Last year, students at New York’s elite United Nations International
School launched an anonymous social media campaign denouncing the
school’s teachers and administrators for their “vast history of systemic
racism,” “white liberal racist thinking,” and “direct, intentional,
repeated racial trauma.” The students threatened to “cancel” their
“oppressors” through social media shaming. Administrators immediately
caved to their demands.
The saga began last June, when a group of students launched an anonymous Instagram account, Black at UNIS,
which began posting dozens of anonymous and unverified accusations
against the school and specific teachers. The accusations ranged from
“microaggressions” (one teacher “used to mix up names of Black
students”) to “white leadership failure,” such as refusing to hire black
teachers and ignoring the bullying of black students. The Instagram
campaign demanded that the school “fire the racist principals,”
threatened to begin naming their “oppressors,” and pledged a policy of
no mercy: “No one is obligated to protect you from those consequences
and no one is obligated to forgive you.”
Later in the summer, the anonymous students formalized their demands
in an online petition, which was signed by students, alumni, and
parents. The petition claims that “for too long, UNIS has carefully
curated the illusion of itself as a multicultural utopia while Black
students and other marginalized groups suffer from a culture of
ignorance and isolation.” The group demanded that the school hire a
director of diversity and inclusion, institute mandatory antiracism
trainings, “decolonize” the curriculum, create “safe spaces” for
minorities, support the “exploration of diverse gender identities,”
reject the “Eurocentric focus of mainstream academia,” and push an
“agenda of intersectionality.”
The campaign caused an immediate stir among administrators, teachers,
and parents. Within days of the Instagram channel’s launch, school
executive director Dan Brenner sent an email to parents pledging that
UNIS was “committed to creating solutions to ensure an anti-racist
environment.” By the end of summer, Brenner had hired a
diversity-consulting firm to conduct antiracist trainings, created a
student-led antiracist board, began overhauling the academic curriculum
to reflect the new orthodoxy, and hired a full-time Director of
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. According to one source within the
school, Brenner and the board of trustees “completely caved to pressure
from these ‘activists,’ and passively accepted [the] list of their
demands without hesitation.”
Others in the school community had a different reaction. One staff
member told me that the school “is currently in the grips of a mania”
that has led to an unprecedented amount of “division, paranoia, and
hatred” within the institution. A small number of employees “see this
‘antiracist training’ as pure indoctrination, but do not know what to
do,” the staffer said. Like Brenner and the school administrators, these
employees are afraid of being labeled “racist” and getting denounced on
social media. According to the student activists, to disagree with any
part of their agenda is to admit to racism. As a result, the anonymous
activists have succeeded in steamrolling the institution and
establishing an inside-outside game—mobilizing power within the
institution and ensuring compliance by means of threats from outside it.
Keep in mind that UNIS is the school of choice for the world’s
elites, teaching the children of diplomats and leading figures in
international banking, finance, technology, and business at a cost of up
to $44,000 a year. The school’s political climate was already
thoroughly liberal and progressive. According to one source, after the
election of Donald Trump in 2016, the school held “three days of
counseling” and “a series of emergency assemblies where tearful students
ranted about being deported.” When then-UN Ambassador Nikki Haley
enrolled her children at the UN School, the source said, faculty and
staff “roundly despised” her as a “Trump enabler.”
The dynamics at this bastion of elite progressivism reveal something
important about the American political environment. The children of the
most privileged people on the planet have donned the mantle of
oppression to satisfy their moral narcissism and to exercise power over
their elders. The adults, crippled with anxiety about any threat to
their status, immediately bow to anonymous teenagers leading an online
mob.
This is the same basic pattern now spreading through most major
institutions in the country, from federal agencies to state boards of
education to Fortune 500 companies. More than anything, what’s needed in
America today is moral courage—precisely the virtue that has vanished
from those who administer our institutions.
When reached for comment, Brenner said that the school must commit to
“anti-racist beliefs” in every aspect of its operations. “It is
important for all facets of the UNIS community to engage in an honest
dialogue on race and privilege to improve the character of our
community. At UNIS, Black Lives Matter.”
Christopher F. Rufo is a contributing editor of City Journal
and director of the Discovery Institute’s Center on Wealth &
Poverty. Sign up for his weekly newsletter and watch his new
documentary, America Lost, which tells the story of three
“forgotten American cities.” This article is part of an ongoing series
on critical race theory in American schools.
Photo: TheCrimsonMonkey/iStock
City Journal is a
publication of the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research (MI), a
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An
opinion writer who frequently contributed op-eds to the New York Times
has admitted to being paid well by the Iranian mission to the United
Nations but insists that this did not make him an agent of the Iranian
government or influence his writing. Kaveh Afrasiabi is currently under
arrest, accused of violating the Foreign Agent Registration Act
(FARA). For its part, the New York Times, which still claims to publish
"all the news that's fit to print," is dummying up, keeping its readers
in the dark on the subject, and offering no comment.
Chief Kristen Roman of the University of Wisconsin-Madison said "hateful ideologies" run counter to the department's core values
Jan. 29, 2021, By Janelle Griffith
University of Wisconsin-Madison's
police chief has banned officers from using "Thin Blue Line" imagery
while on duty. Chief Kristen
Roman informed officers of the ban in a Jan. 15 email that was made public this week. The department faced criticism in
November over a photo posted to its Twitter
account that showed a "Thin Blue Line" flag displayed at the police
department's office.
The "Thin Blue Line" flag,
which resembles an American flag but has a blue stripe, is a sign of support for law enforcement
but has also come to signal opposition to the racial justice movement and
a symbol of white supremacy or support for the Blue Lives Matter cause. Roman said that the flag has been
"co-opted" by extremists with "hateful ideologies" in the
promotion of their views that "run counter" to the department's
"core values" and that it impedes "our efforts to build trust."
"Guided by our core values, my
responsibility to ensure your safety as best I'm able, and by what I believe in
my heart is the right thing to do under present circumstances, I am moved to
enact specific measures to distance UWPD from the thin blue line imagery and
the fear and mistrust that it currently evokes for too many in our
community," she wrote............To Read More.....
