Florida Governor Ron DeSantis will be removing the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) as a partner in the governor’s Faith and Community Initiative.
CAIR has been identified by the Justice Department as an “entity” of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood.
CAIR’s Florida chapter is in particular turmoil; two former leaders have been accused of sexual harassment and abuse. Additionally, CAIR-Florida co-sponsored a pro-Hamas rally in 2014, at which participants yelled, “We are Hamas.”
DeSantis Accuses CAIR of Deception, Ousts It from Florida Program
The office of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has told FWI it will be removing the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) as a partner in its Faith and Community Initiative.
In 2019, the governor founded the Governor’s Faith and Community Initiative “to facilitate the efforts of the state’s faith-based entities by improving communication and collaboration among them,” according to Dylan Fisher, the program’s director.
On August 18, a Facebook post by the Florida branch of CAIR claimed to be a leading member of the initiative, declaring, “Governor Ron DeSantis recently presented CAIR-Florida with a Certificate of Recognition for our continued work in service of the vulnerable populations of Floridians.”
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2022-09-09 19:51:222022-09-09 19:51:22Florida Governor Ron DeSantis removed the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) as a partner in Faith and Community Initiative.
The lying Biden White House has repeatedly denied ordering the FBI’s illegal raid on Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, court documents reveal otherwise. Lyin Biden bald faced to the American people. The illegitimate rogue regime shits on us and our Constitution as a matter of policy.
Court also acknowledges Joe Biden helped initiate criminal probe of his chief Republican rival, alarming many.
A criminal probe “requested by the incumbent president.” The seizure of clothing, medical records, tax records and 500 pages of attorney-client privileged documents not covered by a warrant. The sharing of privileged documents with investigators.
More than simply appointing a special master to referee an evidence dispute, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon exposed this week a Justice Department search of former President Donald Trump’s home that was initiated by his chief Democrat rival, that was carried out so sloppily that it violated the “least intrusive” mandate in the FBI agent’s manual, and that failed to keep legally-protected materials from falling into the hands of investigators.
The problems uncovered so far placed Trump “at risk of suffering injury from the Government’s retention and potential use of privileged materials,” Cannon wrote, adding that a future indictment of the ex-president based on the Aug. 8 search of Mar-a-Lago “would result in reputational harm of a decidedly different order of magnitude.” File
In other words, Cannon was not convinced by the Justice Department’s argument that its honor system — known as “filter” or “taint” teams — was adequate to protect the 45th president’s constitutional rights. “The Court takes a different view on this record,” she wrote.
Cannon’s Labor Day ruling is simply an opening salvo. Whether Trump’s claims of executive privilege, attorney-client privilege or an unconstitutional, overly broad search prevail will be decided some time in the future.
But one thing is clear. The FBI and its overseers at the Biden Justice Department bumbled on what was certain to be one of the most scrutinized search warrant executions in modern American history. And that’s according to one of the bureau’s own former and highly respected executives.
“The more that’s revealed, the more it looks like a kind of sloppy government overreach is in play,” former Assistant FBI Director of Intelligence Kevin Brock told Just the News. “It seems more than a bit ‘loose’ to those of us who have executed numerous search warrants.”
Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University law professor and avowed Democrat, said the judge’s ruling cited the sort of FBI failures that in the past would have enraged liberals who have gone silent about such concerns in the Trump era.
“Many faculty on the left continue the curious objections to a court seeking review of the FBI or not accepting its overbroad claims of authority,” Turley wrote Tuesday. “It is a bizarre shift that we have seen in other Trump investigations where liberals suddenly express shock that a court would override sweeping national security claims or seek to review the Justice Department’s review of material for privilege.
Turley noted that there “appears to have been mistakes by the taint team and that privileged material (as well as an assortment of private material from medical records to tax records) were seized.”
To appreciate the concerns of experts like Brock and Turley, one need only scan the Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide, or DIOG, the documents most FBI agents regard as their on-the-job bible.
The investigative manual requires FBI agents to use the “least intrusive” means of gathering evidence, especially when it comes to “sensitive investigative matters” like a probe of a former president where privileges and First Amendment are front and center.
That means framing a search in the narrowest possible terms to avoid communications protected by the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution. “Rigorous obedience to constitutional principles ensures that individually and institutionally our adherence to constitutional guarantees is more important than the outcome of any single interview, search for evidence, or investigation,” the manual states.
The leading theory about the motive for the Mar-a-Lago raid is that Trump’s political enemies are trying to stop him from a 2024 presidential bid. Second place is the dull and naïve assumption that justice was simply being carried out: in other words, that a former president of the United States is suspected of having broken the law and therefore needed to be raided by the FBI.
Assuming the first theory is correct, one has to marvel at the grand-scale thuggery of the thing. This is the stuff of banana republics. This is the dreaded shakedown by muscle from the mob. Prior to the arrival in 2016 of the self-touted swamp drainer, such an open abuse of power against any political opponent—much less a former U.S. president—could not have been dared with such impunity. Now the deed is done and the Bureau’s protectors are feigning outrage at the public outcry.
If the raid was intended to harm Trump’s chances, it doesn’t seem to have worked. At least not yet. Republicans and independents are now more motivated than ever to vote in the midterm elections, according to a poll conducted by The Trafalgar Group. As one would expect, the great majority of Republican voters believe the raid was politically engineered by Trump’s enemies. But it’s not just Republicans who believe that. Of independent voters, 54 percent believe the same, and 72 percent report being more strongly motivated now to vote, whereas only 55 percent of Democrats report an increased likelihood of voting because of the raid.
So much for the smear attempt. But what if Trump is actually charged and arrested, say under the Espionage Act? Putting him behind bars is certainly one method of preventing the strong populist candidate from dominating whatever bland, woke, virtue-signaling automaton the left decides to offer the American public in the next presidential election.
But such a move carries its own risks, too. It could backfire, like the raid itself, and cause even more people in the middle and on the right to snap out of the illusion that they are living in an honorable democracy. Some Trump loyalists might even go berserk and start a civil war, and it’s hard to imagine such a conflict going particularly well for the left. They don’t like guns, and they could hardly call upon the police they despise to defend them. Perhaps they think they can count on the military in such an event? But that is a risk too far. No one can see clearly the end of such a gamble.
Two things are certain. The left is playing with fire. And the country lies dry as chaff on the threshing floor. The fire that follows might be all-consuming, as indifferent to thugs as it is to citizens.
Are you fed up? Are you worried that America in rapidly sliding into a neo-Marxist state by the radical left in control of Washington with historically narrow majorities in the U.S. House and Senate and an Executive controlled by unnamed far leftists in place of a clinically incompetent President Biden? They are desperate to keep power and complete their radical progressive agenda that will change America and our liberty forever.
Americans just witnessed the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 without one Republican vote in the U.S. Senate and House (just as Obamacare was passed in 2010). The IRS will be hiring 87,000 new agents, many armed, to terrorize American taxpayers.
Americans witnessed the FBI raid at the Trump Mar-A-Lago home and property of President Trump, truly a first in all of American history. We know what that is about.
It is undeniable that the Democrat Party and the administrative state (the executive branches of the DOJ, FBI, IRS, et al) are clear and present dangers to our Republic and our liberty as they increasingly veer further away from the rule of law and the Constitution. What is the solution? At this critical juncture, there is only one action we can all take.
The only viable and timely solution at this critical point is to vote – yes, vote correctly and smartly to retake the U.S. House and Senate on November 8th and to prepare the way to retake the White House in two years. Vote and help everyone you know to vote. Please click the TAKE ACTION link below – we must vote correctly and in great numbers to be sure our votes are counted to diminish the potential for the left to rig and steal the midterms and the 2024 elections as they are clearly intending to do after their success in 2020.
In an interview with Breitbart News, Marine veteran Stuart Scheller, who demanded accountability from senior military leaders over the botched Afghanistan withdrawal, slammed Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley for being focused on “white rage” rather than fighting wars.
Milley, during a House hearing in June 2021, defended military cadets learning about Critical Race Theory and said he wanted to “learn about ‘white rage,’” using a term used by critical race theorists. Two months later, the military had to conduct a chaotic and hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan that ended in the tragic deaths of 13 service members and more than 100 Afghan civilians.
“Obviously our leaders have the wrong focus. I mean, Lloyd Austin, came into office while the Russians were staging on the border of Ukraine. We were trying to withdraw from one of the longest wars in American history. And after 100 days in office, he said he did problem framing and decided COVID was the biggest threat to the DoD followed by extremism. Like obviously his priorities are skewed,” Scheller told Breitbart News.
“And so I go back to what we were just talking about where fighting should be the focus at all times. And obviously you need a Secretary of Defense to manage that. And Mark Milley is the same thing, not only ‘white rage,’ he’s talking about climate control,” he said. “‘Hey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, like your job is to advise on military policy winning wars like climate control is not in your wheelhouse.’”
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2022-09-07 19:51:372022-09-07 19:51:37Marine Vet to Milley: Your Job is to Win Wars, Not Fight Climate Change
A new report shows the Biden administration has allowed one million illegal aliens into the country since taking office. That doesn’t even count another estimated one million who got in without being caught or as unaccompanied minors.
But the administration recently told us not to believe our own lyin’ eyes – illegal aliens aren’t just walking across the border, the White House says, even though there’s video footage showing them doing exactly that. The gaslighting is not appreciated.
Nor are the continued policy changes the Biden administration keeps making to open the border further. The latest is the administration’s announcement it will reimburse El Paso for the cost of sending illegal aliens to New York City on buses. Come on down, get your free bus ticket here!
