Marxism in the Classroom, Riots in the Streets - Clare M. Lopez

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by Clare M. Lopez

The production of brainwashed generations of automatons.

The explosion of lawless rioting on American streets was only a matter of time. Sixty-two years ago, former FBI agent W. Cleon Skousen wrote “The Naked Communist” to warn Americans about how communists planned to destroy our system from within, not by means of sudden revolution as envisioned by Karl Marx, but through a version of Italian communist Antonio Gramsci’s “cultural Marxism.” With a nod to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its People’s Liberation Army (PLA), it has been a “long march through the institutions” that has brought us to the brink of catastrophe—and much of it began in our schools.

Chapter 13 of Skousen’s book lists 45 goals of communism in America. Number 17 reads: “Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of the teachers’ associations. Put the party line in textbooks.” And so they did. While American parents were busy working to sustain their families and achieve a piece of the American dream, their children were at schools with teachers and textbooks that taught them to hate America, the Judeo-Christian foundations of our national identity, and the remarkable individuals who built this country on the principles of the Declaration of Independence, our Constitution, the Federalist Papers, and more.

As a result, the brainwashed generations of automatons marching in lockstep out of such schools possess neither critical thinking nor the intellectual ability to appreciate the brilliance and opportunity bequeathed to them by the great philosophers of Western Civilization. But, as Gramsci envisioned, they enter the ranks of art, film, music, literature, faith communities, government, media, and of course, academia, in droves. There will be no need for gulags or firing squads—or at least, not much. As KGB defector Yuriy Bezmenov told us, subversion is a far more destructive weapon than violence. Today, we face a situation perhaps only slightly exaggerated in this recent quote from Jeff Nyquist: “The Constitution of the United States is something alien to most of the persons who occupy the actual government formed under it”. [Emphasis in the original.]

So, how did this happen?

The plot to destroy Western Civilization was hatched in Moscow shortly after the 1917 Bolshevik revolution and implemented through the Institute of Social Research at Frankfurt University (later simply, The Frankfurt School). John Dewey, Herbert Marcuse, and others brought socialist concepts of “progressivism” to U.S. schools through the National Education Association. Out went E Pluribus Unum; the firm, fixed principles of math and science; the accurate teaching of historical fact; and all religion. In their place came the indoctrination of critical race theory, identity grievance, and the angry psychobabble of “victimhood.”

Textbooks like Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States” (1980) and “A Young People’s History of the United States” (2007) that are used across the U.S. from middle school through university, distort the true historical record and paint America as irredeemably oppressive, racist, and unjust. As I wrote in “Santa Barbara School District: Where Marxism & Black Lives Matter -- But Academics, Not So Much,” at Front Page Magazine on 19 June 2020, Zinn’s ‘solution’ was class warfare that pits identity and minority groups against one another, rejects American exceptionalism, abandons free market capitalism, and goads impressionable students to anger, despair, and hopelessness about their own country. Psychologically twisted revolutionaries steeped in Marxist hatred like Bill Ayers and the Weather Underground set off bombs, smashed windows, and assaulted police in the 1960s-1970s. But instead of going to prison, Ayers went into academia and later held the joint titles of Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior University Scholar at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where he imparted his hatred for his homeland to further generations of students. Proclaiming Justice to the Nations founder Laurie Cardoza-Moore appeared on Fox and Friends Weekend on 11 July 2020 and rightly noted that “The greatest national security threat to the United States is coming from U.S. history textbooks and the Common Core curriculum.”

Decades of such indoctrination have wreaked the havoc we see today on our streets: crazed mobs attack police, assault private citizens and business owners, vandalize property federal and private alike, tear down statues without even knowing whom they represent, set up “autonomous zones”, deface synagogues, and scream antisemitic slurs. The avatars of the current insurrection are Antifa and the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. Indeed, BLM even has a national organization called Black Lives Matter at School (BLMS), whose signature objective is the mandatory injection of Black History and Ethnic Studies into U.S. school curricula. A project of the Movement4BlackLives (whose horrifically antisemitic, racist 2016 Program is now archived online), BLMS offers an online Curriculum Resource Guide based on the BLM’s guiding principles and other materials that promote the three African-American Marxist women who founded BLM, “queer and transgender affirming,” “globalism,”  and “disrupting the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure.” BLMS has the endorsement of the National Education Association, the largest teachers union in the U.S.

In California, a proposed Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum (ESMC), which is among other things both antisemitic and anti-Israel, has been under consideration and revision for more than a year. But even as the revision process grinds on, a group calling itself Save CA Ethnic Studies reportedly is attempting an end-run around the system to hoodwink individual district school boards in CA to vote on a previously criticized and rejected version of the curriculum (sometimes without even being shown the original draft). More than a dozen CA school boards so far have adopted resolutions in support of that earlier proposed ethnic studies curriculum. In response, a letter signed by some 88 state and national organizations has been sent to the California Department of Education to protest the Save CA Ethnic Studies attempted deception as well as its efforts to “indoctrinate students into a highly controversial and divisive set of ideological beliefs that we feared would exacerbate ethnic divisions and foment bigotry in California schools.” Signatories include the American Truth Project, Americans for Peace and Tolerance, B'nai B'rith International, the Endowment for Middle East Truth (EMET), Facts and Logic About the Middle East (FLAME), the Legal Insurrection Foundation, Proclaiming Justice to the Nations, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, The Lawfare Project, the Zionist Organization of America, among many more.

