctrines of Marx, Lenin, Mao, and Deng.” The publishing house also distributes “100 Core Values Nursery Rhyme,” which describes itself as “a collection of inspirational nursery rhymes embodying the core values of socialism.”

“The connotation of the core socialist values allows children to understand and practice the core socialist values from an early age,” a summary adds.

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CCPPG has also pushed the book “Reading Marx As A Teenager,” whose promo describes Marxism as “lively and delightful; like the spring breeze and rain, it will bring all living beings and make people reborn” and contains chapters such as “Why is the Soviet version of socialism unsuccessful, and Western capitalism is also unsuccessful?”

“The reason why our voice has no charisma and our team has no fighting capacity is because we will not think and fight like Marx,” an editor’s recommendation reads.

CCPPG has published parenting books consisting of essays from the Beijing Youth Daily newspaper – the official paper of the city’s Communist Youth League. Additionally, the publishing house is responsible for disseminating “Storytelling by Xi Jinping,” a book whose summary promotes the Chinese Communist Party leader’s stories to “establish a correct world outlook” in children:

This book is based on the content of “Xi Jinping Tells Stories” and selects 47 stories based on the characteristics of children. The content of this book is specific and vivid, popular and profound. It is an excellent reading material to help the majority of children to build cultural self-confidence, strengthen self-identity, establish a correct world outlook, outlook on life and values, and buckle the first button of life.
Throughout the history of mankind, those who have achieved success must have high morale. Marx wrote “Das Kapital” during the poverty and downfall of his life. He wrote in a letter to Engels in February 1852: “In one week, I have reached a very happy point: because my coat entered the pawnshop, I can’t go out anymore, and because I won’t be allowed to pay, I can’t eat meat anymore. “Even so, Marx did not give in and did not stop working. It is the integrity of the proletarian revolutionaries who are not afraid of hardships and hardships, and only for the truth of ism.


The Erikson Institute has also sent educators to China to attend the education conferences sponsored by the state-run East China Normal University.

While collaborating with the Chinese Communist Party, the Chicago-based center has doubled down on its “commitment” to social justice teachings in its resources, promising to “dismantle the structures of institutional and systemic racism” with its resources.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

FISA And The Still Too Secret Police

SUNDAY, MAY 02, 2021 - 10:00 PM
Authored by James Bovard,

The FBI continues to lawlessly use counterintelligence powers against American citizens...


The Deep State Referee just admitted that the FBI continues to commit uncounted violations of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA).

If you sought to report a crime to the FBI, an FBI agent may have illegally surveilled your email. Even if you merely volunteered for the FBI “Citizens Academy” program, the FBI may have illegally tracked all your online activity.

But the latest FBI offenses, like almost all prior FBI violations, are not a real problem, according to James Boasberg, presiding judge of the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. That court, among other purposes, is supposed to safeguard Americans’ constitutional right to privacy under FISA. FISA was originally enacted to create a narrow niche for foreign intelligence investigations that could be conducted without a warrant from a regular federal court. But as time passed, FISA morphed into an uncontrolled yet officially sanctioned privacy-trampling monster. FISA judges unleash the nuclear bomb of searches, authorizing the FBI “to conduct, simultaneous telephone, microphone, cell phone, e-mail and computer surveillance of the U.S. person target’s home, workplace and vehicles,” as well as “physical searches of the target’s residence, office, vehicles, computer, safe deposit box and U.S. mails.”

In 2008, after the George W. Bush administration’s pervasive illegal warrantless wiretaps were exposed, Congress responded by enacting FISA amendments that formally entitled the National Security Agency to vacuum up mass amounts of emails and other communication, a swath of which is provided to the FBI. In 2018, the FISA court slammed the FBI for abusing that database with warrantless searches that violated Americans’ rights. In lieu of obeying FISA, the FBI created a new Office of Internal Audit. Deja vu! Back in 2007, FBI agents were caught massively violating the Patriot Act by using National Security Letters to conduct thousands of illegal searches on Americans’ personal data. Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) declared that an Inspector General report on the abusive searches “confirms the American people’s worst fears about the Patriot Act.” FBI chief Robert Mueller responded by creating a new Office of Integrity and Compliance as “another important step toward ensuring we fulfill our mission with an unswerving commitment to the rule of law.” Be still my beating heart!

The FBI’s promise to repent after the 2018 report sufficed for the FISA court to permit the FBI to continue plowing through the personal data it received from NSA. Monday’s disclosure—a delayed release of a report by the court last November—revealed that the FBI has conducted warrantless searches of the data trove for “domestic terrorism,” “public corruption and bribery,” “health care fraud,” and other targets—including people who notified the FBI of crimes and even repairmen entering FBI offices. As Spencer Ackerman wrote in the Daily Beast, “The FBI continues to perform warrantless searches through the NSA’s most sensitive databases for routine criminal investigations.” That type of search “potentially jeopardizes an accused person’s ability to have a fair trial since warrantlessly acquired information is supposed to be inadmissible. The FBI claimed to the court that none of the warrantlessly queried material ‘was used in a criminal or civil proceeding,’ but such usage at trial has happened before,” Ackerman noted. Some illicit FBI searches involve vast dragnets. As the New York Times reported, an FBI agent in 2019 conducted a database search “using the identifiers of about 16,000 people, even though only seven of them had connections to an investigation.”

In the report released Monday, Judge Boasberg lamented “apparent widespread violations” of the legal restrictions for FBI searches. Regardless, Boasberg kept the illicit search party going: “The Court is willing to again conclude that the . . . [FBI’s] procedures meet statutory and Fourth Amendment requirements.”

“Willing to again conclude” sounds better than “close enough for constitutional.”

At this point, Americans know only the abuses that the FBI chose to disclose to FISA judges. We have no idea how many other perhaps worse abuses may have occurred. For a hundred years, the FBI has buttressed its power by keeping a lid on its crimes. Unfortunately, the FISA Court has become nothing but Deep State window dressing—a facade giving the illusion that government is under the law. Consider Boasberg’s recent ruling in the most brazen FISA abuse yet exposed. In December 2019, the Justice Department Inspector General reported that the FBI made “fundamental errors” and persistently deceived the FISA court to authorize surveilling a 2016 Trump presidential campaign official. The I.G. report said the FBI “drew almost entirely” from the Steele dossier to prove a “well-developed conspiracy” between Russians and the Trump campaign even though it was “unable to corroborate any of the specific substantive allegations against Carter Page” in that dossier, which was later debunked.

A former FBI assistant general counsel, Kevin Clinesmith, admitted to falsifying key evidence to secure the FISA warrant to spy on the Trump campaign. As a Wall Street Journal editorial noted, Clinesmith “changed an email confirming Mr. Page had been a CIA source to one that said the exact opposite, explicitly adding the words ‘not a source’ before he forwarded it.” A federal prosecutor declared that the “resulting harm is immeasurable” from Clinesmith’s action. But at the sentencing hearing, Boasberg gushed with sympathy, noting that Clinesmith “went from being an obscure government lawyer to standing in the eye of a media hurricane… Mr. Clinesmith has lost his job in government service—what has given his life much of its meaning.” Scorning the federal prosecutor’s recommendation for jail time, Boasberg gave Clinesmith a wrist slap—400 hours of community service and 12 months of probation.

The FBI FISA frauds profoundly disrupted American politics for years and the din of belatedly debunked accusations of Trump colluding with Russia swayed plenty of votes in the 2018 midterms and the 2020 presidential election. But for the chief FISA judge, nothing matters except the plight of an FBI employee who lost his job after gross misconduct. This is the stark baseline Americans should remember when politicians, political appointees, and judges promise to protect them from future FBI abuses. The FISA court has been craven, almost beyond ridicule, perennially. Perhaps Boasberg was simply codifying a prerogative the FISA court previously awarded upon FBI officials. In 2005, after a deluge of false FBI claims in FISA warrants, FISA Presiding Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly proposed requiring FBI agents to swear to the accuracy of the information they presented. That never happened because it could have “slowed such investigations drastically,” the Washington Post reported. So, FBI agents continue to lie with impunity to the judges.

The FISA court has gone from pretending that FBI violations don’t occur to pretending that violations don’t matter. Practically the only remaining task is for the FISA court to cease pretending Americans have any constitutional right to privacy. But if a sweeping new domestic terrorism law is passed, perhaps even that formal acknowledgement will be unnecessary. Beginning in 2006, the court rubber-stamped FBI requests that bizarrely claimed that the telephone records of all Americans were “relevant” to a terrorism investigation under the Patriot Act, thereby enabling NSA data seizures later denounced by a federal judge as “almost Orwellian.” FISA could become a peril to far more Americans if Congress formally creates a new domestic terrorism offense and a new category for expanding FISA searches.

The backlash from Democrats after the January 6 clash at the Capitol showcased the demand for federal crackdowns on extremists who doubted Biden’s election, disparaged federal prerogatives, or otherwise earned congressional ire. If a domestic terrorism law is passed, the FBI will feel as little constrained by the details of the statute as it does about FISA’s technicalities. Will FBI agents conducting warrantless searches rely on the same harebrained standard the NSA used to target Americans: “someone searching the web for suspicious stuff”?

Unfortunately, unless an FBI whistleblower with the same courage as former NSA analyst Edward Snowden steps forward, we may never know the extent of FBI abuses.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Pope Francis Tells ‘Vax Live’ Concertgoers to Abandon Individualism
18
In this image released on May 2, Pope Francis speaks via video during Global Citizen VAX LIVE: The Concert To Reunite The World at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California. Global Citizen VAX LIVE: The Concert To Reunite The World will be broadcast on May 8, 2021. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty …
Kevin Winter/Getty Images for Global Citizen VAX LIVE
THOMAS D. WILLIAMS, PH.D.3 May 2021209

ROME — Pope Francis sent a video message to participants in the Vax Live concert in Los Angeles Sunday night, urging concertgoers “not to forget the most vulnerable” in vaccine distribution.

In his Spanish-language message, the pontiff prayed that the “Creator God would infuse in our hearts a new, generous spirit to abandon our individualisms and promote the common good.”

“I beg you not to forget the most vulnerable,” he said.

Sunday’s concert was hosted by Selena Gomez and Prince Harry and featured messages from President and Mrs. Joe Biden, French President Emmanuel Macron and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, as well as live support from Hollywood stars Jennifer Lopez, Ben Affleck, Sean Penn, and others.

In his address to the thousands of fully vaccinated attendees at the SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles, Prince Harry lauded the work of healthcare personnel during the coronavirus pandemic.

“Tonight is a celebration of each of you here, the vaccinated frontline workers in the audience and the millions of frontline heroes around the world,” he said.
The pope has insisted that priority should not be given to the rich in the distribution of vaccines against the coronavirus, but that special attention should be given to the poor.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Biden’s ‘American Families Plan’ lets the IRS snoop on your bank accounts

Andy Meek
Sat, May 1, 2021, 6:01 AM·2 min read

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In President Biden’s first address to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday night, he laid out his ambitious, expansive agenda for getting the country past the economic wreckage associated with the coronavirus pandemic, mostly under the rubric of what his administration is calling the “American Families Plan” (some of the details of which we spelled out here).

For one thing, Biden wants to expand the federal tax credit that provides for up to $3,600 per eligible child in stimulus checks, spread out over monthly payments (starting this July). Instead of the current 1-year expansion that’s already underway, though, Biden now wants to stretch that out through 2025.

Meantime, the American Families Plan also calls for everything from the tax credit expansion to greater access to Medicaid, paid family leave, free community college tuition, and much more. The big question — how will all of this be paid for? Answer: Partly by taxing the rich, and to help that process along, Biden’s plan wants to give an extraordinary amount of new power to the IRS.

Take a look at this fact sheet from the Treasury Department, explaining a new provision that would require banks and financial institutions to start telling the tax agency what people have in their bank account, when money is moved around, and the like. This proposal, according to the fact sheet, “leverages the information that financial institutions already know about account holders, simply requiring that they add to their regular, annual reports information about aggregate account outflows and inflows. Providing the IRS this information will help improve audit selection so it can better target its enforcement activity on the most suspect evaders, avoiding unnecessary (and costly) audits of ordinary taxpayers.”

Giving the IRS more power to track money that moves into and out of your accounts is supposedly meant to help the tax agency go after the wealthiest taxpayers. However, this new authority has been described as being akin to giving federal tax “cops” even more of an excuse to claim a metaphorical probable cause to financially “stop and frisk” someone.

The US operates under a so-called pay as you go tax framework, meaning that people are penalized if they wait until the end of the tax year, for example, to pay all their taxes in one lump sum. This way, the IRS could see that people have a certain degree of taxable income flowing through their financial accounts that they should be paying taxes on throughout the year.

The Biden administration wants to spend $80 billion to expand the IRS’ compliance abilities in order to generate $700 billion over the next decade to help pay for the American Families Plan, and the benefits it includes like new quasi-stimulus checks. Where does that $700 billion come from? From the increased tax enforcement that the $80 billion IRS expansion made possible.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Taking Back American Education
Jack Miller 4/30/2021
Young man hoisting American flag against blue sky

The Jack Miller Center is taking concrete action.

If Abraham Lincoln were alive today and looking out from a speaker’s stand over our divided nation, he would probably once again deliver his Gettysburg speech.

All he would need to change is the number of years:

“Twelve score and five years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

During a time when all over the world kings reigned with absolute power, our founders brought forth a nation based on the vision which Jefferson so perfectly expressed: “that all men are created equal.” And because we were all created equal, we are all entitled to the same rights—amongst which are the rights to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

Jefferson knew that no human institution could ever perfectly embody these ideals. But he declared that ours would be the nation that was always striving to achieve that vision.

Our history is the story of our steady progress toward that vision. We have made great strides: slaves were freed, the franchise extended, and liberty and sovereignty secured at the cost of blood and treasure. We know there is still much to be done, and that work will never cease.

We traditionally have looked to our schools and universities to help raise up the next generation of informed and aware Americans—Americans who value our founders’ vision and who can lead this nation forward to continue our progress. Yet few of us feel very good about what we see.

Too often, politicized or partisan instruction has replaced thoughtful American History and old-fashioned civics instruction, including the careful and reflective reading of America’s historic documents such as the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and their sources of inspiration in English common law and Enlightenment philosophers. In response, The 1776 Commission published a report to honor our true history and refute misrepresentations of it.

To be sure, American education can boast many excellent programs in such areas as science, technology, medicine, engineering, and other fields. But our schools are no longer fulfilling their mission when it comes to forming the next generation of informed and patriotic citizens. Without those citizens, we will be unable to continue pursuing the vision of our Declaration.

Taking Action
Many Americans are rightfully becoming more and more concerned about this problem. Instead of being discouraged, we at the Jack Miller Center are doing something about it. Since 2004, we have been building a cadre of professors on college campuses across the country. Today we have about 1,000 professors, on more than 300 campuses, who have taught well over 1 million students about the wisdom and promise of our founding documents and our history of making them a reality.

We are beginning to see a revitalization. It is not yet strong enough, but it promises a real renaissance in the honest study of American History, in the understanding of our foundational documents, and in the true meaning of that vision that binds together all Americans of whatever race or ethnicity.

By the time kids reach college, it is almost too late. By then, too many of our young people have settled into the belief that America is fundamentally evil and that our free market system is inherently unfair—even though it gives all individuals the greatest opportunities to succeed. So, five years ago, we began a K-12 teachers initiative, starting by enriching the knowledge of high school social studies teachers about our history and our founding principles.

We started in Chicago and expanded to New York City, Wisconsin, Virginia, and now the entire state of Florida. The response from the teachers has been great. They are hungry for good content that they can use in their classrooms. Our vision is to expand this state by state until we are covering the country.

This is a boots-on-the-ground effort. We are really making a difference. For more information on our progress both at the university and the K-12 level, visit our website at jackmillercenter.org. This is an effort that all patriotic Americans can and should get behind.

To conclude as Lincoln did in his Gettysburg address: “we here highly resolve…that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Texas town votes decisively against Critical Race Theory as conservatives sweep, mainstream media laments

All five candidates who opposed Critical Race Theory in Southlake elections won with 70% of the vote.

by JD Rucker
May 3, 2021



Texas town votes decisively against Critical Race Theory as conservatives sweep, mainstream media laments


It wasn’t even close. In fact, the record-breaking election participation in Southlake, Texas, is being heralded as a roadmap for conservatives to take back control of their local governments, including mayor’s offices, city councils, and all-important school boards.