The number of deaths attributed to COVID-19 is astonishing. To be sure, there is an ongoing controversy
of how many of these deaths were due to (from) COVID-19 or reflect
people who died, happening to also have a COVID-19 infection. An even
more basic question is “How do we know when someone is infected with
SARS-CoV-2?”
A good starting point to answering that question is the so-called Corman-Drosten paper,
entitled “Detection of 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) by real-time
RT-PCR.” The purpose of the paper was to “develop and deploy robust
diagnostic methodology for use in public health laboratory settings
without having virus material available.” This work has been used
around the world by laboratories as a blueprint to design their own PCR
tests and gain Emergency Use Authorization.
However, this paper, touted as “peer-reviewed,” was published less than 24 hours after it was submitted. In fact, a request letter to retract the paper
was submitted on November 27, 2020—signed by 22 distinguished
scientists. Moreover, an earlier request (October 26, 2020) to provide
the peer review report of the Corman-Drosten paper was not answered.
The signers of the letter now contend that no peer-review process was
ever performed.
The signers also state that “Any molecular biologist familiar with
RT-PCR (Reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction—the test being
proffered) design would have easily observed the grave errors present in
the Corman-Drosten paper before the actual review process.” More that
that, two authors of the paper, Christian Drosten and Chantal Reusken,
are also members of the editorial board of the publishing journal.
Besides being a conflict of interest, the suspicion is created that
rapid publication was possible simply because the authors were also part
of the editorial board at Eurosurveillance.
The retraction request cites ten “major scientific flaws on the
molecular and methodological level.” Quoting from the retraction
request letter:
“The first and major issue is that the novel Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2
(in the publication named 2019-nCoV and in February 2020 named
SARS-CoV-2 by an international consortium of virus experts) is based on
in silico (theoretical) sequences, supplied by a laboratory in China,
because at the time neither control material of infectious or
inactivated SARS-CoV-2 nor isolated genomic RNA of the virus was
available to the authors. To date no validation has been performed by
the authorship based on isolated SARS-CoV-2 viruses or full length RNA
thereof.”
The key to developing a successful PCR test is using a master copy of
the genetic sequence that is pure and isolated. Any contamination of
the master renders the test unreliable. The SARS-CoV-2 master copy,
used for PCR testing, was derived from a synthetic RNA strand combined
with viral fragments manufactured by Chinese scientists. In other
words, scientists made an educated guess at the genetic sequence for
SARS-CoV-2. At present, labs continue to use the synthetic virus even
though a pure SARS-CoV-2 virus has been isolated.
The “educated guess” includes only two sections of viral RNA, and for
this very reason is simply not able to accurately distinguish between
SARS-CoV-2, and the many other coronaviruses.
While this article cannot do justice to all the scholarship
represented in the retraction request letter, one more key point should
be mentioned:
This PCR test contains neither a unique positive control to evaluate
its specificity for SARS-CoV-2 nor a negative control to exclude the
presence of other coronaviruses, making the test unsuitable as a
specific diagnostic tool to identify the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
According to the documentation for the TaqPath™ COVID-19 Combo Kit RT-PCR test (which utilizes the methodology described in the Corman-Drosten paper)…
Positive results are indicative of the presence of SARS-CoV-2
RNA; clinical correlation with patient history and other diagnostic
information is necessary to determine patient infection status.
Positive results do not rule out bacterial infection or co-infection
with other viruses. The agent detected may not be the definite cause of
disease.
Negative results do not preclude infection with SARS-CoV-2
virus, and should not be the sole basis of a patient management
decision.
The assay is for in vitro diagnostic use under the FDA
Emergency Use Authorization Only. This test has not been FDA cleared
or approved.
All this should raise an alarm; only it probably won’t. I discovered
quite long ago that science isn’t so much a search for truth, as it is a
search for orthodoxy. After all, what are we now supposed to tell the
millions of folks diagnosed using only the PCR test? As to the
publishing journal, it is “[S]eeking further expert advice and discussing the current correspondence in detail.”
Funny. I thought that’s what an editorial board does.
here are probably multiple reasons why coronavirus cases in the US are down nearly 50% in the US in the last month.
Could be seasonal. Could be the vaccine. Could be herd immunity from natural infection.
Could be the post-holiday default to endemicity. Could be a change in
the cycle threshold of PCR that generates fewer positive cases. Could
be data tweaks in light of political changes.
Anyone who says he knows for sure which is dominant is pretending to know the unknowable.
The New York Times, which obliquely reports the case
decline, is still certain that you should still live in isolation, fear,
and disease panic. They offer every county in America a tool in
which you can discover what you should do to protect yourself from the
pathogen, as if the only way to deal with a respiratory virus is to
hide. Their tool is extremely manipulative.
For example, they have this category called “very high risk level.”
Red is in the text. Scary! But what is it? It means 11 or more people
per 100,000 have generated a positive PCR test for the coronavirus.
Not deaths. Not hospitalizations. Not even symptomatically sick. (Yes, I know the term “sick” is old fashioned.)
We are talking about 11 positive PCR tests. This is an infection rate of 0.01%. Consider too that the NYT reports that these tests in the past have generated up to 90% false positives. In addition, the infection fatality ratio for those under 70 could be as low as 0.03%.
Once you add all that up, you end up with a very long string of zeros
followed by some number (I’ll let someone else do the math; in any
case, all these data are mostly based on illusion). In any case, we are
talking about a vanishingly tiny chance of severe outcomes for the
population at large, depending almost entirely on demographics.
Still, the Times says you may not live a normal life. True,
people in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Texas, South Dakota, and
many others states are living happy normal lives. But they are all doing
it wrong, according to the New York Times.
Let’s look at their life advice for anyone living in a “very high risk” area.
No haircuts, no manicures, no gatherings, no travel, no friends, no
bars, no restaurants, and no singing! BE VERY AFRAID…CONSTANTLY!
To me, all of this sounds like insanity defined. And look at how they
tip their ruling-class hand. People should not go to the store but
rather have their groceries delivered. Delivered by whom? Apparently not
readers of the New York Times.
