How Not to Vote in Arizona thumbnail

How Not to Vote in Arizona

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By John R. Ammon

The 2022 midterm election is fast approaching. The system for voting in Arizona is predominantly by mail-in ballots (around 80% of all ballots). The ballots are being mailed to all voters registered for mail-in voting today, October 12th. The actual ‘day’ of the election is Tuesday November 8, 27 days from now.

Once upon a time when all voters went to the polls on the day of election, the tabulated results were announced the night of the election date. If the result of a specific race was razor thin and less than a legislated margin, a recount might prevent the naming of a winner on election night. That was the exception for calling the results of that election.

It is still this way in most first world countries but not the United States and certainly not Arizona. Voting rules (some unconstitutional) were dramatically altered in many states in 2020 because of the Covid pandemic.

We at The Prickly Pear are very concerned about the flaws in Arizona’s predominant ‘mail-in’ voting system.

The title of How Not to Vote in Arizona is purposeful and a plea to the majority of Arizonans who vote-by-mail.

As stated above, around 80% of Arizona voters do vote by mail. The system has been in place for many years but has a major flaw that has been a factor in all election cycles.

The flaw is that hundreds of thousands Arizona voters fail to ‘mail in’ their ballots well before election day.

Many ‘mail-in’ voters arrive at their local polling station on Election Day to deposit their green ‘vote-by-mail’ envelopes into the Mail-In Ballot box that day rather than surrendering their mail-in ballot and actually voting in a booth at the polling station with their vote tabulated for the results the evening of Election Day.

When a mail-in ballot is ‘dropped off’ on Election day, it must be signature certified, a labor-intensive process which may take days to weeks given the 200,000 or more mail-in ballots submitted by Arizona voters this way. These ‘dropped off’ ballots must be collected, transported, sorted, and signature certified, raising serious questions of chain-of-custody and the potential for illegal voting. This is HOW NOT TO VOTE in Arizona.

VOTERS OF ARIZONA – the solution to this serious and troublesome pattern for so many ‘drop off’ voters is to actually complete the ‘mail-in’ ballot shortly after receipt. Complete your ballot, sign the envelope and take it to the post office within days of receipt, certainly no later than November 1st, a full week before Election Day.

Never deposit a ballot in an unsupervised ‘Drop Box’.

As a responsible voter, you should follow your ballot to ensure it has been received, signature certified to be certain it is actually tabulated and counted by Election Day on November 8th. The way voters can check their voter registration and then how to track their ballot after mailing it are at the following links for Maricopa County voters:

Check Your (Ballot) Status at the Maricopa County Voter Dashboard: Are You Ballot Ready? https://recorder.maricopa.gov/Elections/BeBallotReady/

How to Track Your Early Ballot from Start to Finish in Maricopa County: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTLeLvCxFj4&t=37s

Your County Recorder website will have comparable links for Arizonans residing in all other counties.

TAKE ACTION

How Not to Vote in Arizona

The 2022 midterm election is fast approaching. The system for voting in Arizona is predominantly by mail-in ballots (around 80% of all ballots). The ballots will be mailed out to all voters registered for mail-in voting on October 12th. The actual ‘day’ of the election is Tuesday November 8, 27 days later.

Once upon a time when all voters went to the polls on the day of election, the tabulated results were announced the night of the election date. If the result of a specific race was razor thin and less than a legislated margin, a recount might prevent the naming of a winner. That was the exception for calling the results of the election.

It is still this way in most first world countries but not the United States and certainly not Arizona. Voting rules (some unconstitutional) were dramatically altered in many states in 2020 because of the Covid pandemic.

We at The Prickly Pear are very concerned about the flaws in Arizona’s predominant ‘mail-in’ voting system.

Please click on the red TAKE ACTION link below to learn How Not to Vote in Arizona as a mail-in ballot voter and to be certain your vote is included in the count the evening of November 8th.

Harris’ Call for ‘Equity’ After Hurricane Wasn’t a Gaffe, But Natural Conclusion of Leftist Ideology thumbnail

Harris’ Call for ‘Equity’ After Hurricane Wasn’t a Gaffe, But Natural Conclusion of Leftist Ideology

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By Armstrong Williams

Fresh off an embarrassing gaffe in South Korea, in which Vice President Kamala Harris praised the United States’ strong alliance with North Korea, she is at it again—albeit without gaffes but with a striking comment emblematic of our country’s divide over racial issues.

At a Sept. 30 event organized by actress Priyanka Chopra, during which she interviewed Harris, Chopra posed an incredibly loaded and convoluted question concerning the United States’ climate objectives and the hurricanes that have wreaked havoc on parts of our nation.

“(When) we consider the global implications of emissions … the poorest countries are affected the most. They contributed the least (to the climate crisis) and are affected the most,” Chopra said. “So, how should voters in the U.S. feel about the administration’s long-term goals when it comes to being an international influencer on this topic?”

After some time unpacking the first long part of Chopra’s question, Harris responded: “On the disparities … it is our lowest-income communities and our communities of color that are most impacted by these extreme conditions and impacted by issues that are not of their own making … And so, we have to address this in a way that is about giving resources based on equity, understanding that we fight for equality, but we also need to fight for equity. Understanding not everyone starts out in the same place. And, if we want people to be in an equal place, sometimes we have to take into account those disparities.”

That’s right, the vice president of the United States stated that disaster relief should be distributed based on “equity,” not necessarily need—and that low-income communities and communities of color should receive aid first, evidently regardless of the urgency of their situation. The White House the same day released a “fact sheet” listing the administration’s response to Hurricane Ian, and President Joe Biden on Monday visited Puerto Rico, hit hard by Hurricane Fiona.

But let’s deconstruct Harris’ comment, since the left is in damage-control mode trying to offset criticism and online posts chastising Harris and to brand Republicans as liars and somehow make them out to be the offenders in this situation. Harris said unequivocally that low-income and minority areas are disproportionately affected by “extreme conditions” and that we must allocate resources based on “equity.”

She said: “I know we are all thinking about the families in Florida, in Puerto Rico with Fiona — and what we need to do to help them, in terms of an immediate response and aid, but also what we need to do to restore communities and build communities back up in a way that they can be resilient, not to mention adapt to these extreme weather conditions.”

Clearly, “these extreme weather conditions” in the context of this sentence refers to the hurricanes that recently hit Florida and Puerto Rico, as well as those that will occur in the future. Consequently, when Harris remarked, “We have to address (these extreme conditions) in a way that is about giving resources based on equity,” she was saying that “we have to address (disaster relief),” both in terms of immediate aid and in post-catastrophe aid, “in a way that is about giving resources based on equity.”

So, let’s put a stop to any debate and, instead of defending Harris simply because you support the Biden administration, let’s call out a dishonorable comment when we hear it. This argument for “equity” in the context of disaster-related resources is not a recent development among those on the far left. The argument for equitable distribution of resources is prevalent in several aspects of progressives’ ideology. For example, I’m sure you’ve heard the calls for more “diversity” in the workplace and on company boards, or in leadership in Congress, on the Supreme Court and throughout the judiciary, generally. And let’s not forget “affirmative action” in colleges and universities, too.

The merit-over-race debate has been discussed ad nauseum. Clearly, society benefits more when the most qualified individuals occupy influential positions. To establish a fairer, more egalitarian nation, we do not need to tokenize women and individuals of various colors or sexual orientations. We need to level the playing field when it comes to achieving success, not hand out fast passes. As they say: equality of opportunity, not outcome.

Death knows no color. In times of disaster, everyone—no matter their race—is entitled to aid. The logical conclusion of Harris’ charade is that soldiers will airdrop supplies to minority and low-income communities that are otherwise stable, while wealthy, white community members may be left to drown or starve. I think we’ve seen this play out before.

Unquestionably, prejudice and racism have afflicted our nation for many decades. Yet, in the grand scheme of things, we were able to address it—and each year we improve at this effort. The shift toward solving the problem did not result from giving people handouts or preferential treatment, but rather from providing minorities with access to education and resources so they could be well-rounded, educated individuals capable of becoming leaders and assuming specialized occupations.

We do not need to deprive certain people of help in times of need, or of the opportunity for advancement. We need to play by rules that are fair for everyone, no matter their background.

*****

This article was published by the Daily Signal and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

How Not to Vote in Arizona

The 2022 midterm election is fast approaching. The system for voting in Arizona is predominantly by mail-in ballots (around 80% of all ballots). The ballots will be mailed out to all voters registered for mail-in voting on October 12th. The actual ‘day’ of the election is Tuesday November 8, 27 days later.

Once upon a time when all voters went to the polls on the day of election, the tabulated results were announced the night of the election date. If the result of a specific race was razor thin and less than a legislated margin, a recount might prevent the naming of a winner. That was the exception for calling the results of the election.

It is still this way in most first world countries but not the United States and certainly not Arizona. Voting rules (some unconstitutional) were dramatically altered in many states in 2020 because of the Covid pandemic.

We at The Prickly Pear are very concerned about the flaws in Arizona’s predominant ‘mail-in’ voting system.

Please click on the red TAKE ACTION link below to learn How Not to Vote in Arizona as a mail-in ballot voter and to be certain your vote is included in the count the evening of November 8th.

It Was Politics that Drove the Science thumbnail

It Was Politics that Drove the Science

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By Steve Templeton

Most academic scientists spend a lot of time writing grants that have very little chance of being funded. Because the funding environment is so competitive, many scientists feel pressure to emphasize the most positive, sensational results they can produce. Some academic scientists take this too far, by ignoring conflicting results or even fabricating data. Research fraud that goes unreported can upset decades of research, which happened recently in the field of Alzheimer’s research.

What happens if you take away scientific competition? There is indeed a way to do this, and that’s by working in a government agency. Being a government scientist is not a bad deal for a lot of people. The pay is good, the job is secure, and the expectations aren’t high. Securing funding is pretty easy and completely backward from academia—you often get the funding first and justify it with a “grant” later.

The perceived impact of your publications doesn’t matter, any journal is sufficient. In the case of my position at CDC-NIOSH, mechanistic science wasn’t encouraged. Instead, there was a lot of emphasis on toxicology, which simply involves exposing an animal or tissue to a compound or microbe and determining if there is an adverse effect. If there was, taking further steps to determine why there was an adverse effect wasn’t necessary. It was a simple exposure, assess, report, rinse and repeat process.

I wasn’t in my government post-doc position long before I realized that government work wasn’t my calling. It’s not that it wasn’t challenging, it was just challenging in the wrong way. Government scientists often spend more of their time fighting government bureaucracy than scientific problems. In such a red tape-clogged system, self-motivated people eventually get discouraged, while unmotivated people get to coast.

There were many examples of bureaucratic dysfunction and waste. In one department, staff members came across a storage room filled with brand new boxes of obsolete computers that had never been opened. No one seemed to know how they got there. Similarly, it wasn’t a rare occurrence to encounter large stores of expensive reagents in a freezer or storage room that had expired without being opened. These examples were simply a function of shifting funding and priorities. Congress would periodically throw money at the agency so everyone could claim they were doing something about a highly visible health problem. If you didn’t spend it, it went away.

In another instance, government officials decided they needed an online travel booking program for employees similar to Orbitz for Business. The result was underwhelming–millions of dollars and years later, there were still serious problems with it that resulted in travel delays. Everyone complained about having to use it. They could’ve just used Orbitz for Business, if only it had been allowed.

At one point, traveling to a foreign country to give a research seminar required giving notice one year in advance. This included the title of the talk. Who knows what they are going to talk about one year in advance?

One of my favorite horror stories about government bureaucracy was about a CDC employee who got fired accidentally by an unnamed bureaucrat. He didn’t even realize he had been fired until one day his paycheck wasn’t deposited and his security badge stopped working. It took months to get him rehired. The great irony of that story is that it’s nearly impossible to fire someone intentionally. I’m not sure how anyone could do it accidentally. But apparently, it happened.