The race received national attention with Critical Race Theory the top agenda item on the ballot. A proposal by the school board included massive changes to the way racism is handled in schools, including mandatory and ongoing “diversity training” for students and faculty that almost certainly would have been a variation of the “White Fragility” training made famous by Cultural Marxist Robin DiAngelo.

The races for mayor, two city council seats, and two school board seats drew crowds larger than during a presidential election. At stake was not only pushback against Critical Race Theory, but also a general progressive creep that had been happening for the last couple of years in the mostly White, conservative, evangelical Northeast suburb of Dallas. According to The Federalist:

Parents in a Dallas-area school district decisively elected two candidates Saturday dedicated to pushing back against critical race theory indoctrination in classrooms.

The controversial race for two seats on the Carroll Independent School District school board, located primarily in the Dallas suburb of Southlake, focused on the district’s embrace of critical race theory after videos went viral of two students who sang the n-word with rap lyrics in 2018. Legacy media, leftist administration officials and vocal left-wing parents demanded the schools adopt measures to rid the district of “institutional racism” in response, as opposed to pleas students be shielded from slur-laced rap music.

Three years later after the videos went viral provoking a radical embrace of state-sanctioned racism masquerading as anti-racism, parents elected two new school board members to reclaim their local schools from the left-wing indoctrination.

Leftist mainstream media took it hard. One report from NBC News was labeled as a “news” article but was rife with editorializing throughout. It labeled those opposed to Critical Race Theory as racist through journalistic innuendo, being certain to note races of people quoted only when they were White. The races of all other quotes in the article were omitted.

Meanwhile, they only mentioned Critical Race Theory once in a quote, completely ignoring the entire predicate for the record turnout that was supposed to be the lede in their story. Instead, they sidestepped it by addressing the proposed school policies as “protecting diversity” and “defending the most vulnerable” students in schools. It was a hyper-biased mess, even by NBC News standards.

Even the title of the article was loaded with propaganda. “In bitterly divided election in Southlake, Texas, opponents of anti-racism education win big,” it reads. Had the exact vote totals been reversed, they would not have called it a “bitterly divided election.” Instead, they would have noted that the city responded with monumental unity, which it did in this case. As for “anti-racism education,” they ignore the unambiguous fact that Critical Race Theory has been the predicate for unabashedly racist principles spreading across this nation such as “Black Supremacy” and “White Privilege.”

An accurate report by BizPacReview told the real story:

The winning candidates received nearly 70% of the vote, as Cameron Bryan received 68.47% against opponent Lynda Warner’s 31.53%, and Hannah Smith got 69.04% of the vote against opponent Ed Hernandez, who saw 30.96%, Southlake Style reported.

Smith, an attorney who clerked for Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, said in a statement that the election “was a referendum on those who put personal politics and divisive philosophies ahead of Carroll ISD students and families, and their common American heritage and Texas values.”

“The voters have come together in record-breaking numbers to restore unity,” Smith said. “By a landslide vote, they don’t want racially divisive critical race theory taught to their children or forced on their teachers. Voters agreed with my positive vision of our community and its future.”

The candidates were backed by the conservative Southlake Families PAC, according to NBC News. The PAC raised more than $200,000 and the candidates it backed for two city council seats and mayor also won by a similar clip.

The issue of racism took center stage last year when the school board introduced what NBC News described as “diversity and inclusion training.” The network characterized the winning candidates as “opponents of anti-racism education,” and further reported that Southlake is “a historically conservative city where about two-thirds of voters backed President Donald Trump last year.”

Even in that quote, BPR had to correct the NBC News fake news report by noting, “Southlake is primarily in Tarrant County, which voted for President Joe Biden by a slim margin.”

There is a real fear by the left that conservatives are finally waking up and becoming more active in local government. This may be true and Southlake may be the example, but we must not get complacent. Every race going forward is paramount.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Classrooms Bulge with ‘Traumatized’ Migrants as Border Surge Hits the Schools
By RYAN MILLS
May 3, 2021 6:30 AM
unaccompanied-minors-families-texas.jpg

A U.S. Border Patrol agent processes asylum-seeking unaccompanied minors as families sit nearby after about 70 migrants crossed the Rio Grande River from Mexico in Penitas, Texas, March 17, 2021. (Adrees Latif/Reuters)

The kids tend to show up in Garrett Reed’s classroom in shock.

Many have never been to a big city like Houston before. But now they’re here, in the United States, in Reed’s Wisdom High School classroom, with its smart boards and online learning hub. A school administrator hands each kid a laptop. Many haven’t used a computer before.

None of them speak English. Many don’t even speak Spanish, but rather K’iche’ or maybe Mam, indigenous Mayan languages from the Guatemalan hinterlands.

Many of the kids have just made the dangerous journey to the U.S. through Mexico, enduring a gauntlet of crime filled with thugs, thieves, and predators of a variety of stripes – gangbangers who recruit the boys, sex traffickers who prey on the young girls.

“They’re traumatized. I mean, not all of them, but most of them,” Reed said. “A lot of them just put their head on the desk and cry. That’s what happens. That’s fine. Just cry.”

When these “newcomers” arrive at Wisdom High, it is Reed’s job to teach them English. Reed is one of two English as a Second Language teachers at the school.

But, he acknowledges, his job is much bigger than just teaching English. He also is a mentor and a protector, keeping an eye out for potential threats to his vulnerable students inside and outside his classroom.

Over the last few months, Reed said, the number of kids in his classes has at least doubled, maybe tripled. He teaches three classes a day, each an hour-and-a-half long. He started the year with about ten kids in each class, he said. He’s up to about 30 now. He’ll likely get more.

During the first three months of the year, U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported more than 350,000 encounters with illegal immigrants on the Southwest border. More than 34,000 of those encounters have been with unaccompanied minors, predominantly from the Northern Triangle region of Central America – Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador.

The surge at the Southwest border is the biggest in at least two decades, coming on the heels of President Joe Biden’s executive orders dismantling Trump-era immigration deterrents. Biden is allowing the unaccompanied teens and children to stay in the country, creating a perverse incentive for more kids to make the harrowing journey to the U.S.

While much of the mainstream media reporting this spring was focused on overwhelmed border facilities and so-called “kids in cages,” there has been less focus on what happens when these kids eventually disperse into communities, large and small, across the country.

It’s likely most of them will attend public schools like Wisdom High, increasing financial pressures on school systems that are already struggling through the coronavirus pandemic. In some past cases, influxes of immigrants have caused tension between school leaders who need more building space, teachers, and resources, and local taxpayers who question why they should foot most of the growing bill. Educating just the kids who’ve arrived so far this year will almost assuredly cost hundreds of millions of dollars, with the vast majority of that burden falling on the states and local governments.

Along with the financial pressures, the kids coming from Central America also bring social and academic challenges. Many of them are far behind their American-born peers academically – most have had interrupted educations. A handful have no education at all.

In recent years, some school districts have struggled with placing the immigrant children in schools. In 2016, the Southern Poverty Law Center sued a school district in southwest Florida that was sending older immigrant teens to adult-education programs if they were not on a reasonable path to graduate by age 19. The school district eventually settled the suit.

An Associated Press analysis from that same year identified 35 school districts in 14 states that discouraged Central American immigrant students from attending traditional public schools.

The Cost of Educating Unaccompanied Minors

The requirement that U.S. public schools provide a “free” education to all children in the country, regardless of their immigration status, was established in the landmark 1982 Supreme Court decision, Plyler v. Doe. But it turns out “free” public educations are, in fact, quite costly.

Federal, state, and local governments spend over $700 billion annually on kindergarten through 12th-grade education every year, averaging nearly $15,000 per student, according to the website educationdata.org. The bulk of that is paid by state and local governments, which each contribute slightly over 45 percent of the total. The federal government provides 7.7 percent.

At that rate, if each of the 34,000-plus unaccompanied minors who’ve arrived since January attends a U.S. public school next year, it will likely cost American taxpayers about $500 million.

A 2017 analysis by the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which promotes policies to curb illegal immigration, found the U.S. spends more than $43 billion every year educating children who are in the country illegally and the U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants.

“It’s definitely something we need to be concerned about,” said Spencer Raley, director of research for FAIR, “It’s definitely something we need to approach from a position of sympathy, but at the same time being realistic and understanding that we can’t be the welfare system for the entire world.”

Data from the Migration Policy Institute, which studies immigration patterns and impacts, shows that since 2014, unaccompanied minors have overwhelmingly been released to sponsors in Houston (20,787 minors) and Los Angeles (17,596 minors). But tens of thousands more have settled in smaller numbers in other cities, suburbs, and rural communities across the country.

“Every municipality, every area really needs to be prepared to serve English learners,” said Julie Sugarman, a Migration Policy Institute senior policy analyst.
Some worry that enrolling more non-English-speaking students who enter the country illegally will draw resources, and teachers’ attention, away from American-born students.

“I’ve had a number of private conversations with local teachers, and they’re very concerned about it,” said Representative Tom McClintock (R., Calif.).

But that squeeze on resources is a concern “only in the sense that the Congress has decided that they’re only going to spend a certain amount of money on education, and not a penny more,” Sugarman said. “We have a lot of money in this country, and we could spend more money to hire more teachers to have small class sizes, but in a lot of states they choose not to.”

Sugarman acknowledged that a sudden influx of kids in a district or a school can be a “big deal,” particularly in smaller communities or in schools with fewer resources.

“The budgets are based on the anticipated number of kids,” Sugarman said, “and if it’s higher than they expect, then they really have to scramble to hire additional teachers, find more space, all of those sorts of things.”

Geovanny Ponce, an immigrant from Honduras who is now the east area superintendent in the Houston Independent School District, said he expects a large number of the unaccompanied minors who’ve entered the country this year will eventually end up in his district’s schools. He doesn’t know exactly when they’ll arrive or how many to expect. The district received a few thousand of the unaccompanied minors who came in 2019, he said.

With a large and diverse district with about 200,000 students, the new arrivals won’t overwhelm the district overall, Ponce said, but they could overwhelm individual schools, depending on where the kids settle in the community. If that happens, he said, district leaders will send more people and more resources to those schools to help the kids.

“Our policy is to embrace them and support them and help them,” Ponce said of the immigrant students.

‘A Pretty Big Challenge’
Reed, an ESL teacher at Wisdom High in Houston since 1993, knows to expect a rush of new kids every year, usually starting when they return to school in January, he said.

This year’s increase in immigrant students is big, though Reed said he had even more kids in his classes a few years ago. He said working with immigrant children is rewarding.

“I’m on the starting line,” Reed said of his job. “I get to help nurture them and sort of water the garden there, and watch them grow.”

Wisdom High is a traditional public high school, not specifically designated for English language-learners, refugees or immigrants. The surrounding community used to be mostly white, Reed said, but the demographics flipped in the 80s after the Texas oil bust. Now immigrants, many of them from Central America, flock to the oil-boom-era apartments. The immigrant kids from those apartments now make up much of Wisdom’s student body.

Reed acknowledges the challenges his students bring: they don’t speak English, they’re behind – sometimes far behind – academically, they’re homesick, and they often have conflicting priorities. Most of the kids want an education, or at least to learn English, but they also need to work to pay off debts to their smugglers, to send money back home, or to just contribute to the home they’re staying in. It’s a rarity, he said, for his Central American students to be living with both mom and dad. Often they’re living with siblings, or an uncle, or someone who claims to be an “uncle” and “may or may not have good intentions for you,” Reed said.

Some of the kids come already in gangs, but that’s a minority, Reed said. Years ago, there used to be a problem of rival gangs trying to recruit students just outside the school, he said, but that’s mostly gone now. “The gang thing got settled,” Reed said.

Most of the kids don’t want to talk about the trauma in their lives, Reed said. But a couple of times a year, he asks his students to write about their journeys to the U.S., and “they open up totally,” he said. “I keep everything they write. I make photocopies.”

“The majority of the crap they go through is when they go through Mexico,” he said. “Starting at the Guatemalan border, you have to pay a mordida (bribe) to the Mexican police just to get through, like 100 bucks. If you don’t pay it, you have to take the end-around through the jungle, and that’s pretty dangerous. …

The girls, some of them get siphoned off for trafficking. And if you can’t pay that fine to some dude standing next to the train, then you get pulled off and you’re (sex trafficked) for a month or two.”

Reed said his school offers a lot of wrap-around programs, clinics, and psychological services to the kids who’ve been traumatized. “We’re really good with that,” he said.

Reed said that one of the hardest parts of his job is trying to keep up with state-mandated teaching objectives. Because his students have such significant challenges, and start off so far behind their American-born peers, he said he’s always playing catch-up. Most of the kids never graduate. Typically, they disappear after a year or two. They either leave to work full time or move on to another community. But Reed said he tries to keep them in school.

“It’s a pretty big challenge,” he said. “I can’t say that I’m always successful with it.”

But he loves what he does, he said. He loves teaching the kids their first words in English. He tries to make it fun, throwing in some schtick and physical comedy to make the kids laugh.

Reed said he went through some tough times as a child, and can relate to his students. He says they are mostly strong kids who want to contribute and help their families. Part of his job is to encourage the kids to succeed in class, and after they’ve left school.

“I say, ‘You’re not alone. There are thousands who have gone through this before, and you’re going to do it. You’re going to make it. You’re not alone,’” Reed said. “I do what I can. It’s not just school that I’m doing.”
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

May 3, 2021
How Do You Like the Thought of Being Deprogrammed?

By Bruce Deitrick Price

Their normal human sympathies have atrophied. They live in the desert of their own inhuman politics. They are cold and apparently lack a spiritual life. Desperate to look down on other people, they take fatuity to a new level.

David Atkins, recently elected as a California member of the Democratic National Committee, mused on Twitter (Nov. 21, 2020): "How do you deprogram 75 million people who would literally die to stick it to the domestic enemies the teevee and youtube conspiracy vids told them to hate? No, seriously...how DO you deprogram 75 million people? Where do you start? Fox? Facebook? We have to start thinking in terms of post-WWII Germany or Japan. Or the failures of Reconstruction in the South."

Bret Stephens, certified by the New York Times as a journalist, summed up the American political landscape ten weeks after the election (Jan. 18, 2021):
The larger question in my mind is whether the G.O.P. is the village that must be destroyed in order to be saved, or, alternatively, is it like a group of previously reasonable people who got taken in by a cult and now must go through some kind of deprogramming so that they can lead normal lives again? My hope is that once Republicans realize that Trump was both a moral and political disaster for them, they might recover their senses.
Katie Couric, famous TV person, reacted viscerally to this "larger question" when chatting with Bill Maher on his Real Time show (Jan. 19, 2020). Katie confided her contempt for those who don't agree with her. She was particularly upset with GOP congressmen. "It's really bizarre, isn't it, when you think about how AWOL so many of these members of Congress have gotten? ... And the question is, how are we going to really almost deprogram these people who have signed up for the cult of Trump?"

Bill Maher read from the same sermon: "I mean, what do you do about these people? There's 147 Republicans in Congress who still don't concede that Trump lost the election. What do you do about people who are in the government who don't believe in our way of government?"

The Washington Post also has a clairvoyant, Brian Klaas:
For the past four years, the United States was governed by a conspiracy theorist in chief. Whether by retweeting QAnon from the Oval Office or painting himself as the victim of shadowy "deep state" plots at rallies, President Donald Trump injected the toxin of baseless conspiratorial thinking straight into America's political bloodstream.
On Jan 6, 2021, America saw how far that venom had spread, as a ragtag group of militias, racist extremists and flag-waving disciples of Trumpism stormed the Capitol[.]
Columnist Klaas laments the near futility of attempting to "deprogram" millions of Trump-supporters, claiming that many have "gone far enough down the rabbit hole of conspiratorial thinking." His essay "Why is it so hard to deprogram Trumpian conspiracy theorists?" depicts millions of Trump-supporters as so devoted to "dangerous lunacy" that nearly all hope is lost of bringing them "back to reality."

Many readers must feel that Klaas is talking about himself. Baseless conspiratorial thinking, indeed. There is little hope of bringing him back to reality.

