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

[marsh]

Shelby Steele Calls BS on the Left: 'This Is Not a Systematically Racist Society'

redstate.com

Shelby Steele Calls BS on the Left: 'This Is Not a Systematically Racist Society'

By Mike Miller | Jul 24, 2021 4:00 PM ET

(Joerg Carstensen/dpa via AP)

In addition to loathing Black conservatives in general, the Left is terrified of conservative Black intellectuals who not only see through the rhetoric, dishonest narrative, and the Democrat Party’s exploitation of Black America — which the Democrats have done for more than six decades — but are also able to effectively articulate that exploitation and have a large enough megaphone to get people’s attention.

Academic economists Thomas Sowell and the late Walter E. Williams are perfect examples. Conservative author, columnist, and political commentator Shelby Steele is another brilliant example. During a Friday appearance on Fox News “Primetime,” the senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution demonstrated perfectly why he’s among those who terrify the Left.

Dismissing claims that America is a “systemically racist” society, Steele told host Brian Kilmeade that the opposite is true and that Gwen Berry’s Olympic trials protest stunt — during which she turned her back during the playing of the national anthem — was 60 years too late.

“Here’s the thing that is so fascinating to me about today: All the things that we protested back then are over with. We are as free as you can possibly be free. We have enjoyed freedom now for some 50 or so years.

“Our problem has been a lack of development. We haven’t developed commensurate with the new freedom that we want for ourselves, and so we are still behind.

“What frustrates me today when I see someone like Gwen Berry protesting at the Olympics is that, honey, you are 60 years too late. Protest is not going to develop black America. Black America is going to have to develop itself.”

Perfect virtual mic drop moment. Drop the mic, tell the Left, “Thanks for playing,” and walk off the stage.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1418685734987386880

View: https://twitter.com/i/status/1418685734987386880
4:54 min

Steele also talked about responsibility, the “word that shall not be spoken” — because it runs counter to the entire Black Lives Matter, Critical Race Theory, systemic racism, white supremacy narrative.

“We want certainly with the goodwill of other people, but it’s our responsibility to develop it. So, to get on the winning stand and pretend that you are somehow a victim of racism and so forth is horrible. It’s an abomination. It really sends exactly the wrong message to society.

“And there is — the point is there is no racial discrimination behind it.

This is not a systemically racist society. It is a systemically goodwill toward black people society. People in this country are rooting for us. They are not holding us back. They want us to do well. And that’s what George Foreman’s message is the one I think that endures because of that.”

Another devastating mic drop moment — against the ridiculous “systemic racism” narrative. And another example of why conservative Blacks who call BS on the BS are viewed as a threat by the Left.

In an earlier article titled Noted Constitutional Scholar Sunny Hostin of ‘The View’: 2nd Amendment ‘Designed to Protect Slavery’, I wrote the following:

Not only will people like Sunny Hostin, Joy Reid, Don Lemon, and others, never stop making crap up to support their various narratives; they will never understand that they do far more harm than good by constantly playing the race card; the victim card — about everything that ails Black America.

The Democrat Party as a whole does the same thing. If nothing is ever “your” fault — if you are always a “victim,” you are absolved of any and all wrongdoing or responsibility because of “systemic racism.” Everything wrong in your life is caused by “racist white people.”

It’s one thing for an “old conservative white guy” to say the above. It’s quite another for a Black conservative intellectual to say it. And ironically, it is the majority of Black America who most loathes people like Thomas Sowell, Walter E. Williams, and Shelby Steele. The best example — and funniest — that comes to mind is the former head of the New Black Panther Party, Malik Zulu Shabazz, who in 2011 called then-president Barack Obama a “bamboozling buck-dancing Tom.”

“And his wife should leave the n****r tonight, he railed. “She should walk out.”

“We’ve held back on this Negro for a long time. Done held back on him and tried to hope that the nature of the black man would somehow come to reality. And he caved in like a punk.”

Obama’s sin, in Zulu Shabazz’s eyes? “He represents the white man. He represents the ideology of the white man. He represents the policies of the white man.”

Needless to say, Malik Zulu Shabazz was given a complete pass by the Left for his disgusting comments. But when Black conservatives like Shelby Steele speak the truth?

They are to be dismissed, ignored, or destroyed.

 

[marsh]

Democracy's Road to Tyranny | Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn

Plato, in his Republic, tells us that tyranny arises, as a rule, from democracy. Historically, this process has occurred in three quite different ways.

mises.org

Democracy's Road to Tyranny

• 

07/23/2021Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn

Plato, in his Republic, tells us that tyranny arises, as a rule, from democracy.

Historically, this process has occurred in three quite different ways. Before describing these several patterns of social change, let us state precisely what we mean by “democracy.”

Pondering the question of “Who should rule,” the democrat gives his answer: “the majority of politically equal citizens, either in person or through their representatives.” In other words, equality and majority rule are the two fundamental principles of democracy. A democracy may be either liberal or illiberal.

Genuine liberalism is the answer to an entirely different question: How should government be exercised? The answer it provides is: regardless of who rules, government must be carried out in such a way that each person enjoys the greatest amount of freedom, compatible with the common good. This means that an absolute monarchy could be liberal (but hardly democratic) and a democracy could be totalitarian, illiberal, and tyrannical, with a majority brutally persecuting minorities. (We are, of course, using the term “liberal” in the globally accepted version and not in the American sense, which since the New Deal has been totally perverted.)

How could a democracy, even an initially liberal one, develop into a totalitarian tyranny? As we said in the beginning, there are three avenues of approach, and in each case the evolution would be of an “organic” nature. The tyranny would evolve from the very character of even a liberal democracy because there is, from the beginning on, a worm in the apple: freedom and equality do not mix, they practically exclude each other. Equality doesn’t exist in nature and therefore can be established only by force. He who wants geographic equality has to dynamite mountains and fill up the valleys. To get a hedge of even height one has to apply pruning shears. To achieve equal scholastic levels in a school one would have to pressure certain students into extra hard work while holding back others.

The first road to totalitarian tyranny (though by no means the most frequently used) is the overthrow by force of a liberal democracy through a revolutionary movement, as a rule a party advocating tyranny but unable to win the necessary support in free elections. The stage for such violence is set if the parties represent philosophies so different as to make dialogue and compromise impossible. Clausewitz said that wars are the continuation of diplomacy by other means, and in ideologically divided nations revolutions are truly the continuation of parliamentarism with other means. The result is the absolute rule of one “party” which, having finally achieved complete control, might still call itself a party, referring to its parliamentary past, when it still was merely a part of the diet.

A typical case is the Red October of 1917. The Bolshevik wing of the Russian Social Democratic Workers’ Party could not win the elections in Alexander Kerenski’s democratic Russian Republic and therefore staged a coup with the help of a defeated, marauding army and navy, and in this way established a firm socialistic tyranny. Many liberal democracies are enfeebled by party strife to such an extent that revolutionary organizations can easily seize power, and sometimes the citizenry, for a time, seems happy that chaos has come to an end. In Italy the Marcia su Roma of the Fascists made them the rulers of the country. Mussolini, a socialist of old, had learned the technique of political conquest from his International Socialist friends and, not surprisingly, Fascist Italy was the second European power, after Laborite Britain (and long before the United States) to recognize the Soviet regime.

The second avenue toward totalitarian tyranny is “free elections.” It can happen that a totalitarian party with great popularity gains such momentum and so many votes that it becomes legally and democratically a country’s master. This happened in Germany in 1932 when no less than 60 per cent of the electorate voted for totalitarian despotism: for every two National Socialists there was one international socialist in the form of a Marxist Communist, and another one in the form of a somewhat less Marxist Social Democrat. Under these circumstances liberal democracy was doomed, since it had no longer a majority in the Reichstag. This development could have been halted only by a military dictatorship (as envisaged by General von Schleicher who was later murdered by the Nazis) or by a restoration of the Hohenzollerns (as planned by Bruning). Yet, within the democratic and constitutional framework, the National Socialists were bound to win.

How did the “Nazis” manage to win in this way? The answer is simple: being a mass movement striving for a parliamentary majority, they singled out unpopular minorities (the smaller, the better) and then rallied popular support against them.

The National Socialist Workers’ Party was “a popular movement based on exact science” (Hitler’s words), militating against the hated few: the Jews, the nobility, the rich, the clergy, the modern artists, the “intellectuals,” categories frequently overlapping, and finally against the mentally handicapped and the Gypsies.

National Socialism was the “legal revolt” of the common man against the uncommon, of the “people” (Volk) against privileged and therefore envied and hated groups. Remember that Lenin, Mussolini, and Hitler called their rule “democratic”—demokratiya po novomu, democrazia organizzata, deutsche Demokratie—but they never dared to call it “liberal” in the worldwide (non-American) sense.

Carl Schmitt, in his 93rd year, analyzed this evolution in a famous essay entitled “The Legal World Revolution”: this sort of revolution—the German Revolution of 1933—simply comes about through the ballot and can happen in any country where a party pledged to totalitarian rule gains a relative or absolute majority and thus takes over the government “democratically.” Plato gave an account of such a procedure which fits, with the fidelity of a Xerox copy, the constitutional transition in Germany: there is the “popular leader” who takes to heart the interest of the “simple people,” of the “ordinary, decent fellow” against the crafty rich. He is widely acclaimed by the many and builds up a body guard only to protect himself and, of course, the interests of the “people.”

In the Name of the People
Think of Hitler’s SA and SS and also of the tendency to apply wherever possible the prefix Volk (people): Volkswagen (people’s car), Volksempfänger (people’s radio set), des gesunde Volksempfinden (the healthy sentiments of the people), Volksgericht (people’s law court). Needless to say that this verbal policy continues in the “German Democratic Republic” where we see a “People’s Police,” a “People’s Army,” while Moscow’s satellite states are called “People’s Democracies.”

All this implies that in earlier times only the elites had a chance to govern and that now, at long last, the common man is the master of his destiny able to enjoy the good things in life! It matters little that the realities are quite different. A very high-ranking Soviet official recently said to a European prince: “Your ancestors exploited the people, claiming that they ruled by the Grace of God, but we are doing much better, we exploit the people in the name of the people.”

Then there is the third way in which a democracy changes into a totalitarian tyranny. The first political analyst who foresaw this hitherto-never-experienced kind of evolution was Alexis de Tocqueville. He drew an exact and frightening picture of our Provider State (wrongly called Welfare State) in the second volume of his Democracy in America, published in 1835; he spoke at length about a form of tyranny which he could only describe, but not name, because it had no historic precedent. Admittedly, it took several generations until Tocqueville’s vision became a reality.

He envisaged a democratic government in which nearly all human affairs would be regulated by a mild, “compassionate” but determined government under which the citizens would practice their pursuit of happiness as “timid animals,” losing all initiative and freedom. The Roman Emperors, he said, could direct their wrath against individuals, but control of all forms of life was out of the question under their rule. We have to add that in Tocqueville’s time the technology for such a surveillance and regulation was insufficiently developed. The computer had not been invented and thus his warnings found little echo in the past century.

Tocqueville, a genuine liberal and legitimist, had gone to America not only because he was concerned with trends in the United States, but also on account of the electoral victory of Andrew Jackson, the first Democrat in the White House and the man who introduced the highly democratic Spoils System, a genuine invitation to corruption. The Founding Fathers, as Charles Beard has pointed out, hated democracy more than Original Sin. But now a French ideology, only too familiar to Tocqueville, had started to conquer America.

This portentous development lured the French aristocrat to the New World where he wanted to observe the global advance of “democratism,” in his opinion and to his dismay bound to penetrate everywhere and to end in either anarchy or the New Tyranny—which he referred to as “democratic despotism.” The road to anarchy is more apt to be taken by South Europeans and South Americans (and it usually terminates in military dictatorships in order to prevent total dissolution), whereas the northern nations, while keeping all democratic appearances, tend to founder in totalitarian welfare bureaucracy. The lack of a common political philosophy is more conducive to the development of outright revolutions in the South where civil wars tend to be “the continuation of parliamentarism with other (and more violent) means,” while the North is rather given to evolutionary processes, to a creeping increase of slavery and a decrease of personal freedom and initiative. This process can be much more paralyzing than a mere personal dictatorship, military or otherwise, without an ideological and totalitarian character. The Franco and Salazar regimes and certain Latin American authoritarian governments, all mellowing with the years, are good examples.

Slouching toward Servitude
Tocqueville did not tell us just how the gradual change toward totalitarian servitude can come about. But 150 years ago he could not exactly foresee that the parliamentary scene would produce two main types of parties: the Santa Claus parties, predominantly on the Left, and the Tighten-Your-Belt parties, more or less on the Right. The Santa Claus parties, with presents for the many, normally take from some people to give to others: they operate with largesses, to use the term of John Adams. Socialism, whether national or international, will act in the name of “distributive justice,” as well as “social justice” and “progress,” and thus gain popularity. You don’t, after all, shoot Santa Claus. As a result, these parties normally win elections, and politicians who use their slogans are effective vote-getters.

The Tighten-Your-Belt parties, if they unexpectedly gain power, generally act more wisely, but they rarely have the courage to undo the policies of the Santa parties. The voting masses, who frequently favor the Santa parties, would retract their support if the Tighten-Your-Belt parties were to act radically and consistently. Profligates are usually more popular than misers. In fact, the Santa Claus parties are rarely utterly defeated, but they sometimes defeat themselves by featuring hopeless candidates or causing political turmoil or economic disaster.

A politicized Saint Nicholas is a grim taskmaster. Gifts cannot be distributed without bureaucratic regulation, registration, and regimentation of the entire country. Countless strings are attached to the gifts received from “above.” The State interferes in all domains of human existence—education, health, transportation, communication, entertainment, food, commerce, industry, farming, building, employment, inheritance, social life, birth, and death.

There are two aspects to this large-scale interference: statism and egalitarianism, yet they are intrinsically connected since to regiment society perfectly, you must reduce people to an identical level. Thus, a “classless society” becomes the real aim, and every kind of discrimination must come to an end. But, discrimination is intrinsic to a free life, because freedom of will and choice is a characteristic of man and his personality. If I marry Bess instead of Jean, I obviously discriminate against Jean; if I employ Dr. Nishiyama as a teacher of Japanese instead of Dr. O’Hanrahan, I discriminate against the latter, and so forth. (One should not be surprised if an opera house that rejects a 4-foot tall Bambuti singer for the role of Siegfried in Wagner’s “Ring” is accused of racism!)

There is, in fact, only either just or unjust discrimination. Yet, egalitarian democracy remains adamant in its totalitarian policy. The popular pastime of modern democracies of punishing the diligent and thrifty, while rewarding the lazy, improvident, and unthrifty, is cultivated via the State, fulfilling a demo-egalitarian program based on a demo-totalitarian ideology.

Democratic tyranny, evolving on the sly as a slow and subtle corruption leading to total State control, is thus the third and by no means rarest road to the most modern form of slavery.

 

[marsh]

How the Left Undervalues America

In 1776, 56 men signed the Declaration of Independence and thus began a war with Britain. When the war was concluded in 1783, American casualties numbered 25,000 dead and 25,000 wounded. Those 50,000 casualties paid the price so that a new natio...

www.americanthinker.com

July 24, 2021
How the Left Undervalues America
By Vince Coyner

In 1776, 56 men signed the Declaration of Independence and thus began a war with Britain. When the war was concluded in 1783, American casualties numbered 25,000 dead and 25,000 wounded. Those 50,000 casualties paid the price so that a new nation, founded on the ideas of freedom and liberty, could take its place among the nations of the world.

Eighty-five years later the United States was at war with itself and, eventually, 360,000 Union soldiers gave their lives to extend that promise of freedom and end slavery. Seventy-five years later 405,000 Americans would die in an effort to save freedom from tyranny on two continents.

Over the course of almost 250 years, approximately 1 million American men gave their lives in defense of freedom, the vast majority of whom were volunteers.

While their individual reasons for enlisting were likely as varied as their life stories, all made the decision that the nation was worth fighting for and indeed dying for if necessary.

Over the lifespan of our nation, those million men sacrificed their lives and tens of millions of others put theirs on the line to defend the ideals set out in the Declaration of Independence and codified in the Constitution. And despite the current crop of leftist brass leading the Pentagon, most servicemen and veterans are and have been extraordinary patriots. But here’s the thing: America has been so incredibly successful in fostering peace around the world, been so extraordinarily successful in crafting the prosperity at home that relatively few modern-day Americans ever have to bother putting on the uniform in the first place, never mind actually fighting in a war in which they are asked to risk their lives.

Most of those on the left who tell us that America is a fundamentally racist nation have never had to serve in a military environment, one of the most colorblind elements of American society. No, most of them are pampered college-educated agitators with very little skin in the game in terms of doing anything productive at all, not protecting the nation, not building the nation, not improving the nation. Others are minorities who have listened for years to grifters selling the fiction of serial victimization. They attack the United States for not being the nirvana that Marx wrote about or the racial paradise Nikole Hannah-Jones pretends Cuba is. (Ironically, Marx, a chronically unemployed writer who was perpetually supported by Engels, a scion of a wealthy family with textile interests, spent his time theorizing and critiquing capitalists… including textile manufacturers… Similarly absurd, the nirvana we are told is Cuba is today wracked with civil unrest as the poverty-stricken population revolts against 60 years of communist oppression.)

Few on the left have life experiences that would enable them to understand the United States for what it really is… an imperfect nation with extraordinary goals where citizens have enjoyed unprecedented freedoms and achieved unparalleled prosperity. Most of them have been indoctrinated into the mindset that defines the United States by its worst failures, never to be mitigated by its overwhelmingly more common successes. Slavery and Jim Crow were indeed dark marks on America’s history, but a civil war to end the former and more than half a century of laws, programs, and expenditures to overcome the latter count for nothing to redeem the nation.