And new details have been released on the administration’s plan to give illegal aliens identification cards. It’s supposedly a pilot program expected to begin in March and cost a couple million dollars, but there is already talk of expanding the program later. This shows the administration’s priority is to open the border further, not defend it against invaders who break our laws to get in.
Meanwhile, there are fresh reports of the problems Biden’s border policies are causing. It’s a familiar litany by now, starting with national security threats and drug trafficking. An investigation into passport fraud turned up nearly 30,000 Mexican passport holders with Middle Eastern names, raising fears Islamic terrorist groups are taking advantage of the chaos at the border Biden has caused to slip through without a close look. In addition, the Biden administration is still letting Afghan evacuees into the country without fully vetting them and admits it doesn’t know where they are. Dozens were flagged after entry as security risks, but good luck finding them now.
As for drugs, rainbow fentanyl pills made to look like candy to hook children are coming across the border. You might blame the Chinese Communist Party and Mexican drug cartels for trafficking the pills, but I blame the Biden administration for opening the border and creating the opportunity.
The Biden administration obviously also doesn’t care about the escalating number of migrant deaths its policies are causing. They’re up more than 50 percent in the last year and are at the highest on record. Pulling dead kids from the Rio Grande – more video the Biden administration doesn’t want you to see. Missing children are also just pawns in Biden’s cynical game: 57 illegal alien children have been reported missing in the Houston area since late last year. Most are missing from the homes of non-parent U.S. sponsors and others ran away from government shelters.
I’ve said many times Biden and his top border officials should be impeached for failing to faithfully execute our nation’s immigration laws. That will have to wait for Republican control of Congress but, in the meantime, some are fighting back as best they can. Florida brought a lawsuit on that exact point – failing to execute the laws. The case is in the discovery phase and border agents are giving details about the crisis at the border and the lives it is putting at risk. Another lawsuit, brought by ranchers and other plaintiffs, just survived a motion to dismiss. It challenges Biden border policies for the harmful environmental impacts they’re causing – trashed ranches, farmland loss, reduced biodiversity, and strain on water resources. Texas is busing illegal aliens to Chicago now, in addition to D.C. and New York. Chicago is another sanctuary city and now faces the prospect of becoming more dangerous with more illegal aliens showing up at their doorstep. New York is now the most dangerous sanctuary city in the country, according to a new report.
That’s what you get when you choose party over country, chase the unicorns and rainbows of diversity policy, and decide America is just too guilty to be allowed to continue as is. If you think that way, fine, let’s open up the border to the whole world as Biden is doing, destroy America starting with your city, and we’ll see how you like what comes next. How would you like to die – rainbow fentanyl overdose or Islamic terrorist attack?
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2022-09-07 17:52:402022-09-07 17:52:40Border News: Building the Case for Impeachment
The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP) reports that suicide is the 12th leading cause of death in the United States and that an estimated 1.2 million suicide attempts took place in 2020 alone. Our society must deal with this problem, but we have to know where to look. While many contributing factors are associated with attempted suicide or suicidal thoughts, one that deserves special consideration is drug use. Here’s what drugs have the highest risk of causing suicidal thoughts.
Who Are the Culprits?
Deciding which drugs have the highest risk of suicidal thoughts is tricky. This is because many illicit drugs affect the central nervous system (CNS), which is how the brain communicates with the rest of the body. CNS depressants work by slowing down or suppressing this messaging process. CNS depressants include benzodiazepines, opioids, sedative drugs, and even alcohol. Other drugs known as CNS stimulants work in the opposite way to CNS depressants by increasing central nervous system activity in the brain and the body. Stimulants include cocaine, crack, ecstasy, methamphetamine, and prescription stimulants, such as Adderall and Ritalin. Next to these, there’s marijuana, which is sort of a wild card drug because it can produce stimulant and depressant effects.
While it might sound like we’ve gone down the list of all available drugs rather than a list of drugs that cause suicidal thoughts, the reality is all these drugs, and many others, can lead to suicidal thoughts. Each of these drugs manipulates the central nervous system. As a result, they can influence our emotions, our cognitive decision-making, and our awareness. Additionally, underlying factors or mental health conditions can increase the possibility of experiencing suicidal thoughts from drug use.
Concerning Findings
With that said, it’s still true that certain drugs carry a higher potential for suicidal thoughts. While it is an oversimplification to associate stimulants or “uppers” with happiness and depressants or “downers” with sadness, the reality is that even uppers can cause severe depression, which can lead to suicidal thoughts. However, statistics show that most suicidal thoughts or acts are more commonly linked with depressants use. For example, a 2020 study revealed that suicidal drug overdoses ranked highest when people used opioids or barbiturates. Following those drugs, the third-ranking included antidepressant drugs. It is ironic that the medications that seem to carry a high risk for suicide and/or severe depression are, in fact, antidepressants. While benzodiazepines can treat anxiety-related depression, most instances of depression are treated with antidepressant medications, generally belonging to either the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) or the serotonin and norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors (SNRIs) class, though there are other less commonly used antidepressants as well.
Brand names that belong to these classes include drugs such as Cymbalta, Celexa, Prozac, and Zoloft. These drugs are more effective in treating depression than other options because they work in very specific ways to regulate serotonin in the body, which results in a stabilized mood. According to a study examining the link between SSRIs and suicidal thoughts, there is no clear connection between the two for adults. However, there was a higher risk of suicidal thoughts for children and adolescents. Researchers recommended that clinicians closely monitor and follow up with patients who use the medications they prescribed. In fact, this is exactly what we see in advertisements for antidepressant medications. The ads state the risk of the potential for depression and suicidal thoughts, followed by a warning to contact a doctor right away if these symptoms occur.
What to Do
Part of the controversy centered around the safety of antidepressant use concerns whether suicidal thoughts are pre-existing conditions of antidepressant drug use or if they are actually caused by taking the drugs. Additionally, mixing antidepressants with other drugs can create risks that can be detrimental to mental health. This information should not deter anyone from getting medical treatment for suicidal thoughts or depression-related symptoms. However, we can use it to educate ourselves about just how complex the problem is and what drugs to pay close attention to as we maintain our mental health and the mental health of others around us.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2022-09-06 19:51:212022-09-06 19:51:21What Drugs Have the Highest Risk of Causing Suicidal Thoughts?
U.S. Navy SEALs continue fighting in the courts to obtain religious exemptions to the military’s mandatory COVID-19 vaccination while the Biden administration lets exemption requests stack up, unaddressed.
Legal experts argue that the administration’s argument to national security no longer applies in light of changing CDC guidelines.
“The Constitution, federal law, and DOD regulations all protect religious liberty in the military, and our courts have repeatedly reminded us that there is no [COVID-19] exception to the Constitution,” Mike Berry, senior counsel at the First Liberty Institute that is representing the SEALs, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Some Navy SEALs’ case for religious exemptions to COVID-19 vaccination trudges along in the Fifth Circuit court as defense leaders remain wedded to the Biden administration’s military vaccine mandate.
Pandemic restrictions have loosened significantly in most sectors, with federal guidelines changing to reflect the lessened threat of the virus, but the Department of Defense (DOD) continues to maintain that vaccination is critical to ensure readiness of the armed services. It will take continued litigation to convince the military to respect religious accommodation laws that would prevent thousands of service members from facing discharge or confinement to low-skill jobs, the SEALs’ attorneys told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
“The law is on our side. The Constitution, federal law, and DOD regulations all protect religious liberty in the military, and our courts have repeatedly reminded us that there is no (COVID-19) exception to the Constitution,” Mike Berry, senior counsel at the First Liberty Institute that is representing the SEALs, told the DCNF.
First Liberty filed suit in November 2021 on behalf of 26 Navy SEALs and other Special Warfare personnel against the Biden administration, arguing that the mandate violates servicemembers’ right to free exercise of religion.
In January, a Texas judge, relying on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), temporarily blocked the Navy from considering vaccination status when making assignment decisions for the plaintiffs. The case reached the Supreme Court in March when the Biden administration asked the court to reverse the ruling, and the court granted a partial stay to the order.
“Generally, military members are required to follow orders, but in this case, the military has shown sheer hostility toward religious exemptions rather than using the least restrictive means possible. In its effort to be draconian, the military refused to even recognize the now proved science of natural immunity,” Texas Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert told the DCNF.
Out of the 3,375 sailors who have requested religious exemptions to the COVID-19 vaccine as of Aug. 24, only 46 have been approved, according to Department of Defense data. So far, the Navy has recorded 105,277 COVID-19 cases and 17 deaths.
“Did the Navy, in good faith, apply the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in these cases, or did they predetermine that they were going to deny all religious accommodations?” R. Davis Younts, an Air Force reservist and attorney representing several military members seeking religious exemptions, told the DCNF. Referring to the latter possibility, he claimed, “It’s clear that they did, and I think the facts continue to bear that out.”
The military needs to consider exemption cases individually instead of stonewalling requests or issuing blanket denials that no longer reflect the Biden administration’s own COVID-19 guidance, Younts added. The compelling interest of the military to require vaccination — that COVID-19 posed a direct threat to military readiness — no longer exists.
Sailors, soldiers and airmen, many of whom have years of highly-specified training and experience under their belts, remain in limbo while court cases play out, unable to receive promotions or continue their training, Younts explained. Thousands of service members may be dragooned out of a force that is already falling vastly short of its recruiting goals amid blatant threats of war from foreign powers.
“We’re being treated like pariahs,” he said.
The only way forward is continued litigation and “individual military members taking a stand,” Younts said, adding that any policy change among DOD leaders is unlikely.
“This is a public interest issue with significant implications … that has to make a difference,” he added.
Virginia on Tuesday joined 21 other states in filing an amicus brief, dated Aug. 29, supporting the religious liberty of Navy SEALs and other U.S. Navy members to seek vaccine exemptions. The Biden administration has asked the court to give the military “extraordinary” deference in its decision to mandate and enforce vaccination, undermining the fundamental liberties of Navy service members, according to the brief.
