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Feds Admit Offshore Wind Turbines Can Kill Whales!

May 1, 2023/in DrRichSwier.com, Energy, Environment, Politics, Science /by DrRichSwier.com

By Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow

Despite public proclamations of innocence, it turns out BOEM and NOAA clearly acknowledge the deadly threat of offshore wind development to marine mammals. Not surprisingly they do it in documents that are subject to judicial review, lest they be caught fibbing.

Of course these admissions are well hidden, buried in the depths of thousand page documents, but they are there to be found. These are the Draft Environmental Impact Statements (DEIS) that precede each offshore wind project. They are jointly prepared by BOEM and NOAA.

The key is that the overall project EIS includes the EIS for NOAA’s harassment authorizations for the construction of that project. In fact you can find this language by searching the DEIS for the word “harassment”. I am told that this is standard language which varies little from project to project.

The standard language says just what we have been saying! Harassment is likely to lead to dangerous behavior, including increased likelihood of deadly ship strikes and entanglements. It also says, as we have, that having multiple projects increases these risks.

Here is a good example of admitting that harassment is can cause harm. I could not have said it better.

“It is possible that pile driving could displace animals into areas with lower habitat quality or higher risk of vessel collision or fisheries interaction. Multiple construction activities within the same calendar year could potentially affect migration, foraging, calving, and individual fitness. The magnitude of impacts would depend upon the locations, duration, and timing of concurrent construction. Such impacts could be long term, of high intensity, and of high exposure level. Generally, the more frequently an individual’s normal behaviors are disrupted or the longer the duration of the disruption, the greater the potential for biologically significant consequences to individual fitness. The potential for biologically significant effects is expected to increase with the number of pile-driving events to which an individual is exposed.”

Empire Wind DEIS v.1, Page 3.15-14, PDF page 372

This warning is about risks created by pile driving but all forms of acoustic harassment fit this description. NOAA harassment authorizations are based on the estimated number of critters that will be exposed to unsafe sound levels. The source of the dangerous sounds is irrelevant. What matters most is the volume. Sound is a pressure wave; the louder the sound the greater the physical pressure on the hearing system. Pain and physical damage are possible.

In fact the infamous sonar surveying sounds, implicated in the whale deaths to date, can be much louder that the incredibly loud pile driving. Driving the enormous piles for the proposed wind projects is estimated to create sounds around 190 decibels, which is painfully loud in humans.

But some sonar equipment deliberately emits sounds over 200 decibels. Decibels is a log scale so this is not just 5% greater than 190; it is much greater.

Thus it makes no sense that NOAA claims sonar surveys have no significant impact and so do not fall under NEPA, while pile driving does. This is especially true when, as just happened, a dozen different projects are given simultaneous authorization to acoustically harass large numbers of whales.

What is important is that NOAA and a BOEM are clearly stating that the acoustic threats we have been warning about and suspecting are real. The telling correlations between sonar blasting and increased whale deaths cannot be waived away.

Correlation is not causation, but correlation between cause and predicted effect is very strong evidence that the cause is effective. NOAA and BOEM’s repeated insistence that there is no evidence offshore wind development is killing whales is clearly contradicted by their own Environmental Impact Statements.

Harassment kills.

Author

David Wojick

David Wojick, Ph.D. is an independent analyst working at the intersection of science, technology and policy. For origins see here. For over 100 prior articles for CFACT see here. Available for confidential research and consulting.

UPDATE: The Biden Administration is preparing to rush approval for the Atlantic Shores offshore wind project, which is located approximately 10-20 miles off the coast of New Jersey between Atlantic City and Barnegat Light, despite the risk it poses to marine mammals — particularly the severely endangered right whale.

They are poised to allow NOAA (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) to grant Atlantic Shores Offshore Wind the right to harass, and potentially kill through a generous IHA (Incidental Harassment Authorization) permit, the following numbers of marine mammals:

42 Whales
2,534 Dolphins
142 Porpoises
1,472 Seals
Total = 4,190 adversely impacted marine mammals

CFACT just submitted a detailed comment to NOAA opposing this authorization and urging them to pay attention to the potential harm that could be wrought on the natural world.

Read CFACT’s full submission at CFACT.org.

The SCOTUS Case To Watch—Loper Bright Enterprises vs. Raimondo

May 1, 2023/in Courts & Law, DrRichSwier.com, Elections, Featured, Politics, Regulation /by DrRichSwier.com

By Royal A. Brown III

This could be good news for reducing the unfettered power of the Administrative State.

SCOTUS Grants Review of Case That Will Gut the Federal Bureaucracy

By Bonchie | May 01, 2023

In the biggest news to come out of the Supreme Court of the United States since Roe v. Wade was overturned, the Court has granted a review of Loper Bright Enterprises vs. Raimondo. In its deliberations, the court will deal with the question of whether to overrule the infamous Chevron Doctrine, a ’70s-era precedent that granted broad powers to the bureaucratic state to interpret vague, often narrow statutes with near zero accountability.

Here’s a quick explainer on the Chevron Doctrine via Cornell Law School.

One of the most important principles in administrative law, the “Chevron deference” was coined after a landmark case,Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 468 U.S. 837 (1984). The Chevron deference is referring to the doctrine of judicial deference given to administrative actions. In Chevron, the Supreme Court set forth a legal test as to when the court should defer to the agency’s answer or interpretation, holding that such judicial deference is appropriate where the agency’s answer was not unreasonable, so long as Congress had not spoken directly to the precise issue at question.

Read more.

Metaphors, ticking bombs and climate change

May 1, 2023/in DrRichSwier.com, Elections, Energy, Environment, Politics, Science /by DrRichSwier.com

By MercatorNet – Navigating Modern Complexities

We should beware of allowing figures of speech to distort the debate.

Since linguist George Lakoff and philosopher Mark Johnson published their monograph Metaphors We Live By in 1980, scholars have devoted considerable attention to the use of metaphor as a cognitive tool that enables people to apply what they know from their direct physical and social experience to understanding more abstract things.

For example, a common metaphor used with respect to argumentation is that “argument is war”. This metaphor shapes our way of viewing and talking about arguments, so that it is not uncommon to hear people say things like “He won that argument,” “I attacked a weak point in his argument” or “My argument got shot down at the last board meeting.”

The very way an argument is conceptualized is shaped by this metaphor. An argument can of course be seen in other ways than as a battle, but we use this concept to shape the way we think of argumentation and the way we go about arguing.

Because metaphors make abstract things concrete, they are a powerful tool for influencing the way that people think of certain things and phenomena. For instance, the common conception of demographic growth is heavily shaped by the metaphor “population growth is a bomb”, which was popularized by Paul Ehrlich’s 1968 book entitled The Population Bomb. The implicit content conveyed by this metaphor is that population growth is a powerful force which has been suddenly unleashed and which is expanding rapidly in all directions, destroying everything around it.

In actual fact, peak world population growth was reached in 1963 with an annual growth rate of 2.3 percent. In 1968 when Paul Ehrlich published his book, it had already started to decline. Since then the increase of the world population has slowed every year and today is only growing by 0.9% per annum, as the graph below shows.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE OUR WORLD DATA INFOGRAPHIC: World population growth, 1700-2100.

If one were to propose a metaphor to describe what is actually happening population-wise, a much more appropriate one would be that of a boat sailing up a large river which has cut its engines and is now drifting upstream on its initial inertia but is gradually slowing as the current of the river acts upon it. In only 50 years from now, the boat will stop moving upstream and start to be pushed back downstream.

Recently, the bomb metaphor has started to be applied to climate change. Its very first recorded use in relation to this issue was in a report by the Stockholm Environment Institute published in 1988 intitled “The Greenhouse Effect: Impacts on Nordic Countries and Possible Remedial Measures.” However, we are hearing more and more frequently that “the climate bomb is ticking.”

On the other hand, climate scientists have determined that the warming effect of each molecule of CO2 decreases logarithmically as its concentration in the atmosphere increases.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW CO2COALITION INFOGRAPHIC: CO2 Concentration, C, in ppm.

This is why there was no runaway greenhouse warming when the concentration of CO₂ was approaching 20 times that of today during the Cambrian period about 500 million years ago. This inconvenient truth is kept very well hidden and is rarely mentioned, as it undermines the theory of future catastrophic climate change.

On top of this, water vapour, not CO₂, is Earth’s most abundant greenhouse gas, and is responsible for about half of the greenhouse effect.

In the light of these facts, a more apt metaphor for the impact of CO₂ on the rise of global temperatures would be that of an ocean liner with a balloon full of hot air attached to its prow.

AUTHOR

Patrick Duffley is Professor of English Linguistics at Université Laval, in Canada. More by Patrick Duffley

Man Accused Of Murdering Five ‘Execution Style’ Was Previously-Deported Illegal Immigrant, ICE Says

May 1, 2023/in DrRichSwier.com, Elections, Immigration, National Security, Politics /by DrRichSwier.com

By The Daily Caller

The shooter who allegedly murdered five individuals, including an 8-year-old child, in “execution style” killings Friday immigrated to the U.S. illegally, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) spokesperson confirmed to the Daily Caller News Foundation

The suspect, Mexican national Francisco Oropesa Perez-Torres, 38, was previously ordered to be removed by an immigration judge on March 16, 2009, ICE said. ICE removed him on March 17, 2009, the spokesperson said.

Oropesa Perez-Torres is currently at large after being accused of murdering five of his neighbors, Sonia Argentina Guzman, 25; Daniel Enrique Laso Guzman, 8; Diana Velazquez Alvarado, 21; Julisa Molina Rivera, 31 and Jose Jonathan Casarez, 18.

Oropesa Perez-Torres returned to the U.S. illegally at an unknown time and location, ICE said. He was arrested and removed by ICE in September 2009, January 2012 and July 2016.

The suspect was also sentenced to jail time for driving while intoxicated in January 2012, according to ICE.

The Cold Spring Texas Sheriff’s Office has issued a warrant for Oropesa Perez-Torres’ arrest for homicide. He is also wanted by the San Jacinto County Sheriff’s office for the shooting.

The shooting occurred Friday evening when neighbor Wilson Garcia asked Oropesa Perez-Torres to stop shooting his rifle so his baby could sleep, according to The New York Times (NYT). Oropesa Perez-Torres then allegedly walked to Garcia’s home and fatally shot Garcia’s wife, son and the three other victims with his AR-15 before fleeing.

AUTHOR

JENNIE TAER

Investigative reporter.

BOMBSHELL VIDEO: @RealAmVoice reporter captures Border Patrol on video CLEARING PATHS FOR ILLEGALS to enter the US.

BEN BERGQUAM: “Not only are they not closing the borders, or even making it more difficult, they’re CUTTING A NEW PATH to invite them in.pic.twitter.com/yor7JvxC0B

— Chuck Callesto (@ChuckCallesto) April 29, 2023

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Good News for Florida Voter Integrity

May 1, 2023/in Courts & Law, DrRichSwier.com, Elections, Politics /by DrRichSwier.com

By Royal A. Brown III

This is very good news indeed for voter integrity in the Sunshine State.

By Dara Kam

TALLAHASSEE — An appeals court on Thursday overturned the bulk of a federal judge’s ruling that a 2021 Florida elections law was intended to discriminate against Black voters, finding that he relied on “fatally flawed” analyses and “out-of-context” statements by legislators.

The Republican-controlled Legislature and Gov. Ron DeSantis approved the elections law as GOP leaders across the country pushed to make voting changes after former President Donald Trump’s loss in 2020.

The law imposed new restrictions on mail-in voting and voter-registration groups and prohibited people from giving snacks and drinks to voters waiting in line to cast ballots.

Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Walker last year ruled that the law, challenged by voting-rights groups, was intentionally intended to discriminate against Black voters. The judge also made the rare move of putting the state under a process known as “preclearance,” meaning that he would have to approve any changes to certain parts of state elections laws.