To the Times, there is only us and them: the clean people
vs. the dirty people who get to travel to deliver to “us” our groceries
and essential services. Our job is to sit in a perpetual state of
disease avoidance while they operate as sandbags to create the herd
immunity from which we will benefit. It’s the new feudalism.
Now look what we must do for “extremely high risk” which pertains for as low as 20 PCR positives per 100,000 people.
Notice any difference between “serious” and “extreme” risk? That’s
right. There is none. They are identical. And if you look at the map
above you can see that right now most of the country is in extreme risk,
according to the Times. According to this preposterous map, there are
only two counties in the US at low risk.
Let’s look at Prairie County, Montana.
It’s one of the two places you can live without the terrifying prospect
of dropping dead from disease. There are 1,300 people living there. If
one person tests positive, that immediately shifts the entire county
into extreme risk. So the trajectory since November 1 looks utterly
hilarious, toggling between low and extreme risk with a total of 70
cases in three months with most daily cases at exactly 0.
So what according to the Times should the good people of
Prairie County do? They should be grateful to be relatively safe but try
to their best to stay put! Do not go anywhere near the scary places
elsewhere! They should stay in their bubble!
Look, at some point, the media is going to have to admit complicity
in the creation of this extremely unscientific, pathological,
unwarranted, and deeply destructive disease panic. They created it,
starting with the now-discredited Donald McNeil’s February 27, 2020, recommendation that we “go medieval” with the coronavirus.
This whole paradigm amounts to a rejection of public health, which is
always not just about one pathogen but all threats to human health and
not just for the short term but the long term. The defining mark of 20th
century public health as distinguished from the Middle Ages is that we
recognized that pathogens are all around us and need to be managed
rationally. Oh also the paradigm rejects human rights and freedom.
We do not need to destroy society, lock people in their homes, tear
down businesses, close schools, traumatize kids, drive people to
alcoholism and drug abuse, divide society between the clean ruling class
and the dirty working class, ban travel, close churches, abolish
choirs, close the arts, and whip up the population into a frenzied
psychological meltdown in order to deal with a new strain of a
respiratory virus. But tell that to the New York Times.
Jeffrey A. Tucker is Editorial Director for the American Institute for Economic Research.
He is the author of many thousands of articles in the scholarly and popular press and nine books in 5 languages, most recently Liberty or Lockdown. He is also the editor of The Best of Mises. He speaks widely on topics of economics, technology, social philosophy, and culture.
Jeffrey is available for speaking and interviews via his email. Tw | FB | LinkedIn
All during the four years of the Trump Administration we heard the left, including many members of Congress, promoting violence against conservatives, Christians, whites, Republicans, Trump administration personnel, and anyone who stood against their insane positions, and they're still doing it.
Below is a picture that was sent to me via e-mail. So the question remains. Who are the real promoters of political violence in America? None of this was promoted by Trump, and neither was the riot at the Capitol. So, why aren't these lunatics being impeached?
Here are some quotes to flesh out the logic, and hypocrisy, of the promoters of leftist violence.
"Tapper was silent when his CNN peer, Fredo Cuomo, demanded, “Show me where it says that protests are supposed to be polite and peaceful.” He also accepted AOC’s claim
that “the whole point of protesting is to make ppl uncomfortable.” And
you’ll look far and wide for Tapper talking about insurrection,
sedition, or patriotism when anti-Kavanaugh leftists stormed and
occupied the Senate office building.
Tapper reminds us that leftists are neither serious nor principled people."
Britain’s publicly funded broadcaster, the BBC,
has been branded a “complete joke” after it was revealed it has offered
staff a one-hour course on how to drink water.
During the coronavirus pandemic, the BBC has produced a series of
so-called ‘wellness’ webinars aimed at helping staff maintain mental and
physical health. One such course, entitled ‘Hydration’, provided staff with a one-hour
course on the benefits of drinking water and how to stay properly
hydrated, The Sunreported.
In an email sent out to BBC staff, the broadcaster explained:
“Attending this webinar will help you to identify the importance of
being fully hydrated and find practical ways to achieve this state every
day and to understand how being fully hydrated will improve health,
overall wellbeing and performance.”
In response to the course, an insider at the BBC said: “We’ve all had
a good laugh about it, so I guess it has boosted our mental health.”.......To Read More.....
My Take - This was sent to me from someone of Our Group, my internet e-mail group, who snarkily said (paraphrasing): Yes, but did it focus on how to drink water in an inclusive manner sensitive to the needs and concerns of people of color, women, non-cis-heteronormative non-gender conforming individuals, the disabled, and others nearby whose personal identities and pronouns have not been made explicitly clear before the potentially micro-aggressive water intake is initiated. They need to get with the program!
“The” science has spoken: only a clown would impose a lockdown. Not a funny clown, a demented, scary clown. Although I have been too sanguine
in the past, it looks like this time America’s gubernatorial lockdown
clowns are indeed piling into a comically tiny car, proclaiming
themselves heroes, and driving off before they get recalled, or worse.
Before all the worst restrictions fade away, though, many Americans
will have experienced about a year under socialism, i.e., a
command-and-control economy featuring the destruction of the modern
equivalents of the great enemies of the socialist state, the kulaks and petit bourgeoise; suppression of religious gatherings and local knowledge; breakdown of the rule of law; the mass warping of words; an election where party interests trumped Constitutional procedures;
the regular ratting out and ostracization of neighbors and “followers”
for speaking out against the party line; toilet paper, mask, and other
shortages; and for-profit megacorporations nevertheless behaving increasingly akin to state-controlled media.
Of course socialism was imposed in the name of a just “holy war”
proclaimed against a microscopic creature, so that makes it all okay.
Moreover, a year of war isn’t so bad in the scheme of things. Wars often
last much longer, like Seven Years, or even a century (though a good medievalist will tell you the term The Hundred Years’ War is an exaggeration because the fighting between England and France was intermittent over that century).
Arguably the most horrific war in history lasted four years and three
plus months and ended in a global pandemic. Contemporaries called it
the Great War and, more hopefully, “The War to End All Wars.”
That we now call it World War I to distinguish it from World War II,
which started just twenty years later, belies the optimistic view that
grave horrors will automatically spur sufficient backlash to prevent
their recurrence.
