Took millions of barrels of oil out of the U.S. strategic reserves in order to keep gas prices below $4-$6 a gallon before the 2022 midterm elections.
Abandoned Afghanistan and leaving behind U.S. citizens, a trillion dollars worth of military equipment, missiles and ammunition.
Abandoning the women in Iran who are protesting, being raped by the Iranian police and dying in the streets of Tehran for their individual freedom to choose.
Stopped drilling for oil and natural gas on public lands.
Biden administration funded drag performances in Ecuador, with the State Department awarding more than $20,000 to an Ecuadorian cultural center to host “drag theater performances” in the name of “diversity and inclusion.”
Passed the Green New Deal and Inflation Reduction Act which caused even more inflation and increased the costs of food, fuel, products and services nationwide.
Implemented mask mandates to fight Covid, when it has been proven that masks don’t stop the spread of the virus.
Mandated that every American support their trifecta of myths diversity, inclusion and equity (DIE) agenda, including companies, religious organizations, public schools and individuals.
Want abortion up to the moment of birth. Fund abortions using taxpayer dollars both domestically and overseas.
Want to eliminate all vehicles (cars, trucks, trains, aircraft) from using fossil fuels.
We agree. Biden is good at eating ice cream. He’s also good at groping underaged girls and boys. He’s also very good at being forgetful, incoherent and seemingly lost on occasion.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2022-10-20 12:51:532022-10-20 12:51:53Democrats Won’t Talk About Biden’s ‘Accomplishments’—So We Will
And this comes from a Left leaning poll. Lee Zeldin can win. The rational citizens of the state of New York must come out in full force and vote for Lee Zeldin. Vote the Left out of office. Save the state of New York. #Zeldin2022!
New Quinnipiac NY poll has Kathy Hochul up only 4 over Lee Zeldin
NY Governor (D) Kathy Hochul 50% (+4) (R) Lee Zeldin 46%
Independents (R) Lee Zeldin 57% (+20) (D) Kathy Hochul 37%
🚨Our race was just moved to TOSS UP by @RealClearNews! We have just 24 days to go until we FIRE @KathyHochul & save our state. It’s not too late for Hochul to come out of hiding & do multiple debates with me across New York, starting immediately! pic.twitter.com/eYrm1TUYnD
“Save our state” was the chant as NY Gubernatorial candidate @RepLeeZeldin was mobbed today at the Long Island Fall Fair in Huntington pic.twitter.com/WR1HNEkkmu
The issue of crime is topping inflation among Republicans, Democrats and independents in New York, and Republican Lee Zeldin has surged to within four points of his opponent, Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released Tuesday.
A Siena College poll released earlier Tuesday showed Zeldin having closed to within 11 points of Hochul.
In the Quinniqiac poll of 1,617 likely New York voters, crime topped the list of most pressing issues heading into Election Day among Republicans and independents. Democrats listed protecting democracy as their top issue, followed by crime, then inflation. The poll has a margin of error of 2.4 percentage points.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2022-10-20 12:51:512022-10-20 12:51:51ZELDIN SPIKES: NY Race Now A Toss-Up In Blue NY State As Voters Put Crime, Inflation As Top Issues in Midterm Election
Editors’ Note: The choice for the next Senator from Arizona between Blake Masters and incumbent Mark Kelly is not only critical for determining the majority in the United States Senate but vital for America’s national security interests. The following article explains the threat China poses to our nation on many levels but importantly details the role Mark Kelly has played in enabling China’s entanglement and use of our technology and how his business dealings and advisory role advanced the CCP’s interests against America. This should alarm all citizens but should particularly impact the choice Arizona voters make during this election cycle for who represents our state in the U.S. Senate and helps protect our national security in that role.
On October 17, 2022, The Wall Street Journal published a main editorial about the “coronation” of Chairman Xi for another five-year term as dictator of China.
As the nation’s most widely read newspaper, and entwined as it is with Fox News, this is a watershed event, and likely an important inflection point in the way our elites think about China. Here are a few salient passages:
“In a decade, Mr. Xi has crushed all dissent, imposed a vast censorship regime, and created an intrusive surveillance regime beyond anything the East German Stasi imagined. He has erased the autonomy for 50 years that China had promised Hong Kong and made Xinjiang province a prison camp for the Uyghurs.
He has restored the Communist Party to the commanding heights of the economy, putting decades of market reform in reverse…He has abandoned the restraint abroad that marked the first 30 years, after Mao. He has occupied and militarized disputed islands in the South China sea, though he had promised not to.”
Concerning the challenge China now poses to the United States, the Journal says, “it is the most formidable the US has faced since World War II, with economic and military power backed by ideological conviction and nationalist ambition.”
We agree and with great emphasis, express concern about the many ways China has succeeded in sinking its menacing tentacles deep into the fabric of American society. This ranges from their power in our prestigious universities, their influence on our entertainment conglomerates, our sports franchises, their extensive ability to steal our technology, engage in industrial espionage, penetrate our military supply companies, and the environmental movement.
Many of their young people are trained at America’s best universities, only to return home and help build up the Communist dictatorship. Is that a good use of our educational resources? Yes, US universities make a good buck at full tuition, but at what cost to the country?
China’s economic vitality extends broadly into key supply chains for pharmaceuticals, computer chips, and petroleum refining capacity. China has become the key supplier of many things vital to the US economy. Is it smart for us to grow dependent on a country that represents the greatest global threat since WWII?
Economic ties have entwined many of our industrial and political leaders including Republicans such as Mitch McConnell all the way to President Biden’s family. They have actively built up a mighty adversary to this country, for their personal profit.
This creates an obvious conflict of interest, pitting their own financial well-being against the security and prosperity of this country.
The Chinese government also has demonstrated an amazing ability to manipulate Chinese nationals in the free world, by threatening their relatives back in China. A little bit of thuggery goes a long way it seems.
America’s naivete about China has been a bipartisan error. It goes back a number of years. It even involves the classic liberal love of “free trade” and comparative advantage and the liberal notion that strong trade ties are prophylactic against war. But do you want to elevate comparative advantage (let the cheap producer win) as a value above national security, especially if the cheaper producer also gets state subsidies and uses slave labor?
It also exposes an intellectually popular myth, that is that when the Berlin Wall came down, it marked the “end of history.” The superiority of western democracy and free market capitalism was triumphant in the long struggle against communism. Not only did the Chinese leadership not get the memo that the Western model was better, but communist ideas also surged within the West itself, such as Black Lives Matter and the Green Movement.
The consensus was that commerce and cultural exchange would create a democratic China. Close economic ties would mean shared interests, that would prohibit aggression by either party. That theory has proven to be a great mistake and a misreading of Chinese history, culture, and Communist ideology. It is nice to see the Wall Street Journal, often a voice for commercial interests, acknowledge that fact.
One of the few holdouts to this almost universal consensus held by the American Establishment was Donald Trump and those who support his Make America Great Again movement. However, The Wall Street Journal could not bring itself to mention that uncomfortable fact in their otherwise stunning editorial.
The real irony in the relationship is that they did not become more like the democratic West, but rather the democratic West has become more like them. We even adopted in large measure, their response to Covid, all the while covering up the China’s role in the origins and spread of the virus.
Our government may have even paid for the research that lead China to the development of Covid at a laboratory that does work for the Chinese military.
Just today, news has broken, that retired members of the RAF have been training Chinese fighter pilots. Has the West gone mad? Is money really that important? Maybe China will bribe our elites just to give up our country to them?
It is clear, this country is not prepared to meet the challenge of China. That is worrisome.
Unlike the old Soviet Union, China is not an economic basket case. Further, while the Soviet Union was good at espionage, and did develop an extensive network of intellectual sympathizers, as witnessed by the considerable inroads into some of our institutions such as Hollywood and the State Department. Our country eventually reacted to these incursions. However, they never penetrated into America’s business and political culture like China has achieved.
It appears the sheer love of money recruits innocents even faster than ideology. Or, money simply buys silence from our compromised officials.
Today, our institutions are not resistant to China, but in fact, are eager to partner with them. Both our institutions and our political class are so attracted to the immense money to be made, they have not barred the wolf from the door but instead invited him in.
Our social media companies are now compromised, and the ESG movement is pretty much a carbon copy of the Chinese Communist social scoring system.
The US needs to recognize reality before it is too late. That will require bold political leadership to change course.
The Senate of the United States has greater responsibilities than the House as it relates to foreign relations. That is because the Senate gives advice and consent on ambassadors and must ratify treaties.
If he ever felt that China represented a threat to the US, it would be hard to explain Kelly’s extensive commercial and advisory dealings with that dictatorship. If you feel that may be too harsh, just remember the Chinese government does not make investments in US technology companies without the approval of the Chinese Communist Party and the People’s Army. Kelly either knew that or should have known that.
And speaking of entanglements, Kelly even met his second wife, the former Congresswomen Gabby Giffords, during a trip to China.
Senator Mark Kelly, the so-called moderate from Arizona, has been involved in extensive business dealings with the Chinese. We think that is a problem. No doubt he has served his country honorably with his military service. And to his credit, on occasion, he has said some intelligent things about US dependence on China for semiconductors. But saying is one thing, and doing financial deals and serving in advisory positions for aerospace technology with our adversary is quite another.
As voters fill out their ballots, they need to ask themselves a basic question: Which candidate running for US Senate in Arizona is best suited to deal with the challenge from China?
We don’t think it is Senator Kelly, because he chose to do business and invest with them, knowing they are a dictatorial and brutal regime that poses a threat to the security of the United States and our allies in the Far East. He literally invested with the nation which is now the most formidable foe the US has faced since World War II, to use the description by the Wall Street Journal.
To be sure, he is not alone among politicians, in making investments in China. But he is our Senator, not somebody else’s.
Either way, it is very troublesome. Either he did not view them as a threat, so he partnered with them or he did know the threat, and he partnered with them anyway. He is either naive or venal or both, two not very good choices for Arizona.
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.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00ThePricklyPear.orghttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngThePricklyPear.org2022-10-20 04:00:002022-10-20 04:00:00Relations With China and the Arizona U.S. Senate Race
In 2021, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen assured Americans that recent inflation was “transitory.” Back in 2017, Yellen, then Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, hinted there would not be another financial crisis “in our lifetimes.”
Maybe she got that idea from Morgan Stanley boss James Gorman, who in 2013 put the chance of a crisis “in our lifetime” as “close to zero” as he could imagine. Well, imagination, as the song says, is crazy. “Your whole perspective gets hazy.”
These two experts, as Alex J. Pollock and Howard B. Adler tell us in Surprised Again! The Covid Crisis and the New Market Bubble, are far from alone. Economic experts, they confirm, have a collective accuracy that would embarrass a busload of blind golfers. Not one expert, they remind us, saw the Great Depression coming. And none foresaw the Calamitous Coronadoom Panic of 2020. Which lasted until now.
What is fascinating is that being wrong in no way dents the awesome armor of assurance donned by our experts. Whatever they do when given power, they do it boldly and without doubt. Whether this lack of humility is caused by amnesia or hubris can be debated. But no one can doubt the astonishing effects of the economic “solutions” foisted upon us by a string of experts during the panic, each trying to correct the ill effects of the other “solutions.”
