Where are the 'right-wing extremists'? - M. B. Mathews

 

by M. B. Mathews

Where is the alleged army of "right-wing extremists" that ostensibly threatens America?

Who on the right is not disgusted by government and its bizarre excesses, its needless shortages, its unnecessary inflation, and its metastatic corruption?  While that disgust is certainly no excuse for kidnapping or any other crime, where is the alleged army of "right-wing extremists" that ostensibly threatens America?

If you listen to the left, parents of public school students are right-wing extremists because they don't want their children to learn perverse sex, drag queenery, masturbation, pedophilia, and an America Sucks ideology.  Parents don't want their children to be taught to hate people with a different skin color.  Does that make the parents extremists?  Apparently: Parents have been labeled by the National School Boards Association as domestic terrorists, although the NSBA later apologized for the terminology.

Merrick Garland seconded the motion to label parents as domestic terrorists by threatening to set his DoJ dogs on parents who object to what their kids are being taught in public schools.  So I guess that parents who actually get involved in their children's education by showing up to protest are now threats to our democracy.

In the events of Jan. 6, one person died as a direct result of the riot.  More people are killed in Chicago every weekend than those who died as a result of Jan. 6's "deadly insurrection.  In 2021 and 2022 combined, there have been more than twelve hundred murders in Chicago compared with one Capitol death on January 6.  Where are the calls to crack down on the left-wing extremists who run Chicago and on those who commit the crimes?

The FBI has set up "watch lists" for right-wing extremist groups, but in actuality, their "domestic terror" list is composed of left-wingers.  The 2020 left-wing George Floyd riots, occupations, arsons, property destruction, and police deaths as a result of the George Floyd insurrection were responsible for nineteen dead people as of April of 2022.  Most who died were black, including black cops.  These riots were not caused by right-wing extremists.

The looting of high-end items from broken plate glass storefront windows during these riots did not reveal many white faces, which strongly indicates no "right-wing extremism" of the kind the left loves to lie about.

A left-wing extremist attempted to assassinate Republican congressman Steve Scalise and three others a few years back.  Before opening fire, witnesses told investigators that when the gunman arrived at the ballfield, he asked, "Are these the Republicans or the Democrats?"

Left-wing extremist group Antifa showed up armed to the teeth to protect some drag queens at a brunch in Texas just a few days ago.  What side is the extremism on?

It is the Squad, the Teachers' Unions, Hollywood, the Pelosi-Schumer-Sanders triple-axis, the WEF, E.U., and WHO, the climate hysterics, the media, the Twitter/Amazon/Disney/Facebook censors, the proponents of CRT, ESG, SEL, and DEI, and finally, Susan Rice and the Obamas (who have been very active despite their ill disguised attempts at silent running), who have taken this country to the brink of the inferno.  It is not right-wing extremists.

Until the left is willing to address its own nihilistic extremism, it can run its hysterical accusations up the electoral flagpole this November and see who America believes are the real extremists.

Image: Lorie Shaull.

M. B. Mathews

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/09/where_are_the_rightwing_extremists.html

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President of Citizens United slams Biden for labeling those who didn't vote for him 'semi-fascist' - Charlotte Hazard

 

by Charlotte Hazard

"This lunacy that Joe Biden has pushed, is not going to help anything"

Citizens United President Dave Bossie called out President Joe Biden on "Just the News, Not Noise," for calling those who voted for Donald Trump "semi-fascist."

"Joe Biden's out there calling every Republican in the country and the 75 million people who voted for Donald Trump semi-fascist," said Bossie. "This is a disgusting display of partisanship from a guy who got elected by claiming he was going to be a uniter."

Bossie said that the Republicans' response to this should be to get out and vote in the upcoming 2022 midterm elections to stop the "left-wing onslaught."  

 "In order for America to recover, we have to have Republicans elected this November," Bossie stated.

Bossie explained that Republicans need to get their messaging across for the midterms and get votes to take back some control. 

"Republicans better return to message very, very quickly," Bossie warned. "Your average American doesn't pay attention to elections until post Labor Day. But we have plenty of time."

Bossie believes the Inflation Reduction Act will backfire on Biden in the upcoming midterms. 

"This lunacy that Joe Biden has pushed, is not going to help anything," Bossie said in reference to the Inflation Reduction Act. "If anything, it's going to harm the economy."

Bossie explained that another mistake Biden is making is demonizing the MAGA movement. 

MAGA just means "Make America Great Again," Bossie explained. "And that's what the Democrats don't want. They hate America. They don't want America to be great again. They want to fundamentally transform America into a socialist nation."

Charlotte Hazard

Source: https://justthenews.com/government/white-house/president-citizens-united-slams-biden-labeling-those-who-didnt-vote-him-semi

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A Deal Based on Lies: The Iran Nuclear Agreement Will Make War More Likely - Richard Kemp

 

by Richard Kemp

President Biden preposterously hopes that he can "lengthen and strengthen" the deal once it has been struck.

• These are the effects of the proposed nuclear deal brokered by the EU, Russia and China. Why is it brokered by the EU, Russia and China? Because the United States was outrageously banned from direct negotiations by Tehran. It is not outrageous that Iran demanded it, but that the US tolerated its own exclusion.

• [T]he deal that is about to emerge will be even worse [than the 2015 deal]. The argument of the "bad" dealers is that it buys time for the West, with Micawberish optimism that "something will turn up". This thinking is clear from President Biden's preposterous hope that he can "lengthen and strengthen" the deal once it has been struck.

• While in office, Obama declared that Iran would not be allowed to build nuclear weapons on his watch. He must have known that the only way to prevent that was through military action or perhaps crippling sanctions, but was unwilling to do either and the result was the JCPOA, which kicked the problem down the road onto someone else's watch.

• Tehran can legitimately commence operation of advanced uranium enrichment centrifuges in two years, all the while working flat out to develop nuclear-capable ballistic missiles that, along with Iran's terrorist activities, are not covered at all in the agreement.

• The "buying time" argument, and indeed an argument for any agreement, only works if you do not understand Iran and are naive enough to believe the regime will honor what it agrees to.

• The reality that the optimistic and the unschooled fail to grasp is that the regime in Tehran will ignore constraints imposed by the deal that it does not like.

• Tehran will continue to develop the nuclear capability that it sees as its right — deal or no deal — at the speed it wants until it is physically stopped from doing so. Whatever shape Biden's deal takes there are only downsides for the West and the Middle East and only upsides for Tehran.

• More than that, according to Israeli prime minister Yair Lapid, Tehran will receive $100 billion a year as a result of lifted sanctions.

• Released from sanctions, Iran will be used as an economic refuge by Moscow to evade its own international sanctions.

• Under the draft deal, Iran will be able to retain the uranium that it has been illicitly producing since the original JCPOA, enriched beyond any requirements for a peaceful nuclear programme.... [I]t seems likely that Russia — despite its own repeated nuclear threats — will be handed control of this existing uranium stockpile.

