Saturday, July 30, 2022

China announces live-fire naval exercises ahead of possible Pelosi Taiwan visit - Timothy H.J. Nerozzi

 

​ by Timothy H.J. Nerozzi

China's show of strength coincides with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's possible visit to Taiwan

 

 

The Chinese military announced it would be holding live-fire naval exercises Saturday in the Taiwan Strait ahead of a possible visit to Taiwan by U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Tensions are high in the region with a U.S. strike group heading to the South China Sea and Pelosi possibly en route to Taiwan during her tour of Asian allied countries like Japan and Malaysia. Pelosi could become the highest-ranking American elected official to visit Taiwan since 1997. 

Chinese officials have exploded with anger at the proposition, saying that such a visit would violate the One China Policy and would constitute aiding an illegal rebellion. If Pelosi does attempt to visit Taiwan, one Chinese state media personality even suggested shooting down her plane.

The Chinese exercises were to take place over a 13-hour period, according to state media.

FORMER CHINESE STATE MEDIA EDITOR SUGGESTS NANCY PELOSI BE 'RESTRAINED,' 'PUNISHED' BY CCP FOR VISITING TAIWAN

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

The People's Republic of China has long claimed sovereignty over Taiwan and the Taiwan Strait, the relatively narrow strip of ocean between the island of Taiwan and the Chinese mainland. The Chinese military has frequently sent planes into the area, testing Taiwan's air defense zone. 

The U.S. does not have official relations with Taiwan — also known as the Republic of China — and maintains a One China Policy that recognizes the People's Republic of China as the legitimate successor nation. 

However, America has been stepping up engagement with the island as China seeks to isolate it from global institutions.

Members of the Chinese navy stand on the deck of the guided-missile destroyer Suzhou May 18, 2022, in Zhoushan, Zhejiang Province of China.

Members of the Chinese navy stand on the deck of the guided-missile destroyer Suzhou May 18, 2022, in Zhoushan, Zhejiang Province of China. (VCG/VCG via Getty Images)

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U.S. military officials are also moving forces into the ocean area near Taiwan ahead of the visit.

The Pentagon has sent an aircraft carrier to the South China Sea ahead of a possible visit to Taiwan by Pelosi.

The USS Ronald Reagan and a strike group are currently there after they left a port in Singapore Tuesday. A Navy spokesperson confirmed the news but said it was a planned trip.

The USS Ronald Reagan in 2014.

The USS Ronald Reagan in 2014.  (iStock)

"I can confirm USS Ronald Reagan and her strike group are now underway, operating in the South China Sea following a successful port visit to Singapore," Lt. Mark Langford said. "As a matter of policy, we do not discuss future ship movements; however, I will add that Reagan is continuing normal, scheduled operations as part of her routine patrol in support of a free and open Indo-Pacific."

 

Timothy H.J. Nerozzi is a writer for Fox News Digital. You can follow him on Twitter @timothynerozzi and can email him at timothy.nerozzi@fox.com

Source: https://www.foxnews.com/world/china-announces-live-fire-naval-exercises-possible-pelosi-taiwan-visit

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The EU's Shameful Total Appeasement of Iran's Mullahs - Majid Rafizadeh

 

​ by Majid Rafizadeh

Just as Europe disregarded warnings that relying on gas from Russia would leave them open to Russian blackmail, they are again ignoring warnings that a nuclear Iran will leave them open to Iranian blackmail.

  • In 2015, the European powers -- France, Germany and the United Kingdom -- changed their Iran policy from imposing pressure to adopting diplomacy. The diplomatic route included lifting oil and gas sanctions on Iran as well as removing some Iranian individuals and entities from the list of countries to be sanctioned.

  • According to the preface of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action: "The JCPOA will produce the comprehensive lifting of all UN Security Council sanctions as well as multilateral and national sanctions related to Iran's nuclear programme, including steps on access in areas of trade, technology, finance, and energy."