After all, we all solemnly declare “Never again” after each genocide and are proven correct only until the next genocide. Ditto with asset bubbles and bailouts.
In short, Americans cannot assume that the lockdown horror stories
of 2020-21 will not be repeated in the future because the nation has
learned its lesson. They must take positive steps to avoid a repeat
performance.
A Constitutional amendment banning or restricting future lockdowns
might sound nice but America’s policy clowns will subvert it whenever
and however they can regardless of what the amendment says. Just
compare, for example, some state firearms regulations to the Second Amendment.
What America needs to do is to prevent its more clownish policymakers
from gaining power in the first place. The nation will still have 99
problems but socialism in the name of public health won’t be one of
them.
I’ve argued before that I would like to ban political parties
but of course as an advocate for liberty I can’t justify the abolition
of an entire class of peaceful voluntary association. But I can suggest
that like-minded people voluntarily form a new political party based on
very different principles than the two major existing ones.
What if a new political party formed with the goal not of winning
elections at all costs but of protecting and eventually extending the
Constitution and liberty? I don’t mean using the Constitution and
liberty as branding points in an attempt to form a new rent-seeking
political phalanx, a.k.a. a “third party,” I mean establishing an
organization with internal incentive structures designed to protect
Americans’ constitutional liberties and nothing more.
What I have in mind is an organization that would seek to attract and
retain quality members based solely on their Constitutional aptitude
and classical liberal attitude as determined by examination.
Voting and serving in office, you see, is at least as dangerous an
activity as driving a motor vehicle. Only those who demonstrate at least
a baseline proficiency should be allowed to do it. While current
sentiment and the history of the country prevents anything smacking of a
literacy test (or even a heartbeat in some districts,
ba doom boom!) in a general election, political parties can establish
the rules for their own primaries or caucuses. Parties can also decide
who can, and who cannot, “run” for office under their imprimatur. So why
not ensure, through examination, that only those who understand the
U.S. Constitution and the classical concept of liberty can stand for
office as a Constitutional Liberty candidate, or vote in a
Constitutional Liberty party primary?
Political parties, after all, can and do discipline their members.
They are essentially nonexclusive clubs that can use clubs (punishments)
and rewards to force executives, legislators, and even judges to serve
party interests instead of their own, or those of their constituents.
(If you don’t know what I mean, watch House of Cards.
Yeah, Kevin Spacey is in it. So what? If he committed a crime or tort,
let the court system mete out an appropriate punishment.)
A party could credibly commit, however, to serving an interest other
than increasing its own power by screening members, as with an
examination, and expelling or otherwise disciplining members that serve
their own interests instead of the party’s stated goal. A Constitutional
Liberty party, for example, might fine a member for missing a vote on
an important bill or voting in favor of an unread 2,232 page monstrosity. And of course supporting something as obviously unconstitutional and ineffective as a lockdown would mean expulsion from the party and possibly mandatory resignation.
A Constitutional Liberty party could enforce its disciplinary actions
via performance bonds. If one of its members went rogue, supported
something unconstitutional, and refused to resign, he or she would
forfeit money held by a third party arbitrator as well as be expelled
from the club.
Why would politicians submit to such harsh party discipline? To get
elected to office so they can serve their town, county, state, or
country and keep their oath to uphold the Constitution. Public-spirited,
Constitution-loving politicians still exist. Seven of them just
resolved to make Monument, Colorado a Covid sanctuary city, thumbing their noses at the gubernatorial clown lurking along the Front Range.
Rationally ignorant voters
tired of the status quo might flock to a party credibly committed to
liberty and the Constitution. Most Trump voters did not care for the man
personally or even some of his policies. What most of them wanted was
to “drain the swamp,”
i.e., to cut government corruption and waste, so that all Americans
could prosper in a “free country,” as they were doing until the lockdown
clown came to town. A party truly committed to limited government and
voluntary association does not need a problematic, charismatic leader
like Trump but instead could prevail merely on the incentive-aligned
reality of its commitment to the Constitution and liberty.
Robert E. Wright is the (co)author
or (co)editor of over two dozen major books, book series, and edited
collections, including AIER’s Financial Exclusion (2019).
Robert has taught business, economics, and policy courses at
Augustana University, NYU’s Stern School of Business, Temple University,
the University of Virginia, and elsewhere since taking his Ph.D. in
History from SUNY Buffalo in 1997.
Get notified of new articles from Robert E. Wright and AIER.
If the Democrats actually try to do all the nonsensical and, indeed,
dangerous things they appear committed to doing, like country-wide mask
enforcement and COVID shutdowns, bowing to the wishes of the Communist
Party of China, trillions of taxpayer dollars wasted on climate change
and so-called green energy, killing fossil fuels, open borders, amnesty
for millions of illegals, etc.—then there will be little the Republicans
need do to bring about the Dems’ complete collapse in the 2022 midterm
elections. The American people will do it for them, leaving Biden/Harris
unable to continue their radical agenda until 2024 when they will be
canceled themselves.
It is also entirely possible that Biden/Harris will do little of what
they promised the extreme elements of the party and those entities
will, of course, go berserk, with their allies launching another ‘summer
of love’ in which leftists burn down neighborhoods across America.
Indeed, the Squad plus newcomers, Ocasio-Cortez et al, could very well be Joe Biden’s worst nightmare when they realize how little of their radical agenda will actually be enabled.
In “America Today & The Light At The End Of The Tunnel,”
our column last week on America Out Loud, we explained that there is a
silver lining to the dark storm cloud that is the Democrat takeover of
Congress and the presidency. Indeed, there is reason to believe that in
their first two years they will do far more damage to their own party
and its followers than they could actually accomplish against the entire
country. The expression, in use since at least 15th century England,
is:
“Give a man enough rope and he will hang himself.”