At the CDC branch where I worked, we had a histology core run by a technician who didn’t like his job, and knew he couldn’t get fired. I would send tissue samples and they’d take months to get processed and stained. When I did get them back, there were some curious things about the slides I would notice. Some of the different samples would appear identical on the cut slides.

The histology tech was just cutting the same block over and over to make slides and labeling them differently. When I brought up this behavior to my boss, it didn’t surprise him. He told me that the guy was bitter and intended to metaphorically give us all a big middle finger, and there was no way we could stop him. We ended up contracting the nearby university core to do the same work. Meanwhile, worthless histology tech continued to get paid for doing even less.

Once, a CDC pathologist tried to report him for “destruction of government property.” She was one of those self-motivated people who took her job seriously and could be relied upon by others, and at the same time was naïve enough to expect the same. What happened when she raised a stink about lazy histology tech guy? She was reprimanded and labeled a “troublemaker.” Probably because the bureaucrats recognized that her attempt at whistleblowing would just create work for them, and would not actually result in any meaningful change.

Once I got reprimanded by my boss for a reason that I cannot clearly recall. Much like the honorable yet naive pathologist, I was calling BS on something and thus not endearing myself to the front office. Although I can’t recall much of the dressing down I received, one thing he said stuck with me: “You can’t change the system from outside the system,” He meant it was pointless for someone in my lowly contract position to fight anything, it would do nothing and only hurt me and annoy everyone else.

Later, I realized that something he didn’t mention was also true–it’s impossible to advance within the system by promising to change it. If you wanted to advance within the CDC or another government agency, you have to demonstrate your dedication to the status quo. That powerful incentive ensures the system is preserved, with perverse incentives fully intact.

This dynamic was painfully obvious as I watched the government pandemic response unfold. In the beginning, when uncertainty was the greatest, many leaders seemed reasonable and cautioned against panic, because they knew there was a potential for severe collateral damage. Once more particulars about the virus were known, especially the steep age-stratified risk of severe disease, competing political interests emerged, and as a result messaging and decision-making became distorted. 

In normal times, large bureaucratic health agencies driven by political interests do not directly affect the daily lives of most Americans. During a natural disaster, however, these agencies will continue to be driven by politics, not public health, because they are not capable of adapting to a crisis. That’s when the cracks begin to show, and everyone is affected.

A prime example is the CDC’s flagship journal Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR). According to the CDC, MMWR exists “…to report events of public health interest and importance to CDC’s major constituents—state and local health departments—and as quickly as possible”, and to distribute “… objective scientific information, albeit often preliminary, to the public at large”.

The key word here is “objective”, which is apparently used unironically. Here are MMWR editors describing how they determine what content is suitable for publication:

Several other differences [between the MMWR and medical journals] exist. A major one is that, unlike medical journals (with a few exceptions, i.e., certain special supplements such as this one), the content published in MMWR constitutes the official voice of its parent, CDC. One sign of this is the absence in MMWR of any official disclaimers. Although most articles that appear in MMWR are not “peer-reviewed” in the way that submissions to medical journals are, to ensure that the content of MMWR comports with CDC policy, every submission to MMWR undergoes a rigorous multilevel clearance process before publication. This includes review by the CDC Director or designate, top scientific directors at all CDC organizational levels, and an exacting review by MMWR editors. Articles submitted to MMWR from non-CDC authors undergo the same kind of review by subject-matter experts within CDC. By the time a report appears in MMWR, it reflects, or is consistent with, CDC policy.

Did you catch all that? There is nothing “objective” about how the CDC determines what is published in their flagship journal. They choose to publish only results that support their policy and are completely open about it.

This is backward from how health policy should be determined. Science should drive policy recommendations, yet at the CDC, the policy recommendations drive the science. 

Once this fact is acknowledged, much of the more controversial “studies” published in MMWR begin to make complete sense. For example, many mask studies claiming significant universal or school masking efficacy published by the CDC (some that I have previously discussed) were poorly designed and executed and easily debunked by outside observers. That’s because the “rigorous multilevel clearance process” involved no concern with the actual methodology of those studies. There was simply a set of predetermined conclusions from CDC directors in search of supporting data. Nothing objective about it.

Politically driven science at the CDC and other government health agencies was not limited to mask studies. Risks of severe or long COVID and benefits of COVID vaccines in children and healthy adults were also greatly exaggerated. Worst of all, basic tenets of immunology (e.g. infection-acquired immunity) were denied. Immunologists were expected to go along with it. Many did.

Science is a perfect process complicated by flawed human practitioners. Wherever there are people, there will be politics, and wherever there are government health agencies, their political interests will trample any conflicting science. As with any big problem, the first step is admitting there is a problem. After accepting the fact that health agencies are political organizations, the next steps should explore ways to ensure bipartisan administration and remove perverse incentives. Separating research and policy arms of each agency, term limits for administrative positions, and approval of directors by Congress might be a good start. 

Obviously, no meaningful change in government health agencies is going to happen without overcoming massive bureaucratic opposition. But a meaningful change is the only outcome we should accept, or we can expect more of the same when the next pandemic comes.

*****

This article was published by The Brownstone Institute and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

How Not to Vote in Arizona

The 2022 midterm election is fast approaching. The system for voting in Arizona is predominantly by mail-in ballots (around 80% of all ballots). The ballots will be mailed out to all voters registered for mail-in voting on October 12th. The actual ‘day’ of the election is Tuesday November 8, 27 days later.

Once upon a time when all voters went to the polls on the day of election, the tabulated results were announced the night of the election date. If the result of a specific race was razor thin and less than a legislated margin, a recount might prevent the naming of a winner. That was the exception for calling the results of the election.

It is still this way in most first world countries but not the United States and certainly not Arizona. Voting rules (some unconstitutional) were dramatically altered in many states in 2020 because of the Covid pandemic.

We at The Prickly Pear are very concerned about the flaws in Arizona’s predominant ‘mail-in’ voting system.

Please click on the red TAKE ACTION link below to learn How Not to Vote in Arizona as a mail-in ballot voter and to be certain your vote is included in the count the evening of November 8th.

Is the Party of Abortion’s Raphael Gamaliel Warnock a Lying, Two-Faced, Hypocrite? thumbnail

Is the Party of Abortion’s Raphael Gamaliel Warnock a Lying, Two-Faced, Hypocrite?

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By Dr. Rich Swier

Exodus 20:2-17 and Deuteronomy 5:6-21: I am the Lord thy God! Thou shalt have no other Gods but me!; Thou shalt not kill!; Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor!

The Democrat Party is all in on abortions. How do we know? Here’s a few links to demonstrate their full support of murdering babies and unrelenting attacks on religious Hospitals that refuse to perform abortions and attacks by groups like Jane’s Revenge against clinics that provide counseling to pregnant women:

So, why is Democrat Senator Raphael Gamaliel Warnock using abortion to attack Herschel Walker?

Why did Warnock say Walker paid for an abortion then begin running ads showing Walker’s born son.

Isn’t this at cross purposes? 

The Democrats love abortions and want unborn black babies killed. 

According to the Insider’s John L. Dorman,

Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock on Friday [October 7, 2022] affirmed his support for abortion rights during a campaign appearance in Middle Georgia, as the lawmaker works to earn a full six-year term in the Senate next month.

“I am a man of faith. I am a pastor. I have a profound reverence for life, and I have a deep and abiding respect for choice,” he told the attendees, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

If one says he believes in God, is a Baptist Pastor but supports abortion is that man not the definition of a hypocrite?

If a black man, knowing that the founder of Planned Parenthood Margaret Sanger wanted to deal with the “black issue” two-faced? No true man of God would ever embrace the myth that abortion is healthcare. Isn’t that lying to the people of Georgia?

The Heritage Foundation’s Kay C. James wrote,

Sanger said all sorts of disturbing things, like, “We don’t want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population.” She favored the forced sterilization of those she deemed “unfit,” she gave a speech to the Ku Klux Klan, and she once wrote, “The most merciful thing that the large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it…”

[ … ]

Sanger’s open racism, her promotion of eugenics and her advocacy of forced sterilizations to keep those she deemed “unfit” from “breeding” was her vision. Planned Parenthood was formed on that vision, and much of that vision still exists at Planned Parenthood today.

Kay C. James also noted,

According to the Guttmacher Institute, in 2014, a year when Black women only accounted for about 13% of the U.S. population, they made up 28% of those having abortions. Each year in New York City, more Black babies are aborted than born.

So a black Baptist, so called pastor, embraces abortion knowing full well that the intent is to kill black babies.

Isn’t falsely accusing another black man of paying for an abortion bearing false witness and a bold faced lie?

Isn’t Warnock’s “I am a man of faith. I am a pastor. I have a profound reverence for life, and I have a deep and abiding respect for choice” a statement filled with deceitful words at best and blasphemy against God Commandments at worst?

We will let the people of Georgia make their decision on who will be their next U.S. Senator. But we are betting Herschel Walker the real man who didn’t lie, isn’t two-faced and who is truely pro-life, pro-families and pro-people. We believe that Herschel will win at the ballot box as he has on the football field and in his life.

Here’s what a real man does.

I have never known a preacher that likes abortion even after birth, won’t pay his child support and evicts poor people to the street. I will pay the $4500 in past due rents listed in this news article to keep @ReverendWarnock from evicting these people. https://t.co/IqSBIWUnLU

— Herschel Walker (@HerschelWalker) October 11, 2022

As the Insider’s John L. Dorman noted,

But Republicans appear likely to stand largely behind Walker, a former University of Georgia football standout who boasts near-universal name recognition in the state and has been strongly endorsed by former President Donald Trump.

Florida Sen. Rick Scott, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said last week that the committee would continue working to elect Walker next month.

“When the Democrats are losing, as they are right now, they lie and cheat and smear their opponents,” he said in a statement. “That’s what’s happening right now. They know they are on the verge of losing the Senate, and they know Herschel Walker is winning, so they have cranked up the smear machine.”

Who can vote for a black Baptist pastor who is all for killing black babies?

We trust a real black man who has morals and values over you know who.

©Dr. Rich Swier. All rights reserved.

RELATED TWEET:

The Washington Post has polls out today that show 93% of Democrats want to see Trump indicted

But other recent polls also found:

64% of Democrats support reparations

30% of Democrats think it’s fine to kill a baby at its due date

25% of Democrats think men can get pregnant

— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) October 10, 2022

State Department Weighs Funding Sex Change Treatments For Employees And Their Kids thumbnail

State Department Weighs Funding Sex Change Treatments For Employees And Their Kids

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By The Daily Caller

The Department of State is weighing its options for funding gender transition services for diplomats and their dependents, according to a strategic plan for 2022-2026.

The State Department is assessing what resources are available for foreign diplomats and their dependents who wish to transition to the opposite sex, according to the strategic plan. Gender transition treatments can include talk therapy, cross-sex hormones and surgeries, though it’s unclear what forms of support the State Department aims to provide and whether that would apply to dependents who are minors.

The move comes after an August report revealed the State Department was pressuring foreign countries to crack down on forms of therapy for children with gender identity issues that don’t automatically affirm their transgender status.

We continue our work to ensure that all transgender, nonbinary, and gender non-conforming persons are able to live safely and feel included. Trans rights = human rights. #TDOV pic.twitter.com/uBSrxlbJJ9

— Department of State (@StateDept) March 31, 2022

The strategic plan includes a subsection on LGBT inclusion at overseas posts, including goals such as creating more gender-neutral bathrooms and locker rooms in overseas facilities and promoting pro-LGBT policies for children in schools abroad.

The plan proposes that the State Department “develop a Department-wide targeted plan to achieve equity in the advocacy plan to obtain the accreditation of same-sex spouses overseas … assess resources for gender dysphoria and gender transition care at posts for employees and their dependent [and] increase gender-neutral restrooms and locker rooms in overseas facilities.”

