A California judge struck down a 2020 law Friday requiring public companies to meet racial or sexual minority quotas for their board of directors.
Conservative legal advocacy group Judicial Watch sued California on behalf of three taxpayers in October 2020 to block the enforcement of Assembly Bill 979, which required publicly-held corporations to give positions on their board of directors to members of “underrepresented communities,” including those who identify as a racial minority or gay, lesbian or transgender. The law levies penalties against companies who fail to comply with the requirements.
Judicial Watch alleged that taxpayer funding of the bill was illegal under the state constitution as the bill discriminates on the basis of race or sexual preference, and that enforcement of the law through compiling and reporting demographic data would have created an ongoing cost for taxpayers in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
“In its ruling today, the court upheld the core American value of equal protection under the law. Judicial Watch’s taxpayer clients are heroes for standing up for civil rights against the Left’s pernicious efforts to undo anti-discrimination protections,” Fitton continued.
California’s push for racial and LGBT quotas came amid a broader corporate campaign to bring more minorities into corporate leadership positions, such as the NASDAQ stock exchange’s attempt to require companies to have at least two board directors who were female, LGBT, or a racial or ethnic minority.
Judicial Watch did not immediately respond to The Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for further comment.
“We can report that there are problematic system-wide issues that relate to early ballot handling and verification,” the Arizona attorney general report reads.
Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovichalleges “serious vulnerabilities that must be addressed and raise questions about the 2020 election in Arizona” in a report to the state Senate on the controversial management of the election in Maricopa County, the state’s most populous county.
Brnovich, who is running in the GOP primary to take Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly’s seat in the U.S. Senate, found “problematic system-wide issues” with early ballots in his interim report, delivered Wednesday to President of the Arizona State Senate Karen Fann (R).
Tweeting out the report on Wednesday, Brnovich wrote, “We can report that there are problematic system-wide issues that relate to early ballot handling and verification.”
The problems cited by Brnovich include:
election officials having on average less than five seconds to verify early voting ballot signatures;
“multiple violations” in the handling and delivery to election offices of about 20% of ballots in drop boxes;
almost $8 million in private grant money used by election officials in the vote count, donations which would now be illegal under a recently enacted law.
The attorney general reported that he found it difficult to get county officials to cooperate with his requests for information and revealed that his office’s Election Integrity Unit “has uncovered instances of election fraud by individuals who have been or will be prosecuted for various election crimes.”
Establishment media outlets are downplaying the findings of the report with headlines like the following:
Brnovich, however, told “Just the News, Not Noise” TV show on Thursday that if people “read that interim report, they will find very troubling aspects of what happened during the 2020 election.”
“[F]undamentally, one of the greatest threats to election security and integrity is mail-in ballots and the handling of mail-in ballots,” Brnovich said. “And don’t just take my word for it. Literally, the worst president in [the] history of the United States before Joe Biden — Jimmy Carter —literally said the same thing, you know, 17 years ago. And it’s amazing how now the left and the Democrats don’t seem to care about election integrity.”
The attorney general was referring to a report by the 2005 Commission on Federal Election Reform, on which former President Carter served. The commission warned that voting by mail “increases the risk of fraud.”
*****
To read the rest of this report, click here, and go to JustTheNews.com
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00ThePricklyPear.orghttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngThePricklyPear.org2022-04-08 10:25:002022-04-08 10:25:00Arizona AG Reports ‘serious vulnerabilities’ in Maricopa Co. ‘raise questions’ About 2020 election
Cancel culture is sometimes mistaken as the central problem in the life of the West. This happens, I have noticed, more among our U.K. cousins than stateside. Cancel culture, however, is merely a tool, the enforcement mechanism with which the woke left retains the cultural territory it has conquered.
The central problem facing citizens of Western countries is that a very hardcore, Marxian left has scored significant victories in its steady march toward the takeover of cultural institutions. This is a strategy first thought up by an Italian, Antonio Gramsci, who co-founded Italy’s Communist Party in 1921.
Gramsci taught Marxists that, to achieve Karl Marx’s goal of abolishing private property, the family, the church, and the nation-state, they did not need the bloody revolution that Marx had also called for. In Western countries, with their rich civil societies, it was better to infiltrate the cultural institutions, take them over, and indoctrinate the people into abandoning their love for the family, nation, etc., which Gramsci called “false consciousness.”
Indoctrination would raise their consciousness. This led to struggle sessions, which had harrowing results from China to the fields of Cambodia to the West in the 21st century.
Marxism needed coercion, despotism, and outright terror from the start, and Marx called for all three. In 1948, Marx spelled this out in his essay “The Victory of the Counter-Revolution in Vienna,” where he wrote, “There is only one way in which the murderous death agonies of the old society and the bloody birth throes of the new society can be shortened, simplified and concentrated, and that way is revolutionary terror.”
In our Western societies, state coercion of free speech must be presented in less truculent a fashion. This is why Herbert Marcuse, the Frankfurt School neo-Marxist who did so much to promote critical theory and the sexual revolution in the United States, came out with something called—we kid not—“Repressive Tolerance.”
In a 1969 essay by that name, Marcuse wrote that “In this society … false consciousness has become the general consciousness—from the government down to its last objects. The small and powerless minorities which struggle against the false consciousness and its beneficiaries must be helped: their continued existence is more important than the preservation of abused rights and liberties which grant constitutional powers to those who oppress these minorities.”
Marcuse then called for the “withdrawal of tolerance from regressive movements before they can become active; intolerance even toward thought, opinion, and word, and finally, intolerance in the opposite direction, that is, toward the self-styled conservatives, to the political Right—these anti-democratic notions respond to the actual development of the democratic society which has destroyed the basis for universal tolerance.”
That was canceled culture in its germinal stage. What it does is prevent the retaking of the ground lost to the left.
That doesn’t mean it is less of a danger. When people’s lives are canceled, they can lose their freedom of expression, their ability to make a living, and sometimes even their friends. When you have been totally canceled, Franz Kafka becomes your best friend, for only that turn-of-the-20th-century master of the absurd can make sense of your henceforth Kafkaesque existence.
That this fate can lurk around the corner in the free West is something that should concern us all and give us the encouragement we need to fight cancel culture in every way we can. We should expose it for what it is, decry it when it happens, and also summon the courage not to repeat a lie because saying the truth may result in our own canceling.
An area where people have become very cautious of late has been transgender issues. To say that a person can never become a woman, and vice versa, can get you thrown out of polite society, virtual or physical. And yet, most of us know that no matter how many puberty blockers a person takes, or how many healthy organs are mutilated, a man cannot menstruate, conceive, etc.
Indeed, Twitter this week suspended the account of The Babylon Bee, a very popular satirical website that has 1.3 million followers because it gave a transgender man who is a Biden administration official its Man of the Year Award.
The transgender issue is smack in the middle of the culture wars in America. There are many willing to take a stand and say, “No, I won’t live by lies.” Cancel culture is the left’s instrument to force them to do so.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00ThePricklyPear.orghttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngThePricklyPear.org2022-04-08 04:00:002022-04-08 04:00:00Cancel Culture Is Helping Marxists Achieve Their Revolution in the West Without the Bloodshed
Since Russia has not rolled through Ukraine as was speculated by many people, some have argued that Putin would use more extreme measures. The same people began speculating and the Biden Administration followed stating that Putin was poised to use chemical warfare against Ukraine. Biden should first start with stopping the current chemical war waged against the United States.
When most Americans think about the use of chemical weapons, they think about World War I. The scenes of soldiers wearing gas masks in trenches where chemical weapons were used early on by both sides. Interestingly, there was a pre-war agreement not to fire projectiles carrying the dangerous chemicals so canisters were strategically placed so the wind would cause the chemicals to drift into the opposition’s bunkers.
The destructive aspect of chemical warfare was so universally recognized after World War I that an agreement was made called the Geneva Protocol which was passed in 1925. It was put into force in 1928 to prohibit the use of chemical and biological weapons.
That did not stop the use of these deadly chemicals in multiple military conflicts after the adoption of the Protocol. The most ominous use was by the Germans in their death camps where millions of Jews and others were murdered, now commonly referred to in the civilized world as The Holocaust.
In 1997, the Chemical Weapons Convention prohibited the use of these weapons. As of last year, 193 countries had signed on to the agreement. Russia is a party to the agreement. They have been accused of using chemical weapons in Chechnya and Syria but have denied it at U.N. meetings. Certainly, there is a concern that Russia has chemical weapons, but whether they will use them in Ukraine is unknown.
We do know that one specific country has been willing to use chemical weapons and continues to do so. The focus of those chemical weapons has been the United States. We know where these chemical weapons come from. At least one President has asked the country that is shipping these deadly chemical weapons to stop the manufacturing. Everyone knows if they wanted to, they could.
This chemical weapon is so deadly that consuming just two milligrams is deadly to most humans. There are one million milligrams in a kilogram which is 2.2 pounds, about the size of one Tomahawk steak. A kilogram (a kilo) could kill 500,000 Americans. Recent seizures by the border patrol and DEA have netted 588 pounds of weapon which is about 267 kilograms or enough of this drug to kill 133,500,000 Americans.
