Trump Sues Social Media Oligarchs - Matthew Vadum

 

​ by Matthew Vadum

Former president launches class-action lawsuits on behalf of free speech.

 

After being banned from most major social media platforms, Donald Trump launched class-action lawsuits against Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube and their corporate leadership this week claiming Big Tech’s intensifying wave of digital repression directed at the former president, conservatives, and Republicans is unconstitutional.

“We’re going to hold big tech very accountable,” Trump said July 7 at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey. “If they can do it to me, they can do it to anyone.”

Trump condemned “cancel culture” and called for the end of “shadow banning” and “blacklisting,” and said, “we are asking the court to impose punitive damages on these social media giants.”

“There is no better evidence that big tech is out of control than the fact that they banned the sitting president of the United States earlier this year, a ban that continues to this day,” he added.

The crackdown on patriotic Americans that began with Trump’s surprise victory over Democrat Hillary Clinton, reached a fever pitch six months ago.

After the mostly peaceful sit-in at the United States Capitol on January 6, involving selfie-taking with welcoming police officers, some trespassing by overzealous Trump supporters including one who put his feet up on the desk of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and a naughty prankster who briefly absconded with her lectern, known Antifa organizer John Earle Sullivan, and possibly the FBI, which Tucker Carlson correctly stated “sometimes … creates crimes,” the leftist enforcers of Silicon Valley leapt into action to save Americans from themselves.

Facebook, Twitter, and Google-owned YouTube banned Trump within days of each other, falsely accusing him of inciting a so-called insurrection, in which interestingly enough, none of the insurrectionists had guns and no one was killed, except for unarmed Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt who was shot to death by a still-unidentified cop even though she posed a threat to no one.

Trump was executing a coup d’état, our social media overlords shrieked in the absence of evidence, so even though he was the leader of the free world he needed to have his microphone cut.

These are the same people who cheered on the rolling coup attempt against President Trump that then-President Barack Obama and then-Vice President Joe Biden set in motion by authorizing the use of the nation’s intelligence agencies against Trump, along with Hillary Clinton’s phony Russian dossier about Trump.

Trump is serving as lead plaintiff in the class-action suits. Class members are defined in the legal complaints as users of the three platforms “who have resided in the United States between June 1, 2018, and today” and “had their access to their social media accounts wrongly restricted or curtailed by these Defendants and who were damaged thereby.”

“Additionally, the lawsuits take aim at several of Big Tech’s censorship policies including their ‘hate speech’ rules (which the lawsuits describe as ‘vague, broad, ill-defined, or not defined at all’) and COVID-19 ‘misinformation’ rules (which the lawsuits describe as censorship of users who ‘engaged in speech with a different opinion regarding the COVID-19 vaccination’ than the three tech companies),” according to an excellent overview at Reclaim the Net.

Leaders of the America First Policy Institute, which was involved in filing the lawsuits, spelled out how potentially important these legal actions are.

“There’s not much precedent for an American president taking major-media corporations to court — nor is there much precedent for an American president engaging the judiciary to shape the landscape of American freedoms after his presidency,” AFPI president and CEO Brooke L. Rollins said in a statement.

“President Trump often remarked that if Big Tech is out to get him, it’s because they’re out to get the American people — and he was just standing in the way. The actions of the Big Tech firms we’re taking to court illustrate the point perfectly. What they’ve done, what they’ve wrought in the past few years staggers the imagination. ALL Americans need Donald Trump to win — not for what it will mean for him, but for what it will mean for every American man, woman, and child.”

Former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, now chairman of AFPI’s Constitutional Litigation Partnership, weighed in.

“Things have changed over the past several years, and the First Amendment rights of all Americans are on the line in this case. The law and Constitution are on our side. America is the great country that it is because our Constitution protects our freedoms, including freedom from censorship - this lawsuit ensures that those rights are properly defended.”

The three legal proceedings were filed July 7 in the Miami division of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida. The legal complaint against Facebook also names the artificial life form known as CEO Mark Zuckerberg as a defendant. The legal complaint against Twitter also names its nose ring-wearing hipster billionaire CEO Jack Dorsey as a defendant. The legal complaint against YouTube, which is owned by Google, which in turn is owned by Alphabet, names the endlessly uninteresting CEO of both Google and Alphabet, Sundar Pichai, as a defendant.

The three companies are vast and unaccountable and able to shut down the democratic process on a whim.

The legal complaints assert that “censorship runs rampant” against the class members and “the result is a chilling effect cast over our nation’s pressing political, medical, social, and cultural discussions,” according to Reclaim the Net.

“Facebook’s power and influence are immense,” one complaint states. “It currently boasts close to three (3) billion registered Users worldwide and over 124 million Users in the United States. Defendant Facebook had $86.0 billion in total revenue, for a net profit margin of 33.9%, in fiscal year 2020.”

“Twitter is a social media platform with more than three hundred fifty (350) million active Users worldwide, including approximately seventy (70) million daily active Users in the United States,” another complaint states. “Since 2018, approximately 500 million tweets are sent out, or ‘tweeted,’ each day. Twitter reported $3.72 billion in annual profit in 2020.”

“YouTube has accumulated an unprecedented concentration of power, market share, and ability to dictate our nation’s public discourse,” the final complaint states.

“YouTube generated $19.7 billion in revenue in 2020, up from $80 million in 2010. Over 2.3 billion people access YouTube at least once every month,” the complaint continues. “YouTube ranks second in global engagement behind Facebook. YouTube could be worth $140-300 Billion if ‘spun into’ its own company, according to Business of Apps, citing VentureBeat.”

The argument that the companies are too big and powerful may be easy to make, but Trump’s argument that the companies are violating class members’ First Amendment rights is a tough one. The conventional legal thinking holds that as private companies they are not bound by the First Amendment, which restricts government activity, so the companies can do pretty much whatever they want in terms of content moderation and users have no legal recourse.

The lawsuits claim the companies not only ran roughshod over the First Amendment but also that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act is unconstitutional.

“The lawsuits assert that by ‘acting in concert with federal officials’ to censor speech, ‘the Defendants’ censorship activities amount to state action’ and therefore contravene the First Amendment,” according to the Reclaim the Net analysis.

“Examples of such censorship activities that are cited in the lawsuits include Big Tech’s partnerships with groups such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to ‘curb the spread of vaccine misinformation,’” the analysis states.

“The Section 230 count argues that Section 230(c)(1) (which prevents online service providers from being treated as the publisher or speaker of content posted to their platform) and Section 230(c)(2) (which protects online service providers from civil liability when acting in ‘good faith’ to remove or edit content that they or their users deem to be ‘obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected’) are unconstitutional.

“Section 230(c)(1) and 230(c)(2) were deliberately enacted by Congress to induce, encourage, and promote social medial companies to accomplish an objective—the censorship of supposedly ‘objectionable’ but constitutionally protected speech on the Internet—that Congress could not constitutionally accomplish itself,’ the lawsuits state.