Pollock and Adler take us through it all: From the Covid lockdowns to the Fed printing money with glee; from the resultant market swings to the rush and retreat from cryptocurrencies; from the run in the housing market to crushing municipal debt and its ill effects on pension funds; from ballooning student loan debt to—again—the banks and the Fed.
This book serves as an excellent introduction to modern economics and monetary policy, presenting it cleaner than in any textbook, and with a complete absence of pedantry. Theory is backed by observation in a wonderful sort of Appendix (my favorite part) at the book’s end, a mini spreadsheet where the reader can write down a handful of indices when reading and compare them with history and with the authors’ predictions (also printed there).
Primarily, this is a book in which we re-learn the ancient truth that much of what we have learned will be forgotten in the next crisis. One perennially lost lesson, even though it’s been verified by history time and again, is that panic kills, both in the literal and figurative sense. This is not a book about public health, though. Pollock and Adler accept medical (what passed for ) “solutions” as a given, and only question economic “solutions.”
Take the catastrophic effects of lockdowns. The Dow was hovering around 29,000 when the Coronadoom panic hit. Then the government caused record unemployment by forcing many out of work for “two weeks” to “flatten the curve.” The Dow then plunged by about 10,000 points. The same kind of thing with the NASDAQ, and with other market indices around the world. GDP dropped ten percent.
People rushed to cash and caused “an inability of market makers to efficiently handle trades.” Bonds, collateralized loan obligations, and other similar instruments were smacked hard. Tax revenue dropped, and municipalities that received income from airports, stadiums, and the like suffered, putting great pressure on public pension funds. Commercial real estate, like malls and retail rentals, felt deep pain.
Things weren’t all down, down, down. One thing that went up was residential mortgage delinquencies. And, eventually, inflation. That went way up.
Inflation was triggered, mainly, by the Fed’s printing spree, which, our authors tell us, happened because they followed the advice of Walter Bagehot, who had argued “central banks should lend early and freely” during crises to quell fear. And this advice worked. Sort of. “The short-term effects of the federal programs were beneficial; the longer-term financial impacts raise profound concerns,” the authors tell us. It is those profound concerns that interest us most.
The panic, in economic terms, is a story of the creeping tendrils of government insinuating themselves into every available crevice. The style and motive of government beneficence in the panic puts one in mind of Mr. Potter from It’s A Wonderful Life. Like our rulers, Mr. Potter guaranteed his bank sufficient funds to remain open during a run. The side effect was that, after the panic ended, he was left in control of the bank.
What about our panic—and future panics? Given the almost routine occurrence of economic panics, should the government make it known they will guarantee banks, loans, and other monetary investments? “Or,” the authors asked, “should the government promise never to make any future interventions, in order to force the market to price in all the risk?” In other words, make people act and accept responsibility for their actions. “Who would believe that promise? We wouldn’t. Would you, Candid Reader?”
If you did believe, it would, as the saying goes, be the triumph of hope over experience.
One thing good about government is that it never lets a crisis go to waste, including those crises it created.
There isn’t space here to discuss every aspect of the panic our authors tackle. But one of the most relevant is cryptocurrencies. At the start of the panic, Bitcoin, the best known and therefore most viable faith-based currency, was about one per $10,000. Like with other markets, the panic led to a sell off, and the price dropped almost in half.
Over 2021, after government interventions and the partial return of calm, it blasted off, making it to over $63,000 in April 2021. There was a sell off later that summer, then another rally followed by a long, steady decline. As of the end of August 2022, it’s around $20,000.
Will it fall to its pre-panic level? Stay steady? Shoot up again? If I knew, I’d invest. But I’d be skeptical, and, like our authors, am prepared to be surprised.
There are solid reasons for skepticism. One is the rise of competing cryptos, which give other outlets for those seeking escape from fiat currencies. Yet the confusion and uncertainty in their proliferation limits acceptance. Another concern is growing regulation. China forbids Bitcoin. What if more governments ban Bitcoin? They are surely considering it, because crypto is something they can’t control.
Facebook’s attempt to create its own coin is telling. They first called it Libra—get it? Then, after their aspirations smacked into government suspicion, they called it Diem. The blows kept coming. Finally, they called it nothing.
They had meant Libra to be a stable, worldwide form of money, controlled in some vague way by an international board, convened by Facebook, and based in Switzerland (which, of course, isn’t the United States). Finance ministers from the G-7, the Bank of England, Reserve Bank of Australia, and others all wondered out loud how they were going to get a piece of the regulatory action. After that, Facebook gave up.
Government did not, however. The lure of paperless money, with its attractive regulatory possibilities, was and is too strong. So governments set out to create their own crypto-like currencies, a process under development in many nations, including the US and China.
The first thing to fix is volatility. Bitcoin price, as we saw, is far too touchy. Our authors give a brief history of the development of “stable coins,” instruments that do not, by their nature, share the volatility of the traditional (strange word here!) cryptos. Yet to make a coin stable turns out to mean, more or less, pegging it to some fiat currency. Doing so turns the coin into something very like a digital currency.
That is no problem for rulers because, hey, did you know criminals use unregulated crypto? Of course, the definition of what counts as “criminal” has only expanded in time and likely will continue to expand. Anyway, why would you use crypto? Do you have something to hide?
The Fed wrote a whitepaper on the pluses and minuses of a digital dollar as interest swelled in cryptocurrencies during the Coroandoom Panic. The digital dollar, for most of us, is already here, though not centrally controlled. Paper cash hasn’t been king for a long time. Starbucks, for instance, recently announced they soon won’t take cash.
A digital dollar is more than just bits in a computer at your bank. It’s all transactions tracked and watched over by experts in government. Our authors deadpan, “it would be tricky to balance protecting privacy with the need to maintain cybersecurity and prevent money laundering and other criminal activities.”
They summarize the story of cryptos using the Doctrine of Unexpected Consequences (they don’t call it this):
[O]ne of the surprises on the 2020s is that a libertarian revolt against central banks in the form of cryptocurrencies looks to be taken over by central banks and may well end up vastly increasing and centralizing bank and government power.
One thing good about government is that it takes what is now infamous advice to heart. It never lets a crisis go to waste, including those crises it created. For instance, during past crises and government cures, the number of FDIC-insured institutions went from about 17,000 in the 1980s, to about 7,500 in 2009-2012, to just under 5,000 during the covid panic. This allowed government (in which we include the Fed) to fully take over Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and Ginnie Mae, which our authors note together comprise about “69 percent of the total mortgage market.”
Even though housing prices were juiced by the panic, the Fed accelerated their mortgage security buys. This kept mortgage interest rates low, which caused housing prices to rise. And it caused the Fed to swell. In 2006, on the eve of the last crisis, the Fed owned $0.875 trillion in mortgages. By the end of 2021, it was three times higher—$2.6 trillion. This money is part of the $8.9 trillion in total Fed assets, up from $5.3 trillion right before the Coronadoom Panic.
Then there was the government takeover of student loans. First came the government-dictated “pause” in payments during the panic. Then the recent wiping away of a certain amount owed. These moves were billed as more solutions, in part to cover the soaring cost of college. But our authors recognize (emphasis theirs) “the bloated price of higher education is sustained by the student loan bubble.”
How, or is it even possible, to draw back the powers government assumed during the Coronadoom Panic? When the book was written in early 2022, the Fed “began discussing the possibility of shrinking its balance sheet.” But, as of the end of August 2022, there hasn’t been any shrinkage. It’s not only the US finance system, of course. It’s the same story in Switzerland, Canada, Japan, Europe, and wherever the panic was embraced.
If we keep looking to government for solutions, we might end up here:
[O]ne might even imagine the extreme case in which the central bank becomes the monopoly bank for the whole country, holding all consumer and business deposits, supplanting the private banking industry, and with its political agenda dominating the allocation of loans.
It no longer takes as much imagination as it did to envision this scenario.
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.
Dr. John R. Lott, Jr., is the founder of The Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC), an economist and a world-recognized expert on guns and crime. During the Trump administration, he served as the Senior Advisor for Research and Statistics in the Office of Justice Programs and then the Office of Legal Policy in the U.S. Department of Justice. Lott has held research or teaching positions at various academic institutions including the University of Chicago, Yale University, the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, Stanford University, UCLA, and Rice University, and was the chief economist at the United States Sentencing Commission during 1988-1989. His latest book is: Gun Control Myths: How politicians, the media, and botched “studies” have twisted the facts on gun control.
TOPIC: Media Spin on Gun Control Doesn’t Match Voters!
GEORGE LANDRITH
George Landrith, President and CEO of Frontiers of Freedom – a public policy think tank devoted to promoting a strong national defense, free markets, individual liberty, and constitutionally limited government. In 1994 and 1996, Landrith was the Republican candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives from Virginia’s Fifth Congressional District. His work has been printed across the nation, including: Washington Times, Chicago Tribune, LA Daily News, National Review, Sacramento Bee, Ft. Worth Star-Telegram, Providence Journal, Daily Caller, Washington Examiner, Townhall, and Human Events. George Landrith is also a co-host here on the Conservative Commandos Radio Show.
TOPIC: Joe Biden, Oil Production, Energy Prices & Politics!
TODAYS GUEST HOST: Rick Manning is a Conservative Commandos and AUN-TV alumnus and the President, Americans for Limited Government. Rick also served on President Trump’s transition team. And he is also the author of the new book with Starr Parker — “Necessary Noise: How Donald Trump Inflames the Culture War and Why this is good for America!”
Climate campaigners tried hard to stop them from speaking, but failed.
The conference, billed as a “Green Davos,” is an opportunity for investors to cash in on the UN’s upcoming COP27 climate conference in Egypt.
The forum took place despite U.K. Climate Minister Graham Stuart withdrawing his keynote speech, and Dr. Aaron Thierry (pictured above with his hand glued to a building in protest of carbon) pulling out of a debate.
Watch Morano and Monckton discuss the hit they made at the conference on the Mark Steyn show on GB News. Attendees actually voted to extend Morano and Monckton’s presentation. Another session voluntarily canceled to make time for them!
Morano and Monckton told Mark Steyn that business leaders continually came up to them at the conference and told them that they privately absolutely agree with them. They keep up the climate alarm pretense for political, social and financial reasons. CFACT has experienced this for years.
Global warming propaganda never holds up when confronted in an honest forum. That is why the Left never ceases working to stifle debate and suppress facts that correct the record on climate.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2022-10-19 23:51:282022-10-19 23:51:28Watch as Campaigners Fail to Prevent Morano and Monckton from Talking Climate in London, England
And Jesus went out, and departed from the temple: and his disciples came to him for to shew him the buildings of the temple. 2 And Jesus said unto them, See ye not all these things? verily I say unto you, There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down. 3 And as he sat upon the mount of Olives, the disciples came unto him privately, saying, Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?4 And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man deceive you. 5 For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many. 6 And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. 7 For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places. 8 All these are the beginning of sorrows. 9 Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all nations for my name’s sake. 10 And then shall many be offended, and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another. 11 And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many. 12 And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold. 13 But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved. 14 And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come.