But Thursday’s split ruling by a three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Walker’s decision “does not withstand examination.”

“The district court relied on fatally flawed statistical analyses, out-of-context statements by individual legislators, and legal premises that do not follow our precedents,” Chief Judge William Pryor wrote in a 79-page decision joined by Judge Britt Grant. “On the contrary, examining the record reveals that the finding of intentional discrimination rests on hardly any evidence.”

Judge Jill Pryor issued a dissenting opinion.
While Florida had a relatively smooth 2020 election, Republicans in 2021 said changes were needed to help ensure future elections would not have issues such as fraud. The law (SB 90) included restrictions on ballot drop boxes, such as requiring boxes to be manned by employees of the supervisor of elections and limiting their use to early-voting hours.

The law also required voter-registration groups to return completed applications to elections supervisors in the counties where applicants live and imposed a 14-day deadline for submitting the forms.

The League of Women Voters of Florida and a number of Black and Hispanic advocacy groups went to federal court to challenge the measure, alleging that it was an effort to restrict minority voters from accessing the ballot.

In his March 2022 ruling, Walker found that “every single challenged provision has a disparate impact on Black voters in some way.”
The state “has repeatedly, recently, and persistently acted to deny Black Floridians access to the franchise,” the judge wrote.

But Thursday’s decision said that, “from the start,” Walker “erred,” adding that judges must remain mindful “of the danger of allowing old, outdated intentions of previous generations to taint (Florida’s) legislative action forevermore on certain topics.”
The state’s “more recent history does not support a finding of discriminatory intent. The only pieces of legislation cited by the district court that were adopted since the year 2000 offer no support for its finding of discriminatory intent,” the majority opinion said.

In her dissent, Jill Pryor said Walker, in a “thorough and well-reasoned order, committed no reversible error.” Jasmin Burney-Clark, the founder of an organization that is one of the plaintiffs, called Thursday’s ruling disappointing.

“Today, the appeals court has assisted Florida Republicans in silencing Black and Brown Floridians, but attacks to suppress our voices are nothing new, and we will adapt, organize, and overcome until we are heard and we are represented,” said Burney-Clark, the founder of Equal Ground.

Thursday’s ruling also disputed Walker’s conclusions “about the close relationship between racial identification and political affiliation” among Floridians. Walker found that “for white and Black voters in Florida, separating race from politics only works in science fiction.”

But William Pryor wrote that “the Supreme Court has warned against conflating discrimination on the basis of party affiliation with discrimination on the basis of race.”

The appeals court found that the parts of the 2021 law imposing restrictions on drop boxes and on voter registration by third-party groups were not intended to discriminate against Black and Hispanic voters and did not violate the federal Voting Rights Act.

“In sum, based on this record — and even in the light of the deferential standard of review we must apply to the findings of fact — the district court clearly erred in finding that the challenged provisions were enacted with discriminatory intent in violation of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. As a result, we reverse the decision of the district court in part,” Thursday’s ruling said.

But the appellate panel also ruled that part of the law prohibiting people from “engaging in any activity with the . . . effect of influencing a voter” outside of polling places was “unconstitutionally vague.” Plaintiffs argued the provision would prevent people from giving food or water to voters waiting in line to cast ballots.

“How is an individual seeking to comply with the law to anticipate whether his or her actions will have the subjective effect of influencing a voter? Knowing what it means to influence a voter does not bestow the ability to predict which actions will influence a voter. As a result, the district court correctly determined that this phrase in the solicitation provision ‘both fails to put Floridians of ordinary intelligence on notice of what acts it criminalizes and encourages arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement, making this provision vague to the point of unconstitutionality,’” Thursday’s ruling said.

The appellate panel put that part of the 2021 law on hold and sent the issue back to Walker “for further proceedings.”

While Republican lawmakers argued the changes in the 2021 law was necessary to make the state’s elections more secure, Walker decided that was a “justification” for discrimination because voting fraud is rare in Florida.

But Thursday’s ruling called Walker’s analysis flawed, saying that court precedent “does not require evidence of voter fraud to justify adopting legislation that aims to prevent fraud.”
Florida lawmakers “passed a bill that supporters argued would safeguard the integrity of elections against non-imaginary threats. The wisdom of the Legislature’s policy choices is not ours to judge,” William Pryor wrote.

Who coined the term ‘Deep State’? And what does this term mean today?

May 1, 2023/in DrRichSwier.com, Elections, Politics, Regulation /by DrRichSwier.com

By Dr. Rich Swier

To answer the question: “Who coined the term ‘Deep State’?”

We need to understand: What is the deep state?

To answer the question: “Who are the people in the deep state?”

We need to know what does this term mean in the year 2023 and exactly who’s behind it?

The Turkish phrase derin devlet which translates into “deep state” was created in the early part of the 20th century. Derin devlet is a “secret government” buried deeply within the visible government?

Curiously, it was candidate Donald J. Trump who borrowed from Turkish history. Donald J. Trump spoke of a “Deep State” embedded deeply within the government bureaucracy – and centered in the Department of Justice – which actively worked to defeat him in 2016 and then sought to undermine him once he won the presidency.

Who coined the term ‘Deep State’?

In his book Last Rites for a ‘Pure Bandit’: Clandestine Service, Historiography and the Origins of the Turkish ‘Deep State’ published in 2010 Ryan Gingeras wrote the term “Deep State”,

[G]enerally refers to a kind of shadow or parallel system of government in which unofficial or publicly unacknowledged individuals play important roles in defining and implementing state policy.”

On April 10th, 2017 in a Daily JSTOR article Matthew Wills wrote,

This concept of a deep state, Gingeras continues, is used to “explain why and how agents employed by the state execute policies that directly contravene the letter and spirit of the law.” Breaking the law, of course, often means employing criminals. Gingeras, a specialist in organized crime in Turkey, looks at the underbelly of the Turkish deep state to examine how alliances between generals, statesmen and “narcotic traffickers, paramilitaries, terrorists, and other criminals” are formed.

[ … ]

Essentially, dirty work needs dirty workers: so a clandestine force was recruited from paramilitary and criminal elements during the chaotic years of the first quarter century of the [20th] century.

Read full article.

Who are the people in the Deep State today?

Today we have federal agents, the DoJ, FBI, DoD generals, statesmen and women from all parties, narcotics traffickers, paramilitaries, terrorists and other criminals that are part of the “Nuevo Deep State”.

These “Nuevo Deep Staters” include:

Eco-terrorists, elected officials, the Department of Energy, NASA, corporations and non-profits who are pushing the Green New Deal.
Social justice organizations, including educators K-20, media, social media, corporations, government officials, generals, that promote an “anti-white” narrative using the mythical Critical Race Theory and racist the New York Time’s 1619 Project.
The LGBTQIE+ radicals who using the diversity, inclusion and equity myths to further the chemical and physical castration of American underaged children.
Public school teachers, school board members, superintendents who promote the LGBTQIE+ radical ideology by teaching it to American children, especially young and impressionable children.
Public school librarians and public school media specialists who insist on have pornography on their book shelved that depict graphic sexual acts between children and between children and adults.
Organizations such as Antifa and Black Lives Matter who are paramilitary organizations that have caused extensive chaos, burned down entire communities, attacked their opponents and either attempted or actually murdered those who they deemed a threat to the deep state.
Nation states such as China, Iran, Russia, Ukraine, North Korea, Cuba et. al. who are dedicated to supporting the deep states efforts to destabilize the American Constitutional Republic and replace it with a one-party system. Some of these nation states interfered in every election since 2016.
Global governance organizations including the United Nations, World Economic Forum, World Health Organization and others involved in the “Great Reset”.

The Bottom Line

The Nuevo Deep State’s mission is gaining and keep power. It is designed to undermine Judeo-Christian based religions, the individual, the traditional family and the American republic.

Without this the Deep State understands that it will go the way of the former Soviet Union. The Deep State have added new words to the political lexicon like “woke”. It is taking away words like male, female, white, children, boy, girl and replacing them with hundreds or categories of genders and words like homophobic, racist, Islamophobic and fascist.

For the Deep state to win good men and women must do nothing to stop it. They must look the other way while the Deep States takes away more and more of their liberties.

Good men and women must look the other way when their children are taught that they aren’t little boys and little girls anymore. Good men and women must look the other way when their neighbors and friends are imprisoned for attending a peaceful rally or supporting a particular political ideology.

Good men and women must submit.

The Nuevo Deep State demands it.

Today, the Nuevo Deep State stretches from the school house to the White House.

As George Orwell warned in his book “1984″,

“There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always— do not forget this, Winston— always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face— forever.”

The Deep State continues to attack President Donald J. Trump, but you see the Deep State isn’t after him. It is really after we the people.

You see we are the Winston Smith’s of today.

Thus ends the lesson on the Orwellian Nuevo Deep State.

House Passes Debt Ceiling Increase After Republicans Keep Key Inflation Reduction Act Provision

May 1, 2023/in Economy, Featured, Politics, ThePricklyPear.org /by ThePricklyPear.org

By Michael Ginsberg

The House of Representatives passed legislation Wednesday that would raise the debt ceiling through the end of March 2024 or by $1.5 trillion.

The Limit, Save, Grow Act passed almost entirely along party lines, with 217 Republicans in favor. All 211 voting Democrats and four Republicans voted against the legislation, which is unlikely to pass the Senate. The bill serves as an opening salvo in negotiations between Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy and President Joe Biden, who is refusing to sign any debt ceiling legislation that includes any other provisions.

The GOP’s four-seat House margin forced party leadership into late-night negotiations with more than a half dozen holdouts, most of whom represent Midwestern states. Those members included the entire Iowa delegation, who objected to a provision eliminating ethanol and other subsidies included in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. Wisconsin Rep. Derrick Van Orden was able to insert an amendment keeping some of the subsidies in place.

“I will always stand with the farmers who feed America. I’m glad that elements of my amendment were included in the revised Limit, Save, Grow Act that protect our corn growers and biofuels industry. That is a win for Wisconsin and America,” Van Orden said in a statement.

Other Republicans demanded more stringent work requirements for welfare recipients in exchange for their support. Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, New York Rep. George Santos and Tennessee Rep. Tim Burchett called on GOP leadership to increase the number of work hours for welfare recipients from 20 to 30 per week. House Freedom Caucus members Chip Roy of Texas and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania both ultimately supported the bill after pushing for the work hours increase.

Santos, Roy, and Perry ultimately voted in favor of the bill. Gaetz, Burchett, Colorado Rep. Ken Buck, and Arizona Rep. Andy Biggs were the four Republicans who voted against.

The Limit, Save, Grow Act would save an estimated $4.8 trillion over 10 years, Congressional Budget Office director Philip Swagel wrote Tuesday in a letter to House Budget Committee chairman Jodey Arrington of Texas. The legislation would cut discretionary spending by $3.2 trillion, according to Swagel, and mandatory spending by $700 billion. It would also raise federal revenue by $400 billion, he wrote. Swagel offered the estimates before final amendments were introduced.

The legislation is dead-on-arrival in the Senate, but forces Biden to negotiate with McCarthy. The two discussed the debt ceiling at the White House on Feb. 1 but have not met to review the legislation since. The White House blasted the Limit, Save, Grow Act, with communications director Ben LaBolt calling the cuts “draconian.”

“House Republicans are selling out hard-working Americans in order to defend their top priority: restoring the Trump tax cuts for the wealthiest and corporations at a cost of over $3 trillion,” LaBolt said in a statement.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen began taking “extraordinary measures” to avoid a default Jan. 19. The U.S. government will likely go fully over the financial cliff sometime in the summer of 2023.