“The lawsuits go on to argue that Section 230(c)(1) and (c)(2) are unconstitutional because they ‘immunize social media companies for action they take to censor constitutionally protected speech.’”

Again, it’s an uphill climb in court, but it’s not impossible.

Legal scholar Alan Dershowitz was promptly and widely mocked by the legal Left for the crime of taking the new Trump lawsuits seriously.

Dershowitz was attacked because he said the suits are “very, very important” for the future of free speech in America, arguing that the Big Tech companies receive special treatment from the government and are not ordinary private enterprises.

The social media titans’ behavior is “inconsistent with the spirit of free speech that underlies our First Amendment.” The lawsuits “will shake things up considerably, though I can’t predict in the end how it will come up.”

Trump’s lawsuits, Dershowitz said, are “a complicated case because, as the president pointed out … these are not just ordinary private companies—they have special exemption … and therefore they partake of some kind of government action, and the courts will have to parse this issue.”

No less a figure than Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has said social media companies may have to face a reckoning in the future.

In a concurring opinion in Biden v. Knight First Amendment Institute on April 5, Thomas criticized Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, saying Twitter’s ban of Trump showed that "applying old doctrines to new digital platforms is rarely straightforward."

"As Twitter made clear, the right to cut off speech lies most powerfully in the hands of private digital platforms. The extent to which that power matters for purposes of the First Amendment and the extent to which that power could lawfully be modified raise interesting and important questions," Thomas wrote.

Facebook and Google, he noted, hold largely unchecked control over online marketplaces.

"It changes nothing that these platforms are not the sole means for distributing speech or information. A person always could choose to avoid the toll bridge or train and instead swim the Charles River or hike the Oregon Trail," Thomas wrote. "But in assessing whether a company exercises substantial market power, what matters is whether the alternatives are comparable. For many of today's digital platforms, nothing is."

Just as a telephone company cannot prevent a person from making a call, social media companies should not be able to stifle speech, the justice implied. Social media companies are "sufficiently akin" to a common carrier, like a public utility, and ought to be "regulated in this manner," Thomas wrote.

That really is the nub of the issue.

Who is going to rule America?

Silicon Valley oligarchs functioning as semi-official arms of the government?

Or We The People?

Americans are going to have to take sides.

 

Matthew Vadum

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/07/trump-sues-social-media-oligarchs-matthew-vadum/

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U.S. allies face the Revolutionary People’s Army of America - Caroline Glick

 

​ by Caroline Glick

A key component of the purge is indoctrination. Officers and enlisted soldiers, airmen, sailors and marines are now compelled to study and internalize progressive texts and other materials that are aligned with Critical Race Theory.

During his Senate confirmation hearing, Defense Secretary General Lloyd Austin gave an ominous description of how he viewed the Pentagon’s mission. He began his statement blandly enough.

“The job of the Defense Department is to keep America safe from our enemies,” he said.

He immediately added however, “But we can’t do that if some of those enemies live within our ranks.”

Upon entering the Pentagon a week later, Austin issued a 60-day stand-down order to all units in the US Armed Forces to enable commanders to deal with “the enemies within our ranks.”

Those were the days of hysteria that followed the so-called “insurrection” or “occupation” of the Capitol by supporters of former President Donald Trump on Jan. 6. The protesters were castigated as “domestic terrorists” who pose an “existential threat” to America as a constitutional republic. Thousands of National Guard troops were mobilized to protect the Capitol. And America’s “People’s House” took on the appearance of a military base or a prison as barbed wire fencing went up to protect it from the people.

The protesters who entered Capitol Hill on Jan. 6 were hunted down and arrested by federal authorities. Most of those arrested remain incarcerated to this day despite the fact that they haven’t been tried, many haven’t been indicted, none are accused of serious violent crimes and most have no criminal record.

The only person who died a violent death on Capitol Hill on Jan. 6 was a protester. Air Force veteran Ashli Babbit was shot to death by an undercover Capitol Police officer. The officer’s identity has never been revealed. The investigation of his actions was closed without any disciplinary or legal action against him.

Although all of these facts lend to the sense that the rantings about an “insurrection” were entirely wrong, Austin and his generals insist that the events of Jan. 6 were every bit as terrible and dangerous as they were touted to have been by the media and Nancy Pelosi.

Although no evidence has been presented indicating the protesters were at the Capitol to advance a white supremacist agenda, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley intimated in Congressional testimony that the Capitol Hill protest was informed by white supremacy.

Austin, Milley and their colleagues are using the misrepresented events of that day as an ongoing justification of their efforts to purge the US military of the “enemies within the ranks.”

A key component of the purge is indoctrination. Officers and enlisted soldiers, airmen, sailors and marines are now compelled to study and internalize progressive texts and other materials that are aligned with Critical Race Theory. As army veteran Sen. Tom Cotton (Ark.), defined the term in an article in National Review, “Critical race theory repudiates the principle of equality under the law that is articulated in the Declaration of Independence and that has motivated civil-rights reformers for generations. It claims that this American ideal is a sham used by the white majority to oppress racial minorities, and consequently that America is racist to its core. The theory concludes that the only way to end perceived discrimination against racial minorities is to systematically discriminate on their behalf.”

Amidst the public outcry following the Joint Chiefs’ decision to compel servicemen and women to undergo CRT training, Cotton and Rep. Dan Crenshaw set up a “whistleblower hotline,” for service members who feel assaulted by the indoctrination.

In a hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee last month, Cotton presented some of their findings to Austin. The hundreds of complaints the two lawmakers and veterans have received read like testimony from Stalin’s purges or Mao’s Cultural Revolution.

Required “anti-extremism” training includes segregating soldiers and officers by their skin colors and genders. White men are required to apologize for their physical attributes to those of different races and genders. Senior officers instruct their soldiers that “the US Army is a racist institution.”

Soldiers are taught that police forces are systemically racist and violently inclined against minorities. They are taught that whites enjoy “privilege” by dint of their pigmentation and as a consequence, they must take a back seat to non-whites and willingly accept discrimination against them in the interests of “equity.”

The indoctrination isn’t limited to training sessions. It extends as well to reading lists for service members. Admiral Michael Gilday, the Chief of Naval Operations, distributed a reading list to all naval personnel that includes books calling for the eradication of capitalism and the prohibition of interracial adoption, among other things. The books on Gilday’s list castigate the United States as inherently and irredeemably racist and evil. Required reading lists for or cadets at military academies include similar texts.

Cotton told Austin that as a result of the widescale political indoctrination, “We’re hearing reports of plummeting morale, growing mistrust between the races and the sexes where none existed just six months ago, and unexpected separations and retirements based on these trainings alone.”

Unfortunately, nothing happens in a vacuum. While the Joint Chiefs wage their war against their political enemies within their ranks, America’s actual enemies are becoming increasingly aggressive, and emboldened.