That is a hallmark of the left, like Marx… little experience but lots of ideas. How many modern leftists risked their lives for their country? Probably not a lot. How many of them risked every penny they had (or more) to start a business and find themselves forced to walk on the tightrope between paying the landlord, suppliers, and making payroll, all while trying to market their product, fight off competition, and jump through a labyrinth of regulatory hurdles? Again, woefully few. How many of them worked on a factory floor or an oil rig or were plumbers or welders or janitors, as they sacrificed much to try and give their kids opportunities they didn’t have? Certainly not many. As America has become more white-collar, more information-centric, and more focused on cheap imports over the last quarter-century or so, many parents pampered and spoiled their children, creating an army of adult adolescents with few real responsibilities, rarely risking much of anything and even more rarely encountering opposition of any sort.

Which brings us to Donald Trump. One of the reasons Donald Trump was such a great president was that he was an actual businessman -- granted, one who inherited much from his father. But despite his father’s success, Trump was a successful businessman operating a real estate business in shark-infested New York City, one of the most difficult cities in the country to navigate. He dealt with New York’s kleptocratic regulatory boards, corrupt unions, and predatory banks all while focusing on making payroll, hitting deadlines, and producing things that consumers would exchange their hard-earned money for. Donald Trump is not some Wall Street genius making billions by selling obscure financial products to giant retirement funds, nor is he a Silicon Valley prodigy who sold some selfie app to Facebook or Google. He’s a businessman who builds actual things.

Trump may have the planes and the mansions and the security, but his words are his own and he is very much a man of the people. In what was possibly the single most accurate tweet of all time, Trump said: “In reality, they’re not after me.

They’re after you, I’m just in the way.” And that’s the key to all of what’s going on in America today. The digital revolution, social media, and government handouts have fundamentally transformed America from a hardscrabble place where people rolled up their sleeves and built tangible things, grew or extracted an income from the ground, and signed up to defend their nation to one with overindulged snowflakes where virtually everything is digital, business is little more than delivering things built somewhere else by someone else, and government largesse makes actual work seem like a sucker’s game.

America today is allowing itself to be destroyed by groups of people who neither share its values nor its understanding of what’s necessary to build or defend a successful nation in the real world. They, much like their gods -- Marx, Sanders, and Hannah-Jones -- live in ivory tower worlds where virtually everything is theoretical because none of their ideas actually work in practice. They never concern themselves with building anything, improving anything, or designing anything that actually survives an encounter with the real world. When you operate in the universe of ideas, everything is perfect because it’s never subjected to reality. Much as the French learned at the end of the 18th century, such theoretical perfection rarely survives exposure to the kilns of actual life, and giving the reins of society to simpletons who invoke such perfection is the fastest road to abject failure.
Image: Pixabay

 

[marsh]

Slouching Toward Dictatorship

“Were [our forefathers] so blind as not to perceive that the destruction of a myriad of individuals is only so much positive advantage to the mass!” − Edgar Allan Poe* “Progressives” need to opp...

www.americanthinker.com

July 24, 2021
Slouching Toward Dictatorship
By Anthony J. DeBlasi

“Were [our forefathers] so blind as not to perceive that the destruction of a myriad of individuals is only so much positive advantage to the mass!”
− Edgar Allan Poe*

“Progressives” need to oppose time-tested wisdom about human nature and reject the lessons of history because good sense and experience stand in the way of their form of progress toward a better life in a better world. We are all to believe in their superior sagacity and in the “science” justifying their plans for humanity. (That they’re not kidding should frighten the hell out of everyone with a heart as well as a brain.)

How often have you heard “Time for a change?” I’ve been hearing it regularly every four years since 1952 when I voted for the first time. Well, have times changed? You bet! A graph of progress over time for We the People would show a line slumping and accelerating downward toward the end of the 20th century. I am speaking of course of progress toward a better life for all Americans. Is that not the promise of those who wish to be elected?
​

So, why has the desire for a better life in America become a political kickball instead of a priority of leadership? Recalling the Low Heels and the High Heels in Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, the left accuses the right and the right accuses the left of standing in the way of progress, each with one hand pointing to the “opponent” and the other hand in a pocket ready to accept bonus cash.

Excepting the few honest top members of government, it’s a story repeated constantly through history, stretching back to antiquity, ending with many lives ruined and lost. Today’s Great Reset vision of progress is the most pretentious and arrogant of any in the past.

For We the People, no prospect of progress with liberty and justice for all is likely where morality gets corrupted in the process, a habit of “liberals” that proves harmful to humans, time and again.

People who stick to common sense, a.k.a., realists, are more likely than radicals to see through sham, deception, and false image, and more apt to pursue an activity that in fact helps make the world a better place to live in. They are motivated not only by a love of humanity but by a love of truth. Is it really any wonder why people who get smeared as backward, ignorant, and name-the-slur see today’s morally depraved, “post-truth America” as the product of dysfunctional, arrogant, deceitful, and hateful souls?

“Progressives” (the quotes flag the falsehood behind the label) are corrupters of reality who think nothing of corrupting even science in order to achieve their goals. Taking no lessons from history and drunk on political power, they move ahead to make the state command every aspect of our lives in the mad obsession to own us. Their contempt for reality punches us with “justice” that kills babies because they happen to be on the wrong side of a mother’s abdominal wall. It thumps us with “reasoning” that makes killing a non-human creature a criminal act and killing a human being legitimate because Homo sapiens is not on a list of endangered species.

And so it is that the government in an America adulterated by “progress,” exercising a power taken from its people by eviscerating the Constitution, has the “authority” to control every aspect of our lives. And that includes everything we own and everything we need to stay alive. In its preemptive role of supreme lordship (do what I say or else) the government may preside over your home, the land and space you occupy, the kitchen, the bathroom . . . your mind . . . your children . . . what not? If you think the government at least stays out of the bedroom you are forgetting that public schools teach kids how to copulate and provides them with contraceptives and referrals for “medical” services (including abortion) without the consent of their parents.

Dictatorship never had it so good.

Our so-called “democracy” operates through the long arm of oligarchs who, with boundless contempt for any authority above theirs, operate like – well, dictators.

Those who complain or stand in their way, religious leaders included, are regarded as enemies of the state and are likely to be treated accordingly.

For today’s oligarchic “deep state,” whatever can be politicized (your life included) is theirs to rule over. If this violates the Law of the Land (the Constitution), what of it? Does the State not own you and your children? (Was it not Big Brother who reminded everyone that “freedom is slavery”?)

The power to deceive, enhanced enormously since the dawn of the digital age in the past century, is unquestionably a principal weapon of wannabe dictators at the top echelons of society. Next in line of importance, I would say, is the corruption of science.

Those schooled in scientism, a majority it seems among the brightest of our leaders, may argue that since there is a gene for just about everything you can name, then the ultimate solution to bad behavior is imminent in today’s gene-editing era. Although a gene for “criminality” may not as yet have been identified, you can be sure that it will be and criminal behavior will be terminated.

Can we be sure that criminals in the top ranks of society will submit to this final “therapy” against criminality?

Of the few things we can be sure of, one that stands out boldly is that “you can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.” Lincoln’s adage on deception should be posted in every governmental office.

The stench of an uninhabitable transhuman world is invading us in this 21st century. Whether or not you can smell it, it is vitally important for us and for our children to be on guard against an insanity that turns people into androids populating a fake world managed by “superior beings.” It is essential that every unadulterated human resist this madness and strive to restore sanity to the planet.

* From the futuristic tale “Mellonta Tauta,” published in 1849, these words spoken by a balloon traveler reflect the mindset of people obsessed with an inhumane idea of progress.
Image: Pixabay / Pixabay License​

 

[marsh]

Zerohedge

ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero

www.zerohedge.com

It's About Time We Stopped "Trying Communism"

SATURDAY, JUL 24, 2021 - 09:30 PM
Authored by Ethan Yang via The American Institute for Economic Research,

I don’t know how many protests, solidarity movements, refugees, human rights alerts, economic collapses, and purges are going to get this message through everyone’s heads, Communism is a terrible system of governance.

In fact, at this point, we should be consistent. Any government that does not guarantee as to the very justification for its existence, individual rights, open markets, and accountable governance, is worth challenging.


I am of course referring to the ongoing protest in Cuba, to which those on the far left will shamefully attribute to the US embargo on the Communist regime.

Others may simply beat around the bush and try to attribute the reasons for the protests to current events. Although all these may contribute to the discontent fueling the Cuban protests, just like every single Communist regime, the ultimate reason why things are going poorly is that the people live under a crushing regime of incompetence and oppression.

To make room for a colleague that will inevitably publish on the Cuban protests in more detail, my article will focus not on Cuba but on the general topic of Communism.

The Shameful Track Record of Communism
Real Communism has never been tried before, but it certainly has been attempted in all sorts of flavors and every single one of them sucked. For some reason, their leaders can’t bring themselves to care about the rights of individuals. Perhaps it undermines their overall collectivist views? Perhaps individual dignity would lead down the slippery slope to capitalism? Perhaps individual rights and preferences are a bourgeois construct? That’s certainly what Che Guevara, the leader of Cuba’s Communist revolution, and Fidel Castro, Communist Cuba’s first leader thought. In fact, Human Progress points out,

“Both Guevara and Castro considered homosexuality a bourgeois decadence. In an interview in 1965, Castro explained that “A deviation of that nature clashes with the concept we have of what a militant communist should be.”

Although the American Left somehow rationalizes the deification of men like Che Guevara, they seem to conveniently forget that much like all power-hungry dictators with no regard for human life, he was blatantly a racist, a bigot, and a mass murderer. Human Progress notes,

“According to Álvaro Vargas Llosa, homosexuals, Jehova’s Witnesses, Afro-Cuban priests, and others who were believed to have committed a crime against revolutionary morals, were forced to work in these camps to correct their “anti-social behavior.” Many of them died; others were tortured or raped.”

Even today the Cuban government and every single communist country are incredibly repressive. In fact, in reaction to the protests that some may keep telling themselves aren’t against the Communist government, they just shut off the internet. You don’t do that when the people are protesting the actions of a foreign government, such as a US embargo; you do that when the protestors are against the domestic government.

To briefly highlight some of the many atrocities committed by Communist regimes let’s start with China. It’s been a little bit more than a month since the anniversary of China’s Tiananmen Square Massacre and tens of millions died in Mao’s Great Leap Forward as well as the Cultural Revolution. A failure of Communist economic and political reform respectively. North Korea is such a repressive and poor country, it’s hard to even know where to begin. Furthermore, there are entire books about how life in the Soviet Union sucked.

In Cambodia (this one is cool because my family fled this genocide so that’s why we all live in America now), under the communist Khmer Rouge, not only did they manage to kill off as much of a quarter of the population, but the mass murder, starvation, and torture got so out of hand, communist Vietnam had to intervene with military force. Vietnam is probably one of the more well-behaved communist nations; however, they still have a repressive one-party state and much like China, their current economic success is directly attributed to market reforms. In other words, becoming less communist and more capitalist.

It is simply puzzling that in all these regimes that purport to represent the proletariat, they end up doing more to impoverish and oppress the working class than even the most sadistic capitalist. In hindsight, it really isn’t that difficult of a question. As mentioned before, any government that does not protect individual rights, open markets, and constraints on power is not only a recipe for disaster but a moral tragedy.

In liberal democracies, like the United States, there is much talk about the consent of the governed to which governments derive their legitimacy. We already have trouble justifying the impositions that we live under as truly consensual. Such a notion cannot even remotely exist in a Communist regime or any authoritarian regime for that matter.

There is not a single country that adopted Communism or moved in its direction that was able to provide the standards of living and prosperity found in a free and open society like the United States. In fact, that bar is too high, because not a single one has produced any sort of relative prosperity without some sort of market reform, and not a single one can produce a human rights record that doesn’t make the problems in freer countries look like child’s play.

The Basics of Governance
It has become fashionable for some, like the Chinese Communist Party and all those around the world who share their sentiments, to call for a system of moral relativism when it comes to governments. Respect the rights of governments, not individuals. Such a way of thinking believes that the world must be inclusive of different types of political systems, from the freest to the most oppressive. It eschews any sort of moral foundation when it comes to the rights of individuals or sound economic thinking. It subscribes to the fantasy that different political systems work for different countries.

This is empirically false, which is why the current rules-based international order holds that human rights and open markets are the universal standards for good state conduct.

Take a look at any economic freedom index. There is a powerful correlation between prosperity and free markets. Objective metrics such as infant mortality rates, educational attainment, calorie consumption, life expectancy, and other desirable indicators are all better in richer countries than poorer countries.

Basic political science and legal theory tell us that checks and balances are necessary for an accountable government, whether that be preventing the arbitrary use of power or full-on massacres.

Think about it; qualified immunity, a doctrine granting protections for police in the United States against being sued for infringing on a private citizen’s rights, already causes enough problems here. Imagine if an entire government had such privileges? A restrained and gridlocked government is far preferable to an unrestrained and power-drunk one.

Finally, there’s the basic truth that governments cannot run society; they merely exist to facilitate a productive natural order by securing rights and establishing peace. Commerce, invention, culture, and trade arises spontaneously without central dictate. This is why societies in command economies like Maoist China were incredibly bleak and drab. This is also why former Soviet Union president Boris Yeltsin was so amazed and awestruck when he visited a grocery store in the United States. The New Haven Register notes,

“He told his fellow Russians in his entourage that if their people, who often must wait in line for most goods, saw the conditions of U.S. supermarkets, there would be a revolution.”

Key Takeaways
People will always try to find some superficial reason for why a Communist state is failing, whether it’s because of sanctions, resource shortages, inflation, civil unrest, or what have you. These are all fine and good but they ultimately fail to see the elephant in the room. Or in this case, the highly authoritarian, oppressive, and economically incompetent system in place.

We live in an age where ignorance is a choice when it comes to the superiority of a free and open society. The quicker we stop averting our eyes and look at the facts, the quicker we can move towards a world where every individual, regardless of their geographical and political fortune, can live free and prosper.

 

[Lone_Hawk]

I confess, I can only read this thread every now and then because a lot of it makes my blood boil. However saying that I have to thank @marsh for their dedication for posting the contents of this thread. A must read for all.

 

[marsh]

WATCH: Trump Slams Critical Race Theory as 'Poisonous,' 'Flagrant Racism' That Has 'No Place in Our Country' | The Gateway Pundit | by Cassandra MacDonald

Former President Donald Trump took aim at Critical Race Theory during his speech at the “Protect Our Elections Rally” hosted by Turning Point Action on Saturday night.

www.thegatewaypundit.com

WATCH: Trump Slams Critical Race Theory as ‘Poisonous,’ ‘Flagrant Racism’ That Has ‘No Place in Our Country’

By Cassandra Fairbanks
Published July 25, 2021 at 1:30pm

Former President Donald Trump took aim at Critical Race Theory during his speech at the “Protect Our Elections Rally” hosted by Turning Point Action on Saturday night.

Trump asserted that the Marxist teachings have “no place in our country” and slammed it as “flagrant racism.”

“We shouldn’t be apologizing to the world,” he said. “We’re apologizing for America, just like Obama apologized. Remember, he apologized. They should be apologizing to America for what they’ve done to it. That’s who I think should be apologizing to.”

“The Biden administration’s ‘America last’ philosophy … is also making a mockery of our country right here at home,” he continued. “Earlier this year, Biden signed an executive order pushing toxic, critical race theory into our children’s schools and into our military. How about our military? This poisonous left-wing doctrine is flagrant racism, plain and simple, and it has no place in our schools, no place in our military and no place in our country.”

Biden signed an executive order rescinding Trump’s order to restrict the federal government and its contractors from teaching critical race theory.

“If you remember, I ended it very rapidly with a very powerful executive order, but that executive order was immediately repealed and terminated by the radical left,” Trump said. “A Republican Congress will defund it and ban it once and for all. They’re going to ban it. They will get it done.”

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1419094559859019779

View: https://twitter.com/i/status/1419094559859019779
4:25 min

Trump also set his sights on Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley, who defended the military’s teaching of critical race theory.

“Can you believe it?” Trump asked the crowd. “He said he wanted to quote, ‘understand White rage.’ He wants to understand White rage.

What the hell is he talking about that for? Our generals should not be focused on learning left-wing ideology. They should be focused on defeating America’s enemies and winning our future wars. Hopefully, we don’t have them, but if we do, we have to win them.”

“They’re still coming after me because I will never stop fighting and winning for you,” he continued. “Going through it for five years, five years. From the very beginning of our movement, we have been fighting against some of the most corrupt, powerful and entrenched forces imaginable. The professional political class, the deep state, the fake news media, the Russia hoaxers, the globalists, the socialists, the communists, the lobbyists, the corporate special interests who are absolutely terrible, and now the critical race theorists – all of them oppose our movement for a simple reason: We believe in putting America first.”

“It’s very simple,” he added. “We believe in strong families, strong borders and strong sovereign nations. We believe in fair trade for the American worker.”

 

[marsh]

Zerohedge

ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero

www.zerohedge.com

Cybersecurity Experts Encourage System Of Reporting Workers To Employers For "Online Abuse"

SUNDAY, JUL 25, 2021 - 03:30 PM
Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

A new initiative launched by cybersecurity experts encourages companies to create a system that makes it easier for people to be reported to their employers for “online abuse.”


The new program is called Respect in Security and was created by Trend Micro’s Rik Ferguson and Red Goat Cyber Security’s Lisa Forte.

According to Forte, the current system, which is largely based on a combination of AI and human reviewers working for social media companies, is a “no man’s land” and not very effective.

“The best solution we have, if the culprit is identifiable, is to approach their employer,” she argues.

According to Ferguson, companies currently only deal with “abuse” that happens internally and are ill-equipped to monitor what their staff are saying online.
Companies who sign up for the initiative are required to agree to seven principles and create a public reporting system that encourages employees to keep tabs on each other’s behavior.

“If you know your organization has made that commitment, it may make you think twice about doing it,” Ferguson said.
“We need to take action.”