Across the country, however, including in private secondary schools like Phillips Academy Andover, Phillips Exeter Academy, and Sidwell Friends, school systems are pronouncing support for the Marxist BLM agenda as they come under pressure to include materials on “institutionalized racism” in their curricula. In public school systems in New York City, Wake County, NC, the Santa Barbara Unified School District, and others, hard leftist school boards are kowtowing to the belligerent demands of Black Student Youth groups and others. At the Santa Barbara Unified School District Board Meeting of 9 June 2020, for example, resolutions were accepted declaring that “all Students Deserve Justice, Equity, and Freedom” and declaring February 2-5, 2021 as Black Lives Matter In School Week (one of the demands of the BLMS group). Then, two weeks later, in a Resolution dated 23 June 2020, the Santa Barbara School District passed a resolution declaring, among other things, that “racism is a public health emergency,” and resolving that “the Santa Barbara Unified School District will develop and purchase culturally relevant resources for educators and families for distribution and posting on the district website that 1) teach about, celebrate, uphold, and affirm the lives of Black people…” (It is not specified from whom or in accordance with which regular bidding process such purchase of “relevant resources” would be affected.)

This is but an overview of the Marxist agenda that has been for decades and is continuing to this day to be jammed down the throats of America’s students. Hitherto unsuspecting parents are waking up, though, especially during this time of online instruction during the coronavirus crisis. They are seeing, sometimes for the first time, what their children are being taught—and many are furious. The more questions the parents are asking, the more the school boards are resorting to deception and obfuscation, deliberately to exclude the very families with whose children they have been entrusted. It’s not their children and it’s not their money. Parents increasingly are attending school board meetings and demanding answers. They are doing what any patriotic and responsible American parents would do to ensure their children are not being indoctrinated and recruited by shadowy Marxist interests to hate them and the country they love.

With our nation under siege, as Gateway Pundit’s Jim Hoft wrote in a 7 July 2020 piece, “We cannot claim to truly appreciate the Founders and the nation they secured for us while simultaneously refusing to do what it takes to keep and maintain this nation.”

“We are the keepers of the flame of liberty” (President Ronald Reagan, 1986)

Clare M. Lopez is the Founder/President of Lopez Liberty LLC.

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/07/marxism-classroom-riots-streets-clare-m-lopez/

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Tehran-Beijing is the New Fact of Life - Michael Ledeen

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by Michael Ledeen

Maybe Trump was right all along?

There are lots of stories telling about an impending deal between China and Iran, about which U.S. officials Keith Krach and Brian Hook issue a warning: “not so fast.”

To be sure, these two totalitarian countries have frequently indicated their intentions to merge their forces against the American and Israeli democracies, and play a hegemonic role in the Middle East and the South China sea. This goes back several decades, if not centuries, and is one of the Chinese historic goals: establishing a global presence.

No one should be surprised by the start of the mutual agreement:

 “In its opening line, China and Iran describe themselves as 'two ancient Asian cultures, two partners in the sectors of trade, economy, politics, culture and security with a similar outlook and many mutual bilateral and multilateral interests.'

Henceforth, they “will consider one another strategic partners.”

The China-Iran deal stipulates a wide range of cooperation across economic, military and security matters, and gives both regimes access to each other’s strengths.

The implications of the deal are clear. China has opted to ignore U.S. sanctions. Beijing clearly believes the economic and diplomatic price it will pay for doing so will be smaller than the price the U.S. will pay for the diminishment of its position as the ultimate arbiter of global markets.

For Iran, China is a life raft saving it from total economic collapse under the weight of U.S. economic sanctions. 

The Sino-Iranian pact is also a military accord...the agreement commits the sides to intensify their joint military exercises. Since 2014, China and Iran have carried out three joint military exercises, the most recent one, a naval exercise took place in December 2019. Russia also participated.

Following the naval maneuvers, Iran’s naval chief Rear Admiral Hossein Khanzadi told the Chinese media the exercise showed, “the era of American invasions in the region is over.”

 
As Caroline Glick points out, the deal may well resolve a long-standing conflict between Israel and the United States. In the early 1980s, I was sent to Israel to ask Prime Minister Shimon Peres to stop trading with the Chinese. Peres promised to cut back, but continued the practice, as did his successors, for nearly 40 years. But the Iran-China deal will put a stop to it. 

First, and perhaps foremost, China knows a lot about nuclear weapons, and has promised the Iranians to help with their atomic program. That changes the calculus for Netanyahu and his people:

Until now, Israel viewed the possibility of removing Chinese firms from major construction projects and other deals as a regrettable price of its alliance with the U.S. rather than an Israeli interest.

The Sino-Iran pact changed the calculus. Cancelling technological and infrastructure deals with China – Iran’s superpower sponsor – is now an Israeli national interest regardless of Washington’s position.

The creation of joint Sino-Iranian bases in the Indian ocean opens the alarming prospect of increased Iranian control over Persian Gulf shipping, threatening American and British influence in one of the world’s key oil delivery routes, as well as increasing the global reach of the rapidly expanding Chinese navy.

Step by step, the new world alignment is taking shape, and there are many unexpected developments, including a strategic alliance between Russia and the United States. Do you remember the early accusations against Trump, alleging that the new American president would turn out to be an instrument of Moscow’s global outreach? Does it surprise you to discover that it’s the other way around? Instead, Moscow may be the crucial ingredient in a new “Cold War” that will see the United States and China facing one another as the two hegemonic powers maneuvering for strategic dominance. It could work out that way.