The plan recommends guidance be created for protesting policies of foreign countries viewed as discriminatory and recommends the State Department collaborate with accreditation agencies for overseas schools to provide “social-emotional support” for LBGT students.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken recently told embassies to “submit robust information on the so-called ‘conversion therapy’ practices” in their host countries as part of their annual human rights reports, according to an August City Journal report. Blinken believes the “wait and see” approach to childhood gender issues, which doesn’t automatically affirm a child’s transgender identity, is a form of conversion therapy.

The memo was met with outrage from Republican lawmakers, who rebuked the guidance in a September letter.

“The State Department’s memo is a form of radical gender imperialism that threatens our relationships with other nations and harms our standing in the world,” the lawmakers wrote. “Many countries in Europe … employ either ‘last line of defense’ policies on ‘gender affirming care,’ or have banned gender surgeries for youth altogether. These more restrictive policies now risk making Western European nations “human rights abusers” in the eyes of the State Department, putting them on similar footing as the People Republic of China (PRC), which has committed genocide.”

The State Department did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

AUTHOR

LAUREL DUGGAN

Social and culture reporter.

RELATED TWEET:

So very sad. https://t.co/oGzU6pvY3I

— Laura Rambeau Lee (@_RightReason) October 10, 2022

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Vanderbilt To Pause Gender Transition Surgeries On Minors Following Bombshell Report

Federal Judge Rules Biden Admin’s LGBTQ Employee Protections Go Too Far

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WATCH: Director of Boston Children’s Gender Clinic Says Puberty Blockers Cause Infertility, Are Given Out ‘Like Candy’

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

GOP Lawmakers Question Blinken and Garland Over Communist China’s Secret Police Stations in New York thumbnail

GOP Lawmakers Question Blinken and Garland Over Communist China’s Secret Police Stations in New York

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By The Geller Report

Inside China’s secret police station in NEW YORK whose officers hunt down dissidents and ‘persuade’ them to return home

  • One of at least 54 secret Chinese police stations is located in New York City’s Chinatown neighborhood 
  • A human rights watchdog reported the existence of these stations around the world to observe and hunt down dissidents 
  • Many stations around the world are disguised, often running inside Chinese restaurants or convenience stores 

Since the station’s opened in April 2021, the Chinese government has said it ‘persuaded’ 230,000 Chinese nationals to return home (more Daily Mail)

China has set up dozens of secret police stations around the world, including one in New York City, to hunt down and retrieve dissidents.

A new report from Safeguard Defenders, a human rights watchdog, revealed that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has at least 54 ‘overseas police service stations’ in 30 different countries, including the US.

  • New York’s station, located on East Broadway between Chinatown and the Lower East Side, was open on February 15, according to the Chinese-language news site FJSEN.

“Questioning?” The RINOs are useless. What the hell are the Communist Chinese police doing on our home-soil?

GOP Lawmakers Question Blinken, Garland Over CCP Police Station in New York

By Dorothy Li, The Epoch Times, October 9, 2022:

A group of U.S. House Republicans on Oct. 7 sent a letter questioning Attorney General Merrick Garland and Secretary of State Antony Blinken over the presence of a Chinese police service station in New York City.

“We are writing to express our grave concern over reports of the law enforcement presence of the People’s Republic of China in New York City,” the 21 lawmakers wrote, referring to China’s full name.

“The Chinese overseas police service station established in New York City earlier this year appears to be a further step of China’s illicit long arm policing on U.S. soil that violates our sovereignty,” Republican Study Committee chairman Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.), Reps. Michael Waltz (R-Fla.), Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.), and 18 other GOP House members wrote in the letter.

The letter came after a September report from NGO Safeguard Defenders revealed the Chinese authorities have set up at least 54 police service stations across five continents, including the United States, as part of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) global transnational repression.

An outpost in New York City was among the “first batch” of 30 overseas police service stations in 21 countries set up by the Public Security Bureau in Fuzhou city, the capital of the southern coastal province of Fujian.

The Chinese police authorities’ division in New York, called Fuzhou Police Oversea Service Station, is located at 107 East Broadway, inside the headquarters of the American Changle Association, a non-profit that was founded in 1998, according to its website.

Such Chinese hometown associations hosting the overseas police service stations are often linked to the Chinese regime’s “United Front” system, according to Safeguard Defenders. The network of thousands of overseas groups  is loosely overseen by the United Front Work Department (UFWD), a powerful Party agency that works to advance the regime’s interests abroad, including by carrying out foreign influence operations, suppressing dissident movements, gathering intelligence, and facilitating the transfer of technology to China.

The lawmakers noted that the Trump administration imposed visa restrictions on CCP officials in the UFWD in 2020. Then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said those officials “have engaged in malign activities to co-opt and coerce those who oppose Beijing’s policies” in December 2020.

Keep reading.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

RELATED TWEET:

BREAKING: @TulsiGabbard announces she’s leaving the Democrat Party Gabbard says the DNC is under the complete control of woke warmongers. pic.twitter.com/HlmEdJwBoH

— Election Wizard 🇺🇸 (@ElectionWiz) October 11, 2022

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Mitch McConnell Is Funding Lisa Murkowski in Alaska BUT NOT Blake Masters in Arizona thumbnail

Mitch McConnell Is Funding Lisa Murkowski in Alaska BUT NOT Blake Masters in Arizona

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By The Geller Report

Lisa Murkowski has backed Biden 67% of the time. She does the opposite of what she tells Alaskans she will do. Blake Masters, on the other hand is the real deal. McConnell is a democrat operative.

Arizona Republican Blake Masters relentlessly hammered Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) on the issues of border security, inflation, abortion, and big-tech censorship in a clear-cut victory in Thursday’s U.S. Senate debate. https://t.co/cTOA2cRkFE

— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) October 8, 2022

Maria Bartiromo: Mitch McConnell Is Funding Lisa Murkowski in Alaska BUT NOT Blake Masters in Arizona (VIDEO)

By Jim Hoft, Gateway Pundit October 9, 2022:

Maria Bartiromo invited Trump-endorsed Arizona Senate Candidate Blake Masters on this morning to discuss his close race with radical Democrat Mark Kelly.

Mark Kelly is a “California progressive” who has supported every single Joe Biden policy including his open border with Mexico. Illegal aliens are invading America’s southern border and Mark Kelly approves of this. Democrats are sick.

During their discussion today Maria Bartiromo pointed out that Mitch McConnell is funding Lisa Murkowski but did not fund Blake Masters in Arizona.

Of course, Murkowski is a horrid person who helped push ranked choice voting in Alaska that will throw elections to Democrats for decades to come. Ranked choice voting already cost Alaska Republicans their one GOP representative seat.

At the same time, Mitch McConnell cut back his PAC support to Blake Masters in Arizona in his tight race with Mark Kelly.

Watch Blake Masters on Sunday Morning Futures.

Support Blake Masters Here

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

RELATED TWEET:

BREAKING: @TulsiGabbard announces she’s leaving the Democrat Party Gabbard says the DNC is under the complete control of woke warmongers. pic.twitter.com/HlmEdJwBoH

— Election Wizard 🇺🇸 (@ElectionWiz) October 11, 2022

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

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BLM’s Cullors Renovates Backyard of Luxurious $1.4M L.A. Mansion

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By Discover The Networks

Black Lives Matter (BLM) cofounder Patrisse Cullors has been busy making pricey renovations to the backyard of her luxurious $1.4 million mansion, according to a report from the Daily Mail, showing that “trained Marxist” Cullors has installed a brand-new sauna, garden, plunge pool, concrete steps, a children’s swing and slide set, and a trampoline outside her ritzy house located in the upscale Topanga Canyon neighborhood of Los Angeles.

This is not the first time she has upgraded the home, as she reportedly installed a $35,000 fence around the property in June 2021.

Cullors had purchased four homes since 2016 in California and Georgia for a total of worth $3.2 million, among them the Topanga Canyon compound, which she paid for in cash under the entity name “Abolitionist Entertainment, LLC” in March 2021.

After facing mounting criticism over missed funds, she resigned from BLM in May 2021 — one month after it was revealed she had purchased the Topanga Canyon home. Cullors claimed to have bought the homes to support her family and blamed “right-wing media” for highlighting her spending habits on luxurious homes.

Race hustling is lucrative work if you can get it.

Patrisse Cullors

33 Known Connections

Cullors Steps Down from Leadership Post with BLM

On May 27, 2021, Cullors announced that she would be stepping down as executive director of the BLM Foundation the following day. She claimed that her resignation had been in the works for more than a year and was unrelated to criticism she had received from conservatives vis-à-vis her enormous wealth and her various property acquisitions. “Those were right-wing attacks that tried to discredit my character, and I don’t operate off of what the right thinks about me,” Cullors said.

To learn more about Patrisse Cullors, click here.

RELATED TWEET:

It has their attention. https://t.co/d7uV9B2jnN

— Larry P Thomas (@larrythkw) October 10, 2022

RELATED ARTICLE: DeSantis Team Embarrasses MSNBC’s Reid, Rejects Interview

EDITORS NOTE: This Discover the Networks column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Major Rail Union Rejects Biden-Backed Deal, Reigniting Strike Fears thumbnail

Major Rail Union Rejects Biden-Backed Deal, Reigniting Strike Fears

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By The Daily Caller

One of the largest rail unions in the country rejected a Biden administration-brokered deal with railways Monday over concerns regarding working conditions, forcing both sides back to the bargaining table and raising the specter of a potentially devestating strike next month.

The vote drew record turnout, with nearly 12,000 members of the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employes Division of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (BMWED) casting a ballot, rejecting the deal with 56% opposed, according to a BMWED press release. The Biden-sponsored deal includes a 24% raise over the next five years, $5,000 in annual bonuses and attendance policy exemptions for medical purposes, but BMWED President Tony Cardwell said that workers were still concerned about working conditions and sick leave, the Associated Press reported Monday.

“The majority of the BMWED membership rejected the tentative national agreement and we recognize and understand that result,” said Cardwell in the BMWED press release. “BMWED members are concerned with the direction of their employers and the mismanagement and greed in which they have consistently implemented, and are united in their resolve to improve their working conditions across the entire Class I rail network.”

“We are disappointed that members of the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees Division of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (BMWED) have declined to ratify the recent tentative agreement (‘TA’) between the BMWED and the nation’s freight railroads,” the National Railway Labor Conference (NRLC) said in a Monday statement. The NRLC went on to discuss the benefits of the deal, including travel reimbursements of up to 50% for those employees in traveling roles.

While four of the dozen rail unions have thus far ratified, if the members of any union fail to agree to the terms, all 12 unions will go on strike, the AP reported. By rejecting the deal, the BMWED will return to negotiations with railways, entering a “status quo” period where unions cannot strike until Nov. 19, five days after Congress reconvenes, the BWMED stated.

BMWED members reject Tentative Agreement with Class I rail carriers. Read more here:https://t.co/x9J2vfWB3G

— BMWED (@BMWEDIBT) October 10, 2022

A strike could have disastrous consequences for the U.S. economy, which relies on railways to ship key products such as oil, coal and chemicals used in fertilizers, leading to disruptions that could cause $2 billion in economic damages per day, according to the Association of American Railroads, who represent railway management. Nearly 40% of all long-distance trade in the U.S. occurs on rail, and replacing them with trucks would require a fleet of nearly half a million trucks, a logistical impossibility, according to the American Trucking Association.

When asked by the Daily Caller News Foundation about what the BMWED’s management would consider to be a fair deal, Communications Director Clark Ballew said “The union’s management is the BMWED rank and file members and they rejected the tentative agreement.”

The American Association of Railroads referred the DCNF to the NRLC’s statement. Neither the White House nor the Department of Labor immediately responded to the DCNF’s request for comment.