The DEA estimates that in one year, from May 2020 to April 2021, 64,000 Americans died from the ingestion of this deadly chemical weapon.
We know where this weapon comes from. We know where it is shipped to for entry into our country. This is not new. This has been going on since at least 2013. Both the Obama and Trump Administrations confronted the adversary and asked them to stop the illicit production of the chemical. This country has complete control over what goes on within its borders, but somehow cannot shut down the factories manufacturing this chemical. At this time, hundreds of thousands of Americans have died. Their families have been pillaged, towns have been devastated and children have lost their parents, yet we have been unable to stop this mass murder.
The same country has recently shut down entire cities and provinces because of the threat of COVID. Yet it cannot seem to stop the manufacture of fentanyl, however, because it seems it does not want to do so.
If you have not figured out by now what this is about, it is the illicit manufacturing of fentanyl in China that is shipped to America. A 2020 study by the Left-wing Brookings Institute stated “The government of China at first tends to deny the existence of a problem. Under international or strong domestic pressure, it eventually moves to tighten regulation. But its enforcement tends to be limited and subverted by powerful vested interests of industry representatives, officials of line ministries charged with regulating or promoting the industry, and government officials.” We all know that Xi Jinping could shut this down immediately if he wanted to, but he does not care to do so.
China states it has cracked down on illicit production. It states to the world that it cannot find any smuggling of the drug out of their country. The Chinese government’s responses have been bald-faced lies. They are guilty of chemical warfare against the United States and potentially other countries.
While the Biden Administration decries a potential Russian chemical weapon attack in Europe it ignores a real, existing, and ongoing attack on our own citizens. Biden once again proves his distorted focus on Russia while ignoring the real threat – China. Mr. President, put a stop to this before another 100,000 Americans are buried and thousands of children are left without a parent.
*****
This article was published by FlashReport and is reproduced with permission from the author.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00ThePricklyPear.orghttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngThePricklyPear.org2022-04-08 03:55:002022-04-08 03:55:00Fentanyl From China: Biden Should Stop Chemical War on America
At this point, I think it’s safe to say that President Joe Biden, who has admitted he’s a ‘gaffe machine,’ is more eloquent than Harris.
Vice President Kamala Harris does not have a way with words. No matter how hard she tries to be inspirational, her public addresses are most often riddled with unintelligible babble.
Just this week, Harris traveled to Jamaica to build Caribbean relations for the administration. The corporate press lauded her visit as a full-circle moment for the daughter of a Jamaican immigrant, but any high hopes for a moving moment from the vice president were dashed when Harris bungled her way through a repetitive and nonsensical speech.
“For Jamaica, one of the issues that has been presented as an issue that is economic in the way its impact has been the pandemic. … We will assist Jamaica in Covid recovery by assisting in terms of the recovery efforts in Jamaica that have been essential to, I believe, what is necessary to strengthen not only the issue of public health but also the economy,” she rambled.
At this point, I think it’s safe to say that President Joe Biden, who has admitted he’s a “gaffe machine,” is more eloquent than Harris.
Our elderly president may have a knack for rambling incoherently through panels and press conferences, lying through his teeth, and forgetting important names, but none of his awkward speeches compare to the vice president’s amazing ability to make a word salad every time she opens her mouth.
Ever since gaining the spotlight as a young politician, Harris has blundered her way through public appearances but risen as a Democrat star nonetheless. As vice president, she now has a platform for incessant babbling.
For example: “We have the ability to see what can be unburdened by what has been and then to make the possible actually happen,” Harris said, coming up miserably short when trying to placate Americans plagued with problems exacerbated by her administration, such as rising gas prices and harmful inflation.
Harris’s jumbled, off-script chattering is not only embarrassing but terribly confusing. Maybe her inability to communicate what the heck is going on is the reason why Americans didn’t hear from her about the southern border crisis for months last year despite her having been appointed border czar.
The only thing the vice president seems consistently able to work into conversations is her infamous cackle, but the corporate media “fact-checkers” have predictably rushed to her aid to tamp down public blowback when she fails at navigating even softball questions. It isn’t quite working though: Harris is such a disaster, it’s turning most voters off.
Vice presidents are supposed to advise the president, represent the White House at public appearances, and meet with important world leaders, but how can we expect someone so inarticulate to effectively communicate U.S. policy and interests?
In Harris’s own words, “When folks vote, they order what they want — and in this case, they got what they asked for.”
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00ThePricklyPear.orghttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngThePricklyPear.org2022-04-08 03:50:002022-04-08 03:50:00Biden Can Barely Utter A Coherent Sentence But He’s Still More Eloquent Than Kamala Harris
Another giant Democrat media hoax/lie goes poof. And still the Democrats continue to hold patriotic Americans in a gulag-style prison without due process.
BREAKING: Jan. 6 defendant Matthew Martin has been found NOT GUILTY on all charges by Judge Trevor McFadden. Big win for the rule of law!
By: Jordan Boyd, The Federalist, April 06, 2022A federal judge found a Jan. 6 defendant who entered the Capitol not guilty on all charges after he said he was waved in by two Capitol Police officers. The decision lays down the groundwork to push back against the Department of Justice’s charge that the hundreds of people on Capitol grounds on Jan. 6, 2021 deserve to be punished.
U.S. District Court Judge Trevor McFadden acquitted Matthew Martin of all misdemeanor charges on Wednesday after he said it was “plausible” that the defendant “reasonably believed” he had permission to be in the Capitol.
Martin made the trek to Washington D.C. after he saw a tweet from former President Donald Trump in December 2020 encouraging supporters to come to his rally. Martin said he entered the Capitol when he was “let in” by two U.S. Capitol Police officers who waved him through a doorway. In his testimony, Martin said law enforcement officers did not try to stop him from entering the building.
McFadden established that Martin’s involvement in the event in the Capitol was “minimal and not serious.” He also said that video evidence shows that “quiet” and “orderly” Martin was merely a “silent observer” instead of an active participant who entertained any of the crowd’s rowdy antics.
When the Sante Fe, N.M., man was arrested a year ago in April of 2021, he faced a myriad of charges including “entering and remaining in a restricted building; disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building; violent entry and disorderly conduct in a Capitol building; and parading, demonstrating, or picketing in a Capitol building.”
Quick note: Tech giants are shutting us down. You know this. Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Adsense, Pinterest permanently banned us. Facebook, Google search et al have shadow-banned, suspended and deleted us from your news feeds. They are disappearing us. But we are here. We will not waver. We will not tire. We will not falter, and we will not fail. Freedom will prevail.
Subscribe to Geller Report newsletter here — it’s free and it’s critical NOW when informed decision making and opinion is essential to America’s survival. Share our posts on your social channels and with your email contacts. Fight the great fight.
Remember, YOU make the work possible. If you can, please contribute to Geller Report.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2022-04-07 19:51:262022-04-07 19:51:26Jan. 6 defendant Matthew Martin has been found NOT GUILTY on all charges
And with a child porn advocate on the Supreme Court, these pedophiles have their crimes covered.
Biblical level depravity.
This level of depravity is biblical level. And with a child porn advocate on the Supreme Court, these pedophiles have their crimes covered.
This level of depravity is biblical level.
I just went to the Senate floor to try to pass a bill toughening sentences on child pornographers. And the Democrats blocked it, again calling the child porn crisis a “conspiracy theory.” And that tells you everything you need to know
Today Senate Democrats blocked Senator Hawley’s bill to get tougher on child porn offenders. Senator Durbin even asked, “why now?”
“Because it’s a crisis now. Because there are 85 million images of children being exploited on the internet now,” says @HawleyMOpic.twitter.com/1n2DuTOVci
Quick note: Tech giants are shutting us down. You know this. Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Adsense, Pinterest permanently banned us. Facebook, Google search et al have shadow-banned, suspended and deleted us from your news feeds. They are disappearing us. But we are here. We will not waver. We will not tire. We will not falter, and we will not fail. Freedom will prevail.
Subscribe to Geller Report newsletter here — it’s free and it’s critical NOW when informed decision making and opinion is essential to America’s survival. Share our posts on your social channels and with your email contacts. Fight the great fight.
Miguel de la Torre argues that “hope” is a “white concept,” which would come as a surprise to St. Paul. In typical fashion, Sean McFarland, Carlow University Public Relations & Communications Manager, defends the university’s featuring of de la Torre’s message of fashionable racial hatred, resentment, and rage by claiming that the university exposes students to a wide variety of perspectives in order to encourage critical thinking. Is that so? All right: when was the last time the university hosted a foe of jihad violence and Sharia oppression of women? Why, never, because that would be “Islamophobic”? That’s what I thought. So what’s that you were saying about free thought and free expression, McFarland?
Universities today are indoctrination camps for the hard Left. Flee them.
by Katelynn Richardson, College Fix, April 1, 2022:
Carlow University recently hosted an event on “Rejecting White Christianity” that featured a speaker who argued white people should “crucify their whiteness,” called for the embrace of “hopelessness,” and urged people to “ethically lie” to make right for past wrongs….