The pair appear to have failed to take into account that the primary means by which someone gets fired from their job over online behavior is via social media mobs who directly contact employers themselves.

They routinely do so not because a person has engaged in actual “online abuse,” but because they have expressed a political opinion deemed to contradict woke orthodoxy.

Of course, the term “online abuse” is completely vague and arbitrary and routinely abused by leftists who claim that words which they disagree with are “violence” and that them making themselves upset and playing the victim constitutes proof of “abuse.”

 

[marsh]

Ted Cruz on Biden Regime Pushing CRT: 'They Claimed It Was an Error - I'll Tell You What the Error Was . . .' - The Liberty Daily

If you love the news, check out The Liberty Daily's homepage. Joe Biden’s Department of Education was busted giving guidance to our nation’s public school system to embrace Critical Race Theory and teach it ubiquitously to students. When caught, they claimed it was an error. There was definitely...

thelibertydaily.com

Ted Cruz on Biden Regime Pushing CRT: ‘They Claimed It Was an Error. I’ll Tell You What the Error Was . . .’

By J.D. Rucker • Jul. 25, 2021

Joe Biden’s Department of Education was busted giving guidance to our nation’s public school system to embrace Critical Race Theory and teach it ubiquitously to students. When caught, they claimed it was an error.
There was definitely an error that took place, and Senator Ted Cruz called it out.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1418922194231562251

View: https://twitter.com/i/status/1418922194231562251
1:37 min

He’s spot on. If it was never discovered by the media and criticized immediately by patriots across the country, the guidance would have remained and CRT would be part of the “new normal” in public educations. Things were already abysmal in our education system before the Neo-Marxist, racist tenets of Critical Race Theory were introduced. Now, it has become a flashpoint that pits leftist school boards against concerned parents desperately attempting to stop the mass indoctrination of an entire generation.
Kudos to Cruz for pointing this out.

 

[marsh]

Free Speech Expert: Big Tech Platforms Are 'Public Accommodations'

Randy Barnett said big tech platforms have become "public accommodations," meaning that these companies should not discriminate.

www.breitbart.com

Free Speech Expert: Big Tech Platforms Are ‘Public Accommodations,’ Cannot Restrict Free Speech

JUSTIN TALLIS/AFP via Getty Images
SEAN MORAN25 Jul 202191

Randy Barnett, a nationally recognized Georgetown University Law professor, said during a Federalist Society forum Thursday that big tech platforms have become “public accommodations,” meaning they cannot discriminate against Americans using them.

The Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy hosted a panel of First Amendment experts to discuss the degree to which Americans need access to social media platforms in the 21st Century, much in a similar manner to how civil rights law declared all Americans should have access to restaurants and lodging in the 20th.

Barnett contended that social media platforms have become so essential to daily living in the United States that they need to be treated as public accommodations.

Public accommodations are businesses that offer goods and services to the public that cannot discriminate. Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits public accommodations from discrimination based on race, color, national origin, and religion.

Barnett said that big tech platforms had become a public accommodation along the lines of non-governmental entities that states typically regulate. He explained:

Just as restaurants and hotels or public accommodations reach via government on highways, social media platforms can be considered public accommodations that are accessed via the internet … No one is compelled to create a public forum for the expression of speech. It is to their credit, that privately on companies like Facebook and Twitter have successfully created a communications platform that because it is so user friendly, has come to be as a central means of exercising the fundamental privilege of freedom of speech as privately owned restaurants and hotels are to the privilege of travel. By so doing, they have become public accommodations such as restaurants and hotels. [Emphasis added]

The public accommodations argument for free speech on the internet differs from other proposals to crack down on big tech censorship.

Some tech experts have called to repeal or amend Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act to open up liability for big tech companies that unfairly censor free speech on their platforms. Section 230 grants tech companies legal immunity from hosting or removing content from their platform.

Others, such as Eugene Volokh, the UCLA School of Law professor, said during a Federalist Society forum in June that the federal government could use common carrier regulations to prevent big tech companies from censoring Americans’ speech.

Common carrier means that a company must provide its services to anyone willing to pay its fees, such as a telecommunications company.

Barnett continued, saying social media companies’ “universal” status in society makes them a public accommodation.

“The universal nature of social media companies seems to easily to place them into the public accommodation side of why,” he said. “Now, these remarks only scratched the surface of the difficulties raised by regulating social media companies as though they are public accommodations, have not reached any final estimate.”

Barnett did caveat that he is not sure that big tech companies have become public accommodations due to their alleged monopoly status, given that there are technically competitors to big tech companies such as Facebook or Twitter.

However, he did note that Republicans in the 1800s developed the theory of “republican citizenship,” in which all citizens should be treated equally.

Barnett said, “Republican citizenship was a privilege of citizenship, was to be treated equally in the public sphere … as a citizen against invidious discrimination.”

He said that if the emphasis is on the rights of an American citizen, then “the fact that you’ve held yourself open to the public would be enough to subject you to public accommodations restrictions.”

 

[marsh]

School District Hosts Year-Long Anti-Whiteness Training to Fight 'Curricular Violence' in Math

redstate.com

School District Hosts Year-Long Anti-Whiteness Training to School Math Teachers on 'Curricular Violence'

By Alex Parker | Jul 26, 2021 1:45 AM ET

(AP Photo/LM Otero, File)

We’re living in an age of redefined words.

For example, “violence” has taken on a whole new meaning.

The old definition: violence.

The best I can tell at this point, the term indicates something someone doesn’t like.

In a related story, Louisville, Kentucky’s Jefferson County Public Schools is set on straightening crooked education.

As reported by The College Fix, the district will host teacher training on antiracist mathematics.

The instruction will span an entire school year, and it’s intended to “eliminate curricular violence.”

Another aim: to “innovate mathematics education.”

Per an application form allegedly obtained by the outlet:

This cohort will include anti-bias, anti-racist, and racially equitable practices to eliminate curricular violence and innovate mathematics education.

And here’s good news for all: In terms of color concentration, the initiative will target not beigeness, not a light walnut, but “whiteness” specifically.

Maybe they’ll work through other hues at a later date.

From the tweeted flyer:

Through this collaboration, mathematics educators will find ways to analyze, identify, and challenge bias, racism, and whiteness in mathematics education and, more importantly, develop pedagogical practices that are anti-racist while being coached and engaged by a national leader in racially equitable mathematics.

The 2-hours-per-month seminars will be led by Kennesaw State University’s Dr. Lateefah Id-Deen.

Kennesaw’s faculty page describes the professor thusly:

My research examines vulnerable students mathematics identities and sense of belonging to enhance student-teacher relationships in mathematics classrooms. I also explore Black students perspectives on their experiences in mathematics classrooms, and ways to support educators in hearing and developing practice in relation to students expressed interests.

Evidently, the training comes courtesy of Jefferson County’s Diversity, Equity, and Poverty Department.




The notion of Caucasian-concocted racism ruining math is nothing new.

As I covered in February, Oregon took a shot at shedding counting and calculating of its KKK-ish components:



From that report:

A Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction: Dismantling Racism in Mathematics Instruction offers 14 manifestations of white supremacy.
Compliments of the New York Post, rid yourself of racism:

1. Perfectionism
2. Sense of Urgency
3. Defensiveness
4. Quantity Over Quality
5. Worship of the Written Word
6. Only One Right way
7. Paternalism
8. Either/Or Thinking
9. Power Hoarding
10. Fear of Open Conflict
11. Individualism
12. Progress is Bigger More
13. Objectivity
14. Right to Comfort

Work’s being done on multiple fronts:



And it isn’t just primary school math that needs a makeover. See also:

Does Not Compute: Science Tries to Cancel the Term ‘Quantum Supremacy’ – for Obvious Reasons

College Symposium Razes the Anti-Black Racism of ‘Good’ Grammar

As noted by the Fix, Kentucky’s contribution to classroom correction is set to proceed as follows:

[Sessions will] focus on topics like white supremacy in mathematics, racial trauma in mathematics, and creating anti-racist lesson plans. …

Along with the monthly 2-hour sessions, participants receive individual coaching and feedback. …

Teachers accepted into the program are required to teach four social justice math lessons during the Spring 2022 semester. They are also expected to “plan for wider dissemination of their learning within their schools and the district.”

Over the last several years, school has certainly changed.

When I was growing up, the classroom was a place where kids retrieved objective data from a book and were tested on their memorization and understanding of such.

At times, they were challenged to apply mathematical principles in order to solve quantitative problems.

With so much present promotion of social awareness, it’s hard to imagine learning institutions having time for the old stuff anymore.

But I suppose they’re figuring it out.

As for racism in math, perhaps our contemporary consciousness will birth an all-new anti-whiteness abacus.

Such a device might prove victorious over violence.

And in doing things differently, it may be just the change we need.

But if it adds and subtracts in a manner other than the one you learned using your fingers and toes…I wouldn’t count on it.

 

[marsh]

Big Tech Tyrants will Now Add Content to a Shared Counterterrorism "Key Database" to Crack down on "White Supremacists and Far-Right Militias" | The Gateway Pundit | by Cristina Laila

The Big Tech tyrants will now add content to a shared counterterrorism “key database” to crack down on “white supremacists and far-right militias.” According to Reuters, “A counterterrorism organization formed by some of the biggest U.S.

www.thegatewaypundit.com

Big Tech Tyrants will Now Add Content to a Shared Counterterrorism “Key Database” to Crack down on “White Supremacists and Far-Right Militias”

By Cristina Laila
Published July 26, 2021 at 1:21pm

The Big Tech tyrants will now add content to a shared counterterrorism “key database” to crack down on “white supremacists and far-right militias.”

According to Reuters, “A counterterrorism organization formed by some of the biggest U.S. tech companies including Facebook (FB.O) and Microsoft (MSFT.O) is significantly expanding the types of extremist content shared between firms in a key database, aiming to crack down on material from white supremacists and far-right militias.”

White supremacists = Christians, Trump supporters

Right-wing militias = Anyone to the right of Karl Marx who disagrees with Biden regime

We now know that Big Tech is working hand in glove with the government to censor and track conservatives so this database will be used by the Biden regime to arrest political dissidents.

Earlier this year, the Biden Justice Department admitted it was “actively considering” whether to give prosecutors new authorities to bring specific charges against “domestic terrorists.”

“One of the things we’re looking at is would we need new authorities,” Brad Wiegmann, deputy assistant attorney general for the department’s national security division, said in April.

Because the current laws on the books to bring charges for arson, violations of weapons or explosives laws isn’t enough.

The reality is the DOJ is looking to make new laws to persecute people with whom they politically disagree -with the help of Big Tech.

Meanwhile Republican leadership remains silent on Big Tech/Big Government tyranny.

 

[marsh]

Big Tech 'Counterterrorism' Org Shifts Focus from Islamic Extremism to 'Far Right'

Big Tech companies including Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Twitter, Reddit, Verizon, Airbnb, and Mailchimp will expand a project of collusion on "counterterrorism" efforts that target domestic right-wing organizations.

www.breitbart.com

Big Tech ‘Counterterrorism’ Org Shifts Focus from Islamic Extremism to ‘Far Right’

Getty/Chip Somodevilla
ALLUM BOKHARI26 Jul 202125

Big Tech companies including Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Twitter, Reddit, Verizon, Airbnb, and Mailchimp will expand a project of collusion on “counterterrorism” efforts that target domestic right-wing organizations.

The organization, which initially focused on building a database on content shared by Islamic extremists linked to Al Qaeda, ISIS, and the Taliban, will now shift focus to right-wing groups including the Proud Boys.

Via Reuters:

A counterterrorism organization formed by some of the biggest U.S. tech companies including Facebook (FB.O) and Microsoft (MSFT.O) is significantly expanding the types of extremist content shared between firms in a key database, aiming to crack down on material from white supremacists and far-right militias, the group told Reuters.

Until now, the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism’s (GIFCT) database has focused on videos and images from terrorist groups on a United Nations list and so has largely consisted of content from Islamist extremist organizations such as Islamic State, al Qaeda and the Taliban.

Over the next few months, the group will add attacker manifestos — often shared by sympathizers after white supremacist violence — and other publications and links flagged by U.N. initiative Tech Against Terrorism. It will use lists from intelligence-sharing group Five Eyes, adding URLs and PDFs from more groups, including the Proud Boys, the Three Percenters and neo-Nazis.

The news comes on the same day that PayPal announced it would work with the far-left Anti-Defamation League (ADL) to monitor and suppress alleged right-wing extremists and would share the data it collects with law enforcement.

 

[marsh]

Big Tech teams up with ADL to target ‘white supremacy’…

Big Brother has a lot of like-minded siblings Complete details here…

citizenfreepress.com

Big Tech teams up with ADL to target ‘white supremacy’…
Posted by Kane on July 26, 2021 3:18 pm

 

[packyderms_wife]

Farm show this afternoon at lunch time, so a little after 12pm. They were discussing all manners of things that are afoot, the most disturbing is apparently leftists are fielding the idea of "tribunals for dangerous thinking" or some such thing. At which point one of the guys said, we'll they can just go get fauci'd. The other guy was like "what?" and he said it's a new trend on the part of the unvaccinated to tell the vaxx karens to go get fauci'd, instead of get ****ed.

540AM out of Fort Dodge, Iowa. Gotta love real time live news that's yet to be censored. You can pick them up over the internet IIRC.

ETA the link

KWMT, 540 AM, Fort Dodge, IA | Free Internet Radio | TuneIn

KWMT - Fort Dodge, IA - Listen to free internet radio, news, sports, music, audiobooks, and podcasts. Stream live CNN, FOX News Radio, and MSNBC. Plus 100,000 AM/FM radio stations featuring music, news, and local sports talk.

tunein.com

 

[Jubilee on Earth]

Big Tech Tyrants will Now Add Content to a Shared Counterterrorism "Key Database" to Crack down on "White Supremacists and Far-Right Militias" | The Gateway Pundit | by Cristina Laila

The Big Tech tyrants will now add content to a shared counterterrorism “key database” to crack down on “white supremacists and far-right militias.” According to Reuters, “A counterterrorism organization formed by some of the biggest U.S.

www.thegatewaypundit.com

Big Tech Tyrants will Now Add Content to a Shared Counterterrorism “Key Database” to Crack down on “White Supremacists and Far-Right Militias”

By Cristina Laila
Published July 26, 2021 at 1:21pm

The Big Tech tyrants will now add content to a shared counterterrorism “key database” to crack down on “white supremacists and far-right militias.”

According to Reuters, “A counterterrorism organization formed by some of the biggest U.S. tech companies including Facebook (FB.O) and Microsoft (MSFT.O) is significantly expanding the types of extremist content shared between firms in a key database, aiming to crack down on material from white supremacists and far-right militias.”

White supremacists = Christians, Trump supporters

Right-wing militias = Anyone to the right of Karl Marx who disagrees with Biden regime

We now know that Big Tech is working hand in glove with the government to censor and track conservatives so this database will be used by the Biden regime to arrest political dissidents.

Earlier this year, the Biden Justice Department admitted it was “actively considering” whether to give prosecutors new authorities to bring specific charges against “domestic terrorists.”

“One of the things we’re looking at is would we need new authorities,” Brad Wiegmann, deputy assistant attorney general for the department’s national security division, said in April.

Because the current laws on the books to bring charges for arson, violations of weapons or explosives laws isn’t enough.

The reality is the DOJ is looking to make new laws to persecute people with whom they politically disagree -with the help of Big Tech.

Meanwhile Republican leadership remains silent on Big Tech/Big Government tyranny.

I mean, if they’re going to try to keep tabs on 80 million Americans and think that it’s going to be productive to whatever they’re trying to achieve, go for it. All they’re going to learn is how pissed off we are and how far were willing to defend our freedom.

 

[marsh]

Nanny State: Boris Johnson to Introduce Junk Food Credit Score App

Boris Johnson is set to launch a China-style social credit score app that will reward families based on their choices at the grocery store.

www.breitbart.com

Nanny State Britain: Boris Johnson to Introduce Junk Food Credit Score App
1,539

Phil Noble - WPA Pool/Getty Images
KURT ZINDULKA26 Jul 20212,501

Prime Minister Boris Johnson is set to launch a communist China-style social credit score app that will reward families based on government-approved choices at the grocery store.

The supposedly Conservative government will launch an app by the end of the year to monitor the supermarket spending habits of families in the UK. Those who choose “healthier” options such as fruits and vegetables or engage in exercise will be rewarded with “loyalty points” in the app, which will translate into discounts and other incentives.

“There is a whole team in Downing Street working on this, and the Prime Minister thinks that we simply cannot go on as before and that we must now tackle it head-on,” a White Hall source told The Telegraph.

“He has been on a very rigorous diet and exercise programme and it is likely he will play a leading role in fronting this whole campaign.”

The outgoing head of the NHS, Lord Stevens said that the UK’s socialised healthcare system will be weighed down in the future if the government failed to tackle the rising obesity in the country.

“The layers of the onion… stretch out to things that are obviously beyond a healthcare system’s direct control, including the obesogenic food environment that children and poorer communities are exposed to.

“Countries, where more than half the population are overweight, have had 10 times more Covid death,” Lord Stevens noted.

Some have criticised the nanny state mentality of the government, likening the programme to the social credit score in China, which tracks the habits of citizens, awarding positive points for buying things like diapers and subtractions for buying alcohol. The communist scheme has also seen tens of millions of citizens barred from travelling because their score was too low.

Political commentator Calvin Robinson wrote in response to the idea of tracking supermarket spending: “The party of small state and privacy has become the party of nanny state interventionism. For shame.

“The Conservative Party needs new leadership.”



Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who blamed his weight for his difficulties when he contracted the Chinese coronavirus last year, has radically shifted his position on government intrusions into personal matters since then.

As a candidate for the Tory Party leadership two years ago, Johnson pledged a review of “sin stealth taxes” and promised to end the “continuing creep of the nanny state”.

“It’s time to take a proper look at the continuing creep of the nanny state and the impact it has on hardworking families across Britain.