Witness what is happened to the Liberals in Canada. While railing
against former conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper for what the
Liberals regarded as inadequate greenhouse gas reduction targets, after
finally winning the government, now Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s
Liberals have exactly the same targets, to the disgust of climate
activists. Also, despite Trudeau’s virtue signaling on climate change,
he now supports the Keystone XL pipeline. Indeed, in his post-election
phone call with Biden, the first foreign leader to speak with the
president-elect after Nov 3rd, the importance of having energy
cooperation between our two countries was emphasized. Keystone XL is, of
course, an extremely important part of that cooperation. Canceling it
will, according to Gregory R. Wrightstone, Executive Director of the CO2 Coalition:
halt 830,000 bbls/day of crude from Alberta to Nebraska
require about 4,500 tanker trucks per day to replace
kill jobs on both sides of the border (it is a $9 billion project led by TC Energy (old TransCanada))
harm Canadian/US relations
harm US energy security which could lead to more “Wars for Oil”
“We cannot imagine the circumstance where
the United States would effectively choose to benefit OPEC
dictatorships that have spread conflict undermining global security
rather than partnering with its closest democratic-ally, Canada. Now the
government of Canada has said that the top priority in the bilateral
relationship is Keystone XL and I understand Prime Minister Trudeau
expressed that to President-elect Biden on their call on November 9th of
last year in which the statement was issued indicating that they agreed
to engage on issues such as energy environment including Keystone
XL. It is our fervent hope that the incoming U.S. Administration will
keep that commitment to engage with the top ally of the United States,
with Canada.”
Even uber-liberal Trudeau seems to finally understand at least some
of all this. Ocasio-Cortez et al are unlikely to ever fully appreciate
the implications of their proposals, but, assuming Biden actually
survives very far into his four-year term, he is likely to also realize
the impracticality of canceling such important energy projects with free
nations.
It was reported that Biden will indeed cancel XL because
he thinks he needs an early win on climate to assuage the
environmentalist on his team.
Yet Whitestone explained that a reduction of 100% of America’s
emissions would only reduce 0.04 degree C by 2050. Even John Kerry
admitted in 2016 that anything the U.S. does will have essentially no
effect on the climate because China, India, and Africa will offset
whatever we do.
We will now use public feedback from last week’s article to expand on
our premise that America faces only a temporary setback due to the
election steal by Biden’s bunch.
President Donald Trump will be sorely missed by many patriotic
Americans, of course, but other conservatives will be ready to fill his
shoes provided we can get the election frauds corrected in time for the
next elections. We hope that this perspective will help lift the
pessimism felt right now by conservatives across the land and to
rejuvenate the optimism needed to continue to fight more effectively on
behalf of our country.
One reader suggested that this election does not mean the Democrats
will have it all their way to conduct a full trial of their terrible
socialist ideas. The House and Senate are in fact in a near state of
deadlock and one or both may begin to slide right as the 2022 mid-term
elections approach, even before draconian legislative action can be
enabled. Many readers believed that Biden will be unable to hold his
position for more than two years, at which point he will be 80, leaving
vice-president-elect Kamala Harris to replace him. Harris will likely be
completely ineffective for the final 24 months of their term, having
zero experience, public support, or leadership skills, accelerating the
party’s collapse.
We wrote last week that the nation was split down the middle
politically and was taken to task on that view. Critics felt strongly
that no more than 15% of the country were “woke” liberals trying to take
down the country established by our founders. More believed that as
many as 70% of us are broadly supportive of a populist/libertarian brand
of politics which Grover Norquist, President of Americans for Tax
Reform, has long called “center-right”.
President Trump was cruising to an easy re-election
victory before the China virus derailed our country with a fake
pandemic, fake race riots, and then rampant election fraud ending his
ability to win four more years. A fair election should have found that
Trump won a majority of the popular vote by a few percentage points.
We were also fairly criticized for saying that Trump may have
deepened the political divide in the nation when in fact he was healing
old wounds that Obama had reopened. Fixing the judiciary, ending foreign
entanglements, confronting political correctness and social media
censorship, expanding school choice, and trying to end global warming
hysteria all worked to help alleviate, rather than deepen, divisions
among Americans.
The appearance of ‘deep division,’ we were told, was and clearly is
because Trump isolated and ridiculed the radical left and they fought
back by weaponizing every situation they had captured in the past three
decades. This included public schools, colleges, and the many unelected
government officials working against him.
Our biggest and most pressing obstacle is fixing the election laws
that made possible vote harvesting, no-excuse absentee voting, no
signature checks, and unsecured election computers. That is admittedly a
big ‘ask’ but is what all fair-minded citizens from across the
political spectrum should focus on right now. Indeed, if Biden is
really serious about healing the deep rift between left and right in
America, then he must appoint a neutral commission to properly study the
claims of election fraud. Only if it is demonstrated in an open and
transparent fashion that the election was not rigged for Joe, is there
any chance that the 40% of Americans who think the election was
dishonest will be satisfied. Alternatively, if the claims of election
fraud are shown to be justified, which we believe would be the case,
then Biden must lead the process of bulletproofing our election process
against future fraud.
24 months, even 48, with a gridlocked House and Senate are not really
enough time to descend into the pessimistic political chaos we warned
of last week. Most of us will not notice a big change in our taxes or
the regulations that protect our communities. In the short term, our
critics feel it will mostly be just political theater. They are probably
right, and this has made us even more optimistic than we were last
week.
So, we now even more firmly predict that the blazes that marked the
trail for our ancestors will shine brightly to lead us back. America
will get through these latest challenges and continue to be the land of
the free and home of the brave.
Dr. Jay Lehr is Senior Policy Analyst with the International
Climate Science Coalition and former Science Director of The Heartland
Institute. He is an internationally renowned scientist, author and
speaker who has testified before Congress on dozens of occasions on
environmental issues and consulted with nearly every agency of the
national government, as well as many foreign countries. After graduating
from Princeton University at the age of 20 with a degree in Geological
Engineering, he went on to receive the nation’s first Ph.D. in
Groundwater Hydrology from the University of Arizona. He later became
executive director of the National Association of Groundwater Scientists
and Engineers.
Tom Harris is Executive Director of the Ottawa, Canada-based
International Climate Science Coalition, and a policy advisor to The
Heartland Institute. He has 40 years experience as a mechanical
engineer/project manager, science and technology communications
professional, technical trainer and S&T advisor to a former
Opposition Senior Environment Critic in Canada’s Parliament.