The March 3 event was sponsored by Carlow’s Atkins Center for Ethics and featured Miguel De La Torre, professor of social ethics and Latinx studies at the Iliff School of Theology in Denver, Colorado.
De La Torre began his presentation by lambasting evangelicals who voted for Donald Trump, according to a video of the speech.
“When eight out of ten white evangelicals voted for a person who is completely against everything Christianity stands for, I don’t know what Christianity they are practicing,” he said. “But I want nothing to do with that Christianity.”
He then distinguished “white theology and ethics” from “Latinx ethics” and noted that the term white does not refer to skin pigmentation but is an “ontological concept.”
“Those of us who are colored, some of us can also be white. But the good news is there is salvation,” he said. Later, he explained that this salvation means “we [who are colored] have to crucify our colonized minds, and for our white brothers and sisters, they need to crucify their whiteness.”
Torre’s speech focused on the idea of “hope,” which he rejected and characterized as a white concept.
“We embrace Euro-centric concepts like hope because it helps to pacify the oppressed during their oppression,” he said. “It leads to spiritual liberation, and ignores physical liberation.”…
Action for De La Torre means using what he called a “trickster ethic” to transform society.
The ethic covers things like “how to ethically lie so we can discover what is true, how to ethically steal so we can feed those who are hungry…[and] how to disrupt the structures that have trained us to oppress ourselves and to take upon our body our own discipline,” he said.
“This empire was built on stolen resources and cheap labor,” De La Torre said. “So hospitality is really the wrong word. What we need is restitution…By seeing this dilemma through the eyes of the margin, we come to a very different understanding of what the Christian response should be.”…
Sean McFarland, Carlow University Public Relations & Communications Manager, told The College Fix that “viewpoints of lecturers should not be taken as either an endorsement or opposition of how the University feels about a particular issue.”
“Rather, the intent of our university’s liberal arts tradition is to expose students to a variety of worldly perspectives and encourage them to think critically and individually on how they feel about the topic(s) in question,” McFarland said.
“Carlow University is proud of our Catholic heritage and mercy mission, which welcomes all. As such, the University welcomes respectful discourse and multiple perspectives, including being open to hosting speakers like Dr. De La Torre whose topic may engender thoughtful reflection and dialogue.”
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2022-04-07 19:51:242022-04-07 19:51:24Pittsburgh: Catholic university hosts speaker who calls on white people to ‘crucify their whiteness’
I remember 40 years ago, the biggest challenge to defending pro-family values was battling loud mouth national media outlets that made every liberal cause a battle of victimization and discrimination.
Rather than debate the actual merits of a liberal cause, they would focus solely on the plight, hardship and misery of those advocating their crazy ideas for America.
That has not changed. The strategy has remained the same.
Abortion rights? They argue unwanted pregnancies saddle potential mothers with babies they don’t want.
Homosexual rights? They argue gays and lesbians are leading oppressed lives because they can’t get a job, marry, or adopt children.
Illegal immigration? They argue America needs to help the poor souls trying to flee poverty, brutality, and persecution.
A healthy debate on these issues? Forget about it. The media simply labels opponents as insensitive hate mongers.
Liberal groups needed the media those past 40 years. It was their only hope of reshaping America according to their wokeness. Critics were silenced, shamed, but mostly ignored.
But now…
…coming to the aid of a babble of liberal voices are big, billion-dollar corporations.
And we are witnessing how the power of that money is crushing opposing views.
In this episode of Shout Out Patriots we take on two big corporations, Disney and Home Depot.
Disney, because it wants to use its vast wealth to groom little children into gayness, transgenderism and gender confusion.
Home Depot, because it wants people to ‘unpack’ their Christian privilege, white privilege and cisgender privilege.
Who’s ultimately going to win? Well, if ultimately means the Coming of Christ, then Jesus.
But how does Christ win?
The Bible is clear.
“The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet.” (Ro. 167:20)
We have our feet stomping in this episode of Shout Out Patriots.
Remember, for the best listening or viewing experience, please download the episode to prevent buffering delays.
Get a taste of what WE have to say, because we are holding nothing back!
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2022-04-07 18:51:462022-04-07 18:51:46PODCAST: Home Depot Wants Christians to Unpack their Privilege
An electric vehicle requires six times the mineral inputs of a comparable internal combustion engine vehicle, according to the International Energy Agency.
At one time, “Saving the Environment” and “Fighting Climate Change” were synonymous. That is no longer true. The quest for Clean Energy through electric vehicles (EVs) epitomizes “the end justifies the means.”
According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), an electric vehicle requires six times the mineral inputs of a comparable internal combustion engine vehicle (ICE). EV batteries are very heavy and are made with some exotic, expensive, toxic, and flammable materials.
The primary metals in EV batteries include Nickel, Lithium, Cobalt, Copper and Rare Earth metals (Neodymium and Dysprosium). The mining of these materials, their use in manufacturing and their ultimate disposal all present significant environmental challenges. Ninety percent of the ICE lead-acid batteries are recycled while only five percent of the EV lithium-ion batteries are.
Oil has been so demonized that we tend to overlook some of its positive traits as a power source relative to the battery power of EVs. The power for an internal combustion engine, oil, is a homogeneous commodity found abundantly around the world (especially in our own backyard). In 2019, the four top oil producing nations were the United States, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Canada. In contrast, the power for EVs is dependent on a mixture of diverse commodities from just a handful of third world countries.
In spite of the environmental hysteria about oil drilling, the surface area disturbed is relatively small since the oil is extracted from under the ground. In contrast, many of the materials prominent in the clean energy revolution are obtained through open-pit horizontal mining which is extremely damaging to wide areas of the environment.
Nickel
Nickel, a major component of the EV batteries, is found just below the topsoil in the Rainforests of Indonesia and the Philippines. As a result, the nickel is extracted using horizontal surface mining that results in extensive environmental degradation: deforestation and removal of the top layer of soil. It should be noted that Rainforests play a major role in “fighting climate change” by removing Carbon Dioxide from the atmosphere through photosynthesis. The environmental battle cry “Save the Rainforests” needs to be replaced with a new slogan reminiscent of this one from the Vietnam War: “It was necessary to destroy the village in order to save it.” Here is the new environmental bumper sticker for all Clean Energy EVs: “It was necessary to destroy the rainforest in order to save the planet”.
Lithium
Over half of the world’s Lithium reserves are found in three South American countries that border the Andes Mountains: Chile, Argentina and Bolivia. These countries are collectively known as the “Lithium Triangle”.
According to the Institute for Energy Research, Lithium is found in salt flats in very arid areas which complicates the mining process. A multi-mineral mixture containing Lithium is removed from beneath the salt flats. The Lithium extraction from the mixture is a lengthy, 12 to 18 months, evaporation process that is water intensive. Each ton of lithium produced requires 500,000 gallons of water. Besides the discarded mineral salt mixture, the process can result in water and soil contamination plus a depleted water table.
It should be noted that the United States is 4th in total Lithium reserves behind the Lithium Triangle countries. However, NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) environmental protests to “Save the Planet” have stymied efforts to develop the US Lithium market. It seems that our provincial “Earth-Firsters” want to maintain a pristine US, but have no problem turning a blind eye to the environmental exploitation of third world countries.
Cobalt
The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) produces 70% of the world’s Cobalt. While there is no shortage of environmental issues with its Cobalt mining, the overriding problem here is human rights: dangerous working conditions and the use of child labor. Cobalt is a toxic metal. Prolonged exposure and inhalation of Cobalt dust can lead to health issues of the eyes, skin, and lungs. Because Cobalt can be easily extracted from the ground by hand, small scale, bare-bones “artisanal” mines are common. The simplicity of the operation discourages/negates the need for occupational safety measures and encourages the use of child labor.
According to the Wilson Center, “small-scale mining in the DRC involves people of all ages, including children, obligated to work under harsh conditions. Of the 255,000 Congolese mining for cobalt, 40,000 are children, some as young as six years.”
Amnesty International has also made similar comments. “Thousands of children mine cobalt in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Despite the potentially fatal health effects of prolonged exposure to cobalt, adult and child miners work without even the most basic protective equipment.”
The “suspect” (bad) Cobalt is mixed in with the “legitimate” (good) Cobalt that comes from the large-scale mines that have the required safety standards and employ only adults. This co-mingling of “good” and “bad” Cobalt serves to mask the human rights abuses in the country’s mining operations.
As it turns out, however, this charade is largely unnecessary since the majority of the DRC’s cobalt mines are owned or financed by Chinese firms.
Eighty percent of the DRC’s Cobalt ultimately ends up in China, a country not known for being a champion of human rights (the Uyghurs?). So, what is more important: Fighting Human Rights Abuses or Fighting Climate Change?