Jesus Answers their Question With TRUTH
In response to the disciples question, “Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world (Gr. aion / age)?” The first words of Jesus’s answer to His disciples were “Take heed that no man deceive you.” Jesus surely knew that deception would be multiplied as the end of the current age drew closer, so He warned His disciples about that deception.
His warning was directed to them and them alone at that time. Since they would be the people through whom Jesus would establish the Church, His Body on earth after His departure, it was critical that they understood about deception and how, if accepted, it can steal, kill and destroy.
The stones of the temple will all be thrown down – done
Many will claim to be The Anointed, or to be anointed – Occurring NOW
Wars and Rumors of Wars (reports of, the hearing of)– Occurring NOW
Nation will rise against nation – Occurring NOW
Kingdom will rise against kingdom – Occurring NOW
Famines, Pestilences and earthquakes in various places – Occurring NOW
Persecution and killing of the saints – Occurring NOW
The next three statements by Jesus indicate a growing apostasy among believers which was mentioned by Paul in 2 Thessalonians 2:1-3. In verse three of that passage, Paul also warned believers that they should not allow themselves to be deceived “by any means” because that deception would elad to a “falling away” (Strong’s 646, from the Greek apostasia, pronounced ap-os-tas-ee’-ah, means defection from truth).
Offense and betrayal and hatred among the Church – Occurring NOW
Many false prophets will arise and deceive many in the Church – Occurring NOW
Due to waxing (increasing) iniquity the love of many will grow cold – Occurring NOW
There is not one word in that passage predicting that any nation will grow more spiritual, more loving, more kind, more moral or righteous or become “great again”; in fact, such a statement contradicts the words of Jesus who clearly stated that the wars on earth will be due to nations and kingdoms rising against each other, not because they will be getting ‘better’. He also states that “iniquity will abound” and that the growing iniquity, NOT any increase in the ‘goodness of any nation’, will affect the Church, causing many to believe the deception, commonly known as propaganda, whether from any government or from any “Religious officials”.
Every statement of Jesus in this passage is occurring NOW, all over the planet. Earthquakes are definitely increasing in both frequency and intensity, in many cases in conjunction with volcanic eruptions, in many different places around the earth. The earth itself is groaning, awaiting its own redemption from the curse placed on it by God in response to Adam’s sin. The current predictions of a coming massive famine with millions of people starving are totally in accordance with what Jesus said in Matthew 24:7. We are also seeing pestilence in new forms, but in addition, the return of many which were thought to have been eradicated from the earth. Any true believer who has studied the word of God MUST be aware that we ae seeing ALL the signs Jesus told us about. Jesus also declared that the signs are only “the beginning of sorrows”.
Anyone who ignores them, or refuses to see them, is denying the truth of Jesus’ words and in effect is placing his or her trust in the words of false prophets who would have us believe that man is capable of fixing the problems plaguing this planet and all the people dwelling on it. Since man in his fallen state is responsible for those problems, the chance that he can fix them in nil. What is the likelihood that Donald J Trump, or any other politician, most of whom are lying, cheating and corrupt snakes, can “Make America Great Again”? An apparition, a fleeting ghost of false hope that will lead astray anyone who accepts it’s possibility. For that to occur would bring ‘glory’ to the one, or the many, through whom it would be accomplished and that would also be contrary to scripture wherein God declared: “Iam the Lord: that is my name: and my GLORY will I NOT GIVE ANOTHER, neither my praise to graven images”. (Isaiah 42:8 KJV)
I have wondered how easily Satan can deceive so many, especially those who claim to be followers of Christ, and convince them of something that, while it might ‘seem good’, is totally contradictory to God’s word.
Could it be that we have come to see this world as a place so desirable, a place we should love so much, that we cannot let go of it, all the while knowing in our hearts that it will not last much longer? Have we decided to cling to this world, forgetting that Jesus promised He was going away to prepare a place for us, one of the many mansions in His Father’s house?
Abraham ”saw” it by faith and longed to be in it.
As clean and untouched as the earth was in Abraham’s day, the Patriarch declared that “…he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God.” (Hebrews 11:10 KJV). Abraham’s vision, seen by faith, was his view of one of those many mansions that are likely now prepared and waiting for the arrival of the Church, the Body of Christ. I have never seen that place but it must be beautiful, a place we should all have our hearts and eyes looking toward as our eternal dwelling place where we will never again experience the sadness and sorrows we have endured in our lives on this earth.
Conclusion
While it would be wonderful to write that the world is becoming a better place, that America will be “made great again”, that she will rise again as the moral, religious and political leader of the world, it would not be the truth, and anything that is not the truth is deception, designed to mislead and bring destruction and misery.
The plain simple truth is that we ARE seeing ALL the signs of the end of this age, the Church age; all those who believe on, and accept Jesus as Lord, are closer to the joyous realization of all the promises made to us by the Lord: “And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.” (Revelation 21:4 KJV)
The signs we are witnessing should cause shouting and joy as we watch for the approaching of the Lord as He is even now preparing to come for us. We will leave this cursed earth behind and begin our new eternal lives in bodies that are just like His immortal, perfect body!
The most wonderful part of the passage in Matthew 24 is : “But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.14 And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end (of the Church age) come.”
I will close with this fervent admonition: ENDURE UNTO THE END!
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2022-10-19 23:51:272022-10-19 23:51:27Matthew 24:1-14 — The Signs of the End of the Age
WASHINGTON, D.C. /PRNewswire/ — Following months of research, dedication and perseverance, HinduPACT has officially launched its HinduVote.org website to help voters select Federal candidates based on their support for issues that are important to the Hindu diaspora.
The comprehensive website, the first of its kind in the history of the American Hindu community, consists of location-based listing of candidates for the House of Representatives and U.S. Senate, biographical and social media details of the candidates, responses from the candidates on a Hindu-focused questionnaire, and HinduPACT’s assessment of legislative votes that are deemed of importance by the incumbents and federal candidates.
The website uses the power of crowdsourcing to express the sentiment of the Hindu community by providing the constituents with an opportunity to rate the candidates based on the positions they have taken.
All Federal incumbents and candidates will receive the questionnaires this week. This questionnaire covers the issue of growing hate campaigns against Hindus across the country. It also addresses concerns about U.S. foreign policy that affect Hindu communities across the world.
Rakhi Israni, Director of Legal for HinduPACT, said, “The American Hindu community is peaceful, affluent and productive. They are, in many ways, the model community in any society in which they reside. They have held massive economic power in their hands for sometime now. This HinduVote initiative is the first step in claiming the political power that they should have been afforded a while ago.”
Convener of HinduPACT, Ajay Shah, said, “There are six million Hindus in America and an additional six million followers of dharmic traditions (Buddhist, Jain and Sikhs). Conservatively, we estimate that around 5% of the voters are the followers of dharmic traditions. In battleground states, and in close races elsewhere, these voters can decisively impact the outcome. HinduVote.org is a community resource to inform and educate the Hindu community and to ensure a Congress that understands, respects and fulfills the aspirations of the American Hindu community.”
HinduPACT and HMEC are initiatives of the World Hindu Council of America (VHPA) 200 New Bond Street, Sugar Grove, IL 60554-9171 Web: hindupact.org hmec.info | Facebook: HinduPACT | Twitter: @hindupact | Instagram: @hindupact
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2022-10-19 13:55:562022-10-19 13:55:56HinduPACT Launches HinduVote.org Website Just in Time for Midterms
As evidenced by the wild success of Netflix’s Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, American culture is obsessed with criminals, and all too frequently such individuals enjoy cult-like status.
Charles Manson infamously received love letters while in prison, and copycat crimes are a common occurrence. But in our woke age, the worship of criminals has changed. Such cults are no longer nihilistic (as in the case of Manson).
Instead, the criminal is somehow turned into a saint who stands for some vague social justice ideal. Those individuals have no merits of their own, other than having encountered a tragic end. They are lionized solely on the basis of having been the victim of some injustice, no matter how unjust they may have been towards others.
George Floyd is perhaps the most emblematic case in our times. Candace Owens’ The Greatest Lie Ever Soldseeks to remove the mystic aura that surrounds this dubious character.
Owens has long played the cultural contrarian, so she is well-prepared to mount a frontal iconoclastic attack against this woke idol. She has a history of saying some things perceived as outrageous by liberal media, but by and large, she keeps her composure in the film.
Here and there, sometimes Owens unnecessarily goes overboard (e.g., some jokes about Floyd’s children not being truly his). But the film is effective in showing that Floyd was a person who harmed many people and deserves no praise.
Likewise, Owens puts a human face to Derek Chauvin, the police officer who killed Floyd. Owens makes it sufficiently clear that she is not celebrating Floyd’s death. She is merely saying that neither Floyd nor Chauvin are the saint and the monster that, respectively, the media tries to represent.
This is an entirely reasonable stance.
Yet, the media bullies those who state the obvious and Black Lives Matter has seized the moment to make a buck. This is ironic, considering this organization’s ideology. Black Lives Matter’s founder Patrisse Cullors has claimed that they “are trained Marxists.” Marxism’s approach to religion is well-known: as per this philosophy, religion is a scam (“the opium of the people”) that is used to exploit people and extract from them the wealth they produce.
This view has long been criticized, but in the case of the George Floyd cult, it hits the nail on its head. For, Black Lives Matter is noting but a cult-like racket.
The Greatest Lie Ever Sold shows the extent of Black Lives Matter’s corruption in the handling of donations. Cullors now lives in a mansion located in a predominantly white neighborhood, and she has hired her own brother for security (a man with no experience in that industry), with a salary of more than US$800,000.
Owens relies on some fine investigative work to present these details, and that alone makes the film worth watching.
Nevertheless, it is a flawed product. Owens insists that George Floyd’s death was not caused by Derek Chauvin’s actions; in her words, “it is the story of a man who overdosed.” This version of the events has been refuted by many toxicologists, some of whom testified in the trial of the other officers who were involved in Floyd’s death.
Owens could have focused on the obvious point she makes in the film — Black Lives Matter’s corruption and the media’s complicity — but true to her style, she could not resist the temptation to troll. This is unfortunate, because the larger issue at stake is not the exact cause of Floyd’s death, but rather, whether or not racism and police brutality are a problem in the United States.
Owens misses a golden opportunity to address this topic.
The evidence is not conclusive, but it seems that the United States does face a problem of police brutality. However, there is no indication that this is a racial issue. Harvard’s Roland Fryer famously published a study in which it is demonstrated that there are few racial disparities in the use of police force.
Of course, that does not fit the media narrative. If a white man dies with a cop’s knee on his neck — as in the case of Tony Timpa— the media will look the other way. They are only interested in stories that can be sensationalized with racial overtones, and they found in George Floyd the perfect match.
Although sloppy at times, The Greatest Lie Ever Sold is a welcome contribution to push back against the narrative and cynical ploy of Black Lives Matter and woke ideology.
Gabriel Andrade is a university professor originally from Venezuela. He writes about politics, philosophy, history, religion and psychology. More by Gabriel Andrade
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2022-10-19 13:55:552022-10-19 13:55:55Candace Owens puts her finger on Black Lives Matter’s rampant corruption
Statistics published in JAMA Pediatrics are horrifying
The deeper you dig in the dark warrens of adolescent transgender medicine, the more convinced you become that the doctors who operate on young girls are criminal or insane or both.