Emperor Xi Jinping of China, having successfully installed his
puppet⏤the criminal imposter Joe Biden on the chair of the leadership of
the free world, must be wondering how in the world he happened to pick a
demented politician like Joe.
Instead of a more politically astute and groomed individual from his
secret cadre of trained fellow travelers, like Eric Swalwell for
example, who easily fell prey to the undoubted charms of a honey pot
entrapment agent? Joe was bought! So who’s the most astute? Can it be
Kamala Harris? How does she fit in, really?
We should not forget the probable damage done by California Senator
Dianne Feinstein’s Chinese chauffeur spy for twenty years, or the
hundreds of Chinese graduate students, professors, and researchers who
have infiltrated our institutions of higher education for decades as
well as the commercial enterprises of the Military-Industrial Complex
that supply our defense establishments with the tools for our national
security. It’s a good bet we’ve been screwed over!
Bribery and secret sex trysts are still two of the spy trade crafts’
surest methods of opening the doors to government secrets. Homosexuality
once made up the triumvirate of successful ways to suborn potential
dupes as spies but, alas, that’s by the board now, societal perversion
being forced on us as an accepted form of lifestyle not to be shamed but
celebrated.
So, America is now saddled with an illegitimate imposter as chief
executive; a VP unwanted by anyone, even her own party as Joe’s sure
successor, while a dysfunctional Democrat Party seething with rabid,
frothing at the mouth Marxist losers filled with hatred against
undoubtedly, America’s most successful President ever..........To Read More......
A very large majority of establishment academic climate scientists have
succumbed to a virulent infectious disease - the CO2 Derangement
Syndrome. Those afflicted by this syndrome present with a spectrum of
symptoms .
The first is an almost total inability to recognize the most
obvious Millennial and 60 year emergent patterns which are trivially
obvious in solar activity and global temperature data. This causes the
natural climate cycle variability to appear frightening and
emotionally overwhelming. Critical thinking capacity is badly degraded.
The delusionary world inhabited by the eco-left establishment activist
elite is epitomized by Harvard's Naomi Oreskes science-based fiction, "
The Collapse of Western-Civilization: A View from the Future" Oreskes
and Conway imagine a world devastated by climate change.
Intellectual
hubris, confirmation bias, group think and a need to feel at once
powerful and at the same time morally self-righteous caused those worst
affected to convince themselves, politicians, governments, the
politically correct chattering classes and almost the entire UK and US
media that anthropogenic CO2 was the main climate driver. This led
governments to introduce policies which have wasted trillions of
dollars in a quixotic and futile attempt to control earth's temperature
by reducing CO2 emissions...........To Read More....
On a cold, windy day with a small group of spectators watching from
behind barbed wire, Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. swore another in a long
series of false oaths before his motorcade passed between a long row of
soldiers with their backs to him looking outward for threats.
No
inauguration has been this empty in a century of American history. And
at no inauguration have the spectators been outnumbered by a raw display
of armed force. American presidents have been inaugurated in wartime
and during actual national emergencies with a better turnout.
Through
world wars and wars on terror, Washington D.C. has remained a national
capital where the hundreds of millions of taxpayers who labor to pay for
its grand edifices, free museums, and lavish lifestyles could briefly
come to enjoy a little of the life lived by the ruling class in the
Imperial City. Now the ruling class has made it clear that it doesn’t
want peasants entering D.C.
Even as Biden’s team prepped the
executive orders that would end the national emergency at the border and
shut down construction of the wall, new walls topped by razor wire were
rising across the imperial city. The new Fortress of Government sealed
off two miles of the National Mall and parts of downtown D.C. and filled
it with more soldiers than are deployed in Iraq.
The Secret
Service designated green and red zones. Some 25,000 National Guard
members were dispatched from Vermont, Maine, Louisiana, Wisconsin, Ohio,
Minnesota, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Arkansas, Missouri, South
Carolina, Rhode Island, Virginia, and Colorado to prepare for a fake
invasion that never came. But the armored vehicles and heavy weaponry
did come. President Trump had wanted a military parade that would show
America’s strength to the world. Biden held his own military parade to
intimidate his fellow Americans.
Democrats had deployed more
soldiers in D.C. than they had in Iraq and Afghanistan while authorizing
them to use lethal force and investigating their politics before the
deployment. The radical leftists who had resisted using the military to
fight terrorism or secure the border from invasion were eager to deploy
the military against the people of the United States of America.
The
handfuls of ordinary people who arrived, as Americans always do, to
attend the inauguration of a new president were confronted with heavy
weapons and barbed wire.
D.C. had become a Baghdad and Berlin of
checkpoints, choking off access to much of the city, closing roads,
bridges, and metro stations. Soldiers could be seen on every corner, and
the 25,000 troops were bolstered by 4,000 Marshalls, and a motley crew
of local forces, including 200 members of the NYPD, 40 members of the
Chicago police, New Jersey and Maryland state troopers, Miami-Dade cops,
and other law enforcement officers who were needed back home.
24
people were shot in Chicago this weekend and murders are already up
125% this year in New York City. Those officers could have done more
good at home, but Democrats don’t care about murder victims in urban
areas, instead redeploying officers to D.C. in a show of force.
Biden
took office in a city under military occupation whose businesses were
closed and boarded up. The D.C. government had tried to force hotels to
shut down. The hotels didn’t close, but there were hardly any people.
Instead the hotels were filled with soldiers tramping through their
lobbies. Any tourists that did come found nothing to see except
barricades and barbed wire.
Sometimes what you don’t see is more important than what you do see.
Filling
D.C. with soldiers meant that no one was going to measure Biden’s
crowds. The only crowds were heavily armed and had been ordered to come.
The complete lack of enthusiasm for the new one-party state that was
getting its Mussolini on was the dog that didn’t bark.
Questioning
Biden’s election has been deemed to be incitement. It’s enough to get
you censored, deplatformed, and fired by the companies standing behind
him. The election challenges have been used as the pretext for a
military occupation of Washington D.C. But the cloud of a disputed
election, like the winter clouds overhead, still hung over the
inauguration.