“Navy SEALs are some of our best and brightest, willing to sacrifice their lives to protect our freedoms. Those who have filed religious exemptions for the COVID-19 vaccine deserve to be heard and taken seriously,” Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares said in a statement.
The states argued that they have effectively managed COVID-19 within their borders without infringing on religious liberties, and the government should be able to do the same. They decried the administration’s “overreaching and flawed claims of legal authority.”
“The Administration’s near-blanket refusal to grant religious exemptions is not credible … its denial in this case is not entitled to deference,” the brief stated.
“The evidence strongly favors the sailors. The Navy’s own testimony indicates that their decision was based on politics. There is no military or scientific justification for their assault on religious freedoms,” Gohmert said.
However, the Supreme Court had argued that the previous injunction overstepped the judiciary’s authority by overturning an order of the Executive made in an apparent effort to safeguard national security.
“RFRA does not justify judicial intrusion into military affairs in this case. That is because the Navy has an extraordinarily compelling interest in maintaining strategic and operational control over the assignment and deployment of all Special Warfare personnel — including control over decisions about military readiness,” Justice Kavanaugh wrote in the concurring opinion.
A substantial number of the military’s elite positions, including Navy SEALs and fighter pilots, are seeking an exemption from the vaccine mandate, and some of those individuals intend to change careers if they can’t escape. https://t.co/iwZJKWSzzz
Discharges for sailors seeking religious exemptions have been postponed pending the court case, according to the Navy. Of those who either did not seek exemptions or whose requests were denied, 1,533 have been separated with honorable characterization of service.
The Navy and the White House did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2022-09-06 19:51:192022-09-06 19:51:19Navy SEALs Are Fighting For Religious Exemptions To Vaccine Mandates, And The Battle Is Far From Over
By North Carolinians For Immigration Reform and Enforcement
Summer is almost over in NC however the assault on our children is continuing unabated. In fact, it is increasing at an alarming rate.
It is just unimaginable why our legislators in Raleigh, the NC news media and NC law enforcement aren’t all acting as one to stop this most heinous crime against children. Children as young as 3 and 4 years old!
It isn’t because they are unaware of the problem, because we send out over 7,000 emails monthly, with 350+ of them going to media outlets all over NC, every NC House of Representatives member and every NC Senator, each receive a copy of these monthly emails and law enforcement sees these crimes every day.
Unless more citizens demand something be done (like enacting illegal immigration laws at the state level) this will never end.
One day, I just hope, no more NC children have to endure a life-long horrific memory of a brutal sexual attack by someone who shouldn’t be here in the first place.
With that being said, this month, NCFIRE was able to document 27 illegal aliens who committed 169 separate acts of child rape/child sexual assault.
If you would like to see this month’s report, click the link here: August2022
If you would like to view the monthly reports we have compiled since 2013, click the link here: NCFIRE.info
President Biden was recently in Pennsylvania where he campaigned against “assault weapons” again, committing multiple egregious factual errors.
The press describes such events as “gaffes” and the President as “gaffe-prone.”
But simple factual errors occur so frequently, and most often in the context of major policy positions, that one must conclude either the President is either an ignoramus on the whole subject of crime and guns, or he is deliberately demagoguing the subject.
He also took the occasion to spin the yarn that Democrats were not for defunding the police but rather Republicans were. This is because Republicans refused to vote for some Federal funding for police buried in legislation that spent billions on wasteful and unconstitutional spending.
Apparently, Biden is not aware of the summer of 2020, the 700 or so BLM riots, and the frequent calls to “defund the police” by Democrat activists.
Besides, funding or defunding police forces is largely a local matter not within his jurisdiction.
Some time ago, Biden suggested firing shotguns into the air as a way to deter crime and suggested that when assaulted, police should shoot people in the leg. Brandishing and discharging a firearm is a crime in itself, and shooting someone in the leg may be one as well. Normally, the use of deadly force is permitted ONLY if the life of the victim or an innocent party is in imminent danger. If imminent danger is not the condition, discharging a firearm into the air, or shooting for the leg, is circumstantial proof that imminent danger was not at hand. Moreover, if imminent danger to life and limb are indeed present, both actions suggested by Biden would not save the lives of the victims because the perpetrator would not be stopped from committing his crime.
Concentrating on “assault weapons”, he told the crowd that the bullet used by AR-15 rifles is five times faster than any other kind of bullet. He was suggesting that their lethality was therefore on a scale that should not be permitted. However, if the same round is fired from a bolt action rifle, rather than a semi-auto, the speed is the same, but he is not suggesting banning bolt action rifles, or is he?
Ballistically speaking, this is a lie, and anyone could prove it with three minutes’ worth of research. Anyone who has taken high school physics knows that force equals mass times velocity squared. So, the size of the bullet, its speed, what it hits, and how the projectile expands, are also factors in determining lethality.
The .223 or 5.56 mm used in the AR and similar platforms, shoots a very small .22 caliber projectile, commonly 55 to 62 grains in weight. It is so small, that while allowed in some states, most knowledgeable hunters believe the round is too small even for deer hunting. Ironically, the .223 is not permitted for deer hunting in Pennsylvania, the state in which the President was bloviating. The .223 is part of a family of centerfire rifles cartridges generally considered “varmint rounds” only suitable to be used on prairie dogs and coyotes.
As to the velocity of the round, it is not even the fastest, let alone FIVE TIMES as fast. Most .223 rounds travel around 3,200 feet per second.
How does this compare to other rounds? Well, the .270 Winchester has been around since 1922 and is a popular mid-sized hunting cartridge. With a 90-grain projectile, it travels at 3,600 feet per second. The .220 Swift similar in size to the .223 is considered the fastest “commercial” cartridge and moves along at 4,200 feet per second. That is 1,000 feet per second faster than the .223.
Custom, hand-loaded rounds, can go even faster.
Biden’s statement suggests the .223 travels at over 20,000 feet per second, which is just errant nonsense.
He also suggested the .223 blows up the target and therefore should be banned. Earlier he had suggested 9mm pistol rounds “blow the lungs out of the body.”
If that were true, Biden is guilty of war crimes because the .223 and 9mm are the standard rifle and pistol ammunition of the US Armed Forces which he commands, and it would violate the Geneva Convention. The Geneva Convention does not allow rounds to be used in warfare that completely explodes humans.
Some politicians have attacked the AR-15 platform because it is semiautomatic, but an “assault weapon” has a selector switch that allows the rifleman to go to fully automatic, that is one squeeze of the trigger sends multiple rounds downrange, as in a machine gun. ARs that Biden is referring to require one pull of the trigger for one round, which is common in other weapons that are semiautomatic.
Semiautomatic rifles and pistols have been made since the late 1800s. They no more cause crime than do hands and feet. However, more people are killed annually with hands and feet than with AR-type rifles.
True assault weapons, which have a fully automatic function, are illegal in the US and like all machine guns can be acquired only with special Federal permits.
Biden is somewhat unique in that rather than attacking magazine capacity or appearance, he is attacking the round itself. In so doing, he commits numerous factual errors. One can only surmise he is lying to mislead the public on this subject.
This is not without serious consequences. When a President shows his ignorance of the important subject matter or deliberately lies, it makes citizens wonder if they can believe anything the man is saying. When people can’t believe their President, this is serious. We may face critical issues in the future wherein getting the American public ready to endure a crisis may be necessary. If the President has repeatedly blown his credibility or is believed to be deeply dishonest, he will not be able to rally the public in the event of an emergency.
Besides destroying domestic credibility by constant demonstrations of ignorance, a President may show foreign leaders that he is a buffoon as well. This too, makes the world a much more dangerous place.
This is much more than committing gaffes. President Biden is destroying the credibility of the most powerful office in the world. He should not be excused for being an ignorant demagogue.
TAKE ACTION
Are you fed up? Are you worried that America in rapidly sliding into a neo-Marxist state by the radical left in control of Washington with historically narrow majorities in the U.S. House and Senate and an Executive controlled by unnamed far leftists in place of a clinically incompetent President Biden? They are desperate to keep power and complete their radical progressive agenda that will change America and our liberty forever.
Americans just witnessed the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 without one Republican vote in the U.S. Senate and House (just as Obamacare was passed in 2010). The IRS will be hiring 87,000 new agents, many armed, to terrorize American taxpayers.
Americans witnessed the FBI raid at the Trump Mar-A-Lago home and property of President Trump, truly a first in all of American history. We know what that is about.
It is undeniable that the Democrat Party and the administrative state (the executive branches of the DOJ, FBI, IRS, et al) are clear and present dangers to our Republic and our liberty as they increasingly veer further away from the rule of law and the Constitution. What is the solution? At this critical juncture, there is only one action we can all take.
The only viable and timely solution at this critical point is to vote – yes, vote correctly and smartly to retake the U.S. House and Senate on November 8th and to prepare the way to retake the White House in two years. Vote and help everyone you know to vote. Please click the TAKE ACTION link below – we must vote correctly and in great numbers to be sure our votes are counted to diminish the potential for the left to rig and steal the midterms and the 2024 elections as they are clearly intending to do after their success in 2020.
Since assuming office, the Biden administration’s policy towards the Iranian regime has been one of capitulation and giving concessions to the ruling Islamist mullahs of Iran. So far, they include suspending some of the anti-terrorism sanctions on Iran-backed Houthis, then revoking the designation of Yemen’s Houthis as a terrorist group; disregarding Iran’s oil sales to China; shipping oil to Syria, Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Venezuela in direct violation of US sanctions; ignoring the Iranian regime’s crackdown on protesters, smugglingweapons to the Houthis and Venezuela; attempting to murder US former officials and citizens on American soil, and taking more foreign hostages.