• This chilling scenario — for which the world will pay a very high price — is about to be made more likely by the ill-judged actions of governments in America and Europe, which lack the resolve and courage to apply sufficient economic pressure and military deterrence to put a stop to Iranian nuclear ambitions. Instead, as they did in response to Russian aggression, they are again opting for appeasement, the opium of the faint-hearted.

Under the proposed renewed nuclear deal, Iran can legitimately commence operation of advanced uranium enrichment centrifuges in two years, all the while working flat out to develop nuclear-capable ballistic missiles that, along with its terrorist activities, are not covered at all in the agreement. Pictured: Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi speaks during a press conference in Tehran on August 29, 2022. (Photo by STR/AFP via Getty Images)

As Western governments quake in the face of Russian nuclear threats, they are on the verge of striking a deal that will give Iran that same power over them.

Even after six months of war in Europe, they cannot seem to grasp the parallels between the two. Putin risked invading Ukraine because of Western weakness and appeasement, naively welcoming Russia back into the family of nations after it devoured large parts of Ukraine in 2014, while at the same time filling its war chests with ever more billions of euros from energy exports to Europe.

Iran has been waging war non-stop on the West and its allies in the Middle East since the Islamic Revolution in 1979. Appeasing Tehran by endorsing its nuclear programme and handing it billions of dollars from sanctions relief will likewise empower and encourage the ayatollahs to greater aggression even than hitherto. These are the effects of the proposed nuclear deal brokered by the EU, Russia and China. Why is it brokered by the EU, Russia and China? Because the United States was outrageously banned from direct negotiations by Tehran. It is not outrageous that Iran demanded it, but that the US tolerated its own exclusion.

The feeble mantra of the apologists for President Joe Biden's JCPOA 2.0, a desperate attempt to revive President Barack Obama's failed agreement from 2015 that paved the way to an Iranian nuclear bomb, is "a bad deal is better than no deal". Well, no it is not, and the deal that is about to emerge will be even worse. The argument of the "bad" dealers is that it buys time for the West, with Micawberish optimism that "something will turn up". This thinking is clear from Biden's preposterous hope that he can "lengthen and strengthen" the deal once it has been struck. But optimism is not a strategy and it certainly is not a strategy for dealing with a violent and volatile revolutionary regime dedicated to the destruction of the Jewish state, which it sees as the proxy of its ultimate enemy, America.

While in office, Obama declared that Iran would not be allowed to build nuclear weapons on his watch. He must have known that the only way to prevent that was through military action or perhaps crippling sanctions, but was unwilling to do either and the result was the JCPOA, which kicked the problem down the road onto someone else's watch.

Unfortunately the road was short — and is now shorter still. The sunset clauses in Obama's JCPOA are not going to be extended in this new deal, and that means Tehran can legitimately commence operation of advanced uranium enrichment centrifuges in two years, all the while working flat out to develop nuclear-capable ballistic missiles that, along with Iran's terrorist activities, are not covered at all in the agreement. At best Biden's new deal just boots the can down the road to his own successor.

The "buying time" argument, and indeed an argument for any agreement, only works if you do not understand Iran and are naive enough to believe the regime will honour what it agrees to. You only need to look across the border at the equivalent jihadist entity next door in Afghanistan, which Biden assured us was somehow reformed and had undertaken not to allow Al Qaida to rebuild its base there, only to find a year later its leader living and plotting in Kabul under the protection of the Taliban leadership.

The reality that the optimistic and the unschooled fail to grasp is that the regime in Tehran will ignore constraints imposed by the deal that it does not like. That is what it did with the original JCPOA and its other international undertakings including the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty that it has frequently breached, confirmed again earlier this year by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

As Mossad chief David Barnea said a few days ago, the deal is "based on lies".

Tehran will continue to develop the nuclear capability that it sees as its right — deal or no deal — at the speed it wants until it is physically stopped from doing so. Whatever shape Biden's deal takes there are only downsides for the West and the Middle East and only upsides for Tehran. Signing the deal will give Iran renewed legitimacy (while getting Biden and his European friends off the hook of having to confront reality). More than that, according to Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid, Tehran will receive $100 billion a year as a result of lifted sanctions.

Those dollars will enable Iran to speed up its nuclear programme, including development of ballistic missiles capable of launching nuclear warheads not just across the Middle East but also to Europe and the US. Those dollars will boost Iran's regional aggression, threatening Saudi Arabia and the UAE from Yemen, threatening Israel from Lebanon, Syria and Gaza, and threatening the US, Europe and the world with its global network of terrorist proxies and followers. This violent malignity, which will shift into overdrive with a massive cash injection, was most recently exhibited by Tehran's proxies in Gaza launching thousands of missiles at Israel in August, by rocket attacks in Syria that wounded US servicemen just a few days ago, by the attempt to murder Salman Rushdie in the US and by recently-revealed Iranian assassination plots against former members of the Trump administration. All that while dictating terms at the negotiating table.

Missing no opportunity to exploit Western spinelessness, there is also a significant upside for Tehran's ally Russia, which has been in bed with America, Europe and Iran over the negotiations while at the same time inflicting untold violence in Ukraine. Released from sanctions, Iran will be used as an economic refuge by Moscow to evade its own international sanctions. It will be no comfort to Western citizens to know that their governments are taking action that will ease Russian pain while they themselves endure enormous economic suffering as a result of the very restrictions Putin will bypass.

Under the draft deal, Iran will be able to retain the uranium that it has been illicitly producing since the original JCPOA, enriched beyond any requirements for a peaceful nuclear programme. In a twist that many will find shocking, it seems likely that Russia — despite its own repeated nuclear threats — will be handed control of this existing uranium stockpile. Taken together with the benefits that will accrue to China also, which last year concluded a long-term economic agreement with Iran, this deal clearly runs counter to American and European national security interests as well as Israel's. This is not a strategic misjudgement that might only be discovered downstream; it is blatantly obvious today.

As the deal legitimises the Islamic Republic, it will delegitimise the vital efforts of those who have no choice but to deal with it or risk annihilation. Sometimes with US and British assistance, Israel has been conducting a long-term covert campaign to contain and delay Iran's nuclear project. This campaign, which must continue, will be seen in a different light by Western governments once the deal is in place — a deal that they will be every bit as desperate to be seen publicly to succeed as they have been to bring it about.

Twice before, Israel has saved the world from nuclear catastrophe in the Middle East, by bombing an Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981 and a Syrian reactor in 2007. Both raids were condemned by world leaders at the time, who only later came to comprehend the enormity of what they had been delivered from. Imagine the reactions of Western governments to such action against Iran when a deal is in place. Destroying the Iranian nuclear infrastructure, while at the same time defending against the inferno Tehran will seek to unleash using its Hizballah proxies in Lebanon, will be a challenge infinitely greater than that faced by Israel in Iraq or Syria.

This chilling scenario — for which the world will pay a very high price — is about to be made more likely by the ill-judged actions of governments in America and Europe, which lack the resolve and courage to apply sufficient economic pressure and military deterrence to put a stop to Iranian nuclear ambitions. Instead, as they did in response to Russian aggression, they are again opting for appeasement, the opium of the faint-hearted.