In any event, the new world order is shaping up, well described by Caroline Glick:

For decades, U.S. warnings notwithstanding, Israel perceived China as a neutral power and a highly attractive market. Unlike the Europeans, the Chinese never tried to use their economic ties with Israel to coerce Israel into making concessions to the Palestinians. The Chinese didn’t work with radical Israel fringe groups to subvert government and military decisions. They just seemed interested in economic ties for their own sake.

Now that China has chosen to stand with Iran, Israel must recognize the implications and act accordingly. 

It seems to me that China has made a strategic error, but the internal conflicts within the country are pretty heated, as are those in Iran. We’ve got a long way to go before the global conflict becomes clear.

* * *
Photo credit: Official website of Ali Khamenei.

Michael Ledeen

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/07/tehran-beijing-new-fact-life-michael-ledeen/

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Is Jeffrey Epstein’s Money Funding Leftist ‘Black Flag’ Riots in Israel? - Daniel Greenfield

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by Daniel Greenfield

The anti-Israel protests are backed by a group funded by the world’s worst child rapist.

Even as coronavirus cases rose sharply in Israel, radicals waving black flags, PLO terrorist flags, and Israeli flags defaced with black, continued their protests against Israel’s government.

While millions of Israelis were facing the prospect of returning to lockdown in their own homes, the radicals gathered in huge groups in Kings of Israel Square, hung black flags on historical sites, and clashed violently with police officers who were trying to stop these violent extremists.

Despite their lack of regard for public health, the radical rallies were praised by everyone from former prime minister Ehud Barak to the Israeli Communist Party: part of the Islamic Joint List.

Barak’s support for the rallies wasn’t surprising since a Channel 13 investigation found that the National Responsibility Association had allegedly spent 100,000 shekels (approximately $30,000) on equipment, publicity, and even potentially expenses incurred by the protesters.

The National Responsibility Association had been set up a few years ago by Oshi Elmaleh, Barak’s political adviser, and by his aides and his niece. At the time, Haaretz had described it as a platform for the left-wing politician to relaunch his career. These days the organization claims that it’s deeply interested in democracy and fighting the “far-right”.

But the Channel 13 investigation suggests that it’s actually playing a major role in the rallies.

Early on, Barak appeared to borrow the symbol of the front group in an op-ed titled, “A Sick Country and a Black Flag”, and praised the radicals who have been staging the protests.

While astroturf rallies and front groups are a common feature of left-wing Israeli politics, there is a much more troubling angle to the Black Flag movement and Barak’s alleged involvement.

"The Palestinian Authority flag at a left-wing protest organized by Ehud Barak, the partner of the pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, yesterday outside the prime minister's house in Jerusalem. Shame and disgrace," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently tweeted.

Next day, protesters outside Barak’s house carried signs reading, “Black Flag protests – financed by money from the sex trafficking of minors”.

The accusations touched on one of the most sensitive issues in Israeli left-wing politics.
In one of the more shocking photos of the Epstein case, Barak was photographed hiding his face as he entered Epstein's Manhattan townhouse in 2016. The British tabloid noted that on the same day four young women had also entered the now infamous mansion.

One of the women was a Russian model whose father was a Lieutenant Colonel in the Red Army, who had attended a university described as an incubator for the KGB, and whose non-profit advocating for diversity in STEM had been reportedly funded by Epstein.

Barak claimed that he was covering his face because of the cold and denied any wrongdoing.

“I was there, for lunch or chat, nothing else. So what?” the leftist politician claimed. “I never attended a party with him. I never met Epstein in the company of women or young girls,”

Barak then threatened to sue the Daily Mail for the “sordid institutions”. That was in 2019.
After the photos came to light, Barak tweeted, "I admit, I usually cover my face when it is cold. Not just in New York. Everywhere in the world. I did not know that this was newsworthy.”

January 2016 was actually New York City’s second warmest winter on record and locals enjoyed temperatures as high as 59° Fahrenheit

More relevant than whether Barak was hiding his face while paying a visit to the world’s most notorious pedophile because of the weather, was his business relationship with Epstein.

Barak claimed to have met Epstein at a party a year after having to leave office where, in his own words, "there were many famous and important people, including, if I recall, both Clintons."

The former prime minister owed his time in office to Bill Clinton, who had allegedly dispatched his advisers to intervene in the election between Netanyahu and Barak. Obama had made a similar effort to intervene in the Israeli elections against Netanyahu, but Clinton had succeeded.

Barak claimed to have been introduced to Epstein by his corrupt Labor Party predecessor, Shimon Peres, who had been defeated by Netanyahu, despite Clinton’s intervention.

"It would be fair to say that I tried to help Peres win the elections, and I tried to help him in such a way that I would not be openly involved," Bill Clinton later admitted in an interview with Israel's Channel 10.

In the interview, Clinton fumed that he was "embarrassed by the audacity" of Netanyahu.
His next choice, Barak, did succeed in taking down Netanyahu, aided by top Clinton advisers,

James Carville, Robert Shrum, and Stanley Greenberg. But then Netanyahu made a comeback.

"You should never underestimate him," Clinton commented on Netanyahu’s recent victory.

Back in 2001, Barak had lost badly to Sharon, and he was soon looking for career opportunities. A New York Times article noted Barak's role in global finance, lobbying for big investments from a union in America as a director of a fund run by an unrelated namesake of Winston Churchill.

During this period, he would later claim to have been earning over $1 million a year. Meanwhile he was engaging in business ventures around the world at firms whose names he kept secret.