There were no crowds, just soldiers. After the
military and police contingent, the second largest group there for the
inauguration weren’t Biden’s civilian supporters, but his propagandists.
With few people, the media had to work twice as hard to manufacture the
illusion that this was a popular leader taking office instead of a
usurper imposed by Amazon, Google, Facebook, and the rest of the
political, cultural, and economic oligarchy which owns the media on
America.
CNN, a subsidiary of AT&T, had already gushed about,
"Joe Biden's arms embracing America". MSNBC, a subsidiary of Comcast,
compared Biden to God. "He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their
wounds." The only wounds being bound up were those of the ruling class
which had temporarily lost electoral power to an army of flyover country
workers and peasants, only to reclaim it with sedition, wiretapping,
abuse of power, billions of dollars, and soldiers in the street.
Popular
leaders, elected or unelected, might have troops in their cities, but
they also have adoring crowds to cheer them on. Biden’s only cheers were
coming from employees of huge corporations whose jobs depend on
praising him as the greatest thing since SuperPACs.
Biden
couldn’t manage the cheering crowds that greeted even the most mediocre
presidents on their arrival. The band might as well have struck up a
rousing chorus of, “Hail to the Thief.”
Jokes like that are all
but illegal these days even though they were ubiquitous during the Bush
and Trump administrations. But jokes only need to be banned when they’re
too close to the truth. The hysterical fascist theater with troops in
the streets and fawning praise on the lips of the press are all efforts
to overcompensate for the hollow man taking a false oath on a bible.
This
isn’t the pageantry of Stalin or Hitler. It’s the weary theater of
Brezhnev, a senescent leader of a decaying regime being propped up by
desperate threats of force by the nomenklatura. Even though the media
has told us more about Biden’s dogs than it has about any of the
Americans killed by Islamic terrorists enabled by the open borders that
Biden just reinstated, no one cares.
Biden isn’t a charismatic
leader. He isn’t moving the cause forward. He’s a placeholder for a
ruling class that wants homes in Dupont Circle that it buys by selling
out America to China, by ruining our economy with environmental
consulting gigs and racial contract quotas, and for all the manifold
ways which the swamp is coming back as Biden’s wetlands restoration
project.
“Hail to the Thief” is as much their anthem as it is
Biden’s. They fought to keep hold of D.C., the center of their power
base not because they care about its history or that of this country,
but because it’s where they network, collaborate, and do their dirty
little deals at our expense.
The troops in the street are their warning to the rest of the country about who is really in charge.
And
it isn’t Joe Jr, who, along with his criminal family, will be allowed
to dip their beaks in cash and cocaine until they’re sopping wet, along
with every aide, staffer, and associate. Biden will be fawned over, his
idiot wife will be dubbed a doctor, and the investigations involving his
son and brother will be swiftly dropped. And when the time is right,
Kamala Harris will step into his place.
When the Soviet Union was
entering its last days, one leader quickly made way for another. The
parade of old Communist hacks in their dotage became a procession of
political funerals. Generations after the revolution and the purges, the
only thing anyone in Moscow believed in was the power and decadence of
the ruling class. That and the threat America posed to them.
These are still the only three things that Washington D.C.’s ruling class believes in anymore.
Democrats and their media claim that this charade is a “victory for democracy”.
"We’ve
seen a force that would shatter our nation rather than share it, would
destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy. And this effort very
nearly succeeded. But while democracy can be periodically delayed, it
can never be permanently defeated," Amanda Gorman, the Harvard youth
poetess, sonorously recited her tin-eared Maoist verses at the
inauguration.
But where is this democracy? Where are the adoring
crowds, the joyous mobs celebrating and the people cheering the
tremendous victory of the democracy of Google, Facebook, Amazon,
AT&T, Comcast and their D.C. lobbyists and associates over the Rust
Belt and the flyovers?
Biden and the Democrats celebrated their
democratic victory with barbed wire, troops in the streets, political
terror, and the threat of even more political repression to come.
"There
is a broader societal issue that is going to take years to detox the
disinformation," Ben Rhodes, the Obama adviser who had boasted of
creating a media echo chamber, ranted on Comcast's MSNBC. On that same
state TV news network, John Brennan warned that "because of this growth
of polarization in the United States" members of the Biden team would be
"moving in laser-like fashion" to "root out an insidious threat to our
democracy".
Democracy is in a state of permanent emergency that
requires locking down D.C., filling it with soldiers, walls, and barbed
wire, and investigating political crimes. And D.C. will do everything it
can to end the threat that Americans pose to democracy even if its
ruling class has to live in its green zone surrounded by troops and
barbed wire until democracy is saved from Americans.
Biden, we
are told by the political interests and corporations advocating this, is
incredibly popular. But the crowds of his devotees can’t be allowed to
come to Washington D.C. Anyone who doubts that Biden is incredibly
popular is inciting violence and will have to be rooted out as an
insidious threat to our democracy. The more people doubt Biden’s
popularity, the longer D.C. will have to be under military occupation
until finally no one doubts his legitimacy in office.
Daniel
Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an
investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and
Islamic terrorism.
About Daniel Greenfield
Daniel Greenfield is a journalist investigating Islamic terrorism and
the Left. He is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz
Freedom Center
Monsieur John F. Kerry is the Harris-Biden administration’s Climate
Ambassador. He is assisted in his diplomatic duties by National Climate
Advisor Gina McCarthy. Earlier this week they held a press briefing with
the psickening Jen Psaki. I have embedded the video below. It is
excruciating. The White House transcript can be read without the full
effect of Kerry’s otherwise audible hauteur. The gentleman from Madame
Tussauds killed the Keystone Pipeline...........To Read More.....
Maybe this will all work out. Maybe alarm over the appointment of
Maher Bitar will turn out to have been unnecessary. But as of now, the
appointment of anti-Israel BDS activist Maher Bitar, a
Palestinian-American, to be the senior director of intelligence programs
at the National Security Council, promises to be deeply disturbing. A
previous Jihad Watch examination of his appointment is here, and a news article on the appointment is here: “Biden appoints Palestinian American to key intelligence role,” Israel Hayom, January 25, 2021.