This week a Chinese government-controlled magazine published a three-stage plan for invading and conquering Taiwan. This was the second war plan for invading Taiwan published by a Chinese government publication in the past year. Even though US power in the Pacific is predicated in large part on America’s commitment to an independent Taiwan, the Pentagon has no clear strategy for defending the island democracy. It also lacks a strategy for enabling Taiwan to defend itself.

America’s allies in Asia are increasingly open in expressing their concern about America’s lassitude. In a stunning address before the Hudson Institute last month, Japan’s Deputy Defense Minister Yasuhide Nakayama warned his audience that the hour is late and that the US must work with Japan to develop a strategy to defend Taiwan. He concluded his remarks by half begging, “Wake up. We must wake up.”

Precisely what is it that the US needs to wake up to notice? Among other things, the Chinese navy. Earlier this week, Democrat Congresswoman Elaine Luria, a retired naval commander noted in the Wall Street Journal that whereas in 2010, the US Navy had more ships that China, today, the Chinese navy is larger than the US Navy. Rather than bridge and surpass the divide, the navy continues to retire ships far faster than it procures them. Luria warned that there is no correlation between the Pentagon’s procurement plans for the Air Force and Navy and their strategic mission of defending the US from China.

Luria criticized Milley’s efforts to downplay the seriousness of China’s offensive plans in relation to Taiwan noting that Adm. John Aquilino, the Pacific combatant commander views the situation with much greater urgency than Milley.

Last month Milley told Congress, “I think the probability [of a Chinese assault on Taiwan] is probably low, in the immediate, near-term future.”

Aquilino in contrast said China could be prepared to attack Taiwan in the next six years. “We’ve seen things that I don’t think we expected, and that’s why I continue to talk about a sense of urgency,” he said.

China is not the only US enemy the Pentagon is not taking seriously. This week, Austin and Milley withdrew all US forces form Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. Bagram has been the most important US base throughout the long US war in that country. While secrecy may have been called for to protect the retreating troops, the Americans didn’t inform their Afghan counterparts of their plans. The Afghan commander had no opportunity to organize to take control of the base – and the massive amount of military equipment the Americans left behind. As a result, as soon as word got out that the US forces had abandoned the post, mobs of looters descended on Bagram and stole everything in sight.

From a strategic standpoint, the US withdrawal from Bagram left Afghan forces without support, without the requisite training or capacity to defend either the base or themselves. Unsurprisingly the Taliban took the move as a sign that they have won. And they wasted no time running to the real boss in Afghanistan for instructions.

After word broke of the US withdrawal from Bagram, Taliban leaders flew to Tehran to meet with the commanders of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps.

The US’s deterrent posture in the Middle East has sunk to new lows since Joe Biden entered office. In response to attacks on US forces in Iraq by Iranian-controlled militias, Biden ordered airstrikes along the Iraqi-Syrian border on two supply bases that serve the militias. As Dalia al-Aqidi noted in Arab News, the faraway bases have little impact on the militias’ operational readiness or capabilities. Bombing them was little different from bombing empty buildings.

Iran and its proxies wasted no time demonstrating that the US airstrike left them undaunted This week has seen a cascade of attacks against US forces, allies and installations in Iraq and Syria. Missile and drone strikes on US forces in Erbil were followed by similar attacks against the US Embassy in Baghdad. On Tuesday, US forces guarding the oil fields in northeastern Syria and US forces in Basra were attacked on Wednesday and Thursday. The suspected perpetrator of the bombing of the tanker in the port of Dubai that rocked the city Wednesday evening is Iran’s Yemeni Houthi proxy.

All this points to the conclusion that Iran is certain that the US will not lift a finger to defend itself fearing that doing so will jeopardize its efforts to realign its policies towards Iran.

The day after he ordered the bombing of the militia bases along the Iraqi-Syrian border, Biden met with Israel’s outgoing President Reuven Rivlin for a farewell visit. In their joint Oval Office appearance, Biden read all of his talking points from cue cards he held in his hand, including the greeting, “I want to thank the President for being here.”

Biden also read, “Iran will never get a nuclear weapon on my watch.”

A few days after Rivlin’s visit, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken withdrew economic sanctions the Trump administration placed on three Iranian nationals involved in the regime’s ballistic missile program. The administration also acknowledged to reporters that it is considering removing the sanctions the Trump administration placed on Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei following the Iranian downing of a US drone in the Persian Gulf.

As for Israel, whereas a couple weeks ago, Blinken was telling Foreign Minister Yair Lapid that the administration would account for Israeli concerns about the nuclear deal in its nuclear talks with the Iranians, on Wednesday Haaretz reported that a senior US official admitted Israel has no influence on US negotiating positions in relation to Iran and its nuclear program.

The Bennett-Lapid government’s assumption that it can trust the US to defend Israel’s strategic interests in relation to Iran and other regional issues is the anchor of its strategic calculations. Given the Pentagon’s current priorities and its strategic disarray in the region, the government would be well advised to revisit that assumption.

Originally published in Israel Hayom.

 

Caroline Glick

Source: https://carolineglick.com/u-s-allies-face-the-revolutionary-peoples-army-of-america/

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Biden Must Abandon Nuclear Negotiations with Iran - Con Coughlin

 

​ by Con Coughlin

[R]ather than persisting with the nuclear talks in Vienna, the US leader should cut his losses, and end the charade of trying to revive the ill-considered nuclear deal with Tehran.

• The latest report by the International Monetary Fund makes especially grim reading for the Iranian regime, as it shows the country's foreign reserves have collapsed from around $140 billion in 2015 to just $4 billion today.

• Iran's perilous economic state has, unsurprisingly, prompted nationwide protests at the regime's gross mismanagement of the economy.

• With Mr Raisi's triumph, the hardliners have secured victory for a man with the perfect qualifications for crushing anti-regime dissent.... Under his presidency, the Iranian people can expect more of the same as the regime intensifies its efforts to tighten its hold on power.

• Mr Raisi's comments effectively mean that Mr Biden's hopes of expanding the terms of the nuclear deal are dead in the water. Consequently, rather than persisting with the nuclear talks in Vienna, the US leader should cut his losses, and end the charade of trying to revive the ill-considered nuclear deal with Tehran.

US President Joe Biden must give serious consideration to abandoning his ill-conceived plan to revive the nuclear deal with Tehran following the election victory of Iran's new hardline president, Ebrahim Raisi. Pictured: Biden (right, by Alex Wong/Getty Images) and Raisi (by Atta Kenare/AFP via Getty Images)

US President Joe Biden must give serious consideration to abandoning his ill-conceived plan to revive the nuclear deal with Tehran following the election victory of Iran's new hardline president, Ebrahim Raisi.

The appointment of the 60-year-old Mr Raisi as Iran's eighth president since the 1979 revolution means that, far from being prepared to make any further concessions in the nuclear talks, the regime under his leadership is certain to adopt a far more aggressive and uncompromising stance in its dealings with the US and its allies.