“The recent proposal for a tax on milkshakes seems to me to clobber those who can least afford it.

“If we want people to lose weight and live healthier lifestyles, we should encourage people to walk, cycle and generally do more exercise. Rather than just taxing people more, we should look at how effective the so-called ‘sin taxes’ really are, and if they actually change behaviour,” Mr Johnson had said.

However, despite his professed libertarian leanings, Mr Johnson has governed in a far more authoritarian manner, in particular during the Chinese coronavirus crisis, during which he has spearheaded some of the strictest lockdown measures in the world.

Last month, the government announced that “new laws will ban the advertising of food high in fat, sugar or salt (HFSS) on television and online before 9 p.m. when children are most likely to see them.”

This month a government-backed review also called for increased taxes on sugar and salt, ostensibly in order to reduce obesity, however, critics have warned that the taxes will merely punish the poor, who are less able to purchase healthier alternatives.

The review went on to say that Britons should seek out “alternative” sources of protein in lieu of eating meat, including consuming lab-grown meat, which they claimed was better for the environment.

 

[marsh]

Facebook and tech giants to target attacker manifestos, far-right militias in database

A counterterrorism organization formed by some of the biggest U.S. tech companies including Facebook (FB.O) and Microsoft (MSFT.O) is significantly expanding the types of extremist content shared between firms in a key database, aiming to crack down on material from white supremacists and...

www.reuters.com

Facebook and tech giants to target attacker manifestos, far-right militias in database

Elizabeth Culliford

1/5
A militia member with body armor and a Three Percenters militia patch stands in Stone Mountain as various militia groups stage rallies at Stone Mountain, Georgia, U.S. August 15, 2020. REUTERS/Dustin Chambers/File Photo

July 26 (Reuters) - A counterterrorism organization formed by some of the biggest U.S. tech companies including Facebook (FB.O) and Microsoft (MSFT.O) is significantly expanding the types of extremist content shared between firms in a key database, aiming to crack down on material from white supremacists and far-right militias, the group told Reuters.

Until now, the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism's (GIFCT) database has focused on videos and images from terrorist groups on a United Nations list and so has largely consisted of content from Islamist extremist organizations such as Islamic State, al Qaeda and the Taliban.

Over the next few months, the group will add attacker manifestos - often shared by sympathizers after white supremacist violence - and other publications and links flagged by U.N. initiative Tech Against Terrorism. It will use lists from intelligence-sharing group Five Eyes, adding URLs and PDFs from more groups, including the Proud Boys, the Three Percenters and neo-Nazis.

The firms, which include Twitter (TWTR.N) and Alphabet Inc's (GOOGL.O) YouTube, share "hashes," unique numerical representations of original pieces of content that have been removed from their services. Other platforms use these to identify the same content on their own sites in order to review or remove it.

While the project reduces the amount of extremist content on mainstream platforms, groups can still post violent images and rhetoric on many other sites and parts of the internet.

The tech group wants to combat a wider range of threats, said GIFCT's Executive Director Nicholas Rasmussen in an interview with Reuters.

"Anyone looking at the terrorism or extremism landscape has to appreciate that there are other parts... that are demanding attention right now," Rasmussen said, citing the threats of far-right or racially motivated violent extremism.

The tech platforms have long been criticized for failing to police violent extremist content, though they also face concerns over censorship. The issue of domestic extremism, including white supremacy and militia groups, took on renewed urgency following the deadly Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.

Fourteen companies can access the GIFCT database, including Reddit, Snapchat-owner Snap (SNAP.N), Facebook-owned Instagram, Verizon (VZ.N) Media, Microsoft's LinkedIn and file-sharing service Dropbox (DBX.O).

GIFCT, which is now an independent organization, was created in 2017 under pressure from U.S. and European governments after a series of deadly attacks in Paris and Brussels. Its database mostly contains digital fingerprints of videos and images related to groups on the U.N. Security Council's consolidated sanctions list and a few specific live-streamed attacks, such as the 2019 mosque shootings in Christchurch, New Zealand.

GIFCT has faced criticism and concerns from some human and digital rights groups over centralized or over-broad censorship.

"Over-achievement in this takes you in the direction of violating someone's rights on the internet to engage in free expression," said Rasmussen.

Emma Llanso, director of Free Expression at the Center for Democracy & Technology, said in a statement: "This expansion of the GIFCT hash database only intensifies the need for GIFCT to improve the transparency and accountability of these content-blocking resources."

"As the database expands, the risks of mistaken takedown only increase," she added.

The group wants to continue to broaden its database to include hashes of audio files or certain symbols and grow its membership. It recently added home-rental giant Airbnb (ABNB.O) and email marketing company Mailchimp as members.

 

[marsh]

PayPal Working with ADL to Financially Blacklist and Spy on 'Extremists'

PayPal, the online payment processing giant, has announced it will work with the far-left Anti-Defamation League (ADL) to collect information on and cut off financial flows to so-called extremists, and that it will share the data it gathers with law enforcement, policymakers, and the rest of the...

www.breitbart.com

PayPal Working with ADL to Financially Blacklist and Spy on ‘Extremists’

Michael Loccisano /Getty
ALLUM BOKHARI26 Jul 2021259

PayPal, the online payment processing giant, has announced it will work with the far-left Anti-Defamation League (ADL) to collect information on and cut off financial flows to so-called extremists, and that it will share the data it gathers with law enforcement, policymakers, and the rest of the financial industry.

Via Reuters:

The initiative will be led through ADL’s Center on Extremism, and will focus on uncovering and disrupting the financial flows supporting white supremacist and anti-government organizations.

It will also look at networks spreading and profiting from antisemitism, Islamophobia, racism, anti-immigrant, anti-Black, anti-Hispanic and anti-Asian bigotry.

The information collected through the initiatives will be shared with other firms in the financial industry, law enforcement and policymakers, PayPal said.

“We’re hoping to have impact on fighting hatred and extremism, which sadly seems to be surging in society across the globe,” Karczmer said in an interview. “As the son of a Holocaust survivor I know all too well the real world impact that come from hatred and extremist groups.”

PayPal took its first step towards suppressing dissent when it banned the account of Julian Assange in 2011. In recent years it has targeted the right, blacklisting the free speech video platform BitChute, Republican congressional candidate and activist Laura Loomer, and the conservative street artist Sabo.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a liberal digital rights organization, has opposed the rise of financial censorship for over a decade. In 2018, the organization warned that banks, payment processors, and credit card companies were becoming “de facto internet censors.”

PayPal’s announcement that it will work with law enforcement adds another dimension to its political activities — collusion with the state, and surveillance. Specifically, it means likely collusion with the Department of Justice, the same executive department that would get to hold colossal antitrust penalties over the tech giants under congressional Democrat proposals.

Commenting on the news, Blake Masters, a candidate in the Republican primary to contest Arizona’s Senate seat, called PayPal’s decision an “obvious pretext to suppress any dissent.”

 

[marsh]

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0CG6JH9Ifw
7:26 min

This story exemplifies the TERRIFYING partnership between big gov. & high tech

Jul 27, 2021


Glenn Beck

Glenn tells the story of Michael Williams, a 64-year-old man accused of fatally shooting another in Chicago. But the evidence police used to charge Williams was based on a high tech program called ‘ShotSpotter,’ which it turns out, is far more susceptible to errors than perhaps once thought. This 'disturbing' story exemplifies the terrifying partnership between our big government's growing surveillance state and high tech... Watch Glenn dive more into this topic during his Wednesday night special, tomorrow at 9pm ET only on BlazeTV.

 

[marsh]

Anti-Critical Race Theory Candidates Sweep Local Board of Education Endorsements

Critical Race Theory opponents in CT won out after Republicans voted to place 5 of their candidates on the board of education ballot.

www.breitbart.com

Anti-Critical Race Theory Candidates Sweep Local Board of Education Endorsements
139

CDC/Pexels
DR. SUSAN BERRY27 Jul 202195

Critical Race Theory (CRT) opponents in Guilford, Connecticut, won out last week after Republicans voted to place five candidates the group endorsed on the board of education ballot.

The five candidates, endorsed by local organization Truth in Education, were selected from eight nominees and defeated three incumbent board of education members, reported the Connecticut Examiner.

According to the report, several candidates backed by Truth in Education noted a lack of transparency from current board members and failure to hear the concerns of parents and community members.

The Examiner reported in late June a presentation by Truth in Education drew several hundred people in Guilford. The group discussed the dangers of CRT, a Marxist ideology that claims America is a systemically racist nation, and urged parents to resist the teaching of its concepts in local schools.

Truth in Education distributed a flyer during its presentation that read:

Guilford students must understand that America is exceptional, not because we are better than anybody else, but because of our God-given freedoms which are enumerated and codified in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. Guilford students must study these documents, revere them and resolve to protect them from all enemies, both foreign and domestic.

Fox 61 News also observed Guilford Superintendent Dr. Paul Freeman denied his district is teaching CRT concepts. The report noted:

Dr. Paul Freeman says it is inaccurate that this is being taught in schools. In a statement, he said in part:

“We are working in Guilford Schools to be more equitable in our practice, to embrace diverse texts in our classrooms, to diversify our teaching ranks, to address difficult historical events honestly and openly, and to ensure that all children feel heard in their schools.”

The Examiner reported that last year Guilford’s board of education voted to eliminate use of the image of a Native American as the mascot of the school district. Additionally, the district began a curriculum audit and prepared to hire an “equity liaison” who would coordinate an effort with other school districts to bring more teachers of color into the schools.

The National Education Association (NEA) moved to openly promote the teaching of CRT in K-12 schools and to oppose any bans on instruction in both CRT and the widely discredited New York Times’ “1619 Project.”

During its virtual representative assembly, held June 30-July 3, the nation’s largest teachers’ union agreed to “research the organizations attacking educators,” doing what it referred to as “anti-racist work,” as well as to “use the research already done and put together a list of resources and recommendations for state affiliates, locals, and individual educators to utilize when they are attacked.”

At least half of all states in the country are taking steps to prohibit the teaching of CRT and its concepts.

Parents are packing local school board meetings to fight against the teaching of CRT in their local schools and, as is the case in Guilford, moving to oust school board members who promote CRT.

Students themselves are speaking up at school board meetings, sharing their experiences of the introduction of CRT into their classrooms.

A fourth grade student in the Sartell-St. Stephen school district in Minnesota, recently informed the school board she and her classmates were required to complete an “equity survey,” and was told by teachers not to “repeat any of the questions to our parents.”

A Trafalgar Group survey released last week found 51.8 percent of American voters believe parents who oppose the teaching of CRT in schools should take action.

The survey, conducted in partnership with Convention of States Action, found 27.7 percent of voters said parents opposed to CRT should remove their children from public school if the race-based ideology is introduced in the curriculum, while 24.1 percent said parents should run their own candidates and work to take control of local school boards.

 

[marsh]

Zerohedge

ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero

www.zerohedge.com

Authoritarians Drunk On Power: It Is Time To Recalibrate The Government

WEDNESDAY, JUL 28, 2021 - 12:00 AM
Authored by John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

“The executive power in our government is not the only, perhaps not even the principal, object of my solicitude. The tyranny of the legislature is really the danger most to be feared, and will continue to be so for many years to come. The tyranny of the executive power will come in its turn, but at a more distant period.”

- Thomas Jefferson, Democracy in America

It is time to recalibrate the government.

For years now, we have suffered the injustices, cruelties, corruption and abuse of an entrenched government bureaucracy that has no regard for the Constitution or the rights of the citizenry.

By “government,” I’m not referring to the highly partisan, two-party bureaucracy of the Republicans and Democrats. Rather, I’m referring to “government” with a capital “G,” the entrenched Deep State that is unaffected by elections, unaltered by populist movements, and has set itself beyond the reach of the law.


We are overdue for a systemic check on the government’s overreaches and power grabs.

We have lingered too long in this strange twilight zone where ego trumps justice, propaganda perverts truth, and imperial presidents—empowered to indulge their authoritarian tendencies by legalistic courts, corrupt legislatures and a disinterested, distracted populace—rule by fiat rather than by the rule of law.

This COVID-19 pandemic has provided the government with the perfect excuse to lay claim to a long laundry list of terrifying lockdown powers (at both the federal and state level) that override the Constitution: the ability to suspend the Constitution, indefinitely detain American citizens, bypass the courts, quarantine whole communities or segments of the population, override the First Amendment by outlawing religious gatherings and assemblies of more than a few people, shut down entire industries and manipulate the economy, muzzle dissidents, reshape financial markets, create a digital currency (and thus further restrict the use of cash), determine who should live or die, and impose health mandates on large segments of the population.

These kinds of crises tend to bring out the authoritarian tendencies in government.

That’s no surprise: power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Where we find ourselves now is in the unenviable position of needing to rein in all three branches of government—the Executive, the Judicial, and the Legislative—that have exceeded their authority and grown drunk on power.

This is exactly the kind of concentrated, absolute power the founders attempted to guard against by establishing a system of checks of balances that separate and shares power between three co-equal branches: the executive, the legislative and the judiciary.

“The system of checks and balances that the Framers envisioned now lacks effective checks and is no longer in balance,” concludes law professor William P. Marshall. “The implications of this are serious. The Framers designed a system of separation of powers to combat government excess and abuse and to curb incompetence. They also believed that, in the absence of an effective separation-of-powers structure, such ills would inevitably follow. Unfortunately, however, power once taken is not easily surrendered.”

Unadulterated power in any branch of government is a menace to freedom.

There’s no point debating which political party would be more dangerous with these powers.

The fact that any individual—or branch of government—of any political persuasion is empowered to act like a dictator is danger enough.

So what we can do to wrest back control over a runaway government and an imperial presidency?

It won’t be easy.

We are the unwitting victims of a system so corrupt that those who stand up for the rule of law and aspire to transparency in government are in the minority.

This corruption is so vast it spans all branches of government: from the power-hungry agencies under the executive branch and the corporate puppets within the legislative branch to a judiciary that is, more often than not, elitist and biased towards government entities and corporations.

We are ruled by an elite class of individuals who are completely out of touch with the travails of the average American.

We are viewed as relatively expendable in the eyes of government: faceless numbers of individuals who serve one purpose, which is to keep the government machine running through our labor and our tax dollars. Those in power aren’t losing any sleep over the indignities we are being made to suffer or the possible risks to our health. All they seem to care about are power and control.

We are being made to suffer countless abuses at the government’s hands.
We have little protection against standing armies (domestic and military), invasive surveillance, marauding SWAT teams, an overwhelming government arsenal of assault vehicles and firepower, and a barrage of laws that criminalize everything from vegetable gardens to lemonade stands.

In the name of national security, we’re being subjected to government agencies such as the NSA, FBI and others listening in on our phone calls, reading our mail, monitoring our emails, and carrying out warrantless “black bag” searches of our homes. Adding to the abuse, we have to deal with surveillance cameras mounted on street corners and in traffic lights, weather satellites co-opted for use as spy cameras from space, and thermal sensory imaging devices that can detect heat and movement through the walls of our homes.

That doesn’t even begin to touch on the many ways in which our Fourth Amendment rights are trampled upon by militarized police and SWAT teams empowered to act as laws unto themselves.

In other words, freedom—or what’s left of it—is threatened from every direction.
The predators of the police state are wreaking havoc on our freedoms, our communities, and our lives. The government doesn’t listen to the citizenry, it refuses to abide by the Constitution, which is our rule of law, and it treats the citizenry as a source of funding and little else. Police officers are shooting unarmed citizens and their household pets. Government agents—including local police—are being armed to the teeth and encouraged to act like soldiers on a battlefield. Bloated government agencies are fleecing taxpayers. Government technicians are spying on our emails and phone calls. Government contractors are making a killing by waging endless wars abroad.

In other words, the American police state is alive and well and flourishing.

Nothing has changed, and nothing will change unless we insist on it.
We have arrived at the dystopian future depicted in the 2005 film V for Vendetta, which is no future at all.

Set in the year 2020, V for Vendetta (written and produced by the Wachowskis) provides an eerie glimpse into a parallel universe in which a government-engineered virus wreaks havoc on the world. Capitalizing on the people’s fear, a totalitarian government comes to power that knows all, sees all, controls everything and promises safety and security above all.

Concentration camps (jails, private prisons and detention facilities) have been established to house political prisoners and others deemed to be enemies of the state. Executions of undesirables (extremists, troublemakers and the like) are common, while other enemies of the state are made to “disappear.” Populist uprisings and protests are met with extreme force. The television networks are controlled by the government with the purpose of perpetuating the regime. And most of the population is hooked into an entertainment mode and are clueless.

Sounds painfully familiar, doesn’t it?

As director James McTeighe observed about the tyrannical regime in V for Vendetta, “It really showed what can happen when society is ruled by government, rather than the government being run as a voice of the people. I don’t think it’s such a big leap to say things like that can happen when leaders stop listening to the people.”

Clearly, our leaders have stopped listening to the American people.

We are—and have been for some time—the unwitting victims of a system so corrupt that those who stand up for the rule of law and aspire to transparency in government are in the minority. This corruption is so vast it spans all branches of government—from the power-hungry agencies under the executive branch and the corporate puppets within the legislative branch to a judiciary that is, more often than not, elitist and biased towards government entities and corporations.

We are ruled by an elite class of individuals who are completely out of touch with the travails of the average American. We are relatively expendable in the eyes of government—faceless numbers of individuals who serve one purpose, which is to keep the government machine running through our labor and our tax dollars.

What will it take for the government to start listening to the people again?

In V for Vendetta, as in my new novel The Erik Blair Diaries, it takes an act of terrorism for the people to finally mobilize and stand up to the government’s tyranny: in Vendetta, V the film’s masked crusader blows up the seat of government, while in Erik Blair, freedom fighters plot to unmask the Deep State.