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Colonel Richard Kemp is a former British Army Commander. He was also head of the international terrorism team in the U.K. Cabinet Office and is now a writer and speaker on international and military affairs. He is a Jack Roth Charitable Foundation Fellow at Gatestone Institute.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18845/iran-nuclear-deal-lies

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Biden’s Higher Education Student Debt Relief Gravy Train - Joseph Klein

 

by Joseph Klein

The new shiny government giveaway that will lead to ever higher tuition fees.

 

A college or university education is not a guaranteed right. Those who choose to attend a college or university, especially an expensive private institution of higher education when cheaper alternatives such as government-subsidized public universities are available, should find their own means to pay for that privilege.

Some students have worked at menial jobs to earn enough to pay for their higher education academic degrees. Others earned scholarships or were lucky enough to have their educations paid for by their parents. Still others took out student loans which they spent years paying back.

But now President Biden has turned the traditional American notions of responsibility and self-reliance on their heads. He issued an executive order letting millions of college and university students off the hook for federal student debts they willingly incurred. He is sticking the rest of us with the tab to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars.

President Biden’s higher education student debt relief windfall plan, which he announced on August 25^th, will cancel $10,000 of debt for each student with an annual individual income of up to $125,000 (or $250,000 per household). Low-income students with Pell grants will have $20,000 of indebtedness wiped out.

In short, President Biden has sent big government to the rescue for higher education students who were already able, like many other Americans, to take advantage of twelve years of publicly funded K-12 education. It is fundamentally unfair on top of that to transfer the burden to the taxpayers of debts willingly incurred by a privileged class of higher education students for their own personal economic benefit.

Indeed, President Biden’s handouts to these students do nothing for the many millions of workers without a college education who have taken out loans to pay for the tools of their trade or for the vehicles they use for work. Yet the president expects these same people, many of whom are living paycheck to paycheck, to help pay the cost of debt relief for individuals whose higher education degrees will put them on an income trajectory way above the average.

As Laura Hollis noted in her August 29^th FrontPage Magazine article regarding the student loans that President Biden is forgiving by executive order, “As only about a third of Americans attend college, this means that the bulk of the taxes repaying these loans will fall on Americans who, on average, make significantly less than the people who took out the loans.”

The beneficiaries of President Biden’s largesse do not have to do a thing in return. They are not being asked to pay the cancellation of their debts forward even a little bit by, for example, committing to provide a fixed amount of time of community service.

In defending his student debt cancellation windfall program, President Biden made a false comparison to the government’s forgiveness of federal loans to hundreds of thousands of small businesses across America during the COVID-19 pandemic. The government forced these businesses to shut down in the first place as the initial waves of the coronavirus surged through the country. The loans were provided to prop up the small businesses and help the affected employees get through the crisis. Forgiving the loans that the government’s sweeping restrictions necessitated was the right thing to do. This unique set of circumstances bears absolutely no resemblance to letting higher education students off the hook for debts they willingly incurred for their own personal economic benefit.

President Biden also claimed that his spending hundreds of billions of additional dollars on yet another government handout program will not have any material impact on inflation. Jason Furman, who served as former President Barack Obama’s economic adviser, disagreed. Mr. Furman said that the expensive giveaway of money with no visible means to pay for it is a “reckless” idea that will pile on a “half-trillion dollars of gasoline on the inflationary fire that is already burning.”

One specific inflationary consequence of concern that even the Biden administration acknowledges involves the potential acceleration of the rate of increase of the cost of higher education tuition that is already outstripping the general rate of inflation.

“Experts warn that schools could easily game the new structure Mr. Biden has created for higher education financing,” the New York Times reported in its analysis of the Biden student loan cancellation plan, “cranking up prices and encouraging students to load up on debt with the expectation that it will never need to be paid in full.”

It is high time that elite colleges and universities with fat endowments dig deeper into their own treasure troves to take care of the financial needs of their students. The presidents of these institutions should take a significant cut in their bloated million dollar-plus compensation packages, with the money saved going to help students in need who would otherwise have to take out more loans to defray their expenses.

Finally, there needs to be more accountability for what the higher education institutions are delivering to their students. It is not acceptable for the students’ dollars and the dollars of taxpayers who are being asked to foot the bill of President Biden’s debt relief plan to be wasted on woke curricula that will not prepare the students adequately for the labor market.

As George Leef, the director of editorial content at the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal, wrote last year in an article entitled “College Has Become Merely a Racket” that appeared in the National Review, “College has become a very expensive credentialing mechanism that adds surprisingly little in the way of useful skill and knowledge for students.” He added that federal aid has not given us ‘a more educated workforce’ as promised, “but merely a prodigiously bloated education sector selling increasingly empty credentials.”

President Biden’s latest move to curry favor with young voters and placate his progressive base will only make this problem even worse.

Joseph Klein

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/09/bidens-higher-education-student-debt-relief-gravy-joseph-klein/

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Hamas in Turkey: Money Laundering, Turkish Passports, Government Collusion and Terror Bank Accounts - Uzay Bulut

 

by Uzay Bulut

As Hamas is the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, it is probably not a reach to assume that Turkey has no plans to ask Hamas to leave any time soon.

• Beside Erdoğan's regular antisemitic outbursts, other alarming issues -- such as Hamas' secret investment portfolio in Turkey and Turkey's granting passports to Hamas terrorists -- need to be addressed by Turkish government authorities.

• See the US Treasury's list of specially designated nationals whose businesses operate in Turkey and elsewhere.

• "It seems that Hamas has chosen to manage its secret investment portfolio in Turkey because of the weak financial system in Turkey, which enables Hamas to hide its money laundering activity and tax violations from the regulatory bodies. Trend Gyo, controlled by Hamas, has five subsidiaries in Turkey. Senior officials in the investment portfolio hold dual, high-ranking positions in all five companies." — Double Cheque, February 2, 2018.

• As Turkey-Israel relations appear to be entering a so-called "new phase", the government of Turkey needs to publicly explain the following: When Hamas began operating in Turkey, what its political, financial, military, and diplomatic activities have been there, how many Hamas terrorists have lived in Turkey, and why Turkey has enabled them. Why did Turkey give them Turkish citizenship? And if they really deported a few of them, what has changed? Does Turkey see Hamas as a terrorist organization now? How many Hamas terrorists remain in Turkey as of today? And why?

• [A] senior Turkish official and other sources told Middle East Eye that Turkey had not expelled any Hamas members and was not planning to expel the Muslim Brotherhood presence in the country, either. As Hamas is the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, it is probably not a reach to assume that Turkey has no plans to ask Hamas to leave any time soon.

• Until the Turkish government officials honestly and transparently answer these questions and take concrete steps to end Hamas' presence in Turkey, its "rapprochement" with Israel should be understood only as an unauthentic attempt to benefit Erdoğan's regime and harm Israel.