In 2006, Barak deposited 38 million Japanese yen in a Cayman Islands bank. In 2007, he made a comeback in a unity government with Prime Minister Olmert, who was later convicted and imprisoned on bribery charges. The Olmert-Barak coalition was a disaster for Israeli security and Barak once again announced that he was leaving politics. He began by selling his 31st floor tower apartment, complete with gym, pool, and spa, for $7 million.

Four years later, Barak was touting a new app named Reporty. Two years later it was renamed  Carbyne and was backed by $1 million in Barak's money and by Jeffrey Epstein's cash. While Barak was the chairman of Carbyne, Epstein had a stake of about 5% in a company valued at around $100 million.

But Epstein didn't just invest in Barak's company, he also invested in Barak's political ambitions.

When Barak’s associates launched the National Responsibility Association, money poured in from American businessmen. The biggest donation came from activist investor Bill Ackman, a top Democrat donor. Ackman, who is married to MIT’s Neri Oxman, had urged MIT to keep his wife's name out of the university's Epstein scandal, after Epstein donated $125,000 to her lab.

"I don't want to see her forced into a position where to protect her name she Is required to be transparent about everything that took place at MIT with Epstein," Ackman wrote to MIT Media Lab bosses about his wife.

A 44,000 shekel ($40,647) donation to the National Responsibility Association came from HBRK Associates. HBRK was Epstein’s secret non-profit.

Barak denied any wrongdoing. He protested that, "like many respectable people in the United States that we have heard about, I would have preferred in retrospect for this relationship to never have been formed.” But when he was visiting Epstein’s townhouse in 2016, the pedophile’s crimes were public knowledge. Epstein had been tried and sentenced in 2008.

“He’d served his sentence for soliciting prostitution, the indictment didn’t say she was a minor,” Barak protested to Channel 12, when asked about his Epstein ties.

Residents of a building owned by Epstein’s brother, which had been allegedly used to house underage girls sent to Epstein’s parties, frequently reported seeing Barak or his security people.

When asked about his visits, Barak claimed that he couldn't answer the question because of Israeli politics. “Despite the fact that there was no wrongdoing on my part, and that there is not even the faintest suspicion of wrongdoing on my part, I’m not going to address these questions."

Barak claimed to have met Epstein, "more than 10 times and much less than a hundred times, but I can’t tell you exactly how many" and admitted to visiting what had been dubbed, Pedophile Island, but claimed that it was, "years after the publications about sex parties or orgies there.”

It's not clear why Barak thought that would be a defense.

The National Responsibility Association promised to transfer Epstein’s donation to at-risk youth, meanwhile it seems to be using its money to fund radical protests targeting Netanyahu.

And it doesn’t end there.

Netanyahu allies have repeatedly raised the question of the $2.3 million that Barak received from the Wexner Foundation. Les Wexner, the Victoria's Secret billionaire, was the alleged source of much of Epstein's wealth.

Barak insisted, once again, that it was no one's business. "My services are in demand, and there are bodies prepared to pay me large sums for them.”

The Wexner Foundation claimed that it had paid Barak $2.3 million to write two papers. The second paper on the subject of leadership had never actually been written.

“We wish to put an end to ugly insinuations, speculations and rumors aimed at tarnishing the foundation’s name without justification,” the Wexner Foundation contended.

In July, Israel cut off ties to the Wexner Foundation over allegations that it was indoctrinating high-level participants in its activities with left-wing politics.

The Wexner Foundation partners with the Jim Joseph Fund, which funds the BDS-linked NIF.

A Netanyahu video asked, “What else has sex offender Epstein given to Barak?”

Barak has continued denying the Epstein allegations, angrily asserting last month that, "In the Netflix documentary that was very comprehensive, my name was not mentioned once.”

Meanwhile the hateful Black Flag protests continue to undermine and divide Israel.

Borrowing from the rhetoric of the antisemitic Black Lives Matter movement, Barak asserted that, “Netanyahu and his gang are sitting on the Knesset’s neck just as the white police officer did on the neck of George Floyd”. The Black Flag movement that the National Responsibility Association is funding uses the same white and red on black color scheme as BLM.

The color coordination and the branding strongly suggest that the Black Flag movement is yet another example of an Israeli astroturf group invented by American political consultants. A number of these “social movements” protesting for social justice have come and gone. Their protests were invariably in phase with some Israeli politician’s ambitions and his D.C. consultants, who were free and weren’t working on a Clinton or Obama campaign at the time.

But Epstein’s money adds a darker tone to the Black Flag campaign against corruption.

Netanyahu reminded Israelis that the protests by social justice activists are not only backed by one of the country’s shadiest politicians, but by an organization funded by a child rapist.

And as the Black Flag protests worsen Israel’s coronavirus crisis, Jeffrey Epstein’s money may not only be advancing left-wing politics, but wrecking Israel’s economy and even costing lives.

As Black Flag rioters block roads, throw things at police officers, and start fires, spreading hate and the virus, somewhere deep down, Jeffrey Epstein may be smiling.

Photo: BNO News


Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/07/jeffrey-epsteins-money-funding-leftist-black-flag-daniel-greenfield/

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How Democrats Are Supporting Election Interference by Foreign Companies - Daniel Greenfield

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by Daniel Greenfield

Foreign companies who stand to lose if Trump wins are participating in an election interference boycott.

If you have Dove soap or Axe deodorant in your bathroom, Lipton tea or Breyers in your kitchen, you're buying Unilever products. The huge British-Dutch multinational made $60 billion last year and is known for its leftist politics. But Unilever may have gone beyond virtue signaling to election interference.