*****
This article was published by The Daily Caller and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

As we move through 2023 and into the next election cycle, The Prickly Pear will resume Take Action recommendations and information.

NYC: Two Muslims who punched, kicked, pepper-sprayed and beat Jewish man plead guilty to hate crime charges

April 30, 2023/in Courts & Law, DrRichSwier.com, Elections, National Security, Politics, Religion /by DrRichSwier.com

By Jihad Watch

The Jews in the Qur’an are called the strongest of all people in enmity toward the Muslims (5:82); they fabricate things and falsely ascribe them to Allah (2:79; 3:75, 3:181); they claim that Allah’s power is limited (5:64); they love to listen to lies (5:41); they disobey Allah and never observe his commands (5:13). They are disputing and quarreling (2:247); hiding the truth and misleading people (3:78); staging rebellion against the prophets and rejecting their guidance (2:55); being hypocritical (2:14, 2:44); giving preference to their own interests over the teachings of Muhammad (2:87); wishing evil for people and trying to mislead them (2:109); feeling pain when others are happy or fortunate (3:120); being arrogant about their being Allah’s beloved people (5:18); devouring people’s wealth by subterfuge (4:161); slandering the true religion and being cursed by Allah (4:46); killing the prophets (2:61); being merciless and heartless (2:74); never keeping their promises or fulfilling their words (2:100); being unrestrained in committing sins (5:79); being cowardly (59:13-14); being miserly (4:53); being transformed into apes and pigs for breaking the Sabbath (2:63-65; 5:59-60; 7:166); and more. They are under Allah’s curse (9:30), and Muslims should wage war against them and subjugate them under Islamic hegemony (9:29).

2 of Joey Borgen’s attackers plead guilty on hate crime charges for 2021 beating

by Jacob Henry, New York Jewish Week, April 26, 2023:

Two men pled guilty this week for attacking Joey Borgen, a Jewish man who was severely beaten in 2021 while walking to a pro-Israel rally in Manhattan.

Waseem Awawdeh, one of five men who punched, kicked, pepper-sprayed and beat Borgen with crutches, pled guilty on Tuesday for attempted assault in the second degree as a hate crime and criminal possession of a weapon in the fourth degree. The Manhattan district attorney’s office confirmed his plea to the New York Jewish Week. It was first reported by Jewish Insider.

The beating, which took place amid a spike in antisemitism surrounding Israel’s 2021 war with Hamas in Gaza, drew national attention. And the court battle that followed led to criticism from activists in the city’s Jewish community that District Attorney Alvin Bragg was being too lenient with Awawdeh. Earlier this month, Borgen’s father, Barry, was invited by the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee to testify at a hearing in New York City on Bragg and violent crime in Manhattan.

Awawdeh will serve a total of 18 months in jail, and will be sentenced on June 13, Bragg’s office said. That includes 12 months for the attempted assault charge, and six months for the criminal possession charge, to be served consecutively.

Another defendant, Faisal Elezzi, pled guilty to attempted assault in the third degree as a hate crime on Monday. He will be sentenced on June 8 to three years’ probation and is required to continue compliance with anti-bias programming. Both Awawdeh and Elezzi were required to make a public apology.

Awawdeh’s sentence is longer than a six-month plea deal Bragg had reportedly offered him months ago, which had spurred backlash from Borgen, his family and Jewish activist groups, which demanded a longer sentence.

But Borgen told the New York Jewish Week that he still is not “happy about” the sentences, which he believes should be harsher. He pointed to a report that Awawdeh had said he would “do it again.”

Borgen was wearing a yarmulke while heading to a pro-Israel rally, the same day Hamas and Israel announced a ceasefire after 11 days of conflict, when he was attacked on the street in Midtown on May 20, 2021 by five people, including Awawdeh and Elezzi. Awawdeh also yelled “dirty Jew” while beating Borgen, who was sent to the hospital and needed surgery on his wrist….

Read more.

AUTHOR

ROBERT SPENCER

Pakistan: Muslims beat man who became a Muslim but later returned to Christianity

Sweden: Muslim migrant murders his wife in front of their children to preserve the family’s honor

42-year-old 17-year-old Muslim migrant and ISIS veteran hopes to remain in the U.K.

Pakistan: Parents padlock graves of deceased daughters to prevent necrophilia

French Immigration Expert: Immigration Costs Much More Than People Realize

UK Immigration Minister: Illegal migrants ‘cannibalize’ communities by importing ‘different lifestyles’

Canada: Toronto District School Board developing a new strategy to combat ‘Islamophobia’

A LETTER OF THANKS ON BEHALF OF THE PEOPLE OF IRAN TO: Israel’s Intelligence Minister Gila Gamliel

April 30, 2023/in Commentary, DrRichSwier.com, Politics /by DrRichSwier.com

By Amil Imani

MK גילה גמליאל – Gila Gamliel
Minister of Intelligence of the State of Israel
3 Kaplan Street, Jerusalem, 9195017

Dear Minister Gamliel,

On behalf of the people of Iran, we are very grateful and heartened at the recent historic invitation of His Imperial Highness Crown Prince of Iran, Reza Pahlavi, and his beautiful Queen, Yasemin Pahlavi, along with your magnificent hospitality. We look forward to reciprocating in the near future, I especially would like to thank you for accompanying the Prince throughout this event and making sure he is safe. This was indeed a very courageous move that has been much needed, but lacking among the leaders of the free world. We are so grateful for your gracious reception of Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi. Wishing for this visit to pave the way for a new chapter of collaboration and mutual respect between the State of Iran and Israel.

We stand with you in calling the Islamic regime truly what it is: a criminal regime, a violator of basic human rights, a regime sponsor of terrorism, and a threat to world peace.

Ali Khamenei is a well-known supporter of worldwide terrorism. Not only do they remain a clear and viable threat to the existence of Israel with their continuous call for the nuclear annihilation of that sovereign nation, but their brutal regime has thoroughly dehumanized the Iranian people, who, for many years now, have yearned to be liberated from these men’s tyrannical and bloodthirsty rule over their lives.

We applaud your efforts and are very hopeful that other nations would follow suit!

Sincerely,

Amil Imani

‘It’s a Bloodbath’: FOX Ratings Collapse, Loses Half It’s Audience

April 30, 2023/in DrRichSwier.com, Economy, Politics /by DrRichSwier.com

By The Geller Report

MSNBC Wins Demo Each Hour From 4:00-10:00 P.M.

The network is suffering without Tucker’s biting critiques of Democrats and establishment Republicans and people are tuning out in droves.

Every FOX show is taking a Tucker beating. Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham’s ratings are collapsing too.

Tucker had an average audience of 3.03 million people for all of 2022. It’s down two million and falling.

Meanwhile, Tucker’s latest video on twiter has been viewed over 77 million times.

Former Fox News host Megyn Kelly, who left the network in 2017, pointed out that the problem for Fox is even bigger than the drop-off from Carlson’s last show. She wrote. “It’s a bloodbath: they lost HALF their audience.”

“IT’S A BLOODBATH”: FOX NEWS LOSES MORE THAN HALF OF AUDIENCE AFTER AXING TUCKER CARLSON

According to Mediaite, Carlson’s Monday, April 17, show had 3.174 million total viewers, including 445,000 in the 25-54 demographic. Tuesday, April 18’s show drew even larger numbers, receiving 3.223 million total viewers and 481,000 in the demo.

Former Fox News host Megyn Kelly pointed out the network lost half of its audience after firing Tucker Carlson and described the ratings situation as a “bloodbath.”

Brian Stelter, the former media correspondent for CNN, pointed out on Thursday that Fox News’ 8pm ratings dropped from 2.65 million on Friday – Carlson’s final show – to 2.59 million on Monday, 1.70 million on Tuesday, and 1.33 million on Wednesday.

Fox News viewership at 8pm ET:
Tucker’s finale: 2.65 million
Monday: 2.59 million
Tuesday: 1.70 million
Wednesday: 1.33 million

— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) April 27, 2023

Kelly reacted by noting that the drop in viewers had been even more severe when compared to Carlson’s final Monday and Tuesday shows.

“You can’t compare Tucker’s Fri night ratings to this week’s Mon/Tue. (Fridays in prime are where ratings go to die.) Compare his last Mon/Tue to this week’s Mon/Tue,” she wrote. “It’s a bloodbath: they lost HALF their audience.”

You can’t compare Tucker’s Fri night ratings to this week’s Mon/Tue. (Fridays in prime are where ratings go to die.) Compare his last Mon/Tue to this week’s Mon/Tue. It’s a bloodbath: they lost HALF their audience. https://t.co/bH1g6epeC0

— Megyn Kelly (@megynkelly) April 27, 2023

Read more.

Most-Watched in Primetime; MSNBC Wins Demo Each Hour From 4-10 PM

By: A J Katz, Adweek, April 29, 2023:

Following prime-time host Tucker Carlson’s sudden departure from Fox News, the cable news giant’s ratings have dramatically decreased every night when compared with the prior week, industry news site TVNewser reported, indicating that Fox viewers are not happy with the decision and are taking their viewership elsewhere.

Since Carlson left, Fox News Tonight has filled the 8 p.m. hour with rotating Fox News personalities as hosts, including Brian Kilmeade.

Carlson’s final show—though that wasn’t known at the time—was on Friday, April 24, and drew 2.56 million viewers, which was double that of his competitor Chris Hayes at MSNBC.

TVNewser reported that about 1.7 million people tuned into Fox at 8 p.m. Tuesday, down from 3.3 million viewers four weeks earlier—a 48% decline—and while Fox still had the highest ratings of prime time that night among all viewers, it dropped behind CNN and MSNBC among adults 25 to 54, a key demographic.

For the first time in his hosting history, Hayes had the highest ratings Wednesday among adults 25 to 54 and total viewers, with 1.377 million viewers over the 1.332 million who tuned into Fox News Tonight and the 643,000 who watched CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360.
Key Background

Carlson held a prime-time slot on Fox from 2016, when he replaced Bill O’Reilly, and his show quickly became one of the most watched on cable TV and at Fox. Carlson was fired from Fox News with no named reason from the company, though reports speculate it could have been over a number of things, including the Murdochs’ growing irritation with the former host, Carlson’s 2021 documentary, Patriot Purge, promoting conspiracy theories about the January 6 riot on the Capitol, recent lawsuits involving Carlson and concerns about “managing risk versus reward,” per an anonymous news network executive who spoke with CNN.

Big Number

73.3 million. That’s how many views a video Carlson posted to Twitter Tuesday night has received, in which he broke his silence following his cable news departure. In the video, Carlson critiqued “American media,” saying they will not allow debates on what he views as “big topics.” He ended the video with the sign-off: “See you soon.”

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

RELATED ARTICLES:

The Irreplaceable Tucker Carlson

JOSH HAMMER: Tucker Carlson, Please Come Back Soon

FIRST TIME EVER MSNBC Is No. 1 at 8 PM, Tucker-Less Fox Time Slot Down TWO MILLION

Fox Ratings WIPE-OUT! Tucker’s Time Slot Loses Another Million Viewers, While Tucker’s Twitter Video is Viewed 43 MILLION TIMES

DUMPING THE DOLLAR: Argentina Abandons U.S. Dollar. Will Pay for China Imports in Yuan

April 30, 2023/in DrRichSwier.com, Economy, Elections, Politics, Regulation /by DrRichSwier.com

By The Geller Report

No media coverage. The biggest stories of the day are censored from the American public, leading sheep to slaughter. The dollar as the main world currency is a pillar of our strength and power. More countries are mulling a similar move.

Another defeat for the Biden Administration by China. Little to no coverage on this story from the mainstream media, who continue to supress information about the Biden Administration’s incompetence. A vote for the Biden Administration in 2024 is a vote for China to rule the world, and to downgrade the United States into a second rate power like Britain & France.