These acts of desperation and outright anarchy are what happens when a parasitical government muzzles the citizenry, fences them in, herds them, brands them, whips them into submission, forces them to ante up the sweat of their brows while giving them little in return, and then provides them with little to no outlet for voicing their discontent: people get desperate, citizens lose hope, and lawful, nonviolent resistance gives way to unlawful, violent resistance.
This way lies madness.

Then again, this madness may be unavoidable unless we can wrest back control over our runaway government starting at the local level.

How to do this? It’s not rocket science.

There is no 10-step plan. If there were a 10-step plan, however, the first step would be as follows: turn off the televisions, tune out the politicians, and do your part to stand up for freedom principles in your own communities.

Stand up for your own rights, of course, but more importantly, stand up for the rights of those with whom you might disagree. Defend freedom at all costs.

Defend justice at all costs. Make no exceptions based on race, religion, creed, politics, immigration status, sexual orientation, etc. Vote like Americans, for a change, not Republicans or Democrats.

Most of all, use your power—and there is power in our numbers—to nullify anything and everything the government does that undermines the freedom principles on which this nation was founded.

Don’t play semantics. Don’t justify. Don’t politicize it. If it carries even a whiff of tyranny, oppose it. Demand that your representatives in government cut you a better deal, one that abides by the Constitution and doesn’t just attempt to sidestep it.

That’s their job: make them do it.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, all freedoms hang together. They fall together, as well.

The police state does not discriminate. Eventually, we will all suffer the same fate.

 

[marsh]

UN Greenlights Big Tech Mega-Database To Censor American 'Extremists'

A Big Tech-led group is using its power to broaden its shared censorship database to curb 'extremist content' and collect visuals deemed white supremacist.

thefederalist.com

United Nations Greenlights Big Tech Mega-Database To Censor Americans Deemed ‘Extremists’

JULY 27, 2021 By Jordan Davidson

A Big Tech-led group is using its influence and power to broaden its shared censorship database to curb “extremist content” and collect video and images deemed white supremacist, according to Reuters. The expansion comes after the group “took on renewed urgency” after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, which Democrats and tech giants continue to use as an excuse to justify suppression.

Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter, and YouTube, tech oligarchs trigger-happy to deplatform political dissidents, founded the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism in 2017 in what they labeled “a new collective effort to prevent the spread of terrorist and violent extremist content online.” Initially, the organization claimed to focus its efforts on rounding up content from terrorist organizations such as the Islamic State and the Taliban as designated by the United Nations, but now the monopolies running GIFCT are using their oligarch power to crack down on dissidents of their elitist agenda.

Just five years after its founding, GIFCT is expanding its database to include “white supremacist” content as determined by the United Nation’s Tech Against Terrorism project and intelligence groups such as Five Eyes. According to Reuters, the database will include “attacker manifestos — often shared by sympathizers after white supremacist violence” as well as links and material from Proud Boys, Three Percenters, and other “neo-Nazi” groups that are identified and then censored or removed by social media platforms.

Other tech companies, which recently received pressure from the White House to flag content that doesn’t align with the administration’s COVID-19 propaganda from their respective platforms, are now joining social media giants in their efforts and will be able to access the trove of “extremist” material to see which platforms have already removed it.

Although new to GIFCT, many of these tech giants have previously engaged in censorship and deplatforming. Airbnb pledged to prevent “hate groups” from visiting D.C. during President Joe Biden’s peaceful inauguration. Mailchimp used its power to deplatform opinions it doesn’t like. Pinterest and Instagram banned former President Donald Trump.

This digital campaign, however, isn’t good enough for GIFCT’s Executive Director Nicholas Rasmussen, who said he wants a larger crackdown on “extremism.”

“Anyone looking at the terrorism or extremism landscape has to appreciate that there are other parts … that are demanding attention right now,” Rasmussen said, ignoring complaints of overreach to cite “the threats of far-right or racially motivated violent extremism” that could come through “audio” and “symbols.”

GIFCT’s decision comes on the heels of nearly a year and a half of rampant censorship by some of these same companies who are willing to do the government’s social-credit-system dirty work for them.

 

[marsh]

Chinese Human Surveillance Network Discovered In North Atlanta - CDM - Human Reporters • Not Machines

Chinese Foreign Agents Actively Work To Intimidate And Surveil Americans.

creativedestructionmedia.com

Chinese Human Surveillance Network Discovered In North Atlanta

by CD Media StaffJuly 27, 2021320543

The Chinese immigrant community in the United States is made up of various types. Many are attempting to get away from the Chinese Communist Party and live a free life. They despise what Chairman Xi and his minions (here and in China) stand for. They have faced persecution at home and understand what real ‘oppression’ and ‘resistance’ is. They know full well what the CCP is capable of.
Others simply want to be left alone to make money.

However, CDMedia has discovered through interactions with people on the ground, in Johns Creek, and other North Atlanta areas, there is an active surveillance network amongst those Chinese immigrants loyal to Beijing.

We have received scores of tips in the last nine months describing experiences being actively and publicly surveilled by Chinese agents. Many times the activity is also designed to be a threat, to intimidate Americans from standing up for their political beliefs and even their Constitutional rights.

Here is the latest we received yesterday.

“I participated in a drive-by protest of Raffensperger’s home in November. There were a couple of Orientals filming the event from at the corner down 100 ft. or so from his driveway. I wondered why. Now I have reason to believe I know why… [They were surveilling us, taking license plate numbers, to know who was protesting Brad]

One current resident of Johns Creek told us of his experiences over several years. We spoke to him on the phone yesterday.

“They document everything.

“Very strategic. Why at least [there is] one [agent] in every neighborhood, near the entrance. They monitor the opposition.

“Most of them are foot soldiers doing grunt work and report back to local leaders, and then it goes up the chain.”

This local resident also described ‘in his face’ surveillance of his children in his neighborhood. “Being a known Trump supporter, after the election, this Chinese woman followed my family around the neighborhood and took videos of my kids. All very creepy. It was a direct threat”.

This type of activity has been documented in other countries as well.

Strategy and Tactics: Chinese Immigrants and Diasporic Spaces in Johannesburg, South Africa

BEIJING’S INFLUENCE OPERATIONS TARGET CHINESE DIASPORA

And here is an excellent summary of tactics by Eurasia Review.

Yang Jiechi stated in his article that it had become “necessary to actively push the governments of countries of their residence to build a favorable environment for Chinese compatriots.” In the past few years, PRC diplomatic officials in Malaysia have carried out regular visits to ethnic Chinese communities

(China-Malaysia Relations: The Three Dilemmas Of Malaysian Chinese – Analysis), endorsed pro-China political candidates, and attended high level meetings by political parties dominated by ethnic Chinese.

Beijing’s influence operations cynically exploit the diversity of other countries for the CCP’s own ends. Coercion and intimidation of Chinese living abroad harms their civil rights and freedoms and damages their political institutions. The efforts by the People’s Republic to muzzle critical diaspora Chinese media voices, infiltrate and manipulate policymaking, and encourage the formation of pro-Chinese political factions not only harms the sovereignty of other countries, they can also exacerbate social tensions within pluralistic societies and encourage polarization.
Whoever the America First conservative is that takes illegitimate Joe’s place in The White House soon, has to deal first with the threat among us.

CDMedia will continue to investigate these tactics.

 

[marsh]

New York Times Reporter Says the Quiet Part Out Loud: Calls for Labeling Trump Supporters "Enemies of the State" to Combat "National Security Threats" | The Gateway Pundit | by Jim Hoft

Katie Benner New York Times reporter Katie Benner said the quiet part out loud yesterday.

www.thegatewaypundit.com

New York Times Reporter Says the Quiet Part Out Loud: Calls for Labeling Trump Supporters “Enemies of the State” to Combat “National Security Threats”

By Jim Hoft
Published July 28, 2021 at 11:24am

Katie Benner
New York Times reporter Katie Benner said the quiet part out loud yesterday.

Benner wants the regime to label Trump supporters “enemies of the state” to combat “national security threats.”

Benner later took down her tweets.

She approves of BLM but wants patriotic Americans labeled enemies of the state.

What a sick woman!

FOX News reported:

New York Times reporter Katie Benner suggested on Tuesday that in order to tackle America’s current national security “dilemma,” Trump supporters should be considered “enemies of the state.”

As the first hearing of the Jan. 6 committee was underway on Capitol Hill, Benner took to Twitter to stress that it “underscores” what she indicated was the ongoing threat within the U.S.

“Today’s #January6thSelectCommittee underscores the America’s current, essential natsec dilemma: Work to combat legitimate national security threats now entails calling a politician’s supporters enemies of the state,” Benner wrote in now-deleted tweets.

 

[Housecarl]

Former city council candidate to introduce ballot initiative creating ‘African American autonomous zones’ in DC

Former At-Large DC Council candidate Addison Sarter is expected to bring forth a ballot initiative that would look to create African American autonomous areas with in DC, which would have their own mayor and city council members.

thepostmillennial.com

Former city council candidate to introduce ballot initiative creating 'African American autonomous zones' in DC

Former At-Large DC Council candidate Addison Sarter is expected to bring forth a ballot initiative that would look to create African American autonomous areas with in DC, which would have their own mayor and city council members.

Hannah NightingaleWashington DC
July 21, 2021 1:34 PM3 Mins Reading

Former At-Large DC Council candidate Addison Sarter is expected to bring forth a ballot initiative that would look to create African American autonomous areas with in DC, which would have their own mayor and city council members.

According to WAMU reporter Martin Austermuhle, Sarter is expected to propose this ballot initiative, but did not give a timeline.

Sarter wrote about the initiative back in April, outlining what the African American autonomy Act of 2021 would entail.

The act would preserve East of the Anacostia River and the Langdon Park/Brentwood area in Northeast DC, as well as Colonial Village and Shepered Park in Northwest DC as historically black areas that would be covered under the act.

"These African American autonomous regions, would be turned into their own cities, with their own mayor and own city Councilmembers, operating separately and free from control by the present DC government," wrote Sarter.

According to Sarter, east of the Anacostia is 90 percent African American, a place he calls "the perfect area for a African American autonomous region" due to its population demographic and its isolation from the rest of the city due to the 295 highway that runs along the river.

"To deny African Americans autonomous regions in DC, would be denying us our basic human rights," wrote Sarter.

Sarter states that African Americans have the right to an autonomous region because they classify as indigenous people under the United Nations’ definitions. In the United Nations Declaration of Indigenous Rights, they state that indigenous people have the right to autonomous areas.

According to the United Nations, indigenous people are defined as: “the descendants of those who inhabited a country or a geographical region at the time when people of different cultures or ethnic origins arrived. The new arrivals later became dominant through conquest, occupation, settlement or other means."

Sarter claims that African Americans are indigenous people because" African Americans are descendants of Africans who inhabited West and Central Africa at the time when a people of different cultures and ethnic origins, known as Europeans, arrived. These Europeans later became dominant through their conquest to Africa known as the Atlantic slave trade and American slavery."

He goes on to state that interest groups and those making the laws in these majority black areas do not live in the area, and that they were polluting neighborhoods and destroying low income housing, calling the matter a case of life or death.

Sarter explains that the act would not be segregation, that the initiative would not prevent people from traveling to either side of the river.

"I believe white people should also have the right to control the institutions in their community. They already do control. I believe Latinos and Asians should also have the right to control the institutions in their community as well," Sarter states. "All races should have the right to control the institutions in their community. Unfortunately, African Americans continue to be systematically prevented from controlling the institutions in our communities. This is why this initiative is being proposed."

Austermuhle elaborated on the challenges this initiative would face in its attempts to get on a ballot. He said that beyond getting signatures, it could potentially violate parts of the Home Rule Act.

According to the DC City Council, "The Council of the District of Columbia is the legislative branch of local government established by the “District of Columbia Home Rule Act of 1973”, enacted by Congress and ratified by District voters. The Council is composed of a Chairman elected at large and twelve Members–four of whom are elected at large, and one from each of the District’s eight wards. A Member is elected to serve a four-year term."

[COMMENT: Does this mean the Dutch indigenous of New York and New Jersey are entitled to autonomous areas? Asking for a friend....]

The popcorn is on back order....and yes the indigenous Dutch and Tribes ss well are thus due their due....

 

[marsh]

Marlow: Woke Corporations Are 'Apparatchiks Doing Propaganda for the Beijing Regime'

Breitbart News editor-in-chief Alex Marlow, author of Breaking the News: Exposing the Establishment Media’s Hidden Deals and Secret Corruption, said Wednesday on Newsmax TV's "Rob Schmitt Tonight" that American corporations like Coca-Cola have essentially become "apparatchiks doing propaganda...

www.breitbart.com

Marlow: Woke Corporations Are ‘Apparatchiks Doing Propaganda for the Beijing Regime’

PAM KEY28 Jul 202122

Video on website 3:40 min

Breitbart News editor-in-chief Alex Marlow, author of Breaking the News: Exposing the Establishment Media’s Hidden Deals and Secret Corruption, said Wednesday on Newsmax TV’s “Rob Schmitt Tonight” that American corporations like Coca-Cola have essentially become “apparatchiks doing propaganda for the Beijing regime.”

Schmitt said, “Yeah, sure. Coca-Cola, one of the companies that condemned the Georgia voting law standing up for China now, I mean, what a moment this is.”

Marlow said, “This is such an important moment. I’ll tell you, when I wrote the book, really one of the major parts of it was just realizing how embedded our media conglomerates are with the Chinese Communist Party in Beijing. We’re seeing that the woke corporations that are guiding so much of our culture at this time, that are forcing places like you know, Major League Baseball to move the All-Star Game from majority Black Atlanta to Denver, Colorado.”

He continued, “These exact corporations are the ones you could take a bold stand, a brave stand, stand up to Communist China that is genocide in human beings, that is interning people, that is organ harvesting, there’s no human rights, that imprisons or disappeared journalists, they could take a stand right now with these Olympics and say we will not participate if they take place in China. Instead, you get this lying, lying straight through their teeth. These people are essentially apparatchiks doing propaganda for the Beijing regime.”

He added, “They’re so afraid of losing access to the Chinese market that they are willing to sell their souls, and that’s literally what they’re doing. And if you work for these corporations, here is the harsh reality, you are sadly part of it. This is something where there needs to be internal pressure the same way there’s been internal pressure for these organizations to not, you know, advertise on conservative websites or things like that, or stand by things that go against the woke social justice warrior status quo of 2021. The Chinese people are suffering, and people can stand up to these businesses right now and do something very meaningful.”

 

[marsh]

The Duplicitous Ruling Elites Have Awakened the American People

Over the past three decades, a sizable majority of the ruling elites have been preoccupied with self-aggrandizement and cohabitation with the Communist Chinese, ignoring the gradual and now complete domination of many of the nation’s institutio...

www.americanthinker.com

July 28, 2021
The Duplicitous Ruling Elites Have Awakened the American People

By Steve McCann

Over the past three decades, a sizable majority of the ruling elites have been preoccupied with self-aggrandizement and cohabitation with the Communist Chinese, ignoring the gradual and now complete domination of many of the nation’s institutions, and most importantly the Democrat party, by American Marxists.

After a premeditated fraudulent election underwritten by the same credulous elites, and with a witless

marionette in the White House, these collectivists have been de facto governing the nation since January 20, 2021. The past six months have revealed that thanks to these Marxists’ mindless allegiance to failed ideology and breathtaking ignorance of the American experience and citizenry combined with the now unmasked duplicity of the ruling elites, there is a massive awakening bubbling to the surface.

This cabal has for the past five years marginalized, physically confronted, and repeatedly accused not only the 75+ million Americans who voted for Donald Trump but any American not in lockstep with them of being racists, fascists, and white supremacists as well as homophobic, xenophobic and among the vilest people on the face of the earth.

What did they do once in power? Try to bury the hatchet or just ignore this vast swath of the citizenry and hope they go away? Neither. They chose to further alienate the bulk of the voting populace.

They are accelerating demeaning accusations and rhetoric and exploiting the January 6th Capitol incursion as a vehicle to isolate and intimidate many of these same Americans. They are continuing to fuel racial animosity in the hope of further dividing the citizenry and colluding with social media to censor “misinformation.” Thus, fomenting resentment, ongoing political confrontations, and a determined retaliation at the ballot box in 2022 and 2024.

Committed to changing the demographics of the nation, the American Marxists have flung open the borders and are pushing amnesty as well as ultimate citizenship for upwards of 29+ million illegal immigrants and at least another 2-4 million more every year. It is immaterial to the Marxists that the vast majority of these illegal immigrants are lacking basic literacy and employable skills.

Currently, 30% of all working families (or nearly 50 million Americans) are low-income but above the poverty threshold. 60% of these are families headed by racial/ ethnic minorities. African Americans, while 13% of the population (41 million), account for nearly 30% of low-income working families. Another 39 million Americans live below the poverty level.

Thus, a total of 89 million Americans live in low-income families or in poverty.

The American Marxists, through the Democrat party, claim to be the champion of minorities and low-income families while they plot to ultimately legalize an illegal alien population equivalent to 75% of the current African American population.

The Marxists and the Democrat party do not give a damn about the African American population, native-born Hispanics, and the low-income white working families as the potential votes of the illegal population are more important. As the voting patterns in 2020 confirmed, these Americans are rapidly awakening and turning on this traitorous cabal as they are becoming acutely aware of being permanently marginalized.

Thanks to the Democrat-Marxist policies of defunding the police, ending cash bail, and curtailing the prosecution of criminals, murder, and mayhem on the streets of America has skyrocketed. Now that they are in charge of the federal government, it is national policy to actively and solely focus on gun control and disarming law-abiding citizens as the only solution to the increasing violence and criminality.

Currently, 235 million Americans either own or could see themselves owning a gun. The Marxists in the Democrat party believe they can effectively confiscate guns in a nation of 330 million and 3.8 million square miles by doing the following:

1) Putting language in various bills that will in effect create a national registry of all gun owners.
2) Outlawing semi-automatic weapons.
3) Punitively taxing the ownership of guns, magazines, and ammunition making gun ownership unaffordable and requiring a federal license to own a gun.
4) Expanding open-ended red flag laws allowing anyone to file a complaint against someone, ostensibly based on their suspicions, thus allowing the police to seize the guns of the accused prior to any judicial proceedings.