Copper
Chile is the leading producer of the world’s Copper. The vast majority of Chile’s Copper comes from open-pit/strip mines. This type of mining negatively affects vegetation, topsoil, wildlife habitats, and groundwater. The next three largest producers of copper are Peru, China, and the infamous Democratic Republic of the Congo. Number five happens to be the United States. Several states in particular, such as Minnesota and Arizona, show promise as new sources for domestic copper using underground mining instead of open-pit mining.
However, on January 26th, the Biden Administration canceled two copper mining leases in Minnesota. Commenting on the matter, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said, “the Department of the Interior takes seriously our obligations to steward public lands and waters on behalf of all Americans.” This decision was applauded by the strongest supporters of America’s quest for Clean Energy: Environmentalists and Democrats.
It’s Time to be Honest about Clean Energy
In December, President Biden issued an Executive Order saying the United States government will “provide a strong foundation for American businesses to compete and win globally in the clean energy economy while creating well paying, union jobs [except in mining] at home. Today’s executive action further reinforces the President’s directive to Buy American [except for clean energy raw materials] and ensure that equity [in the US, but not in Third World countries] and environmental justice [in the US, but nowhere else] are key considerations.”
For all the “happy talk” about Clean Energy, our actions simply show a superficial commitment. We don’t want to do the heavy lifting that it will take to make the transition to Clean Energy. Our role in the Clean Energy revolution will be limited to the final assembly of electric vehicles. But hey, that is good enough for our virtue signalling Earth First environmentalists and politicians.
What is needed, however, is an honest and comprehensive evaluation of the entire life cycle of clean energy from raw materials through disposition. There are pros and cons to all forms of energy. To date, all we have heard are the benefits of clean energy. It is now time to highlight the true costs of clean energy which must include the negative societal and environmental impact as well.
Michael Heberling is the Chair of Leadership Studies in the Baker College MBA program in Flint, Michigan. Prior to this, he was President of Baker’s Center for Graduate Studies for 16 years. Before Baker, Dr. Heberling was a Senior Policy & Business Analyst with the Anteon Corporation. He also had a career in the Air Force retiring as a Lieutenant Colonel. Dr. Heberling has over 75 business and public policy publications. His research interests focus on leadership, military history and the impact of public policy on the business community. He is a member of the FEE Faculty Network.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2022-04-07 18:51:452022-04-07 18:51:45The Environmental Downside of Electric Vehicles
New details are emerging about what will happen at the southern border once COVID restrictions are lifted on illegal immigration. The Feds are expecting 18,000 border-jumpers a day. That’s more than a half a million a month.
Three states have sued to get the COVID restrictions reinstated. In addition, Texas Governor Greg Abbott said he will bus illegal aliens to the steps of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said he will send them to Joe Biden’s home state of Delaware, as both reacted to the expected surge in illegal immigration.
So, some are fighting the Feds, but the fix is in. All that talk about addressing root causes of illegal immigration was just talk. The Biden administration is rolling out the welcome mat for the new wave of lawless border-jumpers.
A leaked DHS memo shows the administration will use “broadscale release mechanisms” to open the floodgates. In plain English, this means illegal aliens will be released on their own recognizance or with a notice to appear which, everybody knows, is often ignored. This memo follows a long list of policy changes the Biden administration has made to open the border since it’s been in office, changes I’ve documented in previous commentaries.
But the administration isn’t done yet; the Feds want to open the door even wider to illegal aliens. The administration is in discussions to roll out a smartphone app to do pre-screening BEFORE illegal aliens jump the border. Plans are also being laid to spend big on illegal aliens once they arrive: $69 million for medical support at 63 locations; $32 million for medical claims; $29 million for a new Office of the Chief Medical Officer; $140 million for a new processing center; $97 million for flights and ground transportation; $24 million for humanitarian relief necessitated by opening the border; $25 million for emergency family shelter beds; $527 million for alternatives to detention; $12 million for victim assistance necessitated by causing the immigrant crime problem in the first place; $375 million to administer looser asylum standards; and $389 million to process the application backlog caused by its own policies. By the way, there are more than 8 million pending applications – 8 MILLION. And healthcare for detained illegal aliens cost U.S. taxpayers $316 million last year.
The Biden administration is releasing single adult aliens into the interior by the hundreds every day. They’re given a cellphone so they can be tracked, but there’s nothing the Feds can do if the aliens toss the phones. The administration is also allowing illegal alien criminals to be released into the general population after they finish their sentences, instead of taking them into custody for deportation as federal law requires. The Biden administration had wanted to limit deportation to serious criminals, but a court partially blocked that for now. Finally, as previously reported, the administration is moving to take immigration courts out of the asylum process and have low-level bureaucrats quickly rubber-stamp asylum claims on the spot when illegal aliens arrive, without any serious examination.
A lot of these new changes ignore federal laws passed by Congress. So where is Congress in all this? Why aren’t the House and Senate holding oversight hearings to protect their power and insist Joe Biden faithfully execute the laws, as he is constitutionally required to do? Oh, I forgot. They’re controlled by Democrats, too.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2022-04-07 18:51:442022-04-07 18:51:44Biden Rolling Out the Welcome Mat for New Border-Jumpers
“It’s an organized crime that was perpetrated on Americans”
America didn’t vote for these criminals.
2020 Election Integrity: Georgia – True The Vote Geo-Location Data Reported To Identify Two Ballot Trafficking Transfer-Stations As GA Democratic Party Offices
One of the locations was her headquarters. Developing.
For more than a year and a half since the November 2020 election, debate has raged over exactly how the Democrats pulled off the rigging of the vote for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
Very early on in the discussion of how this happened, people like Mike Lindell, Sidney Powell, General Michael Flynn, Patrick Byrne and others seized and held attention for months as they focused much of the population’s attention like a laser on the Chinese hacking theory.
Lindell spent almost 8 months crafting a narrative in which he was going to definitively prove that hackers stole the election by electronically manipulating the vote totals in all 50 states and most counties. He made a series of boastful videos with names like “Absolute Proof” and “Absolutely 9-0” [which advanced the claim that when the Supreme Court saw the evidence he was going to present to it, all nine Justices would vote to overturn the 2020 election].
All that activity culminated in two embarrassing fiascos: a Cyber Symposium where an audience was lured into attendance based on finally being able to see the much vaunted PCAPs [they were never produced] and supposed Supreme Court filing with multiple states Attorneys General signing on to challenge the 2020 election [the filing was never made].
It may be that instead of relying on electronic manipulation of vote totals by hackers in China or some other foreign venue to steal it for Joe Biden, the Democrats relied on the old tried and true method that has served them so well in the past: good old-fashioned ballot box stuffing. But done on a level never seen before the 2020 election.
This is going to be a painful admission for many like me to make after having spent over a year chasing the rainbow of PCAPs and server images and supposed absolute proof of electronic vote totals being manipulated.
Quick note: Tech giants are shutting us down. You know this. Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Adsense, Pinterest permanently banned us. Facebook, Google search et al have shadow-banned, suspended and deleted us from your news feeds. They are disappearing us. But we are here. We will not waver. We will not tire. We will not falter, and we will not fail. Freedom will prevail.
Subscribe to Geller Report newsletter here — it’s free and it’s critical NOW when informed decision making and opinion is essential to America’s survival. Share our posts on your social channels and with your email contacts. Fight the great fight.
Remember, YOU make the work possible. If you can, please contribute to Geller Report.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2022-04-07 18:51:432022-04-07 18:51:43True The Vote Geo-Location Data Reported to Identify Two Ballot Trafficking Transfer-Stations as GA Democratic Party Offices
The apocalyptic talk about climate change is nothing more than a diversion tactic by the government, the radical Left, and their mainstream press. The many laws, the trillions in federal appropriations and tax credits, and the unworkable proposals to address climate change will not slow the rise of the oceans or heal the planet.
Lobbying for more climate regulation is to enhance the power of the authoritarian state, not protect the environment.
The radical Left has the world obsessing over whether we have 10, 20 or 50 years before the eve of destruction. The hysteria gives the government the excuse it needs for more controls over the energy we use, the products we purchase, the homes we live in, the food we eat, and since the pandemic when we can leave our homes. However, the data supporting the climate studies are rarely made public so that scientists can test the reproducibility of the studies.
Citizens of the United States already live under a legal framework that contains over 3,000 separate criminal offenses in 50 titles of the U.S. Code, 23,000 pages of federal law, over 200,000 regulations, and almost daily Executive Orders that usually limit those actions deemed objectionable to the kakistocracy.
Additionally, the government has in reserve 136 emergency laws allowing it to assume control over industrial production, communications and banking, and most aspects of commerce. Most of these emergency laws are effective when the president declares them effective.
“Predictions of apocalyptic events that would result in the extinction of humanity, a collapse of civilization, or the destruction of the planet have been made since at least the beginning of the Common Era.” So far, the planet still exists. George Orwell noted, “People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their wishes, and the grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome.”
In the case of climate change, those who foresee the future believe that capitalism is cancer on the earth, humans must go, and truth is irrelevant.The Left’s Little Red Book on Forming a New Green Republic captures the many statements by the Left espousing these goals. One of its leaders, Prince Phillip, calmly states, “If I were reincarnated, I would wish to be returned to Earth as a killer virus to lower human population levels.” Perhaps Covid-19 gave him his wish?