Argentina Shuns U.S. Dollar: Will Pay for China Imports in Yuan

By SIMON KENT • 27 Apr 2023

Argentina struck a deal with Beijing on Wednesday to stop using U.S. dollars to pay for Chinese imports and embrace the yuan instead.

The measure, driven by Argentina’s leftist President Alberto Fernández, is designed to relieve the South American country’s dwindling dollar reserves, AP reports.

The deal further enhances China’s rise on the world stage and the diminished role of the U.S. on a host of fronts under President Joe Biden.

After reaching the agreement with various companies, Argentina will use the yuan for imports from China worth about U.S.$1.04 billion from next month, accelerating trade with China as Beijing seeks to gain a further foothold in South America.

In November last year Argentina expanded a currency swap with China by $5 billion in an effort to increase its yuan reserves.

Read more.

Iraq To Drop Dollar In Trade With China

By ZeroHedge, February 23, 2023:

Iraq’s central bank is set to allow trade with China to be settled in yuan.

Iraqi imports from China have previously been financed in U.S. dollars.

Last year, US regulators began enforcing controls on transactions by Iraqi commercial banks which caused a dollar shortage in Iraq.

The Iraqi central bank announced Wednesday that, for the first time, it plans to allow trade from China to be settled directly in yuan instead of the US dollar to improve access to foreign currency.

“It is the first time imports would be financed from China in yuan, as Iraqi imports from China have been financed in (US) dollars only,” the government’s economic adviser, Mudhir Salih, told Reuters.

According to a statement released by the Iraqi central bank, carrying out transactions in the Chinese currency would boost the balances of Iraqi banks with accounts with Chinese banks. However, this option depends on the size of the central bank’s yuan reserves.

A second option to boost local banks’ yuan balances would involve converting US dollars held in the central bank’s accounts with JP Morgan and the Development Bank of Singapore (DBS) to yuan before paying the final beneficiary in China……

AUTHOR

China Settles First LNG Trade in Yuan in Latest Hit to Dollar

Another Country Dumps Dollar, Tells Citizens To Get Rid Of Holdings Of US Dollar and Switch to Yuan

Saudis Consider Accepting Yuan Instead of Dollars for Chinese Oil Sales: Report

India, Malaysia Move Off Dollar to Settle Trade in Indian Rupee

DUMPING THE DOLLAR: BRIC Countries Are Developing a New Currency, State Duma Deputy Chair

GDP Shows Economy Slowing in First Quarter of 2023

April 30, 2023/in DrRichSwier.com, Economy, Elections, Politics, Taxes /by DrRichSwier.com

By The Geller Report

Economic momentum is slowing, amid higher interest rates and a banking crisis, new gross domestic product report shows. The U.S. economy wobbled in the first months of 2023. But no worries, the Democrat media axis will cheer on these Biden ‘successes.’

There is very little growth in the Biden Administration’s putrid economy. The American economy grew at 1.1 percent in Q1 of 2023. By contrast, Communist China’s economy grew by 4 percent in the same period.

GDP growth shows slowing economy in the first quarter of 2023

By Fox News, April 28, 2023

Gross domestic product (GDP) increased in the first quarter of 2023, beating the odds of a recession yet again, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA).

Real GDP increased at an annual rate of 1.1% in the first three months of this year, after rising 2.6% in the fourth quarter of 2022, according to the BEA’s advance estimate released on Thursday.

The increase in real GDP was driven by consumer spending, exports, federal government spending, state and local government spending, and nonresidential fixed investment, the BEA reported. Growth in the first quarter was offset by a slowdown in new single-family home construction and private inventory investment, the BEA said.

Read more.

AUTHOR

Geller Report Staff

RELATED VIDEO: Economic CRISIS: Is 2023 the new 2008?

RELATED TWEET:

https://t.co/Vfh09YkAMj

In early 2021, I could not imagine that Biden–or anyone–would deliberately destroy the Trump economy by levying onerous new taxes, raising energy costs, imposing stifling new regulations, and starting a new war.

It’s worse than I ever imagined.

— StevenWMosher (@StevenWMosher) April 27, 2023

Biden/Harris 2024 Campaign Call Draws Only 1,800 Viewers

April 30, 2023/in DrRichSwier.com, Elections, Featured, Politics /by DrRichSwier.com

By The Geller Report

81 million votes, suckers!

Biden-Harris 2024 Disastrous Campaign Call Attracts Just 1,800 Viewers

This is the most popular president in history?

By: Jason Walsh, Bongino Report, April 28, 2023:

Throughout the video, Biden was fighting a losing battle with his teleprompter as Jill Biden helplessly stood by.

Dr. Jill looked visibly tense as Biden struggled to speak to his whole 1,800 ‘grassroots supporters.’

“Let’s finish the job,” Biden said.

“So, you know, you gotta let me tell you something because that’s so important because of all of you we will meet this moment,” Biden said.

Meanwhile, Kamala Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, also made an awkward appearance.

Doug Emhoff giggled as he informed the viewer, “I’m only here because I’m married to her.”

Emhoff is the same guy who complained about toxic masculinity.

Watch:

As Bloomberg reported:

“Democrats are concerned that President Joe Biden hasn’t raised enough money from donors in the initial days since his Tuesday reelection announcement, potentially underscoring the perception that his run isn’t exciting voters.

The sluggish fundraising comes from a lack of outreach to major donors who can boost the early total by making big contributions to the Democratic Party, according to sources close to the campaign.”

According to the Financial Times, Biden’s announcement this week that he intends to run for a second term in 2024 allowed his campaign team to start fundraising in earnest.

Within hours of his declaration, they set about putting the finishing touches to a two-day event in Washington starting on Friday that will bring together Wall Street financiers and other backers, said people familiar with the matter.

The list of attendees at the event, where Biden and his wife Jill are expected to appear, includes many of those who helped fund his last campaign, the people said, including Blackstone’s Jon Gray, Evercore’s Roger Altman and Centerview’s Blair Effron.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

UK Immigration Minister: Illegal migrants ‘cannibalize’ communities by importing ‘different lifestyles’

April 30, 2023/in DrRichSwier.com, Elections, Featured, Government Transparency, Immigration, Politics /by DrRichSwier.com

By Jihad Watch

Britain and other Western countries have seen steadily rising public anger over open-door immigration policies and the general retreat from the rule of law, cultural traditions and concern for national security. Not long ago, globalist leaders who willfully ignore the well-being of their own people were outraged when Home Secretary Suella Braverman called the UK’s influx of illegal Muslim migrants an “invasion,” yet that is what it is. Britain’s new Illegal Immigration Bill offers some promise, but only if it is genuinely acted upon will it mean anything.

There is more going on in the UK than is being reported, given the news that keeps on emerging, which reflects the frustration of the British people as well as the government’s lack of the will to do anything significant about the invasion via the English Channel. Last year, Jenrick stated that “the UK is essentially full.” It is only a matter of time before the true harm of the illegal invasion is seriously felt by Britons, as communities become “cannibalized” one at a time.

Channel migrants ‘cannibalise’ communities by importing different lifestyles, claims minister Robert Jenrick

by Arj Singh, i News, April 25, 2023:

Asylum seekers who arrive in the UK by crossing the Channel in small boats “cannibalise” communities by importing “different lifestyles and values”, the Immigration Minister has claimed.

Robert Jenrick said the “excessive” number of those arriving in small boats “undermine cultural cohesiveness” and put “immense pressure” on public services.

Protests against asylum seekers being housed in hotels, such as those in Knowsley, Liverpool which saw far-right demonstrators clash with police, are a “warning to be heeded, not a phenomenon to be managed” by ministers, he said.

Mr Jenrick was unable to say exactly what it was about asylum seekers’ lifestyles that had such an impact, or whether he was talking about people from a certain country, with Afghans, Albanians, Iranians, Iraqis and Syrians making up the majority of arrivals last year.

A Home Office source also said the minister had “zero tolerance” towards the kind of violence seen in Knowsley in February.

His comments were criticised by the Refugee Council, which said it is “important to recognise” that refugees have made a vital contribution to the UK as tax-paying citizens after being resettled.

Mr Jenrick was speaking at the Policy Exchange think-tank in Westminster as he prepared to see the Government’s controversial Illegal Migration Bill, which is designed to crack down on Channel crossings, through its final Commons stages on Wednesday.

i understands that ministers are in discussions about a concession to stop Tory moderates led by ex-minister Tim Loughton rebelling to amend the Bill to impose more stringent limits on the detention of lone children under the legislation.

One option available to Mr Jenrick would be to promise to Mr Loughton to amend the laws when they reach the House of Lords.

The talks came as Mr Jenrick in his speech cited an “an extensive body of research that demonstrates the damaging effects on social trust and cohesion from uncontrolled migration” as he defended the Bill’s radical and contested approach, which will put a duty on the Government to detain and deport nearly all Channel asylum seekers.

“I saw this myself in the early days in this position, when I met residents of Aycliffe, an estate in Dover, whose lives have been made a misery by illegal migrants who have made clandestine landings on the nearby beaches – knocking on their doors, entering their homes being found in their kitchens,” Mr Jenrick said.

“They felt abandoned by the authorities, and it’s strange for their neighbourhood.

“If we don’t have confidence that those who live in our communities do so lawfully, Individuals are less likely to trust their neighbours, or to make sacrifices which sustain communities.

“Put simply, excessive, uncontrolled migration threatens to cannibalise that compassion that marks out the British people.

“And those crossing tend to have completely different lifestyles and values to those in the UK and tend to settle in already hyper diverse areas, undermining the cultural cohesiveness that binds diverse groups together and makes our proud multi-ethnic democracy so successful.”

Asked what he meant about lifestyles, Mr Jenrick said it was important to ensure public services do not come under pressure.

““We as a government believe that our resources are finite, and there have to be limits to the number of people coming into this country,” he said….

AUTHOR

CHRISTINE DOUGLASS-WILLIAMS

The Government’s Sprawling Effort to Censor [True] Information During the Pandemic

April 30, 2023/in Commentary, DrRichSwier.com, Elections, Healthcare, Politics, Regulation, Science /by DrRichSwier.com

By Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)

In July 2022, Twitter permanently suspended Rhode Island physician Andrew Bostom after awarding the epidemiologist and longtime researcher at Brown University a fifth strike for spreading “misinformation.”

A July 26 tweet alleging that there was no solid evidence Covid-19 vaccines had prevented any children from being hospitalized—”only RCT data we have from children reveals ZERO hospitalizations prevented by vaccination vs. placebo”—was apparently the final straw.

The funny thing was, it appeared Bostom’s tweet was true.

Dr. Anish Koka, a cardiologist and writer, said he was initially skeptical of Bostom’s claim. But after speaking with him for more than an hour, he realized Bostom was citing the government’s own data, a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) briefing document that included randomized controlled trial (RCT) data on children.

“…Dr. Bostom’s tweet appears quite correct as per the FDA documents,” Koka wrote on Substack. “In the RCTs available, there does not appear to be evidence that the vaccine prevented hospitalizations.”

‘They Veered From CDC Guidance’

Bostom’s permanent suspension was one of many anecdotes shared by journalist David Zweig in a December Twitter Files thread viewed by more than 64 million people, which exposed how the government worked with Twitter to try to “rig the Covid debate.”

It turns out this was not the only one of Bostom’s tweets that was true but was nevertheless flagged for “misinformation.”

“A review of Twitter log files revealed that an internal audit, conducted after Bostom’s attorney contacted Twitter, found that only 1 of Bostom’s 5 violations were valid,” Zweig notes. “The one Bostom tweet found to still be in violation cited data that was legitimate but inconvenient to the public health establishment’s narrative about the risks of flu versus Covid in children.”

In other words, all five of Bostom’s tweets that had been flagged as “misinformation” were legitimate. At the very least, four-out-of-five were, and that’s according to Twitter’s own internal audit.