I know that sounds extreme. But how can a decent person read the bare statistics in a recent article in one of the world’s leading paediatrics journals without feeling rage?
A brief report from four doctors at Vanderbilt University, “Gender-Affirming Chest Reconstruction Among Transgender and Gender-Diverse Adolescents in the US From 2016 to 2019” appeared in JAMA Pediatrics earlier this week. It is “the largest investigation to date of gender-affirming chest reconstruction in a pediatric population” to date.
The researchers found that the incidence of “gender-affirming chest reconstruction” surgery for children under 18 – better known as double mastectomies or “top jobs” — increased by 389 percent between 2016 and 2019. (These “chest reconstructions” included some boys who presumably wanted breast implants – but these were only 1.4 percent.)
An estimated 1,130 “top jobs” were performed during those four years on girls as young as 12. What kind of doctor amputates the healthy breasts of a 12-year-old girl?
According to the data, based on the Nationwide Ambulatory Surgery Sample, the Vanderbilt doctors calculated that 5.5 percent of the children were under 14, 21.5 percent under 15, and 56 percent under 16.
It gets worse.
Through the distorted lens of the billion-dollar sex-reassignment surgery industry, “top jobs” might make sense as the last step in a gender-affirmation journey. After a gender-dysphoric girl has experimented with living in a male body for months or years, she wants her chest to look masculine. She proceeds through the following steps:
I know I’m a boy in a girl’s body.
I need social affirmation.
I need puberty blockers.
I need cross-sex hormones.
I need a double mastectomy.
But according to the figures compiled by the Vanderbilt doctors, only 19.9 percent of these girls had hormone therapy before surgery. That means that the overwhelming majority of these young girls – 80.1 percent – had their breasts amputated without attempting to masculinise their bodies.
One of the leading American hospitals for transgender surgery, Boston Children’s Hospital, recommends that patients have hormone therapy first:
Surgery is never the first step in a gender transition. It is something that happens after you have already explored social and medical transition options. People who choose to undergo surgery usually do so after taking other steps in the gender affirmation process, such as taking supplemental hormones.
And the recently-released standards for transgender medicine specify that an adolescent should have had “at least 12 months of gender-affirming hormone therapy or longer, if required, to achieve the desired surgical result for gender-affirming procedures” (WPATH, section 6.12).
Amputation without hormone therapy makes no sense even in the Alice in Wonderland universe of transgender medicine. It is sheer mutilation. How will it solve girls’ gender dysphoria? It is worse than prescribing liposuction for a 12-year-old suffering from anorexia nervosa. Or amputating limbs or severing spinal cords for people suffering from Body Integrity Identity Disorder.
Furthermore, more than a third of the girls had been diagnosed with anxiety or depression. (The study fails to mention autism, which is often implicated in gender dysphoria.) What kind of surgeon amputates the breasts of a mentally-ill teenager?
The data in this study are already nearly three years old. How many more girls will be maimed for life before American doctors wake up to this grotesque violation of human rights?
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2022-10-19 13:55:542022-10-19 13:55:54What kind of doctor amputates the breasts of a 12-year-old girl?
In this terrific book, Dubliner Fr Paul O’Callaghan, a lecturer in the school of theology in the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome, presents a succinct and insightful analysis of a daunting topic: the interaction of faith and culture.
He sets himself the task of examining how Western culture has been moulded by faith (by which he means faith in the strict sense of revealed religion, and not religion in general) and in particular how this is true of four realities key to contemporary culture: rationality, freedom, equality and (surprisingly) conquest.
As we might imagine, the faith-culture relationship will of necessity be a complex one. They are two very different realities: faith stems from a divine initiative, indeed an “interruption” into human history, while culture is the fruit of human endeavour. And nevertheless as the author points out, the West has developed without either element erasing the other; rather they “seek each other out”, each respecting the contribution of the other (for the most part):
“Christian revelation and grace are not meant to ride roughshod over reality, over the world as we know it, over the lives and dreams and projects of its inhabitants, over the traditions and civilizations consolidated over the centuries…”
And yet we know that Modernity (the period dating from around the 16th or 17th century) has been predicated on an elevation of man accompanied by a diminished view of God and a disregard for the West’s Christian roots — an unfortunate over-correction of the mediaeval world’s bias for the divine over the human.
The effects of the secularising tendency of modernity are apparent in the impoverishing effect on those four key areas of rationality, freedom, equality and conquest, distorting them in the direction of rationalism, licence, reductive egalitarianism and rapine respectively.
The interaction of faith and culture
O’Callaghan discusses briefly a number of core tenets of Western civilisation which have their roots in the Bible, such as the notion of intrinsic human dignity, the centrality of human freedom, and the sanctity of marriage.
He cites the late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks’ most interesting distinction between the Judeo-Christian concept of “righteousness and guilt” and the pagan “honour and shame” culture. The former places man’s intrinsic worth on something interior and not immediately apparent, something at the realm of freedom and conscience, and ultimately a person’s interior relationship with God.
The latter on the other hand looks to the external actions alone, for which a person earns honour or shame from others. Such a culture easily (perhaps excessively) exalts its heroes and unequivocally and even brutally condemns its enemies (think “cancel culture”). Lacking the classic Judeo-Christian distinction between sin and sinner, it equates the sinner with their apparent sins, and so is merciless in shaming (and “cancelling”) offenders.
Many core elements of Western culture come from an “intelligent and practical assimilation of Christian Revelation” which is complex and ongoing. There has never been, nor can there ever be, a “purely Christian culture” (despite the nostalgia of some for a Medieval Golden Age of Christendom): sin is a constant in human existence, and has always been present in human culture. Modernity itself, despite all its secularising tendencies, is a “highly positive phenomenon”. As Pope Benedict has reminded Christians, Modernity’s own intrinsic merits as well as its “material fidelity to Christianity” must be acknowledged.
While the theme of the modern world’s fundamental indebtedness to Christianity has recently been revisited and popularised in Tom Holland’s highly successful Dominion, this is not Holland’s discovery: it has been covered in the past by the likes of Dostoevsky, Guardini, T.S. Eliot, and even Jürgen Habermas (for whom the West’s sense of personal conscience, human rights, equality and democracy is built directly on “the Jewish ethic of justice and the Christian ethic of love… All the rest is postmodern chatter.”)
Unfortunately of course, the Christian roots of Western values are increasingly being ignored and forgotten, and it would be, in the words of the Dutch reformed pastor Wim Rietkerk, modern man’s biggest mistake if he thought “that he could keep enjoying the fruits without the roots, without walking humbly with his God. … There is no future for a Western civilisation cut off from its roots.”
The four key tenets
O’Callaghan then focusses his attention on those four concepts so central to the West’s very identity: rationality, freedom, equality, and conquest. The last, “conquest” is an unusual concept, and the author explains it as follows:
We assume that what we obtain, what is at our disposal, we have a right to, as if it were our very own and belonging to no-one else. Whether we are talking about children, or property, or space travel, or instant telematic communication to the other side of the world … we see the world around us as a terrain of conquest, of achievement, of success.
He examines how these four notions as we understand them in the West, are essentially the fruit of Christian revelation.
The first, rationality, was already much prized — as logos — by the Greeks. For them rationality could not be understood without reference to the divine. Nevertheless the Christian conception of reason is even more elevated and optimistic than that of the Greeks, for whom reason was marred by very significant limitations.
Human reason for Christians receives a greater trustworthiness on account of the trustworthiness of its author: God. Nevertheless the secularising tendency of Modernity has lost the vastness of the power of reason as glimpsed by the Greeks, and boldly affirmed by Christianity. It began by reducing reason to a merely “computational and mathematical” power, and even now tends towards a radical scepticism which jettisons all confidence in reason.
O’Callaghan goes on to discuss how much the Western notion of freedom owes to Christianity. For Christianity freedom is essentially the filial freedom of those who are called to become God’s children: it is the “freedom of the glory of the children of God” in the words of St Paul. This is the ultimate goal for freedom to aspire to, a true “freedom for”.
However, this Christian-inspired concept of freedom came gradually to be eclipsed by a reductive “freedom from” — which reduces freedom to the mere capacity to choose one thing over another, without any intrinsic direction or dynamism. This reductive freedom is developed by the likes of Ockham, Bacon, Luther and more recently Foucault. Nevertheless, there has been a recovery of the richer conception of freedom, in particular by the Personalist movement for whom freedom is inseparable from man’s fundamental relatedness to others, and to God.
The notion of the fundamental equality of human beings so central to Western values is equally something stemming from Christian revelation. Man’s social and relational nature is presented throughout the Bible as constitutive of his very being. Against this is a non-Christian understanding of relationality as a sign of weakness, insofar as it implies dependence on others; a lack of the autonomy so valued by Modernity (and to a degree even by the Greeks).
The equal dignity under God of all men receives an unequivocal affirmation throughout the Bible. And yet the manifest inequalities between men are not a scandal for Christianity in the way they are for modern culture (for which all “inequality” must be ultimately stamped out), because the presence of neediness is a divine call to the others to live out the charity which must be at the heart of all social relations.
There follows a most illuminating consideration of the fourth tenet: the idea of conquest (by which we see “the world around us as a terrain of conquest”). What O’Callaghan shows here is that the now dominant “anthropology of the self-made man who designs and constructs himself down to the last detail” has lost sight of the Christian notion of gratitude.
The radical individualism that has developed in the West rejects as “childish”, indebtedness to others. Dignity requires that the self must be “self-made” and autonomous. This produces a great incapacity to receive from others, and with that a systematic ingratitude.
However for the Christian, absolutely everything is a gift from God, and man is a receiver of gifts before anything else. This then allows us in our turn to give and receive from others — there is no shame, nor subjugation in receiving understood in Christian terms.
Modernity, on the other hand, is marked by a systematic rejection of gift and so is marked by a striking ingratitude. What is needed is a return to the sense of gratitude gestured at by Heidegger when he said that “denken ist danken” (“to think is to thank”); that even “thought itself is a grateful receptiveness to the giveness of being”.
And so the ungrateful West is faced with the important task of rediscovering true gratitude, also gratitude towards God. The secular world’s “eclipse of worship” (to coin a phrase from Charles Taylor in his work A Secular Age) means that “humans have stopped recognising God as the source of all good and intelligibility. They have stopped thanking God, they no longer recognise the world they live in as a gift, they no longer live ‘eucharistic’ lives.” And such ingratitude is a serious state of affairs: “the most abominable of sins” for Ignatius of Loyola. The author concludes that:
“This has led many of those influenced by modern culture to a generalised loss of faith and to a pathology of individualism and ingratitude, as they attempt to live out their lives in isolation from their fellows, unprepared to recognise the world they live in and the privileges they enjoy as so many gifts they should be profoundly grateful for.”
The question of the gratitude leads on in the Epilogue to a very interesting discussion on the integration of conservatism and progressive liberalism. O’Callaghan shows that both the conservative and liberal tempers are embraced by Christianity: it is conservative insofar as it is conscious of being the receiver of gifts from God, and handed down by others by tradition; the Christian is by definition a conserver of these gifts.