AUTHOR

JOHN HUGH DEMASTRI

Contributor.

RELATED VIDEO: ESPN’s Stephen A Smith Calls Out Progressives for “Extreme Agenda”

RELATED ARTICLE: The Impending Railroad Strike Could Grind The Entire Economy To A Halt, Experts Warn

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

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The FBI’s Double Standard on Abortion

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By Jihad Watch

“They know who these people are. They’re choosing not to make arrests.”

Last month, The Mother and Unborn Baby Care Center, a pregnancy center in Southfield, Michigan, was vandalized causing thousands of dollars in damages. Graffiti left behind reading, “If abortion isn’t safe neither are you, Jane” linked the attack to Jane’s Revenge, a leftist pro-abortion domestic terrorist group that is believed to be responsible for as many as 50 attacks on pregnancy centers and pro-life groups.

Southfield police notified the FBI which refused to comment on the case.

After 18 attacks directly claimed by Jane’s Revenge over a period of six months, the FBI has made zero arrests. But while under Biden the feds have shown no interest in a national campaign of leftist terrorism, the FBI has been swift to come after abortion opponents.

The same month as the Southfield attack, an FBI team of 25 armed agents pounded on the door of of an anti-abortion activist in Pennsylvania who had been accused of shoving a Planned Parenthood escort. A nationwide campaign of domestic terrorism didn’t trigger a single arrest, but a shove brought heavily armed men in over a dozen vehicles to a suburban home.

The FBI has claimed that “the number of personnel and vehicles widely reported as being on scene Friday is an overstatement” and that its tactics were “professional”. The actual professional tactic would have been to ask the gentleman in question to turn himself in.

But under Biden and Garland, the DOJ has engaged in a campaign of political intimidation.

Biden’s DOJ put out a statement about the incident by his nominee, Jacqueline C. Romero, who was touted as the “first woman of color and first LGBTQIA+ person to become U.S. attorney.”

“Violating the FACE Act by committing a physical assault is a serious crime for which the FBI will work to hold offenders accountable,” Jacqueline Maguire, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI’s Philadelphia Division, who had been featured in Women’s History Month, warned.

The FACE Act, introduced by Senator Ted Kennedy, who had killed a woman some said may have been carrying his child in the first known example of a senatorial underwater abortion, means that the FBI will come pounding on doors over a shoving incident at an abortion clinic, but pregnancy centers can be torched across the country without a word.

On paper, the FACE Act also protects pregnancy centers, but the extremely differing enforcement standards by Biden’s DOJ and the FBI make it all too clear that it does not.

Also in September,  Christopher Moscinski, a Franciscan friar, who was already serving time on state charges for “occupying” the waiting room of a New York abortion clinic, was hit with FACE federal charges by the Biden administration for padlocking the gates of an abortion clinic and then laying “his body in front of the gate, blocking vehicles from entering the health center’s parking lot”. Environmentalist protesters routinely lie down in the street to block traffic. No one sends in the feds after them. They occupy government buildings and they don’t go to prison.

Moscinski’s actions were illegal, but leftist protesters routinely engage in the same kind of behavior, locking and blocking entrances and call it civil disobedience. There are few consequences if any for this behavior. And no pro-abortion protesters rallying outside pregnancy centers have faced FACE Act charges, let alone aggressive FBI aids on their homes.

But Biden’s DOJ keeps using the FACE Act to target pro-life protesters outside abortion clinics while issuing pro-abortion political statements that make its political agenda clear.

Philip Sellinger, another Biden nominee and a leading Democrat fundraiser, celebrated a FACE Act campaign against a street evangelist by declaring, “Access to reproductive healthcare is a fundamental right…  Individuals must be able to access facilities like the Englewood clinic to make decisions about their own bodies.” That was not a legal statement by a US Attorney, but a political statement by an aspiring Democrat politician abusing federal law enforcement authority.

But Sellinger was just echoing Biden’s Attorney General Merrick Garland, who had responded to the Supreme Court’s Dobbs ruling by attacking the court for having “eliminated an established right that has been an essential component of women’s liberty for half a century” and announcing that the DOJ  “strongly disagrees with the Court’s decision”.

Garland went even further in his insurrection against the Constitution and the Supreme Court by warning that he would employ the FACE Act to “protect healthcare providers and individuals seeking reproductive health services in states where those services remain legal”.

Biden’s own Beria clearly meant only one kind of service. The kind that ends a child’s life.

The DOJ’s Reproductive Rights Task Force has weaponized the FACE Act under Vanita Gupta, a leftist veteran of the ACLU and the NAACP, and racked up charges against anti-abortion protesters. Since the attacks on pregnancy centers are being investigated under FACE Act violations, it is quite likely that they’re being routed to the DOJ’s Abortion Task Force.

And the Abortion Task Force’s response would be to cheer on Jane’s Revenge.

The lack of trust has become so severe that Reverend James Harden, the head of a pregnancy center in New York, has filed suit against the FBI to return surveillance footage from the attack. The FBI took the footage, but has refused to share it with CompassCare: the victimized clinic.

According to Harden, the video shows license plates and other identifying footage. And yet after over 100 days, the FBI has made no arrests and refuses to turn over the video.

“They know who these people are. They’re choosing not to make arrests,” Harden charged.

Meanwhile, local authorities claimed to be worried that releasing the video would play into the hands of right-wing “nut jobs out there with guns and AK-47s, bombing and killing people.”

Late last month, the FBI canceled a visit meant to look into the firebombing of the clinic.

Even while leftist pro-abortion terrorists continue vandalizing and firebombing pregnancy centers, Democrat politicians at the federal and state level have targeted those same centers with legislation meant to shut them down in an effort to achieve the same terroristic goals.

In Los Angeles, Democrats are trying to impose a $10,000 fine for anyone who claims to have been misled into thinking that pregnancy centers also provide baby-terminating services. A similar attempt in California had already been struck down by the Supreme Court years ago.

Senator Elizabeth Warren introduced the Stop Anti-Abortion Disinformation Act which tries to use the FTC to target pregnancy centers. Senator Mark Warner and House Democrats demanded that Google go even further in censoring pregnancy centers from its search results.

Jane’s Revenge, or whichever combination of activists are operating under that name, is just the direct action arm of a leftist movement that is coordinating a campaign against pro-life groups. And the Biden administration is using its control over the DOJ and the FBI to implement it, ignoring violence by its political allies while ruthlessly going after acts of civil disobedience.

Under Merrick Garland, the DOJ has become the enforcement arm of the Left. Justice can only return to the Department of Justice when Garland and the other cronies have left the building.

AUTHOR

DANIEL GREENFIELD

RELATED VIDEOS:

FBI Arrests Pro-Life Father in Front of Family

U.S. Senator John Kennedy Releases Funniest Campaign Ad Ever

RELATED ARTICLES:

It Can’t be Criminal to Peacefully Protest Abortion But OK to Firebomb Pregnancy Centers

Jill Biden Celebrates Friend Who Killed Her Baby in Abortion

Kamala Harris Has Headlined More Than 20 Events to Promote Killing Babies in Abortions

Abortion Activist Demands Closing Catholic Hospitals Because They Don’t Kill Babies

Scientists Confirm Unborn Babies Feel Pain as Early as 8 Weeks

Heartbreaking Images Show 26-Week-Old Unborn Baby Killed in Abortion

Stacey Abrams Doesn’t Care That More Black Babies are Killed in Abortions Than Born Alive

Feminist Complains Abortion Bans Mean “I Have to be More Careful When I Have Sex”

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. All rights reserved.

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Democrats Nap Peacefully Through Border Crisis They Engineered

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By Deroy Murdock

Editors’ Note: If the reader is like us, this border chaos is beyond frustrating. The Biden administration and those supporting it act as if nothing is wrong. The administration and Congressional leaders regularly trot officials forward to say the border is “under control.” The outright lying and the choice to simply ignore the laws of the land are serious breaches of their oath of office. All this is made possible by the extremely narrow margin Democrats have in the Senate. This makes the current Senate race in Arizona of utmost importance.  The Prickly Pear endorses Blake Masters and we urge our libertarian friends not to waste their vote and instead, support the Republican candidate.

We have attached a video produced by Arizona U.S. Representative Andy Biggs above this article explaining the southern border crisis created by the President and the Democrat party in less than two years. The effects of this travesty will ripple across the nation for decades to come. The enormous human tragedy, the cartel enrichment and the damage done to countless U.S. citizens and economies throughout the nation are incalculable and a direct consequence of the attempt to secure permanent power by the Democrat party at the expense of the American people. Mark Kelly is unquestionably complicit in this lawless violation and should be removed from the U.S. Senate on November 8th.

Democrats are napping peacefully through the U.S.-Mexico “border” crisis that they engineered. Perhaps these data will snap them from their slumber:

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security reports that the Mexican cartels’ income from smuggling illegal aliens into America has soared from $500 million in 2018 to $13 billion this year—up 2,500%.

If these criminals merged into a corporation, their 2022 gross revenues would rival that of—are you sitting down?—Fox Corporation. Fox News Channel’s parent company earned $12.91 billion in the year ended June 30, 2021, and gleaned $13.97 billion 12 months later.

This fact might awaken “Sleepy Joe” Biden and the lazy Left: Mexico’s human-trafficking cartels are now as big as Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham.

If Democrats still are dozing through the havoc of their no-border strategy, these figures might rouse them:

  • Border Patrol agents apprehended 951,568 illegal aliens during President Donald Trump’s final 19 months in office. In President Joe Biden’s first 19 months, the Border Patrol encountered a staggering 3,588,877 illegal aliens—up a sickening 377%.
  • In fiscal year 2020, the last one fully under Trump’s control, 69,000 illegal aliens were detected on the “border,” but got away into America’s interior. Fiscal year 2021 (four months of Trump, eight of Biden) witnessed 389,155 got-aways—up 464%. In fiscal year 2022 (all on Biden’s watch), got-aways hit 599,000—up 54% versus fiscal year 2021 and 768% compared with fiscal year 2020.
  • “At least 266,000 unaccompanied migrant children/minors have been encountered at the southern border since President Biden took office, per [Customs and Border Protection] data,” Fox News Channel’s invaluable southern-frontier correspondent Bill Melugin explained via Twitter on Sept. 26. “That’s enough to fill up approximately three Rose Bowls.”
  • Fourteen House Republicans wrote Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Sept. 23 to complain that “between October 2021 and July 2022, more than 130,000 Venezuelan nationals were encountered after entering the United States illegally.” The Marxist regime of Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela, they added, “is deliberately releasing violent prisoners early, including inmates convicted of ‘murder, rape, and extortion,’ and pushing them to join caravans heading to the United States.”
  • Twelve U.S. senators contacted the U.S. Marshals Service about crooks cascading across the “border.” According to their Aug. 30 letter, “So far in FY22, [Customs and Border Protection] has apprehended over 9,000 criminal aliens, including 53 for homicide or manslaughter, 283 for sex crimes, and almost 900 for assault, battery, and domestic violence.”
  • During Trump’s fiscal years 2017 through 2020, 11 terrorists on the watchlist were captured at the border—two, six, zero, and three, in those respective years. Under Biden, Border Patrol apprehended 15 in fiscal year 2021 and a terrifying 78 in fiscal year 2022, through Aug. 31. September’s figures will follow. How many terrorists got away? Who knows?
  • According to data from the United Nations’ Missing Migrants Project, during Trump’s final 20 months in office, 712 illegal aliens died on or near the U.S.-Mexico border. For Biden’s first 20 months, that number is 862—up 21%.

These fatalities range from drownings in the Rio Grande to the barbaric demise of 53 illegal aliens whose four smugglers let them roast to death inside an abandoned truck. Officials discovered this carnage on June 27 in San Antonio, Texas. That day’s high temperature: 97 degrees Fahrenheit.