Steven Hassan, of Salon, can probably claim to be among the first to discuss some of these items. A year before the election, he asked: "Is it possible to deprogram Trump's political cult members and return them to normal society?

Should good Americans isolate Trump supporters and refuse to interact with them?"

Hassan deals in such epiphanies as follows:
One of the most universal techniques of subverting our ability to correctly assess reality is through phobia indoctrination. This is the implantation of irrational fears against questioning the leader, the doctrine, or the organization or cult's policies[.] ... These techniques include behavior control, information control, thought control, and emotional control to keep people dependent and obedient within that group's structure.
Who needs all this psychoanalytical jibber-jabber? Simple. People whose self-esteem is shaky — i.e., they can hardly stand themselves. So they label other people deplorable even as they probably suspect how deplorable they are.

Every time the cult member says, "I hate Trump," the real me is preening: "I'm a genuine and superior person. And people like me!" The more evil you claim that Trump is, the more beneficent you are claiming to be.

The fascinating thing is the dead-brain, tone-deaf consciousness you need to muse in this offhand way about deprogramming and reprogramming many tens of millions of people. As if this cascade of crimes is just a walk to the drugstore.

After all, what is Katie Couric demanding? Kidnapping? Torture? Human-trafficking? Involuntary servitude? At least.

Can deprogramming be done in a day? More probably weeks or months. Where will people stay? Who pays for all this? When you move them around, do you use school buses or tractor-trailers? Do you put them in straitjackets?

One perennial thread in fascism is a love affair with brutality. One can't help feeling that some of these people would love to bring back the guillotine and have a front-row seat as heads plop into the basket. We can almost see Joy Behar grinning with anticipation.

Perhaps the basic sin is not so grotesque, merely the overestimating of one's intelligence. The New York Times, always trying to equate Trump with Hitler, started using the word cult all the time, and before you know it, it's a fact as solid as the Rocky Mountains. No further discussion required. In the same way, all these people believe they personally witnessed Trump as he personally commanded an insurrection to capture a building that was already his. Only the cognitively incomplete could claim to comprehend this caper. (Spoiler alert: History will conclude there is no cult and no insurrection. Repeat ten times each day.)

The public schools almost cannot be bothered to teach knowledge. And we see that this attitude has infected all the best people. Everything is whatever they say it is. There's really no need to discuss evidence with peasants. There is a serious question whether they should even be allowed to exist.

The only cult is the people who think CNN is the political middle ground. The only insurrection is the sacking and looting of the city named Veritas, where facts and knowledge were once cherished.

The whole point of America was to be free to make your own choices, live and let live. But now the left does not believe in choices or freedom to choose the answers each individual likes best. It's a brutal setback for personal independence and a cunning victory for totalitarianism.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

May 3, 2021
To Live Without Freedom and Liberty Is a Sort of Death

freedom and liberty

Editor’s Note: This is a fictional story, like “they called themselves free born Americans,” but illuminates well the direction that America is heading. Enjoy!

America had long ago slipped into the dark night of tyranny. She had failed to heed the warnings offered by many of our ancestors, between the years of 1979 and 2028, when Americans finally arose to fight a bloody civil war, that ended with the defeat of those who stood for liberty. And so, the country had soon found itself under the “Protectorate” of the sadistic Chinese Communists and the United Nations, whose leadership had been found more than willing to go along with the push into the new world hegemon, if it meant sharing in the spoils of all that followed.

By 2076, the American people were suffering unimaginable cruelties, as millions of people were sent to the camps for political prisoners that now scattered the countryside, from one coast to the other, on the outskirts of every major city in what was once known as “the United States”. Not many referred to the “United States” anymore, after it had become so apparent that it was anything but “united” and so many of its people had fully embraced the ideas of Marx and Mao, while so many others contented themselves in engaging in activities of no worth, as the nation drifted along to its demise. Instead, the long active, still standing resistance always spoke of “Free America”, while to the vile and evil forces who now occupied nearly the entire country, America was now known to the world as Xindalu, roughly translated as “New World”.

Axl had grown to manhood often marveling at the drive and hard-fought freedom his grandfather and father managed to protect, to some degree, in the face of constant assaults and weekly and sometimes daily firefights in the Basin of Middle Tennessee, where the people had successfully managed to secure the area against the foreign invaders and their willing amerikkan allies, the traitors.

Other such areas that sprang up in similar fashion, included the entire states of Idaho, Wyoming and South Dakota, Southeastern Colorado and the Oklahoma Panhandle, and areas like the Summersville Dam area between Summersville and Levasy, West Virginia, and parts of Arizona and Texas and most of Alaska, as well as several scores more.

Drifting into a daydream, as he momentarily stopped chopping wood, Axl looked back on his childhood, sitting on GranPa Grover’s knee, while GranPa spoke to those nearby and explained how their current misery at the hands of the world’s fascists and communists were the result of the previous generations of America forgetting God, even turning their backs on God, in favor of immoral pursuits and the much ballyhooed “Free Entitlements” offered by the Marxists and Maoists. This had opened the door to every kind of evil imaginable, and each time cracks appeared obvious in the “perfection of Marxism”, the Ministry of Truth’s Cultural Control Commission rapidly struck down any voice that dared to speak of it or challenge the tyranny that had replaced a government of the people and self-determination, many terrible and sad decades ago.

The beginnings of this ongoing civil war were such that it had kept nukes of any type from being detonated, although the Democratic Party Communists in control of the military had suggested using tactical neutron bombs on certain regions; but then, someone got the bright idea of calling in “U.N. Peacekeepers”, who then turned to China for the bulk of its “peacekeepers” …..

“And there it was. Here we are”, Axl said out loud to no one in particular, since there wasn’t anybody for miles around, not out this far where he’d set up an outpost and a farm of sorts, that he enjoyed calling “Axl’s Freehold”.

Axl had been fortunate to have had parents, whose own folks and relatives had been deep in the many years long fights to rid the country of its invaders, and it had made him want to do all he could to gather more recruits to the effort and build an army of men, who were willing to kill for freedom and liberty, every bit as much as they were willing to die for America. And even now, as he thought of how easily the largest part of the country had fallen to the communists and One Worlders, he shivered in his anger, as he saw these radical, red communist bastards as the enemies of Liberty and Humanity and Justice and Truth. He knew America’s occupiers to be the Handmaidens, the Manservants, to the cruelest Evils his country and his people had ever seen.

Ambling on to the rough-hewn rustic cabin he had built with his own two hands, he didn’t think much that day of any impending danger. Oh sure, there were the occasional incursions by the hard-core True Believers who would come charging in on a Ministry operation to see how many more Free Born Americans they could kill. But technically, they had an ongoing “peace” and this area was largely seen as a “free autonomous region”; and still to this day, the “peacekeepers” were supposedly still bound by U.S. Constitutional law, which meant any incursion required a search warrant. Today would be different.

The dawning of the day saw sunlight shining through the arbor window and warming the hardwood floors, where Mudflap, the house cat, napped and where Axl studied a painting he’d been working on. He turned to smile at his wife, Maggie, as she approached him and they embraced and kissed.

“You better not have paint on those hands, Big Boy!”, Maggie playfully warned, kissing him again and moving away to do her chores, as he gave her bottom a bit of a squeeze.

Deciding he’d dallied about the house for too long already, Axl thought to go set some traps and then head down to the nearby river to catch enough fish, hopefully for lunch and dinner, for today and maybe tomorrow, too, and he headed to retrieve his gear. If he hadn’t been thinking so hard on what needed to be done to prepare for the meeting of the local resistance that evening, he may have paid more attention to Sweet Mutt, a half pit half coonhound mix, who normally just laid around all day; but now, Mutt moved from his spot near the fireplace, barking and looking out the multi-paned door that led into the backyard, literally the back forty acres.

Sweet Mutt’s barking was most usually due to some squirrel gather food within eyesight of the backdoor, at least ninety percent of the time, or some other equally harmless annoyance. But his tone today finally got Axl’s attention, especially when it changed to a low guttural growl. So telling Mutt to stay, he grabbed his shotgun and headed towards the barn where Sweet Mutt had been intently gazing, his senses on full alert, standing next to the barn for a few minutes, before deciding nothing was out of sorts.

He turned to head back to the cabin, taking about five steps before he heard the crackle of leaves and twigs behind him and was knocked out cold, as something hard and solid hit him in the back of his head. “Stupid, stupid, stupid” he thought as time seemed to stop, with him falling through thin air grasping for anything to stop a hard impact with the ground, and he heard the voice of Elvis softly singing:

“We’re caught in a trap … I can’t walk out … because I love You too much Baby …”

Axl awakened some time later in his own living room, to the sound of Sweet Mutt barking and growling from inside a nearby coatroom, his hands, and feet bound with zip ties and his head pounding like a big kettle drum on the 4th of July, giving thanks they hadn’t simply killed his dog. Seven black-clad thugs from the United Nations Firearms Confiscation Bureau [UNFCB] stood staring at him, with their faces hidden behind balaclavas and sunglasses, holding their QBZ-191 assault rifles — the same standard 5.8x42mm with an effective range of 400 yards that they’d been using since 2021, capable of firing 750 rounds per minute. They were the new enforcers for the Communist People’s Republic of Xindalu, largely comprised of foreign private military contractors from Europe supported by a large contingent of Chinese military “advisors”, who had pretty much abandoned all pretense of being “peacekeepers” in the earliest years of the Times of Trouble.

The UNFCB’s motto said it all: “A Friendlier, United, DISARMED America”.

Through split lips and a few loose teeth, Axl demanded to know where his wife was, which got him another hard crack to his jaw from a short wooden club. One of the foreign thugs leaned in close to his face and shouted, “Tell us where your group’s unauthorized radio site is located, asshole”, as he flexed and unflexed his right hand, preparing to deliver more abuse.

“Show me your warrant, you rat bastard sonuvabitch”, came Axl’s reply and the huge smile that followed. He knew they didn’t have one, but such demands always served to remind them that they were occupiers without any real popular support.

After all the ensuing failures over the decades under their control, even their initial allies in America’s own communist and socialist ranks had soon become highly disillusioned with what was actually unfolding in the name of Marx, Mao and an all consuming Communist regime, that abandoned all semblance of truth and with it any chance for real justice for anybody; it was a regime that destroyed love and compassion wherever it was found and never exhibited any human kindness or mercy for anyone.

In Xindalu’s occupied land, it was “legal” to own slaves, and sex slavery had grown into a massive and lucrative business. It was also legal to murder a slave for any reason. All women were treated like chattel and baby murder was a regular occurrence, especially when those babies were female, since the goal was always to strive to reduce the country’s overall population, and in theory, to reduce the world population to a mere 500 million people. And for this reason, the Western and Judeo-Christian principles and virtues that once flourished openly across America were the targets of systematic eradication, and being thought to be a Christian always marked one for death, in just as cruel a manner as took place during the era of Christianity’s earliest martyrs — thousands of bodies each year appeared along the roadsides hanging from inverted crosses.

Upon witnessing the upside down crucifixions, one old man was heard reciting the following to all who would listen:

“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Window shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”


One of the black-clad PMCs came into the room with Maggie, hands bound behind her and a gag in her mouth, still kicking and screaming through the gag with the fierceness of a wounded panther. “Get your hands off me, you commie bastard” came her muffled words.

God how Axl loved her right at that moment, as saw what a strong woman he had married. It made him smile again, this time with al the warmth and love that he held for Maggie. And, as one of the PMC cowards made her scream with pain from having her hair pulled back quick and hard, Axl jerked against his ties as hard as he could, wishing to be free so he could bite the bastard’s neck in half and watch him bleed out, but once again, his efforts brought him another good clubbing.

The one in charge told Axl, “I’ll ask one more time and then we’re all going to take turns with your wife”, which brought forth a gleeful, raucous laughter from the group of deadly agents, reminiscent of a pack of hyenas. Maggie’s eyes narrowed down into two hot glowing embers filled with a venomous hatred that Axl had never seen in her.

Across the way from Axl’s little homestead, some twenty miles, at his nearest neighbor’s spread, another similar situation was unfolding.

Eighty-seven year old Sergeant Major H.C. Donlon, retired U.S. Army and Medal of Honor recipient, sat on his back porch, drinking coffee and looking at old family pictures, especially those of his wife, Libby, who had been dead these past ten years. Tears rolled down his cheeks as he looked at her grave in the backyard, now marked by a large boulder he’d painstakingly rolled to that spot and chiseled her name, along with the sentiment “loved and cherished forever”. His dog, Bowser, a wolfhound mastiff cross-breed, had been his only companion all these years, and as he took in the group of rolling thunderheads from the east, he saw the rapidly approaching blacked out suburban heading his way, and with a crystal clear clarity, he knew danger was coming with it.

Bowser started barking and growling like he was on a bear hunt, and so, following his usual procedure for whenever he had the rare visitor, he quickly put Bowser in his bedroom and closed the door. H.C. donned his Iraq War Veteran cap exhibiting his rank and a Combat Infantryman’s Badge displayed and went back outside to see just what would be, taking time to untangle his American Flag from around the pole.

Before he could turn around, H.C. heard the much familiar sound of a command booming from a loudspeaker. The anonymous voice ordered, “Put your hands on top of your head and slowly turn around to face us.” He hesitated just a moment too long, as he studied how he wanted to play this confrontation out, and the voice immediately screamed, “Hands on top of your head NOW!”

H.C. slowly turned and let his enemies see the smirk and disdainful look on his face, for to be sure, he had always known these UNFCB boys as “the Enemy”, target practice and rabid vermin to be put in the ground, tout de suite. He had to admit his surprise at seeing a man wearing no identifying patches in multi-cam camouflage and body armor with a snazzy high-tech assault rifle moving his way.

“I never would have dreamed I’d be such a scary thing for boys like Y’all, all fitted up to storm the Reichstag. Who could have known that an arthritic old man was such a threat to national security”, H.C. asked as the rest of the group gathered nearby.

“Are you armed, sir?”, came the question as they gruffly began to search his person. “Not this very moment” came H.C.’s response. “You can lower your hands now” he was told.

“What do you want?, H.C. asked fairly impatiently.

Pretty soon he knew he was just about to be deep in the mix, that point between life and death, where the slightest miscalculation would mean the difference between seeing the moon rise this evening and the sunrise tomorrow.

The UNFCB Commander asked about contraband and weapons in the house, as he explained that the area surrounding H.C.’s home harbored an armed insurrectionist group that also was operating an unauthorized radio broadcast site, and as such, they were going to have to search his entire property, just as they planned to search every home in the area, to flush any member from hiding.

It was also suggested that his Veteran status placed him under heightened suspicion, while the Commander also informed him that the American Flag was “a piece of capitalist, racist shit” and flying it was grounds to be arrested and taken to the “re-education” camps.

H.C. knew he had just been swept up in the latest crackdown on civilian ownership of firearms. He stalled for time, laughing in the Commander’s face, as he stood his ground and declared: “I’m eighty-seven years old, you crazy horse’s ass. If you think I’m part of some crazy resistance group, y’all are dumber than a bag of rocks.”

H.C.’s mind drifted back to years gone by, when he had stacked the dead carcasses of Chicom and Eurofascist trash all about him for as far as the eye could see, and he found himself longing for the feel of a BAR in his hands, so he could dispatch these self-made sonsabitches on their way to hell. He snapped alert, seeing a glint of light from the western crop of hills, just as one of the PMCs headed toward his front door, and he hollered out in his best command voice:

“Now wait just a damn minute here! I don’t give a good damn who you work for or what misguided authority you believe you are operating under, but you sure in the hell don’t have any right to barge into my home. Stop NOW and there won’t be any hard feelings.”

A split second later, a rifle butt was swung into H.C’s stomach, forcing him to one knee to vomit, and a flash later shots were ringing through the air dropping one PMC after the next, as angry and anguished cries of pain filled the space between shots. The exterior window to H.C.’s bedroom crashed outward, as Bowser entered the fray, in a mad fury, sensing his master was in danger and slashing at every throat he could reach, even after taking a slug in the side — one angry yelp and on he raced, bringing several to the ground from behind as they tried to run.