Beside Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's regular antisemitic outbursts, other alarming issues -- such as Hamas' secret investment portfolio in Turkey and Turkey's granting passports to Hamas terrorists -- need to be addressed by Turkish government authorities. Pictured: Erdoğan (right) honors Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh at the Parliament in Ankara, Turkey on January 3, 2012. (Photo credit by Adem Altan/AFP via Getty Images)

"Tayyip [Erdoğan] is a Jew who pretends to be a Muslim," wrote Yüksel Üstün, on his Facebook account in 2020. In November 2021, a criminal court sentenced Üstün with a fine of 7,000 Turkish liras ($385) for "insulting the president." In the complaint, filed by Hüseyin Aydın, an attorney for President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the expression "Jew" (when applied to Erdoğan) was deemed "humiliating, damaging to honor and dignity."

The Chief Public Prosecutor's Office of the city in which Üstün resides filed the lawsuit against Üstün after the Ministry of Justice gave permission to prosecute him. The indictment argued that the suspect committed the alleged crime in his post by "offending the honor, dignity and respectability of the president". The court initially sentenced the defendant to 10 months and 20 days in prison. The judge later commuted the sentence to a judicial fine. The defendant nearly went to prison for calling Erdoğan "a Jew."

Ironically, the government of Erdoğan, who believes that being called Jewish is an "insult", now claims to be in the process of "normalizing" its relations with Israel.

Beside Erdoğan's regular antisemitic outbursts, other alarming issues -- such as Hamas' secret investment portfolio in Turkey and Turkey's granting passports to Hamas terrorists -- need to be addressed by Turkish government authorities.

On May 24, according to the US Treasury Department, the United States imposed sanctions on a Hamas finance official as well as a network of financial facilitators and companies that generated revenue for the terror group.

The sanctions target Hamas's Investment Office, which holds assets estimated to be worth more than $500 million. This includes companies operating in Turkey, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Algeria and the United Arab Emirates, again according to a statement issued by the US Treasury Department.

"Today's action targets the individuals and companies that Hamas uses to conceal and launder funds," said Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorist Financing and Financial Crimes Elizabeth Rosenberg while in Israel to discuss countering terror financing.

"Hamas has generated vast sums of revenue through its secret investment portfolio while destabilizing Gaza, which is facing harsh living and economic conditions. Hamas maintains a violent agenda that harms both Israelis and Palestinians. The United States is committed to denying Hamas the ability to generate and move funds and to holding Hamas accountable for its role in promoting and carrying out violence in the region."

In mid-2017, Usama Ali was appointed as the head of the Hamas Investment Office, a position from which he coordinated financial transfers for the terrorist group. The US Treasury statement noted:

"Hisham Younis Yahia Qafisheh (Qafisheh) is a Turkey-based Jordanian national who served as Usama Ali's deputy and played an important role in transferring funds on behalf of various companies linked to Hamas's investment portfolio. Qafisheh was involved in managing the operations or held key roles in several companies controlled by Hamas including serving as a member of the Board of Directors at Sudan-based Agrogate Holding and the Deputy Chairman of the Board at Turkey-based Trend GYO, and Chairman of the Board at Sudan-based Al Rowad Real Estate Development. Qafisheh also managed Anda Company, a real estate and construction business, which was based in Saudi Arabia.

"As of 2018, Hamas elements held about 75 percent of the issued capital at Turkey-based company Trend GYO. Additionally, Hamas planned to privately issue more than $15 million of Trend GYO's shares to senior officials in the investment portfolio."

See the US Treasury's list of specially designated nationals whose businesses operate in Turkey and elsewhere.

The database of the website Double Cheque, which helps companies refrain from business activity that facilitates terrorism, lists the subsidiaries of Trend GYO, a real estate investment trust ("gayrimenkul yatırım ortaklığı" in Turkish) located in Turkey, as follows:

IYS Yapi Co, a contracting company, and a subsidiary of Trend Gyo. Its CEO is Hamas operative Walid Jadallah. The chairman of the board of directors is Hamas operative Hisham Qafisheh.

Expert Yapi Co, another contracting company in Turkey and Trend subsidiary. Its CEO is Hamas operative Amer al-Shava.

Uzmanlar Co, a construction company and subsidiary of Anda Gayrimenkul Co. The company was established in 2001. The CEO is Hamas operative Ahmad Jahleb. The partners in the company and members of the board of directors are Hamas operatives Ahmad Odeh, Ahmad al-Maghrebi, Amar al-Shava, Ahmad Jahleb, and Ayman al-Duwaik, and Hamas facilitator Muhammad Bin Mahfouz. This company established two subsidiaries in 2014, one that imports and exports air conditioners and elevators, and the other in the tourism sector. The company operates in Jordan, Dubai, and Saudi Arabia as well.

Advancity Co., is a construction contracting company and subsidiary of Anda Gayrimenkul Co. It was founded in 2014. The company's CEO and chairman of the board is Hamas operative Amar al-Shava.

AG Yapi Co., a construction contracting company and subsidiary of Anda Gayrimenkul Co. It was founded in 2007. The company shareholders and board members include: Hisham Qafisheh (20%), Muhammad Bin Mahfouz (15%), Saleh Mangoush (20%), and Amar al-Shava (1%).

According to Double Cheque:

"It seems that Hamas has chosen to manage its secret investment portfolio in Turkey because of the weak financial system in Turkey, which enables Hamas to hide its money laundering activity and tax violations from the regulatory bodies. Trend Gyo, controlled by Hamas, has five subsidiaries in Turkey. Senior officials in the investment portfolio hold dual, high-ranking positions in all five companies.

"Trend Gyo has been traded on the Istanbul stock exchange since 2018. Raising funds via a public company that is traded on the Istanbul stock exchange is unprecedented in the extent of the risk posed by the terror organization to all investors, banks, accountants, and lawyers involved.

"In addition to the banking, business, and regulatory sectors, unwitting customers who buy apartments are unaware that they are purchasing real estate from a terror organization that is incapable of providing financial backing in case of a collapse. The correspondent banks linked to the banks that manage the investment portfolio accounts are also subject to fines and audits."

These companies are not the only way that the Turkish government has enabled Hamas. In 2020, The Telegraph reported that Turkey was in the process of granting citizenship to high-ranking Hamas members living in the country, who are suspected of involvement in directing terror attacks. Of the 12 senior members of the cell, most were already given citizenship, according to the British daily.

One of those who has apparently received citizenship is Zacharia Najib. He reportedly oversaw a plot to assassinate senior Israeli public figures, including the national police commissioner and Nir Barkat, who at that time was mayor of Jerusalem and is today a Member of Knesset. The Times of Israel reported that an East Jerusalem Palestinian-Arab, who was recruited to the cause during a meeting in Istanbul, was arrested after he returned to Israel and tried to buy a pistol.

Roey Gilad, chargé d'affaires at Israel's embassy in Turkey, confirmed the reports. "Some are in the process, some already got (the documents), but we are talking about around a dozen". Gilad said Israel has evidence of the arrangements.