Unilever is one of the biggest foreign companies to join the Facebook boycott by leftist pressure groups.

The boycott’s goal is to suppress conservative speech on social media, especially by President Trump, before a presidential election, by convincing advertisers to withhold ads from Facebook until it complies. While Facebook already censors conservatives, it isn’t enough to satisfy the radicals running the boycott.

Rashad Robinson, the president of Color of Change, one of the leaders of the boycott made that clear in an editorial titled, "Will Zuckerberg dump Trump, or continue to serve him?"

"Facebook also loves its advertisers, and they are increasingly joining the boycott," he boasted. "So who will Zuckerberg choose?"

In an interview with the New York Times, Robinson emphasized that this was about the election.

"Honestly, there is an election and I need to get them to enforce the policies on the books before the fall. I need them to have some real rules around elections and voter suppression posts that actually will apply to Trump and other politicians so he doesn’t do anything dangerous on Election Day or before."

Robinson's examples of the kind of speech by President Trump that he wanted to pressure Facebook into censoring included, "claiming victory early".

The #StopHateForProfit campaign promoted by Color of Change, a radical leftist group, is blatant election interference. And it’s backed by huge foreign multinationals who are interfering in our election.

Unilever's own boycott post blatantly referenced the election, stating, "there is much more to be done, especially in the areas of divisiveness and hate speech during this polarized election period in the U.S".

A huge foreign company was pressuring Facebook to interfere in America's presidential election.

And it wasn't alone.

The Body Shop, a British company, also explicitly framed its boycott around the election, complaining that, "when we see the current dialogue in the US around anti-racism and equality, we continue to be concerned by the spread of hateful content and disinformation online, and the potential for this to affect the democratic right of Americans to have access to fair and balanced elections this fall."

Should foreign companies be allowed to intervene in an American election? Especially when that election has a potential impact on their bottom line?

Diageo, a British liquor company whose brands include Guinness, Johnnie Walker, Seagram’s, Captain Morgan, Smirnoff, and many others, announced that it would participate in the Facebook boycott while, continuing “to discuss with media partners how they will deal with unacceptable content."

The Trump administration has been considering new tariffs on European products from the UK, France, and Germany. The foreign firms joining the Facebook election interference boycott are primarily from these three countries. And, As Bloomberg noted, Diageo is one of the companies at risk if Trump strikes.

As is Pernod Ricard, the French company behind Absolut, Beefeater, Glenlivet, and Jameson, and which is also participating in the Facebook election interference boycott.

Some of the foreign companies that joined the #StopHateForProfit election interference campaign have direct or indirect financial interests that have been affected by Trump’s pro-American trade policies.

Honda had announced, “American Honda is withholding its advertising on Facebook and Instagram. We choose to stand with people united against hate and racism.” American Honda is just a subsidiary of the Japanese company. Its CEO, Shinji Aoyama, formerly headed the Asian Honda Motor Co.

The Japanese automaker has a direct financial stake in President Trump’s defeat.

The Trump administration had declared that car imports "threaten to impair the national security of the United States", and threatened to impose potential tariffs of 25%. After a trade deal, it appears that the Section 232 tariffs won't be imposed, but Honda's leadership is aware of the threat. And the Japanese company would be a lot safer if Trump were out of office. So would a lot of foreign companies.

Playstation, a Sony product, has announced its support for the #StopHateForProfit campaign. Another Japanese company, Konica Minolta, has also been listed as participating in the boycott.

Japanese companies should not be interfering in the next American presidential election.
Neither should German companies, especially those with a Nazi past, be lecturing Americans on racism.

Volkswagen, founded as a Nazi state-owned project dictated by Hitler which used slave labor during the war, issued an ultimatum, “Hate speech, discriminating comments and posts containing dangerous false information must not be published uncommented and must have consequences.”

That probably sounded a little less threatening and bellicose in the original German.

Much like Honda, Volkswagen has a stake in Trump’s defeat. President Trump has threatened to slap tariffs on European cars unless the EU drops its tariffs on American lobsters. A 25% tariff on European vehicles would add $10,000 to the cost of every car and hit German car companies really hard.

While VW is calling for “consequences”, the German company may be worrying about consequences.

Adidas and Puma, rival German companies founded by Adolf and Rudolf Dassler, members of the Nazi Party and suppliers to the Hitler Youth, who signed their letters Heil Hitler, joined the boycott.

Puma claimed to be, "part of an overall effort to create positive change and improvement in Facebook's platform by demanding the removal of inaccurate, hostile and harmful conversation," while Adidas called for, "a cosmopolitan and safe environment." VW and Puma had mentioned false or inaccurate comments which are euphemisms for censoring conservative political speech on social media.

Adidas and Puma neglected to sign off with the traditional “Heil Hitler” signature of their founders.

Foreign companies should not be joining a call by American leftist organizations to censor speech.

Henkel, the German company behind Persil, Dial, and Loctite, another former Nazi company that used slave labor, declared that it, "stands for tolerance, diversity and respect", and that it also expects "this attitude from all of our business partners around the world” as its reason for joining the boycott.

Next time you buy some Dial soap, think about where the German company really wants to stick it.

But it’s not just German companies.

The Lego Group, the Danish politically correct toy corporation, jumped on board the boycott, calling for an, "inclusive digital environment free from hate speech, discrimination and misinformation."