At the same time, the Christian doctrine of Original Sin necessitates the liberal dimension since certain elements from the past will of necessity be tainted by sin and in need of reform and purification; not everything merits conservation. But there is need of a delicate balance of these two opposed tendencies: too much conservatism produces a lazy complacency that is fearful of change, while too excessive liberalism fails to appreciate what has been received from predecessors.
Conclusion
It is hard to overestimate the value of this book. O’Callaghan shows how our contemporary culture simply cannot be understood without a deep grasp of its Christian roots. And furthermore, he shows what damage our culture has already suffered because the key tenets of rationality, freedom, equality and conquest have to the degree to which they have become unmoored from their Christian roots.
At the same time, these affirmations are never simplistic; O’Callaghan takes into account the great complexity of the relationship between faith and culture. And even though it is quite a short book, the author does not oversimplify the issues involved. For that reason, parts of the book will be challenging for someone unfamiliar with the issues involved.
Certainly, this book would make a wonderful basic text for a college course on faith and culture. It would also very beneficial for anyone interested in the deeper issues at play in our current “culture wars”, where much of the discussion is unfortunately as heated as it is uninformed by philosophy and theology.
Rev. Gavan Jennings studied philosophy at University College Dublin, Ireland and the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, Rome. He is co-editor of the monthly journal Position Papers. He teaches occasional… More by Fr Gavan Jennings
Arizona U.S. Representative Andy Biggs is a unique federal legislator. He is a strong advocate for liberty and the foundational and constitutional basis of the United States and aggressively fights to defend our liberty and opportunity for all Americans. We should expect no less from all our federal and state legislators who govern by our consent but in these foreboding times, we are often deprived of that passion and commitment. Andy Biggs gets a loud A+++ in this department for his work in Washington, DC on our behalf.
What isn’t as well known about this unique and superb U.S. Representative is the very real attention he and his staff pay to the actual needs of his individual constituents and their families. There are many examples that demonstrate the dedication of Andy Biggs and his staff that reflect his leadership in this key role for the constituents of Arizona Congressional District 5. He and his office staff are a model of constituency service and genuine, highly effective care for those he represents. We may call that a ‘personal touch’ or playing to the voters but in Representative Andy Biggs case, it speaks to his quality as a person, a man of faith and a dedicated public servant.
Please watch the following short videos of examples of the testimonies given about Andy Biggs’ service to his constituents and the role he has played for individuals and families in AZ District 5, all in addition to his work, stature, and leadership as a federal legislator in the United States Congress.
In addition to what Representative Biggs has done on the local level for his constituents, this last video is about the frightful and destructive invasion of our Arizona and national border and the fight he is waging to protect all of his constituents and all Americans. He is at the center of this battle and must be on the front line as we move beyond November 8th and then January 3, 2023 in the new Congress.
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.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00ThePricklyPear.orghttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngThePricklyPear.org2022-10-19 13:28:002022-10-19 13:28:00U.S. Representative Andy Biggs – A Model of Constituency Service and Real Care of Those He Representatives
As part of an effort to increase vaccination rates in the Land of the Rising Sun, Tokyo Disney Park is providing a special discount on theme park admission to guests who have received their COVID vaccinations.
The woke company now offers a “discount” for guests, both international and domestic, who can prove they are “fully boosted and vaccinated.”
It has been two years, but it appears that there is still a push by some to continue to push pandemic-era restrictions and policies and make life more difficult for those who choose not to comply.
One such example of this authoritarian endurance can be found at Tokyo Disney Resort.
According to its website, a new “discount” has been issued that is only available to “fully-vaccinated” Guests (both domestic and international) in order to boost of vaccinations in the Land of the Rising Sun. Called the “Event Wakuwari Discount” program, a special 20% discount will be available on 1-day ticked.
Vaccinated Guests can save 20% on one-day Passports valid from October 13, 2022, to January 31, 2023. Prices are as follows:
Adult: 6,320 yen / 6,720 yen / 7,120 yen / 7,520 yen Junior: 5,280 yen / 5,600 yen / 5,920 yen / 6,240 yen Child: 3,760 yen / 4,000 yen / 4,240 yen / 4,480 yen
Vaccinated Guests with disabilities and one accompanying person can purchase one-day Passports at the following rate:
Adult: 5,200 yen / 5,440 yen / 5,680 yen / 5,920 yen Junior: 4,240 yen / 4,480 yen / 4,720 yen / 4,960 yen Child: 3,040 yen / 3,200 yen / 3,360 yen / 3,520 yen
In order to access the special discount, Guests must provide the following:
Vaccination record (3rd vaccination completed)
PCR test negative certificate (using samples collected within 3 days before admission)
Antigen quantitative test negative certificate (collected within 3 days before admission) using the specimen)
Antigen qualitative test negative certificate (using a specimen collected within 1 day before admission)
Guests will be able to purchase the tickets online, but Cast Members will be checking credentials before Guests can claim the Passports to Tokyo Disneyland and Tokyo DisneySea. Guests under 12 will not need to show proof of vaccination so long as they are accompanied by a “fully vaccinated” adult.
Who is hiring these pedophiles. Pull your children out of government schools. Democrats hate you. What more effective way of destroying and our wonderful country then by abusing your children and shredding the family?
74% of the arrests involved alleged crimes against students
Virginia counselor charged twice for sex crimes allowed to work for nearly two years
Fox News’ Mike Emmanuel reports on a Fairfax County, Virginia, twice-convicted sex offender who was allowed to work for nearly two years before being fired.
Nearly 270 public educators were arrested on child sex-related crimes in the U.S. in the first nine months of this year, ranging from grooming to raping underage students.
An analysis conducted by Fox News Digital found that from Jan. 1 to Sept. 30, at least 269 educators were arrested, which works out to roughly one arrest a day.
The 269 educators included four principals, two assistant principals, 226 teachers, 20 teacher’s aides and 17 substitute teachers.
At least 199 of the arrests, or 74%, involved alleged crimes against students.
TRUSTEE OF TRANSGENDER KIDS’ CHARITY RESIGNS AFTER UNEARTHED SPEECH TO GROUP FOR ‘MINOR-ATTRACTED PERSONS’
The analysis looked at local news stories week by week featuring arrests of K-12 principals, assistant principals, teachers, substitute teachers and teachers’ aides on child sex-related crimes in school districts across the country. Arrests that weren’t publicized were not counted in the analysis, meaning the true number may well be higher.
Only 43 of the alleged crimes, or 16%, did not involve students. It is not known whether another 10% of the alleged crimes involved students.
Men also made up the vast majority, with over 80% of the arrests.
OLD DOMINION UNIVERSITY PLACES PROFESSOR ON LEAVE AFTER INTERVIEW DEFENDING ‘MINOR-ATTRACTED PERSONS’
There are an estimated 3.2 million public school teachers in the country, meaning the arrests compiled by Fox News Digital make up only 0.0084%. placeholder
“The number of teachers arrested for child sex abuse is just the tip of the iceberg — much as it was for the Catholic Church prior to widespread exposure and investigation in the early 2000s,” Christopher Rufo, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, said in a statement to Fox News Digital. “The best available academic research, published by the Department of Education, suggests that nearly 10% of public school students suffer from physical abuse between kindergarten and twelfth grade.”
“According to that research, the scale of sexual abuse in the public schools is nearly 100 times greater than that of the Catholic Church,” he said. “The question for critics who seek to downplay the extent of public-school sexual abuse is this: How many arrests need to happen before you consider it a problem? How many children need to be sexually abused by teachers before you consider it a crisis?”
Many of the arrests in Fox News Digital’s latest analysis involved especially heinous allegations. Eugene Pratt, a former principal, elementary school teacher and coach who taught at-risk youth in multiple Michigan public schools, is accused of sexually assaulting at least 15 boys and young adult men over the course of several decades.
Eugene Pratt, a former principal, elementary school teacher and coach who taught at-risk youth in multiple Michigan public schools, is accused of sexually assaulting at least 15 boys and young adult men over the course of several decades. (Genesee County Sheriff’s Office)
Eugene Pratt, 57, a former principal, elementary school teacher and coach who taught at-risk youth in multiple Michigan public schools, was charged with first-degree criminal sexual conduct in August. He is accused of sexually assaulting at least 15 boys and young adult men during his education career spanning several decades.
Genesee County Sheriff Chris Swanson, whose office is investigating Pratt, told ClickOnDetroit in August that sexual predators often put themselves in a supervisory position so that they have easy access to victims.
“When you see positions that he held that involve being a principal, school administrator, counselor, GED coordinator, and even after he taught, where he was arrested last week out of New Paths, as a driver, as a transport officer,” Swanson said. “Individuals like Eugene Pratt put themselves in positions of authority over others in order to act on their prey and to find and identify vulnerable people.”
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2022-10-19 12:52:192022-10-19 12:52:19At Least 269 K-12 Educators Arrested on Child Sex Crimes in First 9 months of 2022
Bribing a foreign power to rig oil prices to keep control of Congress.
“There’s going to be some consequences for what they’ve done,” Biden threatened Saudi Arabia on CNN.
The widely unpopular president wasn’t upset at the Kingdom over what it had done to America, but to his party’s prospects for retaining control of Congress.
In response, the Saudis revealed that the Biden administration had actually asked them to postpone the production cut for a month. Why a month? A month wouldn’t have changed anything meaningfully for Americans, but would have gotten the midterms out of the way.
As the Wall Street Journalnoted, “The one-month delay requested by Washington would have meant a production cut made in the days before the election, too late to have much effect on consumers’ wallets ahead of the vote.”
Perfect timing. Too perfect to be a coincidence.
Adrienne Watson, Biden’s NSC assistant, denied Biden had been asking for an election boost. “It’s categorically false to connect this to U.S. elections,” the former Hillary Clinton spokeswoman insisted. “It’s about the impact of this shortsighted decision to the global economy.”
But the story became even more damning when it was revealed that the Biden administration had tried to bribe the Saudis to delay the production cut until the midterms by promising to “buy oil on the market to replenish Washington’s strategic stockpiles if the price of Brent, the main international benchmark, fell to $75 a barrel”.
Biden was bribing the Saudis with a potential fortune in taxpayer money as a hedge against a decline in the price of oil. The strategic reserves had already been badly depleted by Biden in an effort to lower oil prices. This was not done to help consumers, but to politically prop up Biden’s own prospects for a second term. Biden plans to end the strategic releases from the reserve at the end of October. This is obviously aimed at influencing the midterm elections.
With the release of 180 million barrels of oil, Biden was trying to buy the midterms in a way that was corrupt, but technically legal. With crude currently priced in the high 80s, refilling the reserve would be quite expensive and Biden officials had told the finance media they would not be refilling the reserve anytime soon. But they were telling the Saudis something very different.
Biden’s already legendary corruption has worsened dramatically when given full access to the White House, but trying to bribe a foreign power to rig oil prices to keep control of Congress is outrageous even in the litany of White House scandals.
The quid pro quo here is potentially massive.