  • The EU immediately allowed transfers of funds between Iranian and EU persons and entities, banking relationships between Iran's banks and the EU financial institutions, financial support for trade with the Islamic Republic, financial assistance and concessional loans to the Iranian government, the import of Iranian oil, petroleum products, gas and petrochemical products, investment in the oil, gas and petrochemical sectors, as well as export of gold, precious metals and diamonds, among others.

  • The EU continued with this policy even though the Iranian regime was found to violate the JCPOA.

  • Just as Europe disregarded warnings that relying on gas from Russia would leave them open to Russian blackmail, they are again ignoring warnings that a nuclear Iran will leave them open to Iranian blackmail.

  • Iran will not even have to use any nuclear weapons to persuade the leaders of Europe to do whatever it likes; the threat alone should do the trick. The mullahs might even sell or give a few to their terrorist militias. The tea leaves are not that hard to imagine; one only need look at Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and Iraq.

Thanks to the EU's complete appeasement policy towards the Iranian regime, it is now capable of building a nuclear bomb. In 2015 France, Germany and the UK changed their Iran policy from imposing pressure to adopting diplomacy. The diplomatic route included lifting oil and gas sanctions on Iran. Pictured (L-R): Then French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, then German FM Frank-Walter Steinmeier, then EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs Federica Mogherini and then Iranian FM Mohammad Javad Zarif in Vienna, Austria on July 14, 2015. (Photo by Joe Klamar/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)

Thanks to the EU's complete appeasement policy towards the Islamist mullahs, the Iranian regime is now capable of building a nuclear bomb.

Kamal Kharrazi, a senior official and adviser to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in a rare statement, revealed to Al-Jazeera TV:

"In a few days we were able to enrich uranium up to 60 percent and we can easily produce 90 percent enriched uranium.... Iran has [now] the technical means to produce a nuclear bomb."

The current capability of the mullahs to manufacture a nuclear bomb is most likely a culmination of the EU's appeasement policy towards the Islamic Republic, particularly since 2015.

In 2015, the European powers -- France, Germany and the United Kingdom -- changed their Iran policy from imposing pressure to adopting diplomacy. The diplomatic route included lifting oil and gas sanctions on Iran as well as removing some Iranian individuals and entities from the list of countries to be sanctioned. According to the preface of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action:

"The JCPOA will produce the comprehensive lifting of all UN Security Council sanctions as well as multilateral and national sanctions related to Iran's nuclear programme, including steps on access in areas of trade, technology, finance, and energy."

The EU immediately allowed transfers of funds between Iranian and EU persons and entities, banking relationships between Iran's banks and the EU financial institutions, financial support for trade with the Islamic Republic, financial assistance and concessional loans to the Iranian government, the import of Iranian oil, petroleum products, gas and petrochemical products, investment in the oil, gas and petrochemical sectors, as well as export of gold, precious metals and diamonds, among others.

The EU continued with this policy even though the Iranian regime was found to violate the JCPOA. For instance, Germany's domestic intelligence agency, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), revealed in its annual report a year after the nuclear deal was reached, that Iran's government was pursuing a "clandestine" path to obtain illicit nuclear technology and equipment from German companies "at what is, even by international standards, a quantitatively high level." Germany's BfV also stated:

"Against this backdrop it is safe to expect that Iran will continue its intensive procurement activities in Germany using clandestine methods to achieve its objectives."

Even during the life of the nuclear deal, the United Nations' nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), warned that the Islamic Republic violated the nuclear agreement at least twice.

After the Trump administration pulled the US out of the nuclear deal, the EU did not change its course. Instead, Germany, France and the UK doubled down on their Iran policy. The three countries established a mechanism called the Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges (INSTEX) which was primarily created to skirt US sanctions. Heiko Maas, Germany's then foreign minister, pointed out:

"We're making clear that we didn't just talk about keeping the nuclear deal with Iran alive, but now we're creating a possibility to conduct business transactions."

Did the Iranian regime reciprocate the EU's favors? Instead, they gradually reduced their compliance to the nuclear deal to a point where, according to the IAEA, they violated all terms and restrictions of the 2015 nuclear deal.

Later, the Iranian government also switched off several surveillance cameras that had been installed by the IAEA in Iranian nuclear sites.