On top of that, newly leaked information from inside Iran, obtained by Iran International, reveals that the Biden administration has made even more concessions to revive the nuclear deal, which have not been revealed to the public. According to the report, “the US guarantees that its sanctions against IRGC would not affect other sectors and firms: e.g. a petrochemical company shouldn’t be sanctioned by US because of doing business with IRGC.”
The Biden administration seems to have been bragging that Iran’s leaders have dropped a key demand: removing the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) from the US foreign organizations’ terrorist list. But if other sectors that are linked to the IRGC can freely do business under the nuclear deal, then the designation of the IRGC as a terrorist organization, as well as the sanctions against the IRGC, are merely cosmetic.
The IRGC has a large stake in almost every industrial sector in Iran, which includes the energy sector, mining, telecommunications, gold, shipping and construction. Private sector competitors are not permitted in these sectors because the more closed the economy, the more easily the IRGC can monopolize it.
As a result, any economic growth in these sectors will directly benefit Iran’s military, the IRGC and its elite Quds Force branch, and Iran’s militia and terror groups across the Middle East. Since Iran’s economy is predominantly controlled by the IRGC or the state, additional revenues will likely be funneled into the treasury of the IRGC and the office of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
The other critical concession being reportedly made is that “the participants note the firm commitment of the US President [without mentioning Joe Biden by name] for returning to JCPOA compliance as long as Iran remains committed to the deal.” This probably means that future US presidents are obliged to continue with the implementation of the nuclear deal. But why should the US guarantee the implementation of the nuclear deal if it is not even a legally binding treaty, approved by two-thirds of the Senate, in accordance with Article II, section 2 of the US Constitution? In addition, it is illegal for any president to commit future presidents to anything that has not been approved as a formal treaty by two-thirds of the Senate.
Additionally, one critical issue about Iran’s nuclear program is linked to its past nuclear activities, which reportedly have military dimensions. The IAEA opened a probe into this issue, but the Iranian regime has been refusing to provide answers about several clandestine nuclear sites. Reportedly, another concession that the Biden administration has made to Iran is that the IAEA is expected to halt its investigation into the regime’s past nuclear activities.
Yet another major concession reportedly includes the term that only a report from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) can trigger the snap-back sanctions clause.
This is a much worse deal than the 2015 nuclear deal. Because, first, the US or EU3 (France, the United Kingdom and Germany) cannot call for reinstating sanctions on Iran unilaterally even if they believe that the Iranian regime is violating the nuclear deal. In the previous nuclear deal, at least, any single party to the deal could unilaterally trigger the snap-back sanctions clause. In addition, with the new deal, restrictions on the regime’s nuclear program could be lifted only two years after the agreement is signed; and the Iranian regime will not be obliged to reveal its past nuclear activities, which had military dimensions; and Russia will be trusted to store Iran’s enriched uranium, a task for which Moscow will be paid.
To make things worse, even if the deal falls apart again for any reason, the Iranian regime will beexemptfrom the US sanctions for 2.5 years. In other words, even if the regime is found breaching the deal and the US decides to pull out of the agreement, Tehran can continue enjoying sanctions relief for additional 2.5 years.
Even though the concessions that Iran has been obtaining from the Biden administration may be catastrophic to the region and even to the United States — presumably based on a fantasy that normalizing trade with Iran with normalize its aspirations to be a hegemon and instead become a pacifist good neighbor — the Biden administration nevertheless appears determined to enrich and empower what the US Department of State has called “the world’s top state sponsor of terrorism,” whose core policy since its Islamic Revolution in 1979 has been to “export the revolution,” as anchored in “Death to America” and “Death to Israel”. ”
As Reza Pahlavi, the son of Iran’s former Shah, explained last week: “This shift to appeasement was never going to solve any of the world’s issues with the Islamic Republic. The regime’s problem with the West is the West’s very existence, which obstructs its path to a global caliphate. Any efforts to accommodate this radical regime are shows of weakness that Tehran can manipulate” — as Tehran already seems to be doing extremely well.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00ThePricklyPear.orghttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngThePricklyPear.org2022-09-04 03:55:002022-09-04 03:55:00Still More Dangerous New Concessions by Biden Administration for a Nuclear Deal with Iran’s Mullahs
We are watching the villainous Left deindustrialize our societies, under the guise of climate nonsense. All while they fly around the world in private jets, which emit far more green-house gasses into the atmosphere. The Green Movement is a total assault on capitalism, our freedom, and our entire way of life. It’s implementation will cause significant economic decline and instability in countries throughout the world. Furthermore, if this movement is not stopped, you can expect massive instability in your cities and your towns, and your communities in the years ahead.
I warned Europe of the danger of relying on Russian energy while restricting their own production.
The Biden Administration needs to end its war on American energy, or we could face the same dangerous result.
Green energy policies in Europe designed to rapidly shift the continent away from fossil fuel dependence have contributed to soaring power prices in the region.
The European benchmark index measuring future electricity prices increased to a record $993 per megawatt hour (MWh) on Monday, days after prices in France and Germany surged 25%, according to European Energy Exchange data compiled by Bloomberg. By comparison, the average price of electricity in the U.S. hit $129 per MWh in June, federal data showed.
The energy crisis has forced consumers to cut back on power consumption, industrial production declines and energy rationing across the continent. The European Union Council (EU) scheduled an emergency meeting of EU energy ministers slated for next week in response to the market conditions.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2022-09-03 11:51:562022-09-03 11:51:56Experts Blame Green Energy Policies for Europe’s Full-Scale Energy Crisis: ‘A warning to the U.S.’
Editors’ Note: We at The Prickly Pear will continue to run worthwhile articles that explore the shift from “establishment Republican” to MAGA Republican, often referred to as National Conservatism, Progressive Conservatism or National Populism. It is a work in progress and you can tell that because various adherents can’t even agree on what to call themselves. But what seems clear is they want the government to be smaller, less expensive, less arbitrary, and act first and foremost in the interests of Americans. Americans come first, and then we can aid the rest of the world. American interests come first, not those of international bodies. American liberty based our Constitution come first. All hues note that the nation-state is a better model than international bodies or international government. Government is already distant enough and should be brought closer to home more to the state level within our Federal system. Let California be California, as long as we don’t have to be. It is part traditional Republican, part populist, and a dash of libertarianism on the economic front, but not the social front. As we see books and worthwhile reviews, we will continue to bring this to your attention. Above much of the theory is the necessity to win so as to defeat the Left. William F. Buckley famously said when he founded National Review that “It stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so or to have much patience with those who so urge it.” The problem is traditional conservatism didn’t stop much of anything. It has pretty much been 70 years of Progressive Left victories. It has left us where all the important cultural and political nodes of power have been captured by the Left. So, what we have been doing has not been working, and thus a new more muscular kind of conservatism is evolving. Trump did not create it, rather like a good prospector, he tapped into a rich political vein that no “experienced” politician had previously found. It is uniting small businesses and working-class people who are tired of unelected elites using state-sanctioned force to impose their way of life on others.
And they are tired of paying for their own destruction through high taxes and high inflation. Trump also taught many new candidates to counterpunch, realizing that the media and educational institutions have been captured and corrupted by the Left. MAGA needs to be a political movement with well-thought-out principles and less focused on the person of Trump. Perhaps both this review and the book itself will continue to aid in that effort.
Frank Buckley is always a thoughtful and provocative author, but I disagree with what he has to say in Progressive Conservatism more than with other books of his I’ve reviewed, such as his outstanding AmericanSecession and Curiosity (see my review here).
In the present book, he defends a “national conservatism” and is critical of laissez-faire capitalism, though he does not dismiss it entirely. Whether he is correct that the program he favors is the “winning strategy” for the Republican Party I do not presume to say: he knows far more about such things than I do. Despite his rejection of the complete free market, his concrete proposals often manifest great economic insight and his criticisms of the contemporary Left are forceful and effective. I propose to begin, though, by asking why it is that Buckley differs from the Rothbardian position I deem correct.
The answer, it seems to me, is that Buckley reposes much less confidence in philosophical reasoning when applied to politics and economics than do Rothbardians, who endeavor to derive a legal code based on natural law. Buckley is unsympathetic to natural law and says of it,
There are several difficulties with natural law theories, however, beginning with the leap from what is to what ought to be the case. If we have natural preferences, that doesn’t tell us that they’re the ones we ought to have. By nature, we can be greedy and selfish, so calling something natural doesn’t tell us it’s a good instinct. And if all you meant by saying something is natural is that it’s a good thing to do, labels like “natural” and “unnatural” are wheels that turn nothing…. More recent thinkers, such as John Finnis, try to sidestep the is-ought problem by identifying natural law with rational egoism and the idea that our practical reason will direct us to choose those goods that are best for us. This has come to be called New Natural Law…. But NNL fails to explain why we should sacrifice ourselves for others when there is no personal gain from doing so. (p. 180; on p. 242n15, Buckley cites David Hume on the “is-ought” gap)
Suffice it to say that Buckley does not address the endeavor of standard natural law theorists to bridge the is-ought gap (for some, though certainly not all, judgments) by appeal to the notion of the human essence; and though he cites Philippa Foot’s Natural Goodness (p. 3), he appears unacquainted with its distinctive line of approach to the issues he discusses. Further, it is not correct that John Finnis’s NNL is a version of rational egoism; in claiming this, Buckley has not considered what Finnis has to say about “the requirements of practicable reasonableness.” (For further discussion of the traditional natural law view, see my review of Douglas B. Rasmussen and Douglas J. Den Uyl’s The Realist Turn in the Philosophical Quarterly, October 2021)
Buckley makes explicit his antitheoretical stance in this passage:
But wait, says the right-wing intellectual. You want to promote the common good. Fine, but where’s your theory? Ah, you noticed that, did you, answers the progressive conservative. You’re right. I don’t have a theory. I think they’re baloney. They offer a false security and not the nuanced and adaptable answers needed for the multitude of problems life throws at you. “It is illogical to guillotine a prince and replace him with a principle,” said Ortega. (p. 182)
I should prefer to say, with Immanuel Kant, that if your theory does not work in practice you have the wrong theory.