Lululemon, a Canadian company which got its name because its founder thought it would be funny to have Japanese people try to say it, and who endorsed child labor, claimed that it was, "actively engaging with Facebook to seek meaningful change." Perhaps it should start engaging with itself instead.

The Facebook ad boycott is election interference and while it’s bad enough that major American companies like Verizon, Best Buy, Target, and Starbucks are participating in this effort to silence their political opponents, foreign companies joining the election interference boycott is unacceptable.

While Democrats have been clamoring about foreign election interference, the participation of foreign companies in a boycott meant to silence Republicans, has their universal approval and support.

"We share the concerns of companies who are speaking up about Facebook's inaction around making meaningful changes that protects our democracy," Biden's spokesman said.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi went further, boosting the boycott even before it was officially announced.

“Advertisers have tremendous leverage,” she sneered. “I would say to them, know your power.”

Her comments, which came a day before the official election interference boycott, strongly suggest that she had early knowledge and may have been coordinating with the activists involved. The big question was whether Pelosi knew that the activists intended to involve foreign companies in their campaign.

If Pelosi knew, then the highest-ranking elected Democrat official was encouraging foreign election interference. And she should be held accountable for it just the way she wanted Trump to be.

It’s time for Republicans to start asking questions about the foreign election interference campaign.

Whatever Pelosi knew or didn’t know then, everyone now knows that foreign companies are participating in a campaign to shut down President Trump and his political supporters. This disturbing campaign of election interference has not been condemned by Democrats, only praised by them.

A foreign oligarchy has intervened in the 2020 election. The security of our political system must be protected by taking on this foreign election interference by foreign companies, some of whom may hope to profit from President Trump’s defeat, by sanctioning them for their attack on our system.

Any Democrats, who have demanded action against foreign election interference, but block sanctions on those companies should be held accountable for their complicity in foreign election interference.


Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/07/how-democrats-are-supporting-election-interference-daniel-greenfield/

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The Implosion of the Left's Language Circus - Robert Oscar Lopez

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by Robert Oscar Lopez

Recent fiascos in Portland and Chicago indicate a dangerous turn for the left, and for the English language.

Recent fiascos in Portland and Chicago indicate a dangerous turn for the left. Portland's mayor let anarchists terrorize the downtown for fifty days, then fueled a psy-op campaign blaming the destruction on Trump. Chicago's mayor, Lori Lightfoot, lashed out at Donald Trump just before hundreds of protesters hurled projectiles at police before a Christopher Columbus statue. Next, they marched to surround her house, yelling expletives at her.

Conservatives worry, understandably, about whether the public will blame this chaos on Trump. Many signs indicate that the left's propaganda machine has worked. As a personal endeavor, I contacted Democratic friends and relatives during June and July to see if we could find common ground. There exists no common ground. 

All the Democrats I know hold Donald Trump personally responsible for the spread of COVID. They believe that racial violence has increased under Donald Trump. No Democrat who spoke to me believes there is any rioting in the United States other than white supremacist provocateurs. They believe that cancel culture is not real, not a problem, and not something that leftists participate in. They do not believe that the media have any bias.

November's results may have nothing to do with how Trump performs. This year has seen the largest false-flag operation in my lifetime; an enormous segment of the population refuses to believe copious footage of rioting and believes claims about "peaceful protesters" abused by Trump's "shock troops." Not even the shrewdest Republican could win over this demographic.

Looking past the election

We should campaign as we always do. Beyond that, Trump's fate is beyond our control. Let's consider the future beyond Trump.

Right now, the left's power consists mostly of power over the English language. The left has sway over education, the media, law, arts, and entertainment, especially in English-speaking countries: the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand. Liberal-dominated industries shape the understanding and use of words. Since the English-speaking world defines discourse for the whole world and the English-speaking left defines English words, the left now has global hegemony. For two reasons, I believe that this will not last very long.

First, the history of Spanish, French, and German shows that language communities reach their downfall when one party's prevalence distorts communication.

Second, the three most prominent left-wing slogans in recent history — "it gets better," "me too," and "black lives matter" — cancel each other. Eventually, skeptics will notice, or the folly will cause a social disaster.

Point 1: What do English-speakers have in common with speakers of Spanish, French, and German?

Having exiled conservatives from education, media, law, and the arts, the left lacks checks and balances. Without challengers to reveal their blind spots, they fail to see the dangerous direction of their own thought processes. This trend explains why the English-speaking world has adopted absurd beliefs on biological sex. It explains why basic current events, like violent anarchists rioting in Portland, are virtually unknown among huge numbers of English-speaking liberals. The center of gravity moves farther left, which causes dangerous radicals to flood into the liberal mainstream. Sound conservative counterpoints are dismissed or silenced.

Prescient writers like Cervantes (Don Quijote), Voltaire (Candide), Franz Kafka (Metamorphosis), and George Orwell (1984 and Animal Farm) understood the collapse of meaning. They predicted in various allegories the suffering that would come from their own tongues becoming meaningless because of dire political turns. Orwell brought all these concerns about language together in his landmark essay, "Politics and the English Language."

As I'm exploring in a current book project, when languages attain too much social power, they suffer lapses in judgment. Spanish, French, and German lost their ability to convey universal and objective ideas, largely because their speakers' poor judgment caused heinous crimes against humanity. English-speakers were fortunate for many centuries and did not fall into the same traps. Now we see that English is not immune to collective madness.