Iran has continued to enrich a substantial amount of uranium -- up to 60% purity, a short technical step away from the 90% purity level required to build a nuclear weapon.

The EU's soft-on-Iran policy remained undisturbed even after France, Germany and the UK warned that the Iranian government's latest action was "further reducing the time Iran would take to break out towards a first nuclear weapon and it is fueling distrust as to Iran's intentions."

In spite of all these developments, the EU is still trying to revive the failed nuclear deal while it continues to trade with the Islamic Republic. According to the Tehran Times:

"The value of trade between Iran and the European Union, reached €4.863 billion in 2021, registering a nine-percent growth compared to the previous year.... According to the data released by the Tehran Chamber of Commerce, Industries, Mines and Agriculture (TCCIMA), Iran exported €554 million worth of commodities to the union during the said nine months, while importing goods valued at €2.7 billion".

Just as Europe disregarded warnings that relying on gas from Russia would leave them open to Russian blackmail, they are again ignoring warnings that a nuclear Iran will leave them open to Iranian blackmail.

Iran will not even have to use any nuclear weapons to persuade the leaders of Europe to do whatever it likes; the threat alone should do the trick. The mullahs might even sell or give a few to their terrorist militias. The tea leaves are not that hard to imagine; one only need look at Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and Iraq.

 

Dr. Majid Rafizadeh is a business strategist and advisor, Harvard-educated scholar, political scientist, board member of Harvard International Review, and president of the International American Council on the Middle East. He has authored several books on Islam and US Foreign Policy. He can be reached at Dr.Rafizadeh@Post.Harvard.Edu

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18755/eu-appeasement-iran

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Rigging the War on Fossil Fuels - David Horowitz and John Perazzo

 

​ by David Horowitz and John Perazzo

Taxpayer dollars to make the world green and red.

 


With the 2022 midterm elections less than four months away, a New York Times/Siena College poll revealed that just 1 percent of registered voters viewed climate change as a “top priority,” let alone the most important issue facing the nation. The poll placed climate change far behind concerns about inflation, the economy, record crime rates, and the humanitarian crisis on America’s southern border. Even among voters younger than 30 -- the demographic that is typically most energized by debates about environmental policy -- the corresponding figure was a mere 3 percent.

The same poll showed that public concern about climate change has actually declined significantly from the already-low levels of concern documented by previous surveys. In the summer of 2020, climate change ranked a lowly eleventh in a Pew Research Center poll. In September 2020, a Gallup poll likewise found that climate change ranked eleventh in a list of registered voters’ top concerns – well behind such items as the economy, terrorism/national security, the COVID-19 pandemic, health care, education, race relations, gun policy, crime, abortion, and immigration.

Notwithstanding the public’s consistent and overwhelming lack of concern about climate change as an urgent problem, the main concern of the Biden administration and the entire agenda of the Democrat Party has been, and continues to be, driven by this issue. In the words of President Joe Biden, “climate change poses an existential threat” – in fact, the chief existential threat to the United States – greater than terrorism, or Chinese expansionism, or the invasion by 2,400,000 unvetted illegal migrants annually across America’s broken southern border.

So obsessive is the focus of Democrat leaders on the alleged “existential threat of climate change,” that a centerpiece of their policies to oppose it is a war on fossil fuels, beginning with the cancelling of the Keystone pipeline, the shutting down of the ANWR oil field in Alaska, and the refusal for more than 17 months to sell oil-and-gas drilling leases on federal lands. An economic consensus which includes such influential voices as former Obama Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, has singled out the war on fossil fuels as the chief driver of rising gas prices and the record inflation in the economy as a whole. Yet, despite the lack of public support, and the immediate destructive consequences of the anti-climate change policies, the radical leadership of the Democrat policy is adamant in pursuing them. According to Bernie Sanders, a lifetime supporter of communist dictators and bankrupt socialist regimes, “the climate crisis is not only the single greatest challenge facing our country,” but “is also our single greatest opportunity to build a more just and equitable future,” by which he means a bankrupt, socialist dictatorship. 