How this happened was partially explored by Zweig, who explained Twitter’s convoluted censorship process, which relied heavily on bots, contractors in foreign countries who lacked the expertise to make informed decisions, and Twitter brass who carried their own biases and incentives. This structure led to a predictable result.

“In my review of internal files,” writes Zweig, “I found countless instances of tweets labeled as ‘misleading’ or taken down entirely, sometimes triggering account suspensions, simply because they veered from CDC guidance or differed from establishment views.”

The CDC had effectively become the arbiter of truth.

This is alarming for at least two reasons. First, for anyone familiar with the government’s track record on truth, there’s reason to be skeptical of putting any government agency in charge of deciding what is true and false. Second, the CDC has been, to put it kindly, fallible throughout the pandemic. Indeed, the agency has been plagued with so much dysfunction and made so many crucial mistakes that its own director announced less than a year ago the organization needed an overhaul.

So there’s some reason to believe that Bostom and people like him—including epidemiologists like Dr. Martin Kuldorff (formerly of Harvard) and mRNA vaccine creator Dr. Robert Malone—were being suspended, banned, and de-amplified simply because Twitter was poorly situated to determine what was true and what was false.

There’s reason to doubt this claim, however.

1. THREAD:

THE TWITTER FILES: HOW TWITTER RIGGED THE COVID DEBATE

– By censoring info that was true but inconvenient to U.S. govt. policy
– By discrediting doctors and other experts who disagreed
– By suppressing ordinary users, including some sharing the CDC’s *own data*

— David Zweig (@davidzweig) December 26, 2022

‘Worrisome Jokes,’ ‘Natural Immunity,’ and Other ‘Potential Violations’

Months after Zweig published his report on the Twitter Files, journalist Matt Taibbi published a separate deep dive exploring the Virality Project, an initiative launched by Stanford University’s Cyber Policy Center.

The project, which Taibbi described as “a sweeping, cross-platform effort to monitor billions of social media posts by Stanford University, federal agencies, and a slew of (often state-funded) NGOs,” is noteworthy because officials made it clear that a goal was not just to flag false information, but information that was true but inconvenient to the government’s goals. Reports of “vaccinated individuals contracting Covid-19 anyway,” “worrisome jokes,” and “natural immunity” were all characterized as “potential violations,” as were conversations “interpreted to suggest that coronavirus might have leaked from a lab.”

In what Taibbi describes as “a pan-industry monitoring plan for Covid-related content,” the Virality Project began analyzing millions of posts each day from platforms such as Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Medium, TikTok, and other social media sites, which were submitted through the JIRA ticketing system. On February 22, 2021, in a video no longer public, Stanford welcomed social media leaders to the group and offered instruction on how to join the JIRA system.

In contrast to Twitter’s previous internal guidance, which required narratives on Covid-19 to be “demonstrably false” before any censorship actions were taken, the Virality Project made it clear that information that was true was also fair game if it undermined the larger aims of the government and the Virality Project.

Specifically noted were “true stories that could fuel [vaccine] hesitancy,” personal testimonials about adverse side effects of vaccination, concerns over vaccine passports, and actual deaths of people following vaccination, such as Drene Keyes.

As NBC noted in 2021, Keyes, a 58-year-old black woman, died after receiving the Pfizer vaccine in February 2021. Described as an “elderly Black woman” by the Virality Project, Keyes’s death became a “disinformation” event after it garnered attention from “anti vax groups”—even though no one denied that she died within hours of taking the vaccine.

No autopsy was conducted on Keyes and there’s no way of knowing if the vaccine caused her death. But merely raising the possibility could have resulted in a ban. Officials at the Virality Project warned platforms that “just asking questions”—at least the wrong questions—was a tactic “commonly used by spreaders of misinformation.”

Ironically, Taibbi notes, the Virality Project itself was often “extravagantly wrong” about Covid science, describing breakthrough events as “extremely rare events” (a fact it later conceded was wrong) and implying that natural immunity did not offer protection from Covid.

“Even in its final report, [the Virality Project] claimed it was misinformation to suggest the vaccine does not prevent transmission, or that governments are planning to introduce vaccine passports,” Taibbi writes. “Both things turned out to be true.”

1.TWITTER FILES #19
The Great Covid-19 Lie Machine
Stanford, the Virality Project, and the Censorship of “True Stories” pic.twitter.com/v41dyC26ZR

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 17, 2023

‘You Can’t Handle the Truth’

It’s clear that the Virality Project’s primary purpose was not to protect Americans from misinformation. Its goal, as Taibbi notes, was to get the public to submit to authority and accept the state’s Covid narrative, particularly the pronouncements of public figures such as Drs. Anthony Fauci and Rochelle Walensky.

The official policy can be summed up in the immortal words of Colonel Nathan Jessup, the villain portrayed by Jack Nicholson in Aaron Sorkin’s popular 1992 film A Few Good Men: “You can’t handle the truth.”

It’s important to understand that public officials, just like Col. Jessup, genuinely believe this. Jessup utters these words in anger in a wonderful monologue, after he is baited by Lt. Daniel Kaffee (Tom Cruise) into telling the court how he really feels. Similarly, the Twitter Files reveal a program designed to control information—even true information—because it serves the state’s plan.

The last word—plan—is important, because it calls to mind Ludwig von Mises’s warning about those seeking to plan society.

“The planner is a potential dictator who wants to deprive all other people of the power to plan and act according to their own plans,” Mises wrote. “He aims at one thing only: the exclusive absolute preeminence of his own plan.”

‘Sometimes They Are Five’

Mises’ words apply perfectly to the Virality Project, a program designed specifically to get people to submit to the government’s narrative and objectives, not their own. The preeminence of the plan is so important that it requires censoring information and targeting individuals—as the Virality Project did—even if it’s true.

It’s difficult to overstate how Orwellian this is.

In Orwell’s classic novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, Winston Smith, the protagonist of the story, says, “Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two makes four.”

Absent any context, the quote doesn’t make much sense. But it’s important to understand that Orwell saw statism and politics as forces destructive to the truth. His own brushes with state propaganda during the Spanish Civil War left him terrified that objective truth was “fading out of the world,” and he saw the state as inherently prone to obfuscation and euphemism (regardless of party).

“Political language,” he wrote, “is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

Within the context of Nineteen Eighty-Four, the meaning of Winston Smith’s words becomes crystal clear. Saying “two plus two makes four” might be an objective truth, but sometimes objective truth runs counter to Big Brother’s plan. Winston Smith is a slow learner, state agents tell him, because he can’t seem to grasp this simple reality.

“How can I help it? How can I help but see what is in front of my eyes? Two and two are four.”

“Sometimes, Winston. Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once. You must try harder.”

Many people who lived through the Covid-19 pandemic likely can identify with the terror of Nineteen Eighty-Four and Orwell’s fear that objective truth is “fading out of the world.” We witnessed public officials say things that were demonstrably false and face no consequences, while Andrew Bostom and countless others were exiled from public discourse because they said things that were true, but ran counter to the state’s narrative.

Fortunately, in large part because of Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter, we now know how this happened.

“Government, academia, and an oligopoly of would-be corporate competitors organized quickly behind a secret, unified effort to control political messaging,” Taibbi writes.

All of it was designed to control information. And in doing so, the state—which actually attempted to create a “Disinformation Governance Board,” which critics promptly dubbed a Ministry of Truth—created an environment hostile to free speech and truth.

Ironically, despite the egregious abuse delivered upon the truth over the last three years in the name of fighting “misinformation,” polls show roughly half of Americans believe social media companies should be censoring such material from their sites. Few seem to realize this will almost certainly involve those with influence and power—especially the government—deciding who and what are censored.

This is a recipe for disaster. History shows there’s no greater purveyor of falsehood and propaganda than the government itself. The Twitter Files are a reminder of that.

AUTHOR

Jon Miltimore

Jonathan Miltimore is the Managing Editor of FEE.org. (Follow him on Substack.) His writing/reporting has been the subject of articles in TIME magazine, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Forbes, Fox News, and the Star Tribune. Bylines: Newsweek, The Washington Times, MSN.com, The Washington Examiner, The Daily Caller, The Federalist, the Epoch Times.

In a World Full of Robots, Humans Wanted

April 30, 2023/in DrRichSwier.com, Education, Politics, Science /by DrRichSwier.com

By Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)

The K-12 district schools I went to while growing up in a Boston suburb look nearly the same today as they did when I attended them in the 1980s and 90s, when they also looked quite similar to how they did when my father attended those same schools in the 1950s and 60s. Sure, there are some new technologies and updated curriculum—and more testing—but for the most part, traditional schools haven’t changed much over the past few generations.

The world around those schools has, of course, changed beyond measure. The disconnect between the outdated structure of standard schooling and the economic and cultural realities of the innovation era is growing harder to ignore.

At a time when top jobs didn’t even exist a decade ago, and many jobs of the next decade haven’t yet been invented, most young people today continue to learn in conventional classrooms that train them to be passive bystanders, rather than active, agile pathmakers in a complex, constantly changing culture.

This conditioning starts early. The exuberance and inquisitiveness that young children naturally display is quickly constrained within a system of coercive schooling that favors obedience and compliance over originality and curiosity. With the growth of universal preschool programs, more children today are beginning this standard schooling path when they are just barely out of diapers. They learn to color in the lines, to wait to speak, and to ask permission to use the bathroom. They learn that their interests and ideas are irrelevant, that their energy and enthusiasm are liabilities. They learn to need to be taught.

Indeed, as Ivan Illich wrote in his classic book, Deschooling Society: “School makes alienation preparatory to life, thus depriving education of reality and work of creativity. School prepares for the institutionalization of life by teaching the need to be taught.”

This may have been more tolerable at the dawn of the industrial era, when compulsory schooling statutes were first passed and when conventional schooling created a pipeline to factory jobs that required obedience and compliance. Even then, parents like Nancy Edison recognized that standard schooling could crush a child’s creativity. She pulled her son Thomas out of school after only a few short weeks when his teacher called him “addled.” From then on, Thomas Edison mostly directed his own education as a homeschooler, following his own interests and passions.

Later in life, while working in his massive laboratory in New Jersey, one of Edison’s chemists concluded: “Had Edison been formally schooled, he might not have had the audacity to create such impossible things.” [i]

Today, we need more young people to grow up with the audacity to create the impossible things that will brighten our lives, enhance human flourishing, and improve our planet. We need more young people to nurture the qualities and characteristics that separate human intelligence from artificial intelligence. These human qualities—including curiosity, critical thinking, ingenuity, and an entrepreneurial spirit—are the same qualities that are so often eroded in our dominant system of traditional schooling.

To successfully coexist, compete, and cooperate with ever-smarter machines, humans need the chance to cultivate the cherished qualities that make us distinctly human. The type of rote, by-the-book, standardized behaviors that conventional schools inculcate are exactly what AI and other technologies are increasingly automating. To thrive in the economy of tomorrow, children need to learn how to both harness and rise above the robotic.

There are some who believe that conventional schools, both public and private, can successfully change to meet the economic and social realities of the 21st century, but I am doubtful. The continued stagnation, and in some instances increased standardization, of conventional schooling demonstrates why any meaningful educational change will come from outside the prevailing model, not in it.

I already see signs of these changes in my work spotlighting the stories of the entrepreneurial parents and teachers who are creating innovative learning models beyond the conventional classroom, including many that emphasize self-directed learning. These everyday entrepreneurs recognize the growing gap between how most schools teach and what humans need to excel in the innovation era, and are doing something about it.