Meanwhile, Erdoğan met several times with delegations of Hamas leadership, including its leader Ismail Haniyeh and deputy leader Saleh al-Arouri, both of whom have a $5 million bounty on their heads after being designated as terrorists by the US.

Erdoğan also received Haniyeh alongside the accompanying delegation at Istanbul's Vahdettin Palace.

The Erdoğan regime's close relationship with Hamas might be explained by the ideological agreement between the two entities. In 2017, Erdoğan targeted the Jewish people by referring to a hadith (traditional accounts of Islam's prophet Muhammad's deeds and sayings) about Judgement Day. "Those who think they are the owners of Jerusalem today will not even be able to find trees to hide behind tomorrow," he declared, ironically during a "Human Rights Day" event in Ankara on December 10, 2017. Erdoğan's comment came in response to the U.S. administration's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital. According to the hadith, for the "the coming of the hour," the Jews must suffer a violent death to the last one.

The Hamas Charter also refers to the same hadith:

"The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews." (related by al-Bukhari and Moslem)."

Meanwhile, a Palestinian official told the Israel daily Israel Hayom this past April that "Some of the people with ties to Hamas' military wing have been deported" from Turkey. A month later, however, a senior Turkish official and other sources told Middle East Eye that Turkey had not expelled any Hamas members and was not planning to expel the Muslim Brotherhood presence in the country, either. As Hamas is the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, it is probably not a reach to assume that Turkey has no plans to ask Hamas to leave any time soon.

Hamas continues to operate an office -- or more -- in Turkey. The Israeli chargé d'affaires in Turkey, Irit Lillian, said on August 26 that Israel "expects Turkey to close the Hamas office and send the activists there away from here."

As Turkey-Israel relations appear to be entering a so-called "new phase", the government of Turkey needs to publicly explain the following: When Hamas began operating in Turkey, what its political, financial, military, and diplomatic activities have been there, how many Hamas terrorists have lived in Turkey, and why Turkey has enabled them. Why did Turkey give them Turkish citizenship? And if they really deported a few of them, what has changed? Does Turkey see Hamas as a terrorist organization now? How many Hamas terrorists remain in Turkey as of today? And why?

Until the Turkish government officials honestly and transparently answer these questions and take concrete steps to end Hamas's presence in Turkey, its "rapprochement" with Israel should be understood only as an unauthentic attempt to benefit Erdogan's regime and harm Israel.

 
Uzay Bulut, a Turkish journalist, is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Gatestone Institute.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18844/hamas-turkey-money-laundering

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The Death Warrant for American Ingenuity - Janet Levy

 

by Janet Levy

The Obama administration really messed up the patent process in America.

Last September, scores of patent-holders demonstrated in six cities across the U.S. wearing black t-shirts that said, "Homo sapiens inventoris: Endangered Species."  These men and women of ingenuity were protesting America's decade of stolen dreams: the years since the passage of the America Invents Act (AIA) of 2011 and the establishment of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), which together have made it easy for big corporations to steal their ideas and profit from them with impunity.

"We've had piracy for all the years I've been an inventor, but the AIA just put it on steroids, in the context that now you can get PTAB-ed and lose your rights without any due process at all," said Dan Brown at the Detroit rally.  A professor with more than 40 patents, including inventions used in space shuttles, Brown invented the bionic wrench, a one-size-fits-all wrench that obviates the problem of stripped bolt corners.  He says Sears stole his idea, down to the marketing pitch, and replaced his product on its shelves with a Chinese rip-off.

Participants at these rallies, organized by U.S. Inventor, a non-profit fighting for inventors' rights, had similar stories.  So do others represented by U.S. Inventor.  Among them are Molly Metz, a jump rope champion whose patented idea for a ball-and-eye pivot mechanism for speed ropes was stolen by a rogue competitor; Glenn Sanders, whose patent on Emmy award–winning wireless video recording equipment was invalidated by PTAB; and Gene Luoma, an octogenarian muscular dystrophy patient who lost his patent and millions in royalties on his Zip-It drain cleaner.

These are individuals who came up with brilliant ideas or solutions, worked on them, built prototypes, set up small businesses, and plowed ahead to sell their products.  But the new patent system under AIA is throttling them.  For them, it is destroying the culture of inventiveness, innovation, and creating original products and solutions that made America great and rocketed it into space.

To understand how that came about, a brief history of American patent law is in order.

As early as during the Constitutional Convention of 1787, our founding fathers recognized the need to promote innovation and finely balance it against the competitive spirit of the free market.  So, under Article I, Section 8, Clause 8, they granted Congress the power to give authors and inventors exclusive rights for a limited time over their writing and discoveries.  They viewed intellectual property as real property and wisely foresaw its protection and nurturing as the road to American prosperity and greatness through creativity.

The third law of Congress was the Patent Act of 1790.  The Bill of Rights of 1791 further affirmed, through the Fifth Amendment, that property rights (which also meant intellectual property, such as patents) were not to be taken away without due process of law or without just compensation.

Then the Patent Act of 1836 gave the first inventor the right to a patent, not the first to file for one.  It also established that the U.S. Patent and Trade Office (USPTO) would issue patents, decide on infringements, and revoke or invalidate patents after holding hearings, and examining expert testimony and material and other evidence.  Though this could entail lengthy and expensive legal proceedings, the system empowered inventors and small businesses with the means to protect their intellectual property.

Two ancillary but relevant facts.  In 1946, the law was amended to change the first-to-invent principle from first to invent in the world to first to invent in America in response to a 1939 SCOTUS judgment (Electric Storage Battery v. Shimadzu) that could have allowed American patents to be invalidated by claims from abroad.  In 1982, the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals was created, with exclusive jurisdiction on appeals over decisions by patent appeal boards or district courts, after inconsistencies that raised forum shopping concerns.  The same year, limits were set on the breadth of a patent so that it would not restrict related inventions.

American innovation thrived from the late 18th century onward, with wars and hard times galvanizing invention and myriad spin-offs that have benefited humankind in unforeseen ways.  Incentivizing invention made America a superpower — took it into space and into the molecular-level research that is unfolding the secrets of life itself.  Not for nothing have Yankee ingenuity and can-do spirit become American shibboleths.

But things began to fall apart beginning in 2007.  A sustained and exaggerated campaign by the Coalition for Patent Fairness, an ad hoc organization of Big Tech corporations like Amazon, Google, Intel, and others, sought to alter eligibility doctrine and get rid of the system of injunctions and sanctions for patent violations.  At the same time, Big Tech had been building up the myth of the Patent Troll, against whom "true innovators" — that is, Big Tech and Big Business, which have actually been stealing ideas and used financial muscle to browbeat the solo inventor with litigation  — must be protected.

Unfortunately for America, their narrative has prevailed.  In 2011, President Barack Obama presented the AIA, ostensibly to end frivolous lawsuits, and make the patent process easier, less expensive, faster, and fairer than handling patent suits in courts or before the USPTO.  America also switched to the first-to-file principle, followed worldwide.  The final nail in the coffin was the establishment of PTAB, an administrative body without a lifetime-appointed judge.  PTAB hearings are conducted with little due process — there are instances in which it has refused to admit material evidence — and so far, 84% of its decisions invalidated inventors' patents.  As retired federal judge Paul Michel says, "[t]hey [Big Tech] got their way with Congress in 2011 with a statute creating an administrative tribunal where it would be easier to kill patents when they could not do so in the courts."