[Read remainder of story here: To Live Without Freedom and Liberty Is a Sort of Death ]
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Biden team may partner with private firms to surveil suspected domestic terrorists online
Zachary Cohen
https://archive.fo/o/r15nu/https://www.cnn.com/profiles/katie-bo-williams
By Zachary Cohen and Katie Bo Williams, CNN
Updated 6:02 AM ET, Mon May 3, 2021

Washington (CNN) — The Biden administration is considering using outside firms to track extremist chatter by Americans online, an effort that would expand the government's ability to gather intelligence but could draw criticism over surveillance of US citizens.

The Department of Homeland Security is limited in how it can monitor citizens online without justification and is banned from activities like assuming false identities to gain access to private messaging apps used by extremist groups such as the Proud Boys or Oath Keepers.

Instead, federal authorities can only browse through unprotected information on social media sites like Twitter and Facebook and other open online platforms.
The plan being discussed inside DHS, according to multiple sources, would, in effect, allow the department to circumvent those limits. A source familiar with the effort said it is not about decrypting data but rather using outside entities who can legally access these private groups to gather large amounts of information that could help DHS identify key narratives as they emerge.

By partnering with research firms who have more visibility in this space, the DHS could produce information that would likely be beneficial to both it and the FBI, which can't monitor US citizens in this way without first getting a warrant or having the pretext of an ongoing investigation. The CIA and NSA are also limited on collecting intelligence domestically.

It would, however, involve empowering a unit at DHS that is already under fierce scrutiny for its bungled handling of the Portland riots last summer, an episode that included collecting intelligence reports on journalists and unmasking private citizens, according to a source familiar with a recent internal report on the matter.

That leaves the Biden administration with a key question: how to address mistakes made during the Trump administration while also finding ways to respond to what critics say were blatant failures by US intelligence agencies to act on warnings ahead of the January 6 attack on the US Capitol?

"There's a tension between wanting to empower [DHS's intelligence office] to do this kind of work around domestic terrorism on the one hand and then on the other hand the misuse of its capabilities during the summer of 2020, gives a lot of people on the Hill pause {when it comes to} potentially giving them new authorities, capabilities or resources," a Senate aide told CNN.

DHS officials are exploring ways to enhance the department's information gathering within the bounds of its current authorities, multiple sources told CNN.

The department is coordinating with the National Security Council and FBI as part of the effort, sources added.'

"There was only limited awareness before January 6 of what violent extremists were planning through social media," said Tom Warrick, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council who served as DHS Deputy Assistant Secretary for Counterterrorism Policy from 2008 until 2019 and has decades of experience as a career government official at agencies including the State Department.

Warrick added he would expect DHS to "explore whether contractors could help them understand plots and trends" emerging online.

"Whatever gets approved and implemented has to comply with established laws," he said, noting that DHS can only use overt methods to gather information from social media or collect information that is publicly available.

Researchers who already monitor such activity online could act as middlemen to obtain the information. DHS officials maintain the materials provided would only consist of broad summaries or analysis of narratives that are emerging on these sites and would not be used to target specific individuals.

But some of the research firms and non-profit groups under consideration by the DHS periodically use covert identities to access private social media groups like Telegram, and others used by domestic extremist groups. That thrusts DHS into a potential legal gray area even as it plugs an intelligence gap that critics say contributed to the failure to predict the assault on the Capitol.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkNCx2dbE2Q
6:31 min
Is Coca Cola backing down? Coke ‘pauses’ race initiatives after big BOYCOTT
•May 3, 2021


Glenn Beck


Months ago, Coca-Cola was the poster child for how a corporation could shove leftist ideologies onto its consumers. It suspended advertising on Facebook in a push to censor Donald Trump, published a manifesto about racial equity, and demanded all legal teams working for Coke meet certain diversity quotas. But now, after politicians like Donald Trump, Rand Paul, and Ted Cruz called for a boycott of the company's products, Coca-Cola may be shifting directions…so, is it backing down? Did the boycott work? Glenn explains Coke’s latest actions…
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiO99DciFjc
31:34 min
Democrats WARNING Wokeness Is Blowing Up In Their Faces Paving Way For Republican Victory In 2022

•May 3, 2021


Tim Pool


Democrats WARNING Wokeness Is Blowing Up In Their Faces Paving Way For Republican Victory In 2022. In two local elections critical race theory backfired and helped the moderates win. James Carville and the DNC chair are warning that wokeness is elitism and hurts Democrats. In one school election the anti-woke candidates won 70% of the vote in a stunning rebuke of the far left
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

The Criminalization Of Dissent

MONDAY, MAY 03, 2021 - 11:20 PM
Authored (somewhat satirically) by CJ Hopkins via The Consent Factory,

One of the hallmarks of totalitarian systems is the criminalization of dissent.
Not just the stigmatization of dissent or the demonization of dissent, but the formal criminalization of dissent, and any other type of opposition to the official ideology of the totalitarian system. Global capitalism has been inching its way toward this step for quite some time, and now, apparently, it is ready to take it.


Germany has been leading the way. For over a year, anyone questioning or protesting the “Covid emergency measures” or the official Covid-19 narrative has been demonized by the government and the media, and, sadly, but not completely unexpectedly, the majority of the German public. And now such dissent is officially “extremism.”

Yes, that’s right, in “New Normal” Germany, if you dissent from the official state ideology, you are now officially a dangerous “extremist.” The German Intelligence agency (the “BfV”) has even invented a new category of “extremists” in order to allow themselves to legally monitor anyone suspected of being “anti-democratic and/or delegitimizing the state in a way that endangers security,” like … you know, non-violently protesting, or speaking out against, or criticizing, or satirizing, the so-called “New Normal.”

Naturally, I’m a little worried, as I have engaged in most of these “extremist” activities. My thoughtcrimes are just sitting there on the Internet waiting to be scrutinized by the BfV. They’re probably Google-translating this column right now, compiling a list of all the people reading it, and their Facebook friends and Twitter followers, and professional associates, and family members, and anyone any of the aforementioned people have potentially met with, or casually mentioned, who might have engaged in similar thoughtcrimes.

You probably think I’m joking, don’t you? I’m not joking. Not even slightly.
The Federal Office for Protection of the Constitution (“Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz”) is actively monitoring anyone questioning or challenging the official “New Normal” ideology … the “Covid Deniers,” the “conspiracy theorists,” the “anti-vaxxers,” the dreaded “Querdenkers” (i.e., people who “think outside the box”), and anyone else they feel like monitoring who has refused to join the Covidian Cult. We’re now official enemies of the state, no different than any other “terrorists” … or, OK, technically, a little different.

As The New York Times reported last week (German Intelligence Puts Coronavirus Deniers Under Surveillance), “the danger from coronavirus deniers and conspiracy theorists does not fit the mold posed by the usual politically driven groups, including those on the far left and right, or by Islamic extremists.” Still, according to the German Interior Ministry, we diabolical “Covid deniers,” “conspiracy theorists,” and “anti-vaxxers” have “targeted the state itself, its leaders, businesses, the press, and globalism,” and have “attacked police officers” and “defied civil authorities.”

Moreover, back in August of 2020, in a dress rehearsal for the “Storming of the Capitol,” “Covid-denying” insurrectionists “scaled the steps of Parliament” (i.e., the Reichstag). Naturally, The Times neglects to mention that this so-called “Storming of the Reichstag” was performed by a small sub-group of protesters to whom the German authorities had granted a permit to assemble (apart from the main demonstration, which was massive and completely peaceful) on the steps of the Reichstag, which the German police had, for some reason, left totally unguarded. In light of the background of the person the German authorities issued this “Steps-of-the-Reichstag” protest permit to — a known former-NPD functionary, in other words, a neo-Nazi — well, the whole thing seemed a bit questionable to me … but what do I know? I’m just a “conspiracy theorist.”

According to Al Jazeera, the German Interior Ministry explained that these querdenking “extremists encourage supporters to ignore official orders and challenge the state monopoly on the use of force.” Seriously, can you imagine anything more dangerous? Mindlessly following orders and complying with the state’s monopoly on the use of force are the very cornerstones of modern democracy … or some sort of political system, anyway.

But, see, there I go, again “being anti-democratic” and “delegitimizing the state,” not to mention “relativizing the Holocaust” (also a criminal offense in Germany) by comparing one totalitarian system to another, as I have done repeatedly on social media, and in a column I published in November of 2020, when the parliament passed the “Infection Protection Act,” which bears no comparison whatsoever to the “Enabling Act of 1933.”

This isn’t just a German story, of course. As I reported in a column in February, The “New Normal” War on Domestic Terror is a global war, and it’s just getting started. According to a Department of Homeland SecurityNational Terrorism Advisory System Bulletin(and the “liberal” corporate-media propaganda machine), “democracy” remains under imminent threat from these “ideologically-motivated violent extremists with objections to the exercise of governmental authority” and other such “grievances fueled by false narratives” including “anger over Covid-19 restrictions.”

These Covid-denying “violent extremists” have apparently joined forces with the “white-supremacist, Russia-backed, Trump-loving “Putin-Nazis” that terrorized “democracy” for the past four years, and almost overthrew the US government by sauntering around inside the US Capitol Building without permission, scuffling with police, attacking furniture, and generally acting rude and unruly. No, they didn’t actually kill anyone, as the corporate media all reported they did, but trespassing in a government building and putting your feet up on politicians’ desks is pretty much exactly the same as “terrorism.”

Or whatever. It’s not like the truth actually matters, not when you are whipping up mass hysteria over imaginary “Russian assets,” “white-supremacist militias,” “Covid-denying extremists,” “anti-vax terrrorists,” and “apocalyptic plagues.”

When you’re rolling out a new official ideology — a pathologized-totalitarian ideology — and criminalizing all dissent, the point is not to appear to be factual. The point is just to terrorize the shit out of people.

As Hermann Goering famously explained regarding how to lead a country to war (and the principle holds true for any big transition, like the one we are experiencing currently):
“[T]he people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.”
Go back and read those quotes from the German Interior Ministry and the DHS again slowly. The message they are sending is unmistakeably clear. It might not seem all that new, but it is. Yes, they have been telling us “we are being attacked” and denouncing critics, protesters, and dissidents for twenty years (i.e., since the War on Terror was launched in 2001, and for the last four years in their War on Populism), but this is a whole new level of it … a fusion of official narratives and their respective official enemies into a singular, aggregate official narrative in which dissent will no longer be permitted.

Instead, it will be criminalized, or it will be pathologized.
Seriously, go back and read those quotes again. Global capitalist governments and their corporate media mouthpieces are telling us, in no uncertain terms, that “objection to their authority” will no longer be tolerated, nor will dissent from their official narratives. Such dissent will be deemed “dangerous” and above all “false.” It will not be engaged with or rationally debated. It will be erased from public view. There will be an inviolable, official “reality.” Any deviation from official “reality” or defiance of the “civil authorities” will be labelled “extremism,” and dealt with accordingly.

This is the essence of totalitarianism, the establishment of an inviolable official ideology and the criminalization of dissent. And that is what is happening, right now. A new official ideology is being established. Not a state ideology. A global ideology. The “New Normal” is that official ideology. Technically, it is an official post-ideology, an official “reality,” an axiomatic “fact,” which only “criminals” and “psychopaths” would deny or challenge.

I’ll be digging deeper into “New Normal” ideology and “pathologized totalitarianism” in my future columns, and … sorry, they probably won’t be very funny. For now I’ll leave you with two more quotes. The emphasis is mine, as ever.

Here’s California State Senator Richard Pan, author of an op-ed in the Washington Post: “Anti-vax extremism is akin to domestic terrorism,” quoted in the Los Angeles Times:
“These extremists have not yet been held accountable, so they continue to escalate violence against the body public … We must now summon the political will to demand that domestic terrorists face consequences for their words and actions. Our democracy and our lives depend on it … They’ve been building alliances with white supremacists, conspiracy theorists and [others] on the far right …”
And here’s Peter Hotez in Nature magazine:
“The United Nations and the highest levels of governments must take direct, even confrontational, approaches with Russia, and move to dismantle anti-vaccine groups in the United States. Efforts must expand into the realm of cyber security, law enforcement, public education and international relations. A high-level inter-agency task force reporting to the UN secretary-general could assess the full impact of anti-vaccine aggression, and propose tough, balanced measures. The task force should include experts who have tackled complex global threats such as terrorism, cyber attacks and nuclear armament, because anti-science is now approaching similar levels of peril. It is becoming increasingly clear that advancing immunization requires a counter-offensive.”
We’ll be hearing a lot more rhetoric like this as this new, more totalitarian structure of global capitalism gradually develops. Probably a good idea to listen carefully, and assume they mean exactly what they say.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Pinkerton: Wokery Is Snobbery; How the Populist Right Can Win the New Class War
3,722
cancel culture illustration
wildpixel/Getty Images
JAMES P. PINKERTON2 May 20212,146

Carville’s Warning to Democrats
James Carville is a well-known Democratic operative, and yet he’s also capable of causing trouble for Democrats. That’s what happened in an April 27 interview, when he declared, “Wokeness is a problem, and we all know it.” A problem, that is, for the Democratic Party. As Carville explained:
You ever get the sense that people in faculty lounges in fancy colleges use a different language than ordinary people? They come up with a word like “Latinx” that no one else uses. Or they use a phrase like “communities of color.” I don’t know anyone who speaks like that. I don’t know anyone who lives in a “community of color.” I know lots of white and Black and brown people and they all live in . . . neighborhoods.
We might pay special attention to some of Carville’s word-choices: “people in faculty lounges in fancy colleges.” There’s a stereotype that leading Democrats hang out in the Ivy League and other posh colleges—and Carville agrees with it.

Indeed, he went on to attack “jargon-y language that’s unrecognizable to most people—including most Black people.” Picking up on his theme of a snobby dimension to leftist thinking, Carville added, “This ‘too cool for school’ [bleep] doesn’t work, and we have to stop it.”

Here we can pause to quote conservative Scott Alexander, who wrote earlier this year, “Wokeness is a made-up mystery religion that college-educated people invented so they could feel superior to you.” Continuing, Alexander added, “The whole point is that the only way not to be racist is to master an inscrutable and constantly-changing collection of fashionable shibboleths and opinions which are secretly class norms.”

So we can see: Alexander is agreeing with Carville; the whole essence of wokeness is that it’s a status symbol. Just as some people choose to raise themselves—at least in their own estimation—by gaining an affected accent, others seek to gain status by becoming fluent in woke. Politically correct lingo thus further distinguishes Berkeley, CA, from, say, Beckley, WV.

Then Carville, a native of rural Louisiana, known as the “Ragin’ Cajun,” roared some more, saying of Democratic vulnerability, “I think it’s because large parts of the country view us as an urban, coastal, arrogant party.”

We can also add: “rich.” Of the ten richest states (including the District of Columbia), as measured by per capita income, Joe Biden carried eight last year; of the ten poorest states, Donald Trump carried nine. Drilling down a bit, we can also see that Democrats represent 41 of the 50 most affluent districts in the U.S. House.

Yet it’s not just that Democrats are woke and wealthy. In addition, some of their best-known policy ideas are way-y-y out of touch with ordinary people. But don’t take my world for it—here’s Carville: “Maybe tweeting that we should abolish the police isn’t the smartest thing to do because almost [bleeping] no one wants to do that.”

Not surprisingly, Carville’s words didn’t play well with the woken. Transgender activist Charlotte Clymer lamented that Carville has “chosen to buy into this bizarre myth that asking adults to be empathetic and responsible is ‘wokeness.’”

And the woken website Jezebel jabbed, “Carville seems to have one job of late: Popping up to offer his list of grievances about the left’s influence on the Democratic Party.” The writer then addd a racialist snipe at “People—often white, often men—with large and influential platforms who redefine co-opted terms like ‘woke’ and dictate its supposed harm.”

Yet interestingly, on April 30, Jaime Harrison, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, seemed to agree with Carville. As Harrison said of Carville, “there’s some truth to what he says,” and then he added:
Ultimately, working people just want somebody, and their leaders, to speak plain English, to speak to them in the way that they operate, in the space that they operate in.
We might recall that Harrison was the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate seat in South Carolina last year, in which he challenged Sen. Lindsey Graham—and that in September 2020, he was running dead even with Graham. But then Graham started running TV spots lambasting Harrison and Democrats for wanting to defund the police. Graham’s spots did the job. In November, Harrison lost by 10 points, despite spending $130 million, vastly more than Graham.