The hardening of Iran's position can already be detected in the recent upsurge in attacks against US personnel based in Iraq by pro-Iranian militias.

Following the latest attacks by Iranian-made drones against American targets in Iraq, Washington launched air strikes against Iranian-backed militias on the Syrian-Iraqi border this week, killing four members of the Iranian-backed Kataib Sayyid al-Shuhada militia.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the American action was aimed at sending "a very important and strong message" to Iran to prevent further attacks by pro-Iran militias, which Washington believes are being carried out at the behest of Tehran to increase pressure on Washington as negotiations in Vienna continue, aimed at reviving the nuclear deal.

Mr Biden has previously said he wants to "strengthen and extend" the terms of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the controversial deal negotiated with Iran by the former Obama administration.

Apart from extending the restrictions on Iran's nuclear enrichment activities, which Western intelligence officials believe are aimed at producing nuclear warheads, the Biden administration has intimated that it would like a revived deal to include other aspects of Iran's military programme, such as the development of ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads.

The prospect of American negotiators achieving any further concessions from Tehran, following Mr Raisi's election victory, now looks exceedingly remote as hardline supporters of the country's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, seek to consolidate their grip on power.

Mr Khamenei and his backers in Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps have never shown much enthusiasm for the JCPOA, which was negotiated by the country's outgoing president, Hassan Rouhani, as a means of getting punitive US sanctions lifted. Iran never even signed the deal.

Mr Rouhani's approach did, initially, achieve its objectives after the Obama administration rewarded Tehran with an estimated $150 billion for signing the nuclear deal.

The agreement quickly unravelled, however, after the hardliners squandered the cash supporting Islamist terror groups throughout the Middle East instead of reviving the Iranian economy.

This failure prompted former US President Donald Trump to withdraw from the deal in 2018 and reimpose a sanctions regime designed to place "maximum pressure" on Tehran.

Mr Trump's policy has been a resounding success and had a devastating impact on the Iranian economy, with the value of the rial, the national currency, having halved in the past year, inflation running at 50 percent and the country facing widespread unemployment.

The latest report by the International Monetary Fund makes especially grim reading for the Iranian regime, as it shows the country's foreign reserves have collapsed from around $140 billion in 2015 to just $4 billion today.

Iran's perilous economic state has, unsurprisingly, prompted nationwide protests at the regime's gross mismanagement of the economy.

The regime's response has been to rig the presidential elections to guarantee victory for a hardline candidate who would maintain Tehran's violent repression of anti-government protesters.

With Mr Raisi's triumph, the hardliners have secured victory for a man with the perfect qualifications for crushing anti-regime dissent.

Having first come to prominence in the 1980s as a member of Iran's notorious "Death Commission," which sanctioned the summary execution of thousands of political activists, Mr Raisi has more recently headed the Iranian judiciary, in which capacity he has supported the brutal repression of anti-regime protesters.

Under his presidency, the Iranian people can expect more of the same, as the regime intensifies its efforts to tighten its hold on power.

Moreover, the emergence of the hardliners as the dominant force in Iranian politics is bad news for the Biden administration, as it makes the likelihood of Tehran making any significant concessions in the nuclear talks even more remote.

This certainly appears to be Mr Raisi's attitude, judging by the comments he made in his first press conference after his election victory this month. The new Iranian leader says he has no desire to meet with Mr Biden, and ruled out the possibility of expanding the terms of the nuclear deal. Mr Raisi added that neither his country's ballistic missile programme nor Tehran's support for militia groups across the Middle East were up for negotiation.

Mr Raisi's comments effectively mean that Mr Biden's hopes of expanding the terms of the nuclear deal are dead in the water. Consequently, rather than persisting with the nuclear talks in Vienna, the US leader should cut his losses, and end the charade of trying to revive the ill-considered nuclear deal with Tehran.

 

Con Coughlin is the Telegraph's Defence and Foreign Affairs Editor and a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Gatestone Institute.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17514/abandon-nuclear-negotiations-iran

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California Legalized Theft. Everyone’s Packages Were Stolen - Daniel Greenfield

 

​ by Daniel Greenfield

Porch piracy is what happens when stealing isn’t against the law.

 

California legalized theft with Proposition 47. Since then pharmacies and small businesses have been forced to shut down by a wave of shoplifters with nothing to fear from the law.

But it’s not just stores that are reeling from the crime wave unleashed by criminal justice reform.

Proposition 47 was passed in 2014. LAPD crime data shows that package thefts shot up from 500 to 700 between 2014 to 2015. By 2016, they rose to 1,000, and 1,200 in 2017.

In Sawtelle, home to Little Tokyo and a historic Japanese neighborhood, package theft went from practically zero to a record high in only a few years after Democrats legalized stealing.

Legalizing theft didn’t just hit stores, but led to an epidemic of ‘porch piracy’.

In Los Angeles, brazen criminals took to driving behind delivery trucks and stealing the packages as soon as they were delivered. Others dressed up in Amazon uniforms.

But nowhere was the problem as bad as in the pro-crime metropolis of San Francisco.

Porch piracy has been growing across America alongside the Black Lives Matter riots and the election of Democrat mayors, council members, and prosecutors who support criminals.

In 2018, less than a third of people responding to a survey said that they had been ripped off, but by 2020, the number had shot up all the way to 43%. One survey estimated that porch pirates had been responsible for over $5 billion in thefts in cities across the country.

But San Francisco has topped the nation in package thefts for two years straight.

It’s no coincidence that California, which has led the way in legalizing crime, accounts for three of the top ten cities for porch pirates and that the state ranks third in the nation. But San Francisco has been unique in its tolerance for crime and contempt for crime victims.

Pharmacies have been shutting down across San Francisco due to the shoplifting epidemic, and as the nation’s Big Tech capital turned to online retail, the thieves turned to porch piracy. Big Tech companies have urged homeowners to adopt high tech solutions like doorbell cameras, but recording the thieves is next to useless when nothing happens to them.

One article chronicled a multi-year effort by a socialist union leader, a Google employee, and a lesbian BLM supporter to stop a heroin addict who was repeatedly caught stealing packages. The junkie blamed racism, and refused to show up in court. Police officers came, wrote her tickets, and she went right on stealing. Judges issued bench warrants, and then released her, telling her to report to drug rehab, and she went right back to stealing. While one of her victims was in court waiting for the case to be heard, the thief was stealing packages from his porch.

She was hit with a stay-away order, forced to wear an ankle monitor, and none of it helped.

When a trial finally happened, she was convicted and sent to a drug rehab program. She failed drug tests, refused to show up for hearings, went on stealing packages, and was sentenced to more drug rehab.

And that’s what happens when people spend a lot of time and effort to try and get justice.