Jeff Parker, a longtime inventor and CEO of ParkerVision, laments the squelching of the incentive to invent and the end of the cooperative spirit.  In the 1970s, he developed some of the first digital thermostats for air-conditioners and patented several of their features.  Impressed by the achievements of a small company with a limited R&D budget, Carrier approached him to embark on a joint venture.  Such interactions, he says, were the foundation of the U.S. economy then.  The symbiosis between spirited inventors and deep-pocket corporations improved products, solved problems, and benefited consumers.

Later, when a much larger competitor copied their product, down to the text in the instruction manual, all it took was a letter for the copycat to acknowledge wrongdoing and pull down the product for fear of litigation.  But that's a vestige of the past, says Parker: today, his company would end up before a hostile board.  Big corporations don't have to invent anything.  They can wait for inventions, scoop them up, and then either get to the patent office first or get the inventor's patent invalidated.  Patent litigation has already reduced the market cap of Parker's company from $500 million to $30 million, and the technology he developed can now be used for free.

It's indeed the death of the American Dream, built on innovation.  Meanwhile, in 2019, China wrested the U.S.'s long-held position of the country which filed the most international patents.  China continued to rank first in 2020 and 2021.  And while America left the solo inventor defenseless, China has strengthened its patent laws and innovation policy so much that Erick Robinson, a patent attorney with Beijing East IP, says, "China may be the best place in the world to file a patent lawsuit."

Hopefully, H.R. 5874, or the Restoring America's Leadership in Innovation Act (RALIA), introduced by Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), will eliminate the PTAB and provisions of the AIA that encourage patent robbery by Big Business.  That will bring relief to hundreds of ingenious inventors like Brown, Sanders, Parker, and the octogenarian Luoma, whose intellectual property must be protected like physical property.  Just as our founding fathers envisioned it.  Remember, two of them — Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson — were prolific inventors.

Image: WolfBlur via Pixabay, Pixabay License.

 

 Janet Levy

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/09/the_death_warrant_for_american_ingenuity.html

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Forgetting the Americans Killed by Palestinian Terrorists - Hugh Fitzgerald

 

by Hugh Fitzgerald

Can the media be shamed for their coverup? Don't be silly.

 

Alice Speri is a far-left journalist whose work appears in even farther-left Internet site, The Intercept. She recently wrote a piece, which also appeared in the French newspaper Le Monde, on innocent Americans “killed by Israel.” A report on her indictment is here: “Anti-Israel journalists cover up the Palestinians’ murder of numerous Americans,” by David J. Michaels, JNS, August 24, 2022:Alice Speri (Photo: Francesco Ascanio Pepe)

…Who are the primary victims of the bloodlust supposedly uncovered by The Intercept and Le Monde?

One is Rachel Corrie, a young woman originally from Olympia, Washington who died in 2003.

The other is Shireen Abu Akleh, a Palestinian journalist who obtained U.S. citizenship through relatives in New Jersey. She was fatally wounded by gunfire in May.

But Israel did not dispatch agents to Washington and New Jersey to kill these two women. Nor did Israelis conspire to harm them at all.

Corrie was killed after journeying to the Gaza Strip as an anti-Israel activist. She was hit by an Israeli bulldozer that was demolishing structures near the Egyptian border. It was doing so as part of an effort to stop the smuggling of weapons to Palestinian jihadists who explicitly seek Israel’s destruction. Corrie was affiliated with the International Solidarity Movement, a self-declared “non-violent” Palestinian-led group that endorses “legitimate armed struggle”—that is, terrorism—against Israel. According to an ISM witness’s own account, Corrie approached the military bulldozer, climbed onto it, fell off and was then dragged by its shovel, which caused mortal injuries.

In other words, Corrie’s death was unintentional. She had climbed onto a bulldozer, then fell off it, unobserved by the driver, which led to her being dragged by its shovel. There was no intention to hurt her; the driver was unaware that Corrie had climbed onto the bulldozer, and had then fallen off. This was purely an accident, not a deliberate murder.

Akleh was killed in Jenin in Judea/Samaria. An Al Jazeera correspondent, she was there to cover an Israeli counterterrorism raid that followed a wave of gruesome Palestinian attacks that murdered 19 people across Israel. When Israeli security forces attempted to apprehend Palestinian suspects, a fierce gun battle erupted and Akleh was fatally wounded. Al Jazeera, a Qatari state-owned network whose funders do not recognize Israel, asserted immediately that “Israeli occupation forces assassinated” Akleh while she was “covering their brutality.” However, there was no proof that the bullet came from the Israelis’ position, let alone that Akleh’s death was intentional. Palestinian leaders refused to share physical evidence with Israel or conduct a joint investigation.

Shireen Abu Akleh was caught in the crossfire during the gun battle between the IDF and Palestinians on the outskirts of Jenin. It is still unclear which side killed her. The bullet that was retrieved, and reluctantly turned over by the P.A, to the Americans for analysis after weeks of refusing to release it, had been too damaged — possibly deliberately so – for them to determine who had fired the fatal bullet. And no matter which side was responsible for her death, her killing was certainly an accident. But the anti-Israel brigade, including Alice Speri, ignore all this, claiming from the very first that the IDF deliberately “murdered” Shireen Abu Akleh. Both the American and Israeli governments have rejected this charge.

Of course, neither the actions nor the personal politics of Rachel Corrie or Shireen Abu Akleh dispel the tragedy of their deaths. But to suggest that their demise indicates calculated, systemic Israeli malice towards Americans is absurd. On the contrary, Israel has every reason to prevent such deaths, as it knows very well that they will be exploited to maim Israel politically. Israel expressed sadness over Corrie’s demise and left the questions surrounding Abu Akleh’s death to be answered by a full investigation.

What Speri and Filiu ignore is as significant as their wild accusations. Put simply, they engage in the wholesale omission of American victims of brutal and deliberate Palestinian violence.

Over the three decades since Israel gave the Palestinians autonomy, which eventually included a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, some 60 Americans have lost their lives to Palestinian terrorism. Here are some of their names:

Koby Mandell, 13, was stoned to death.

Malki Roth, 15, was killed in a suicide bombing in a pizzeria.

Nachshon Wachsman, 19, was taken hostage and then shot dead.

Naftali Fraenkel, 16, was kidnapped while hitchhiking and killed.

Hannah Rogen, 92, died in a bombing of a Passover seder.

Rabbi Moshe Twersky, 59, was killed in a hacking and shooting attack on a synagogue.

Marla Bennett, 24, died in a bombing of a Hebrew University cafeteria.

Kristine Luken, 44, a Christian, was bound and fatally stabbed during a hike.

Hallel Yaffa Ariel, 13, was stabbed to death in her own bed.