Biden’s NSC spokesman, John Kirby, warned that his boss would “take a look to see if that relationship is where it needs to be and that it is serving our national security interests.”
It’s not the national security interests at issue here, but Biden’s own political interests.
The Biden administration has already begun pulling out of regional security sessions in revenge for the Saudi refusal to prop up energy prices to help the Democrats retain control of Congress.
The carrot and the stick here involve foreign policy and billions in spending for a quid pro quo.
The Biden administration was using oil purchases and security cooperation as leverage to secure a foreign government’s help in the midterm elections. Senate Democrats are rushing to make the quid pro quo even more explicit by threatening to pull out anti-Iran defenses.
Rep. Tom Malinowski, Rep. Sean Casten and Rep. Susan Wild, all of whom are running for reelection, introduced a bill calling for the removal of missile defense systems and troops from Saudi Arabia, to punish it for the pre-midterm production cut.
“Saudi Arabia and the UAE’s drastic cut in oil production, despite President Biden’s overtures to both countries in recent months, is a hostile act,” the press release by the candidates stated.
As Biden said, “There’s going to be some consequences”.
Rep. Malinowski is running a tight race in a time when, as the New York Times described, “gas prices were soaring”. Susan Wild is running in another “bellwether” seat. It’s unlikely to be a coincidence that House Democrats who would have benefited the most from Biden’s Saudi quid pro quo are also the ones trying to punish the Saudis, not for Americans, but for themselves.
Rep. Malinowski voted to impeach Trump because, in his words, “by pressuring a foreign country”, he “used the powers of his office not for America but for himself”, “signaled that America’s foreign policy can be bought by anyone willing to interfere in our politics on his behalf” and “endangered our national security, and violated his oath of office.” All of these things are true of Biden and of his political accomplices inside and outside the administration.
Biden was caught trying to pressure a foreign country for his own political benefit. Had he just asked the Saudis to suspend the price cut without a specific timetable, he might have gotten away with it, but by timing it for a month, enough to clear the midterms, he indicted himself.
The Saudis revealed what Biden was up to and administration flunkies like Watson have denied the motive, but not the act. The next step is for Congress to investigate the quid pro quo.
Considering how many members of the current Congress were heavily invested in preventing a production cut before the midterms, it is unrealistic to presume that a corrupt and self-interested body can credibly investigate itself. Only after the midterms have cleaned house a little bit will it be possible to turn over some rocks and discover who knew what and what the exact deal was.
Biden’s strategic oil reserve releases timed to the midterms were bad enough. There was a time when such nakedly calculated abuses of government assets and taxpayer money might have even been impeachable, but we live in times when politicians routinely engage in such plunder.
Trying to bribe a foreign government to interfere in our election is a whole other matter.
The Democrats were the ones who set the precedent with the first Trump impeachment. And that should be Biden’s first impeachment too. Whether it will be his last is up to Congress.
BREAKING: The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia confirms Biden attempted to coerce them to postpone oil cuts until after the midterms, announce they have rejected his quid pro quo pic.twitter.com/MGNRbZVrRk
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2022-10-19 12:52:182022-10-19 12:52:18Impeach Biden for Saudi Election Quid Pro Quo
Sunday on ABC’s This Week, Transportation Secretary diversity hire Pete Buttigieg claimed comically that President Biden had so many accomplishments it was hard to talk about them all.
To the host’s suggestion that President Biden should be speaking more about his accomplishments from last year, the hopelessly incompetent Buttigieg said, “Well, we are proud of those accomplishments. You know, the things that those accomplishments have done, first of all, contributing to historic job creation under this president, 10 million plus jobs, that’s never happened in this time period in a presidency before in American history. Remember, we have our challenges right now, but when the president took office, we were facing an economy that was at risk of going into free fall. The American Rescue Plan stopped that, and it went directly into easing the burden for Americans with those tax benefits that Americans got, and it went into projects that are improving communities all around the United States. Back in my hometown saw infrastructure projects that they’re doing there with some of that money.”
He added, “I think we run the risk because there have been so many accomplishments, right, the Chips Act and Pact Act and the infrastructure bill, the Inflation Reduction Act, on top of that American Rescue Plan, you know, in some ways having achieved so much legislatively makes it hard to talk about all at once because there are so many accomplishments.”
Anyone who isn’t a hardcore ideologue like Buttigieg can look at America and recognize that the Biden administration has wrought more havoc on this country than any past President, including the radical anti-American Barack Obama. The Biden administration doesn’t have accomplishments, only debacles.
Buttigieg Launches $1 Billion Pilot Plan for “Racial Equity” in Roads
On June 30, 2022, Buttigieg, who had previously declared that “there is racism physically built into some of our highways,” initiated a $1 billion pilot plan — the so-called Reconnecting Communities program — to address what he saw as racial segregation created by roads in cities and neighborhoods across the United States. “Transportation can connect us to jobs, services and loved ones, but we‘ve also seen countless cases around the country where a piece of infrastructure cuts off a neighborhood or a community because of how it was built,” said Buttigieg when announcing the program in Birmingham, Alabama. “This is a forward-looking vision,” he explained. “Our focus isn’t about assigning blame. It isn’t about getting caught up in guilt. It’s about fixing a problem. It’s about mending what has been broken, especially when the damage was done with taxpayer dollars.”
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2022-10-19 12:52:172022-10-19 12:52:17LOL: Buttigieg Says Biden’s Had ‘So Many Accomplishments’ It’s Hard to Talk About All of Them
A little over a year ago President Biden proposed a plan to set in place a new health agency to drive the U.S. down a futuristic road that would lead to cures for cancer, Alzheimer’s, diabetes and other diseases.
At the time, investigative journalist Whitney Webb, author of “One Nation Under Blackmail,” warned that the new biomedical research agency — modeled after the nation’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) — actually is a plan to merge national security with health “security” in a way that would “use both physical and mental health ‘warning signs’ to prevent outbreaks of disease or violence before they occur.”1
According to Webb, “Such a system is a recipe for a technocratic ‘pre-crime’ organization with the potential to criminalize both mental and physical illness as well as ‘wrongthink.’”
ARPA-H — A ‘High-Risk’ Research Agency
That agency — formally named the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health2 (ARPA-H) — is now well on its way to being and up and running, with a $1 billion budget from Congress to start. Public law 117-103 was enacted March 15, 2022, which authorized its establishment within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), under the National Institutes of Health (NIH).3
Government officials only need to iron out details such as what programs and activities it will engage in, and (of course) what “appropriate” current and future funding will be needed to run it.
ARPA-H seems to fit hand in glove with Biden’s September 12, 2022, “Executive Order on Advancing Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing Innovation for a Sustainable, Safe and Secure American Bioeconomy,”4 which essentially establishes a fast-tracked pipeline for transhumanist dream projects.
Specified in that order is the development of genetic engineering technologies and techniques “to be able to write circuitry for cells and predictably program biology in the same way in which we write software and program computers,” as well as genetic technologies to “unlock the power of biological data” using “computing tools and artificial intelligence.”
Additionally, “obstacles for commercialization” will be reduced “so that innovative technologies and products can reach markets faster.” ARPA-H is a tailor-made vehicle for fast-tracked (read poorly tested and incredibly dangerous) biomedical research. Like DARPA, ARPA-H will focus on “high-risk, high-reward research.”
Task Force Calls for Psych Screening All Adults
In related news, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force — an independent panel of experts appointed by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, an agency within the Department of Health and Human Services — is recommending that all U.S. adults aged 65 and younger should be screened for mental health issues.5
Is this a forerunner for Webb’s prediction of how the government will detect mental health “pre-crimes”? The task force is accepting public comments on the proposal until October 17, 2022.6
Health and Biowarfare Have Become Increasingly Entwined
While we often think of military defense and public health as two very different areas of concern, the two have over the years merged to a significant extent, which in some ways helps explain why the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is now acting in ways that can best be described as a covert war against the health of the American public.
In June 2002, President Bush signed the “Biodefense for the 21st Century”7 directive, the aim of which was to advance a “comprehensive framework” for U.S. biodefense, based on the assumption that America could be devastated by a bioweapons attack.
The directive outlined “essential pillars” of the U.S. biodefense program, including threat awareness and vulnerability assessment, prevention and protection, surveillance and detection, response and recovery.
In 2002, the Bush administration quintupled biodefense spending to $317 million, and the following year, that budget ballooned to $2 billion.8 Bush also earmarked another $6 billion for the development and stockpiling of vaccines over the next decade.
The man selected by Vice President Dick Cheney to oversee the spending of much of these vast amounts of cash was Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) since 1984.
In 2003, Fauci’s professional responsibilities were expanded to include all civilian biodefense research, both classified and unclassified, and the development of medical countermeasures against terrorist threats from infectious diseases9 — and all without oversight. For all these years, he’s had carte blanche to approve and run whatever biodefense research he wanted, without anyone telling him otherwise.
We now know Fauci has funded a wide array of risky gain-of-function research, including research that may have been instrumental in the creation of SARS-CoV-2. And while all of that is being justified in the name of biodefense, in reality, all biodefense research is biowarfare research. Everything has dual use.
Allegiance to the Highest Bidder
At the same time that he’s involved in the creation of lethal pathogens capable of devastating the global population, Fauci is also supposed to protect the American public against infectious diseases. In the case of COVID-19, he clearly failed, even though he confidently predicted10 that President Trump would have to face an infectious outbreak.
As it stands, ARPA-H is also housed under the umbrella of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), just like the NIAID. So, we basically have two biowarfare/defense agencies smack-dab in the middle of a public health agency.
Add to that the fact that “biodefense” has for the last nearly three years been used to strip Americans of their Constitutional rights and freedoms, and it’s starting to look as though our public health agencies have been turned into Department of Defense proxies.
The designated enemy is the American people, and the weapons of war are a combination of souped-up pathogens and gene-based technologies cooked up in Fauci-funded labs, and DOD-directed surveillance and social engineering technologies.
It makes sense to ask why the American defense department would turn its military might against its own people, the very ones it’s supposed to protect. The answer is that most nations have been infiltrated and basically taken over by globalist interests that want to erase national borders in favor of a centralized global governance board.
The United States is, unfortunately, no exception. So, the short answer is, the American government is not attacking Americans on their own accord. They’re merely doing the bidding of globalist interests.
Why? That’s a tougher question to answer. Some probably decided to sell out to the highest bidder. Others truly believe in the ideologies of technocracy and transhumanism that The Great Reset authors espouse.
Some might not realize why they’re doing what they’re doing. They’re just following orders and haven’t thought it through. Others may be psychopaths and just don’t care what happens, as long as they get theirs. Some are bonafide eugenicists and want to thin the herd, and all the more so if they can make a buck in the process.
ARPA-H’s Original Intention: Neuropsychiatric Monitoring
Focusing for a moment on the psychiatric monitoring issue mentioned earlier, Webb, in her article, explained how ARPA-H proponents, in 2019, wanted Trump to implement it for the prevention of mass shootings — not cancer. As explained by Webb:11
“ARPA-H is not a new and exclusive Biden administration idea; there was a previous attempt to create a ‘health DARPA’ during the Trump administration in late 2019 …
In 2019, the same foundation and individuals currently backing Biden’s ARPA-H had urged then president Trump to create ‘HARPA,’ not for the main purpose of researching treatments for cancer and Alzheimer’s, but to stop mass shootings before they happen through the monitoring of Americans for ‘neuropsychiatric’ warning signs.