  • Fentanyl killed some 71,000 Americans in 2021, up 23% compared with 2020. For those aged 18 to 45, fentanyl leads COVID-19, car wrecks, suicides, and every other cause of death.

It’s tragic enough when witting users fatally overdose on cocaine, heroin, or other fentanyl-laced contraband. Sadder still are those innocently poisoned via counterfeit, toxin-tainted “Adderall,” “Xanax,” and other phony pharmaceuticals.

Fentanyl is 100 times stronger than morphine. Two milligrams in one pill can kill.

Under Trump, Border Patrol’s fentanyl seizures for fiscal years 2019 and 2020 (through Aug. 31) totaled 7,595 pounds. Under Biden’s equivalent dates in fiscal year 2021 and 2022: 24,062 pounds—up 217%.

Mexican cartels freely traverse the “border” to transport this venom. Biden Democrats couldn’t care less.

*****

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

TAKE ACTION

How Not to Vote in Arizona

The 2022 midterm election is fast approaching. The system for voting in Arizona is predominantly by mail-in ballots (around 80% of all ballots). The ballots will be mailed out to all voters registered for mail-in voting on October 12th. The actual ‘day’ of the election is Tuesday November 8, 27 days later.

Once upon a time when all voters went to the polls on the day of election, the tabulated results were announced the night of the election date. If the result of a specific race was razor thin and less than a legislated margin, a recount might prevent the naming of a winner. That was the exception for calling the results of the election.

It is still this way in most first world countries but not the United States and certainly not Arizona. Voting rules (some unconstitutional) were dramatically altered in many states in 2020 because of the Covid pandemic.

We at The Prickly Pear are very concerned about the flaws in Arizona’s predominant ‘mail-in’ voting system.

Please click on the red TAKE ACTION link below to learn How Not to Vote in Arizona as a mail-in ballot voter and to be certain your vote is included in the count the evening of November 8th.

Arizona Democrat Won’t Say If She Supports Any Limits On Abortion

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By Nicole Silverio

Democratic Arizona gubernatorial nominee Katie Hobbs refused to give a direct answer as to whether she supports any limitations on abortion during a Sunday appearance on “Face the Nation.”

The candidate said she opposes the national 15-week abortion ban proposed by Republican South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, prompting host Major Garrett to ask if she would put any limitations on the procedure. Graham’s abortion proposal is based on scientific research indicating that an unborn child can feel pain at 15 weeks gestation.

“If it’s not 15 weeks, what is it?” he asked.

“Abortion is a very personal decision that belongs between a woman and her doctor,” she replied. “The government and politicians don’t belong in that decision. We need to let doctors perform the care that they are trained and take an oath to perform.”

“So if an Arizona voter were to conclude from your previous answer that you do not favor any specific week limit on abortion, would they be correct?” Garrett asked.

“I support leaving the decision between a woman and her doctor and leaving politicians entirely out of it,” she answered.

Hobbs also criticized her opponent, Kari Lake, for supporting Arizona’s near-total abortion ban passed in 1864 that is currently being deliberated in the courts. She then claimed that Lake referred to women seeking abortions as “murderers” and “executioners.” (RELATED: ‘Why Not Go Into Specifics?’: Doocy, Jean-Pierre Spar On Abortion Limits)

“Under a Kari Lake administration, we would have government-mandated forced births that risk women’s lives. Her position is the one that’s extreme, it’s out of touch with where the majority of Arizonans are, who support access to safe and legal abortion, and under her administration, women would not be safe.”

Lake, who joined “Face the Nation” in the previous segment, told Garrett that Hobbs and the Democrats support abortion up to the point of birth. She then vowed to uphold the abortion law in the state once it is firmly decided and to help provide resources to pregnant women to ensure that they can raise the child or choose adoption.

“I will uphold the law, whatever that law is, and I want to see to it that we’ve saved more lives,” Lake said. “Right now, the Democrats have started pushing so far from that rare but safe to anything goes.”

Democrats have remained silent on whether they support abortion limits while decrying the Republicans’ 15 week limit proposal. All Senate Democrats except Joe Manchin of West Virginia voted in favor of legislation that would have lifted restrictions on partial-birth and sex selective abortions in May.

The party has made abortion a central issue in the midterm elections campaigns due to the overturn of Roe v. Wade by the U.S.  Supreme Court in June. Ahead of the upcoming gubernatorial election, Democratic Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers attempted to repeal the state’s current 1849 abortion ban in a special session Tuesday, which Republicans immediately adjourned.

*****

This article was published by the Daily Caller News Foundation and is reproduced with permission.

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The West Didn’t Become Rich Because of Slavery But in Spite of It

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By Lipton Matthews

The blockbuster film The Woman King has resurrected the myth that slavery furnishes wealth. While irate critics argue that the film downplays the fact that the Dahomey Empire derived its wealth from slavery, however, this observation wrongly conflates political success with human flourishing. The state and individual are two distinct entities, and as such the objectives of individuals are often incompatible with those of the state.

In Africa, the slave trade enriched merchants and political elites at the expense of people who were enslaved, nor did ordinary Africans emerge as winners from the transatlantic slave trade. Noting that states like Asante and Dahomeyb became affluent as a result of the slave trade is really a commentary on the growing reach of African elites rather than an indication of improved living standards for ordinary people.

During the apex of the slave trade, the trade in slaves was monopolized by the Dahomean king. After being procured for trade, slaves were sold at the coast by royal traders. Opportunities released by the slave trade led to the establishment of a thriving merchant class that consisted primarily of people who were connected to the state bureaucracy. Inevitably, the slave trade was another vehicle for elites to accumulate wealth rather than an agent of mass-based flourishing.

Throughout history, many societies have engaged in slavery, yet slavery never led to an economic revolution in any preindustrial society. But, unfortunately, people continue to conflate the enrichment of the national treasury with individual advancement. As a mercantilist tool, slavery boosted the national treasury, though it was unsuccessful at engendering widespread prosperity.

Media rhetoric might promote the narrative that slavery leads to economic prosperity, but this claim is merely folklore and easily disproven by Dahomey’s abysmal economic track record. Today, Dahomey, now called Benin, has a measly per capita income of $1,428, according to the World Bank. Dahomey was one of the most prominent African players in the slave trade, so if the slave trade is a potential route to wealth, why is she so poor today?

Notwithstanding the potency of mainstream rhetoric that slavery is linked to economic prosperity, studies consistently show a negative relationship between slavery and development. Neither should we believe the claptrap that the wealth of Europe was hinged on slavery. European countries were already modernizing before partaking in the slave trade and Atlantic slavery.

Moreover, the success of the Atlantic economy should be attributable to the institutional and human capital advantage of European economies. Europeans built trading companies, insurance facilities, and other innovations to oversee the business of exploitation. Hence people who contend that slavery built Europe are misidentifying the channels that led to growth.

Slavery is a classic example of what economist Douglas North calls a closed social order. Under such systems opportunities are limited and privileges are distributed to a select few. Slave societies naturally disenfranchise slaves and people who are too poor to acquire chattel. Slaves are rarely exposed to education or given the tools to succeed and because most policies favor the slaveholding aristocracy, nonslaveholders are placed at a disadvantage.

Furthermore, slave societies are unlikely to invest in mass literacy, civic institutions, and the industrial sector. Since, economic elites derive most of their wealth from slavery, they are unmotivated to finance innovations in other sectors of the economy and due to their political clout slaveholders can block reforms that deprive them of benefits. The negative link between slavery and social outcomes has been a persistent fact in economic research, contrary to mainstream propaganda.

One study surveying Brazil finds that even thirty years after abolition, municipalities with a history of large-scale slavery still had worse social outcomes, measured by literacy rates, wages, and availability of public resources. Over the long-term research also reveals that in Brazil the intensity of historical slavery predicts higher levels of income and educational equality and worse public institutions. In Columbia, research paints an equally horrendous picture of the effects of slavery. A 2012 study conducted by Daron Acemoglu and coauthors asserts that the “historical presence of slavery is associated with increased poverty and reduced school enrollment, vaccination coverage, and public good provision.”

On the other hand, in nineteenth-century America, the US North was more productive and innovative than the slave-producing South. Yet despite the importance of slavery to the South’s economy, after abolition, the South continued to thrive, thus suggesting that slavery is not a necessary condition for economic progress. Indeed, the claim that slavery ushered in a period of economic dynamism in the West or anywhere else is inaccurate. Furthermore, it must be noted that non-Western economies were more reliant on slavery

The abolition of slavery in places like Ibadan and among the Igbo people severely disrupted society. Unlike Western countries that were involved in slavery, these societies had less scope for economic diversification. Their economies were intimately related to slavery and few industries existed that could replace the institution of slavery. So, although slavery did not make them rich, they obtained a larger share of wealth from the institution than their Western peers.

In the current climate of hysteria, intellectual gatekeepers frequently parrot the claim that slavery is an engine of prosperity, but this notion is unsupported by rigorous empirical tests and repeating it will never make it true.

*****

This article was published by the Ludwig von Mises Institute and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

How Not to Vote in Arizona

The 2022 midterm election is fast approaching. The system for voting in Arizona is predominantly by mail-in ballots (around 80% of all ballots). The ballots will be mailed out to all voters registered for mail-in voting on October 12th. The actual ‘day’ of the election is Tuesday November 8, 27 days later.

Once upon a time when all voters went to the polls on the day of election, the tabulated results were announced the night of the election date. If the result of a specific race was razor thin and less than a legislated margin, a recount might prevent the naming of a winner. That was the exception for calling the results of the election.

It is still this way in most first world countries but not the United States and certainly not Arizona. Voting rules (some unconstitutional) were dramatically altered in many states in 2020 because of the Covid pandemic.

We at The Prickly Pear are very concerned about the flaws in Arizona’s predominant ‘mail-in’ voting system.

Please click on the red TAKE ACTION link below to learn How Not to Vote in Arizona as a mail-in ballot voter and to be certain your vote is included in the count the evening of November 8th.

Does Mankind Have An Endless Supply Of Oil and Natural Gas? thumbnail

Does Mankind Have An Endless Supply Of Oil and Natural Gas?

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By Dr. Rich Swier

Globally, people  are used to hearing and reading about fossils fuels. The first use of the term “fossil fuel” occurs in the work of the German chemist Caspar Neumann in 1759.

The term fossil fuels refers to hydrocarbon-containing materials formed naturally in the earth’s crust from the remains of dead plants and animals that is extracted and burned as a fuel. The main fossil fuels are coal, crude oil and natural gas.

Environmentalists believe that in order to save planet earth mankind must stop using fossil fuels.

For a dedicated environmentalist, like Al Gore, have used the words “fossil fuels” as a pejorative to demonize those who discover, mine, drill for, refine, transport, sell and then use coal, oil, natural gas to fuel their homes and businesses and keep the lights on in government buildings at every level.

Fossil fuels contribute 81% of the global energy system, the same percentage as 30 years ago. The remainder of the global energy system is: hydroelectric at 16%, nuclear at 10.3%, wind at 6% and solar at 2%.

These environmentalists also believe that mankind can control the climate by simply ending the use of all fossil fuels. 

Given the importance of having cheap and reliable power we have always been interested in new theories on energy. We received an email from a reader asking that we research the theory of “Abiotic Oil” and do a column on it. So being loyal to our readers we decided to some research on it.

We found that the theory of “Abiotic Oil” isn’t nearly as insane as  the environmentalist’s theory that mankind can control the climate by simply ending the use of all fossil fuels.

Here is what we found out about Abiotic Oil

Wikipedia states, “The abiogenic petroleum origin is a largely discredited hypothesis which proposes that most of earth’s petroleum and natural gas deposits were formed inorganically.”

QUESTION: Is Wikipedia right or wrong?