Summing up the election afterward, Harrison’s former boss and longtime mentor, Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-SC), recalled, “Jaime Harrison started to plateau when ‘Defund the Police’ showed up with a caption on TV right across his head.”

In the South Carolina results—Harrison outspending Graham, thanks to abundant out-of-state donations, but still losing badly—we can see the lesson for the Democrats that Carville was pointing to: Woke is wealthy, but woke doesn’t work politically.

In fact, Carville is not backing down. On May 1, he appeared on CNN, adding fuel to the fire, incinerating wokeness yet again: “Most of the people that are enthused by this kind of dialogue live in Boston or Manhattan or Washington, but we’re going to carry D.C. and New York and Massachusetts. We’re not going to win an election in a faculty lounge.”

Obviously, Carville is trying to help his party, and yet at the same time, Republicans might take note of his words and compare them to the words–and deeds–of Democratic officeholders. After all, there are plenty of Democratic incumbents–not just in the Northeast–who have embraced some or all of the woke worldview.

For instance, in 2019, Joaquin Castro of Texas, running for the Democratic presidential nomination, declared that trans women need access to reproductive health, including abortion. Yes, that’s nuts, and yet now, thanks to Carville, we can imagine a future GOP TV ad against Castro, who will soon enough be running for something else: “It’s not just Republicans who think Castro is out of touch, it’s fellow Democrat James Carville.”


Part 1 of 2
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment
Part 2 of 2

The Democrats’ Dilemma
If wokeness was just a matter of words, it’s possible that Democrats could change those words; after all, when the word “liberal” became a negative, they simply took up a new phrase, “progressive,” and carried right along.

And yet unfortunately for Democrats, wokeness is more than just wordplay; it’s also policy. That is, the same faculty lounges and well-off zip codes that give rise to avant-garde lectures also give rise to radical policies.

To illustrate, we might consider some of the favorite phrases of Democrats these days: “structural racism,” “Black Lives Matter,” “mass incarceration,” “transgender,” “trans women are women,” “trans men are men,” “reproductive rights”—and yes, in certain noisy circles, “defund the police.”

We can quickly see that each of these phrases has a policy program attached to it. And most often, those policies come straight from some faculty lounge or some other equally left-wing lair. And to be even more blunt about it, these words, and policies, come straight from the brain of the Democratic Party; and deeply held beliefs, of course, are hard to change.

For years now, political scientist Zach Goldberg has tracked the ideology of elite, opinion-leading Democrats, most of them White. As he detailed in 2019, many White Democrats are are now far to the left of Blacks or Hispanics:
Over the past decade, the baseline attitudes expressed by white liberals on racial and social justice questions have become radically more liberal. In one especially telling example of the broader trend, white liberals recently became the only demographic group in America to display a pro-outgroup bias—meaning that among all the different groups surveyed white liberals were the only one that expressed a preference for other racial and ethnic communities above their own.
Yes, you read that right: According to Goldberg’s data, White leftists and their “pro-outgroup bias” are, literally, self-loathing. And we can readily see how that sort of mental malformation would make for unpopular politics. Continuing, Goldberg added:
As woke ideology has accelerated, a growing faction of white liberals have pulled away from the average opinions held by the rest of the coalition of Democratic voters—including minority groups in the party.
The revolution in moral sentiment among this one segment of American voters has led to a cascade of consequences ranging from changes in the norms and attitudes expressed in media and popular culture, to the adoption of new political rhetoric and electoral strategies of the Democratic Party.
Indeed, there has been a “cascade of consequences” for Democrats, as their disappointments in Congressional elections last year—including Harrison’s—demonstrate.

In fact, Joe Biden was elected to the White House in 2020 precisely because he was not woke; he was different, or at least he said he was. And yet now that he’s in the Oval Office, the wokesters seem to be winning most of the internal policy debates—and that’s exactly what Carville was warning about.

Okay, so now the question: How does all this wokery play in Peoria? That is, how are woken policies received in the Heartland?

And as it happens, we can answer that question with geographic precision, since just on April 30, the Member of Congress who represents Peoria, IL, Cheri Bustos, a moderate (relative term) Democrat, announced her retirement.

Bustos was once a rising star in the Democratic Party, admired for being able to win in a mostly red district, and yet after she suffered a painful collision with the wokesters, she was marginalized—and now, she’s soon to be an ex-lawmaker.

The Democrats Are the Party of the Two “One Percents”
As Carville said, the country increasingly views the Democrats as the “urban, coastal, arrogant party.”

The coasts, of course, are where the money is, including New York City, Silicon Valley, and Powertown, Washington, D.C. And politically, these places are where Democrats predominate.

Thus we see that there’s been a political inversion from the old stereotype of the Republican Party as the party of the rich: Today, Democrats are the plutocrats.

This inversion trend has been evident for some time; after all, it was back in 2000 that Democratic presidential nominee Al Gore couldn’t carry Tennessee, which was technically his home state. (These days, Gore, freed from any need to pretend, makes his home in California.)

Yet the decisive hinge came in 2016, with the candidacy of Donald Trump. Although wealthy himself, Trump could make a simple calculation: There are a lot more non-rich people than rich people, so why not side with the non-rich?
Of course, Trump being Trump, he went further than that: His message included a serrated edge of anger and resentment at the coastal elites—and folks in Ohio and Oklahoma loved him for it.

As a shrewd observer here at Breitbart News wrote that year, “Trump’s genius, of course, has been in stigmatizing the fatcats, turning them into millstones around the necks of his rivals.” Indeed, that article recalled that through most of U.S. history, majorities of voters have been hostile to the rich.

In the old days, that class hostility had benefited populist Democrats; in these new days, that class hostility is helping populist Republicans, who have been repositioning themselves as the home for workers, soldiers, first responders, and homemakers.

So, that 2016 article continued, it was now Trump and Trump Republicans who were attacking the privileges of the rich, in the populist style of our seventh president, Andrew Jackson, a man so popular that his name became a movement: Jacksonianism:
The very emergence of the phrase “donor class” in recent years has been devastating to the interests of the elite. That is, once the big political givers are labeled as the “donor class,” they are nailed—the Jacksonians know who to hate.
To be sure, the populist turn of the Republican Party is far from complete, although the exit of libertarian House Speaker Paul Ryan in 2018 serves as a major milestone in the remaking of the GOP.

In fact, over the last few years, a new Republican economic agenda has taken hold. It’s not only disdainful of corporations that play along with “cancel culture,” but it’s also, in fact, increasingly hostile to basic corporate goals.

For instance, two GOP officials elected in the Trump era are taking some distinctly anti-corporate stands; Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), elected in 2018, wants to hit Big Tech with antitrust action, while Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-TN), advocates regulating Silicon Valley companies as “common carriers.”

Yet the Republicans’ populist assault on entrenched power is more than just economic: It’s also cultural.

In that interview, Carville touched on this Democratic vulnerability when he ripped the ideology emanating from “fancy colleges.” As we all know, Democrats represent more than just Big Money. They also represent Big Culture, and as such, they must answer for its excesses.

Big Culture is larger than just the Main Stream Media, big as that is; Big Culture is also Hollywood, book publishing, and the newest recruit to wokeness, pro sports.
By this reckoning, if Big Money is an elitist One Percent, then Big Culture is a second elitist One Percent. Yes, the Democrats and the left control both.

Without a doubt, that’s a lot of power, both financial and cultural.

However, as Carville suggests, such power might not be enough. After all, Big Money and Big Culture—those two One Percents—don’t represent a lot of people, also known as voters.

In addition, the two One Percents bring with them baggage, even backlash; as Carville says, they are “arrogant” and self-consciously “too cool for school.”
Regular people don’t like being talked down to, let alone being outright insulted.

Moreover, these elite One Percents have certain blind spots, opening up plenty of political opportunity for alert populist Republicans.

One of these blindspots is crime and disorder. As we have seen over the last year, the woke attitude toward crime is that it’s not a problem—unless, of course, the police can be accused of a crime, in which case, it’s a big honking deal.
And that takes us to a second blind spot, whih is woken hostility to law enforcement, embodied in the phrase “defund the police.” These days, many election-minded Democrat cringe at “defund,” and yet Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan tweeted it, again, on April 12, and she’s still in good standing with her party. (In that same tweet, Tlaib also called for an end to incarceration, leaving one to wonder, yet again, about her sanity.)

In fact, it’s hard to think of an institution that’s been hit harder by the two One Percents than the police. And yet lookee here, as caught by Breitbart News: a new NBC News poll finds that 58 percent of Americans approve of the police. Okay, that’s not the highest number ever, and yet it’s a full eight points higher than the percentage of Americans who approve of Joe Biden.

Those percentages suggest that in a head-to-head, Biden vs. the Blue, the cops would win. Obviously, such an exact match-up can’t happen, and yet for the sake of his party, that’s a popularity contest that Carville desperately wishes to avoid.

The Republican Anti-Woke Opportunity
So what should Republicans do? The answer seems obvious enough: If they sense Democratic weakness on wokeness, they should keep pressing their anti-woke advantage. And that means standing against crime, standing with the police, and standing up new laws as needed.

For instance, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has been working hard to make the Sunshine State an Antifa-free zone. To that end, he prodded the Tallahassee legislature to enact a new and comprehensive anti-riot statute. DeSantis’ bill had teeth, and so, of course, the woke One Percents opposed it fiercely. And yet DeSantis played his cards well, framing the issue as a choice between wokesters plus rioters, on the one hand, and law and order, on the other.

De Santis won that fight, of course, and on April 19 he signed into law the bluntly titled “Anti-Riot Bill.” Florida is now a safer place.

So that’s the formula for Republicans to follow: If the Democrats are now wielding the power of Big Money and Big Culture, then the GOP should play jujitsu. That is, the right should use the left’s arrogant strength against itself.

To do this, Republicans must rally the non-woken, of all colors, into an avowedly anti-woke coalition. Individually, regular folks have almost no power, and yet solidaristically, they have enormous power, as DeSantis just proved.

In response, of course, woke types will say that Republicans are playing the race card. But that’s nonsensical because nobody but a crazy likes disorder.

Instead, Republicans are playing a class card on behalf of the rainbow of people who uphold the homey virtues of family, tradition, and normalcy. That’s a good platform to attract normal people of all colors, and they are the majority.

Wokeism is well-funded and trendy. But the woke One Percents are nowhere near a majority—and Carville knows it.

So Republicans should build an anti-woke majority coalition—and that’s Carville’s nightmare.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

REVEALED: The Chinese Communist Party’s Media Outlets Are Promoting The ‘Abolish Policing’ Campaign.
Chinese Communist Party-run media outlets are making the case to “abolish policing” in the United States, capitalizing on the far-left’s new and radical, Marxist talking points.

The American left has been all-too-willing, like during the Cold War, to promote the goals of a foreign and hostile power. This time, it’s the Chinese Communist Party.

The April 30th op-ed – “Police violence won’t end until we commit to public safety” – also relies on a popular left-wing argument for ditching the institution: the practice developed from slave patrols and is, therefore, inherently racist.

“Not until policing is seen for what it is, a tool to maintain an unequal social order and not an institution sworn and committed to public safety, can we begin to get solutions that move us in the direction of justice,” the op-ed in China Global Television Network (CGTN) posits.

Penned by Ray Baker, an Adjunct Professor at Towson University, the piece conflates police officers to slave patrols, both of which “fulfilled dual capitalist aims.” Baker continues, infusing the “slave patrol” narrative with a Marxist focus on “worker solidarity”:

It’s important to remember the origins of modern United States policing. Many American observers make the connection between police and slave patrols. What’s sometimes missing in this observation is the function of slave patrol as a labor and social hierarchy question. Those who claimed humans as property were incentivized to ensure those humans would not flee. This created a job for overseeing and policing enslaved workers. Who better to fill that job than white workers who couldn’t sell their labor for fair wages because enslaved labor depressed wages. This creates a labor force of workers whose job it is to ensure enslaved workers produce at unprecedented levels and never take flight. Perfect for oligarchs committed to fracturing any potential of worker solidarity.

“To demand accountability and justice from policing would be to abolish policing as we know it,” the CTGN article ultimately concludes.

Another example of the Chinese Communist Party’s attempts to inflame racial tensions in the U.S., the piece cautions that “the lesson to white Americans must be that your whiteness will not save you” before detailing society’s “pervasive anti-Blackness”:

Black Americans being disproportionately the victims of police violence is reflective of the continued belief that Black Americans are others, behaving outside the norm of the social order. This pervasive anti-Blackness in law enforcement is sustained regardless of the race or ethnicity of the officers. This is because officers of all ethnic, gender and religious backgrounds are dedicated to maintaining social order. The violence against Black Americans that comes from maintaining social order is par for the course.

Anti-Western influence operations are on the rise, from China
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

"Content Modification" - Facebook's New Campaign Should Have Free Speech Advocates Freaking Out

TUESDAY, MAY 04, 2021 - 12:55 PM
Authored by Jonathan Turley,

In 1964, Stanley Kubrick released a dark comedy classic titled “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.” The title captured the absurdity of getting people to embrace the concept of weapons of mass destruction. The movie came to mind recently with the public campaign of Facebook calling for people to change her attitudes about the Internet and rethink issues like “content modification” – the new Orwellian term for censorship.



The commercials show people like “Joshan” who says that he was born in 1996 and grew up with the internet.” Joshan mocks how much computers have changed and then asks why our regulations on privacy and censorship cannot evolve as much as our technology. The ads are clearly directed at younger users who may be more willing to accept censorship than their parents who hopelessly cling to old-fashioned notions of free speech. Facebook knows that it cannot exercise more control over content unless it can get people to stop worrying and love the censor.

There was a time when this would have been viewed as chilling: a corporate giant running commercials to get people to support new regulations impacting basic values like free speech and privacy. After all, Joshan shows of his first computer was a “giant behemoth of a machine” but that was before he understood “the blending of the real world and the internet world.”

The Facebook campaign is chilling in its reference to “privacy” and “content modification” given the current controversies surrounding Big Tech. On one level, the commercial simply calls for rethinking regulatory controls after 25 years. However, the source of the campaign is a company which has been widely accused of rolling back on core values like free speech. Big Tech corporations are exercising increasing levels of control over what people write or read on the Internet. While these companies enjoy immunity from many lawsuits based on the notion of being neutral communication platforms (akin to telephone companies), they now censor ideas deemed misleading or dangerous on subjects ranging from climate denial to transgender criticism to election fraud.

Moreover, Facebook knows that there is ample support for increasing censorship and speech regulation in Congress and around the world. Free speech is under attack and losing ground — and Facebook knows it.

The rise of the corporate censor has challenged long-standing assumptions of the free speech community. Our Constitution and much of free speech writings are focused on the classic model of government censorship and state media.

What we have seen in the last few years is that corporations have far greater ability to curtail speech and that you can have a type of state media without the state.

Free speech advocates are not the only ones to notice. Authoritarian figures have recognized these companies as competitors. Recently Russian President Vladimir Putin denounced Big Tech as a threat to “Democratic institutions” – a farcical objection from one of the world’s most blood-soaked, anti-democratic figures.

Other leaders have simply sought an alliance with the companies for mutually beneficial censorship. Countries like India appear to have out-sourced censorship duties to Big Tech. Twitter admitted recently that it is actively working with the Indian government to censor criticism of its handling of the pandemic. There are widespread reports that the Indian government has misrepresented the number of deaths and the true rate of cases could be as much as 30 times higher than reported. Thousands are dying each day due to a shortage of beds, oxygen, and other essentials. Twitter is saying that it had the power to “withhold access to the content in India only” if the company determined the content to be “illegal in a particular jurisdiction.” Thus, criticism of the government in this context is illegal so Twitter has agreed to become an arm of the government in censoring information.

Sikh groups last year objected that Facebook censored Sikh posts during #SikhGenocide remembrance movements. They also objected to such censorship by Instagram and Twitter, was centered on stifling anything linked to the Khalistan and likely was done at the behest of the Indian state.

These corporations are now offering politicians what they have long desired in controlling speech and curtailing criticism. Leaders in this country have encouraged the same mutually beneficial alliance. Politicians know that the First Amendment only deals with government censorship, but who needs “Big Brother” when a slew of “Little Brothers” can do the work more efficiently and comprehensively.