Take the story of James Lomax, for example. He and his wife enrolled their daughter in a top private preschool at the age of two, thinking they would set her up for a successful path to college and career. “What we found was that the preschool was very, very, very focused on academics, on being kindergarten ready,” Lomax told me in a recent podcast episode. “So we got progress reports home saying she can only count to 100, but she should be counting to 150 at this point. And her Spanish comprehension is not where we want it to be. And around this time, it’s starting to click with me that maybe these aren’t the important things.”

Lomax had other questions for the preschool staff, such as what was happening on the playground? Was his daughter making friends? Was she learning to solve conflicts? “And I just kept getting this blank stare,” Lomax said in response to his inquiries. He felt there had to be a better way.

Simultaneously, Lomax saw in his work as an engineer that many of the young engineering new hires coming straight from college lacked important competencies. “A lot of these engineers went to very top universities with perfect grades. We get them on the job, and it’s very clear, very soon that the only thing they really learned how to do in their education was to take tests. So they can’t critically think, they can’t solve a problem without the exact path given to them to solve the problem. They don’t have basic life skills,” said Lomax.

“I started to think this is not the path I want for my daughter, because the skills we need are different skills than what’s being taught in school,” he added.

Lomax founded Life Skills Academy, an Acton Academy affiliate in Las Vegas, Nevada. Acton Academy is a leading network of learner-driven microschools that was founded in 2009 in Austin, Texas and now has approximately 300 affiliate microschools across the US and around the world. Acton Academy puts learners in charge of their own education and “hero’s journey,” in collaboration with their mixed-age peers and adult guides.

Acton Academy is one of the fastest-growing educational networks to challenge the schooling status quo by empowering learners, but there are others as well. Liberated Learners is a network of self-directed learning centers for tween and teen homeschoolers that was modeled after one of the first microschools, North Star, that launched in 1996 to provide maximum freedom and autonomy to young people. Agile Learning Centers also use a self-directed learning model that emphasizes youth agency. Similarly, Sudbury schools, inspired by the original Sudbury Valley School that was founded in 1968 and continues to flourish today, use no adult-imposed curriculum, and no grades or evaluations, while allowing young people to fully direct their own lives and learning.

Research on Sudbury Valley alumni has found that even though their education is entirely self-directed, graduates go on to lead fulfilling lives, pursue higher education without difficulty if they chose, and work in a wide variety of careers. Research on grown unschoolers, or homeschoolers who learn in a self-directed way with no forced curriculum, reveals similar findings, including a high percentage of entrepreneurial individuals who were working in fields connected to interests that emerged in childhood and adolescence.

Independent microschools that aren’t affiliated with a national network, such as Bloom Academy in Las Vegas, Wild Roots in Dallas, Wildflower Community School in Kansas, and Moonrise in Georgia, all incorporate unschooling principles that allow young people to direct their education, with support and without coercion.

We may have left the industrial era long ago, but our culture’s dominant educational model continues to be defined by top-down, teacher-directed, curriculum-driven, coercive schooling. As we now get further into the innovation era, there is a deepening mismatch between how most children learn in school and what they will actually need to know and do to live meaningful, purposeful lives in a rapidly-changing, technology-molded world.

Fortunately, schools and learning models that nurture curiosity and creativity and enable young people to direct their own paths, in pursuit of their own goals, do exist—and more are continually being invented. These schools and models are also growing increasingly accessible to all learners, as education choice policies that enable funding to follow students become more widespread.

As A.S. Neill wrote in Summerhill, his 1960 book about the self-directed school that he founded in England in 1921 (and that recently celebrated its centennial): “The function of the child is to live his own life—not the life that his anxious parents think he should live, nor a life according to the purpose of the educator who thinks he knows what is best. All this interference and guidance on the part of adults only produces a generation of robots.”

In a world full of robots, humans wanted.

[i] Matthew Josephson, Edison: A Biography (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1992), 412.

AUTHOR

Kerry McDonald

Kerry McDonald is a Senior Education Fellow at FEE and host of the weekly LiberatED podcast. She is also the author of Unschooled: Raising Curious, Well-Educated Children Outside the Conventional Classroom (Chicago Review Press, 2019), an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute, education policy fellow at State Policy Network, and a regular Forbes contributor. Kerry has a B.A. in economics from Bowdoin College and an M.Ed. in education policy from Harvard University. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts with her husband and four children. You can sign up for her weekly email newsletter here.

The Shaking of the International Political System

April 30, 2023/in Commentary, DrRichSwier.com, Elections, Politics, Regulation, Religion /by DrRichSwier.com

By Bud Hancock

“See that ye refuse not him that speaketh. For if they escaped not who refused him that spake on earth, much more shall not we escape, if we turn away from him that speaketh from heaven: Whose voice then shook the earth: but now he hath promised, saying, Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven. And this word, Yet once more, signifieth the removing of those things that are shaken, as of things that are made, that those things which cannot be shaken may remain.” — Hebrews 12:25-27 KJV

The writer of Proverbs stated: “These six things doth the Lord hate: yea, seven are an abomination unto him: A proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, An heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief, A false witness that speaketh lies, and he that soweth discord among brethren.” Proverbs 6:16-19 KJV.

Anyone who has followed politics for very long will testify that the six characteristics listed in this proverb provide a perfect description of politics, and MOST politicians. I call them the “Six Pillars of Politics”. Without their presence in the system, it would cease to exist.

St. Paul, who wrote nearly two thirds of the New Testament, wrote this to Timothy: “But they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition. For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.” 1 Timothy 6:9-10 KJV

Inherent in the very nature of politics is its tendency to surround those who participate in it, with an “atmosphere of greed”; that greed can be for money and fame, or power and control. In either case it reveals itself in those who allow that foul system to shape, determine, and eventually expose, their true nature, whether good or evil. If good, that nature will not soon remain, as the working of greed will change it into something sinister and corrupt.

And corruption in politics is NOT an American phenomenon, it can be found in every political system in every nation on earth.

The First Politician

The words in Proverbs chapter six, above, appear to be a perfect description of the spiritual creature we know as Satan. He was so proud that he imagined himself to be equal with God, he was a chronic liar (Jesus called him the father of all lies), he has been responsible for shedding the blood of hundreds of millions, perhaps billions of humans (only God knows the true number), through the hands of his human minions who allow him to use their physical bodies on this earth, his heart devised the wicked imagination that he could war against and defeat God, he is said to be roaming the earth, looking for anyone whom he may devour. He is called ‘the accuser of the brethren’, and he definitely works hard to create divisions among the Church. Satan is THE quintessential politician.

Even though God had clearly spelled out His rules for their behavior to Adam and Eve, and also made clear the penalty for breaking them, they allowed themselves to fall victim to a politician, even though they had the TRUTH, straight from the mouth of God.

Satan cleverly used a serpent to be his ‘mouthpiece’ when approaching Eve regarding whether or not God had spoken truth to her and Adam. He used lies, questioning the very word of God in his effort to deceive her and gain the control and authority man had been given. His trickery and lies worked and, through lies anddeception, Satan established his kingdom on earth, becoming the first politician, thus making him the first known liar in history and the ‘pattern’ for all politicians in the future.

If you question whether all politicians are liars, do your own research, as I did, to determine what is the true definition of politics. If you can find any good in the corruption of politics, please let me know.

Political Effect on the Nations

I would estimate that the majority population of every ‘developed nation’ has some knowledge of the ‘political system’ that governs their nations. Whether a ‘democracy’, a ‘theocracy’, a dictatorship or empire, you can be sure that it was established by political means, using lies and deception and possibly physical force, and is constantly being re-enforced by the same political means.

Throughout history, nations have been destroyed and millions of lives have been forfeit through the actions of one, or a few, politicians. Every war ever fought has been the result of politics, and most, if not all, were planned events, meant to enrich those who became extremely wealthy by providing the means of war: guns, ammunition, artillery, tanks, ships and aircraft along with the fuel needed to run them, as well as the food and medicines needed when soldiers are wounded. The ‘global war-mongers’ always come out on top while the nations, wherein the wars are fought, lose EVERY TIME.

The involvement of politicians from many western nations in the corruption of Ukraine is evidence of this.

The Politics of the Russia/Ukraine War

From the White House to the US Congress and federal bureaucracies, to the Governors mansions of many states, they ALL seem to desire their own gain of wealth over that of the people who vote for them and pay their bloated salaries.

The recent news item that major American oil producers, Exxon-Mobil, Chevron and Halliburton are meeting with Ukrainian officials, with the desired result being the oil companies will be allowed to take over control of Ukraine’s oil production offers solid proof of the statement above. This will result in hundreds of millions of dollars in profit flowing into the coffers of these giant oil corporations. This is a perfect example of the political power of major corporations, and how they use that power for profit.

When the fiasco in Ukraine is over, there will have been millions of lives negatively affected and many totally destroyed, while the same group of global “war apparatus providers” will rush in to “help the nations recover” from the bloodbath they mostly started and underwrote. This is one of the many effects that politics has always had and will continue to have until it is no longer present on this planet.

Politics, regardless of what it might have been when this nation actually had some ethics and morals in government (many, many years ago), has become merely a system whereby evil people do their evil and then hide behind the dark curtains of the legalese jargon and mumbo-jumbo their ‘attorneys’ spout that keeps challenges against their evil tied up in courts for months, perhaps even years. The dark curtains are built into, and are an integral part of, the party structure and platforms, and the marketing of the candidates they run for office in either party. They were created solely for that purpose.

God LOVES justice and set it into the heart of our Founders to form a constitutional republic based on laws, on rights, with justice, providing liberty for all, but the politicians use of the nation’s “justice system”, even though legal (based strictly on man’s law), points to the foulness of those who use it in a way that would have our Founders doing flip-flops in their graves.

The underhanded strategies, machinations and deceitful stratagems that are so deeply imbedded in the foul practice of politics are not “one-sided”, meaning they are not used by only one political party. They are mostly the same for any and all political parties and they were designed to do one thing: win at any cost, no matter who might be harmed.

The Republicans love to tout their moral high ground, their conservativeness, you might say their ‘righteousness’, in their political processes, but they are no different from the Democrats, Independents or any other political party. All the political parties in the world exist to enrich themselves by engaging in illegal, immoral and unjust behavior, by controlling the money that is extracted from the citizens of the nations through unlawful taxation, as well as through the massive ‘private’ donations they receive from their controllers.

And just as a reminder, there are far more ‘hidden’ politicians, those who sit in the boardrooms and offices of multinational corporations and the major banks of the world, who use underhanded, devious political strategies and devices to achieve their goals, than there are those who sit in parliaments, congresses and other institutes of governance in the nations. These are the REAL politicians, the ones who, by their possession and use of their huge monetary holdings, have the REAL power and control over the nations.

When God starts the shaking, the fall of these politicians and their part of the whole system will be worldwide and earth-shaking in its magnitude.

The End of Politics

I will make a simple statement, which I personally believe to be true, and which is plainly supported by the Bible: “The earth, the skies, the sun, moon and stars were all created by God and all these plainly reveal the creator”.

I know there is a group of people who will refuse to ever believe that, preferring to accept the widely held view (among atheists) that some ‘big bang’ occurred some unknown hundreds of millions of years ago and eventually, somehow, produced everything we see. To their explanation of our presence on this planet I say: Hogwash.”

God will always have the final say about everything that humans will ever believe, think, say or criticize. He has tolerated man’s increasing rebellion, disobedience and apostasy far longer that I would have believed possible. Even if man fails to recognize the eternal fact that God WILL have the final say, that failure to recognize it will NOT change it: God has the final say……period. In His perfect time, he will step in and make the decision to end, for all time, the corrupt and destructive international political system.

To reiterate the Bible’s statement regarding the six things that God hates, A proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, An heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief, A false witness that speaketh lies, and he that soweth discord among brethren”, I am, and long have been, highly expectant that a totally righteous God will NOT tolerate these continued “pillars of politics” much longer.