On November 13th, 2008 in a Forbes magazine article titled Endless Oil? Robert Langreth reported,

Everybody knows that oil and gas drilled out of the earth comes from the remains of plants and animals trapped underground millions of years ago. This received wisdom so dominates our thinking that it is enshrined in the very language we use–fossil fuels. They took eons to form, and we are using them up far faster than they can be replenished.

What if the whole theory is wrong?

That’s the premise of a small but passionate band of Russian and Ukrainian contrarians. They argue that oil and gas don’t come from fossils; they’re synthesized deep within the earth’s mantle by heat, pressure and other purely chemical means, before gradually rising to the surface. Under the so-called abiotic theory of oil, finding all the energy we need is just a matter of looking beyond the traditional basins where fossils might have accumulated.

The idea that oil comes from fossils “is a myth. … We need to change this myth,” says petroleum engineer Vladimir Kutcherov, at the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden. “All kinds of rocks could have oil and gas deposits.”

Alexander Kitchka of the Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences brashly estimates that 60% of the content of all oil is abiotic in origin, and not from fossil fuels. He says companies should drill deeper to find it.

Kitchka says oil may be found in all sorts of geological structures such as volcanic rock or deep-sea thermal vents where companies aren’t looking today.

Read the full article.

On September 14th, 2011 in a U.S. News and World Report article titled Abiotic Oil a Theory Worth Exploring – Oil may not be formed the way we think it is Gregg Laskoski wrote,

It’s our nature to sort, divide, and classify. We label ourselves to identify political leanings, religious beliefs, the food we enjoy, and the sports teams we cheer. The oil industry too has its own distinct labels which include the “Peak Oil” theorists, those who believe the world is fast depleting the finite supply of fossil fuel; and the pragmatists, those who recognize that engineering and technological advances in oil drilling and extraction continuously identify new reserves that make oil plentiful.

And there’s a third group you may not know. These people are deeply interested in oil and its origins, but their advocacy of “abiotic theory” has many dismissing them as heretics, frauds, or idealists. They hold that oil can be derived from hydrocarbons that existed eons ago in massive pools deep within the earth’s core. That source of hydrocarbons seeps up through the earth’s layers and slowly replenishes oil sources. In other words, it turns the fossil-fuel paradigm upside down.

Perhaps the breakthrough for this theory came when Chris Cooper’s story appeared April 16, 1999, in The Wall Street Journal about an oil field called Eugene Island. Here’s an excerpt:

Production at the oil field, deep in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Louisiana, was supposed to have declined years ago. And for a while, it behaved like any normal field: Following its 1973 discovery, Eugene Island 330’s output peaked at about 15,000 barrels a day. By 1989, production had slowed to about 4,000 barrels a day.

Then suddenly—some say almost inexplicably—Eugene Island’s fortunes reversed. The field, operated by PennzEnergy Co., is now producing 13,000 barrels a day, and probable reserves have rocketed to more than 400 million barrels from 60 million. Stranger still, scientists studying the field say the crude coming out of the pipe is of a geological age quite different from the oil that gushed 10 years ago.

[ … ]

The idea that oil comes from fossils “is a myth” that needs changing according to petroleum engineer Vladimir Kutcherov, speaking at the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden. “All kinds of rocks could have oil and gas deposits.”

Alexander Kitchka of the Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences estimates that 60 percent of the content of all oil is abiotic in origin and not from fossil fuels. He says companies should drill deeper to find it.

Is abiotic theory the real deal? Is Eugene Island “Exhibit A?” Look how long it’s taken for this conversation to reach a tipping point!

Read the full article.

Maybe is we stop using the term “fossil fuels” and start using the term “abiogenic petroleum” or “abiogenic power” the environmentalists will back off?

Just kidding. Their goal is to harm mankind while saving the planet. Get it? Got it? Good.

©Dr. Rich Swier. All rights reserved.

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Reality Bites Wind

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Megatons Of Toxic Waste from Solar Panels: Ticking Time Bomb

Give Her Back Her Kurdish Name: Jina Amini thumbnail

Give Her Back Her Kurdish Name: Jina Amini

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By Middle East Media Research Institute

We all know her as Mahsa Amini, the 22-year-old girl that was tortured and killed by the “religious morality police” of Iran’s Islamic Republic. However, her name was Jina, a beautiful Kurdish name, meaning “life.”

In Iran, the Kurdish population is being discriminated against, and Kurdish names are banned. “Iran controls of how its citizens name their children. Iran denies names that are not on their approved Persian and Islamic list, names that represent ethnic nationalism or regional pride are banned, with the exception of Persian names,” Kurdish affairs commentator Hamid Mustafa explains.[1] Therefore, in her official documents, she was registered as “Mahsa,” a Persian name permitted by the Islamic Republic. Yet, at home, she was Jina. This is the name her family used to call her, this is the name her mother uttered, while crying on her grave.[2]

The Kurdish slogan “Jin, Jiyan, Azadi” (“Woman, Life, Freedom”). (Source: Twitter)

She Was Forced To Carry “Mahsa” As Her Official Name

Kurdish human rights activists on social media point out that Jina was not just beaten to death because she was wearing her hijab too loosely and not in accordance with the regime’s standards, but also because she was Kurdish. The Kurdish-Swedish activist, Dr. Kochar Walladbegi, writes: “In Iran… minorities such as the Kurds are being suppressed… For Kurds, being killed and tortured is a systematic behavior [of the Islamic Republic], they face this every day of their lives!… Jina was tortured by the Iranian morality police… also because she was a Kurd and a woman, which makes her a minority within a minority! I decided to call her by her Kurdish name Jina that stand for living, a name she, like many other Kurds, was not allowed to carry. Instead, she was forced to carry ‘Mahsa’ as her official name, for the short 22 years of her life.”[3]

The Islamic Republic Accuses Kurdish Opposition Groups Of Helping The Protesters

After Jina’s death, the demonstrations against the Islamic Republic intensified all over the country, especially in the Kurdistan region. Kurdish media outlet Rudaw reported that the Iranian government told the Kurdish opposition parties based on the Kurdistan Region borders “to evacuate” their bases, otherwise the regime “will consider other options.” “Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) showered the skies of the Kurdistan Region’s Erbil and Sulaimani provinces with ballistic missiles and suicide drones late last month, targeting bases of Kurdish opposition groups, whom they accuse of providing arms to the protesters in the country,” Rudaw explained.[4]

Furthermore, Nazim Dabbagh, the representative of the Kurdistan Regional Government office in Tehran, said: “The Iranian government has investigated and found that a number of the Iranian [Kurdish] opposition parties have interfered in the protests and accuse them of inciting chaos, therefore Iran has stressed that the parties must evacuate their headquarters.”[5]

“Jin, Jiyan, Azadi“

It is worth noting that the protests’ Farsi slogan “Zan, Zendegi, Azadi [Woman, Life, Freedom]” is in fact a popular Kurdish one, which has been used for years in the Kurdish independence movement. It was Abdullah Öcalan, the jailed founding member of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), who popularized the slogan in his writings.

Political activist Zozan Sima writes: “But the intimidation, [which the Islamic Republic of Iran] tried to bring to bear on women, Kurds, and those opposed to the system in the person of Jina, has kicked back and lit a new spark in the struggle against the system. Most significant are the crescendo of slogans [that] women and men – in Iran in general and in Iranian Kurdistan in particular – are chanting in Kurdish and in Farsi as one voice: ‘jin-jiyan-azadi!’ and ‘zan-zendegi-azadi! [Woman, Life, Freedom!].”[6]

Explaining the meaning of the slogan, in her book, “The Art of Freedom,” Kurdish freedom movement activist Havin Guneser states: “You’ve probably heard of ‘Jin, Jiyan, Azadi.’ Because of this theory… the Kurdish freedom movement has shown the connections that make women’s revolution the liberation of life itself. It is about freeing life. Therefore, men also see that, in fact, they do not have any real privileges. Similarly, we say that the colonization and oppression of Kurds prevents Turks from becoming democratic [and the same can be said of Iran!]. The enslavement of women also perpetuates the enslavement of men… That’s why we say women’s revolution liberates life. In Kurdish, the root of the word life is ‘Jin’. Jin means woman, while jîn means alive and jiyan means life. The root word is the same. And that’s why we say Jin, Jiyan, Azadi. Azadi means freedom. And given that the Sumerian word for freedom is Amargi, which means ‘returning to the mother,’ the three words are so interconnected and make perfect sense: women, life, freedom. As women become free, it is inevitable that life itself return to its magic and enchantment. Thus, the slogan, Jin, Jiyan, Azadi.”[7]

What Is In A Name?

It is undeniable that the protests for freedom in Iran have also a Kurdish root. The change in Iran will be coming from women and ethnic minorities that are tired of being oppressed and persecuted.

In social media, many users are writing: “Say her name.” Well, her name was Jina. Let us not forget her death and let us not cancel her Kurdish identity. The fight “for freedom” (“baraye azadi,” as the popular anti-regime song goes)[8] is in opposition to the Islamic Republic’s discrimination against women, against minorities, and against Kurds. Jina was both a woman and a Kurd.

Her name Jina finds its source in the slogan for freedom, Jin, Jiyan, she was a woman, she represents life. Say her name: Jina Amini.

AUTHOR

Anna Mahjar-Barducci

Anna Mahjar-Barducci is a MEMRI Senior Research Fellow.

Sources:

[1] Facebook.com/Himdad.A.Mustafa, September 28, 2022.

[2] Kurdistan-au-feminin.fr, October 3, 2022.

[3] Facebook.com/kwalladbegi, September 20, 2022.

[4] Rudaw.net/english/kurdistan/091020221, October 9, 2022.

[5] Rudaw.net/english/kurdistan/091020221, October 9, 2022.

[6] Medyanews.net/crescendo-of-kurdish-womens-rallying-cry-jin-jiyan-azadi/, September 22, 2022.

[7] Havin Guneser, The Art of Freedom: A Brief History of the Kurdish Liberation Struggle, PM Press, Oakland, CA, 2021.

[8] Youtube.com/watch?v=XrvpRb2jY1M, Baraye Azadi by Shervin Hajiaghapour.

EDITORS NOTE: This MEMRI column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Kari Lake KICKED OUT of Town Hall Audience Ahead of Katie Hobbs appearance

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By Olivia Rondeau

How Not to Vote in Arizona

The 2022 midterm election is fast approaching. The system for voting in Arizona is predominantly by mail-in ballots (around 80% of all ballots). The ballots will be mailed out to all voters registered for mail-in voting on October 12th. The actual ‘day’ of the election is Tuesday November 8, 27 days later.

Once upon a time when all voters went to the polls on the day of election, the tabulated results were announced the night of the election date. If the result of a specific race was razor thin and less than a legislated margin, a recount might prevent the naming of a winner. That was the exception for calling the results of the election.

It is still this way in most first world countries but not the United States and certainly not Arizona. Voting rules (some unconstitutional) were dramatically altered in many states in 2020 because of the Covid pandemic.

We at The Prickly Pear are very concerned about the flaws in Arizona’s predominant ‘mail-in’ voting system.

Please click on the red TAKE ACTION link below to learn How Not to Vote in Arizona as a mail-in ballot voter and to be certain your vote is included in the count the evening of November 8th.

Trump Must Run thumbnail

Trump Must Run

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By The Geller Report

Trump is the man, battle hardened and primed for the battle of the ages. Anyone who believes that there is anyone more fit, i.e. DeSantis etc., has not been paying attention.

Do not believe, for a moment, that the hell that was visited on Trump wouldn’t be visited on his successor—in spades. And why not, it worked. The left smeared, mocked, defamed, libeled and persecuted Trump since the day he took that fateful ride down the escalator at Trump Tower.

I know of no other person who could have withstood the daily, brutal beatings he sustained. And he kept coming – harder, faster, stronger. Trump ’24 and beyond.