When Twitter’s CEO Jack Dorsey came before the Senate to apologize for blocking the Hunter Biden story before the election, he was met by demands from Democratic leaders for more censorship. Senator Chris Coons (D., Md.) pressed Dorsey to expand the categories of censored material to prevent people from sharing any views that he considers “climate denialism.” Likewise, Senator Richard Blumenthal (D., Conn.) chastised the companies for shying away from censorship and told them that he was “concerned that both of your companies are, in fact, backsliding or retrenching, that you are failing to take action against dangerous disinformation.” Accordingly, he demanded that they “commit to the same kind of robust content modification playbook in this coming election.”

That brings us back to Facebook’s glitzy media campaign. Polls show that younger Americans are more open to censorship after years of speech regulation in their high schools and colleges. They have grown up with media figures like CNN’s host Brian Stelter calling censorship simply a “harm reduction model.”

They have read writers and editors embracing book banning and blacklisting. They have been conditioned to fear unrestrained free speech. making them natural allies in “evolving” with Big Tech companies.

What is fascinating about Joshan and his equally eager colleagues Chava and Adam is that they tie changes in technology to possible changes in core principles like reconsidering “content modification.” They were all born in 1996 — the sweet spot for censors between the Millennials and Generation Z members. Those generations, and particularly Gen Z, are the most likely to come stop fearing the censor and love “content modification.” Joshan and his technologically woke friends simply want us (and regulations) to “change” with our computers. After all, it may not be our content that needs to be “modified” but ourselves in our attitudes and assumptions. Just do not be surprised if that upgrade to You 2.0 requires the removal of the free speech bug that is inhibiting your “blending of the real world and the internet world.”
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

The Democratic Party’s Stasi
The Biden Justice Department is “the shield and the sword”—the motto of East Germany’s Stasi—for the Democratic Party, protecting its own corrupt ranks while terrorizing any and all detractors.

By Julie Kelly
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May 3, 2021

While reading emails in his bedroom last Wednesday morning, Paul Hueper heard a loud commotion inside his house. Still clad in pajamas, the Alaska business owner ran to his dining room to see what was happening.

Hueper found himself face-to-face with several armed FBI agents, guns drawn, barking orders to him and his wife, Marilyn. The agents had kicked down the front door of their home in Homer, Alaska where they also operate a day spa and inn.

The pair were quickly handcuffed along with a few houseguests, including a teenager. Paul and Marilyn, who had attended Donald Trump’s speech in Washington, D.C. on January 6 and then walked to the Capitol, were interrogated for at least three hours by federal investigators.

“They said they had a search warrant but didn’t present it to us . . . they said it had something to do with the January 6 riot . . . as they called it,” Hueper told a local radio station after the April 28 raid. “They put us in different rooms to make sure we were telling the same story. They treated us like criminals.”

Marilyn was told she was a suspect in the case of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s “stolen” laptop; a few hours into the inquisition, an agent finally showed Marilyn a photo of someone inside the Capitol on January 6 who looked like her. She told agents it wasn’t her and insisted the image had been photoshopped.

The whole incident was somewhat amusing to the Huepers. “We laughed a lot of the time because it was so ridiculous,” Marilyn said. “I could hear Paul laughing in the other room.”

But it was far from a laughing matter. One investigator warned Marilyn that if she didn’t give the answers they were looking for, she could face perjury and obstruction of justice charges. Although it was clear neither Hueper had the “stolen” laptop or were inside the building on January 6, the FBI ransacked their home then confiscated computers and cell phones. (The FBI also took the Huepers’ copy of the Declaration of Independence; considering one judge recently cited a January 6 defendant’s text about the “spirit of 1776” as evidence of wrongdoing, perhaps the government will present the founding document in court to show the Huepers are a danger to society.)

Paul Hueper, without an attorney present, allowed agents to retrieve photos from his cell phone. (Please do not try this at home, folks.) “I’ve got nothing to hide,” he said.

Unfortunately for the Huepers, the presumption of innocence, due process, and equal treatment under the law do not apply to Americans on the political Right, particularly supporters of Donald Trump. The story was described as a case of mistaken identity—but the FBI knew exactly what it was doing.

There was no mistake.

It’s very likely investigators are scouring the Huepers’ devices for proof they trespassed near the Capitol—several protesters who never entered the building nonetheless face charges for remaining in a restricted area outside the building—and prosecutors are working up similar charges to file against the Huepers in addition to the feds’ favorite “obstruction of an official proceeding” charge, a felony punishable by up to 20 years in prison.

And since the Huepers spoke publicly about what happened to them, retribution by the government is undoubtedly imminent.

Joe Biden’s Justice Department now operates as the unapologetic enforcer of the Democratic Party’s will, a modern-day Stasi unleashing a campaign of terror against the ruling party’s perceived enemies. Americans who dare to deny the legitimacy of the U.S. president—an activity considered political haute couture from 2016 until 2021—aren’t just dismissed as misguided conspiracy theorists but rounded up across the country to face criminal trials conducted not by a jury of their peers but by Democratic Party-ruled tribunals located in Washington, D.C..

It only took the U.S. Justice Department four short years between ambushing a top Trump national security advisor in the White House to ambushing small-town Alaska spa owners and Iraq War veterans inside their own homes. At least way back in 2017, Democratic Party henchmen disguised as federal prosecutors tried to conceal the targeting of a decorated Army lieutenant general who was on Barack Obama’s hit list.

Now, Biden’s Justice Department flaunts its plans in a public display of “shock and awe” as one top prosecutor boasted, empowered no less—and once again—by the craven political leadership of the Republican Party.

In a near-unanimous vote on April 20, the U.S. Senate confirmed Lisa Monaco as Biden’s deputy attorney general. (Only two Republicans, Senators Ted Cruz and Rand Paul, voted no.) The golden stamp of approval was a green light for Monaco—an Obama confidante, key Russian collusion hoax perpetrator, and former chief of staff to ex-FBI Director Robert Mueller—to accelerate the agency’s manhunt for Trump allies, both the powerful and the unknown.

Monaco reportedly authorized the search of Rudy Giuliani’s home. (The raids against the Huepers and Giuliani occurred on the same day last week.) The Justice Department previously refused to execute such an unprecedented warrant against one of the president’s closest advisors and lead impeachment attorney. After Merrick Garland was installed as attorney general, thanks to the help of 20 Republican senators and despite public promises he would run a politically neutral Justice Department, Garland lifted the official objection.

Garland and Monaco, with full cooperation by FBI Director Christopher Wray, a man Trump should have fired several times over, have pledged to make the investigation into January 6 the department’s top priority. Roughly 400 people have been arrested so far; dozens have been transported to a Washington, D.C. jail and languish in solitary confinement without being convicted of a single crime. Trials are repeatedly delayed as prosecutors and judges conceal evidence from defense lawyers.

Biden’s Justice Department promises to arrest at least 100 more Americans before the “shock and awe” phase of the campaign is done.

The FBI’s Twitter account frequently posts photos of its “most wanted” list. It is not full of serial murderers or child pornographers or suspected international terrorists, but average Americans who traveled to the nation’s capital on January 6 to support their president. Last Friday, the world’s most powerful law enforcement agency posted a photo of a woman clad in Trump gear committing no obvious crime and asked people to help identify her. (The tweet went viral and was justifiably ratioed into hell.) She looked about as menacing as the typical suburban Target shopper.

But the message was clear: if you were in or near the Capitol on January 6—even if you did not break the law—the FBI can and will ruin you in a single tweet.

With zero pushback from Republican leaders, Biden’s Justice Department continues to build its arsenal against the Right. The FBI is looking for new ways to circumvent laws prohibiting the agency from directly spying on American citizens. (Biden’s top intelligence chiefs already have violated their statutory boundaries but perhaps the White House wants to make the crusade look more official lest it agitate long-dormant civil libertarians or, God forbid, any lawmakers.)

The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security are planning to collaborate with private providers to surveil so-called “domestic violent extremists,” code for Trump supporters. “By partnering with research firms who have more visibility in this space, the DHS could produce information that would likely be beneficial to both it and the FBI, which can’t monitor U.S. citizens in this way without first getting a warrant or having the pretext of an ongoing investigation,” CNN reported on Monday. “The CIA and [National Security Agency] are also limited on collecting intelligence domestically. The [DHS] is coordinating with the National Security Council and FBI as part of the effort.”

Meanwhile, Hunter Biden’s criminality is rewarded with book deals and university speaking gigs; Antifa rioters in Portland are let off the hook and violent demonstrators who ransacked Washington, D.C. during Trump’s 2017 inauguration are getting hefty cash settlements and clean records.

The Biden Justice Department is “the shield and the sword”—the motto of East Germany’s Stasi—for the Democratic Party, protecting its own corrupt ranks while terrorizing any and all detractors. Unfortunately, there are no liberators in sight.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Local Nullification: A Way To Fight Both State And Federal Despots

by CD Media StaffApril 30, 202112877
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Reprinted with permission Mises Institute
By James Ketler

Throughout American history, decentralists have championed “states’ rights” as the winning strategy for freedom, but what if that’s not enough? After all, states, in many cases, have themselves become instruments of grave tyranny. What are citizens to do when their own state governments impose onerous restrictions, regulations, and mandates upon them? In recent years, the answer has become clear: local governments can interpose themselves between the citizens and the state government by refusing to uphold unjust laws. Just as states can nullify federal laws, localities can nullify state laws. This offers a way for even very small pockets of the population to defend their natural rights when they’ve been imperiled—a valuable strategy for the modern age.

Local Governments Can Resist State Tyranny

Traditionally, the theory of nullification has only been applied to the relationship between the states and the federal government. In “Federalist No. 46,” James Madison pointed out that states’ “refusal to co-operate with the officers of the Union … would present obstructions which the federal government would hardly be willing to encounter.” If a state used this strategy to nullify a law, the federal government would be left with no recourse, since it cannot seize control of states’ resources or coerce them into enforcing federal laws.

This principle—dubbed the “anti-commandeering doctrine”—has been repeatedly affirmed by the Supreme Court. Instead of relying on state authorities, the federal government, in such a case, would have to use its own resources to enforce the law in that state, which—due to budgets and limited manpower—is a costly and rather unlikely enterprise. That’s given this strategy a successful record over the course of the American republic, originally being used to resist the Fugitive Slave Act and federal immigration and drug laws in modern times.

But how can local governments nullify state laws? The story here is a bit different. Because different states have developed under different historical circumstances, there is no single rule governing the state-local relationship. Some states are “Dillon’s rule” jurisdictions, which means that they regard local governments as mere administrative subdivisions of the state that only have power insofar as the state delegates it to them. Other states are “home rule” jurisdictions, which recognize at least some degree of self-government as a fundamental right of localities. Some states are a hybrid between the two, using Dillon’s rule for some local polities and extending home rule to others. In any case, all the intricacies of the state-local relationship are spelled out either in state law or in the state constitution.

At first glance, then, this appears to mean that the state holds absolute supremacy over localities. After all, it’s the state government that gets to define the relationship it has with localities, and even the local autonomy granted in home rule jurisdictions exists only at the mercy of the state. “From a legal standpoint, no anti-commandeering doctrine exists for cities or counties,” the Tenth Amendment Center’s Mike Maharrey has lamentingly declared. For proponents of political decentralization, this realization is disheartening. It leads to the conclusion that state authorities could, at any time, dissolve the structure of the local government and turn all local officials into agents loyal to state authorities. Maharrey continued, “From a strategic standpoint, activists should be wary of trying to employ a strategy created for states to use against the feds as a tool for local governments to take on a state.” Many have thus written off local nullification as an impracticable pipe dream, even folks who would love to see the strategy succeed.

Luckily, that isn’t the whole story. In his criticism of local nullification, Maharrey may be thinking too much about the theoretical legal structure of the state-local relationship and less about how that relationship actually functions in practice. As a report from the National League of Cities points out,
It is often—too often—said that cities and counties are creatures of state law, even in states with the strongest existing versions of constitutional home rule. That proposition is technically true, but state governments are also creatures of state law and the truism does not reveal anything definitive about how any given state allocates formal legal authority between the state and the local level. That is a question that state, and federal, constitutional law leaves entirely to the people of each state to determine.
Through the ballot box, it’s ultimately the people of each state who exercise control over the sort of laws that are passed and who must assent to any changes to the state constitution (in every state besides Delaware). If the structure of local government is spelled out in a state’s constitution, the voters would have to ratify any would-be changes to that structure via a statewide plebiscite. If the structure of local government is prescribed in statutory law, the state legislature would have the power to alter it by itself, but only technically. Of course, ever hungry for better poll numbers, state senators and congressmen would be unwilling to alter the structure of local government if doing so violated the wishes of their constituents and invoked their fury.

In fact, only one state—tiny Connecticut—has ever managed to abolish its counties, and that’s only because public opinion there came to view them as unnecessary. The legislatures of any medium- or large-sized state would surely never be able to get away with any such change to the local structure. It’s not, then, that it’s not a legal possibility for states to commandeer local resources; rather it’s just that, as a political reality, they’re not able to.

If state governments can’t interfere in local affairs, then, that means that they have little recourse against local nullification. Local sheriffs, who are almost always elected (rather than appointed) to their positions, are well suited to lead these efforts, as they’re beholden only to their voters and not to any state or local board. Sheriffs can simply refuse to enforce laws that, in their view, violate the principles of justice and the Constitution, and can direct their deputies to do the same. The sheriff’s office is under no obligation to back unjust measures with its own local resources and so can openly refuse to do so. To defenders of liberty, this strategy is quite promising.

“However,” one might counter, “couldn’t the state government sue for the removal of a recalcitrant sheriff on the ground that he failed to perform his duty?” Well, they could certainly try, and it’s true that sheriffs can be removed through the courts; however, law enforcement is afforded a great deal of discretionary wiggle room in their jobs, and—probably for this reason—no suit has been brought against a nullifying sheriff to date. In practice, state officials have really had hardly any recourse at all against these sheriffs. As a practical strategy, local nullification has been shown time and time again to be rather rock solid. Not only has it served counties very well in the past few years, but the idea behind it actually stretches back to before the Civil War.

The Role of Local Nullification Today
The idea of local nullification was first explicitly propounded by Senator Stephen A. Douglas in 1858 during a debate against his senatorial election rival Abraham Lincoln in Freeport, Illinois. In what became known as the Freeport Doctrine, Douglas proposed that towns and counties in US territories could decide for themselves whether to be “slave” or “free.” That decision did not have to be made by any higher level of government—localities could do it themselves.

Despite the Supreme Court’s then recent Dred Scott decision, local governments would not be bound to protect planters’ slave “property.” “Slavery,” Douglas told Lincoln, “cannot exist a day or an hour anywhere, unless it is supported by local police regulations.” Without a higher authority capable of commandeering local resources, slavery could be de facto abolished even if it remained officially legal.

Though there are a few key differences between Douglas’s Freeport Doctrine and the local nullification efforts of today, the gist has always been the same:
following the will of local voters, law enforcement officials can and should refuse to enforce laws considered to be unjust or unconstitutional. This idea is far from new and can be adapted for use in various times and places. The late, great Murray Rothbard, who identified the creeping of tyranny at every level of government, was enamored of Douglas’s “quiet, local nullification.” He considered it the “one course left to the lovers of freedom” in the antebellum US—practical, simple, and nonburdensome. Perhaps today, more than 160 years later, the principles articulated in Freeport still offer a path forward for those “lovers of freedom.”

Already, there is the Constitutionalist Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA), whose four hundred–plus members refuse to enforce, among other things, covid mandates and state gun control measures. The founder of the CSPOA, former sheriff of Graham County, Arizona, Richard Mack, considers local sheriffs one of the final lines of defense against government tyranny. “[W]hen you have no place else to go, when all the courts are against you, all the legislators are against you, where else do you go?” he asked a Washington Post interviewer. “I believe,” he continued, “to the local county sheriff … and if that means standing against the federal government, then so damn be it.”

Mack’s group of local nullifiers made national headlines this past year, after vowing not to enforce mask mandates and lockdown orders in their counties, citing that those policies are oppressive and unconstitutional. Due to the nature of their offices, they thankfully haven’t faced any serious repercussions. Their most heated critics could only throw a few roadblocks in their way, none of which made much difference to their efforts.