The thumbprint of the radical Left is everywhere. In one year, the Biden administration used executive power to shut down the National Petroleum Reserve – Alaska, the Keystone Pipeline, and the EastMed natural gas pipeline that would supply non-Putin gas to Europe. Without energy, the world crumbles. But that is a tactic the radical Left uses to achieve its agenda.
By shutting down U.S. energy supplies, Biden harms the security and economy of the United States. The U.S. is forced to rely on terrorist states (Russia, Saudi Arabia, China, and now Iran and Venezuela), to produce dirty fuels so that we can chug along. Unless there is an ulterior motive, no sane world leader would ever put his nation at the mercy of terrorists.
The radical Left plays the federal regulatory system like a grandmaster pianist. With Citizen Suit provisions incorporated in all environmental laws, the Left routinely blocks industries that need federal permits.
Wielding the power of the citizen suit provisions, the radical Left uses the Clean Water Act to regulate farming and home building, since water flows over the land. The Left uses the Clean Air Act to deny permits to almost any activity having air emissions, which includes manufacturing, energy production and transportation.
They use the National Environmental Protection Act to stall permits for years, sometimes decades, driving cost overruns and bankruptcies, merely by alleging a thousand-page environmental impact statement is not sufficiently robust.
In addition to impeding economic development, the radical Left forces government to regulate almost every item in the home, including dishwashers, washing machines, showerheads, toilets, ceiling fans, light bulbs, heating and air conditioning units, stoves, ovens, refrigerators and conventional cooking products. Seventy-four regulatory standards cover these products.
Another 15,000 products, from coffee pots to ink cartridges, are regulated by the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
Now the radical Left wants to ban many common foods, including sugar, chocolate, coffee, meat, palm oil, soybeans, mineral water, plastic bottles, fish, especially salmon, rice and cereals, and any fruits and vegetables that require water.
Another radical Left group identifies the top 10 foods that harm the climate: lamb, beef pork, chicken, turkey, salmon, canned tuna, cheese, eggs and potatoes.
For plastic packaging that preserves our food, the radical Left has 25 reasons for banning it. They also want to ban soda straws – but say nothing about billions of pounds of plastic and polysilicon solar panels embedded with toxic metals. They’ve certainly succeeded in increasing the cost of gasoline, the fossil fuels that power our factories and economy, and thousands of products that are made from petrochemicals: plastics, paints, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics and countless others.
Now the radical Left is demanding that the Federal Reserve break up banks if they make loans or investments in fossil fuel operations that harm the earth – but not for the mining and processing for billions of tons of metals and minerals required for “clean, renewable” wind and solar energy.
These restrictions rest not on science, logic, reality, or consistency – but on a political narrative that our way of life will result in a planetary apocalypse. The apocalypse narrative disguises the government’s real agenda: a more authoritarian government.
It’s all about authoritarian control, stupid!
The only appropriate summation of this article is to quote David Forman, a radical Left environmental pressure group founder. Forman said, “Phasing out the human race will solve every problem on earth, social and environmental.”
Based on the hypocritical actions of many of the Left’s leaders – like Gavin Newsom, Gretchen Whitmer, Lori Lightfoot, AOC, Nancy Pelosi, Stacy Abrams and hundreds of others – it should be assumed they would be exempt from Forman’s phase-out.
William L. Kovacs has served as senior vice-president for the US Chamber of Commerce, chief counsel to a congressional committee, and a partner in law DC law firms. His book Reform the Kakistocracy is the winner of the 2021 Independent Press Award for Political/Social Change. His second book, The Left’s Little Red Book on Forming a New Green Republic, quotes the Left on how it intends to control society by using climate change to eliminate capitalism, people, and truth.
*****
This article was published by CFACT, Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow and is reproduced with permission.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00ThePricklyPear.orghttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngThePricklyPear.org2022-04-07 04:05:002022-04-07 04:05:00Climate Change Is About Control, Stupid – Not The Environment
A sample of the smart people who were fooled into believing that Putin was a reformer who embraced capitalism and democracy.
Under Stalin’s reign of terror, there were many notable Americans who continued to believe that communism was an ideal political and economic system for ending class distinctions and achieving equal results, or in today’s euphemism, “equity.” During Putin’s early presidency of Russia, there were many notable Americans who believed that capitalism and democracy would bring Russia into the Western orbit and that Putin was a reformer who shared their values.
Both groups had idealism and naiveté in common. Let’s look at some of the people and publications in the second group.
The New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, and Los Angeles Times
In the December 2003 Russian parliamentary elections, Putin’s United Russia party took nearly half the seats. The above newspapers lauded Russia’s move toward a liberal democracy but overlooked the rigging of the election and the scoundrels who were elected.
The Los Angeles Times went so far as to say that Putin’s parliamentary control was an opportunity for him to “push through additional reforms, including cleaning up the entrenched corruption.”
By contrast, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe questioned Russia’s commitment to European election standards. The National Post of Canada went further with this headline: “Racists, killers, and criminals run for Duma.” And an editorial in The Economist declared the death of democracy in Russia.
(Source: The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin, by Masha Gassen, Riverhead Books, 2012.)
American Presidents and Presidential Candidates
Over the years, Putin has gotten into the heads of American presidents and presidential candidates, who have had wildly inconsistent views of him and who have been driven to partisan divisiveness by his actions. Examples follow.
(Trigger warning: Democrat and Republican partisans will find something to vehemently disagree with the following.)
When George W. Bush met Putin for the first time in June 2001, he said that he “had looked the man in the eye” and “was able to get a sense of his soul.” Putin not only didn’t return the compliment but warned that the hostility between the West and Russia that began with the NATO bombings of Yugoslavia in 1999 was far from over.
It didn’t take long for Bush to change his first impression and for the relationship between the two presidents to become increasingly strained, especially over the Republic of Georgia, Iraq, and NATO expansion.
When President Obama was running for re-election in March 2012, a live microphone picked up what he whispered to then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev at a meeting in Seoul: that it was important for incoming President Putin to “give me space” on missile defense and other issues, because he (Obama) would have “more flexibility” after the election.
On October 22, 2012, Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama had their final debate of the presidential election. Trying to portray Romney as inexperienced in foreign policy, Obama said: “A few months ago, when you were asked what’s the biggest geopolitical threat facing America, you said Russia. Not al-Qaeda. You said Russia . . . the 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back.”
Four years later, while campaigning for Hillary Clinton in 2016, Obama criticized Donald Trump’s “continued flattery of Mr. Putin and the degree to which he appears to model many of his policies and approaches” after those of Putin.
Hillary Clinton would go on to blame her election loss on Putin meddling in the election, and she and her campaign would trigger the Muller special investigation with the hawking of the Steele dossier and the fantastical story of Trump paying prostitutes to urinate on a hotel bed in Russia.
After assuming the presidency, and before a meeting with Putin, Trump blamed Obama for sour relations with Russia. He tweeted, “Our relationship with Russia has NEVER been worse thanks to many years of U.S. foolishness and stupidity and now, the Rigged Witch Hunt!”
Recently, in response to the invasion of Ukraine, Senator Mitt Romney called Putin a “small, evil, feral-eyed man.” He also said that Russia is “circling the drain” due to a declining population and that former Senator John McCain had been right when he said that he had looked into Putin’s eyes and seen the KGB.
William Browder
William Browder is an investor who went to Russia to help establish a capitalist economy and make a lot of money in the process. His strategy was to take a financial stake in mismanaged Russian companies and make them more profitable and valuable by rooting out corruption. He thought he had Putin’s backing in this.
Browder’s Hermitage Fund became the largest foreign portfolio investor in Russia.
Browder is married to a Russian woman and is the grandson of the former head of the Communist Party USA. Angry over how his grandfather had been persecuted during the McCarthy era, he relinquished his U.S. citizenship in 1998 and became a naturalized British citizen in 1999.
America was pretty good to him. After getting a degree in economics from the University of Chicago and an MBA from the Stanford School of Business, he went on to work for the Boston Consulting Group and Salomon Brothers before starting the Hermitage Fund.
Russia was also pretty good to him, at least initially. Then, under Putin’s direction, it was pretty bad to him.
On November 13, 2005, Browder was declared a threat to Russian national security and deported to the UK. Over the next two years several of his associates and lawyers, as well as their relatives, became victims of crimes in Russia, including severe beatings and robberies. For example, Hermitage Capital’s offices in Moscow were raided by agents of Russia’s Interior Ministry. Other agents raided the Moscow office of Browder’s American law firm, Firestone Duncan, seizing the corporate registration documents for Hermitage’s investment holding companies.
Sergei Magnitsky, the head of the tax practice at Firestone Duncan, later discovered that while those documents were in the custody of the authorities, they had been used to fraudulently re-register Hermitage’s holding companies in the name of an ex-convict. For exposing this fraud, Magnitsky was arrested by Russian authorities, spent eleven months in pretrial detention, and died in prison on November 16, 2009, allegedly from mistreatment and abuse.