God is perfect in all His ways and those ways are much higher that any human ways. His timing is also perfect and, when HIS time is right, He will do as He has promised and He WILL shake the foundations of international politics and that corrupt system WILL cease to exist.

I do not question just HOW God will ‘shake the things that can be shaken’; being God, He always does what is right and in the right way. We who study end-times Bible prophecy realize just how close we are to the end of the Church age, a time when major world-wide changes are going to take place. The arrival or the advent of the Antichrist will certainly have major impacts on all political systems that are currently governing nations. That event will most definitely be a part of God’s shaking.

He has set aside a seven year period, called the Tribulation Period, Daniel’s 70^th week, and that period of time has several definite purposes. One is to judge the world and his plans for judgement are already set. That seven years will be a time of GREAT shaking on the entire earth and its inhabitants. Anything that cannot be redeemed out of the shaking, will be destroyed. Another definite purpose of that time is to deal with God’s chosen earthly people, the Jews. Their previous rejection of Jesus Christ as their Messiah has set them on a collision course with God and the majority of them will not survive that collision.

Also, as the Antichrist will represent the evil and unrighteousness of all the previous empires on earth, all of which were politically controlled, God will deal with that ugly, corrupt system with finality.

Nothing sinful or unrighteous will be allowed to continue into the 1000 year reign of Jesus Christ on the earth. As a popular rock star famously wrote, “Gonna be a whole lot of shaking going on”, and the result will NOT be pleasant for those who experience it.

Conclusion

For way too long, Satan has had his way with the human race, at least those who are not believers and do not allow Christ to govern their lives. Satan’s evil system of politics, a system that has NEVER produced any positive results on earth, has been used to gain control over individuals and nations and has been responsible for the deaths of hundreds of millions, if not billions of people, from the time of Adam right up to the present day.

God, who lives outside of time, established a pattern of time in the creation account detailed in Genesis 1-2. One day is the same as 1000 years to God. Based on the pattern established, God gave man a “six day lease” on this earth, six days, or 6,000 years to prove his ability to govern himself using the authority given to him by God. History readily proves that all efforts at self-government for the past nearly 6,000 years have been a complete failure.

God certainly knew that man’s efforts would fail, so why did He not just add a few years out of a sense of pity for man? Because God knew that, without Jesus Christ being in complete control, man would not be able to successfully govern himself even if he were given a million years, and therein is proven God’s mercy for man. He will stop the time clock on the exact day man’s lease is up and install the only man capable of governing the entirety of mankind: King Jesus, the Messiah, the Son of God.

Be watchful for the shaking that is even now starting. It may seem to start slowly, but when it reaches its crescendo, the entire system will collapse in a moment. I say, bravo! Let the shaking begin. The earth has been groaning for the arrival of God’s shaking for thousands of years and will, along with all mankind, rejoice to see that wonderful day!

Maranatha!

The 8 Ways The Government Rigged The Election and Shielded Joe Biden From The ‘Laptop From Hell’

April 30, 2023/in DrRichSwier.com, Elections, Politics /by DrRichSwier.com

By The Geller Report

There is conspiracy theory and conspiracy fact. This election coup is a vast left-wing conspiracy fact. The entire intelligence community made sure Joe Biden was installed. They decided the 2020 election.

By: Margot Cleveland, The Federalist, April 28, 2023

While team Biden lying about ‘Russian disinfo’ is dirty politics, government’s assistance in burying the scandal is election interference.

Biden and his backers lied to Americans that the Hunter Biden laptop was “Russian disinformation.” While that might merely qualify as dirty politics, our government’s assistance in burying the scandal constituted election interference.

Though we don’t yet know the extent of government involvement in the info ops, the evidence already indicates eight potential actions taken to protect Biden from what former President Donald Trump and others have since called the “laptop from hell” and hand him the White House.

1. Feds Seized Laptop, Shushed Mac Isaac

Americans might never have known of the extensive evidence of the Biden-family pay-to-play scandal contained on Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop if John Paul Mac Isaac hadn’t copied the hard drive before handing it over to the FBI. Likewise, had Mac Isaac, who owned the Delaware repair shop where Hunter Biden had abandoned the computer, cowered to the alleged threat made by an FBI agent, the scandal would have been buried too.

According to Mac Isaac, in December 2019, two federal agents arrived at his Wilmington store to retrieve the laptop, following the issuance of a subpoena. Attempting to lighten the situation, Mac Isaac claims he quipped, “Hey, lads, I’ll remember to change your names when I write the book.”

Mac Isaac maintains that while one agent, Wilson, continued to walk toward the door, “Agent DeMeo paused and turned to face me.” Mac Isaac alleges the agent replied: “It is our experience that nothing ever happens to people that don’t talk about these things.”

In his later-penned book, “American Injustice: My Battle to Expose the Truth,” the computer repair store owner wrote that the incident left him wondering if he was “being paranoid or had what the agent just told me been a direct threat, or at best a thinly veiled one?”

The FBI’s seizure of the laptop represents the government’s first effort to quiet the Biden family pay-to-play scandal, with the alleged threat to Mac Isaac another early attempt by a government official to protect Joe Biden.

2. FBI Made Laptop Off Limits

Of course, had the FBI seized the laptop for investigative purposes, that would have been a different matter, but the evidence suggests that was not the reason agents removed the computer.

Consider the timing: The FBI was alerted to the existence of the laptop in October 2019, when they were reportedly told that, in addition to pornography, the computer contained information “dealing with foreign interests, a pay-for-play scheme linked to the former administration, [and] lots of foreign money.” The FBI, however, waited two months before obtaining a subpoena for the laptop.

Then, upon seizing the laptop, according to multiple whistleblowers, the “local FBI leadership told employees, ‘You will not look at that Hunter Biden laptop.’” The whistleblowers further alleged that “the FBI did not begin to examine the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop until after the 2020 presidential election — potentially a year after the FBI obtained the laptop in December 2019.”

These facts strongly suggest the FBI seized the laptop to protect then-candidate Joe Biden by keeping the contents secret.

3. FBI Presumably Gave Inaccurate Briefing

If, as the whistleblowers claim, the FBI did not review the laptop until after the 2020 presidential election, the government’s pre-election defensive briefings for Biden would have been inaccurate. It is even possible intelligence agencies falsely told Biden the laptop — or possibly the Post’s reporting on it — was Russian disinformation.

The FBI’s alleged failure to review the laptop until after the election would also have prevented the government from advising Biden about the video of Hunter telling a prostitute in 2018 that he believed a group of Russians had stolen another laptop from him. By failing to give Biden complete and accurate defensive briefings, the government gave the campaign “plausible deniability.” The FBI also eliminated the need for Biden to get ahead of the story by “coming clean” on any of the laptop’s scandalous details — something a politician not assisted by the government would do.

4. Government Sources Lied to Media

While the government’s first three assists to the Biden campaign occurred behind the scenes and were more subtle, FBI officials evidently intervened publicly after the New York Post broke its first story on Oct. 14, 2020.

First came the Oct. 15, 2020, “leak” to Russia-collusion hoaxer Ken Dilanian, who ran an “exclusive” at NBC, reporting that “federal investigators are examining whether emails allegedly describing activities by Joe Biden and his son Hunter and found on a laptop at a Delaware repair shop are linked to a foreign intelligence operation.” The next day, USA Today similarly reported the FBI’s supposed involvement in investigating whether a Russian influence operation was behind the disclosure of the Hunter Biden emails. On Oct. 17, 2020, USA Today reiterated that the “federal authorities” are investigating whether the laptop is “disinformation pushed by Russia.”

Leaking to help a political campaign is bad enough, but worse is that while unnamed government sources told select outlets the FBI was investigating the laptop as a potential “disinformation campaign,” the FBI was doing no such thing. It already knew the laptop was real and not hacked.

5. Other Leaks Pushed ‘Russia Disinfo’ Narrative

The government also helped the Biden campaign build the false Russian-disinformation narrative with other leaks. On Oct. 14, 2020 — the same day as the New York Post’s first Hunter Biden laptop story — the New York Times reported U.S. intelligence analysts “had picked up Russian chatter that stolen Burisma emails” would be released as an “October surprise.” “Burisma, of course, was the Ukrainian energy company that paid Hunter nearly $1 million to sit on its board during his father’s final year as vice president.”

According to the Times, “intelligence analysts” feared “the Burisma material would be leaked alongside forged materials in an attempt to hurt Mr. Biden’s candidacy.” The leak and this spin prepared the public to disregard the laptop, or to assume the more damaging documents were “forged.”

The Washington Post pushed similar leaks, with the outlet reporting on Oct. 15, “U.S. intelligence agencies warned the White House last year that President Trump’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani was the target of an influence operation by Russian intelligence.” This leak helped bolster the Biden campaign’s claim the laptop was Russian disinformation since Giuliani had provided the hard drive to the Post.

In fact, in responding to the media about the laptop scandal, Andrew Bates, then a Biden campaign spokesman and the director of his “rapid response” team, consistently spun the scandal as one about Giuliani’s supposed connection “to Russian intelligence.” These other government leaks gave the Biden campaign more cover.

6. Government Pressed Social Media to Censor

In addition to leaking false claims to the media, the government interfered in the 2020 election by priming Big Tech companies to censor the laptop story.

Americans first learned of this scandal last August when Facebook’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg, told Joe Rogan, “The FBI basically came to us, some folks on our team, [saying,] ‘Hey just so you know, you should be on high alert.” According to Zuckerberg, the FBI told Facebook that “we thought there was a lot of Russian propaganda in the 2016 election,” and “we have it on notice that basically there’s about to be some kind of dump similar to that so just be vigilant.”

Zuckerberg said that, based on the FBI’s warning, Facebook treated the New York Post’s bombshell story as “potentially misinformation, important misinformation.” Then, while Facebook worked to determine the authenticity of the laptop, it “decreased its distribution of the story by making the story rank lower in the news feed.”

While Facebook merely decreased distribution of the explosive reporting, Twitter barred sharing of the story — and it was the government’s warnings of a “hack and leak” operation that prompted the censorship.

As Yoel Roth, Twitter’s then-head of trust and safety, explained in a letter to the Federal Election Commission, “since 2018 he had regular meetings with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, and industry peers regarding election security.” And “during these weekly meetings, the federal law enforcement agencies communicated that they expected ‘hack-and-leak operations’ by state actors might occur in the period shortly before the 2020 presidential election, likely in October.”

The government’s “prior warnings of a hack-and-leak operation and doubts about the provenance of the materials republished in the N.Y. Post articles,” Roth explained, led its Site Integrity Team to conclude “the materials could have been obtained through hacking,” and thereby block the sharing of the story.

The government’s repeated warnings led, at a minimum, Twitter and Facebook to censor the story. Yet after the story broke, when Facebook asked Laura Dehmlow, the FBI’s section chief for the Foreign Influence Tax Force, about status of the laptop, she refused to comment.

The FBI’s failure to correct the tech companies’ misapprehension that the laptop was either disinformation or part of a hack-and-leak operation contrasts with how the government handled other inquiries. For instance, when asked by Facebook to fact-check information for the platform, Brian Scully, an official with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, “responded with an explanation of why the government believed that the report was misinformation violating Facebook’s terms of service.”

7. Potentially More Government Interference

It’s possible the FBI did more behind the scenes to prompt censorship of the laptop story, such as by feeding Twitter false leaks, as the government did with legacy media outlets.

Of particular concern is FBI Agent Elvis Chan’s Oct. 16, 2020, email directing two high-level Twitter executives to monitor their Teleporter messages for two important documents. The content of those documents, transmitted via the FBI’s secure Teleporter system, remains a mystery, but the timing is suspect.