San Francisco is both the epicenter of the tech industry and the pro-crime movement. Big Tech donors have fueled the rise of pro-crime prosecutors like George Gascon and Chesa Boudin, even as they have cashed in by selling doorbell cameras and package security systems. But surveillance technologies are useless when there’s no law enforcement to back them up.

A packaging supply company conducted a survey and found that the "four states with the lowest search rates of package theft (Alabama, South Carolina and Arkansas came 2nd, 3rd and 4th respectively) were all southern states.” The company concluded that “the south is safer from porch piracy than the north.” But California isn’t the north. The issue isn’t geography, it’s the law.

A bill to criminalize porch piracy was killed last year. It’s been reintroduced again this year.

"It doesn’t matter how many times somebody steals a package, it’s still only a misdemeanor. And in California right now, a misdemeanor is usually a citation. People aren’t showing up for their court dates or not paying the misdemeanors, and they just keep on stealing from people’s porches," Senator Brian Jones (R-Santee) noted.

Why shouldn’t porch pirates steal packages when all they come away with is a citation?

As long as the porch pirates steal less than $950 worth of packages, it’s classified as petty theft. The same decriminalization of theft that led to an epidemic of shoplifting, forcing stores and pharmacies to close, has also led to a boom in porch piracy. When brick-and-mortar stores close, that leaves people more dependent on online deliveries and vulnerable to porch pirates.

In an economy dominated by Big Tech, porch piracy, like everything else, has become a weapon in a rivalry between unfathomably huge companies. Netflix CEO Reed Hastings and his radical leftist wife, Patty Quillin, have been some of the biggest pro-crime donors.

The Netflix CEO was the sixth biggest donor for Proposition 47. The Big Tech boss vastly outspent pro-victim donors opposed to legalizing theft. While legalizing theft had little impact on Netflix, whose big product is an online subscription service, it’s hurting Amazon, one of its biggest video streaming competitors. Ordinary Californians are just Netflix’s collateral damage.

Homeowners are turning to locked delivery boxes and rigged packages. A cottage industry of companies provides doorstep security solutions and YouTube is full of guides to rigging up every type of package trap from glitter bombs to fouler concoctions to surprise porch pirates.

But no matter what homeowners do, the rates of porch piracy keep rising because glitter bombs will never be as effective a deterrent as a working criminal justice system.

Proposition 47 hasn’t just hurt stores. The thieves empowered by criminal justice reform have stolen birthday presents, prom dresses, and priceless heirlooms. They’ve destroyed special days and stolen moments that can never be replaced. And above all else they’ve robbed millions of ordinary people of their sense of security in their own homes.

California’s experiment in legalizing theft has been successful in stealing public safety.

Photo: CBS Sacramento

 

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/2021/07/california-legalized-theft-everyones-packages-were-daniel-greenfield/

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San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus faces backlash for 'we're coming for your children' video - Sam Dorman

 

​ by Sam Dorman

The group defended itself, calling the video 'tongue-in-cheek humor'

 

The San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus is facing a wave of backlash after offering up what it described as ironic humor about fears surrounding children and the "gay agenda."

The backlash came after the chorus posted a video in which members sang about indoctrinating children into being more concerned about "fairness" and "justice."

"You think that we’ll corrupt your kids, if our agenda goes unchecked," one of the members sings. "Funny, just this once, you’re correct."

"We’ll convert your children. Happens bit by bit. Quietly and subtly. And you will barely notice it. You can keep them from disco. Warn about San Francisco. Make ’em wear pleated pants. We don’t care. We’ll convert your children. We’ll make them tolerant and fair."

Later, the lyrics continue: "We’ll convert your children. Someone’s gotta teach them not to hate. We’re coming for them. We’re coming for your children. We’re coming for them. We’re coming for them. We’re coming for your children.

PBS DEFENDS DRAG QUEEN SKIT FOR KIDS: ‘PERFORMANCE ART THAT CAN INSPIRE CREATIVE THINKING’

"Your children will care about," the chorus adds, "fairness and justice for others. Your children will work to convert all their sisters and brothers. Then soon we’re almost certain, your kids will start converting you!"

"The gay agenda is coming home. The gay agenda is here! But you don't have to worry because there's nothing wrong with standing by our side."

The video received plenty of pushback from conservatives. "Man, this suuuure sounds like a cult, doesn't it?" an article for Not The Bee read. "This is grotesque and unacceptable!" tweeted Brigitte Gabriel of ACT for America.

Commentator Raheem Kassam tweeted: "LGBT in 2010: ‘NO WE ARENT INTERESTED IN KIDS YOU BIGOT WE JUST WANNA GET MARRIED LIKE YOU.’" He proceeded to tweet "LGBT in 2021," directing followers to an article about the song.

DRAG QUEEN STORY HOUR AT LOCAL LIBRARY DRAWS DEMONSTRATIONS

Republican Ohio state legislator Christina Hagan said: "They are pompously singing about undermining traditional values of families." 

According to The Post Millennial, the video was made private after receiving 88 likes and 5,000 dislikes. The group said it made the video private out of concern for its members' safety. Although the original was removed, footage emerged on other YouTube pages and on Twitter.

The performance also received praise from some. An SFist headline read: "Extremely Funny SF Gay Men’s Chorus Video Unleashes of Right-Wing Threats, Vitriol"

The chorus did not immediately respond to Fox News' request for comment, but the group posted a lengthy reaction on Twitter.

An Important Message to the Chorus Family. ❤️ pic.twitter.com/XBpSY6r4j7

— SF Gay Men's Chorus (@SFGMC) July 8, 2021

 

In it, the chorus seemed to blame conservative media for the backlash. 

"The far-right conservative media found our ‘Message…’ video and have taken it as their cause … They have taken the lyrics out of context to support a narrative that suits their intolerant and hateful needs," the message read. 

It added that the video was obviously "tongue-in-cheek humor," claiming that the backlash has included "threats of harm."

The group also defended itself, stating: "After decades of children being indoctrinated and taught intolerance for anyone who is ‘other,’ from using the Bible as a weapon to reparative therapy, it's our turn. We have dedicated ourselves to being role models, teaching, spreading the message of love, tolerance and celebration through our music."

Sam Dorman

Source: https://www.foxnews.com/us/san-francisco-gay-mens-chorus-your-children

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Looks like Dems are panicking over the planned forensic audit of the Pennsylvania 2020 presidential election - Thomas Lifson

 

​ by Thomas Lifson

Suddenly, sunshine is no longer a disinfectant

This is quite a coincidence: Two days after Pennsylvania state senator Doug Mastriano announced that the committee he heads was preparing a forensic audit of the 2020 presidential election, the White House announced a trip to Pennsylvania by President Biden "to deliver remarks on actions to protect the sacred constitutional right to vote."

Source.

The stakes are just too high to allow the Senate in Pennsylvania to conduct a 2020 election audit; and all prior corrupt activity must be protected and maintained.  As a direct result the White House is announcing the people behind Joe Biden are immediately dispatching all federal resources to Philadelphia to begin the war against Pennsylvania voters.