How is it possible that there should be such a disconnect between a democratic government and its constituents? How was such a radical consensus formed over such a controversial and contested issue – a consensus so strong and so anti-democratic that by 2022 it had resulted in the lowest approval ratings ever recorded for a sitting president and his political party? The answer can be found in the vast network of tax-exempt foundations and advocacy groups, unscrutinized and accountable to no one, that developed the analyses and policy recommendations that make up the “Green New Deal” in the decades prior to its official launch in 2019.

When Democrat Senator Ed Markey and former bartender and current congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez first announced the Green New Deal in February 2019, it was already supported by 600 leftist organizations as well as 67 House Members and 11 U.S. Senators -- all Democrats.

What was this Shadow Party’s agenda? The Green New Deal calls for the U.S. economy to achieve “net zero greenhouse gas emissions” by the year 2030 and, in the words of Rep. Ocasio-Cortez, to “transition off all nuclear and all fossil fuels as soon as possible.” The Green New Deal would also mandate: (a) trillions of dollars in inflationary public expenditures on government-approved, energy-saving “upgrades” and “retrofits” of all existing homes and businesses in the United States, and (b) zero-carbon standards for all new building construction.

In addition to doing away with nuclear reactors and fossil fuels, the Green New Deal seeks to raise the living standards of “low-income communities, communities of color, indigenous communities, [and] the front-line communities most affected by climate change, pollution, and other environmental harm.” Toward that end, it aims to guarantee that members of those demographics will be preferentially trained and hired to fill federal “green jobs” that will pay them at least $15-per-hour to implement the aforementioned upgrades, retrofits, and construction projects, thereby helping them to enjoy a “just transition” from their previous occupations to the new “green economy.” The premise underlying these training/hiring policies is that some form of economic reparations or wealth transfer program should be put in place to counteract the alleged affects of America’s historical discrimination against nonwhites and the poor. Orchestrating public policy around skin color is unconstitutional and – since the passage of the Civil Rights Act 58 years ago – illegal.

Heartland Institute president Tim Huelskamp summarizes the Green New Deal agendas as “the most radical socialist proposal in modern congressional history…. “[T]heir real desire is to accomplish the Left’s longtime goal of moving the United States toward full adoption of socialism. This isn’t just a theory. Significant provisions of the Green New Deal reveal its true purpose of imposing socialism on an unprecedented scale. The plan would create a ‘basic income program’ and federal jobs guarantee providing a ‘living wage’ to everybody who says they want one. It would impose a federal-government-run, single-payer health care system with bureaucrats and liberal politicians in Washington, D.C. in charge of every American’s health care. It would encourage the Federal Reserve to unleash inflation and create a system of government-owned banks to ‘create’ tens of trillions of dollars needed to fund these immense programs. None of these proposals has anything at all to do with climate change.”

In a July 2019 interview with The Washington Post, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s chief-of-staff, Saikat Chakrabarti, acknowledged that the Green New Deal had not been devised to protect the environment, but rather, to inject discredited socialist “solutions” into the American economy. “The interesting thing about the Green New Deal,” he said with great candor, “is it wasn’t originally a climate thing at all. Do you guys [reporters] think of it as a climate thing? Because we really think of it as a ‘how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy’ thing.” We don’t say this, but rather conceal it, because if we did we would have to explain why the epic failures of socialist regimes in our lifetimes should not be a red flag against repeating them.

The Shadow Party behind this campaign to replace America’s incomparably productive free market economy with a socialist travesty has been made possible by the failure of the Internal Revenue Service to enforce its own guidelines, which allow taxpayer subsidies only to non-partisan, non-political, charitable organizations. Beginning with its vast subsidies to universities that have been purged of conservatives and transformed into indoctrination and recruitment centers for the radical left and the Democrat Party, the I.R.S. has enabled the formation of the socialist juggernaut behind the Green New Deal and its war on fossil fuels. In its newest version, it is  a war, by the way, which stops at the water’s edge, since Russian pipelines, and increased oil production by the totalitarian regimes in Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, are apparently okay with the Biden administration.