That said, Buckley offers insightful comments on many current problems. He wants the Republican Party to return to the tradition of Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and Eisenhower, who supported nationalist policies designed to aid American workers and rejected the unhampered free market; but the polices Buckley favors at the present juncture are often quite in line with what Austrians would prescribe.
He says, for example,
While the legislator can’t enact cultural changes, there are nevertheless things he can do to help restore traditional family structures…. We could also make it easier to get married and have children through more generous tax credits for children in married households. The tax credit at present is $3,600 per child, and progressive conservatives should give some thought to increasing this. (p. 187)
Like Buckley, Rothbardians support the traditional family; and the more tax credits, the better.
On higher education, he says that the “government-backed loans increased the financial burden on students, and it also corrupted higher education. They freed universities from the discipline of private markets and led them to admit students who had no business in university. If the ill-educated students couldn’t get jobs after graduation, too bad for them” (p. 189). Well said, indeed!
Again, Buckley explains with exemplary clarity a key principle of political economy:
Mancur Olson described minoritarian misbehavior as a collective action problem in The Rise and Decline of Nations. We’d all be better off if we could band together and prevent interest groups from wastefully directing public spending their way. But when the benefits of combining together are dispersed across all American citizens, it’s easy to free ride and do nothing. The interest group doesn’t have the same problem because its numbers are far fewer. A classic example is government protection of the sugar industry, where tariff barriers raise sugar prices 64 to 92 percent above the world average. (p. 132)
I venture to suggest that this provides an excellent reason not to trust the federal government to administer the welfare state measures Buckley favors to aid the poor, but rather to reduce the size and scope of the government to the greatest extent possible.
One can only applaud when Buckley calls for a radical reduction of government regulations. “Could the commission cut back regulations by 70 percent as Trump proposed? Yes, and more so, if it corrects the biases of the deep state’s rulemaking and abandons the regulator’s conceit that every little error deserves to be corrected by a rule” (p. 199).
Perhaps the best point in the book is Buckley’s mordant comment on the contemporary Left:
What especially annoyed Republicans was how Democrats tried to pass themselves off as the party of law and order. They told us there was nothing to see when cities burned and stores were looted, and when Antifa injured 140 federal officers in Portland, the blamed the cops…. For Democrats, the police were the villains and the thugs were social justice heroes, which explains the degradation and crime we’re now seeing in Democrat-run cities, the homeless encampments and the looting, dangerous driving, and carjackings. (p. 23)
The fundamental difference between Buckley’s position and that of consistent supporters of the free market emerges most clearly in this passage:
I’ll concede, the progressive conservative tells the libertarian, that you have some great thinkers on your side. However, they don’t supply me with the kind of answers I’m looking for. If I want to know what percentage of the federal budget to spend on welfare, the Robert Nozick of Anarchy, State, and Utopia will say zero. If I asked Ludwig von Mises what kind of tariffs to erect, he’d say get rid of all of them. If I asked Milton Friedman what to do about infrastructure, he’d say “privatize, privatize, privatize.” They’re wonderful savants, but I have a different set of teachers and a Republican Party of Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and Eisenhower, not of philosophes. (pp. 173–74)
Though I would choose differently from Buckley, I would agree with him entirely that Eisenhower was no philosopher.
Are you fed up? Are you worried that America in rapidly sliding into a neo-Marxist state by the radical left in control of Washington with historically narrow majorities in the U.S. House and Senate and an Executive controlled by unnamed far leftists in place of a clinically incompetent President Biden? They are desperate to keep power and complete their radical progressive agenda that will change America and our liberty forever.
Americans just witnessed the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 without one Republican vote in the U.S. Senate and House (just as Obamacare was passed in 2010). The IRS will be hiring 87,000 new agents, many armed, to terrorize American taxpayers.
Americans witnessed the FBI raid at the Trump Mar-A-Lago home and property of President Trump, truly a first in all of American history. We know what that is about.
It is undeniable that the Democrat Party and the administrative state (the executive branches of the DOJ, FBI, IRS, et al) are clear and present dangers to our Republic and our liberty as they increasingly veer further away from the rule of law and the Constitution. What is the solution? At this critical juncture, there is only one action we can all take.
The only viable and timely solution at this critical point is to vote – yes, vote correctly and smartly to retake the U.S. House and Senate on November 8th and to prepare the way to retake the White House in two years. Vote and help everyone you know to vote. Please click the TAKE ACTION link below – we must vote correctly and in great numbers to be sure our votes are counted to diminish the potential for the left to rig and steal the midterms and the 2024 elections as they are clearly intending to do after their success in 2020.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00ThePricklyPear.orghttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngThePricklyPear.org2022-09-03 04:00:002022-09-03 04:00:00REVIEW: Progressive Conservatism – How Republicans Will Become America’s Natural Governing Party?
What Mikhail Gorbachev tried to do with the Soviet Union is surprisingly relevant today.
Sometimes I joke that I lived through four currencies and three leaders of the Soviet Union. I was born in 1981, Brezhnev died in 1982, Andropov in 1984, and Chernenko in 1985. Compared to the previous Soviet Leaders who spent a lot of time in hospitals, some even chairing meetings via video link, Mikhail Gorbachev, who took the helm in 1985, seemed young, fresh, and a reformer.
Gorbachev, who died Tuesday in Moscow at age 91, to this day is regarded by many in the West as someone who could have reformed the Soviet Union. An overall impression among many is that things could have been much worse, had someone more bloodthirsty occupied the Kremlin at a time. Sure, he did not tear down the Berlin Wall like Reagan encouraged him to. But he also did not send in the tanks when Germans started tearing the wall down themselves.
Conversely, many in Russia, especially the ruling circles, lament that Gorbachev was too weak, did not send enough tanks, and thus allowed the Soviet Union to collapse.
Interestingly enough, what Gorbachev tried to do with the Soviet Union is surprisingly relevant today.
Communism Cannot Survive Without Totalitarian Oppression
Gorbachev introduced the policy of “Glasnost” or “Publicity,” which, in broad terms, allowed people to acknowledge that everything was not alright in the Soviet Union. Prior to Glasnost, even complaining about mundane issues (e.g. lack of meat in the supermarket) could get you in trouble for being a rabble-rouser, counter-revolutionary, or an “agent of imperialism.”
Even though Glasnost was not what one would call freedom of speech or freedom of press (you still could not criticize communism), it was a big step for regular Soviet citizens, who for the first time could complain that there was no meat on the shelves and not risk being jailed. Everyone started acknowledging that things were not just bad, but very bad. People started questioning whether they would be better off if they governed themselves.
This, combined with desire for national self-determination, created a situation where public dissatisfaction could not be contained; the voices of discontent were simply too loud to be silenced. There were attempts though. The Tbilisi massacre in 1989 (also known as the April 9 tragedy) saw Soviet soldiers hack Georgian demonstrators (mostly women) to death with field spades In Lithuania in 1991, hundreds of Lithuanians gathered in Vilnius in a bid to reclaim independence, prompting Soviets tanks to drive over peaceful protesters, killing more than a dozen people and injuring hundreds more.
After Gorbachev, surviving and aspiring tyrants concluded that in order to maintain power they had to curtail freedom of speech and freedom of press.
Many Politician Today Are as Socialist as Gorbachev
“Perestroika” (rebuilding) was another of Gorbachev’s policies. It recognized deficiencies in central planning, especially in the provision of consumer goods. It tried to inject some capitalism into the economy, and even allowed for limited private companies to be established. This was very significant because the entire Soviet central planning rested on the Marxist premise that private enterprises are inherently exploitative.
Of course, private enterprises were limited to consumer goods sectors. The general thinking was that if Soviet citizens want jeans and chewing gum—fine, let local small companies make jeans, maybe then people will stop complaining. The government, however, would retain complete control of all the so-called important industries—energy, manufacturing, mining, and the like—while the willing masses would be allowed to play in the little sandbox of consumer goods.
It is easy to spot a fault in Gorbachev’s thinking: if central planning does not work for consumer goods, it would not work for even more complex production. What is horrifying is how many politicians of the free world hold the same basic assumptions as Gorbachev. Even worse, how many Americans on the left (or even the centrist right) call for the government to regulate or nationalize a company whenever they decide that the thing they want costs too much?
Once again, the aspiring tyrants studied Gorbachev’s attempts carefully and concluded (perhaps correctly) that inherently faulty systems cannot be fixed. It is impossible to fix central planning without abolishing its central premise that the government, not consumers, know best what to produce and in what quantities. In order to maintain power, the governments have to control the entire economy, or at least most of it.
Hardliners Sow the Seeds of Their Own Destruction
As mentioned, those who wish that communism and the Soviet Union never collapsed like to blame Gorbachev. But what really finished off the Soviets was the attempted coup by the hardliners in August 1991. Gorbachev was put under house arrest, TV stations started showing Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Lake”—a Soviet version of “everything is fine, nothing to see here,” and later a group of elderly men declared that they were taking things into their own hands to salvage the ideals of the Socialist revolution.