In their zeal to overturn the Second Amendment and a centuries-old tradition of gun ownership that predates the Constitution, the American Marxists do not fathom the building tidal wave of resistance and push back from nearly two-thirds of the nation’s citizenry who view gun ownership as the only viable means of self-defense against the unbridled criminality wrought by the unfathomable policies of the Marxists.

Inflation, which these same Marxists have unleashed by their profligate spending, is set to devour the economy if spending and ongoing money creation is not curtailed. Which they have no intention of doing as they are committed to a myriad of spending programs. The estimated average annual cost of these proposals exceeds $2+ Trillion over and above current spending. In order to pay for these programs and keep deficit spending at past historic levels, revenue from individual taxpayers would have to be increased by 150%. The average American taxpayer will revolt and refuse to pay the massive increase in taxes.

Refusal to pay exorbitant and unfair taxes is in this nation’s DNA as the United States came into existence based on a revulsion to paying punitive taxes.

Nor will the American Marxists be able to continue to coerce the Federal Reserve into “printing” trillions of dollars in new money for an extended period of time due to the very real threat of creating massive hyperinflation and potentially leading to a replay of the catastrophe of the Weimar Republic (Germany) in the 1920s.

Thus, the resources to combat the recession/depression that is on the horizon will not be available as the nation’s ability to tax, borrow or create money will have been essentially exhausted if the American Marxists remain in power. Over two-thirds of the citizenry is convinced that the economy is getting significantly worse and blame the current regime.

The Democrats have introduced legislation (the “Equality Act”) that will undermine and destroy religious liberty in the United States, a long-term goal of the American Marxists. They are foolishly determined to overturn 245 years of laws, a four-century tradition of religious freedom, and one of the philosophical pillars in the founding of this nation.

Currently, 71% of Americans (235 million) are members of a Christian denomination (160 million of whom are Evangelical Christians and Catholics). The destruction of religious freedom is no longer a hypothetical but a reality that is not lost on a vast segment of the American population.

True believers in Marxism have never been able to successfully govern any nation let alone one that has a 245-year history of individual freedom and free enterprise. The 20th Century is replete with examples of nations that succumbed to a one-party Marxist-inspired oligarchy. In every case, these were nations that suffered overwhelming societal destruction in global and regional wars or were nations suffering from societal dislocations due to not having a history of freedom and self-determination. Marxism and its offsprings (communism, fascism, and socialism) dramatically failed and further devastated these same nations.

Yet, the American Marxists are, for the moment, in charge of governing this nation and thus are wreaking havoc on the citizenry that will take time and determination to overcome. To paraphrase Shakespeare, the fault lies not with the American Marxists who are ignorantly captive to Marxist ideology and are few in number, but with the ruling elites who have betrayed the American people by allowing this scenario to play out over the past 3-4 decades.

When a significant majority of those running for election as a Democrat on the local, state, and federal level in 2022, 2024, and beyond are defeated, the American Marxists will be permanently cast upon the ash heap of history. More important, however, is the recapture of the culture by re-transforming America’s institutions. The citizenry must force and endure dramatic institutional battles outside of government: in universities, non-profits, media, arts, public sector unions, corporate boardrooms, and the array of institutions that constitute the sinews of a self-ruling people. The current iteration of the ruling elites must be permanently marginalized. Just defeating the American Marxists will not save this nation for generations yet unborn.

 

[marsh]

The Left Essentially Exists To Make Your Entire Life Worse

These policies are from unhappy people who have realized that combining ideology and claims of victimhood give them power they can use to hurt others.

thefederalist.com

The Left Essentially Exists To Make Your Entire Life Worse
These policies are the products of unhappy people who have realized that combining ideology and claims of victimhood give them power, which they can use to hurt others.

By Nathanael Blake
JULY 28, 2021

They want to make your life worse. They are the various diversity, equity, and inclusion activists and apparatchiks whose obsessions with race, sex, and gender now govern much of American life. They are the nation’s scolds, afraid that someone, somewhere, is having fun in a way that offends the ever-shifting demands of diversity and inclusion.

The latest victims of their killjoy spree are in Virginia, where prom kings and queens and daddy-daughter dances are about to be banned in public schools.

By law, all Virginia public schools are required to implement policies that are “consistent with but may be more comprehensive than the model policies developed by the Department of Education.” These model policies are a disaster, requiring schools to “accept a student’s assertion of their gender identity without requiring any particular substantiating evidence, including diagnosis, treatment, or legal documents.”

Thus, on nothing more than a child’s say-so, schools must allow males into female locker rooms and showers, and house boys with girls on overnight trips.

School employees are even told to keep a student’s steps toward transition secret from parents deemed insufficiently “supportive,” and to consider calling Child Protective Services on them. But the malice of the trans-kids movement may be most evident in the smaller cruelties of prohibiting prom queens and daddy-daughter dances.

This directive is meant to ensure the inclusion of students who identify as transgender, but it is an inclusion by elimination, achieved by banning sex-specific celebrations and honors. Any sex-specific distinctions, it is feared, might hurt the feelings of those with gender dysphoria.

But by this logic, even a generic gender-neutral parent-child dance should be cut for making children with dead, absent, or terrible parents feel left out. Indeed, dances in general should be cancelled because they might make socially awkward or physically disabled students feel bad. And so on the reasoning goes, cancelling everything that might make someone, somewhere, feel excluded.

This mindset allows misery to take happiness hostage, and it is particularly pernicious for sex and gender. We are embodied, and the reality of biological sex is fundamental to our being. It is also essential to human existence, for new persons are conceived through the union of male and female. That some people are uncomfortable with the sexed reality of physical embodiment is tragic (that cultural and political leaders are trying instill and encourage such discomfort is wicked), but that is no reason to require everyone else to officially ignore the basic experiential reality of being male and female.

Yet this is precisely what Virginia is doing to the children in its public schools. The cancellations of dances and other events are emblematic of a deeper erasure of identity, in which young men and women have the sexed reality of bodily existence officially erased in the name of inclusion. We are born male and female, but Virginia has decided that helping children grow into men and women is wrong, and that fundamental relational identities such as “father” and “daughter” must be publicly eliminated.

The irony in this is that those who preach most fervently about celebrating diversity seem terrified of acknowledging human differences. If, for instance, they really believe that “trans women are women,” then what is diverse about them? Only by acknowledging the difference between biological women and biologically male trans women can there be any diversity to celebrate. But admitting these differences threatens the entire ideological project.

The difficulty the ideologues face is that their mantra of diversity, equity, and inclusion is borderline incoherent. Diversity means difference, which intrinsically imperils equity and inclusion, for differences are by nature unequal in some way and exclusive of something. To be one thing is to not be another. To prefer one thing is to disfavor another. And so on.

Identifying and responding to important differences are always fundamental social and political tasks, as is finding commonalities that might unite us. These duties require wisdom and discernment, and the advocates and acolytes of diversity, equity, and inclusion are not up to the job. They efface essential differences and magnify those that they should minimize. And they lack a unifying principle that could unite different people and groups. Hence their flailing attempts to reconcile the tensions inherent in their sloganeering.

The Virginia public school system is a case in point, with Loudoun County alone providing a plethora of egregious examples that have provoked a major parental backlash even in this wealthy, solid-blue area. For instance, Loudoun administrators have illegally punished a teacher for stating the truth about biological sex, and they have become racial obsessives who have spent tens of thousands on critical race theory training that denounces colorblindness.

But the distinction between male and female is literally fundamental to human existence, whereas the construction of racial identities has little to no basis in biological reality. Effacing the former while emphasizing the latter is the opposite of what educators should be doing.

This folly arises because they are trying to remake society with a half-baked, incoherent ideology that is enforced by the shifting demands of the woke internet mob. And those people will always find something else to be unhappy about and another ideological envelope to push. Thus, the same ideology that cancels daddy-daughter dances in Virginia is putting men into female prisons in California, with predictably horrifying results.

These policies are the products of unhappy people who have realized that combining ideology and claims of victimhood give them power, which they can use to hurt others. This is why so much of our public discourse, especially from thelLeft, amounts to little more than accusations that “the thing you like is bad, and you should feel bad for liking it.”

The truth is that a daddy-daughter dance hurts no one, except those already determined to be miserable. Banning the dance helps no one, except for those eager to punish those who are happy.

 

[marsh]

Home | Sara A. Carter

Taking Back The Story

saraacarter.com

EXCLUSIVE: FBI Director Wray stonewalls Congress on ‘Warrantless Surveillance’ of Americans

Jul 26, 2021

FBI Director Christopher Wray has stonewalled members of the powerful House Judiciary Committee for more than a month after possible evidence emerged that the bureau was conducting warrantless surveillance of Americans. Wray’s refusal to answer numerous questions posed by Congressional members during a hearing on June 10, was met Monday with a letter from House Judiciary Committee ranking member Rep. Jim Jordan demanding that the FBI respond to Congress.

Congressional members have raised serious concerns regarding the bureau’s apparent abuse of surveillance powers granted in section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Through Section 702 the FISA court allows for U.S. intelligence community (mainly the NSA) to monitor foreigners but that becomes a backdoor to monitor Americans who are in communication with foreigners.

I spoke with Jordan this afternoon regarding the letter and he told me the “premise here is simple, we want Director Wray to answer the questions that he came to the committee to testify about.” Jordan noted that these questions were not just posed from “Republicans, but Democrats, and we would like information from the questions we posed to at the hearing.”

He said holding the FBI accountable for answering those questions is not easy but “in the end the founders made it so congress controls the purse strings – we want to continue raising the issues and hopefully Wray will get us the answers.”

Jordan also noted “that along with the problems with the FISA issue, there are questions about the southern border that are not being answered, as well there are numerous questions regarding journalists like Tucker Carlson, which it appears the NSA was spying on him. These must be answered.”

In the letter Jordan chided Wray for failing to answer numerous questions still plaguing the FBI’s now debunked investigation into President Donald Trump, as well as continued concern that the bureau is still utilizing its powerful intelligence to tools to spy on American citizens, in violation of the Fourth Amendment.

JDJ to Wray Re June 2021 Hearing by Sara on Scribd (Scribd doc on website)

“Of notable concern, both Republicans and Democrats questioned you about the serious and systematic problems with the FBI’s use of its warrantless electronic surveillance powers under section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act,” stated Jordan in the letter. “Members requested a briefing on the matter, which you agreed to provide. The FBI has not yet provided this briefing, let alone begin to schedule the briefing. In addition, the FBI has not yet provided responses to questions for the record posed following your testimony at the Committee’s 2020 oversight hearing.”

FBI officials did not immediately respond for comment but this story will be updated if and when they do.

Jordan states that Wray has never delivered on questions asked by Rep. Mike Johnson during a hearing on “February 12, 2020. During the hearing Johnson “posed a number questions for the record pertaining to the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation. It is our understanding that you have not answered Representative Johnson’s questions. We therefore ask that you provide a copy of your response to the questions for the record from the 2020 hearing.”

Rep. Mike Johnson Questions Submitted To FBI Director Wray

Director Wray, as you are aware Former Special Counsel Mueller brought on members of the FBI onto the Special Counsel’s team when Crossfire Hurricane was transferred from the FBI to the Special Counsel. In Mr. Mueller’s subsequent appearance before this Committee he refused to answer any questions related to the Steele Dossier. With that in mind, I would like to ask you a few questions regarding this phase of the investigation:

1. To your knowledge did Former Special Counsel Mueller ever question any of the Steele Dossier origins after or during the transition of Crossfire Hurricane from the FBI to the Special Counsel’s team?

2. Are you aware of any FBI personnel that were not part of the Mueller team being asked by Former Director Mueller to carry out tasks during his tenure as Special Counsel?

3. In addition to addressing the relevant deficiencies found in the IG report, are you internally examining FBI protocols surrounding the transfer of investigations to a Special Counsel, particularly in instances where FBI staff are used by the Special Counsel?

4. Have you considered updating any sections of relevant Policy Implementation Guides or the Domestic Investigations Operations Guide (DIOG) regarding FBI interactions, or the transfer of investigations, to a Special Counsel?[/QUOTE]

Johnson questions to Wray February, 2020

 

[155 arty]

New York Times Reporter Says the Quiet Part Out Loud: Calls for Labeling Trump Supporters "Enemies of the State" to Combat "National Security Threats" | The Gateway Pundit | by Jim Hoft

Katie Benner New York Times reporter Katie Benner said the quiet part out loud yesterday.

www.thegatewaypundit.com

New York Times Reporter Says the Quiet Part Out Loud: Calls for Labeling Trump Supporters “Enemies of the State” to Combat “National Security Threats”

By Jim Hoft
Published July 28, 2021 at 11:24am

Katie Benner
New York Times reporter Katie Benner said the quiet part out loud yesterday.

Benner wants the regime to label Trump supporters “enemies of the state” to combat “national security threats.”

Benner later took down her tweets.

She approves of BLM but wants patriotic Americans labeled enemies of the state.

What a sick woman!

FOX News reported:

That's ok because I already have labeled them as enemies of my country

 

[marsh]

Zerohedge

ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero

www.zerohedge.com

"The Enemies Of The State": The New York Times And The Fluidity of Advocacy Journalism

THURSDAY, JUL 29, 2021 - 06:00 PM
Authored by Jonathan Turley,

We have been discussing the rise of advocacy journalism and the rejection of objectivity in journalism schools. The New York Times has been at the forefront of this shift away from traditional reporting but has increasingly found that the fluidity of advocacy journalism leaves it without any clear framework or standards. Consider the latest scandal at the Times.

Justice Department reporter and MSNBC contributor Katie Benner went on a rave about Republicans and called Trump supporters “enemies of the state.” She also made a not-so-veiled call for readers to vote against them. The Times has been in total radio silence over what, just a few years ago, would have been viewed as an outrageous violation of journalistic standards. Yet, just recently, it fired another reporter for a comparatively mild tweet supporting Biden.

Professional ethics, it seems, has become entirely impressionistic in the age of advocacy journalism.


Notably, many of us denounced Donald Trump for calling the New York Times and other media outlets the “enemy of the people.” The media was aghast and the Times publicly condemned such rhetoric as “inflammatory.”

Now, however, journalists like Benner are engaging in the same inflammatory rhetoric and the Times is conspicuously silent.

We have have been discussing how writers, editors, commentators, and academics have embraced rising calls for censorship and speech controls, including President-elect Joe Biden and his key advisers. This movement includes academics rejecting the very concept of objectivity in journalism in favor of open advocacy. Columbia Journalism Dean and New Yorker writer Steve Coll has denounced how the First Amendment right to freedom of speech was being “weaponized” to protect disinformation. In an interview with The Stanford Daily, Stanford journalism professor, Ted Glasser, insisted that journalism needed to “free itself from this notion of objectivity to develop a sense of social justice.” He rejected the notion that the journalism is based on objectivity and said that he views “journalists as activists because journalism at its best — and indeed history at its best — is all about morality.” Thus, “Journalists need to be overt and candid advocates for social justice, and it’s hard to do that under the constraints of objectivity.”

Benner tweeted on Tuesday during the first hearing of the Democrat-led Jan. 6 select committee was underway:

“Today’s #January6thSelectCommittee underscores the America’s current, essential natsec dilemma: Work to combat legitimate national security threats now entails calling a politician’s supporters enemies of the state.”

The MSNBC contributor also declared:

“As Americans, we believe that state power should not be used to work against a political figure or a political party. But what happens if a politician seems to threaten the state? If the politician continues to do so out of office and his entire party supports that threat?”…That leaves it up to voters, making even more essential free, fair access to the polls.”

Benner’s comments are indistinguishable from the Democratic members that she is covering. The problem is that, while the Times has embraced advocacy journalism, its has not updated its guidelines which state that “Our journalists should be especially mindful of appearing to take sides on issues that The Times is seeking to cover objectively.”

While the tweets were deleted, the Times refused to respond to other reporters asking about the tweets.

Just recently, we discussed the firing of Lauren Wolfe, who was fired for saying that she had “chills” in watching Biden land at Andrews Air Force base. Wolfe later penned a column declaring “I’m a Biased Journalist and I’m Okay With That” — a full-throated endorsement of the new journalistic model of open bias and advocacy.

I was critical of Wolfe but the two cases leave many completely confused on the standards applied by the Times. The confusion has been growing for years.

A year ago, the New York Times denounced its own publishing of an editorial of Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) calling for the use of the troops to restore order in Washington after days of rioting around the White House. It was one of the one of the lowest points in the history of modern American journalism. While Congress would “call in the troops” six months later to quell the rioting at the Capitol on January 6th, New York Times reporters and columnists called the column historically inaccurate and politically inciteful. Reporters insisted that Cotton was even endangering them by suggesting the use of troops and insisted that the newspaper cannot feature people who advocate political violence.

While insisting that it will never again publish someone like Cotton, it has published columns from figures like one of the Chinese leaders crushing protests for freedom in Hong Kong. Cotton was arguing that the use of national guard troops may be necessary to quell violent riots, noting the historical use of this option in past protests. This option was used most recently after the Capitol riot.

Yet the Times has no problem publishing someone called “Beijing’s enforcer” who mocked pro-Democracy protesters as her government beat them and arrested them.

Likewise, almost on the one-year anniversary of its condemning its own publication of Cotton (and forcing out its own editor), the New York Times published an academic columnist who previously defended the killing of conservative protesters.

If none of this makes sense to you, that is because it does not have to make sense. Starting with the Cotton scandal, the New York Times cut its mooring cables with traditional journalist values. It embraced figures like Nikole Hannah-Jones who have championed advocacy journalism.