The foundations of this Shadow Party of tax-exempt institutions were laid in the 1970s, when the political left launched a campaign inspired by the Italian Communist Antonio Gramsci to build a revolution based on seizing control of the “means of cultural production” – universities, schools, philanthropic foundations and the like. A key component of 501(c)(3) nonprofit entities dedicated to promoting the Green New Deal and its leftwing agendas are the vast majority of colleges and universities across the United States. As the American Association of Universities explains, nearly all public and private institutions of higher learning “are tax-exempt entities as defined by I.R.C. Section 501(c)(3) because of their educational purposes — purposes that the federal government has long recognized as fundamental to fostering the productive and civic capacity of its citizens — and/or the fact that they are state governmental entities.”

So much for the boilerplate, not a word of which is true any longer. The movement to purge universities of conservative faculty and influences has been so successful over the last 50 years that universities have, and as far as social theory and policy are concerned have ceased to be educational institutions in any reasonable sense of the word. The total dominance of leftist narratives and values in virtually every academic discipline is as self-evident as it is disgraceful and dangerous. How this took place is the subject of a book by one of the authors of this article – The Professors (2014) by David Horowitz. A 2020 study of more than 12,300 professors by the National Association of Scholars found that professors nationwide donate money to Democratic political figures rather than Republicans by a ratio of 95 to 1. Even Moscow University probably has more diversity than that. In a 2018 study of nearly 8,700 tenure-track, Ph.D.-holding professors from 49 of America’s top 66 liberal arts colleges as ranked by U.S. News, the professors were 12.7 times more likely to self-identify as Democrats than as Republicans. In the field of environmental science specifically, the ratio of Democrats-to-Republicans was greater than 25 to 1. There is no way to describe this intellectual monolith than as a partisan political training and research center.

In addition to its taxpayer subsidies to left-wing university institutions, the I.R.S. has granted tax-exempt status to a vast number of 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations and charitable foundations that seek to permanently institutionalize the Green New Deal and its totalitarian agendas. With $12 billion in assets, the Ford Foundation typifies the problem posed by the tax-exempt network of the left, which the I.R.S. has fostered and allowed to flourish.

Most significantly and ominously, the existence of this taxpayer-subsidized juggernaut disenfranchises ordinary voters. Ford has more assets than either political party, and more discretionary funding opportunities than the federal government. It has a large (and therefore rubber stamp) board which is self-appointed and is accountable to no one. And it exists in perpetuity. If one set out to undermine the democratic system, one could find no better vehicle than an institution like Ford, or for that matter the so-called philanthropies of George Soros, whose agendas have included creating a national crime wave, and rigging the electoral system in the service of creating a one-party state. These abuses cry out for reforms to protect the sovereignty of America’s citizenry which all these “charities” have put under threat. One could begin by sunsetting them within a five- or ten-year window.

Major funding institutions like Ford and Soros’s Open Society Foundations often operate through secondary advocacy organizations that are also tax-exempt. According to a comprehensive survey conducted by one of the current authors in 2012, and published as The New Leviathan: How the Left-Wing Money-Machine Shapes American Politics and Threatens America's Future there were, at that time, at least 553 such organizations nationwide. Their combined net assets were approximately $9.5 billion – a figure that exceeded the annual budget of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). By contrast, there were just 32 identifiable environmental activist groups that were nonradical and pro-free market. Their combined net assets were a mere $38.2 million – a figure amounting to four-tenths of 1 percent of the assets owned by their environmental-left counterparts. Moreover, the environmental-left organizations at that time were awarding, in aggregate, $555 million in grants to their pet causes each year, while their 32 conservative counterparts were able to make grants totaling just $1.2 million -- a ratio of nearly 462 to 1.[1]

As if this imbalance were not bad enough, the coffers of the 553 environmental-left organizations -- after they had doled out their $555 million in yearly grants -- were essentially replenished, dollar for dollar, by the federal government, which annually provided some $569 million in grant money to approximately 247 of those groups. By contrast, the government gave a total of just $728,190 in federal funds to 7 (of the 32) conservative groups supporting free-market solutions to environmental problems. The dollar-to-dollar ratio of left-to-right funding by the government was an astounding 781 to 1.[2] How can a democracy survive such an imbalance in government investments in new policies and ideas? It can’t.