In response to international outrage over Magnitsky’s death, the U.S. Congress passed the Magnitsky Act, which was signed into law by President Barack Obama on December 14, 2012. Under the act, Russians who had a hand in the ugly affair were prohibited from entering the United States and using its banking system.
It’s ironic that Browder’s grandfather was a communist, that Browder had renounced his U.S. citizenship over how his grandfather was treated, and that he had his property stolen and rights violated by a Russian government and its president that had a similar disrespect for property rights and civil rights as the communist government of the former Soviet Union.
Andrei Illarionov
It’s not only liberals and conservatives who were fooled by Putin. The libertarian Andrei Illarionov was also fooled.
Illarionov was a member of the St. Petersburg economists’ club when Putin appointed him in 2000 to be his economic advisor, apparently to send a message to American businesses and investors that he believed in a market economy, given that Illarionov was such a staunch proponent of free markets.
At the same time, Illarionov shared the common belief among free-market thinkers that market reforms adopted by an authoritarian state would lead to a liberalization of the political system.
He misjudged Putin.
He got crosswise with Putin in a private meeting in which he took issue with Putin’s military intervention in Chechnya, saying that he thought that Russian troops were committing a crime. He eventually became persona non gratis and resigned. He would go on to become a senior fellow at the Cato Institute in Washington, DC.
The book The Man Without a Face summarized Illarionov’s misjudgment as follows: “At base, Illarionov had a difficult time imagining he might be systematically deceived—which is exactly what allowed him to be deceived for a rather long time.”
That applied to a lot of Americans and Europeans when it came to Putin.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00ThePricklyPear.orghttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngThePricklyPear.org2022-04-07 04:00:002022-04-07 04:00:00Fooled by Putin
Peggy Noonan, a former Reagan speechwriter and editorial columnist for the Wall Street Journal, represents in many ways, the pre-Trump Republican Party. As such, she has made it quite clear she resents the Trumpetarian upstarts that have influenced the party and yearns for the good old days of losing with what she finds to be grace and class.
The April 3, 2022 edition of the WSJ has an illustrative piece penned by Noonan, “Nixon’s Example of Sanity in Washington.”
She starts by recalling examples of past examples of political extremism and gives some illustrations of today’s partisan divide such as outrageous attacks on Justice Kavanaugh and even the private emails of Ginny Thomas, the wife of Justice Thomas, who expressed fears about the last election being a fraud. She says of Mrs. Thomas, “This is a person who lives in the heart of the Washington establishment and had no proof for any of the wild things she was saying. But when you are a conspiracist, every way you look is a grassy knoll.”
Clearly, Noonan thinks there is nothing, nothing at all to any claims the election was stolen, or perhaps purchased by Mark Zuckerberg. To suggest that elections have not honest, is apparently like questioning whether the Pope is Catholic.
But in reality, elections have been stolen and many people would agree that the current Pope does not think like a Catholic. She seems completely unaware of the many anomalies and illegalities, especially in Wisconsin, Arizona, Georgia, and Pennsylvania, that have been recently uncovered. Nor does she even hint she has read Mollie Hemingway’s book about the role of Big Tech and Zuckerbucks in the last election.
Ignorance is either bliss or material for another column.
For Noonan, the January 6th Capitol riot, is an “insurrection”, fully buying into the Democratic Party’s description of that event.
Then she shifts to the election of 1960 and admits that the bare difference in the vote, of 1/6th of one percent, was likely due to election fraud in Illinois and Texas, which gave Kennedy the victory.
Mayor Daly and the mob-dominated unions provided Illinois for the Kennedy side of the ledger.
Then she follows with, “As for Texas, everyone knew what Robert Caro later established, that Lyndon B. Johnson, Kennedy’s Vice President, had the state wired, with credible charges of ballot-box fraud going back to 1948.”
So, it would seem fraud has occurred in the past, but not in the present.
Then, she really gets at her point. Nixon refused to contest the election because he felt that given the Cold War raging, the country could not stand the risk of division. So even lacking the context of a Cold War with a nuclear threat, Nixon is now an example to all Republicans. Avoid political division even if the other guy is stealing the election results.
She points out that almost all liberal historians, who generally despised Nixon, “speak with respect of this chapter in his life.”
She closes with, “Why can’t self-professed patriots love America like that now-maturely, protectively?”
Clearly, the “self-professed patriots”, are Trumpetarians are of the worst kind. You know, the kind of Republicans that complain when billionaires insert themselves into the election process and suppress all news and opinion from getting on social media or on the major TV networks. That kind of riff-raff that doesn’t “love” America.
Why is it mature and protective of America to be silent about election fraud? How on earth does that “protect” our electoral system and love America? She admits fraud occurred and praises losing candidates who did nothing to contest the results. But to “protect” the system, the best response is silence?
If elections are rigged, what is the point of politics?
For Peggy it seems, whether it be electoral mischief in Minnesota with Norm Coleman (which helped swing Obama Care), or knocking off Alaska’s Senator Ted Stevens with bogus charges, the job of Republicans is to suck it up and take their beating. If you complain, you are not a statesman but a conspiracy theorist.
Ms. Noonan seems to have some sort of psychological aversion to fighting back even when fraud has been established. But it would seem, it is gauche to fight fraud when it occurs. It should only be established thirty or forty years later by historians. Those who knew for decades and did nothing about it are to be praised as statesmen.
Like a battered wife, the correct response for her to the signs of fraud is not to call for investigations but to quietly take the beating and come back to the electoral system bruised and bloody, and give the relationship more time to inflict more beatings. If you just keep taking the beatings, historians will finally love you.
Historically, she agrees that fraud has taken place. She denies any fraud in recent elections. But get this: where fraud has been established, the best thing is to capitulate to those who committed the fraud.
The proper role of a Republican is to support the election of any Democrat who wins through fraud. Don’t complain, and for heaven’s sake, do not investigate. It just is in bad taste.
Mr. Trump has done some wonderful things and said a number of stupid things. But what many admire is that he did not lie down to the establishment in Washington. He fights.
While personally, we are still waiting for all the information to come in, enough is already available to question the last election. At least some Republicans are trying to see that information gets out so voters can decide and then writing legislation to stop election fraud. Noonan is against both getting the information in a contemporaneous way where it will be of some practical use, and then doing anything about it.
Get it? Not only don’t investigate but if the evidence is found, capitulate for the sake of political stability and reverence for the “system”. Going along with fraud demonstrates class and maturity. How else can Republicans curry favor with historians? Getting that approval from historians and writers is more important than getting the actual winner in office.
Democracy means power is derived from the consent of the governed, through voting. It is quite legitimate to ask who voted, were they qualified to vote, did they vote once, were the votes tampered with, and were the votes counted correctly. Peggy cannot seem to chew gum and walk at the same time. But, she can write a silly column.
In corporate America, people who count money get audited all the time, in fact, audited results are required. But for Noonan, people who count votes should always be trusted, even though fraud has occurred before. It is not right to steal someone’s money but it is OK to steal their vote?
Peggy Noonan does not feel election integrity is worth fighting over. It is divisive and in poor taste to do so.
She really does represent the mindset of the Republican Party prior to Trump.
To others, it shows naivete and cowardice.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00ThePricklyPear.orghttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngThePricklyPear.org2022-04-07 03:55:002022-04-07 03:55:00Peggy Noonan and The Republican Future
Like the New York Times with its roster of anti-Israel contributors, such as the anti-Israel post-Zionist Peter Beinart, the Washington Post favors op-ed contributors on Israel-Palestine who are very much on the side of the Palestinians. A recent example, featuring the Palestinian Mariam Barghouti, is reported on here: “Washington Post Publishes Op-Ed by Mariam Barghouti, Who Compared Israel to Nazi Germany,” by Rachel O’Donoghue, Algemeiner, April 1, 2022:
It would appear that having a documented history that has included comparing Israel to Nazi Germany does not preclude one from offering their opinions on the editorial webpages of The Washington Post, a publication that prides itself on a self-stated commitment to fairness.
Mariam Barghouti, who describes herself as a “writer and researcher based in Palestine,” was recently invited to share her views with Post readers, in a piece titled, “Another group recognized Israel’s Palestinian apartheid. How will the world react?”
Barghouti, who has also previously written for and contributed to outlets including The NewYork Times, The Guardian, and Newsweek, came to HonestReporting’s attention last year after we uncovered a series of now-deleted tweets, such as one in which she asserted that “Israel has been beating Hitler at his own game since 1948,” and another that referred to former Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu as being “nothing more than a war criminal and a Nazi.”
Barghouti declared in her tweets that Israel was even worse – more murderous, more evil – than the Nazis, for the Jewish state “has been beating Hitler at his own game since 1948.” And Benjamin Netanyahu is a “war criminal and a Nazi.” Yes, we all remember how the Israeli police rounded up hundreds of thousands, or was it millions, of Palestinians and then sent them off to a series of death camps that that “Nazi” Netanyahu had built. Of course, once this grotesque series of tweets was discovered, Barghouti did the only thing she could do: she quickly deleted the tweets, but it was too late; they had already been seen and recorded.