The Obama regime officials cannot permit the State of Pennsylvania to challenge or expose the scale of election fraud executed in Philadelphia county. They will manipulate every narrative needed, instruct every corporate media ally, call out every labor union and community activist group, pre-position Antifa, trigger every BIG Tech mechanism, activate the DOJ, FBI, Department of Homeland Security and even the U.S. military if that is needed to quell any rebellion.

Senator Mastriano's committee, the Intergovernmental Operations Committee of the Pennsylvania state Senate, will predictably have trouble getting the information it is requesting (and has the right to demand) from the local authorities, especially after a visiting president meets with them or their significant influencers and lobbies them to resist and delay.  Mastriano's announcement stated:

Today [July 7], as Chair of the Intergovernmental Operations Committee, I issued letters to several counties requesting information and materials needed to conduct a forensic investigation of the 2020 General Election and the 2021 Primary.

We have asked these counties to respond by July 31st with a plan to comply. The counties represent different geographical regions of Pennsylvania and differing political makeups. Some are Republican while others are Democrat, which means that this will be a balanced investigation.

The Intergovernmental Operations Committee is a standing committee of the Pennsylvania State Senate with oversight and investigatory responsibilities regarding activities relating to or conducted between two or more governments or levels of government, including the administration of elections across the Commonwealth. As set forth in Pennsylvania Senate Rule 14 (d), each standing committee is empowered with the authority to inspect and investigate the books, records, papers, documents, data, operation, and physical plant of any public agency in this Commonwealth, including county boards of elections.

The hysteria with which the left and its NeverTrump allies proclaim that questioning the election results is a Big Lie reveals their fear.  These same people had nothing to say about years of phony claims that Russian collusion placed Trump in the White House and treat Stacey Abrams as an icon after her claim to have been elected Georgia's governor despite losing by tens of thousands of votes.

Suddenly, sunshine no longer is a disinfectant.  Ignorance is bliss (if you are a cheater and your marks are the ignorant).

We're still impatiently waiting for the Arizona audit to be completed and results announced.  Georgia is another state that provided a margin of victory where suspicions abound and preliminary data suggest that fraud determined the outcome.  There is no constitutional or established legal remedy for a stolen presidential election, and the words "constitutional crisis" would not be an exaggeration of the trouble ahead if audits demonstrate that the presidential election was stolen.  That may be why so many disturbing moves like the national expansion of the Capitol Police are being put in place by Democrats.

To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here.

 

Thomas Lifson

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/07/looks_like_dems_are_panicking_over_the_planned_forensic_audit_of_the_pennsylvania_2020_presidential_election.html

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The House Select Committee to Criminalize and Obstruct - Chris Farrell

 

​ by Chris Farrell

Pelosi's committee -- is a transparent political ploy to sensationalize and criminalize all things and persons related to President Donald Trump and political conservatism.

• Pelosi's committee has absolutely nothing to do with the investigation of facts concerning what happened on January 6. It is a transparent political ploy to sensationalize and criminalize all things and persons related to President Donald Trump and political conservatism.

• Pressure from a March 2021 Judicial Watch lawsuit helped lead to the disclosure that Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick died of natural causes. For weeks, Sicknick's death had been falsely characterized as a cynical lie by members of Congress and their lapdog reporter buddies for political advantage.

• If the government were truly interested in the full disclosure of all the facts and circumstances around the Capitol breach, why would they stonewall Judicial Watch requests? Why force the matter into slow and lengthy litigation? Slow and lengthy? Oh, that's why!

• Speaking of a criminal conspiracy to obstruct justice -- there's Pelosi's phone call to General Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.... You'll remember that call was purportedly when Pelosi told Milley not to obey President Trump's orders. We can all look forward to reading the transcript of that call.

• There is a lot to question concerning law enforcement involvement on January 6. The official narrative keeps changing. For example, claims concerning the number of people that died were wrong. Only Babbitt, an unarmed protestor, died that day by Capitol Police gunshot from a still unidentified officer. Protestors supposedly caused $30 million in damage -- they did not. There are several other points to question.

• The government is fighting tooth-and-nail not to make the information public. The release of all these records and videos is discretionary -- some of the same people calling for investigation are actively blocking release.... Read stories about some of the protestors -- how they are being treated and prosecuted -- some are still in solitary confinement, others are being "reprogrammed," and it seems that most are being specifically targeted for their political beliefs.

Pictured: U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi at a press conference on July 1, 2021, where she announced her appointments of House Democratic members to the select committee to investigate the events of January 6 at the U.S. Capitol. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

The House of Representatives just voted to create a select committee to investigate the unrest on Capitol Hill on January 6, 2021. And -- surprise, surprise -- Representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger crossed over to vote with the Democrats in support of their select committee. Cheney found herself appointed to the select committee by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. She says she is "honored to serve." Cheney's Republican primary opponent(s) must be overjoyed.

Pelosi advanced the creation of the select committee when an earlier effort at a so-called joint "independent" commission failed after Senate Republicans blocked the initiative.

Pelosi's committee has absolutely nothing to do with the investigation of facts concerning what happened on January 6. It is a transparent political ploy to sensationalize and criminalize all things and persons related to President Donald Trump and political conservatism.

There will be much discussion of "root causes" -- a shibboleth expression favored by the Left to attack "systemic" errors and enemies. Expect "white privilege", "white rage", anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and a variety of other critical theory subjects to be deployed in deconstructing and destroying anyone and/or anything to the right of something President Bill Clinton might have advocated in 1996.

Keep in mind, this is Pelosi and company's fifth "bite at the apple" going after Trump. Three impeachment efforts failed utterly and embarrassingly, and the so-called "independent commission" was defeated in the Senate.

How about some facts and documents on the "Capitol breach probe," as the Justice Department calls it?

Well, Judicial Watch has several lawsuits seeking government records regarding January 6. Congress and the Capitol Police are not subject to the federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) law -- the open records law – so creativity was required to get to the sought records obliquely.

Judicial Watch recently sued the Pentagon and the U.S. Park Police for information on deployment of troops and warnings about the January 6 disturbance.

Pressure from a March 2021 Judicial Watch lawsuit helped lead to the disclosure that Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick died of natural causes. For weeks, Sicknick's death had been falsely characterized as a cynical lie by members of Congress and their lapdog reporter buddies for political advantage.

Judicial Watch has sued to obtain records about the U.S. Capitol Police shooting death of unarmed civilian Ashli Babbitt, a U.S. Air Force veteran, in the Capitol Building on January 6.

In February 2021, Judicial Watch filed a lawsuit against the Capitol Police for emails and video related to the January 6 protests. After all -- if everyone is interested in the truth, then release all of the video and let's all see what really happened.