That did not go well with people who had had enough. The masses had turned against the continuation of the Soviet Union and socialism, which had wrought pain, poverty, and oppression. After the armed forces agreed to go with Yeltsin, the days of the Soviet Union were numbered. It dissolved on December 26th, 1991, giving the world the best Christmas present imaginable.
How does that apply to today’s America? You can’t have a free country without truly free speech. You cannot have empowered citizens if all aspects of economic life are decided by the government. And hardliners? They often overestimate how much support they really have.
Zilvinas Silenas became President of the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) in May 2019. He served from 2011-2019 as the President of the Lithuanian Free Market Institute (LFMI), bringing the organization and its free-market policy reform message to the forefront of Lithuanian public discourse.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2022-09-02 10:52:152022-09-02 10:52:15Why Tyrants Still Study Gorbachev
The Taliban are getting rich from the immigration business. And we’re paying for it.
Ariana Afghan Airlines used to fly Al Qaeda terrorists from Afghanistan to the Middle East. As a sideline, it also flew guns and drugs on behalf of the Islamic terrorist organization. While Ariana was controlled by Osama bin Laden, it was allegedly coordinated by Viktor Bout, the Russian arms dealer whom Biden has offered to trade for pothead WNBA player Brittney Griner.
But these days Ariana has a new mission and we’re the ones paying for it.
The Biden administration is buying bulk tickets on the Taliban airline, according to a congressional report, and paying “approximately $300,000 per flight to a Taliban controlled airline in order to allow U.S. citizens and Afghan allies to continue evacuating.”
Taliban Air flies Afghans to Qatar, a close ally and state sponsor of Islamic terrorists, and then they go on to America. With tens of thousands to over a hundred thousand Afghans in the pipeline, the Taliban could see over $100 million in payments from Biden for its airline.
Ariana Afghan Airlines, notorious for its terrorist connections and its poor safety record (the Europeans banned it some years back and it’s ranked as one of the most dangerous airlines in the world although face masks and probably burkas are compulsory), is once again under the control of the Taliban. And it’s a crucial part of the Taliban business model.
The Taliban sabotaged Biden’s retreat, keeping Americans and Afghans with visas trapped behind enemy lines to profit from their evacuation. And they’ve been doing just that. While the media has been shy about covering what’s going on, the Taliban have been quite open.
Taliban officials have boasted of handing out over 700,000 passports to collect $50 million.
“We are issuing up to 4,000 passports daily and we aim to increase the number to 10,000,” Shirshah Quraishi, deputy director of Afghanistan’s passport department, bragged.
It’s a myth that the Taliban are not allowing Afghans to leave. They’re happy to facilitate the trip for the right price. They’re also willing to let Americans and other foreigners visit since “the Taliban leadership also made more than $1 million in visa fees paid by more than 4,100 foreign nationals who have visited Afghanistan over the past year.” Many if not most of those visitors are involved in humanitarian aid organizations which the United States is also financing.
The Taliban profit from the Biden administration buying bulk tickets on its terrorist airline, they profit from issuing the visas to Afghans leaving the country and they profit from them once they come to America. A Los Angeles Times profile of a family of Afghan refugees describes them getting welfare payments and then sending money back home to Afghanistan.
Such remittances are a commonplace reality among immigrants and a major incentive for mass migration. A number of Latin American economies depend on remittances leading them to encourage mass migration to America. The Taliban have done the same thing in Afghanistan.
In 2020, total Afghan international remittances were estimated at $780 million making up 4% of the failed state’s GDP. Between the mass migration and the collapse of Afghanistan’s economy, the numbers fell, but will likely rebound to become much higher in the coming years.
Much of this money is sent through the Islamic ‘Hawala’ system often used by terrorists.
The Biden administration deliberately insulated remittances from sanctions on the Taliban and Al Qaeda’s Haqqani network going so far as “authorizing transactions involving the U.S.-blacklisted Taliban or Haqqani Network that are incident and necessary to the transfer of noncommercial, personal remittances to Afghanistan.”
Biden had created a massive loophole for funding Al Qaeda and the Taliban.
Afghans in America are collecting welfare and sending cash back home. Some of it may be going to their family members while other payments may end up in the hands of the terrorists. Either way, the Taliban and Al Qaeda will take their cut.
And the flow of remittances will make the Taliban Air flights and the visa payoffs seem minute.
Taliban financial institutions break up remittances into installments, thereby potentially profiting from interest rates (despite the formal Islamic stricture against it), charge fees and peg payments to their artificial exchange rate against the dollar which has little connection to reality.
The Taliban profit in three separate ways from just the payments alone, and will profit in many more ways as the money is injected into an economy that they control. That’s why they want to hand out 10,000 visas a day if they can. The more Afghans come to America, the more money the terrorists make when they send payments back home. It’s also why so many of the Afghan migrants are young military-age men. They were never refugees, but guest workers meant to move to America, get jobs, collect aid and send the money back to the Taliban terror state.
The flow of military-age men also helps disguise a terrorist infrastructure allowing Taliban, ISIS and Al Qaeda to inflitrate America, build criminal and terror cells to provide more cash and plot attacks among the huge number of undocumented migrants flown out by Biden in the last days.
The Afghanistan refugee crisis is actually a deliberate effort by the Taliban to create a sustainable funding model for their failed terrorist state through humanitarian aid, passports, flights and remittances. And Americans are footing the bill at every stage of the scam.
Under Osama bin Laden, Ariana Afghan Airlines was a system for transporting terrorists. Under the Taliban, it will play that role once again. Even the Clinton administration had sanctioned Ariana, while Biden is funding Ariana flights, allowing the terror airline to maintain its legitimacy and finance its operations. On September 11, Al Qaeda infiltrated our nation and flew airplanes into our buildings. Now, the terrorists are inflitrating their cash cows and terrorists into America.
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.
EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. All rights reserved.
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Editors’ Note: Elon Musk is hard to categorize. On the one hand, he is selling a lot of cars because of government subsidies, tax breaks, and coercion. But on the other hand, he notes such policies are anti-human and will lead to great misery and chaos. His space business gets a lot of both government and private sector business, largely because NASA could not do the job and left the world reliant on Russian rockets. He seems to believe in having children, yet he has them with multiple women. But with his comments below, he recognizes that we are destroying cheap, healthy, and dependable energy sources, seeking to replace that technology with new methods that are unproven and way behind the curve. He recognizes that environmentalism today puts a mythical “earth” above the needs of people, and thus is a secular religion that will likely kill a lot of people in the process. More ironic is that solar panels and windmills could not even be made without material and the energy created by fossil fuels. The “new energy” is completely dependent on the “old” energy it seeks to eliminate. But so is just about everything that provides our high standard of living almost totally dependent on fossil fuels. He seems to understand all this while our political leaders do not. Given his following, this is a good thing, even if we may disagree with some aspects of his business and personal life.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk spoke out about the need for more drilling and exploration of fossil-fuel resources for decades to come while addressing attendees at the ONS 2022 energy conference in Stavanger, Norway, on Monday.
“Realistically I think we need to use oil and gas in the short term, because otherwise civilization will crumble,” Musk told reportersat the conference.
When asked if Norway should continue to drill for oil and gas, Musk said, “I think some additional exploration is warranted at this time.”
“One of the biggest challenges the world has ever faced is the transition to sustainable energy and to a sustainable economy,” he said.
“That will take some decades to complete.”
Warning the conference participants who are quite aware of the world’s energy woes, especially in Europe, Musk stated, “We actually need more oil and gas, not less.” This is in line with the current concern that Europe’s energy issues will get much worse over the upcoming winter. There is also the risk of continued high gas prices and the fact that the power grid is being rendered more unstable in the United States by reliance on so-called sustainable energy.
Musk’s theme of civilizational collapse as a response to a premature transition off of fossil fuels is taken up in scientist and policy analyst Vaclav Smil’s recent book “How the World Really Works.” Although Smil discusses the impact more broadly, he zeroes in on our food supply’s link to fossil fuels: “Our food supply — be it staple grains, clucking birds, favorite vegetables, or seafood praised for its nutritious quality — has become increasingly dependent on fossil fuels.”
Smil, like Musk, anticipates a transition, but does not think it can be rushed. “Even if we try to change the global food system as fast as is realistically conceivable, we will be eating transformed fossil fuels, be it as loaves of bread or as fishes, for decades to come.”
He is certain that the coming transition “will not be (it cannot be) a sudden abandonment of fossil carbon, nor even its rapid demise — but rather its gradual decline.”
Last week Musk, the electric-vehicle pioneer and disciple of renewable energy sources, tweeted, “Countries should be increasing nuclear power generation! It is insane from a national security standpoint & bad for the environment to shut them down.”
A response to Elon’s tweet stated, “Nuclear is clean, efficient, and could replace fossil fuels entirely if it was embraced. It’s not, because so-called environmentalists aren’t pro-clean energy, they are anti-human.”Musk agreed, posting, “Some are indeed sadly anti-human.”
Germany is suffering from the “anti-human” environmentalists’ effect on their nation’s green-energy goals. They have gone from 17 nuclear power plants to just three in an aggressive transition to wind and solar power, which has not worked. Germany still heavily relies on fossil fuels for more than 75 percent of the nation’s energy needs.
Musk’s comments come after California Governor Gavin Newsom’s California Air Resources Board voted to require all new vehicles in the state to run on electricity by 2035. California, the nation’s most populous state, is likely to suffer grave consequences from this massive government-forced regulation.
California’s “ground-breaking” effort to lead the nation and world with Zero Emission Vehicle goals can only lead the state into an economic abyss brought forth by renewable energy grand illusions. The infrastructure and technology required to even get the ball rolling toward being free of fossil fuels is at the very least decades away.