The Spanish Inquisition had a long-term deleterious effect on the Spanish-speaking world because the inquisitors operated as a shadow government (the original Deep State, if you will), not entirely accountable either to the Vatican or to the Spanish crown. By denouncing anyone who disagreed with them as heretics, the inquisitors silenced correctives and became tone-deaf, humorless, and megalomaniacal. Cervantes mocks them mercilessly in Don Quijote. By the War of the Spanish Succession, Spain ceased to lead in debates about human questions. Spanish-speakers had been forced by ecclesiastical overreach to live in a bubble. Their ideas and understanding suffered.

Paris became the world's capital by the Enlightenment, but French-speakers slid into a similar fate. The Parisian philosophes knew how the Inquisition had gone haywire. The leaders of the French Revolution were prepared to avoid the excesses that brought down Spanish hegemony. Their answer was to pass the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, placing churches firmly under the control of the revolutionary government. In doing so, they sought to protect the nation from the ecclesiology that stifled the Spanish-speaking world.

In an oft-repeated trend, powerful movements fall into new errors when they try to avoid old errors that don't really pose a threat. It's the curse of the blind spot and "fighting the last war." French revolutionaries fought an entire civil war against staunch Catholics in order to show that a rogue system like the Inquisition would never arise in France, but the true danger to the Revolution came from secular lawyers whose jargon assumed overblown importance. Soon the "Terror" brought an entirely new form of politics into being — the use of sheer, unrelenting intimidation and violent spectacles to shake people out of their mindsets. The Directory and Napoleon followed. Both compounded the madness imposed on the French language.

The Nazis had studied the French Revolution. The Nazis decided to avoid France's overreaching universalism and chaotic squabbling by focusing on the concrete ties of shared bloodlines. Rather than submitting their language to the veto power of Jacobin lawyers, the Nazis gave direction of their language to a police state. The Gestapo assumed control over professional communications. Policing became the dominant source for language definition, as ecclesiology had in Spain and lawyers had in France. We know what happened next: genocide and fascism.

The English-speaking world is obsessed with undoing the errors of the Nazis: their racism and their policing obsession. But the dangers now are not racism and eugenic race fantasies. The dangers are Stalinism and Maoism, offshoots of the Marxist-Leninist thinking that has enamored English-speaking academics, and which English-speaking schools have downplayed when they teach twentieth-century history. The left's blind spots are its forced compassion and false equalities. Orwell foresaw this.

The implosion of the left

Since 2010, three slogans dominated the left, all based on the English-speaking world's turn to coercive liberalism: "It Gets Better," "Me Too," and "Black Lives Matter." Each is in itself an Orwellian delusion. Together, the three undermine each other.

"It gets better" is Orwellian. Most youths who begin a homosexual or transgender lifestyle will see their living conditions worsen. As they get older and adult demands weigh on them, they suffer from more health problems and an unsupportive LGBT community. LGBT networks reward them for joining by pulling them into needlessly stressful debates and unstable relationships. The slogan was aimed at young people, whose age afforded them the support of patient schools, families, and communities, which will no longer see them as babes to care for when they become adults and realize how cold and harsh the LGBT scene really is. The campaign commissioned aging LGBTs to speak via internet to impressionable teens and pre-teens, in essence imposing gross assumptions on them and lying to them about how happy gay and trans adults felt.

"Me Too" is an Orwellian delusion because the movement for sex abuse victims was never to designed to support everyone who survived sex abuse. Male victims of sex abuse fell out of the discussion almost immediately. Females victimized by females vanished in deference to the lesbian community. Even as MeToo charged ahead, the left pushed to legalize prostitution and infuse elementary education with provocative sexual material, paving the way for more exploitative situations.

As we saw with Tara Reade, women victimized by prized liberal males could be quickly dismissed as well. The MeToo revolution elevated well-to-do professional women in high-profile fields like entertainment, finance, government, and academia, especially if the perpetrator was somebody rich, famous, and for whatever reason unpopular. The vast majority of abuse survivors want healing rather than revenge, wish to move on with their lives rather than dwell on their pain, and cannot withstand the nastiness of a public campaign against their abusers. Instead of "me too," it should have been called "only if we like you."

Finally, "black lives matter" is an Orwellian delusion because the organization called Black Lives Matter does not prioritize the black community's problems over the general left-wing agenda, nor does the organization conduct itself as though it cares about all black lives. In an interview with Terry Crews, CNN commentator Don Lemon stated that the movement wasn't designed to address the large numbers of black Americans killed in civilian gun violence; their only focus was on killings of black Americans by white police officers. The organization has shown zero interest in pro-life black Americans worried about the effects of abortion on black communities.

The group does not exist as a real nonprofit but siphons its money to a liberal partisan group, while its mission statement prioritizes transgender rights, gay culture, the Sexual Revolution, and alternative families that lack a mother or father. The hostility from BLM-supporters to the phrase "all lives matter" makes no sense, no matter how many times they repeat the tortured logic behind opposing it. Activists accuse "all lives matter" of drowning out the particular hardships imposed on black Americans with too general a focus. But the organization Black Lives Matter refuses to address many threats to black lives while taking on a plethora of left-wing agendas (not the least of which is getting Joe Biden elected), which are of tangential or minimal importance to black communities.

These three slogans contradict each other; the left falsely intertwines them. It Gets Better seeks to thrust sexual content into young children's lives when they are vulnerable vis-à-vis the powerful position of adults who dictate false sexual terms to them. It focuses on painting a rosy picture of the LGBT community, hiding the many forms of abuse people suffer there. This conflicts with MeToo's emphasis on protecting people from abuse and laying bare the truth about abuse wherever it has hidden.