If the government were truly interested in the full disclosure of all the facts and circumstances around the Capitol breach, why would they stonewall Judicial Watch requests? Why force the matter into slow and lengthy litigation? Slow and lengthy? Oh, that's why!

Speaking of a criminal conspiracy to obstruct justice -- there's Pelosi's phone call to General Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In March 2021, Judicial Watch filed suit against the Department of Defense for records about Pelosi's January 8, 2021, telephone call with Milley. You'll remember that call was purportedly when Pelosi told Milley not to obey President Trump's orders. We can all look forward to reading the transcript of that call.

There is a lot to question concerning law enforcement involvement on January 6. The official narrative keeps changing. For example, claims concerning the number of people that died were wrong. Only Babbitt, an unarmed protestor, died that day by Capitol Police gunshot from a still unidentified officer. Protestors supposedly caused $30 million in damage -- they did not. There are several other points to question.

If you are interested in more information concerning January 6, articles written by American Greatness columnist Julie Kelly raise a number of important questions and legal issues that demand answers.

Here is what you need to consider: Judicial Watch is suing the government to force them to release information on the events of January 6. The government is fighting tooth-and-nail not to make the information public. The release of all these records and videos is discretionary -- some of the same people calling for investigation are actively blocking release. Virtually no one, certainly not "Big Media," is calling those persons on their hypocrisy. It is left to a journalist from an online publication to expose and discuss. Read stories about some of the protestors -- how they are being treated and prosecuted -- some are still in solitary confinement, others are being "reprogrammed," and it seems that most are being specifically targeted for their political beliefs.

As we celebrate the 245^th birthday of the United States, it is fitting and right to examine and consider what happened on January 6, how the government is responding, and what the real objectives of the new House select committee might truly be.

 

Chris Farrell is Director of Investigations at Judicial Watch and Distinguished Senior Fellow at Gatestone Institute.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17543/house-select-committee-criminalize-obstruct

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France Learns about Islam’s 1,400 Year Assault - Raymond Ibrahim

 

​ by Raymond Ibrahim

Just as post-Christian Europe and its offshoots (America, Australia, etc.) fail to understand Islam’s true history, so too do they fail to understand their own true history.

Raymond Ibrahim’s 2018 book, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West, was recently translated into French and published in France.  In connection, Arnaud Imatz of the French website La Nef, interviewed him. An abbreviated, English version of that interview follows:

The American Raymond Ibrahim has just published a fascinating and erudite history of the centuries-old conflicts between Islam and Christianity: L'épée et le cimeterre (Jean-Cyrille Godefroy Editions). This book is the almost exhaustive account of the fourteen centuries of antagonisms and fights, major or minor, which took place…. A historian, linguist and philologist, and a specialist in oriental languages, Ibrahim has methodically exploited first-hand sources, both Muslim and "Western", and has consulted numerous manuscripts from the Library of Congress in Washington. His book is not only a detailed chronicle of the battles, it is also and above all a rigorous analysis of the intentions and strategies of the various warring leaders. Ibrahim shows that the Muslim forces were essentially obeying a religious, messianic, expansionist, conquering logic, whereas the Christian armies wanted above all to recover territories that for centuries had been Roman, Greek and Christian. He also shows that the religious fervor of today's Islamists overlaps exactly with ancestral Islamic dogmas, that Western reactions are 1400-year-old self-defense mechanisms, and that current rivalries are the reflection of a very old existential struggle. We interviewed him for La Nef. 

La Nef: Is the hostility between Islam and Christianity an accident of history or is it part of the continuity of Islamic history? 

Ibrahim: It is most certainly part of a continuum.  The problem is that modern historians tend to sideline this religious aspect, and focus instead on national identities.  For example, we know that for centuries, a great array of “Eastern” people invaded and sometimes conquered portions of Europe.  Modern historians give them a variety of names -- including Arabs, Moors, Berbers, Turks, and Tatars; other times they call them Umayyads, Abbasids, Seljuks, and Ottomans.  What modern historians fail to do, however, is point out that all these groups relied on the same exact jihadist logic and rhetoric that contemporary terrorist groups such as the Islamic State do today.  Whether it was the Arabs (or “Saracens”) who first invaded Christendom in the seventh century, or the Turks and Tatars who terrorized Eastern Europe into the eighteenth century -- all of them justified their invasions by citing Islamic teaching, namely, that it is Islam’s “destiny” to rule the whole world through the means of jihad.  They also followed the classical juridical injunctions of, for example, offering the “infidels” three choices before battle -- conversion to Islam, acceptance of dhimmi status and payment of tribute (jizya), or death.  And, once they conquered a Christian area, they immediately destroyed or transformed churches into mosques, and sold whichever Christians were not slaughtered into abject, and often sexual, slavery. 

The degree to which the modern “West” fails to realize this is evident in its claim that groups like the Islamic State are not behaving according to Islamic teaching and doctrine.  In fact, not only are they acting in strict accordance with Islam’s traditional worldview -- hating, combating, killing and enslaving infidels -- but they often intentionally emulate the great jihadists of history (such as Khalid bin al-Walid, the “Sword of Allah”) whom the West tends to know nothing about.

La Nef: Is it your opinion that the term "West" masks the real history because it suggests that the "Eastern" and North African lands conquered by Islam (Syria, Egypt, Asia Minor, North Africa), that is to say two thirds of the original Christian territories, were not really part of the Greco-Roman Christian heritage, contrary to what is usually said of the Christian regions of the Balkans or Hispania?

Ibrahim: Yes, just as post-Christian Europe and its offshoots (America, Australia, etc.) fail to understand Islam’s true history, so too do they fail to understand their own true history -- especially as impacted by Islam. What is now referred to as “the West” was for centuries known and demarcated by the territorial extent of its religion (hence the older and historically more accurate term, “Christendom”). It included all the lands you mention and more; they had become Christian, many centuries before Islam arrived and were part of the same overarching civilization. Then Islam came and violently conquered the majority of those territories, some permanently (the Middle East, North Africa, Anatolia), some temporarily (Spain, the Balkans, the Mediterranean islands).  During this time, most of Europe became the last and most redoubtable bastion of Christendom not to be conquered though constantly attacked by Islam. In this (forgotten) sense, the term “the West” becomes ironically accurate.  For the West was actually and literally the westernmost remnant of what was a much more extensive civilizational block that Islam permanently severed.  Overall, however, the term “the West” shortchanges its own history with and truncation by Islam. It further implies that all those “Eastern” lands conquered by Islam were never part of “Western civilization,” when in fact they were the original inheritors of its Greco-Roman and Christian heritage. 

La Nef: The battle of Manzikert, which was for the Turks what Yarmuz was for the Arabs, is celebrated as a great victory of Islam by Erdogan and Turkish dignitaries. On the other hand, the leaders of countries like France and Spain prefer to ignore or underestimate the historical importance of Tours-Poitiers or Las Navas de Tolosa. Many French scholars no longer consider the battle of Poitiers-Tour (732) as a "turning point" but rather as a "minor raid episode." Should we see in this attitude signs of the revival of fighting Islam and, conversely, of European pacifism and renunciation? 