Joining California last week, the far-left Marxist states of Massachusetts and Washington also issued mandates requiring the purchase of electric vehicles. In what can only be pure nonsensical “green madness” lemming behavior, those states passed legislation in 2019 to follow whatever guidelines are enacted by the California Air Resources Board. Sadly, all of these states are falling victim to the policies of their hubris-infected, green-energy politicians.
Elon Musk’s warning that civilization will crumble could very well come to pass if the Democrat-supported leftist green-energy evangelists continue to impose their oppressive agenda. The Great Reset is in play, and the world as we know it is rapidly changing. So, it is up to all of us to continue to challenge our leaders and keep them on a path away from the evils and falsehood of “sustainable” energy.
Are you fed up? Are you worried that America in rapidly sliding into a neo-Marxist state by the radical left in control of Washington with historically narrow majorities in the U.S. House and Senate and an Executive controlled by unnamed far leftists in place of a clinically incompetent President Biden? They are desperate to keep power and complete their radical progressive agenda that will change America and our liberty forever.
Americans just witnessed the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 without one Republican vote in the U.S. Senate and House (just as Obamacare was passed in 2010). The IRS will be hiring 87,000 new agents, many armed, to terrorize American taxpayers.
Americans witnessed the FBI raid at the Trump Mar-A-Lago home and property of President Trump, truly a first in all of American history. We know what that is about.
It is undeniable that the Democrat Party and the administrative state (the executive branches of the DOJ, FBI, IRS, et al) are clear and present dangers to our Republic and our liberty as they increasingly veer further away from the rule of law and the Constitution. What is the solution? At this critical juncture, there is only one action we can all take.
The only viable and timely solution at this critical point is to vote – yes, vote correctly and smartly to retake the U.S. House and Senate on November 8th and to prepare the way to retake the White House in two years. Vote and help everyone you know to vote. Please click the TAKE ACTION link below – we must vote correctly and in great numbers to be sure our votes are counted to diminish the potential for the left to rig and steal the midterms and the 2024 elections as they are clearly intending to do after their success in 2020.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00ThePricklyPear.orghttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngThePricklyPear.org2022-09-02 04:00:002022-09-02 04:00:00Musk: “Civilization Will Crumble” Without Oil and Gas
As if the crisis along the southern border were not bad enough, adult illegal immigrants are posing as minors to enter—and stay in—the U.S. since typically those under 18 are welcomed with open arms. The government refers to them as Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) and hundreds of thousands have entered the country in the last few years. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is charged with caring for illegal aliens under the age of 18 and the agency spends millions of dollars annually to house, medically treat, entertain, and school UAC who come mainly from Central America. Undoubtedly, illegal immigrant minors are almost always allowed to remain in the U.S. and quickly disbursed to a government-funded shelter upon arrival at the border.
The special treatment has led to even more criminal behavior by those already breaking the law entering the U.S. illegally. In El Paso alone, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) confirms that more than 655 adult migrants posing as minors have been busted in fiscal year 2022. This week the agency announced that the El Paso Sector has recently seen an unusual amount of activity involving adults posing as minors to dodge deportation. In one of the incidents agents identified 10 adults posting as UAC while in custody. CBP has a limited time to transfer UAC to HHS custody once the illegal border crossers are vetted and there begins the journey to stay in the U.S. Bigger criminal enterprises are behind the imposter plots, according to federal authorities. “Transnational Criminal Organizations exploit migrants convincing them to pose as minors in order to be processed as such” said El Paso Sector Border Patrol Chief Gloria I. Chavez. “Identity fraud is a common tactic used by TCOs to take advantage of migrants who do not know the legal consequences of their actions as they attempt to deceive authorities.”
The frontline Homeland Security agency says three adults posing as minors were also discovered recently using counterfeit documentation at the El Paso Sector Central Processing Center in Texas. The illegal immigrants, a 21-year-old female, 22-year-old female and 22-year-old male, are from Guatemala and were part of a group of 13 apprehended by federal agents in the area. “The three were encountered, along with nine unaccompanied children from Guatemala and one adult,” CBP writes in a statement. “These individuals pose as minors in order to avoid expulsion.” In a separate incident this month three males from Guatemala, ages 18, 25 and 26, intentionally posed as minors to remain in the U.S. Federal agents detected discrepancies between their stories and documentation presented in their failed attempt to pass as minors.
In yet another incident made public this month, CBP officers at El Paso’s Ysleta Station, which is responsible for 16.7 miles of international boundary along the Rio Grande River, discovered a group of what appeared to be eight minors later determined to be from Guatemala crossing the border illegally. Two of the illegal immigrants pretending to be underage turned out to be imposters, according to the feds. One was a 22-year-old male and the other a 19-year-old female. As in the other cases, agents, though overwhelmed with an onslaught of illegal immigration, detected discrepancies during interviews. CBP warns that individuals who attempt to pose as unaccompanied children may face charges under American laws that prohibit false statements to federal agents and conspiracy to defraud the U.S.
The last thing the country’s disastrous immigration system needs is more UAC. American taxpayers already spend a fortune to accommodate them through HHS’s Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), which funds and oversees dozens of state-licensed care facilities to house the young migrants when they arrive in the U.S. In fiscal year 2021 ORR housed an unprecedented 122,731 UAC, according to government figures, and this year’s budget is a whopping $8.76 billion. HHS projects that in 2022 it will accommodate approximately 149,000 and between 500 and 600 daily for the remainder of the fiscal year, which ends in September. Last year the overwhelming majority of illegal immigrant minors in U.S. custody, approximately 72%, were over 14 years of age and 66% were male. Nearly half (47%) of the underage migrants came from Guatemala, 32% from Honduras, 13% from El Salvador and 8% from other countries.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2022-09-01 11:51:262022-09-01 11:51:26Border Patrol Busts Hundreds of Adult Migrants Posing as Minors to Dodge Deportation
The Congressional Veteran Commendation (CVC) is a nominations-based program designed to recognize the wartime sacrifices and peacetime community involvement of American veterans. Honorees have demonstrated a record of being exceptional Americans both on and off the battlefield.
In Florida’s 16th Congressional District five warriors will be awarded the CVC. Two WWII veterans, a Korean War veteran, two Vietnam War veterans and a Gulf War veteran will be honored.
Congressman Vern Buchanan will be presenting the Congressional Veteran Commendation at a ceremony to recognize the exceptional military and community service of veterans residing in Florida’s 16th Congressional District.
The event will be held at 5:30 p.m. on Thursday, September 22 in the auditorium at Keiser University, 6151 Lake Osprey Dr., Sarasota, Florida 34240.
Please join in helping to recognize these 2022 honorees:
Edward Mahoney of Sun City Center who served in the U.S. Marine Corp during World War II
John Skeen of Bradenton who served in the U.S. Army during World War II
John Brill of Longboat Key who served in the U.S. Army during the Korean War
Richard Petrucci of Lakewood Ranch who serviced in the U.S. Navy during the Vietnam War
Richard Swier of Sarasota who served in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War
David Daily of Bradenton who served in the U.S. Army during the Gulf War
EDITORS NOTE: To help a local veteran please visit Operation Warrior Resolution whose mission is to transform veterans to health and wellness.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2022-09-01 10:51:592022-09-01 10:51:59SARASOTA, FLORIDA: WWII, Korean, Vietnam and Gulf War Warriors to Receive the Congressional Veterans Commendation
Senator Marco Rubio’s letter is below. We are glad that he responded to this outrage but wish he had mentioned Hillary Clinton by name as to why FBI didn’t raid her residence when she had confidential work related info on her private server at home.
Our great Governor Ron DeSantis did not hesitate to mention this.
The DOUBLE STANDARD within the DEPARTMENT OF IN-JUSTICE and the FBI is staggering.
Like many Americans, I was outraged to learn of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI’s) unprecedented raid on former President Trump’s residence in Palm Beach, Florida from the media. The FBI’s actions, less than three months from the upcoming elections, are doing more to erode public trust in our government institutions, the electoral process, and the rule of law in the U.S. than the Russian Federation or any other foreign adversary. These values represent the very core of what the United States stands for, and what the FBI is mandated to protect. Yet the FBI raid sows the same division – and exacerbates the same loss of confidence in the U.S. political process – that adversaries like Vladimir Putin go to great lengths to foment.
According to press reports, the August 8, 2022 raid may relate to an ongoing national security investigation regarding compliance with the protection of classified information. No one is above the law, but every American also deserves equal justice under it. The FBI appears to have taken steps related to President Trump that it has never taken with any other former President, and that it has generally failed to take with respect to certain criminal referrals made from elements of the Intelligence Community (IC) to the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) relating to instances where individuals allegedly disclosed classified information without authorization.
As such, I request the answers to the following questions, no later August 17, 2022, as it relates to criminal referrals made by any element of the IC to the DoJ regarding unauthorized disclosure of classified information during the past five years:
Of referrals made by other elements of the IC, what percentage of those referrals resulted in the FBI opening preliminary investigations? What percentage of those referrals resulted in full investigations?
In what percentage of the referrals did the FBI raid the private residence of the individual in question?
Of the referrals made, what percentage of those referrals resulted in a formal filing of criminal charges?
All Americans deserve the right to know why the FBI raided President Trump’s residence, but the law requires that you inform, at a minimum, the leadership of the congressional intelligence committees regarding such activities if the purpose of the raid was related to an investigation regarding the unauthorized disclosure of classified information with intelligence equities.
Therefore, I expect an explanation as to why I, and to the best of my knowledge every other leader of the congressional intelligence committees, first learned of this raid on President Trump’s residence via the media, despite the law requiring the committees to be fully and currently informed of all intelligence activities undertaken by the U.S. Government, including any significant anticipated intelligence activity.