For the last few years, one man has been the driving force behind HARPA — former vice chair of General Electric and former president of NBC Universal, Robert Wright.
Through the Suzanne Wright Foundation (named for his late wife), Wright has spent years lobbying for an agency that ‘would develop biomedical capabilities — detection tools, treatments, medical devices, cures, etc.— for the millions of Americans who are not benefitting from the current system.’
While he, like Biden, has cloaked the agency’s actual purpose by claiming it will be mainly focused on treating cancer, Wright’s 2019 proposal to his personal friend Donald Trump revealed its underlying ambitions.
As first proposed by Wright in 2019, the flagship program of HARPA would be SAFE HOME, short for Stopping Aberrant Fatal Events by Helping Overcome Mental Extremes.12
SAFE HOME would suck up masses of private data from ‘Apple Watches, Fitbits, Amazon Echo, and Google Home’ and other consumer electronic devices, as well as information from health-care providers to determine if an individual might be likely to commit a crime. The data would be analyzed by artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms ‘for early diagnosis of neuropsychiatric violence.’
The Department of Justice’s pre-crime approach known as DEEP13 was activated just months before Trump left office; it was also justified as a way to ‘stop mass shootings before they happen.’ Soon after Biden’s inauguration, the new administration began using information from social media to make pre-crime arrests14 as part of its approach toward combatting ‘domestic terror.’
Given the history of Silicon Valley companies collaborating with the government on matters of warrantless surveillance,15 it appears that aspects of SAFE HOME may already be covertly active under Biden, only waiting for the formalization of ARPA-H/HARPA to be legitimized as public policy.”
Total Information Awareness
According to Webb, ARPA-H’s connections to DARPA suggests the new agency is a new version of DARPA’s failed Total Information Awareness (TIA) program, a biosurveillance project launched in the aftermath of 9/11.
The goal was to develop information technologies capable of automatically detecting the release of a pathogen by “monitoring nontraditional data sources,” including “prediagnostic medical data” and “behavioral indicators.”
Put plainly, they were trying to identify bioterrorist threats by spying on the public. “Now, under the guise of the proposed ARPA-H, DARPA’s original TIA would essentially be making a comeback for all intents and purposes as its own spin-off,” Webb writes.
Into this mix we also have to add Big Tech. The list of tech companies with DOD contracts is a long one, so many technologies have dual purposes. Facebook is but one example of that. This dual purpose also goes the other way. For example, the U.S. military is developing biometric wearables to detect COVID-19, ostensibly to allow Americans to “return to work safely.” As noted by Webb:16
“While of interest to the military, these wearables are primarily intended for mass use — a big step toward the infrastructure needed for the resurrection of a bio-surveillance program to be run by the national-security state.”
We also now know the U.S. government illegally instructs tech platforms to censor information and people on its behalf. So, Big Tech is also best viewed as a weapon, wielded by the U.S. government for the benefit of the technocratic cabal that wants to do away with nations and run the whole world.
The Era of Digital Dictatorship Is Upon Us
There can be little doubt today that “biosecurity” is the favored justification for the need of a digital dictatorship. Stripping you of your freedom is “for your own safety,” and you’re supposed to be thankful. If you’re not, the biosecurity state labels you a homicidal bioterrorist.
It’s easy to see, actually, why biosecurity is such an alluring ploy. It’s easy to make people afraid of something they can’t see. It’s easy to fake an outbreak. It’s easy to get rid of anyone you want simply by labeling them a biothreat and tossing them into a quarantine camp, never to be heard of again. It’s easy to get people to comply with surveillance, as most are scared of getting sick.
It’s easy to get people to turn on each other, again because they’re afraid of getting sick. All you have to do is declare people who don’t mask up or won’t get the latest gene therapy a threat to public health, and people around them do the harassing. We’ve even discovered it’s easy to get people to commit voluntary suicide by taking a poisonous, experimental injection they know nothing about — again because they’re afraid of getting sick.
It’s a good plan. Just look at how easily these maniacs eliminated more than 5.9 million people worldwide with SARS-CoV-2 (many of which were killed by intentionally improper treatment protocols), and how easily they’re eliminating millions more in excess deaths from the COVID jab. All without firing a single bullet or lighting up a single gas chamber. It’s amazing, really. As noted by Webb:17
“In the merging of ‘national security’ and ‘health security,’ any decision or mandate promulgated as a public health measure could be justified as necessary for ‘national security,’ much in the same way that the mass abuses and war crimes that occurred during the post-9/11 ‘war on terror’ were similarly justified by ‘national security’ with little to no oversight.
Yet, in this case, instead of only losing our civil liberties and control over our external lives, we stand to lose sovereignty over our individual bodies … The … NIH’s BRAIN initiative … was launched, among other things, to ‘develop tools to record, mark, and manipulate precisely defined neurons in the living brain’ that are determined to be linked to an ‘abnormal’ function or a neurological disease …
Biden’s newly announced agency … would integrate those past Obama-era initiatives with Orwellian applications under one roof, but with even less oversight than before. It would also seek to expand and mainstream the uses of these technologies and potentially move toward developing policies that would mandate their use …
ARPA-H … will be used to resurrect dangerous and long-standing agendas of the national-security state and its Silicon Valley contractors, creating a ‘digital dictatorship’ that threatens human freedom, human society, and potentially the very definition of what it means to be human.”
US Military Spends Millions Spying on Americans
In related news, Vice recently reported the U.S. military has purchased a mass monitoring tool called “Augury,” which is said to capture everything “except the smell of electricity”:18
“Multiple branches of the U.S. military have bought access to a powerful internet monitoring tool that claims to cover over 90 percent of the world’s internet traffic, and which in some cases provides access to people’s email data, browsing history, and other information such as their sensitive internet cookies, according to contracting data and other documents …
Additionally, Sen. Ron Wyden says that a whistleblower has contacted his office concerning the alleged warrantless use19 and purchase of this data by NCIS, a civilian law enforcement agency that’s part of the Navy …
The tool, called Augury … bundles a massive amount of data together and makes it available to government and corporate customers as a paid service … agencies that deal with criminal investigations have also purchased the capability. The military agencies did not describe their use cases for the tool.”
According to Vice, the U.S. Navy, Army, Cyber Command and the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency have spent at least $3.5 million to access this tool. The question is why. As noted by Vice, rather than getting a proper warrant, U.S. agencies frequently simply purchase the desired data, be it cell phone data or internet use data, from private companies.
In the case of Augury, it harvests an estimated 93% of all internet traffic, including browser history, URLs visited, cookie usage, email data, and most importantly, packet capture data (PCAP) related to email, remote desktop and file sharing protocols.
In all, it’s an insane amount of data being captured without our knowledge, which is then sold for a hefty profit by a private company (and this is just one of many) to government agencies that use our tax dollars to spy on us.
Google — The Biggest Spy Machine of All
A key player in this digital prison being built around us, on the taxpayers’ dime, is Google. Not only is it a massive spy machine, capturing “every word of every email sent through Gmail and every click made on a Chrome browser,”20 it’s also a key censoring tool. Sure, it’s private and “can do what it wants,” but it’s actually doing the government’s bidding, so it’s not independent in any serious definition of the word.
Google is also a frontrunner and expert in artificial intelligence, required for effective social engineering, and both are crucial components of The Great Reset’s social credit system.
Google’s interference in your life is only going to increase, and if you’re still using Gmail, understand that they are censoring your inbox. While about 50% of our subscribers are using Gmail accounts, the delivery rate for Gmail accounts is HALF of all the email providers like ProtonMail.
So, if you are using Gmail to receive our newsletter please change immediately. ProtonMail is an excellent alternative. It provides end-to-end encryption to protect your content and other user data. Proton also provides an encrypted calendar, encrypted cloud storage and free VPN.
Stop Feeding the Beast
Next, start weeding out any and all other Google products. All Google products are interconnected, and the data from all their different products and services are collected to build your personality profile.
That profile is then sold to third parties. It’s also used by Google to influence your thoughts, beliefs and behaviors using AI analytics. AI analytics also bring us back to where we started, with Biden’s new “pre-crime,” predictive policing agency, ARPA-H — or what could become such an agency.
While predictive policing may still sound like pure sci-fi, a January 2020 Intercept article21 cited a 2018 document22 by the data storage firm Western Digital and the consulting company Accenture, which predicted smart surveillance networks will eventually be used for that very purpose.
At present, law enforcement uses CCTV networks to investigate crimes after they’ve occurred. Western Digital and Accenture predict that by 2025, municipalities will be transformed into fully connected smart cities where the cameras of businesses and public institutions are all plugged into a government-run AI-enabled analytics system, and by 2035, that system will have predictive capabilities. As reported by The Intercept:23
“A ‘public safety ecosystem’ will centralize data ‘pulled from disparate databases such as social media, driver’s licenses, police databases, and dark data.’ An AI-enabled analytics unit will let police assess ‘anomalies in real time and interrupt a crime before it is committed.’ That is to say, to catch pre-crime.”
Looking at ARPA-H with a jaundiced eye, it does seem tailor-made for what Webb calls “a technocratic ‘pre-crime’ organization with the potential to criminalize both mental and physical illness as well as ‘wrongthink.’”
Privacy Is Freedom, Freedom Is Privacy
It’s time to realize that you cannot have freedom without privacy — especially data privacy. We simply must have data privacy because our data is being used to manipulate, control, deceive and hurt us. It’s being used as a weapon against us.
Considering how massive the monitoring, surveillance and data harvesting is already, it’s going to take a while to extricate ourselves. Ultimately, we’ll need stringent laws and enforcement agencies that penalize companies that harvest and sell user data.
In the meantime, we need to educate each other about the control grid being set up, and on an individual level begin to “starve the beast.” Stop giving away your data. Every single data point you give them is another data point that will be used to educate AI on how to better control people.
Ditching Google products — all of them — will take a big chunk out of the data harvesting effort. So, don’t delay. Start today. Several of the most commonly-used Google traps are listed in the list and graphic below.
If you’re a high school student, do not convert the Google accounts you created as a student into personal accounts.
Switch to a secure document sharing service — Ditch Google Docs and use another alternative such as Zoho Office, Etherpad, CryptPad, OnlyOffice or Nuclino, all of which are recommended by NordVPN.24 Digital Trends has also published a number of alternatives.25
Delete all Google apps from your phone and purge Google hardware.
Avoid websites that use Google Analytics — To do that, you’ll need to check the website’s privacy policy and search for “Google.” Websites are required to disclose if they use a third-party surveillance tool. If they use Google Analytics, ask them to switch!
Don’t use Google Home devices in your house or apartment — These devices record everything that occurs in your home, both speech and sounds such as brushing your teeth and boiling water, even when they appear to be inactive, and send that information back to Google. The same goes for Google’s home thermostat Nest and Amazon’s Alexa.
Don’t use an Android cellphone, as it’s owned by Google.