Such remarks are evidence of anti-Jewish bigotry, and are a breach of the IHRA’s internationally-recognized working definition of antisemitism, specifically making comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis and claiming that Israel’s very existence is in itself a racist endeavor.
The IHRA definition of antisemitism includes making comparisons between Israeli policy and the genocidal program of the Nazis, and insisting that Israel is in its very essence a “racist” undertaking. Barghouti’s tweets, now taken down, make both claims.
The IHRA definition has been either adopted or endorsed by dozens of countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Italy, Sweden, Spain, and Germany.
In her latest piece, Barghouti accuses the Jewish state of maintaining a “deep essence of apartheid;” suggests that Jerusalem’s decision to designate six Palestinian NGOs is part of a campaign to “discredit and vilify” critics; and claims that Israel “weaponizes charges of antisemitism to manipulate and gaslight.”
Hundreds of NGOs are active in Israel, many of them quite critical of the Jewish state. But they are not shut down. The six NGOs that Israel banned last fall were not merely critical of Israel, but their members had close ties to the internationally-recognized terrorist group the PFLP. In fact, there was an overlap of the personnel of these NGOs and the PFLP. These six NGOs were, in essence, working hand-in-glove with a known terrorist group, and thus deserved the “terrorist” designation themselves. Initially critical of Israel’s move, Washington asked Israel for more evidence to justify its banning of these six NGOs as “terrorist organizations.” Jerusalem supplied that evidence, which was apparently convincing enough for the Americans, for there have been no complaints ever since from Washington about Israel’s banning of those six NGOs.
Mariam Barghouti’s description of Israel maintaining a “deep essence of apartheid” reflects the latest fashion in anti-Israel propaganda: that Israel is an “apartheid” state. This charge is made ad nauseam, repeated all over social media. For too many, this charge is enough to blacken Israel’s image; the credulous, animated by hate, will believe. Not a shred of evidence is required.
There are a number of points that deserve to be noted in response to such allegations.
For starters, the accusation of apartheid, which has been primarily promulgated by three organizations — Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch (HRW), and B’Tselem — has previously been thoroughly debunked by HonestReporting.
Let’s repeat that debunking of the “apartheid” charge here. There is no apartheid in Israel. Arabs serve in the Knesset, sit on the Supreme Court, go abroad as Israeli ambassadors. The chairman of the largest bank in Israel, Bank Leumi, is an Arab. Jews and Arabs study in the same universities. Jews and Arabs work in the same offices and factories. Jews and Arabs are treated in the same hospitals, by the same Jewish and Arab medical personnel. Jews and Arabs play on the same sports teams (an Arab is the captain of Israel’s national soccer team), and in the same orchestras. Jews and Arabs own businesses together, everything from restaurants to high tech start-ups. Nothing here bespeaks “apartheid.” The only difference is that Israeli Jews must, while Israeli Arabs may, serve in the IDF.
In addition, two of the organizations, Amnesty and HRW, that have spread this libel have been accused of having a fixation on alleged misdeeds by Israel. For example, when Amnesty released its widely-publicized report last month, an analysis of its Twitter account over the next six days revealed it had posted no fewer than 132 tweets accusing the Jewish state of perpetrating various crimes, compared to just 13 about every other human rights issue in the world.
Human Rights Watch released a 5,000-word report about Israel in December last year, in which it claimed Israeli law enforcement responded to outbreaks of violence in May in an “apparently discriminatory manner.” Yet the same document completely ignored what had been described as “pogroms” by Arab-Israelis against Jews and their property during the same period.
Israel’s police did not “discriminate” in May when they arrested Jews and Israeli Arabs alike who had been attacking one another in such “mixed” cities as Lod and Ramle. But there were many more, and much more violent, attacks by Arabs on Jews than by Jews who, in response, attacked Arabs, during this unrest, which HRW did not see fit to disclose. And that’s why – the only reason – that more Arabs than Jews were arrested.
In April, HRW penned a 213-page report that peddled the “apartheid” canard and a third 6,500-word report was released in May that accused Israel of “war crimes” for its response to the barrage of indiscriminate rocket fire by Hamas during last year’s conflict.
It would be fascinating to see how HRW managed to support its “apartheid” charge when all the evidence – see above — undermines that claim. As for the “war crimes” supposedly committed by the IDF in the May war, there were none. Hamas deliberately placed its weapons, rocket launchers, command-and-control centers, and fighters in civilian buildings, in schools, hospitals, apartment houses, office buildings. It is Hamas that thereby put civilians in danger. Furthermore, Hamas launched its rockets indiscriminately into Israeli cities. The IDF made enormous efforts to minimize civilian casualties in Gaza. It warned civilians to leave, or get away from, buildings about to be targeted, using telephoning, emailing, and the “knock-on-the-roof” technique. No other military, according to Colonel Richard Kemp, commander of the British forces in Afghanistan and the veteran of a half-dozen military campaigns, makes such efforts to limit civilian casualties as does the IDF; it is, he has said, the “most moral” of militaries.
The NGOs that Barghouti claims Israel has unfairly targeted have proven links to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a designated terror group by most of the western world.
The six NGOs Israel banned as “terrorist groups” were not only were staffed by members of the PFLP, but served as the conduits for funds that they received from unsuspecting donors, and then were transferred to the PFLP.
The overlap of PFLP personnel with those staffing the six NGOs, and those NGOs also transferring donor funds to the PFLP, proved convincing enough for one European country, the Netherlands, which initially was doubtful about Israel’s charges against these six NGOs, to itself stop its funding of the Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC) this past January; the UAWC is one of the six Palestinian NGOs Israel banned last year due to ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terrorist organization.
In a letter to the Dutch parliament, two ministers wrote that their investigation found that 34 UAWC employees were active in the PFLP in 2007-2020, some at the same time as holding leadership positions in the terrorist group.
And after it had initially insisted that Israel provide more proof of its allegations about the six NGOs, Washington has gone silent on the matter, presumably because that proof was provided by Israel. The Bidenites still don’t want to follow Israel’s lead and designate those NGOs as terrorist organizations; they are trying to appease the P.A. just as they have been appeasing Iran in Vienna.
Finally, there is an irony in Barghouti accusing Jerusalem of weaponizing antisemitism, when she has manifestly spread anti-Jewish hatred online.
Just this week — mere hours before a Palestinian gunman murdered five people in the central city of Bnei Brak and amid a wave of terrorism — Barghouti tweeted that every year around the time of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, Israel becomes “charged with intensified aggression” to create circumstances whereby Palestinians face violence or “the fear and crippling anxiety of anticipated attacks.”…
Ramadan is well known to be a time when Muslim violence erupts, and not just in Israel; it’s the Palestinians, not the Israelis, who during this Ramadan, as in all previous Ramadans, will demonstrate “intensified aggression” against the Israelis. Barghouti turns it upside down, claiming that the violence that erupts at Ramadan will come from the Israelis, and that is why the poor Palestinians, at such risk of terrible violence from the Jews, suffer this “fear and crippling anxiety of anticipated attacks.” That “fear and anxiety” is not felt by the Palestinians, but by their intended victims, Israel’s Jews, who know all too well how the Muslim Arabs customarily behave at Ramadan.
Will the Washington Post, following the “fairness doctrine,” allow an op-ed to be published in response to Mariam Barghouti? Such an article would answer her claim that Israel is an “apartheid” state, by citing all the ways that Israeli Arabs work, study, play, are treated medically, side by side with Jews, and serve in every part of Israel’s government, from the Knesset to the Supreme Court to the diplomatic corps.
And such an article would note that the evidence linking those six NGOs in Israel to the terrorist PFLP has now apparently been accepted by the Biden Administration, as it has ceased to criticize Israel’s banning of those six NGOs.
Finally, the editors of the Washington Post should ask themselves if they think it proper to run an op-ed on the sins of Israel by someone who clearly has exhibited a deep antisemitism, according to the IHRA definition. Shouldn’t such views have disqualified Mariam Barghouti from making her malevolent and baseless claims about Israel from the exalted heights of the Washington Post’s op-ed page?
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2022-04-06 19:51:212022-04-06 19:51:21Introducing Mariam Barghouti, Washington Post Op-Ed Contributor
Both Murkowski and Romney have been a stain on the Republican Party. Senator Murkowski is likely going to be primaried by Kelly Tshibaka in 2022. Senator Romney must be primaried in 2024 as well. The Republican Party is not sustainable if the RINO Republicans are not punished for consistently betraying the Republican (Trump) voters.
Mitt Romney voted against Ketanji Brown Jackson last year. Now that he knows she gave lenient sentences to criminals convicted of possessing child rapes, he says he will support her nomination. https://t.co/cFIXfQoRQd
The long guessing game is over. Lisa Murkowski is supporting a leftist SCOTUS nominee who will write legislation from the bench and have the potential to harm Alaskans for decades to come. Check out my statement 👇 pic.twitter.com/ZgjABSqal7
— Kelly Tshibaka – Text KELLY to 20903 (@KellyForAlaska) April 4, 2022
Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Mitt Romney Monday said they will vote for Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to be confirmed to the Supreme Court, bringing the total expected GOP votes for Jackson’s confirmation up to three.