The problem with Benner was not that she is actively supporting Democrats or viewing Trump supporters as enemies of the state. The problem is that she said it a bit too openly. There remain slight sensibilities to be observed even the age of advocacy journalism. So she deleted the tweet and no one is much interested in how such biased reporters continue to cover such stories. Indeed, just this week, NBC’s Chuck Todd denied that there is a problem of biased journalism despite the long criticism of his own overt partisanship on the air.

In the end, it does not matter what happens to Benner. The lesson for others is to confine any such bias to framing coverage rather than directly calling for votes for Democrats or joining in on the condemnations of Trump supporters. One must keep up appearances even in the age of advocacy journalism.

 

[marsh]

'Elaborate wordplay': Critics debate Department of Education retreat from critical race theory

House Education Committee's top Republican tells secretary to purge CRT-related policies and materials.

justthenews.com

'Elaborate wordplay': Critics debate Department of Education retreat from critical race theory

House Education Committee's top Republican tells secretary to purge CRT-related policies and materials.

Updated: July 30, 2021 - 10:54pm

Faced with nationwide pushback against its plan to prioritize grant funding for American history and civics programs informed by critical race theory (CRT), the Department of Education clarified its thinking. Perhaps.

Secretary Miguel Cardona's blog post on "invitational" priorities in grant competitions drew polarized interpretations among critics of CRT, who either claimed the agency backed off its plan or simply used deceptive language to create the impression that it backed off.

Among those in the former camp: House Education and Labor Committee ranking member Virginia Foxx and Sen. John Thune, both Republicans. Foxx is keeping the pressure on Cardona, telling him that "critical race theory and related policies and materials should not be referenced, referred, or recommended to any students, teachers, or educational agencies."

The proposed rule said applicants for grant money must show how their projects consider "systemic marginalization, biases, inequities, and discriminatory policy and practice in American history" and incorporate "racially, ethnically, culturally, and linguistically diverse perspectives."

It favorably mentioned Boston University professor Ibram Kendi, the foremost popularizer of "anti-racism," and the New York Times' 1619 Project, which is also a school curriculum offered through the Pulitzer Center.

Contrary to the perception of its proposed rule, the program "has not, does not, and will not dictate or recommend specific curriculum be introduced or taught in classrooms," Cardona wrote July 16. "Those decisions are — and will continue to be — made at the local level."

Though the department is inviting submissions that "incorporate racially, ethnically, culturally, and linguistically diverse perspectives into teaching and learning" and "improve students' information literacy skills," Cardona said applicants aren't required to address these priorities and will "gain no competitive advantage" if they do.

Foxx said the department "changed its approach to grant funding because parents, students, and Republican leaders stood up in defense of our nation's history and legacy." While Cardona gave up "overt preferential treatment" for "anti-American agendas," Foxx expects him to continue "the administration's crusade to push Critical Race Theory in our public schools."

In a floor speech Tuesday, Thune said the department reversed its plans to prefer programs that reflect the "radical, leftist ideology" of CRT. But that reversal "was cloaked in bureaucratic language, leaving room for a future flip-flop by the administration."

View: https://youtu.be/EGYiwecWfII
7:43 min

Parents Defending Education, which said it facilitated a third of the comments in the proceeding, "applauds" Cardona's decision to withdraw the "requirement that grantees incorporate curriculum and instruction" in the vein of Kendi and the 1619 Project.

"It is our hope that this change is a sign of the administration's recommitment to historical accuracy and civics education over ideology and advocacy," the group said, claiming "the vast majority" of nearly 34,000 comments opposed "making racism and slavery the centerpiece of American history."

The National Association of Scholars doesn't think the administration has "backed one inch away" from its agenda, president Peter Wood told The Federalist. "They have done what they usually do, which is elaborate wordplay. This is one more attempted hoodwink in public."

Stanley Kurtz of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, who wrote model legislation to ban politically motivated "action civics" in schools, called Cardona's blog post "nothing more than a shallow attempt to parry public criticism."

He pointed The Federalist toward President Biden's instructions to agencies "to fight 'systemic racism,' making CRT the basis of administration policy."

The Department of Education issued a clearer mea culpa in response to Rep. Foxx's outrage that it promoted the Abolitionist Teaching Network in its school reopening guidance.

Founded by University of Georgia education professor Bettina Love a year ago, the network's guide calls on educators to "disrupt Whiteness and other forms of oppression" and implies academic standards should be lowered to promote "liberation" for non-Asian racial minorities.

The department linked the guide in a sentence on "intentional conversations related to race and social emotional learning." Following a report by Fox News, it removed the sentence entirely. The guide's inclusion was an "error in a lengthy document," the department told Fox News, and it "does not endorse the recommendations of this group, nor do they reflect our policy positions."

The incident shows why CRT opponents should focus much more on Love's influence, according to Kurtz, the crusader against action civics.

Her 2019 book "We Want to Do More Than Survive" "is arguably the single most comprehensive and up-to-date guide to the ideology of the CRT movement in education," Kurtz wrote in National Review Friday, claiming "there is no way the Biden administration can successfully disavow" her.



Rep. Foxx questioned whether the department only called the Abolitionist Teaching Network's inclusion "an error" because Fox News highlighted it. "The Department has established a pattern of supporting critical race theory-related information and material that divides our students and communities based on race," she wrote in a letter to Cardona July 23.

The secretary "notably failed to denounce critical race theory or the harm it does to the effort to end racial injustice" when he testified before the House Education and Labor Committee in June, Foxx wrote.

Providing a two-week deadline, she asked the secretary to "personally review all of the citations made in the COVID handbooks" and devise staff guidance against promoting CRT to any audience. Foxx also requested "all communications among department staff, Love, her network or "anyone who might have been associated with her."

Audra McGeorge, communications director for Education and Labor Committee Republicans, told Just the News Friday that Foxx had not received a response to her letter a week later. Department spokesperson Jim Bradshaw said he was checking "to see if we have received" Foxx's letter.

 

[marsh]

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efA6B2EKLN4
8:04 min
When Identity Politics, CRT, and Feminism Get Together!
Jul 31, 2021


AwakenWithJP

 

[marsh]

Education groups warn feds not to reinstate race-based school discipline guidance

Obama administration policy was based on "statistically illiterate" report and selectively highlighted disparities, they say.

justthenews.com

Education groups warn feds not to reinstate race-based school discipline guidance

Obama administration policy was based on "statistically illiterate" report and selectively highlighted disparities, they say.

Updated: July 31, 2021 - 10:58pm

As it considers turning back the clock on Title IX rules for sexual misconduct investigations, the Biden administration is also eyeing a return to the "disparate impact" school discipline policies the Trump administration rescinded in 2018.

In its request for information on "nondiscriminatory administration of school discipline" last month, the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights (OCR) claimed nonwhite students in general, and in "individual racial groups," don't commit more disciplinary offenses than their white peers.

Yet black, Latino and Native American students receive "substantially more school discipline" and "harsher and longer punishments" compared to whites, suggesting racial discrimination was the culprit.

The proceeding drew nearly 2,700 public comments by its Friday deadline. Many warned against reimposing an alleged quota-based system under which school districts could be investigated by the feds for disparate disciplinary rates, especially by race or disability status.

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (USCCR) report cited by the feds is "statistically illiterate," Parents Defending Education wrote in its comment urging the department to not reinstate the Obama administration's 2014 disparate-impact guidance.

That 2019 report relied on "self-reported incidents" by male 10th graders and used different scales for misconduct rates and disciplinary outcomes, which "creates an artificial perception" that the two are "mismatched," the group said.

The commission limited misconduct to alcohol, drugs and guns at school, but included discipline for all misbehavior that resulted in at least a trip to the principal's office.

OCR is also highly selective in the disparities it highlights, focusing on black versus white, the comment said.

Asian-American students typically have lower disciplinary rates than whites, yet Pacific Islanders have higher rates than black students, which by OCR's logic would mean the U.S. is "arbitrarily racist." The agency also does not argue that male students suffer systemic discrimination even though they make up nearly three-quarters of expulsions, the comment said.

Parents Defending Education frequently cites from a 119-page comment by longtime USCCR member Gail Heriot, who dissented from the "Beyond Suspensions" report when it was released and wrote a law review article challenging the 2014 guidance.

"While both misbehaving and model students come from every walk of life, no one should be surprised to learn that students from households below the poverty line" and those born out of wedlock "tend to present more discipline challenges than others," she wrote. Blacks and Hispanics have much higher rates for both than do whites and Asian Americans. "One cannot infer race discrimination from the differing discipline rates," she reasoned.

Heriot, a University of San Diego law professor who was considered a contender for OCR chief in the Trump administration, argued that "plenty of evidence shows that the threat of discipline is a prominent deterrent for student misbehavior, and that the resultant environment is one that promotes learning."

The Pacific Legal Foundation, whose lawyer Alison Somin cowrote the law review article with Heriot, told OCR that the 2014 guidance was both out of step with Title VI and "bad policy that led to increased disorder in classrooms across the nation."

Teachers in Oklahoma City and Indianapolis revolted against disparate-impact reforms in 2015 that sharply reduced suspensions and increased misbehavior, from screaming at teachers to physically assaulting them, the comment said.

OCR will harm children with "the fewest resources at home, some of whom are themselves racial and ethnic minorities," if it issues guidance that ends up depriving them of "some basic level of order in the classroom," the legal group said.

The black leadership network Project 21 warned that reinstating the 2014 guidance "puts teachers in a tenuous position," rendering them "vicious racists" based on the statistics of their disciplinary referrals.

Imposing racial quotas for discipline "creates a death spiral for quality-of-life in schools with large minority student bodies," the group said. Misbehaving students become more "unruly" when they aren't disciplined, harming those students who are trying to learn.

The Texas Classroom Teachers Association told OCR that the 2014 guidance had a "chilling effect" on its 50,000 members' ability to maintain classroom order "without providing useful alternatives." Districts were more focused on "avoiding federal investigations" than helping students.

It said the department's National Center for Education Statistics showed an all-time high for teachers "threatened with injury or physically attacked by students" in the 2015-2016 school year, with the exception of 2011-2012, which had similar figures.

The Texas group supports a pilot program in the Dallas Independent School District that sends disruptive students to "reset" classrooms to address behavioral issues and has them complete classwork remotely, rather than suspending them.

The School Superintendents Association said new federal guidance would not be "particularly impactful or useful" as districts address disparate discipline rates.

Both the 2014 guidance and 2018 rescission had limited effect on changes to districts' policies and practices, in contrast to state-level policy changes.

First Liberty Institute, a public interest law firm focused on religious freedom, asked OCR to explicitly mention religious discrimination in school discipline in future guidance or rulemakings. It's not mentioned in the request for information.

The agency worsened the problem in its recent LGBTQ fact sheet by characterizing the statement "there are only boys and girls" as harassment, encouraging schools to "misunderstand numerous religions' teachings about gender" and discipline students for their views on gender and sexuality.

In some of First Liberty's cases, school officials punished its clients "ironically out of a desire to forcibly foster a positive and inclusive learning environment" that stigmatizes unpopular "cultural beliefs" in the community, it said.

The Alliance Against Seclusion and Restraint asked OCR to expand the definition of "seclusion" to "recognize the power differential" between adults and children and include environments where children "may perceive that they are not free to leave."

It wants the feds to withhold funding from school districts and even private schools that practice seclusion or "prone and supine restraint," the latter of which is already strongly discouraged in federal guidance. The group said seclusion is neither "therapeutic" nor often used in situations that involve "imminent serious physical harm," and it can increase aggression and even lead to post-traumatic stress disorder.

 

[marsh]

Tennessee mama bear wipes floor with Liberal tears… [CRT]
Posted by Kane on August 1, 2021 3:33 pm

View: https://youtu.be/E9Ae55TlBdM
6:42 min

Phenomenal speech from this proud, free Tennessee mother

 

[marsh]

Zerohedge

ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero

www.zerohedge.com

The Road To Totalitarianism

MONDAY, AUG 02, 2021 - 12:00 AM
Authored by CJ Hopkins via The Consent Factory,

People can tell themselves that they didn’t see where things have been heading for the last 17 months, but they did.

They saw all the signs along the way. The signs were all written in big, bold letters, some of them in scary-looking Germanic script. They read …

“THIS IS THE ROAD TO TOTALITARIANISM.”
I’m not going to show you all those signs out again. People like me have been pointing them out, and reading them out loud, for 17 months now. Anyone who knows anything about the history of totalitarianism, how it incrementally transforms society into a monstrous mirror image of itself, has known since the beginning what the “New Normal” is, and we have been shouting from the rooftops about it.

We have watched as the New Normal transformed our societies into paranoid, pathologized, authoritarian dystopias where people now have to show their “papers” to see a movie or get a cup of coffee and publicly display their ideological conformity to enter a supermarket and buy their groceries.

We have watched as the New Normal transformed the majority of the masses into hate-drunk, hysterical mobs that are openly persecuting “the Unvaccinated,” the official “Untermenschen” of the New Normal ideology.

We have watched as the New Normal has done precisely what every totalitarian movement in history has done before it, right by the numbers.

We pointed all this out, each step of the way. I’m not going to reiterate all that again.

I am, however, going to document where we are at the moment, and how we got here … for the record, so that the people who will tell you later that they “had no clue where the trains were going” will understand why we no longer trust them, and why we regard them as cowards and collaborators, or worse.

Yes, that’s harsh, but this is not a game. It isn’t a difference of opinion. The global-capitalist ruling establishment is implementing a new, more openly totalitarian structure of society and method of rule. They are revoking our constitutional and human rights, transferring power out of sovereign governments and democratic institutions into unaccountable global entities that have no allegiance to any nation or its people.

That is what is happening … right now. It isn’t a TV show. It’s actually happening.
The time for people to “wake up” is over. At this point, you either join the fight to preserve what is left of those rights, and that sovereignty, or you surrender to the “New Normal,” to global-capitalist totalitarianism. I couldn’t care less what you believe about the virus, or its mutant variants, or the experimental “vaccines.”

This isn’t an abstract argument over “the science.” It is a fight … a political, ideological fight. On one side is democracy, on the other is totalitarianism. Pick a ****ing side, and live with it.

Anyway, here’s where we are at the moment, and how we got here, just the broad strokes.

It’s August 2021, and Germany has officially banned demonstrations against the “New Normal” official ideology. Other public assemblies, like the Christopher Street Day demo (pictured below), one week ago, are still allowed. The outlawing of political opposition is a classic hallmark of totalitarian systems. It’s also a classic move by the German authorities, which will give them the pretext they need to unleash the New Normal goon squads on the demonstrators tomorrow.



In Australia, the military has been deployed to enforce total compliance with government decrees … lockdowns, mandatory public obedience rituals, etc. In other words, it is de facto martial law. This is another classic hallmark of totalitarian systems.

In France, restaurant and other business owners who serve “the Unvaccinated” will now be imprisoned, as will, of course, “the Unvaccinated.”

The scapegoating, demonizing, and segregating of “the Unvaccinated” is happening in countries all over the world. France is just an extreme example. The scapegoating, dehumanizing, and segregating of minorities — particularly the regime’s political opponents — is another classic hallmark of totalitarian systems.

In the UK, Italy, Greece, and numerous other countries throughout the world, this pseudo-medical social-segregation system is also being introduced, in order to divide societies into “good people” (i.e., compliant) and “bad” (i.e., non-compliant).

The “good people” are being given license and encouraged by the authorities and the corporate media to unleash their rage on the “the Unvaccinated,” to demand our segregation in internment camps, to openly threaten to viciously murder us.


This is also a hallmark of totalitarian systems.

And that, my friends, is where we are.

We didn’t get here overnight. Here are just a few of the unmistakable signs along the road to totalitarianism that I have pointed out over the last 17 months.

June 2020 … The New (Pathologized) Totalitarianism.
August 2020 … The Invasion of the New Normals.
October 2020 … The Covidian Cult.
November 2020 … The Germans Are Back!
March 2021 … The New Normal (Phase 2).
March 2021 … The “Unvaccinated” Question.
May 2021 … The Criminalization of Dissent.
June 2021 … Manufacturing New Normal “Reality“.

And now, here we are, where we have been heading all along, clearly, unmistakably heading … directly into The Approaching Storm, or possibly global civil war. This isn’t the end of the road to totalitarianism, but I’m pretty sure we are in the home stretch. It feels like things are about to get ugly. Very ugly.

Extremely ugly. Those of us who are fighting to preserve our rights, and some basic semblance of democracy, are outnumbered, but we haven’t had our final say yet … and there are millions of us, and we are wide awake.

So pick a side, if you haven’t already. But, before you do, maybe look back at the history of totalitarian systems, which, for some reason, never seem to work out for the totalitarians, at least not in the long run. I’m not a professional philosopher or anything, but I suspect that might have something to do with some people’s inextinguishable desire for freedom, and our willingness to fight for it, sometimes to the death.

This kind of feels like one of those times.

Sorry for going all “Braveheart” on you, but I’m psyching myself up to go get the snot beat out of me by the New Normal goon squads tomorrow, so I’m a little … you know, overly emotional.

Seriously, though, pick a side … now … or a side will be picked for you.

 

[marsh]

‘There can be no redemption, until America is gone’…

Democrats truly hate America.

citizenfreepress.com

‘There can be no redemption, until America is gone’…
Posted by Kane on August 2, 2021 2:43 pm

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1422214630462705665

View: https://twitter.com/i/status/1422214630462705665
1:09 min

 

[marsh]

EXC: A Chinese Communist-Linked Group is Partnering With American Schools To 'Transform Education' With 'Social Justice'. - The National Pulse

An Asia Society effort – advised by several Chinese Communist Party-linked individuals – has partnered with schools across the U.S. to shape curricula and teaching faculty to become consistent with a “social justice” approach to education that encourages “teaching activism” in favor of left-wing...

thenationalpulse.com

EXC: A Chinese Communist-Linked Group Is Partnering With American Schools To ‘Transform Education’ With ‘Social Justice’.