Chaya Zissel Braun died in a car-ramming attack. She was just three months old.

These are some of the 60 Americans deliberately murdered by the Palestinians. Alice Speri makes no mention of a single one of them. She’s concerned only with the two American citizens killed by the IDF Rachel Corrie and Shireen Abu Akleh — and in circumstances quite different from those deliberate murders of sixty Jewish Americans in Israel.

During the time these atrocities took place, the Palestinians received more than $6.3 billion in U.S. aid. Yet Palestinian leaders continue to be implicated in endemic, shocking glorification of violence, and they officially dispense payments to those found guilty of terrorism.

Each victim of these attacks had a past, a stolen future and a grieving family left behind.

Will The Intercept and Le Monde speak their names? Or do their lives—and the Palestinian atrocities that took them—not matter?…

Have there been any articles published in either The Intercept or Le Monde (France’s paper of record, read by its elite, and which has become increasingly anti-Israel during the past 40 years) about any of the Americans murdered by Palestinian terrorists? Not a one.

And can those outlets be embarrassed or shamed into finally reporting on those 60 American victims of Palestinian terror? Don’t be silly.

Hugh Fitzgerald

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/09/selective-memory-left-forgetting-americans-killed-hugh-fitzgerald/

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California Asks Residents To Avoid Charging Electric Vehicles Due To Blackout Risk Days After Unveiling New Gas Car Ban - Ben Zeisloft

 

by Ben Zeisloft

“If left unmanaged, the power demanded from many electric vehicles charging simultaneously in the evening will amplify existing peak loads, potentially outstripping the grid’s current capacity to meet demand.”

 

Days ago, officials in California unveiled a plan to phase out new gas-powered cars. Now, officials are asking residents to avoid charging their electric vehicles in the interest of not overwhelming the power grid.

The western United States is facing a likely “prolonged and record heat wave” that could lead to temperatures as high as 115 degrees Fahrenheit, according to the National Weather Service. As a result, the California Independent System Operator is seeking to bring all available resources online to handle higher electricity demand and expects to issue “voluntary energy conservation” notices over the Labor Day weekend.

“The top three conservation actions are to set thermostats to 78 degrees or higher, avoid using large appliances and charging electric vehicles, and turn off unnecessary lights,” according to the American Public Power Association. During a “Flex Alert,” residents are encouraged to reduce energy consumption from 4:00 pm to 9:00 pm — the hours in which “demand for electricity remains high and there is less solar energy available.”

California also experienced a round of blackouts during last year’s Labor Day weekend. The state issued Flex Alerts because grid operators predicted “an increase in electricity demand, primarily from air conditioning use” related to extreme temperatures.

The warnings of low grid capacity come days after the California Air Resources Board issued new rules requiring 35% of new vehicles to produce zero emissions by 2026 — a standard that will rise to a 68% benchmark by 2030 and a 100% level by 2035. Yet experts have warned that the state’s electric grid will require significant upgrades to manage a rapid transition away from internal combustion vehicles.

“Today, most people charge their electric cars when they come home in the evening — when electricity demand is typically at its peak,” according to researchers at Cornell University’s College of Engineering. “If left unmanaged, the power demanded from many electric vehicles charging simultaneously in the evening will amplify existing peak loads, potentially outstripping the grid’s current capacity to meet demand.”

The legislatures of Massachusetts, Washington, and Virginia have previously passed laws conforming their states to standards approved by the California Air Resources Board. However, officials in Virginia have denounced the state’s laws — greenlit last year when Democrats controlled the General Assembly — and are seeking to repeal them.

“In an effort to turn Virginia into California, liberal politicians who previously ran our government sold Virginia out by subjecting Virginia drivers to California vehicle laws,” Governor Glenn Youngkin (R-VA) wrote. “Now, under that pact, Virginians will be forced to adopt the California law that prohibits the sale of gas and diesel-fueled vehicles. I am already at work to prevent this ridiculous edict from being forced on Virginians. California’s out of touch laws have no place in our Commonwealth.”

On a national level, Democratic officials have been similarly eager to phase out internal combustion vehicles while incentivizing the purchase of electric cars. The Inflation Reduction Act, which President Joe Biden signed earlier this month, greenlit $7,500 tax credits for the purchase of new electric vehicles — even as Ford and GM raised their electric vehicle prices by approximately the same amount.

Ben Zeisloft

Source: https://www.dailywire.com/news/california-asks-residents-to-avoid-charging-electric-vehicles-due-to-blackout-risk-days-after-unveiling-new-gas-car-ban

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Hochul Wants All Those Nasty Republicans Out of Her Nice, Clean State - Robert Spencer

 

by Robert Spencer

A harrowing glimpse into the Left's heart of darkness.

 

There are 2,848,894 registered Republicans in New York state, and 3,251,997 New Yorkers voted for Donald Trump for president in 2020 — and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-Planned Parenthood) is not happy. What are all these dissidents from Acceptable Opinions doing in her state? She made it clear Monday that they’ve got to get out, and pronto. And given the way things are going in New York these days, that’s a capital idea.

Hochul wants all these people who dare to disagree with her to clear out because, you see, she believes so deeply in democracy — you know, like in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, where all the people freely, spontaneously, and democratically agree with Kim Jong Un. “We are fighting for democracy,” Hochul declared, and everyone knows that fighting for democracy involves expelling all of one’s political opponents. “We’re fighting to bring government back to the people and out of the hands of dictators,” Hochul added, and as we all know, bringing government back to the people can only really be accomplished after you’ve kicked out all the people who might vote against you.

The hard-Left governor was speaking at a rally for Democrat congressional candidate Pat Ryan and seized the opportunity to slam those enemies of all that is good, Ryan’s opponent Marc Molinaro, as well as her own gubernatorial opponent, Lee Zeldin, and the locus and source of all evil in the modern world, one Donald J. Trump. “We’re here,” Hochul informed the crowd, “to say that era of Trump and Zeldin and Molinaro – just jump on a bus and head down to Florida where you belong. OK? Get out of town. Because you don’t represent our values.”

There are no doubt many New Yorkers who, because of high taxes, rising crime rates, and a host of other ills that Hochul and her henchmen have helped afflict upon the state, would love to jump on a bus and head down to Florida. Multitudes have already left: BizPacReview noted Friday that “due to high taxation, crime, and insane mandated policies, 1.5 million residents have exited the state in the last ten years.” It added that “Should Republicans flee New York, it would bankrupt the state since it relies so heavily on personal income taxes. With $14 billion in projected budget gaps over the next five years, the state cannot afford to lose any residents even if they are conservative.” And the money crunch is only going to get worse: “Instead of enticing Americans and businesses to the state, Hochul has overseen a record $220 billion budget that indicates she has no intention of slowing spending and will burden taxpayers even more to fund progressive projects.”