Maher Bitar will be ideally situated in his new and important post to
learn, for example, of American collaboration with Israel on moves to
stop Iran’s nuclear program. Why should we assume he would not try to
limit that collaboration, or to alert Iran about these moves, or might
try to influence policy by focusing on international criticism of
Israel’s “settlement building,” in an attempt to manufacture an
unnecessary crisis between the allies, and making that crisis into a
reason for America to threaten to cut back on military aid to Israel
unless it were to stop enlarging or building settlements? Without
knowing Maher Bitar, a Palestinian and a Muslim, shouldn’t we assume
that he identifies with his own people, and while his outward demeanor
may suggest a lack of bias and parti-pris, he may be a dab hand
at assuming a sober mien of objectivity while being a master of
deception? “War is deceit,” said Muhammad.........To Read More...
Editor's Note:This was forgotten sitting in my draft file, so some of the information is dated. I came across it today and it's dated but the thoughts are current and valid, especially in light of Kasich's current comments and De Wine's tyrannical decisions regarding this coronavirus issue. RK
Governor Mike DeWine is fond of telling people he's a conservative. He seems to have the same problem John Kasich had: Defining conservatism as they see fit. Which in the case of both of them is to act like far left Democrats.
Ohio Gov. and former
Republican presidential candidate John Kasich (R-Ohio) told an
audience in Cleveland that he looks at immigration as an opportunity
because Ohio has a “stagnant growth of population – we want people to
come to Ohio.” “When I look at immigration I look at a new level of
energy,”....... “I look at immigration as an opportunity. One of the
things that we face in Ohio is a stagnant growth of population – we want
people to come to Ohio.
Okay....I wonder who this "we" is he's talking about? And why do we need more people in Ohio? Are we getting a bunch of new factories to replace all those that closed over the last 20 years? I haven't seen them. And
why are they immigrants and not people from other states? There's a
reason why is it Ohio is in the top five states people are moving out
of? Does anyone besides me think there's something wrong with Kasich? I
think he's weird and stunningly arrogant.
He's
gone from being a "conservative" - at least that's what everyone
thought until he became Governor of Ohio, then he started acting like
.....well..... Obama! He bypassed the expressed will of the legislature
regarding Obamacare issues, which will end up costing Ohio billions of
dollars we don't have. His justification? He says he has to support
Obamacare otherwise he'll have to answer to God for not doing so. Is
this another Twilight Zone episode?
He
claims he cut taxes, but what he did was shift them to the "rich". He
cut taxes on small businesses, but he didn't cut the volumn of taxes
being collected - he merely shifted them to bigger companies. That's
classic leftist class warfare, and claiming to have cut taxes is a lie. He
subsidized large corporations that threatened to move out of Ohio, like
Bob Evans, thereby forcing all the other restaurants in Ohio to support
Bob Evans financially - along with the rest of us. Did anyone see Bob
Evans cut their prices as a result? No, and you won't.
There are
some consolation to all of this - he's not going to the convention, so
we won't have to listen to his gibberish and logical fallacies, and he's
term limited. He's gone after 2018 and we won't have to listen to
anything he babbles about again. In the meanwhile - It appears to me John Kasich is now in the service of Mordor and the dark lord Sauron.
He
claims we're isolationists when we "just take care of us", but the fact
of the matter is when we take care of us the rest of the world
benefits. If we throw more good money after bad money we'll go broke
and the world will spiral into dystopia.
Personally - I think there's something seriously wrong with him, and I'm not all that crazy about his Lieutenant Governor, Mary Taylor. She actually thinks after accepting Obamacare
they can (and I heard her say this in a meeting I attended) back out of
it if they please. Is it possible she's not the brightest pebble in
the brook either? Or is it she's just another political hack?
Then we come to DeWine. What a prize he's turned out to be. The booby prize!
Former Gov. John Kasich (R-OH) said Thursday on CNN’s “Cuomo
Prime Time” he holds the Republican leadership responsible for fostering
“foster lies and misinformation” that enabled President Donald Trump,
who Kasich called a “false prophet.”
Kasich said, “The situation is that the Republican leadership has
really gone along in fostering these lies, these conspiracies. You know,
the election was stolen.”
He continued, “So what has to happen in order to wake people up is
the Republicans in a clear voice have to say, we lost the election plain
and simple. There are people in the party right now — frankly, Trump
was a false prophet. He was a false prophet. When he told people, the
people who go paycheck to paycheck, whose kids are not doing well, whose
jobs are at risk, he’s telling them, I’ll fix all this. Those folks,
you’re not going to— you’ve got to give them ideas and give them some
hope because much of this is about desperation, conspiracies.”
He added, “I’ve got to hold the leadership and the party accountable
for this because they continued to foster untruths, not untruths, they
foster lies and misinformation. People out here, some of whom are
desperate, are willing to latch on to anything, and that’s how Trump
became the false prophet.”.......To Read More....
My Take - John Kaisch is a disgrace, please view my Kasich, file.
On Thursday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Hannity,” Rep.
Elise Stefanik (R-NY) called for New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) and New
York Health Commissioner Dr. Howard Zucker to be subpoenaed over the
report from the New York Attorney General’s office that the state
undercounted coronavirus deaths in nursing homes.
Stefanik said, “Sean, this is so much more than a nursing home
scandal. This is a massive corruption scandal at the highest level of
New York state government. We know that the March edict that the
governor put in place, Gov. Cuomo, forced nursing homes to take positive
COVID patients, which put at risk our most vulnerable constituents in
New York state. There have been advocates who have lost loved ones who
have been asking for answers, accountability, and transparency. And at
every turn, the governor and his staff have smeared those individuals.”
She added, “We need to get answers and issue subpoenas immediately
against the governor, the Commissioner of Health in New York state, Dr.
Zucker, and his senior staff. Because the corruption is the cover-up.
They knew this number, and yet they refused to be transparent with New
Yorkers, but what was most heartless is they weren’t transparent with
those that have lost loved ones.”............To Read More....
By Rich Kozlovich 
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