• AUGUST 2, 2021
• NATALIE WINTERS

EXC: A Chinese Communist-Linked Group Is Partnering With American Schools To ‘Transform Education’ With ‘Social Justice’.

• AUGUST 2, 2021
• NATALIE WINTERS
  
  
  
  

An Asia Society effort – advised by several Chinese Communist Party-linked individuals – has partnered with schools across the U.S. to shape curricula and teaching faculty to become consistent with a “social justice” approach to education that encourages “teaching activism” in favor of left-wing causes such as “equity,” “globalism,” and “unraveling systemic racism.”

Based in the U.S., the Asia Society describes its mission as “preparing Asians and Americans for a shared future” and is favored by current and former high-level Chinese Communist Party officials.

The group’s Center For Global Education outlines its mission as “transforming education to build a more just and equal society” and partners with schools and school districts throughout the U.S. to do so. The center is expected to reach 4,000,000 students and 100,000 educators through various partnerships including dictating curricula and establishing schools alongside the Department of Education in states such as Ohio and Colorado.

Serving on the center’s board, however, are several Chinese Communist Party apparatchiks. The co-chair of the effort, Yu Lizhong, is the former president of two Chinese Communist Party-run universities and has held leadership roles at several state-run groups:

Dr. Yu was the vice chairman of Chinese Geography Association. He is the chairman of Geographic Education Commission of Chinese Education Society, chairman of Shanghai Science Promotion Committee for Youth, and senior adviser of Shanghai Association of Science and Technology.

Advisors also include former President of state-run Shanghai Normal University, a former President of the Clinton Foundation, and former Director at Chinese the military proxy, China Mobile.

The map below demonstrates the coast-to-coast reach of the program, which arose out of a 2015 agreement between Asia Society President and CEO Josette Sheeran and United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Director-General Irina Bokova. “Welcoming the agreement, the Director-General stressed the heightened relevance of global citizenship education for countering violent extremism and promoting human rights, respect for diversity and a sense of solidarity and shared responsibility towards the future,” a press release summarized.

SCHOOL MAP.
The United Nations and Chinese Communist Party-backed effort has led to the adoption of “social justice” teaching methods, as outlined in a 2018 curricula guide published by the Asia Society.

One case study highlighted by the group reveals a high school math teacher introducing “discussions of social justice issues in her algebra classes”:
“Rachel Fruin, a high school math teacher in Naperville, Illinois, in the United States uses newspaper stories as the starting point for brief math-informed discussions of social justice issues in her algebra classes.”

The document also reveals how this ideology has even permeated the hiring process for teachers, as Denver Center for International Studies (DCIS) principal Vanessa Acevedo admits to hiring people who are “committed to social justice and equity”:

“In hiring teachers, Acevedo looks for candidates who have had experiences with other cultures, such as people who have served in the Peace Corps, or who have traveled extensively. “My hope is that, if you come to DCIS, you will have some passion about learning about the world, or are an avid traveler,” she says, adding that she also looks for people who understand how to teach in culturally responsive ways and who are committed to social justice and equity.”

Among the recommend “educator resources” are classroom exercises that have students craft a social media campaign aimed at “unraveling systemic racism in schools” and infographics that articulate “the challenges of xenophobia.”

Another resource calls for “teacher activism” in the classroom, urging teachers to “suggest students write essays, blogs, pen letters to editors, and other types of advocacy”:

“There is a tendency to shy away from “teaching activism” in the classroom, due to beliefs that activism is too radical for a space like a school. The ultimate goal of developing global competence, though, is to grow students who can take action to improve their world. Educators should address the importance of disruptive protests to social movements throughout history, such as the American Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and ’60s. Help students navigate the complexity of viewpoints on organizing tactics, talking through the utility and potential consequences of differing approaches. As a possible resource, The Chicago History Museum has developed a lesson plan around protest in American history.

For example, what are the pros and cons of staging a counter-protest at a political rally for a politician who has been vocally anti-immigrant? Perhaps even help students understand what is involved in planning an action like this this, ensuring students are aware of the legal requirements (e.g., permits, types of allowed speech), and how to deal with counter-protestors, including safety issues in light of the recent violence against protestors at Donald Trump rallies.”

Teachers also inform students how to “critically examine issues such as poverty, trade, migration, inequality, environmental justice, conflict, cultural differences, and stereotypes” – even North Korea.

An Asia Society-recommended resource instructs teachers on how to get students to “look beyond the stereotypes” of the communist country:

“North Korea is the country everyone loves to hate. Be it their leader’s idiosyncratic behavior or their insistence on making and testing nuclear weapons, media and political leaders alike focus on the strangeness of North Korea and eagerly perpetuate superficial stereotypes about the country and its people. But by using the tools of global competence as a starting point, you can empower your students to consider North Korea beyond the stereotypes and gain a better understanding of the country.”

Other initiatives sponsored by the Asia Society include the “Education for Equity” initiative which seeks to develop “materials for teachers, parents and youth themselves that enable all students to understand and act on racism as an interpersonal and structural malignancy.” Another initiative – “Teaching Truth To Power” – “looks at the root causes of systemic racism in public education, identifies exactly what it looks like, and empowers parents and educators to do something about it.”

In addition to influencing curricula, the Asia Society is actively involved with the formation of new schools as part of its International Studies Schools Network (ISSN), which boasts about teaching students the “language of globalism”:

“Six years ago, we didn’t have anything,” Sharpstown International Principal Chang Yu says. Faced with a failing school, the Houston Independent School District asked Asia Society to help start a new small school, Sharpstown International School, in the same neighborhood. The idea was to use proven reform efforts to make unsuccessful schools successful. Chang adds, without prompting or hesitation: “Without the Asia Society we wouldn’t be here.” […]
It’s not that the meat and potatoes — reading, writing and arithmetic — are neglected; in fact, students’ performances on standardized tests have risen sharply.

What’s different at Sharpstown is that the words “world”, “Asia,” and “global” are in the air, painted flags decorate hallway floors, and students are fluent not only in Mandarin, say, but in what you might call the language of globalism.

The Asia Society’s subversion of American classrooms with “social justice” teaching tactics and globalist ideology follows The National Pulse unearthing the organization’s ties to the Chinese Communist Party’s controversial Confucius Institutes and their K-12 counterparts, Confucius Classrooms.

These initiatives have been described by Chinese government officials as “an important part of China’s overseas propaganda set-up” – along with intellectual property theft and espionage per the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Department of Justice (DOJ).

 

[marsh]

Forget Socialism - We Just Went Full Fascism!

Authoritarianism is turning into outright American Fascism. You can't object, you can't question, and you can't sue them if you disagree.

thebluestateconservative.com

Forget Socialism – We Just Went Full Fascism!

• August 3, 2021
• By guest author David Robb

Recently, AIER published two articles here, and here discussing a new Executive Order mandating extensive government involvement in a huge range of business activities. Both articles tended to focus on how the order would affect large businesses but suggested that the effects of the Order might be more pervasive.

In a fact sheet issued by the Biden administration, the Order is represented as a way to promote competition and increase innovation. Through it, regulatory agencies across the board are directed to develop new regulations pertaining to agriculture, healthcare, employer-employee relationships, the internet, and a host of others. But how is this Fascism?

To explain that, we need to look at a bit of history. Fascism is currently defined as a trait of the Right. That wasn’t always so. Both FDR and JFK spoke glowingly of Fascism and FDR even incorporated many of its principles in his New Deal policies. He also spoke well of National Socialism, otherwise known as Nazism.

The ability of the State to organize and direct labor, to have centralized planning, and to subsume the individual into the collective state were much-admired aspects of both Fascism and National Socialism. It wasn’t until after the Second World War when the atrocities and inhumanities of both were exposed, that Fascism and National Socialism lost their luster and acquired a bad odor.

True to their Leftist practices, once these ideologies acquired a negative image, their proponents disavowed the labels, and sought to attribute these ideas to the Right, in a classic move of ideological “pin the tail on the donkey”. Most dictionaries and encyclopedias today will state that Fascism and National Socialism are characteristic of the Right. As we’ll see, there are good reasons why the Left doesn’t want to take credit for these ideologies anymore.

Socialism still has a patina of acceptability, in spite of its many failures whenever and wherever it has been tried. Few are aware, though, that Mussolini, often considered the face of Fascism, considered Fascism to be the perfection of Socialism by adding the use of collective force and violence to impose and maintain a Socialist state. For many years prior to WWII, Mussolini was considered one of the most influential theorists of Socialism. Today, of course, we think of him as a pompous, strutting buffoon, but then he was well respected and a leading European thinker.

There is a fair amount of confusion about the differences between Communism, Socialism, Fascism, and National Socialism. Let us take a moment to clarify the differences.

Communism is where everything is in one big pot. Everything – land, people, businesses, factories, everything – is collectively owned. No one owns anything personally, and they are all supposed to be happy. To the extent that the State exists, it is there to organize things and make sure everything runs smoothly. It is expected to gradually disappear as people get used to the collective way of doing things. Its motto is “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” People quickly learn that it is best to have no ability and to be very needy.

Socialism differs by separating productive enterprise, businesses in other words, from the State. However, the State still retains control and directs business enterprises to its own goals and ends. People and everything else are still collectivized and owned by the State. This organization is well regarded by State agents especially as it gets around one of the principal disadvantages of Communism.

Under Socialism, if the country is prosperous and the people are happy, the state can take credit for its wise and benevolent management. If, on the other hand, things don’t go well and there is poverty and shortages and misery, then businesses can be blamed for not following properly the directives of the enlightened State. The State can even accuse businesses of sabotage and subversion and terminate, sometimes with extreme prejudice, a few business leaders to encourage the rest. The clear advantage of Socialism over Communism is that Communism has no one but the State leaders to blame – a rather inconvenient circumstance at times. The motto of Socialism is “from each according to his ability, to each as the State directs.”. People quickly learn the advantages of having no ability except the ability to cozy up to State agents.

National Socialism is just a variant of Socialism that holds one nation to be supreme over all others. Essentially, other nations are just placeholders waiting for the principal nation to come and take over to make everything bright and wonderful. Indeed, such a takeover often involves a bit of housecleaning and removal of undesirable riff-raff that the superior national Elites deem unfit. The National Socialist motto is similar to that of ordinary Socialism: “from each according to their ability, to the National Elites everything to distribute or keep as they deem fit.”. The lessons are essentially the same as for Socialism.

This brings us to Fascism. This offshoot of garden variety Socialism adds State coercion to the mix. Communism and other forms of Socialism have been built on the idea that people will want to share and work together once they see how good it can be if everyone has what they need, no-one is above anyone else, and there is a benevolent State to watch over, care for, and protect everyone. With Fascism, everyone will recognize the benefits of sharing and working together for the common good and there will be peace and love throughout the land – or else.

The motto of Fascism is a bit more complex than the others: “From each according to as much ability as they can muster – slackers will suffer, to each according to whatever the State Elites don’t want for themselves, and only as little as necessary to keep the proles from rebelling”. The lessons are confusing but might be summarized as: Keep your head down, don’t attract attention, don’t show a lot of ability, do as you’re told, and if you’re not among the Elite, take whatever you can get and be happy to get it. Former Soviet bloc countries had a saying that encapsulated matters well: “We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us.”.

So how does this relate to the recent Executive Order? Is it just directed at big, nation scale businesses, or does it have wider effect?

The Order, number 14036 of July 9, 2021, is entitled “Promoting Competition in the American Economy”. As is typical with such things, the title is rather the opposite of what it actually specifies. What the order does is empowers the entire Federal bureaucracy to regulate, in detail, how businesses conduct themselves in nearly every aspect that might be conceivably be associated with “competition”.

The agencies specifically listed include:  National Economic Council

• Department of the Treasury
• Department of Defense
• Office of the Attorney General
• Department of Agriculture
• Department of Commerce
• Department of Labor
• Department of Health and Human Services
• Department of Transportation
• Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs

In addition, other agencies may be included from time to time, including

• The Federal Trade Commission
• The Federal Communications Commission
• The Federal Maritime Commission
• The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
• The Surface Transportation Board
• any other agencies or offices deemed appropriate

In other words, the entire army of the Federal bureaucracy is being mobilized to bring businesses across the country under the direction and control of the Federal Government. Does that seem to fit the definition of Fascism, especially when the enforcement arms such as the FBI under the Attorney General’s office can be used to ensure compliance?

So now we have a horde of career bureaucrats, most of whom have never run a successful business, empowered to regulate business activities in minute detail.

The Order empowers them to decide what promotes competition and what blocks it. They can decide who has a monopoly, who has too much market share, who needs to be cut down to size, all without recourse to courts or other remedies. Where are the provisions for challenging the actions of these bureaucrats? Will it be like the IRS where challenges to rulings must go to their captive court? Who besides a Fascist would think that a good idea? Of course, there will be no corruption – the career bureaucrats will always be fair and make the best decisions for all concerned and will never be swayed by the temptations of bribery, influence, revolving door jobs, and other inducements.

Now that may seem alarmist. Maybe they really are concerned about keeping American businesses competitive and productive. After all, in a global economy we have many competitors so perhaps they are going to address some of the issues that hamper our ability to compete on the world stage. Strangely, though, the Order is not about foreign competition, but rather mostly about competition between American firms.

One provision of the Order suggests that non-compete agreements be abolished since they keep workers from moving freely between jobs. Sounds like a good idea, no? But what if you have an executive familiar with the business’s customers who leave to work with a competitor? Even without taking confidential materials, if they don’t have a non-compete agreement, they could share that customer information with their new employer and take business away from the former. But of course, that encourages competition, right? Maybe a better term would be predation.

What about technology businesses? Many small firms rely on trade secrets to operate. Patents are difficult to obtain and enforce, and many smaller firms don’t have the resources to pursue them. For some, it might not even be possible to secure a patent since it is the “know-how” of the employees that provides their advantage. Under the Order, however, that knowledge represents an unfair advantage and can be considered anti-competitive. What happens when a competitor reports that firm to the “Competition” enforcers who then force the firm to share its advantage or face regulatory sanctions? Can the State now force firms to give hard-won knowledge freely to their competitors in the name of promoting competition? Why should anyone bother to innovate and make the effort to develop new products and technologies if they must then share them with a competitor who contributed nothing to the effort?

Another provision eliminates the need to have an audiological exam prior to getting hearing aids, claiming as justification that such examinations make hearing aids prohibitively expensive for most who might benefit. The claim is that eliminating such a requirement would allow hearing aids to be sold over the counter much more cheaply. What it ignores is that an audiological exam can detect many conditions besides hearing loss, including many brain and nerve cancers that can be fatal if not caught early. Hearing loss or other anomalies are often the earliest signs of these conditions, and audiologists are trained to look for such signs so that measures can be taken while there is still time. The cost of an audiological exam is a small part of the cost of providing hearing aids and has a high benefit for the customer/patient.

Those examples may sound trivial, so let us look further. Normally, the SEC is responsible for approving mergers and acquisitions of large firms where such an event might result in a market monopoly. However, there are lots of smaller firms that are not so regulated. To the Biden administration, that is a serious oversight that must be addressed. Under the Order, nearly any merger or acquisition will be subject to scrutiny. Perhaps two local grocery stores want to merge to take advantage of better purchasing power and provide better service.

Should they need to ask permission of the Federal government in order to do that? Which agency will be responsible, or will they have to obtain approval from several? What if a local dentist wants to buy the practice of another doctor who wants to retire? What if that means that there would only be one dentist in the community – a clear anti-competitive monopoly condition that must be prohibited to protect the people.

Oh, and they want to prohibit businesses from sharing information on wages, salaries, and benefits, presumably so they can’t collude against workers. Does that mean that it will be illegal to participate in salary surveys – you know, those surveys that help workers decide what sort of salary offers might be fair and reasonable?

They also want to examine how chicken and beef are marketed as if that was not already a heavily regulated activity. Can’t have too many regulations to keep people safe. Likewise with beer and wine. Perhaps it is not enough to be drunk with power – something more liquid might be necessary. Indeed, the whole area of food products and agriculture is virtually an open field ripe for regulatory plowing.

Of course, they also want to tackle the high prices of prescription drugs.

Everyone knows that Big Pharma is gouging consumers by charging huge prices for drugs that only cost pennies to make. Forget that as a simple rule of thumb it can cost a Billion dollars to develop and obtain approval for a new drug.

Unless the company can make that billion back in sales, that will likely be the last drug they make. If it is a limited market – say only a million doses total, then they would have to charge $1000 per dose just to break even. Most of the cost of new drugs is already in the expenses of regulatory compliance. But of course, it makes sense to punish US drug makers for overcharging and instead import cheap drugs from Canada and India, and China where regulatory conditions are much less strict.

The Order goes on for thirteen fine-print pages of the Federal Register. The examples above are just a few of the things that are explicitly called out in the Order. Those are just the tip of the iceberg. What most of the Order does is call for all the regulatory agencies to produce, in the next two to four months, their proposals for new regulations addressing issues they believe affect competition between businesses and how they plan to address them. This is an open call to bring out their wish lists.

What ambitious bureaucrat cannot think of a dozen new regulations to address “fair” business practices? Want to offer a sale with special low prices – clearly anticompetitive. Have a unique product that only your firm makes – clearly monopolistic and you must be forced to set up a competitor to make that product, too. Have some new business practices that are much more efficient so you can provide goods and services at lower cost – unfair competitive advantage, naughty, naughty.

Set your imagination free. The horizon for new and creative regulation is unlimited. Businesses need your wisdom and insight, especially if you just got your first job out of school with your new Political Science degree.

Including the Attorney General’s office in the group makes sure that the new regulations will have teeth in them. Step out of line with the new regulations and you can be persecuted, excuse me, prosecuted to the full extent of the regulation. Go to jail, go directly to jail, don’t pass Go.

The Order ends with:

“This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.”

In other words, you can’t object, you can’t question, you can’t sue them if you disagree. Welcome to the new Fascist States of America.