A particularly noteworthy coalition of Green New Deal advocates today is an alliance of 15 leftwing activist groups that collectively call themselves the Green New Deal Network. This Network is a fiscally sponsored project of the Tides Foundation, a $405 million funder of left-wing causes. Among the members of the Network are several tax-exempt 501(c)(3) nonprofits such as the following:

  • The Sunrise Movement, the foremost organization behind the Green New Deal, calls for “an economy-wide effort” to pursue the “bold vision” that is necessary for “making core tenets of the Green New Deal a reality.” 
  • The Climate Justice Alliance -- a network of 82 organizations and supporting networks which in 2021 received some $5.47 million in tax-exempt donations from foundations, corporations, and individual donors for the purpose of fighting climate change -- boasts that its member groups, in their quest to lead “a much needed aggressive national pivot away from climate denialism to climate action,” have already “made local versions of the Green New Deal a reality from New York City to Oregon.”
  • The U.S. Climate Action Network, whose revenues in 2017 exceeded $5 million, asserts that “the massive government investments that are needed” to bring forth “a Green New Deal for all people — Black, Indigenous, Brown, and white — ha[ve] never been more urgent.”
  • The Center for Popular Democracy, whose 2019 revenues were in excess of $28.9 million, states that the Green New Deal encompasses “the bold action that we need to build a resilient future for our planet.”
  • The Brooklyn-based Right to The City Alliance (RTCA) is a tenants’-rights coalition which claims that the GND holds the key to developing “a regenerative economy based on cooperation, deep democracy, feminism, and equity.” Among RTCA’s more noteworthy organizational members are fellow 501(c)(3)s like the anarchist Ruckus Society, the National Low Income Housing Coalition, and the National Domestic Workers’ Alliance. 

Of course, there is also a massive array of highly influential 501(c)(3) nonprofit activist groups that support the Green New Deal but are not part of the Green New Deal Network. A small sampling of these organizations includes the following:

  • 350.org, which reported a combined $30 million in revenues in 2016-2017, declares: “It’s time for a Green New Deal” to provide “a just, rapid transition to 100% renewable energy in the timeline we need to avert the worst impacts of climate change.” 
  • The Natural Resources Defense Council, which in 2019 held net assets of almost $387 million and awarded nearly $12 million in grants, declares that it “strongly supports the Green New Deal goal to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas pollution, with social and economic justice at the core of the solution.” 
  • The Environmental Defense Fund, which in 2018 held net assets of more than $208 million and awarded nearly $22 million in grants, says: “We look forward to working with the sponsors of the Green New Deal – and all those across the political spectrum working towards climate solutions – to transform our economy and achieve a healthier, more equitable and prosperous future.” 
  • The Wilderness Society, which in 2019 held net assets of $67 million and awarded nearly $34 million in grants, proudly “applauds Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) for leading the Green New Deal resolution,” which “lays out a framework for how to safeguard nature and humanity from the worst effects of climate change while providing sustainable economic opportunities, clean air and water and a just future for all.”
  • The Rainforest Action Network, which in 2019 held net assets of $8.5 million and awarded more than $712,000 in grants, likewise backs the Green New Deal with fervent passion. As Rainforest Action Network executive director Lindsey Allen has written: “The Green New Deal brings much-needed urgency to the national conversation around the climate crisis, which is without a doubt the biggest threat to life on this planet.” Allen’s only lament, in fact, is that the GND is not radical enough for his taste: “While I applaud the direction proposed in the Green New Deal resolution, it simply does not go far enough. The hard truth is that we must keep more fossil fuels in the ground.”

Other major supporters of the Green New Deal include such tax-exempt 501(c)(3) nonprofit activist organizations as the National Audubon Society, which in 2020 held net assets of $585 million and awarded more than $5.4 million in grants and similar disbursements; the World Wildlife Fund. which in 2019 held net assets of $386 million and awarded grants exceeding $70 million; and the Trust for Public Land, which in 2019 held net assets of $133 million and awarded over $58 million in grants.