Also disconcerting is the role Jim Baker had in pushing Twitter to censor the story. Baker, who was previously the FBI’s general counsel, worked at Twitter as a deputy general counsel during the relevant time. On the morning of Oct. 14, 2020, after the Post story broke, Baker pushed for Twitter to err on the side of caution by banning the coverage. That same day Baker arranged a phone conversation with Matthew Perry in the FBI’s Office of General Counsel.

Both Chan’s email to Twitter and Baker’s conversation with the FBI Office of General Counsel provided another opportunity for the FBI to interfere in the 2020 election by feeding Twitter fake intel. Of course, the communications could instead be unrelated to the laptop scandal and the timing merely coincidental.

Another potential for government interference came when the 51 former intelligence officials joined together to pen their public statement declaring the laptop story had all the hallmarks of a foreign disinformation campaign. While we now know the Biden campaign’s role in prompting that letter, it is unknown whether any current government officials assisted in the efforts.

8. ‘Twitter Files’ Show Potential Military Connection

Another potential connection between the government and the laptop info ops came from the latest “Twitter Files” released earlier this week. In Andrew Lowenthal’s “Twitter Files 20” thread, he revealed an email referencing the “2020 U.S. Elections Tabletop Exercise,” sent from an individual connected to Harvard Law School to two individuals connected to Harvard’s Intellectual Property in Cyberspace program, as well as a slew of individuals with military email accounts.

Significantly, CCed on the email were individuals from organizations that had participated in the Aspen Institute’s “Tabletop Exercise” that prophetically used a “hack-and-leak” “October Surprise” involving Hunter Biden to game the media’s supposedly “appropriate” response to the release of Biden communications. Thus, this email suggests a connection between the military and some of those who participated in Aspen’s exercise. The timing of the email is also striking: It is dated Oct. 20, 2020 — the day after the 51 former intelligence officials released their deceptive statement framing the laptop as Russian disinformation.

What role, if any, our military had in pushing the hoax remains to be seen. But what is already abundantly clear is that our government helped peddle the Democrats’ info ops on the American public.

A Weekend With O’Keefe

April 30, 2023/in Featured, Liberty, Politics, ThePricklyPear.org /by ThePricklyPear.org

By John Howting

My old boss James O’Keefe recently parted ways with the Project Veritas, the organization that he founded and ran for over a decade, following allegations of abuse from his employees.

Visionaries are rarely loved by their employees. Mountains aren’t moved without sweat and tears, and the man I know can—and did—move mountains.

In 2009, O’Keefe’s work prompted Congress to defund the left-wing community-organizing collective ACORN. In 2012, O’Keefe’s voter fraud series was cited in state legislatures and in congressional hearings. David Weigel, of Slate Magazine, said that O’Keefe “had more of an impact on the 2012 election than any journalist.” In the 2016 election year, O’Keefe exposed left-wing groups disrupting Trump rallies, and how Google insiders censored conservatives online—work that earned praise from President Donald Trump. Earlier this year, O’Keefe released footage of a Pfizer consultant boasting of secret plans to mutate the COVID virus. This has become the most viral story in the history of O’Keefe’s Project Veritas.

Project Veritas would not have been a success without a dynamic, driven person like O’Keefe at its helm. Such a creative, intense personality, it is true, may tend to intimidate or even frighten normal people.

A weekend I spent with O’Keefe in 2011 illustrates what working for James is like—and why it is not for everyone.

James flew me out on a Thursday evening for the festivities—a weekend in Atlantic City. A couple of mutual friends picked me up at the airport and drove me to the original Project Veritas office, a converted carriage house in Westwood, New Jersey. James arrived around midnight, carrying a toolbelt, safety goggles, and a clip board. I assumed this meant that I would be assisting his father with some manual labor in the morning. But James had something else in mind. “John, you are going to ask Eric Boehlert, a senior fellow at Media Matters, if it’s fair for a one-percenter like him to collect a half-million-dollar salary from George Soros while so many people—the 99 percent—struggle to get by,” he said.

“How am I going to do that?” I asked. “By ringing Boehlert’s front doorbell,” James replied. I broke out laughing. “Boehlert doesn’t live far from here,” James continued. “I’ll drive you there and film from my car. You will also wear a camera; we want both angles.”

Boehlert, who practically lived on Twitter, had recently tweeted about his various home repairs. James reasoned that if I wore a toolbelt and said I was conducting a survey, Boehlert’s brain would fill in the blanks. “Boehlert will think you’re from Maytag or some cleaning service until you ask the big question,” James said. “At that point, the worst that can happen is he will slam the door in your face.”

I was worried Boehlert would get aggressive and follow me back to the car. James assured me that would not happen.We argued over this for about ten minutes. Finally, James made me an offer I could not refuse: he’d cover my hotel in Atlantic City, and I could have any pre-workout supplements I could find in the carriage house or in the trunk of his car. Deal!

I knocked on Boehlert’s door midmorning the next day. Sure enough, Boehlert assumed I was working with a company that had recently installed something for him. “On a scale of one to five,” I asked, “How would you rate the timeliness of the worker’s service?” Boehlert replied, “About a one. He showed up like three hours late.”

After a few customer service questions, I asked the big one: “Mr. Boehlert, do you think it is fair and equitable for you to collect a half-million-dollar salary from George Soros while so many Americans—the forgotten 99 percent—are struggling to get by?” The expression on Boehlert’s face quickly shifted from relaxed to confused, and then to angry. I kept pushing for an answer until Boehlert told me to leave. I turned around and began walking back to the car. When I reached the end of his lawn Boehlert jogged up beside me and said, “I’m going to follow you to your car.”

Rather than continuing to the car, where James and Spencer Meads, one of the first Project Veritas employees, were waiting, my flight instinct kicked in and I sprinted in the opposite direction.

I ran and ran until James and Spencer pulled up beside me. I heard Spencer yell, “Eric Boehlert chased you down the street!” We all laughed hysterically all the way back to the carriage house. Then we watched the footage and laughed some more.

A few months later, I left my job in a congressional office to work with James. That memorable weekend was a big part of my decision—one I do not regret. A normal person might feel abused if their boss pressured them into tense and uncomfortable situations, such as buttonholing someone at his front door and challenging him with difficult questions. Investigative journalism, especially the undercover investigative journalism James practiced, is not for normal people. But it is necessary nonetheless.

*****
This article was published by Chronicles and is reproduced with permission.

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Iranians Are Not Muslim

April 30, 2023/in DrRichSwier.com, Politics, Religion /by DrRichSwier.com

By Amil Imani

Iranians are Muslim in name only. Most Iranians consider Islam an invader. We have a saying in Persian that the way you take your first step points your path for the rest of your journey. To elucidate this, please allow me to elaborate and give a brief account of Islam.

Islam’s very first step was that of violence aimed at the decimation of any people that stood in its path of conquest. It all started with Muhammad when his own Quraysh tribe chased him out of his hometown of Mecca. He was a troublemaker who earned the “crazed poet” epithet. He escaped from Mecca and settled in Medina where a large tolerant Jewish community lived. There he found enough peace to start his campaign of gathering a bunch of thugs with the promise of booty in this world as well as the eternal pleasure of a sensual paradise if people followed his edict.

The rest is history. One of the very first things he did was to turn on the Jews of Medina – an easy and convenient target to kill, loot and enslave. Being amply rewarded for this thuggery, his followers expanded their range. To this day, the goal is the same. Destroying any and all people who refuse to surrender everything they are and have to this creed of savagery and slavery.

Nearly 1400 years ago, the followers of Muhammad from across the scorching Arabian Desert managed to conquer Iran (Persia), the greatest empire of that era. After the conquest, they tried to eradicate one of the most benevolent and beautiful religions of all humanity, Zoroastrianism, often called the mother of all revealed religions.

Originally, many Iranians and other minorities who lived in Iran were forced to accept Islam to save their lives from the Arab butchers, but deep within their hearts, they never surrendered to the Bedouin Arab culture. That period became the defining moment of 1400 years of resentment Persians kept it in their hearts; this resentment still exists to this day. If you by accident call a Persian an Arab, there won’t be a good scene. The events of history have toughened present-day Iranians. They have no feelings for Islam and its founder, but they pretend as if they do. They have become great pretenders. But the totality of 1400 years of Islamic barbarity and savagery must and will end. Iranians no longer need to pretend that they are practicing Muslims when in fact they are not.

Before the Islamic invasion of 1979, most Iranians were unaware of the true nature of Islam. But the 1979 Islamic invasion quickly changed that. Nowadays, masses of Iranians are irreparably alienated from corrupt and oppressive Islamic rule. The rule of the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) is crumbling. The previously solid edifice, or at least the appearance of it, is finally showing many cracks that continue to grow. There are just too many fault lines to list here. Many consider this an era of Iranian awakening or Iranian renaissance. Islam has always been in contrast with Persian values, as is evident from the glorious pre-Islamic Iranian festivities and celebrations.

In the monumental task of dealing with Islam and its variations, every individual, group, and government must combine their resources and energies to prevail. We must urge all people to resist Islam’s encroachment and not be deceived by its sanitized version presented in non-Islamic lands. The destiny of civilized life hangs in the balance. Shirking this responsibility would be an unpardonable act of every enlightened human being and organization that values human liberty and dignity.

For one, multiculturalism and multi-religionism are not interchangeable and are not one and the same. Muslims and their frequently well-paid apologists use the multiculturalism umbrella only in non-Islamic lands to shield themselves from the torrent of legitimate criticism that those who know Islam better shower on this cult of violence peddled as the religion of peace.

Don’t listen to me, and don’t listen to these conniving dissimulators. Find out for yourself. See if the euphemism of multiculturalism is ever even mentioned by any Islamic leader, ever printed in the Islamic press, or ever appears in any form anywhere in Muslim countries.

This multiculturalism gambit is Islam-manufactured wool to pull over the eyes of the non-Muslims, while the Muslims carry on with their unrelenting campaign of eradicating anything or anyone non-Islamic anywhere in the world. Those of us who, through reason and tremendous acts of will, have freed ourselves from the enslaving yoke of Islam placed around our necks from birth know about all the heinous inside dirt of this plague of humanity.

We hardly need to call a toll-free number to hear a phony canned message of deceptions and lies. We have experienced Islam firsthand and up close from the inside. We have studied the Quran, the Hadith, and the Sunna. We have seen Islam in action where it wields sway. Some of us even tried desperately to cling to this security blanket that was wrapped around us from birth. Yet the more we studied and the more we experienced Islam, the more our effort to remain in the fold became untenable. We broke away from Islamic slavery and found it to be our solemn duty to expose this fraud of a religion, help other Muslims to free themselves from it, and warn the good-hearted and gullible non-Muslims against falling prey to it.

It is Muslims and Muslim organizations who are guilty of dissimulation and fraud. Muslims act meekly when they lack sufficient power. Once in power, Real Islam emerges from its shell of dissimulation and puts free people and their way of life to the sword.

Who coined the term ‘Deep State’?

Who are the people in the Deep State today?

The Bottom Line

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“IT’S A BLOODBATH”: FOX NEWS LOSES MORE THAN HALF OF AUDIENCE AFTER AXING TUCKER CARLSON

‘They Veered From CDC Guidance’

‘Worrisome Jokes,’ ‘Natural Immunity,’ and Other ‘Potential Violations’

‘You Can’t Handle the Truth’

‘Sometimes They Are Five’

[i] Matthew Josephson, Edison: A Biography (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1992), 412.

1. Feds Seized Laptop, Shushed Mac Isaac

2. FBI Made Laptop Off Limits

3. FBI Presumably Gave Inaccurate Briefing

4. Government Sources Lied to Media

5. Other Leaks Pushed ‘Russia Disinfo’ Narrative

6. Government Pressed Social Media to Censor

7. Potentially More Government Interference

8. ‘Twitter Files’ Show Potential Military Connection

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