But MeToo also became a lopsided movement of females threatening males with legal action, police intervention, and public shaming. Given our country's long history of terrorizing non-white men with excessive police force, criminalization, and charges of menacing white women, MeToo was bound to produce white Karens calling cops on black men.

Black Lives Matter draws its strength from the vivid experience of males being terrorized by police, to a large degree because they are males. The statistics on murders of black men pretending to be women, for instance, illustrate this (22 "trans women" killed in 2019, but 6,237 black males killed in 2018). A black man is in much greater danger of violence if he presents as masculine than if he cloaks his masculinity behind a feminine costume. MeToo spent three years inveighing against all things masculine. The movement's hysteria made things more dangerous for black men as all men were suspected of violently endangering women.

It Gets Better prioritizes anti-bullying measures. These, like MeToo's protective crusades, give more power to enforcement authorities to investigate, sanction, and punish people considered "aggressive," which usually means men. When you demonize typically masculine behavior, you endanger black men.

Perhaps, through some magic trick, the left will be able to hold all this together. I don't think so. History shows us what happens when politics corrupts the meaning of words. The language goes crazy, and the community that speaks the language slides into a world-historical collapse. The left will implode.


Robert Oscar Lopez can be followed on Twitter, at his blog, or on his podcast at Gatekeepers.

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/07/the_implosion_of_the_lefts_language_circus.html

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Black and minority lives would improve if politicians supported charter schools - Thomas Sowell

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by Thomas Sowell

The stakes could not be higher for minority youngsters, for whom a decent education is often their one best chance for a better life.

There was a brief buzz in the media after former Vice President Joe Biden told a Black man that, if he didn't vote for Biden, he wasn't really Black. But this was more than just one of Biden's many gaffes.

What really showed how much Biden took the Black vote for granted was his announcement that, when he is president, he would have "a teacher-oriented Department of Education" and charter schools would not receive "a penny of federal money."

Some of us think schools should be student-oriented. And official statistics show that students in charter schools in Harlem and other low-income minority communities in New York City pass the statewide mathematics tests at a rate more than 6 times the rate at which traditional public school students, housed in the same buildings, pass the same test.

THOMAS SOWELL SAYS CONCEPT OF SYSTEMATIC RACISM 'HAS NO MEANING' WARNS US COULD REACH 'POINT OF NO RETURN'

Why then is Biden against charter schools? Because the teachers unions are against charter schools. And, unlike Black voters, teachers unions -- with millions of members who vote and millions of dollars to donate as political campaign contributions -- do not automatically give their support to either political party, without getting something big in return.

A majority of the students in charter schools are either Black or Hispanic, and they usually live in low-income communities. So teachers unions' opposition to charter schools is directly in conflict with the interests of low-income minority students. But low-income minority students do not vote, and their parents do not donate millions of dollars to political campaigns.

In an election year, it is no mystery why many politicians support the teachers unions, even if that means sacrificing the education -- and the futures -- of millions of Black and Hispanic youngsters.

Why are teachers unions so opposed to charter schools?

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First of all, most charter school teachers do not belong to teachers unions, while most traditional public school teachers do. Union dues nationwide run into billions of dollars annually.

Although charter schools are a small part of the education picture, their enrollments are growing far more rapidly than enrollments in traditional public schools. From 2001 to 2016, enrollment in traditional public schools grew 1 percent. But enrollment in charter schools grew 571 percent.

In New York City, there are more than 50,000 students on waiting lists to get into charter schools.  If they transfer to charter schools, in a city where per-pupil expenditures exceed $20,000 a year, that means a transfer of more than a billion dollars a year from traditional public schools to charter schools.

Such transfers have been blocked in many ways, both legally and illegally. In various cities across the country, there are school buildings that have been vacant for years.  But charter schools have been blocked from using them. In some cases, the buildings have been demolished, making sure no charter schools can use them to enroll students who are on waiting lists.

In 2019, California passed sweeping anti-charter-school laws, closely following the teachers unions' agenda. Similar agendas are being pushed in other places across the country.

Various opinion polls have shown Blacks to be more favorably disposed toward charter schools than the population at large. Parents of children in these schools have already seen how much better results the charter schools get. But how many other people -- inside and outside minority communities -- know the full facts is a big question.

My recently published book, "Charter Schools and Their Enemies" has more than 50 pages of data, comparing test scores of students in more than a hundred New York City schools, cited by name. These are all charter schools and traditional public schools housed together in the same buildings, and serving the same communities. But the charter school students score overwhelmingly better.

Other data from other sources tell the same story. In 2019, the Wall Street Journal reported that "while the majority of New York students attending traditional public schools are not proficient in either math or English language arts (ELA), a majority of charter school students are."

Back in 2013, a Harlem charter school had a higher percentage of its fifth-graders pass the mathematics test than any other fifth- graders in the entire state of New York. That included, as the New York Times put it, "even their counterparts in the [Whitest] and richest suburbs, Scarsdale and Briarcliff Manor."

While the hard facts are on the side of the charter schools, the rhetoric and the politics favor the unionized traditional public schools. Everything depends on how many of the facts reach how many minority group parents, and how many other people who still believe that schools should serve the interests of the students, rather than the interests of teachers unions.

The stakes could not be higher for minority youngsters, for whom a decent education is often their one best chance for a better life.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE BY THOMAS SOWELL


Thomas Sowell

Source: https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/black-minority-lives-improve-politicians-charter-schools-thomas-sowellv

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