Ibrahim: Yes, you should most certainly see this, because that is precisely what these attitudes signify.  But I would argue that, for the European elite, the matter is worse than merely “downplaying” their ancestors’ defensive victories against Islam. Some are actively condemning them.  For a growing number of Spaniards, for example, the Reconquista -- centuries of warfare to liberate Spain from Islam -- is a source of shame, a reminder of how “intolerant” and “backwards” their forbears were, particularly vis-à-vis the supposedly “tolerant” and “advanced” Muslims of al-Andalus.  In reality, the shame such elites have for their ancestors, and the praise they have for their ancestors’ enemies, is indicative of the degree to which they have been indoctrinated in a “history” that is antithetical to reality.

La Nef: The feeling of Christian solidarity has disappeared nowadays not only among European politicians and chancelleries but more generally in public opinion. What about Muslims who know the history of Islam? Do they consider the concept of jihad against the infidels to be an integral part of Islam?  

Ibrahim: Yes they do, certainly the ones learned in history -- and the average Muslim is by far much more learned in Islamic history than the average European is in their own history. Worse and as mentioned, Europeans tend to be “learned” -- that is, indoctrinated -- in false histories, ones designed to demonize their past and heritage, while whitewashing the past and heritage of others, in this case, Muslims.  Jihad against infidels is indeed an integral part of Islam, documented and validated everywhere -- in the Koran, hadith (and subsequently Sunna), and the consensus of the umma.  No authoritative Muslim cleric (or ‘alim, singular for ‘ulema -- “they who know”) past or present, has ever denied this -- except, of course, when speaking before “infidel” audiences and practicing taqiyya.

La Nef: Are the "militant", "extremist" or "Islamist" Muslims faithful to Islam or are they holding it hostage to their own political interests? 

Ibrahim: The bottom line is this: there is hardly anything that these types of Muslims do that is not already part of their religion and heritage.  For example, all the depravities the Islamic State engaged in -- enslaving, selling, and buying infidel “sex slaves”; beheading, crucifying, and even burning infidels alive; destroying or turning churches into mosques -- were committed countless times over the centuries by Muslims, always in the name of jihad.  Such depravities are, moreover, defined as at least “permissible” in Islamic law. How then can we call such Muslims “militant” and “extreme”? Seems more logical to call Islam itself “militant” and “extreme,” no? 

Image: Charles de Steuben

To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here.

 

Raymond Ibrahim

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/07/france_learns_about_islams_1400_year_assault.html

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Report Card on Real Racism - Lloyd Billingsley

 

​ by Lloyd Billingsley

The nation’s biggest union unites with the federal Department of Education against America.

 

The National Education Association (NEA), the nation’s biggest union, is a militant purveyor of “critical race theory” (CRT), basic Marxist class struggle recast along racial lines. The NEA will offer resources for teachers to deploy “when they are attacked” by critics of CRT. Parents who defy this racist jihad should understand the powerful alliance now arrayed against them. 

The three-million-members NEA works in alliance with the federal Department of Education. This power couple dates back to 1976, when the NEA endorsed Jimmy Carter for president and the Georgia Democrat proved grateful to a fault.

The U.S. Constitution gives the federal government no role in education but in 1979 Carter created the federal Department of Education. As NEA boss Terry Herndon admitted, “there’d be no department without the NEA.” Despite NEA support in 1980, Carter lost to Ronald Reagan, but the DOE carried on in a tacit alliance with the NEA.

The U.S. Constitution does not demand that parents send their children to a government school. The newfound DOE, like the NEA, did not support the right of parents to choose the school their child attends, and take their government funding with them. That was the pattern of the federal G.I. Bill, which empowered students to select UCLA, Brigham Young, NYU, or any accredited university. In this arrangement, the dollars follow the scholars.

With K-12 education, on the other hand, taxpayer dollars must trickle down through four layers of bureaucratic sediment – federal, state, county and local district – before they reached the classroom. The system forces parents and students seeking a quality education to pay twice, a clear case of separate and unequal treatment. Even so, against furious union opposition, Milwaukee’s parental choice program proved popular and successful.

African American activist Polly Williams, prime mover of the program, noted that President Bill Clinton and First Lady Hillary sent daughter Chelsea to the prestigious Sidwell Friends School. That prompted Williams to proclaim, “Bill and Hillary Clinton shouldn’t be the only people who live in public housing who can send their kid to private school.” In similar style, the Obamas sent daughters Sasha and Malia to Sidwell Friends, bypassing the dangerous and dysfunctional schools of the DC government system.

For most parents, particularly African Americans, the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program, operated by Congress, provided the only way out. The NEA opposed the program and found a strategic ally in the federal Department of Education.

For education secretary Obama chose Arne Duncan a white Harvard alum and former Chicago education boss. Duncan not only failed to support the DC Opportunity Scholarships Program but actually rescinded 216 scholarships already awarded for the coming year. As the Washington Post observed in an editorial, “nine out of 10 students who were shut out of the scholarship program this year are assigned to attend failing public schools.”

Like segregationist governors under Jim Crow, Duncan blocked the schoolhouse door facing both ways. African American parents and students shut out of the scholarship program could be forgiven for regarding that action as officially sanctioned racism. The Department of Education did not come to their aid, and the National Education Association continued to oppose parental choice in education.

In the 1983 A Nation at Risk, the Department of Education warned of “a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people.”  If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose such mediocre performance, “we might well have viewed it as an act of war.” By that time, government monopoly education had become a collective farm of ignorance, mediocrity and failure. In 2021, the NEA is transforming government schools into indoctrination centers.

Critical race theory divides the people along racial lines and essentially encourages students to hate themselves. The New York Times 1619 Project contends that the United States of America was a slavery operation from the start and remains bastion of “white supremacy,” to be hated by students even as they hate themselves. If parents and students oppose this hatred, the NEA will deploy resources to attack them.

President Trump slapped a ban on CRT indoctrination but NEA-endorsed Joe Biden quickly rescinded the ban. Biden’s choice for education secretary was Miguel Cardona, Connecticut schools boss and promoter of the first state mandated ethnic studies course. The mandatory curriculum is rooted in critical race theory that claims America is intrinsically racist. True to form, National Education Association president Becky Pringle, a “fierce social justice warrior,” decries “systemic racism,” and the union looks forward to “partnering” with Cardona “in taking on these challenges together.”

A federal bureaucracy that should not exist joins forces with the leftist NEA to block freedom of choice and indoctrinate students in racist, anti-American ideology. This act of war is what happens under government monopoly education. Victory will come when the nation establishes full educational choice for all, as a matter of basic civil rights.

 

Lloyd Billingsley

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/07/report-card-real-racism-lloyd-billingsley/

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