Sheriff Adam Fortney of Snohomish County, Washington, faced two recall petitions after refusing to enforce Governor Jay Inslee’s lockdown order last April. But those petitions came from busybody voters in his county—not state authorities—and they both failed anyway. In December, Los Angeles County sheriff Alex Villanueva announced his deputies would take a lax attitude toward the new stay-at-home order Governor Gavin Newsom had imposed on counties in Southern California. In response, the furious Newsom threatened to suspend the county (and any others who considered following its lead) from receiving covid relief funds—all carrot, no stick. Outside of that, the state government was without any options. Many more sheriffs across the country did exactly what Fortney and Villanueva did, successfully shielding local citizens from oppressive state orders.

The same has been done to resist state gun control measures. In 2018, Governor Inslee signed into law a set of new firearm regulations which made background checks more stringent and raised the minimum age for purchasing semiautomatic rifles. Though Washington is a decidedly blue state, about a dozen sheriffs in rural counties took action to resist the new measures in part or in full. Inslee, again, couldn’t compel those sheriffs’ compliance. The most he could do was instruct the state patrol to enforce the new restrictions in those counties themselves (but without the support of local departments, this is both difficult and costly). The resources of Washington’s local counties simply couldn’t be commandeered—nor could they in Nevada or New Mexico, where similar resistance efforts took place around the same time. Nullification won the day.

Conclusion
Local nullification offers a practical guide to resisting tyranny in a way that reflects the real wishes of local community members against the ivory-tower mentality of their government “representatives.” The state must be fought tooth and nail, and—as the most heinous and expropriative criminal of all—it makes sense for sheriffs to have a role in this fight. Civil disobedience is all well and good, but it can often be too time consuming or injurious to those taking part in it, which limits its strategic worth. But sheriffs—who have tangible power and a fair amount of autonomy—can just ignore the laws that warrant disobedience and thus vitalize the efforts of the state’s enemies.

Short of outright revolution, such local nullification may be the last true refuge for liberty. For now, change at the state and federal levels may be a lost cause, but working bit by bit and county by county, the forces of freedom still have a fighting chance.
 
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marsh

On TB every waking moment

OPINION POSTED ON MAY 3, 2021 BY STEVEN HAYWARD

IS WOKERY STARTING TO WANE?
More and more the woke pandemic afflicting our elites and causing them to mask their racism is reminding me of forced busing back in the late 1960s and early 1970s—a project to which liberals (and compliant federal judges) were fiercely dedicated (even as rich liberals sent their own kids to private schools), and which was hugely unpopular.

Then, as now, many Republicans spoke in subdued tones about their opposition to busing for fear of being called “racist,” and the most vocal and direct critics of busing were Democrats like Washington Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson. That kind of Democrat is long gone, of course, though you hear faint echoes from time to time, such as James Carville’s recent comments reported here that “wokeness is a problem, and everybody knows it.”

As long as federal judges were imposing forced busing by judicial fiat, it was largely immune from the ballot box. But local school board elections often turned on opposition to busing, and it was not unusual in the early 1970s for there to be slates of anti-busing school board candidates who would sweep out compliant liberal school boards in landslides, often in Democrat-friendly jurisdictions. It was from these efforts that alternatives such a magnet schools, and later charter schools, were born, as an alternative to busing. Eventually the federal judiciary relented on forced busing, but not until after the damage to the Democratic Party had been done, from this and related issues such as rising crime and urban unrest. (Hmmm, that sounds oddly familiar now too.)

Hence it is interesting to see the results of elections for school board and local government in Southlake, Texas, a Dallas suburb, over the weekend. NBC News reports it this way:
SOUTHLAKE, Texas — Nine months after officials in the affluent Carroll Independent School District introduced a proposal to combat racial and cultural intolerance in schools, voters delivered a resounding victory Saturday to a slate of school board and City Council candidates who opposed the plan.
In an unusually bitter campaign that echoed a growing national divide over how to address issues of race, gender and sexuality in schools, candidates in the city of Southlake were split between two camps: those who supported new diversity and inclusion training requirements for Carroll students and teachers and those backed by a political action committee that was formed last year to defeat the plan.
The result wasn’t even close: the anti-woke candidates beat the incumbent school board members by a 70-30 margin on heavier than normal turnout. That used to be called a landslide:
Candidates backed by the conservative Southlake Families PAC, which has raised more than $200,000 since last summer, won every race by about 70 percent to 30 percent, including those for two school board positions, two City Council seats and mayor. More than 9,000 voters cast ballots, three times as many as in similar contests in the past.
Here’s how NBC News tweeted the story, with suitable corrections:
NBC-Tweet-corrected.png

Chaser: Voters in Austin, Texas, voted to repeal the permissive city ordinance allowing “urban camping,” i.e., runaway homelessness. The vote was not close: 58 to 42 percent. More here.

I expect a lot more of this over the next two election cycles—if conservatives and Republican candidates don’t flinch from from direct confrontation.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Reclaiming American higher education: Idaho is cutting off social justice universities

ANNA K. MILLER - GUEST COLUMNMAY 4, 2021

celebrate-win-woo-victory-cheer.mangostock.shutterstock-370x242.jpg

OPINION: Starving universities of public money is the only way to rein in a social justice university and force activists to find careers outside of higher education

This session conservatives in the Idaho legislature sent a clear message: No public funds will be used for state sanctioned racism and sexism in institutions of higher education.

Today, American higher education faces an acute crisis. Universities have abandoned the unique mission of unfettered dedication to the pursuit of truth and replaced it with social justice.

The radical, illiberal, anti-American ideology of social justice combines a toxic brew of intersectionality, critical race theory, neo-Marxism and pseudo-science.
Many Americans are justly becoming concerned about this problem. We at the Idaho Freedom Foundation and the Claremont Institute’s Center for the American Way of Life are doing something about it.

Idaho’s legislators were awakened to the demise of higher education by two reports, co-authored by Dr. Scott Yenor of the Claremont Institute and me, on the University of Idaho and Boise State. These reports showed Idaho’s public universities, like virtually all of America’s colleges and universities, have abandoned educational excellence in favor of the social justice agenda.
This indoctrination has been infused into the administration, hiring, curriculum, and residence life on college campuses.

The examples are instructive. Bias incident response teams are present on both UI and BSU campuses. These teams operate as secret police for social justice educators by enforcing the “inclusive” environment that activists want to build. Faculty are required to undergo implicit bias and diversity training to serve on search committees at both universities. Such practices ensure new hires adhere to the prevailing ideological goals of the university. Social justice dogma is built into required general education courses at both universities, too.

In one general education class at BSU a social work professor taught what he called the “solid viewpoint” that “white people should be slaves.” Social justice fanatics at BSU even bullied a small business off campus for supporting the police.

This misuse of public funds for social justice activism is a betrayal of the public’s confidence and deprives students of an education that cultivates their mind by forcing them to adhere to one ideological dogma.

The higher education establishment in Idaho has refused to reverse course from this politically malevolent agenda for years. Armed with evidence and policy solutions in these reports, conservatives in the legislature decided no more public funds would be used to subsidize the political activists hijacking Idaho’s institutions of higher education.

The House of Representatives decisively rejected (13-57) Senate Bill 1179, which would have imposed a minor fiscal reduction on Idaho’s public universities as a consequence for their social justice agenda. In its place the legislature passed a bill cutting an additional $2.5 million from university budgets as a penalty for misusing public funds on social justice activism.

At the same time, a bill banning public universities from compelling students to adopt the divisive tenets of critical race theory and using public money to do so became law.

Opponents of these legislative reforms have cried free speech. But free speech is an illusion without diversity of opinion. The activists controlling universities have no interest in negotiating with concerned citizens who rationally dissent from the social justice orthodoxy.

Administrative bodies, like bias incident response teams, are established at social justice universities to deliberately punish any student or faculty member who dissents. Social justice advocates call names, brand unwanted speech as violence, claim civility is complicity, demand safe spaces, engage in bullying tactics known as cancel culture, and use “inclusion” policies to silence any viewpoints they disagree with.

These tyrannical methods stifle free speech and even free thought on college campuses.

Social justice activists will continue using public funds to silence anyone who gets in the way of their transformative agenda. Starving universities of public money is the only way to reign in a social justice university and force activists to find careers outside of higher education.

The response from Idaho citizens in our efforts to fight against the state sanctioned racism and sexism in public universities has been great. They are hungry for information equipping them to fight against this ideology and are the engine motivating lawmakers to act.

Our vision is to expand this reform state by state until we are covering the entire country.

Conservatives in Idaho’s legislature were right to restrict public subsidization of this pernicious ideology dominating higher education. Social justice activists will have to impose this tyranny elsewhere, it is no longer welcome in Idaho.
Will you invite us to help your state claim victory next?
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

The Left’s Paradigm Shift
Posted by FRED WATSON JR on MAY 4, 2021

The left loves to talk about the path of progress as a never-ceasing arc of history.

There is a linear progression to everything. One is either on the right side of history or an evil obstacle to inevitable progress. This is a hustle as Gaetano Mosca noted that most of the rationale of democracy promoters is tied up in the inevitability of it all. There is always another group for power to fight for as we have seen since the gay victory turned into a trans fight, but is it inevitable?

What we are seeing now in the fight on the left is proof that it is not linear. The left has nearly completed a paradigm shift.

Thomas Kuhn took a wrecking ball to the idea that science is an incremental, linear development and instead is a mass of competing stories where one wins out, explains the world better and causes a paradigm shift. How does his approach fit here? Not as much with the stories as with how the old stories died.

Often, they just died out as practitioners and scientists died out, so no one was left to tell the older explanation. Many time though those who held onto the older story were just uninvited from conferences and not given any voice in journals and publications any longer. One going on in the science world is the asteroid wiping out the dinosaurs theory. It wasn’t the explanation, but then a crater was located. A competing theory involves massive volcanic activity that made Earth less conducive to the dinosaurs. There is a little overlap now, as more scientists see that there might be a way to bridge the two. We will see what happens with more time.

In media and online, we see the fight on the left happening daily. A natural progression for the old left would be single payer or other economic programs to tax the 1% who have reached wealth holdings last seen in the 1920s. That would have been the natural progression from the New Deal to the Great Society to Obamacare to the ’20s. It is not happening, and the rejection of the Bernie ’16 program for woke social policies is.

This is the shift. The story that justifies the current coalition and ruling clique is bioleninism. Bioleninism was always there waiting to be used, but the situation was not right. What happened is the McGovern coalition of ’72 that was destroyed in Nixon’s landslide victory did not have the voting muscle nor the decades of funding and spread to give it critical mass. Foundations like Ford had to build the chairs and faculty posts in colleges. Those colleges had to indoctrinate more students, who washed in like the tide as our economy shifted towards minting mind workers. The body politic needed millions of different special interest groups to cater to, organize with, and fund for later use.

All through the ’80s and ’90s the Democrats needed to re-orient towards a pro-growth and not as left socially platform. The Democrat Leadership Council was started with massive donations from finance and business interests with this exact idea in mind. They sought politicians like Al Gore, Richard Gephardt and President Bill Clinton who could present as heartlanders and push through a safe enough message and pro-growth policies to win. Bill Clinton’s 1992 Sister Souljah moment was the quintessential DLC move. Today, Democrats cannot even push back on BLM without risking ostracism and denunciation.

The Bernie class based analysis crowd is losing, and in fact, have lost already.

Their old story of anti-capitalism or anti-elitism is now found on the right. Want to fight monopolies? Want to fight faceless corporate power? Join the right. The left’s dominant story and narrative is an anti-white race based program. It is the glue that holds it all together. Each hiring of a race focused or ethnonarcissist writer places pushers of this story into positions that matter. Where are the class based left wing writers? They are on substack, tweeting into the void and hoping for grants and money to come their way from somewhere.

This also reveals why cancelling on the left is so useful. As Kuhn wrote of scientists no longer invited to conferences and select councils, cancelling removes class based analysts and writers from positions of power over policy and narrative. They get replaced by adherents to the new woke narrative. The 1% loves this because it divides the low and middle to remove any threats. The other problem is that the same ideological indoctrination on the masses who went through the university system also washed all over the professional managerial class that occupies positions of power that administer the system for the 1%.

There are no brakes on this train, and with each cancelling of a class based lefty and retirement of an old Democrat, the system gets more pure. It gets more totalitarian. It also gets crazier. Now any criticism even from the left on policy is considered a betrayal of woke ideas and cause for removal. The last to get it will be these center-left individuals and class based thinkers who still think they are on the same team as the woke. The shift has occurred. The McGovern coalition is victories on the left. To stop this train would require mass defections from those confused center-left and economically focused groups. Defections of donors and the professional managerial types that staff our bureaucracies need to occur, and they need to occur quickly.

A cultural revolution sponsored by Citigroup, Google and Amazon should clue them in that the arc they assumed would happen has jumped train tracks and is racing down an identity based path to ethnic strife. They’d have to defect for any chance to get on the old track. That may be impossible. Anyone reading this has seen their other tweets and essays. The defectors would have to throw in their lot with people who do not wear masks outdoors.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

INSIDE THE ALL-HANDS MEETING THAT LED TO A THIRD OF BASECAMP EMPLOYEES QUITTING
The company’s senior leadership wanted to quell employees’ concerns, and only made things much, much worse

By Casey Newton@CaseyNewton May 3, 2021, 8:00pm EDT
Illustration by Alex Castro

I.
AtAt 8AM PT on Friday, a bleary-eyed Basecamp CEO Jason Fried gathered his remote workforce together on Zoom to apologize. Four days earlier, he had thrown the company into turmoil by announcing that “societal and political discussions” would no longer be allowed on the company’s internal chat forums. In his blog post, Fried said the decision stemmed from the fact that “today’s social and political waters are especially choppy,” and that internal discussions of those issues was “not healthy” and “hasn’t served us well.” The public reaction had been furious, and Fried said he was sorry for the way the new policies had been rolled out — but not for the policies themselves.

Behind the scenes, Fried had been dealing with an employee reckoning over a long-standing company practice of maintaining a list of “funny” customer names, some of which were of Asian and African origin. The internal discussion over that list had been oriented primarily around making Basecamp feel more inclusive to its employees and customers. But Fried and his co-founder, David Heinemeier Hansson, had been taken aback by an employee post which argued that mocking customer names laid the foundation for racially-motivated violence, and closed the thread. They also disbanded an internal committee of employees who had volunteered to work on issues related to diversity, equity, and inclusion.
“MY HONEST SENSE OF WHY EVERYBODY IS LEAVING BECAUSE THEY’RE TIRED OF JASON AND DAVID’S BEHAVIOR”

On Friday, employees had their chance to address these issues directly with Fried and his co-founder. What followed was a wrenching discussion that left several employees I spoke with in tears. Thirty minutes after the meeting ended, Fried announced that Basecamp’s longtime head of strategy, Ryan Singer, had been suspended and placed under investigation after he questioned the existence of white supremacy at the company. Over the weekend, Singer — who worked for the company for nearly 18 years, and authored a book about product management for Basecamp called Shape Up: Stop Running in Circles and Ship Work that Matters — resigned.

Within a few hours of the meeting, at least 20 people — more than one-third of Basecamp’s 57 employees — had announced their intention to accept buyouts from the company. And while many of them had been leaning toward resigning in the aftermath of Fried’s original post, the meeting itself pushed several to accelerate their decisions, employees said. The response overwhelmed the founders, who extended the deadline to accept buyouts indefinitely amid an unexpected surge of interest.

This account is based on interviews with six Basecamp employees who were present at the meeting, along with a partial transcript created by employees.

Collectively, they describe a company whose attempt to tamp down on difficult conversations blew up in its face as employees rejected the notion that discussions of power and justice should remain off limits in the workplace. And they suggest that efforts to eliminate disruptions in the workplace by regulating internal speech may cause even more turmoil for a company in the long run.

“My honest sense of why everybody is leaving because they’re tired of Jason and David’s behavior — the suppression of voices, of any dissent,” one employee told me. “They really don’t care what employees have to say. If they don’t think it’s an issue, it’s not an issue. If they don’t experience it, then it’s not real. And this was the final straw for a lot of employees.”
II.
WhileWhile Friday’s meeting would eventually grow heated, it began on a conciliatory note. Fried, who employees described as looking tired, began the meeting by apologizing for announcing the policy changes by a public blog post rather than first telling all employees. Hansson tuned into the meeting from bed, where he reported that he was feeling ill, and after making introductory remarks turned off his camera for the duration of the meeting.