By J.R. Dunn, The American Thinker, October 9, 2022:

The final take on the disastrous Mar-a-Lago raid and its noxious aftermath – the latest in a series of “killing blows” aimed at Donald Trump and the movement he created — is that Trump must run once again for president and must win. The logic behind this is simple: the Deep State, in its slow, dull-witted, and utterly inept way, is making its big move, and Trump is the only visible figure who can stand against this. The Left is well aware of this, and is terrified.

Consider the timeline: on August 7, the Senate passed the “Inflation Reduction Act,” dramatically expanding government spending, including doubling the size of the IRS. The next day, Mar-a-Lago was raided, permanently rupturing the modus vivendi that has underlain the American political system since its founding. Two days later, it was revealed that the drastically expanded IRS was looking to hire gunmen “willing to use lethal force.” Two days after that, the inflation act was passed by the House.

In due time, we got Biden’s Demon Lord speech, which cast more than half the populace as enemies of the state, to the delight of the hard Left, followed by Countess Hochula, speaking from her castle deep in the Adirondacks banning Republicans from her realm.

Since then, we’ve seen dozens of Trump attorney, aides, and even mere supporters arrested, subpoenaed, and otherwise harassed by an out-of-control Justice Department. The depth here was probably reached with the ensnarement of enemy of the people Mike Lindell by three carloads of FBI agents at a Hardee’s drive-in. (Why no chopper gunships? I assume they were down for maintenance.)

This progression of events is no accident, comrades. Things like this don’t “just happen” – they are made to happen. It clearly demonstrates that the woke elite intends to take things to another level, challenging its opponents – which is to say, the American people — directly. How far this will go, whether to open police action or 2020-style targeting by Antifa and related elements, is impossible to say. But one thing we can take for granted is that this represents, at the very least, an intention, and that the Left will attempt as much as it can get away with.

The progressive elite has cut itself off from the mainspring of American political life as thoroughly as the Confederates did in 1861. Though, following Hegel’s dictum, this time it’s farce. It all immediately began falling to pieces – the raid itself, obviously meant to mark the beginning of a political purge, blew up in the faces of the DoJ and FBI, Donald Trump got a much-needed second wind, and the MAGA masses are now energized to a point unseen since the Big Cheat. Clearly, this generation of swamp dwellers is incapable of carrying out any exercise of greater complexity than tying their shoes.

But why now, you ask? It’s not that they particularly think that this is the right time – it’s simply the logic of events. All the errors and crimes they’ve committed in the past decade are pushing them inexorably to the next step, and then the one after that. So, as in the case of the raid itself, they make their moves without adequate preparation, without careful planning, and without guarantees. The result is the half-crazed acts of desperation we’re seeing right now.

The response to the raid ranged from incredulity and disgust from the voting public to a kind of mollusk-like belching from the current GOP leadership. Evidently, there is somebody named “DeSantis,” who is, believe it or not, the governor of Florida, where Mar-a-Lago is located. The DoJ, in defiance of law, tradition, and common sense, set out to persecute an innocent man living in Florida, which DeSantis purports to govern. He could have answered this in tones of thunder, demanding to know what the Hell they thought they were doing in his state. He could have ordered the local SAC (special agent in charge) to appear at his office, and when he didn’t show up, drove over to his office escorted by State Police and plenty of media, to publicly humiliate him. He could even have shut the office down and ordered the staff out of state, as used to occur with regularity in my hometown when I was a kid (granted, it was the Mob-controlled police force that was doing this in Utica, but the principle is sound).

But he didn’t do any of this. No, he released a “statement,” which I’m not going to bother to look up – reading it once was enough. But it went something like, “That wasn’t very nice… maybe you shouldn’t do things like that.”

So much for the young GOP lion. Martha’s Vineyard stunts are one thing, standing up when it counts is something else altogether.

This puts DeSantis in the same class as Kristi Noem and Scott Walker. We all recall Noem bending to the transgenders, while Walker’s career evaporated when he adapted the RINO stance toward illegals under pressure from GOP donors. DeSantis is likely to recover better than these two, but he is clearly not yet ready for national office.

We’ll simply add that this is the man who has been widely proposed as a “replacement” for Trump.

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. All rights reserved.

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Women in Iran Are Fighting for Their Freedom, and This Imam in Texas Is FURIOUS

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By Jihad Watch

What is happening in Iran these days is world-historical. The entire country is rising up against a brutal, violent, repressive regime that the people of Iran have endured for over forty years, and the most courageous of all are little schoolgirls who have their whole lives ahead of them and thus the most to lose. Yet while practically the entirety of what used to be called the free world is cheering on the demonstrators who are standing unarmed against ruthless security forces, one imam in Texas is not happy at all. Yasir Qadhi, one of the most prominent Muslim clerics and Islamic apologists in the United States, recently likened the protests in Iran to protesting for the right to walk around nude in Texas. Yes, he really did.

The East Plano Islamic Center’s YouTube channel, EPIC Masjid (which has nearly 300,000 subscribers), recently posted a video of Qadhi explaining that to oppose Iran’s mandatory hijab law, which some women have received ten-year prison sentences for violating, is tantamount to opposing public indecency laws in the good old USA. Qadhi said: “In the last two weeks, I have been inundated with dozens of emails with one particular focus or theme… regarding the enforcement of the hijab in a particular country, and apparently, it caused the death of somebody and whatnot.” Qadhi explained that he wasn’t a political commentator, and so he said he wasn’t going to name the country or get into the political issues involved.

Qadhi said that he received a question from one of his followers, a high-school girl: “Is it true that our religion forces the women to wear the hijab? Can an Islamic government have this right? Shouldn’t worship be done freely?” Qadhi responded by warning about getting involved in hypothetical issues that are far beyond our own responsibility: “I am not responsible for something happening five thousand miles away.” He then launched into a lengthy critique of Western secularism, comparing it unfavorably to Islamic law, and argued that all countries, including those in the secular West, enforce codes of morality; they just differ in their content.

On that basis, Qadhi then advanced a curious argument: “Even in the West,” he explained, “there are laws against indecency, and there are moral prescriptions about what one can and should and must wear.” He added: “If you show certain parts of the body, and if you show certain organs of your body, you shall be fined, and if you continue to do so, you shall go to jail. Now, the issue therefore is not over, Can the state control what you can or cannot show. The issue is, How much can you show? So some Middle Eastern countries might have a lot more. And, uh, here in America, it is a lot less. But the notion of the state telling you a minimal amount that you can wear, that is pretty much universal.”

That’s true as far as it goes, but Qadhi is ignoring the fact that women have received draconian and disproportionate sentences for not wearing the hijab, and 22-year-old Mahsa Amini was killed in police custody after being arrested for not wearing her hijab properly in the eyes of the security forces. That already takes the protests in Iran far beyond any question of the right of the state to make laws regarding public indecency. Nor is brutality against Muslim women who dare not to wear the hijab limited to Iran. Aqsa Parvez’s Muslim father choked her to death with her hijab after she refused to wear it. Amina Muse Ali was a Christian woman in Somalia whom Muslims murdered because she wasn’t wearing a hijab. Forty women were murdered in Iraq in 2007 for not wearing the hijab. Alya Al-Safar’s Muslim cousin threatened to kill her and harm her family because she stopped wearing the hijab in Britain. Amira Osman Hamid faced whipping in Sudan for refusing to wear the hijab. An Egyptian girl, also named Amira, committed suicide after being brutalized by her family for refusing to wear the hijab. Muslim and non-Muslim teachers at the Islamic College of South Australia were told they had to wear the hijab or be fired. Women in Chechnya were shot with paintballs by police because they weren’t wearing hijab. Other women in Chechnya were threatened by men with automatic rifles for not wearing hijab.

Elementary school teachers in Tunisia were threatened with death for not wearing hijab. Syrian schoolgirls were forbidden to go to school unless they wore hijab. Women in Gaza were forced by Hamas to wear hijab. Women in London were threatened with murder by Muslim thugs if they didn’t wear hijab. An anonymous young Muslim woman doffed her hijab outside her home and started living a double life in fear of her parents. Fifteen girls in Saudi Arabia were killed when the religious police wouldn’t let them leave their burning school building because they had taken off their hijabs in their all-female environment. A girl in Italy had her head shaved by her mother for not wearing hijab.

In the face of all this and more, Yasir Qadhi scoffs at “this notion of fetishizing the hijab and the headscarf, and saying ‘Oh, they have the right to not wear it,’” and asks, “Well then, why aren’t these same people fighting for the rights of nudity here in Texas? Why aren’t they fighting for the rights of no man and woman — or sorry, every man and woman — to wear nothing in every single state in Europe and every single country and city across the world?”

Maybe because no one is killing those who are guilty of public indecency in Texas. In fact, sometimes they get to play James Madison’s flute. The issue in Iran is all about a barbaric, brutal, repressive regime that kills its own people. Qadhi is just obfuscating, although he does raise an important question: can someone who supports Sharia as fully as he does accept the existence of a secular society on an indefinite basis?

AUTHOR

ROBERT SPENCER

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. All rights reserved.

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Who gave our pen-pushing bureaucrats the right to settle the science?

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By MercatorNet – Navigating Modern Complexities

A group of Australian doctors, scientists, and leading academics aims to “end mandates and social coercion, and stop lockdowns happening again.”

People of a certain age will remember only too well Pastor Martin Niemöller’s poignant lament that as the Nazis hunted down groups one by one, those outside the target groups kept their head down and voice quiet in order to stay out of trouble. “Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak for me.”

In the Covid equivalent, since 2020 first they went after the lockdown critics, organising “devastating takedowns” of “fringe epidemiologists” just as with the three authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, forging semi-fascist alliances between state and corporate power involving Big Government, Big Tech, Big Pharma, Big Media and Big Philanthropy.

Then they went after the mask mandate resisters, othering them as selfish far right-wingers with no thought for the welfare of the collective community. Next they moved seamlessly to the vaccine-hesitant, tarring and treating them as germ-carrying walking biohazards too diseased and unclean to be fit for society.

No middle ground

Justin Trudeau talked the banks and financial service providers into freezing the funds and accounts of anyone supporting the truckers’ Freedom Convoy and PayPal UK most recently demonetised Toby Young and the Free Speech Union. Stung by the immediate, powerful and growing backlash, they’ve cancelled their own cancellation, but that doesn’t detract from the new chilling low of attacking an organisation that took no position of its own but merely defended the right of everyone to speak freely.

Australia was not immune to the galloping authoritarianism of Western democracies. Melbourne was Ground Zero for some of the most draconian restrictions on individual freedoms and civil liberties, as most routine daily activities were criminalised for people and small businesses.

Victoria became the world leader among democracies in police excesses, as peaceful protestors (yes, you read that right) were bashed with batons, fired upon with rubber bullets, a pregnant young woman was arrested and handcuffed in the presence of her toddlers while still in pyjamas for posting on Facebook about a planned peaceful protest with people asked to be masked and respect social distancing, and so on. Sydney streets were patrolled by the military.

A handy compilation of these scenes can be seen in this sober yet partly fun interview with Jay Bhattacharya when he was recently in Melbourne.

Excessive legislation

Yesterday, September 28, I received a press release from the Australian Medical Network (AMN). A bill before the Queensland Parliament is to be debated and voted into law on October 11.

It will compel doctors to refrain from saying anything that reduces “public confidence in safety.” According to the AMN, the new law means (1) “government health bureaucrats will determine how doctors should approach treatment recommendations for their patients” and (2) would give to the health regulators “the power to sanction doctors for expressing their professional opinion based on their assessment of the best available science.”

Furthermore, by legal provisions I don’t fully understand but a couple of lawyers examining this have assured me is a correct understanding, once enacted, the state law will become more or less the national law.