Kathy Hochul has inadvertently revealed once again the Left’s totalitarian heart. She and others like her actually have nothing but contempt for democracy, or for the actual republic that the United States really is. They have no patience whatsoever for political disagreement and want it erased, whether by expelling all the dissenters to Florida or silencing them on social media, or both. Republican New Yorkers, if they have the means, should take her advice extremely seriously and get out of the state as soon as they possibly can, because there is no way they’re going to get a fair shake in Kathy Hochul’s New York and all manner of ways that this fanatical ideologue in the governor’s mansion can and will act to make their lives as difficult as possible.

There has been a considerable clouding of the political atmosphere in the United States over the last few years. Any governor who had exhorted all members of the opposition party to leave the state would have faced universal opprobrium and the end of her political career just a few years ago. But now Kathy Hochul represents the views of the Democrat mainstream. These people, so unctuous and self-righteous in their self-appointed role as defenders of what they call “our democracy,” don’t even pretend to believe in actual democratic rule anymore.

Robert Spencer

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/08/hochul-wants-all-those-nasty-republicans-out-her-robert-spencer/

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China Is Torturing Critics in Psychiatric Hospitals - Gordon G. Chang

 

by Gordon G. Chang

The Chinese Communist Party has changed the organizational structures and the methods of how it destroys people in psychiatric institutions, but the destruction of life continues.

• In the ankang—"peace and health"—system, detainees are strapped onto beds, pumped full of drugs, receive electric-shock therapy, and are left to lie in their own excrement.

• Researchers Chi Yin and Jerome Cohen, writing on the Diplomat site, report that some Chinese are confined for their lifetimes.

• The system also appears to be grounded in the Chinese Communist Party's optimistic totalitarian notion that medical treatment can make people obedient.

• Chinese medical personnel administered drugs that damaged the central nervous system of adherents of that faith, intentionally overdosed them, applied extreme-strength electroacupuncture, and brutally force-fed them.

• The abuse of psychiatry has continued for seven decades in the People's Republic of China. The Chinese Communist Party has changed the organizational structures and the methods of how it destroys people in psychiatric institutions, but the destruction of life continues.

• Safeguard Defenders—and the international community—must finally acknowledge that the Party is inherently murderous. The only way to end the abuse of psychiatry in China as well as the Party's other horrific crimes is to end its rule of China.

China's regime is torturing and killing critics, petitioners, activists, dissidents, and religious adherents in psychiatric hospitals. In the ankang—"peace and health"—system, detainees are strapped onto beds, pumped full of drugs, receive electric-shock therapy, and are left to lie in their own excrement. Pictured: An illustrative photo of electric-shock therapy. (Image source: Joël Saget/AFP via Getty Images)

China's regime is torturing and killing critics, petitioners, activists, dissidents, and religious adherents in psychiatric hospitals, thereby bypassing its horribly misdescribed criminal justice system. The "barbaric practice," as a Madrid-based NGO termed it this month, is still widespread.

Safeguard Defenders, in "Drugged and Detained: China's Psychiatric Prisons," details how police and government agents are sending Chinese citizens "for medically unnecessary involuntary hospitalizations" in the police-run ankang system, which was established in the 1980s.

The new report updates work by leading researcher Robin Munro, the author of "Dangerous Minds: Political Psychiatry in China Today and Its Origins in the Mao Era" and the groundbreaking 2000 article "Judicial Psychiatry in China and Its Political Abuses."

In the ankang—"peace and health"—system, detainees are strapped onto beds, pumped full of drugs, receive electric-shock therapy, and are left to lie in their own excrement.

"Some languish for years," Safeguard Defenders notes. Those who survive often can barely function after release. Those released are often recommitted to such facilities without justifiable reason. One woman had been committed 20 times. Researchers Chi Yin and Jerome Cohen, writing on the Diplomat site, report that some Chinese are confined for their lifetimes.

The Soviets perfected techniques for breaking people in psychiatric facilities, and Mao Zedong's regime adopted them about a decade after taking power. As Munro reported in 2002, the "earliest known examples of political-style psychiatric diagnosis in China" date back to the early 1960s.

After intense criticism from the international community, China in 2012 and 2013 both enacted the Mental Health Law and amended its Criminal Procedure Law to require medical assessments for compulsory psychiatric treatment and judicial review of police-initiated commitments to psychiatric institutions.

The Safeguard Defenders report examined 99 cases from 2015 to 2021 and called these examples "just the tip of the iceberg." The witness reports were first recorded by a Chinese organization.

Because the Chinese regime often ignores the procedures mandated by its Criminal Procedure Law, why does it feel necessary to commit dissidents and other individuals to psychiatric facilities? After all, it already has the means to silence opponents and deter them.

Safeguard Defenders points out that the use of psychiatric facilities stigmatizes opponents of the regime. "They are," its reports states, "discredited and isolated from others with this false label of 'mental illness.' "

The system also appears to be grounded in the Chinese Communist Party's optimistic totalitarian notion that medical treatment can make people obedient.

Sean Lin, communications director of the Falun Dafa Association in Washington, D.C., tells Gatestone that the Chinese regime from the first days of the prosecution of the Falun Gong religious group was focused on "scientific transformation" of individuals. Adherents of the faith were framed as mentally ill and subject to improvement.

Chinese medical personnel administered drugs that damaged the central nervous system of adherents of that faith, intentionally overdosed them, applied extreme-strength electroacupuncture, and brutally force-fed them. These treatments were in addition to physical torture, Lin, also a microbiologist and former lab director of the viral disease branch of the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, reports.

Falun Gong adherents, according to Lin, suffered emaciation, visceral failure, organ decay, cerebral thrombosis, heart pain, paralysis, insanity, amnesia, blindness, and death.

The ankang facilities engaged in these acts, but Lin also reports that the 610 Office, a now-dissolved unit established to persecute the Falun Gong, and other regime agencies sometimes forced healthy Falun Gong adherents into China's regular psychiatric facilities.

"Legal reforms did not work," Safeguard Defenders correctly reports.

The NGO demands that China, among other things, take "immediate steps to put a stop to the political abuse of psychiatry." Amen to that.

The organization also urges China to "urgently review its responsibilities under international law as regards the treatment of psychiatric patients and endeavor to revise current legislation and improve the medical sector's understanding of such legislation to prevent this kind of abuse from happening ever again."

The "medical sector's understanding"? Safeguard Defenders gets an "A" for its reporting and an "F" for this recommendation.

The NGO, with these words, seems to believe that horrific psychiatric abuses continue because Chinese doctors do not comprehend prohibitions contained in Chinese law.

That view is breathtakingly naïve. The abuse of psychiatry has continued for seven decades in the People's Republic of China. The Chinese Communist Party has changed the organizational structures and the methods of how it destroys people in psychiatric institutions, but the destruction of life continues.

Safeguard Defenders—and the international community—must finally acknowledge that the Party is inherently murderous. The only way to end the abuse of psychiatry in China as well as the Party's other horrific crimes is to end its rule of China.

• Follow Gordon G. Chang on Twitter

 

Gordon G. Chang is the author of The Coming Collapse of China, a Gatestone Institute distinguished senior fellow, and a member of its Advisory Board.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18843/china-torture-psychiatric-hospitals

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