Fried opened the floor for comments and questions. For the next two and a half hours, employees pressed the founders on the policy changes, the events leading up to them, and the state of the company. The first part of the meeting was devoted to discussing the events that had unfolded in the company’s internal Basecamp chat last month, in which an employee had cited the Anti-Defamation League’s “pyramid of hate” to argue that documents like the “funny” names list laid a foundation that contributes to racist violence and even genocide.

Roughly 90 minutes into the meeting, Singer raised his hand and spoke. One of Basecamp’s most senior executives, he had joined the company in 2003, when it was known as 37Signals and consisted of just four people. From his original role designing interfaces, Singer had risen to become head of strategy — essentially, Basecamp’s chief product officer.

“THE DIFFICULTY OF THIS CONVERSATION IS EXACTLY WHY I RAISED IT”
Along the way, he had also alienated some of his coworkers by promoting conservative views. In 2016, three employees said, he praised right-wing website Breitbart’s coverage of the presidential election in an internal forum. (About a week before rolling out the policy changes, the founders deleted nearly two decades of internal conversations from previous instances of Basecamp and its other collaboration products. Among other things, this made it more difficult for employees I spoke with to accurately describe past interactions with Singer in the forums.)

In the April discussion about the list of customer names, Singer posted to say that attempting to link the list to genocide was “absurd.” On the Friday call, he went further.

“I strongly disagree we live in a white supremacist culture,” Singer said. “I don’t believe in a lot of the framing around implicit bias. I think a lot of this is actually racist.”

He continued: “Very often, if you express a dissenting view, you get called a Nazi. … I have not felt this is open territory for discussion. If we were to try to get into it as a group discussion it would be very painful and divisive.”

Singer concluded his remarks. Fried responded, “Thank you, Ryan.”

A handful of other speakers followed. Then a Black employee asked if the company could revisit Singer’s remarks. (I’m withholding the employee’s name and other identifying details out of colleagues’ fears that they could be targeted for harassment for speaking out.)

“The fact that you can be a white male, and come to this meeting and call people racist and say ‘white supremacy doesn’t exist’ when it’s blatant at this company is white privilege,” the employee said. “The fact that he wasn’t corrected and was in fact thanked — it makes me sick.”

“I THINK IT’S ABSOLUTELY THE MOST DISGUSTING THING IN THE WORLD”
Fried went to move on, but other employees pressed him for more of a response from him and Hansson. At that point, employees said, Singer spoke up again.

“I can gladly respond,” he said. “I stand by what I said. Saying white people have something in common is racist. I stand by it … I am very sure I don’t treat people in a racist way.”

(Singer remembers one of these quotes differently: “I said that claiming anybody must have a certain viewpoint because of the color of their skin is racist,” he said today.)

The Black employee said they did not want to hear from Singer, but after some cross-talk, he finished his statement.

“The difficulty of this conversation is exactly why I raised it,” he said.
The Black employee responded: “You said, ‘white supremacy doesn’t exist.’ That’s a factual lie. It’s not true.”

To which Singer responded: “I said we have different ways of framing … If you want to debate whether it exists anywhere, then yeah. But not here at this company, not with the people I associate with.”

“It exists right now,” another employee said. “This is ****ing bullshit. You are being ridiculous.”

“I don’t accept that framing,” Singer responded. “It’s not productive to argue further. I don’t want to argue. This difference in views, it is what makes a political discussion so difficult.”

Employees once again pressed Fried and Hansson for a response.

“I don’t like hearing that someone doesn’t feel valued,” Fried said. “I don’t know what to say … I can understand why [the employee] feels uncomfortable right now. I feel terrible about it. I don’t know how else to respond.”

The employee called for the founders to denounce white supremacy. “That would be the bare minimum for me,” they said.

“I’m not here to share my personal views on anything,” Fried said. “I’m horrified when one group dominates another.” Fried, who is Jewish, added that he had lost relatives during the Holocaust. “I think it’s absolutely the most disgusting thing in the world … I can’t say that’s happening here.”

Fried added that he didn’t “know what to say about specific terms. I don’t know how to satisfy that right now.”

Hansson remained on mute.

It was in that exchange that several employees decided to quit Basecamp, I’m told. Two employees told me that they had found themselves crying and screaming at the screen.

“EVIL IS NOT REQUIRED”

“This was the test, as far as I’m concerned,” one told me later. “Do you protect this extremely senior employee that you’ve protected for many years? And [the answer] was yes.”

Over the next hour, employees continued to come forward to discuss Basecamp’s new policies and what would be like going forward. But before the meeting ended, one employee spoke up to address Singer’s remarks directly in a way that Fried and Hansson did not.

“Racism [and] white supremacy are not things that are so convenient that they only happen when full intention is present, or true malice is present,” the employee said. “Evil is not required. We’re not so lucky as for this to come down to good and evil. It’s as simple as creating a space where people do not feel welcome.”

The employee continued: “The silence in the background is what racism and white supremacy does. It creates that atmosphere that feels suffocating to people. It doesn’t require active malice. It’s not that convenient.”

The meeting broke up after no more employees had questions.

III. (See website for remainder of story)
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Media concealing profile of anti-Asian attackers
Doesn't fit narrative of white Trump supporters who blame COVID on China

Art Moore
By Art Moore
Published May 4, 2021 at 8:40pm

CCTV video captured an attack on an Asian man in the Bay Area
The media profile of the perpetrators fomenting a rise in anti-Asian hate-crime attacks is a Trump supporter who blames the COVID-19 pandemic on the Chinese people.

But police in cities where the attacks are most common tell a different story, as do data from the New York Police Department, which compiles the most comprehensive and detailed hate-crimes statistics in the country, points out Manhattan Institute scholar Heather Mac Donald.

The data show a black New Yorker is more than six times as likely to commit a hate crime against an Asian as a white New Yorker. In 2020, Mac Donald pointed out, blacks made up 50% of all suspects in anti-Asian attacks in New York City, even though blacks are 24% of the city’s population. Whites made up 10% of all suspects but account for 32% of the city’s population. If black Hispanics are included in the black category, blacks account for 60% of all anti-Asian attacks in 2020.

New York's WABC-TV reported an Asian woman in Manhattan on Sunday was hit in the head with hammer by a stranger who demanded she take her mask off. The online report offered no details about the perpetrator, other than she was female, but video footage of the incident showed she was black.

See the WABC report:
1:22 min video on website

Over the weekend, the NYPD hate crimes unit began investigating two other assaults on Asian-Americans, CNN reported. In an attack on Saturday, a 52-year-old woman sustained minor injuries when she was pushed while waiting for a subway train in Brooklyn. And a 15-year-old boy was taken to a hospital with minor injuries after he was approached by three people who allegedly made anti-Asian remarks and hit him.

On Sunday, Mayor Bill de Blasio called for an end to hate crimes during a rally.

"If you hate, get the hell out of here, because you don't belong in New York City!" de Blasio said. "So anyone who commits a hate crime, let's be blunt, let's be clear. We will find you, we will prosecute you. You will suffer the consequences. If you harm our Asian brothers and sisters, you will pay. Period!"

'One all-powerful narrative'
Mac Donald argued that the media and the Democratic establishment are invested in "one all-powerful narrative."

For example, the murder of 10 people at a grocery store in Boulder, Colorado, drew nonstop coverage when it was believed to be motivated by white supremacy. But when the suspect turned out to be a Muslim immigrant, media moved on to other stories.

In Atlanta, Mac Donald said, the false narrative that developed about the spa shootings in March "still has legs."

"It represents a double lie — first, that the massacre was the product of Trump-inspired xenophobic hatred, and second, that whites are the biggest perpetrators of violence against Asians," Mac Donald said.

Indeed, six of the eight victims of 21-year Robert Aaron Long, a white man, were Asian.

Protests across the nation featured signs declaring "I am not a virus"; "Asians are not viruses, racism is!!"; "End white supremacy now!"; and "All of us against racism."

An organizer of a protest in Alhambra, California, told the Los Angeles Times: "I think it's important for Black and Asian communities to work together on this because at the end of the day, it’s about dismantling white supremacy and speaking out against white racism."

Vice President Kamala Harris announced the attack shows "racism is real in America and it has always been."

But Mac Donald pointed out there was no evidence that Long was motivated by racism. He told police he had targeted the three spas to purge himself of his lust and his addiction to pornography. Long appears, Mac Donald said, to have targeted presumed sex workers who happened, given the demographics of the massage trade in Atlanta, to be Asian. In fact he told police he intended to target a business in Florida next that produced pornography, and the employees there were unlikely to be Asian.

Mac Donald noted that Reuters was reprimanded on social media for the headline "Sex addiction, not racial hatred, may have driven suspect in Georgia spa shootings."

Reuters revised the headline to "Motive in Georgia spa shootings uncertain, but Asian-Americans fearful."

Both Harris and President Biden dismissed the relevance of the motive. 'Whatever the killer’s motive, these facts are clear," Harris said. "Six out of the eight people killed on Tuesday night were of Asian descent." And Biden said, "Whatever the motivation, we know this: Too many Asian-Americans have been walking up and down the streets and worrying."

But when it comes to "hate crimes," Mac Donald argued, "motive is the entire issue."

Last month, the Senate overwhelmingly passed and anti-Asian hate crimes bill that was said to have gained momentum after the shootings of the Asian women in Atlanta.

'They are pretending to care now'
Mac Donald recounted the details of numerous incidents of attacks on Asians in the Bay Area and New York City this year, noting "the suspects in all of these cases were black; the news reports rarely mentioned that detail."

"Had the suspects been white, their race would have led each news report, as it did for Robert Aaron Long," she wrote.

A former member of the Oakland police department's robbery undercover suppression team told Mac Donald the racial pattern of the attacks and the lack of coverage is longstanding.

He said no one cares about Asian robbery victims.

"We used to follow around elderly Asians, waiting for the bad guys to start circling. This has been one of my long-term frustrations," he said. "They are pretending to care now but ironically blaming it on white supremacy," even though the suspects in Asian robbery attacks are almost exclusively black.

Inner-city animus against Asian small business owners is also longstanding, Mac Donald said, as the 1992 Los Angeles riots and the 1990 Big Apple grocery boycott in New York City illustrate.

Mac Donald warned that the "lie about white supremacist violence is not innocuous."

"It forms the basis of the Biden administration’s policy in national security and in a host of domestic welfare programs," she said. "It is the pretext for Big Tech and Big Media's silencing of speech. And the shamelessness with which that lie is constructed grows more brazen by the day. It must be fought with facts before it irrevocably alters our culture."

Mac Donald is known for her extensive research of data refuting the claim of systemic racism in policing. In a presentation reported by WND , she cited mainstream studies showing a white officer is much more likely to shoot an unarmed white suspect than a black suspect. And a police officer is up to 30 times more likely to be killed by a black male than an unarmed black male is to be killed by a police officer.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

China’s Big Brother ‘Social Credit System’ Now Tracks People in North America Too with Video Surveillance
AP Photo/Andy Wong
AP Photo/Andy Wong
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China is covertly conducting surveillance and even tracking people’s movements in North America using what’s called “a social credit system,” trying to advance its totalitarian authority all over the world even in free nations.

The Gatestone Institute, a non-partisan, not-for-profit international policy council, and think tank, reports seven years ago, China’s State Council issued guidelines for the establishment of a national “social credit system” by 2020, with the feeds from about 626 million surveillance cameras and smartphone scanners and with data from a multitude of sources.

The system was designed to keep tabs on every Chinese citizen’s behavior. For example, criticizing China’s communist ruler Xi Jinping would result in the lowering of one’s score, which could result in consequences for the individual.

People with low scores could be denied social services, mortgages and even could be banned from traveling on trains or airplanes. There are also “interconnecting repercussions for family, friends, associates, and businesses both in and outside China,” Ina Mitchell, an investigative journalist and co-author with Scott McGregor of the upcoming The Mosaic Effect, told Gatestone.

And this system has now been detected far from communist China’s shores, operating at a restaurant in Vancouver, Canada. The Haidilao Hot Pot has more than 60 cameras watching 30 tables with the video feeds going to China. The restaurant is part of a chain of 935 restaurants that are corporate-owned and began operations in China’s Sichuan province.

The Gatestone Institute points out besides a national security risk, the secretive transmission of video to China is a violation of British Columbian law under the province’s Personal Information Protection Act.

There are several of these systems in place, but the Chinese Communist Party’s central committee has apparently set 2025 as the target for a national system, according to The Diplomat. In the meantime, a lot of information is being collected, the website notes.

Why would Beijing be interested in the patrons of a Vancouver restaurant? Because the Chinese government sees the Canadian city as a gateway into North America, “where they engage in pervasive foreign interference activity, mobilizing overseas United Front units to strategically lure political and business leaders using financial inducements and other incentives to promote the Party’s agenda,” according to The Diplomat.

The restaurant is also located near the house of Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of Huawei Technologies, who since 2019 has been fighting extradition to the U.S. on charges that she tried to circumvent U.S. sanctions against Iran. In 2020, Meng was indicted by the U.S. Department of Justice on charges of trade secrets theft which carries a maximum penalty of 10 years’ imprisonment, according to The Verge.

China also wants such a system to keep tabs on the rest of the world and has made the effort to do so. From 2012 to 2017, they secretly downloaded data from the computers housed in the Beijing-donated and Chinese-built headquarters of the African Union in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia through Huawei servers, according to the BBC.

China’s Communist Party is creating the world’s first digital totalitarian state and so far, western democracies don’t seem to care, The Gatestone Institute noted.
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Sen. Ron Johnson: Unequal application of justice, law by administration should ‘frighten every American’

'Our FBI, our Department of Justice is equally biased and they are not administering justice equally in this country'
Fox News Staff

By Fox News Staff | Fox News

Ron Johnson: Unequal application of justice should 'frighten every American'
Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisc., join 'Hannity' to discuss new evidence of FISA fraud.

New developments on FISA abuses against the Trump campaign have Republicans searching for answers and Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisc., told "Hannity" on Tuesday that every American should be afraid of how the justice system is being manipulated.

JOHNSON: I referred to the Obama administration as a lawless administration, this is in the face of President Obama declaring there wasn't a scintilla of proof of any scandal in his administration, but completely false. But it's just a continuation of this. When you see the unequal administration application of justice in the law, that should frighten every American and we're continuing to see it.

My latest episode that had to do with a briefing I received -- Apparently, they were looking at giving Rudy Giuliani a similar briefing. I suspect, at the time, it was a complete setup. I'm quite certain, based on how this was leaked to The Washington Post and other publications, it was complete set up to, again, paint me as some kind of dupe of Russia. Nothing could be further from the truth and try to destroy me politically. But that is what the left does. And that's how the press cooperates with Democrat parties, which they are basically the communications shop of…

So, again, Democrats skate because the media is part and parcel to the Democrat Party. They will cover for them. They will explain problems away. But again, and unfortunately, our FBI, our Department of Justice is equally biased and they are not administering justice equally in this country. And that should concern every American.


CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE FULL INTERVIEW
Ron Johnson: Unequal application of justice should 'frighten every American' 7:50 min
 

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Sidney Powell: We Are Living Under a Communist Totalitarian Regime (AUDIO)

By Cristina Laila
Published May 5, 2021 at 7:00am
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Former federal prosecutor Sidney Powell said we are living under a Communist totalitarian regime this week during her appearance on Rose Unplugged on WJAS 1320.

Sidney Powell blasted the corrupt Justice Department for raiding Giuliani’s NYC apartment while ignoring Hunter Biden’s hard drive and other Democrat crimes.

“The world is absolutely upside down because this country is upside down,” Powell said. “They’re feeding lies to the American people every single day. Just the fact that they’re saying Biden is president is a lie because we still got to resolve the election issue.”

Sidney Powell continued, “We are living under a Communist totalitarian regime. If the voting machine companies had nothing to hide, they wouldn’t be hiding anything.”

Sidney Powell said there were millions and millions of fraudulent votes for Joe Biden in the 2020 election.

AUDIO:

View: https://youtu.be/F88eHeeESLE
18:43 min

Check out Rose Unplugged on WJAS 1320 AM – The Talk of Pittsburgh 1320 AM
 
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