The collapsing official narrative

The debate is over, the verdict is in: lockdowns did not work in reducing Covid infection and mortality burdens but did cause enormous and lasting damage on health (especially through cancelled operations and deferred screenings for treatable-if-detected-early killer diseases like cancers and heart conditions), mental health, children’s development, youth well-being, and employment, poverty, food security, and economic outcomes.

Dr Scott Atlas from Stanford University’s Medical Center and later the coronavirus adviser to President Donald Trump, explained how policies of total isolation prevent the development of population immunity which prolongs the problem. The harm/benefit balance of lockdowns, school closures, masks and universal instead of age-segregated vaccines is tilting increasingly toward net harms.

A US assessment released in September showed school closures had wiped out decades of progress in math and reading. Numerous studies show little correlation between the severity, timing and duration of lockdown either for countries or for US states. Age-adjusted mortality of Florida today is no worse than that of New York.

Much-maligned Brazil’s mortality rate is less than half that of hard and extended lockdown Peru, significantly lower than Czechia, nearly identical to Chile and only slightly higher than UK and Italy. Its cumulative cases per million people is currently less than half that of Australia and the pandemic’s hermit kingdom New Zealand, and lower than highly-masked Japan and South Korea.

In July 2020, Sweden’s chief epidemiologist Anders Tegnell said: judge me in a year. Two years later, he stands vindicated. Sweden’s cumulative Covid deaths per million puts it 30th of 47 European countries. Many hard lockdown countries fared worse: Czechia, Italy, Belgium, UK, Spain, France, Austria. Sweden’s cumulative excess mortality is lower than these seven. Its cumulative cases per million people is lower than Australia, New Zealand, the EU, the US and South Korea.

Crucially for my purposes today, Tegnell explained in April 2020 that lockdowns have no “historical scientific basis.” Scepticism toward lockdowns and masks was the reigning scientific and policy orthodoxy before 2020. The UK Pandemic Preparedness Strategy, for example, acknowledged that:

“Although there is a perception that the wearing of facemasks by the public in the community and household setting may be beneficial, there is in fact very little evidence of widespread benefit from their use in this setting.”

Western governments were impressed by dubious claims of success from Beijing in eradicating the virus, on the one hand, and panicked by the doomsday predictions of models using flawed assumptions, on the other. But “settled science” built up over a century cannot be overturned in weeks and all the data since early 2020 reinforces the prevailing pre-Covid scientific and policy consensus.

Last December, Hillsdale College in Washington, DC announced the creation of the Academy for Science and Freedom. Its mission is “To combat the recent and widespread abuses of individual and academic freedom in the name of science.” In the effort to enforce a nonexistent consensus, dissident scientists were “silenced, censored, and slandered” as the single-viewpoint-dominant public health community actively engaged “in intimidation and false declarations of consensus.”

Many health experts made profound errors in judgment, failed to adjust based on growing data and continued to pronounce their initial assessments as forever correct.

Australians…

On September 21, Drs Conny Turni and Astrid Lefringhausen published an Australia-centric peer-reviewed article on Covid vaccines in the Journal of Clinical and Experimental Immunology. They decry the dismissal of robust and durable natural immunity, the banning of treatment using low-cost repurposed drugs recommended by many US doctors and the dogmatic rejection of the claim that, like existing coronaviruses that became endemic even without vaccines, Covid-19 too would do so.

They hold that under-18s are more than 50 times likely to die from mRNA vaccines, which cause more side effects than any other vaccine, than from Covid. Their very final sentence asks: “Who gave bureaucrats the means to destroy the fundamentals of science and tell scientists not to argue the science”?

Good question.

In July, Denmark banned Covid vaccines for healthy under-18s and in September also for under-50s. Norway has banned them for healthy under-65s. Both are among the world’s most aggressive countries in public health measures. Meanwhile on July 19, Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Administration approved a Moderna vaccine for children aged 0.5-5 years, followed by a Pfizer vaccine on September 29. They cannot all be following The Science™.

NSW Health data back Denmark’s and Norway’s conclusion that Covid poses grave risks only to the elderly. In the last four months (May 22–September 17), just 0.1 and 1.5 percent of the 2,134 Covid deaths were under 20 and 50, respectively. Among those with known vaccination status, only 16 of the 7,857 hospital and 10 of 730 ICU admissions were unvaccinated, compared to 5,769 and 538 boosted, respectively.

This is consistent with the results from an Oxford study published in Lancet on June 30 which found that two doses of the vaccine increase the infection rate by 44 per cent (supplementary Table 7). The strain on the health system — the only justification for coercive mandates — is much greater from the numbers of healthcare staff who’ve been fired for refusing the jab than from the great unvaxxed.

… For Science

The combination of growing numbers with natural immunity from infections, the protective benefits of vaccines for high-risk elderly, and diminished lethality of newer virus variants of concern mean we are at a good place for reevaluating the relationship between good science, good policy and good politics.

I am part of a diverse group of Australian clinicians, academics, lawyers and social, economic and policy commentators united in growing disquiet at federal and state responses to the pandemic. Our main purpose is to reflect on mistakes made and lessons to be learnt in order to avoid repetitions in the future of policy interventions that rely on social coercion and population-wide mandates.

We believe good science leads to good policies and good politics must underpin, not undermine free societies.

The name of the group is yet to be settled. “Academy for Science and Freedom” could cause confusion with the US group and also worry those disillusioned with academe as the incubator of cancel culture and viewpoint conformism (“‘University’ is the antonym for ‘diversity’”). “Australians for Science and Freedom” broadens the group beyond the academy, yet keeps the intellectual and philosophical links with the US group through the common acronym ASF.

Driven by intellectual curiosity, questioning existing knowledge and the fit between theoretical frameworks and empirical data is the essence of the scientific enterprise. In July 2021, an article in the Wall Street Journal explored how science lost the public’s trust. A poll by the respected Pew Research Center on February 15 mapped falling confidence in medical scientists between April 2020 and December 2021. Journalists and elected officials fared significantly worse.

… and Freedom

The freedom side of the agenda has three components.

First, free inquiry, including the freedom to be sceptical and question established wisdom or the dominant worldview and set of beliefs, is integral to scientific advance and progress. Without this, we would all still be flat-earthers.

Second of course and, if anything, even more important, is the meaning, practices and survival of a free society instead of a command-and-control society with a China-style social credit system for rewarding compliant and punishing deviant behaviour.

Finally, freedom is integral to the practice of medicine.

It underpins the sacred Hippocratic Oath of “First, Do No Harm.” It is indispensable to the principle of informed consent to treatment options, if necessary after second and third opinions. And it is fundamental to the sanctity of the doctor-patient relationship. It’s deeply unethical for the health bureaucrat and drug regulator to insert themselves as disinterested third parties into that relationship. There is absolutely no substitute for the combination of doctors’ formal training, clinical experience and intimate knowledge of the patient.

Recalling Ronald Reagan’s 1986 bon mot about the nine most terrifying words in the English language, I would have much more confidence in my doctor giving me their best professional advice without a nanny state as a controlling third party in the relationship.

Conversely, the Queensland bill may be our Stalingrad moment, our line in the sand, if I may mix my metaphor about a place that is synonymous with deep snow. If most Australians remain apathetic to this level of state control and not enough doctors say: “Thus far but no further,” then we will surely cross over into the Age of Dystopia.

This article has been republished from the Brownstone Institute under a Creative Commons licence.

AUTHOR

Ramesh Thakur

Ramesh Thakur, a former United Nations Assistant Secretary-General, is emeritus professor in the Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University. More by Ramesh Thakur

RELATED ARTICLE: Federal Judge Declares Federal Guidelines on Pronouns, Unisex Bathrooms Unlawful

EDITORS NOTE: This MercatorNet column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

The ‘full force of the law’ falls on a British mum. Her crime? Being rude on Twitter. thumbnail

The ‘full force of the law’ falls on a British mum. Her crime? Being rude on Twitter.

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By MercatorNet – Navigating Modern Complexities

Caroline Farrow was arrested for online harassment. This is simply demented.

British police are being inundated with social media-fuelled hate crime claims, including a large rise in transgender complaints. Hate crimes motivated by transphobia have risen 56 percent in one year.

Statistics collected by the Home Office show that English and Welsh police forces had 4,355 of these incidents in the year to March – up from 2,799 in the previous 12 months. Hate crimes as a whole, including crimes motivated by hostility towards race, disability, sexual orientation, religion and transgender identity, rose 26 percent, reaching a record high of 155,841.

However, the Home Office commented that because of significant improvements in recording crime, it was unclear if the increase was a genuine rise, or because more victims had the confidence to come forward. “Transgender issues have been heavily discussed on social media over the last year, which may have led to an increase in related hate crimes.”

Alison Lowe, the diversity and equality head of the APCC, the police and crime commissioners group, called these figures “shocking”, saying: “We expect the police to fully investigate these hateful attacks and make sure the cowards who commit them feel the full force of the law.”

Someone who has personal experience of “the full force of the law” in such matters is Caroline Farrow, a mother of five in a village in Surrey. Ms Farrow is married to Robin, an Anglican priest who converted to Catholicism. For several years she has been a prominent voice in the British media on Catholicism, feminism and current affairs. (Editor’s note – Ms Farrow is also a MercatorNet contributor.)

On Monday, October 3, at 4.45pm Ms Farrow was preparing dinner for her family. A burly policeman knocked at the door and announced that she was to be arrested “for the offence of malicious communications and harassment”. Do you have a warrant? Asked Ms Farrow. Don’t need one, the policeman replied. “Basically, an allegation has been made that you are harassing someone because of the stuff that you’ve been posting online.”

The police barged in, frisked her, confiscated all her electronic devices, hauled her off to the police station, locked her up in a cell for three hours, and interviewed her for another two. She was released under investigation and returned home after midnight.

Ms Farrow’s alleged crime involves nothing more serious than a Twitter spat. Whatever the rights and wrongs of her online argy-bargy, it seems demented to treat a mother of five as a dangerous criminal. She claims – and she has lots of company in this – that local police are so busy chasing up so-called hate crime that they have no time to investigate burglary, car theft, vandalism, and drugs.

“I have suffered the most awful harassment and abuse for four years from trans rights activists and each time I have complained to the police they have done nothing to help me,” Ms Farrow told The Daily Mail. “And yet, those same activists are able to use the police as their own private militia. It’s ridiculous.”

Like many others, she is taking a very dim view of Britain’s increasingly woke constabulary. “The police are supposed to act without fear or favour. But I’m an easy target because I don’t subscribe to their LGBTQ agenda. I’m meant to be a protected minority too but they don’t give a toss about Christian views. On social media I have had the most vicious abuse for being a Catholic.”

The Express’s Home Affairs Editor, Michael Knowles, suggests that to keep police from being drawn into social media rows, Big Tech should create “mechanisms for vile abuse to be removed quickly. There must be a way of using technology to recognise racist abuse to remove it from their sites.”

Does that make any sense? Instead of the police chilling free speech with their heavy-handed tactics, social media companies will become censors.

It takes no imagination at all to guess who will be censored – not those making “vile” remarks, but those like Mrs Farrow making reasoned and/or religious comments on the protected woke issues.

To be arrested and have one’s house searched and equipment confiscated, in a Kafkaesque atmosphere of not knowing what crime one is supposed to have committed, all for complaints of hate crime that will not stand up in court, smacks of a totalitarian state intent on chilling legitimate debate about issues of serious public concern.

Amid public concern about the need for police to fight crime rather than spending time and effort stifling free speech and curbing civil liberties, the new Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, has said “police must focus on catching criminals rather than intervening in online spats”.

Watch your language, Ms Braverman. You, too, could hear the dreaded 4.45pm knock on the door.

AUTHOR

Ann Farmer

Ann Farmer, mother of three, grandmother of five and permanently disabled, is based in Woodford Green, Essex. She is a poet, illustrator, writer and pro-life feminist devoted to defending the natural family… More by Ann Farmer

EDITORS NOTE: This MercatorNet column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

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