In addition, I request a meeting to understand the FBI’s concerns regarding the handling of classified material in this instance, and to understand why the FBI did not keep the congressional intelligence committee leadership fully and currently informed as the FBI has done in previous sensitive cases.
Thank you for your prompt response to these important issues.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2022-09-01 10:51:572022-09-01 10:51:57Florida Senator Marco Rubio’s Letter to FBI Director Wray on the Mar-a-Lago Raid
Esmeralda Upton apparently had too much to drink and accosted a group of Indian American women in the parking lot of a restaurant in Plano, Texas.
This was captured on cell phone video, with Upton saying, “I hate Indians. Go back to India. We don’t want you here.” She also pushed the women, slapped their cell phones, and threatened to shoot them.
Police were called, but did not arrest her since they had not witnessed the incident. Upton was driven home by a friend after she refused to take a breath analyzer test. She is now facing charges of assault and making terrorist threats, with possible hate crime enhancements.
Although the Indian women say that they were scared, they were clearly defiant, continued to engage, and knew exactly what they were doing, and were video recording their attacker the entire time.
If you have ever seen someone drunk and blowing it, you know how cringeworthy that is. But unless that person is a celebrity or a public official, it isn’t really news, and is cruel to subject a private person to this kind of publicity.
Nevertheless, TV stations simply can not resist this kind of observational cinema, especially when there is the possibility of hate crime charges pending.
Esmeralda Upton represents no one and nothing but herself.
However, this newscast tries to imply she is part of a rising tide of violence and hate against Indian-Americans.
But the FBI website says that white people receive the most hate crimes after blacks. Jews are number 3.
I don’t even see a category for Indian-American. And anti-Hindu is near the bottom, at 31st place.
Furthermore, if one looks at what constitutes a hate crime, listed in order there is:
Intimidation – 4,381
Destruction/Damage/Vandalism of Property – 2,433
Simple Assault – 2,197
Aggravated Assault – 1,407
All Other Larceny – 222
All of this is bad, and should be prevented by law. But it is not evidence of some kind of crisis in society. The sum total of these hate crimes listed on the FBI site, 10,640, is 0.003% of the U.S. population of 330 million.
If the station were responsible, it would have said that hate crimes against Indian-Americans are rare.
Even if there were a rising tide of some sort, Esmeralda Upton is not part of it. She doesn’t belong to any hate group or movement. Unlike some of the groups who trying to make a federal case out of this.
The stations tells us the video is “shocking.” But it is not. It is banal.
What is shocking is that the stations include the Executive Director of the Council on American Islamic Relations Dallas/Fort Worth area, Faizan Syed, on their broadcasts. See here, here, here, here, and here.
Despite this incident having nothing to do with Muslims or Islam, Faizan Syed is calling for Upton to be charged with a hate crime. Reports say the police are investigating the parking lot incident as a hate crime. That means they are considering Faizan Syed’s input.
And he says this incident has impact upon the entire South Asian community. So he has pretensions to being the spokesman for the South Asian community now? He already works for CAIR, which pretends to represent the nation’s Muslim community. Additionally, CAIR purports to represent blacks, Asians, and American-Indians, as well as Muslims. They need to stay in their lane.
OpIndia stated: “CAIR that came in support of the victims made it about the ‘South Asian Community’ which the assault was clearly about being the woman ‘Indian’. The propaganda to shift the paradigm to call it ‘South Asia’ and not ‘Indian sub-continent’ has been active for many years now. The left eco-system and the western mainstream media have been trying to stop using the word ‘Indian’ or ‘Indian sub-continent’ while mentioning the region and using ‘South Asia’ instead.”
This is the same Faizan Syed who is campaigning to free Lady al-Qaeda, Aafia Siddiqui, from prison. He has organized rallies on her behalf in partnership with the Aaafia Foundation, a pro-Taliban group of people who wrote a prayer for Anas Haqqani, a leader in the Haqqani Network, which is part of the Taliban and allies with al Qaeda.
All the available evidence strongly suggests that Syed’s activities inspired Malik Akram to take hostages at a synagogue in Colleyville, Texas last January.
Who is Faizan Syed to point fingers at anyone?
Esmeralda Upton is CAIR’s third victim of the month, and the 23rd of the year.
CAIR attacks individual working-class Americans on TV at a rate greater than twice a month. And it has been going on for over five and a half years now.
And we are already at 23 for the year with Esmeralda Upton being the latest.
CAIR had ABC affiliate WSB defame a sitting judge to influence a legal decision.
There are several examples of CAIR turning an entire town against one person.
CAIR turned the town of Dearborn against Bill Larion for using the word “camels” in a Facebook post. ABC affiliate WXYZ was a willing participant in Larion’s persecution.
CAIR turned the town of Toms River, New Jersey against Dan Leonard for mocking and scoffing at Ilhan Omar, Rachida Tlaib, and Sharia law. CAIR did nothing to calm the situation down after Leonard’s daughter received rape threats.
CAIR used a rumor on social media to get on TV four times and call for a teacher’s termination while she was under police protection.
This is more than just news. It is a scandal.
Because 99% of the people CAIR attacks on TV are white.
Does CAIR hate white people? It’s not an absurd question. They have given the subject a great deal of thought and discuss it at length on their YouTube channel.
Here is the CAIR-Los Angeles Executive Director reducing America to a caricature of “white nationalism” – https://youtu.be/S0AeItOnV5M?t=1036
CAIR uses very expensive media databases to hunt for white people to attack.
CAIR is the hate criminal. And a national security risk.
There is your “shocking” news story.
CAIR and local TV newscasters are working together to persecute Americans with a clear pattern of bias.
The media won’t report this, but it doesn’t matter. The public is discovering it on their own. After all, they are the targets of CAIR’s hate campaign. If this isn’t stopped, CAIR will succeed in inspiring some nut case to physically attack one of their targets. In fact, it already happened in Colleyville. The only difference is that next time, an innocent person could get killed.
Finally, it is very disheartening to see that TV station KTVT is in Dallas/Ft Worth.
Colleyville is right there!
Colleyville “is situated in the Mid-Cities suburban region between Dallas and Fort Worth.” It is just 21 minutes away from Fort Worth. But, KTVT, and all the rest of the newscasters covering this story are already a million miles away from what happened there last January.
What happened in Colleyville was a hate crime. The Plano incident is a tawdry news story with a gratuitous inclusion of CAIR.
They let CAIR get away with Colleyville.
Then they bring Syed on for a story he has nothing to do with.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2022-08-31 08:51:362022-08-31 08:51:36Does the Council on American Islamic Relations Hate White People?
Some countries run their entire economies around remittances, promoting mass migration to America, and then profiting from the money sent back to their families. Once we enabled money to enter Taliban territory, this was inevitable.
But this little detail emerges from what is supposed to be a sympathetic profile of Afghan migrants by the Los Angeles Times, but is actually an exercise in entitlement.
In many ways, Musafer said, America has provided him and his family with the safety and opportunity they had hoped for. He quickly found a full-time job at an Apple warehouse. His children — Sefatullah, 18; Rabia, 16; Muqaddas, 12; and Subhanullah, 10 — are enrolled in school. He and Yalda take English-language courses. Many in Yalda’s family immigrated to California several years ago, during an earlier phase of the U.S. occupation, and on weekends the Musafers spend time with her sister’s family, cooking together or exploring Northern California.
But America sucks.
About 10 miles from Musafer’s home, Ali Zafar Mehran questioned why the resettlement process for Afghans hasn’t gone more smoothly. Since arriving in the U.S. in April, Mehran, 36, has struggled to find housing. His caseworker told him that it could take months for the resettlement agency to help him find a place to live.
It can take Americans months to find a place to live. And we do it without subsidies or a government-funded agency.
“This resettlement system and refugee services are not fair,” said Mehran, who worked as a budget advisor for the Justice Sector Support Program — an international partnership with the U.S. and Afghan governments to help reform the Afghan criminal justice system and curb the flow of narcotics. “Some of my friends received good services. But most are in bad situations like me.”
His resettlement agency didn’t help him find a home, he said.
Why should it? The vast majority of people coming to this country don’t have government agencies finding them homes. They have to do that on their own.
He found his current apartment through another friend, who said he knew the leasing office manager in a complex in the Arden Arcade area where many Afghans have resettled.
That’s how it works.
Mehran used his “welcome money,” about $3,500 disbursed by the resettlement agency, to pay for the apartment that he has furnished with hand-me-downs and items he’s salvaged from the street. His wife, Karima, 31 — a former nurse who gave birth to their second daughter after moving to California — sleeps on a mattress he pulled from the trash. The decorative pillow cases that he brought from Afghanistan are also filled with things he found in the garbage.
Mehran works in a warehouse, he got $3,500 in aid and is getting government aid now. Why can’t he afford a mattress for his pregnant wife?
He borrowed roughly $12,000 from friends to purchase a car, a rug and other household items.
Buying the rug is a priority, but your wife can sleep on a mattress from the trash. That’s a cultural value.
“I really didn’t expect it, that life will start like this in the United States,” Mehran said. “I have lots of other problems. I must earn money to send to my parents in Afghanistan.”
Each month, he receives roughly $1,400 from Sacramento County in the form of cash aid and food stamps.
Between a full-time job and $1,400 in state welfare, Mehran might have more money, but he’s sending it to his family who live in Talibanstan. One way or another, the terrorists will get a cut of money brought into Afghanistan.
How much money is he sending to them? We’re not told.
The bottom line though is that Mehran is surly and complaining about the country that took him in and is lavishing cash on him because it’s not doing enough, meanwhile he’s sending money back to his home country.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2022-08-30 20:51:102022-08-30 20:51:10Afghan Refugees in U.S. Are Sending Our Tax Dollars Back to Afghanistan