Ditch Siri, which draws all its answers from Google.
Don’t use Fitbit, as it was recently purchased by Google and will provide them with all your physiological information and activity levels, in addition to everything else that Google already has on you.
Stop using Gmail — Use a privacy based encryption service like ProtonMail.
Stop using Chrome browser and Google Search — Brave is the browser of choice and while you are there, you can use the new Brave search engine.
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This column was used by Facebook’s community standards “overseers” as an excuse to censor us and then lock us out of our Facebook page.
The very same afternoon that we posted this article on Facebook and shared with with our friends, like Tea Party International, our account was frozen for 29-days.
Facebook is now in the business of protecting Antifa, a group that has caused riots across America using the false narrative that American patriots are Fascists. As we pointed out in our article Joseph Goebbels said, “Accuse the other side of that which you are guilty.”
Facebook is now censoring those who dare to expose those who accuse the other side of that of which they, themselves, are guilty.
Therefore, Facebook by censoring us is in essence “promoting violence” against Americans and their community standards censors prove it.
We have noticed that since Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. was sworn into office on January 20th, 2021 our Facebook account has been charged with multiple, continuing restrictions for violating “community standards.”
Our account was first shut down for 24-hours (e.g. no posting, sharing, commenting, liking) on March 13th, 2021 for violating Facebook’s “community standards.”
The most recent violation of “community standards” restriction was place on our account on August 21st, 2022 for a period of thirty-nine days for posting about Covid, vaccines, MAGA and other related links.
Here is a screen shot of Facebook Restrictions placed on our account beginning on August 21st, 2022.
Is it just a coincidence that Biden entered the White House on January 20th, 2021 and less than two months later our restrictions began?
In June of 2021 Facebook issued it’s mission statement which is to,
“Bring the world closer together…give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together.
When one reads this mission statement one thinks of Facebook giving power to the people. Right? It doesn’t say give power to an employee of Facebook or say give power to any government entity. Right?
QUESTION: How does restricting any individual’s power to build a community bring the world closer together?
ANSWER: It doesn’t!
QUESTION: What is standing in the way of the power of each individual to build his/her community?
ANSWER: Facebook’s Community Standards!
Facebook’s Semi-Fascist Community Standards
We analyzed this sudden change in Facebook’s “community standards” policy that began, for us, in March of 2021.
On August 26th, 2022 in a BBC News‘ titled Zuckerberg tells Rogan FBI warning prompted Biden laptop story censorship David Molloy reported,
Mark Zuckerberg says Facebook restricting a story about Joe Biden’s son during the 2020 election was based on FBI misinformation warnings.
The New York Post alleged leaked emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop showed the then vice-president was helping his son’s business dealings in Ukraine.
Facebook and Twitter restricted sharing of the article, before reversing course amid allegations of censorship.
Zuckerberg said that getting the decision wrong “sucks”.
“When we take down something that we’re not supposed to, that’s the worst,” Zuckerberg said in a rare extended media interview on the Joe Rogan podcast.
The New York Post story was released just weeks before the presidential election between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, which Mr Biden won.
It claimed that a laptop, abandoned in a repair shop by Hunter Biden, contained emails which included details of Hunter introducing a Ukrainian energy tycoon to his father and arranging a meeting. There is no record on Mr Biden’s schedule that such a meeting ever took place.
Critically, it fed into long-running unproven allegations about corruption on Joe Biden’s part to ensure his son’s business success in Ukraine.
In that context, the New York Post story, based on exclusive data no other news agency had access to, was met with scepticism[sic] – and censored by social media outlets.
Zuckerberg told Rogan: “The background here is that the FBI came to us – some folks on our team – and was like ‘hey, just so you know, you should be on high alert. We thought there was a lot of Russian propaganda in the 2016 election, we have it on notice that basically there’s about to be some kind of dump that’s similar to that’.”
He said the FBI did not warn Facebook about the Biden story in particular – only that Facebook thought it “fit that pattern”. [Emphasis added]
Our federal government paid for Russian disinformation to frame the president of the United States for colluding with Russia.
The FBI put a contributor to the Hillary Clinton campaign’s Donald Trump smear dossier on FBI payroll as a confidential human source after investigating Igor Danchenko for allegedly spying for the Russian government, revealed Special Counsel John Durham in a court filing unsealed by a Virginia federal court yesterday. The filing contains this bombshell and seven other significant details about the Democrat-led plot to use U.S. intelligence agencies to deny Americans the results of their choice for president in 2016.
The FBI made Danchenko a confidential human source, providing him and the FBI’s use of him “national security” cover, in March 2017 and terminated that designation in October 2020, according to the court filing unsealed on Sept. 13. Danchenko is the originator of the false claim trumpeted all over global media that Donald Trump told prostitutes to pee on beds the Obamas had slept in in a Russian hotel.
The FBI had previously targeted Danchenko, Christopher Steele’s primary source, as a possible Russian agent. But after discovering Danchenko’s identity as Steele’s Sub-Source No. 1, rather than investigate whether Danchenko had been feeding Steele Russian disinformation, the FBI paid Danchenko as a CHS.
Trial for Lying to the FBI to Take Down a President
Danchenko faces trial next month on five counts of lying to the FBI related to his role as Steele’s primary sub-source. One count of the indictment concerned Danchenko’s denial during an FBI interview on June 15, 2017, of having spoken with “PR Executive-1” about any material contained in the Steele dossier. “PR Executive-1” has since been identified as the Clinton and Democratic National Committee-connected Charles Dolan, Jr. Also according to the special counsel’s office, Danchenko fed Steele at least two false claims about Trump that originated in part from Dolan.
The FBI before the 2020 presidential election tells Facebook that Hunter Biden’s laptop is misinformation. Facebook then de-platforms those, like us who said the laptop was real, because we violated FB’s community standards.
Then the FBI creates a dossier that is leaked and sent to various agencies and Congress to do a witch hunt against a sitting president of the United States.
Then Facebook goes along with this hoax and even de-platforms people like us who point out it is a hoax. Those who point out that this is a hoax are then de-platformed for violating FB’s community standards.
Then the Biden administration, Dr. Fauci, the CDC and U.S. Department of Health begin a massive shut down of the American economy using Covid as the reason. Then Facebook begins to flag any posts on its platform that questions this national shutdown.
Then the Biden administration mandates government workers, our military and every American citizen get jabbed or lose their job. Facebook goes along with this program and flags any comments that question this policy.
The more and more cases of the mild to serious short and long term effects and even deaths of those taking the Covid vaccines are reported by people like us on their platform. Then FB’s community standards kick in again and people like us are de-platformed.
Then the January 6th Democrat hearings begin and not surprisingly those who call this demonstration mostly peaceful are blocked for violating FB’s community standards.
Then Biden begins implementing his stop climate change at all costs, to the American taxpayer, agenda and FB’s community standards kick in to shut down those who do not believe that government or spending more of their tax dollars has any influence on the weather, let alone the global climate.
We could go on but we think you get the point. Facebook’s community standards are semi-fascist in that they protect this Democrat controlled White House and U.S. Congress at all costs.
Why? Because Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg helped steal the 2020 election by illegally funding ballot drop boxes in key states as dis covered by True the Vote and made public in their file 2000 mules.
This isn’t a conspiracy theory, this is in fact a conspiracy to keep conservatives taking back the reigns of power in 2022 and 2024.
Facebook is part of this conspiracy and we’re calling them out.
When our time in Facebook jail ends for violating their community standards ends we will post this article on their platform. Then FB’s semi-fascist community stands will discover us and we will be back the the Facebook gulag.
Chris Baugh, one of Adams’ top aides, was recorded discussing how delicate the situation in the city has become due to the thousands of migrants being sent up north from the U.S-Mexico border.
Here are some of the highlights from today’s video:
Chris Baugh, Advance Team Aide, NYC Mayor Eric Adams: “There was talk about us just limiting the number of migrants we would accept, and I’m glad we didn’t do it that way. But I still think what [Texas Governor] Abbott was doing has proven effective. Like, it’s flooded our system. We have more people in social services than we’ve ever have — potentially ever in history. So, it’s effectively demonstrating the strain.”
Baugh: “Frankly, I don’t know how much Biden is going to appreciate having a mayor be like, ‘Hey, you owe blue cities money because of this migrant crisis.’ Like, eventually that’s going to make Biden look bad. We’re a month out [until] midterms and he is not going to like that. It’s a very perilous situation for him and I don’t know that Eric Adams is capable enough to navigate it.”
Baugh: “I think the optics of this are bad for Biden and bad for the mayor, and I think Biden saying, ‘Alright, I’m just gonna give money to New York City because they can’t take care of these migrants’ is just gonna be bad politics for him.”
NYC Mayor’s Press Secretary Fabien Levy RESPONDS: “Time and again, Project Veritas has lied and spliced video to spin false narratives and deceive the American people. No one has any reason to believe a word from an enterprise run by a convicted criminal and one that admitted to lying in an effort to even have a conversation with a member of our team.”
In the video, Baugh acknowledges that blame falls on NYC officials if the migrant crisis isn’t resolved in the city.
“Emergency [federal] money should be going to Florida and Puerto Rico before it should be coming here [to NYC]. Ultimately, it’s us struggling to comply with our own laws. Our ‘Right to Shelter Laws’ and other stuff,” he said.
“It’s going to be the biggest test of his [Adams’] political career, which is kind of wild being that he has been in office for nine months or 10 months now…Just like, if he gets this right, like, if we can weather the surge of migrants and commit to, whatever it’s called, ‘Right to Shelter Laws’ and all of that, he is going to look like a hero. If [it] goes the other direction, Greg Abbott and Ron DeSantis are going to be like, ‘The Democrats don’t practice what they preach,’ and it’s going to be a huge pitfall for him,” he said.
“So, we’ll see. Like I said, this could define his entire time in office.”
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2022-10-19 10:53:392022-10-19 10:53:39Top Aide to NYC Mayor Eric Adams ADMITS Migrant Crisis is Catastrophic for the City
Even in deep blue Philadelphia the FLOTUS is booed. Fans chant “Let’s go Brandon” in the stands. The American people know. Watch below.
What does it mean when a heavily Democrat city like Philadelphia boos Jill Biden and chants “Let’s go Brandon” during an Eagles game?pic.twitter.com/0XVIkwBkwF
To be fair, it isn’t called the city of sisterly love.
FLOTUS Dr. Jill Biden got no love from her hometown of Philadelphia (raised just outside) on Sunday night, as she attended the opening coin toss as a special guest; the Philly crowd booed her “bad” according to reports.
From The New York Post:
The first lady was serving as the Eagles’ honorary captain for the game and was also present to promote the Biden administration’s Cancer Moonshot initiative.
Jill Biden received the traditional greeting from the Philly Phaithful as she took the field with cancer patients, survivors, and their families.
Watch the clip below:
Social Media Communists are Censoring Jill Biden getting mercilessly booed at the Eagles game.🦅🤣🤣🤣
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2022-10-19 10:53:382022-10-19 10:53:38FJB VIDEOS: Jill Biden Gets ‘LOUDLY Booed’ At Eagles Game In Her Hometown