“After reviewing Judge Jackson’s record and testimony, I have concluded that she is a well-qualified jurist and a person of honor,” Romney, R-Utah, said. “While I do not expect to agree with every decision she may make on the Court, I believe that she more than meets the standard of excellence and integrity.”
Quick note: Tech giants are shutting us down. You know this. Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Adsense, Pinterest permanently banned us. Facebook, Google search et al have shadow-banned, suspended and deleted us from your news feeds. They are disappearing us. But we are here. We will not waver. We will not tire. We will not falter, and we will not fail. Freedom will prevail.
Subscribe to Geller Report newsletter here — it’s free and it’s critical NOW when informed decision making and opinion is essential to America’s survival. Share our posts on your social channels and with your email contacts. Fight the great fight.
Remember, YOU make the work possible. If you can, please contribute to Geller Report.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2022-04-06 18:51:392022-04-06 18:51:39RINOs Romney, Murkowski, and Collins support Biden child porn nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson for SCOTUS
“The purpose of the center is to support teaching and research concerning the ideas, traditions, and texts that form the foundations of western and American civilization,” the amendment to Florida’s SB 2524 reads, granting the authorization to the public university.
The University of Florida is set to receive $3 million to establish its Hamilton Center for Classical and Civic Education.
By: Campus Reform, April 5, 2022:
A university spokesperson told Campus Reform, ‘While the Governor has not yet signed SB2524, we are prepared to move forward on this initiative.’
The University of Florida is set to receive $3 million to establish its Hamilton Center for Classical and Civic Education.
“The purpose of the center is to support teaching and research concerning the ideas, traditions, and texts that form the foundations of western and American civilization,” the amendment to Florida’s SB 2524 reads, granting the authorization to the public university.
Steve Orlando, vice president for communications at the University of Florida, told Campus Reform, “While the Governor has not yet signed SB2524, we are prepared to move forward on this initiative.”
“[W]e look forward to making this resource available to our campus community,” he added.
The legislation lists a number of goals for the Hamilton Center to accomplish through its mission.
These goals are to “Educate university students in core texts and great debates of Western civilization; Educate university students in the principles, ideals and institutions of the American political order; Educate university students in the foundations of responsible leadership and informed citizenship; Provide programming and training related to civic education and the values of open inquiry and civil discourse to support the K-20 system.”
Bryan Griffin, the deputy press secretary for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, referred Campus Reform to the politician’s comments at a Mar. 17 press conference.
“[E]very single person that comes through our school system is eventually going to turn 18 and they’re going be an American citizen exercising those responsibilities,” DeSantis remarked. “[O]ur responsibility to make sure that they have a good foundation of what that means.”
Accordingly, the Hamilton Center is expected to assist with the “curation and implementation of Portraits in Patriotism.” The project will feature a series of video accounts from immigrants who escaped communist regimes in Latin America.
Quick note: Tech giants are shutting us down. You know this. Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Adsense, Pinterest permanently banned us. Facebook, Google search et al have shadow-banned, suspended and deleted us from your news feeds. They are disappearing us. But we are here. We will not waver. We will not tire. We will not falter, and we will not fail. Freedom will prevail.
Subscribe to Geller Report newsletter here — it’s free and it’s critical NOW when informed decision making and opinion is essential to America’s survival. Share our posts on your social channels and with your email contacts. Fight the great fight.
Remember, YOU make the work possible. If you can, please contribute to Geller Report.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2022-04-06 18:51:382022-04-06 18:51:38DeSantis to authorize teaching the ‘foundations of Western and American civilization’
Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI) on Tuesday announced his exit from Congress, notching up a 40-percent exit rate among House Republicans who voted to impeach Donald Trump.
Just before announcing his retirement, Upton noted in a campaign email on Tuesday “very positive” poll numbers in his primary race against Trump-endorsed Rep. Bill Huizenga (R-MI). Both Huizenga and Upton were running for the same seat due to state redistricting.
“My district was cut like Zorro — three different ways,” Upton told reporters. “So I’ve been here 36 years. When I first ran, I thought I’d be here 10.” Upton was first elected in 1986.
“I got a lot of unfinished business that I’m going to be working on now. … But no, this was our decision, independent of what I did with Trump,” Upton said, acknowledging his failed vote to impeach Trump.
Upton joins three other pro-impeachment Republicans to forgo running for reelection. Those include Reps. John Katko (R-NY), Anthony Gonzalez (R-OH), and Adam Kinzinger (R-IL).
Quick note: Tech giants are shutting us down. You know this. Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Adsense, Pinterest permanently banned us. Facebook, Google search et al have shadow-banned, suspended and deleted us from your news feeds. They are disappearing us. But we are here. We will not waver. We will not tire. We will not falter, and we will not fail. Freedom will prevail.
Subscribe to Geller Report newsletter here — it’s free and it’s critical NOW when informed decision making and opinion is essential to America’s survival. Share our posts on your social channels and with your email contacts. Fight the great fight.
Remember, YOU make the work possible. If you can, please contribute to Geller Report.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2022-04-06 18:51:372022-04-06 18:51:3740 Percent of House Republicans Who Voted to Impeach Trump to Exit Congress
In an ominous warning to Israel and regional Sunni countries, Major General Hossein Salami, the commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), on Wednesday threatened those nations that have “established political and security relations with the Zionist regime,” a reference to the Jewish State of Israel.
He added, “We explicitly declare and warn that the continuation of such relations is not acceptable at all.”
Coming three days before the start of Ramadan, the annual month of obligatory fasting and prayer for Muslims and one of the Five Pillars of Islam, the warning should be taken seriously by those specifically identified in Salami’s threat because Ramadan is also traditionally a time of Islamic terror attacks.
Those attacks may already have begun with a deadly spate of terrorism across Israel, in Be’ersheba, Hadera and Bnei Brak (just outside of Tel Aviv) that thus far have killed 11 people in the space of a single week. Assailants, two Arab-Israelis and the last one from the town of Ya’bad, near Jenin in Samaria, were armed with knives and guns, including an M-16 rifle, in the three attacks.
In HAMAS-ruled Gaza, sweets were handed out on the street to celebrate Israeli deaths, and in Lebanon, Hezbollah hailed the attacks with flags and music in the streets.
An official statement from Hezbollah referenced both the Abraham Accords indirectly and more specifically the tri-partite March 22 meeting of Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett at the Egyptian resort of Sharm e-Sheikh with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi and United Arab Emirates (UAE) Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi Mohammed Bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, declaring that “All meetings of betrayal and the heights of normalization cannot give the enemy security.”
The fact that it was Maj. Gen. Salami, the IRGC commander, who issued the Iranian threat is significant, because it is the IRGC and its subordinate Qods Force unit that provide the support — arms, funding, training — for Islamic terror proxies across the Middle East.
The official statements coming from both Iran and HAMAS, Hezbollah and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the wake of the Israel attacks indicate an orchestrated terror offensive, timed for the start of Ramadan. As Islamic doctrine obligates that a warning be given before attack, the Tehran regime is here putting Israel and the entire region on notice that this Ramadan, as others past, will be a violent one.
The Iranian regime understands that both within and outside of the Abraham Accords, key regional players, including Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the UAE, Egypt, Sudan, Morocco and others are banding together with Israel in an unprecedented recognition of the threat from an aggressive and rapidly nuclearizing Iran.
Those expanding relationships with the hated Jews, as well as the centuries-old Sunni-Shi’ite split that leaves the Sunni Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in administrative charge of Islam’s Two Holy Places — Mecca and Medina — are what’s really “not acceptable at all” to the Shi’ite Twelvers who head both Iran and the IRGC/Qods Force.
It is especially incongruous that at precisely this time, in this atmosphere, the U.S. reportedly is considering removing the IRGC from the Department of State’s Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO) list as one of a slew of concessions to Iran intended to revive the July 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear deal.
Indeed, indicative of the alarm such reports are invoking, recent articles in the Saudi press have labeled such efforts an “absurd” act and a “crime” that will threaten global security. Writing in the London-based Al-Sharq Al-Awsat on March 22, Saudi journalist Abdullah bin Bijad al-Otaibi called the idea of revoking the IRGC’s terrorist designation “a direct threat and danger not only to the Arab states but to the entire world.”
Likewise writing in Al-Sharq Al Awsat, Saudi journalist Tariq al-Homayed drew the broader implications, stating that “Removing the IRGC from the terror list will grant Iran freedom of action in the region as part of a Russian-Chinese-Iranian alliance.”
As the seasons of Ramadan, Passover and the Christian Holy Week culminating with Easter on April 16 all coincide this year, it is urgent that we understand the explicit intent of the Iranian warning to Israel and the region. It is nothing less than a declaration of war against Israel and those regional people who are choosing the pathway of peace and reconciliation with it.