These and hundreds of other likeminded activist organizations are united in their mission to advance the economic and cultural transformation that the Green New Deal, if it were signed into law, would herald. 

The efforts of the aforementioned pro-Green New Deal activist groups are augmented by a second enormous class of 501(c)(3) nonprofits that likewise have been granted tax-exempt status by the I.R.S.: the hundreds of charitable foundations that together award countless thousands of grants, worth many billions of dollars in the aggregate, to environmental activist organizations and causes each and every year. Among the more notable of these foundations are:

  • George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, which in 2019 held $10.3 billion in net assets and awarded $431 million in grants and contributions; 
  • The Pew Charitable Trusts, which in 2019 held $887 million in net assets and awarded over $142 million in grants and contributions; 
  • The Ford Foundation, which in 2018 held nearly $12.2 billion in net assets and awarded more than $534 million in grants and contributions;
  • The David and Lucille Packard Foundation, which in 2019 held over $10.3 billion in net assets and awarded $431 million in grants and contributions;
  • The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, which in 2020 held $12.7 billion in net assets and awarded over $471 million in grants and contributions; 
  • The Rockefeller Brothers Fund, which in 2019 held more than $1.2 billion in net assets and awarded $37.7 million in grants and contributions; 
  • The Nathan Cummings Foundation, which in 2019 held $430.8 million in net assets and awarded $20.3 million in grants and contributions;
  • The Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, which in 2019 held more than $323 million in net assets and awarded over$9.5 million in grants and contributions;
  • The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, which in 2018 held $5.9 billion in net assets and awarded nearly $308 million in grants and contributions; and 
  • The Tides Foundation, (the Sunrise Movement’s aforementioned fiscal sponsor), which in 2019 held over $405 million in net assets and awarded $457 million in grants and contributions.

The agendas of the activist organizations, charitable foundations, and educational institutions discussed above reflect their political rather than charitable agendas, make them agents of the Democrat Party, and should disqualify them from receiving billions in taxpayer subsidies. But thanks to the partisan – and even rogue - nature of the current I.R.S., they don’t. 

Notes:

[1] David Horowitz and Jacob Laksin, The New Leviathan (New York: Crown Publishing Group, 2012), pp. 156, 209-246. 

[2] Ibid.

 

David Horowitz and John Perazzo

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/07/rigging-war-fossil-fuels-david-horowitz-and-john-perazzo/

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McConnell helps Dems pass $280 billion Big Tech corporate welfare bill. Schumer betrays him in return - Daniel Horowitz

 

​ by Daniel Horowitz

[T]he politics surrounding the bill, as well as the bill itself, perfectly exemplify the “uniparty” dynamic

Few people in America were following the passage of the $280 billion handout for huge chip manufactures and the 5G industry, but the politics surrounding the bill, as well as the bill itself, perfectly exemplify the “uniparty” dynamic. To begin with, GOP leadership had no problem with this corporate welfare bill and worked together to craft it. However, McConnell promised to hold up the bill unless the Democrats committed to forgoing budget reconciliation, a process through which they can pass liberal priorities without the need for 60 votes. Well, McConnell and 17 other Republican senators eagerly provided the votes for the “chips-plus bill,” and Schumer responded by announcing his plans to pass budget reconciliation to remake our economy!

Leftists love over-taxing and over-regulating certain businesses while granting endless corporate welfare to other industries in order to create transnational monopolies. The semiconductor and 5G industries embody everything conservatives are worried about with the corporate masters – ties to China, privacy concerns, health concerns, outsourcing American jobs, creating monopolies, and funding woke global corporations that hate our values and use the funding as well as the technology against our best interests. 

In comes the “chips and science” bill (HR 4346), a $280 billion package for the science and tech cartels that includes $54 billion in five-year grants for manufacturing and design of semiconductors and 5G wireless deployment, plus $24 billion in tax credits for new semiconductor manufacturing facilities through 2026 and funding authorizations to bolster U.S. scientific research. These are some of the wokest and wealthiest companies. Intel, which aggressively lobbied for the bill, already earned $79 billion in revenue last year. Yet 17 Republicans, including Leader McConnell, joined every Democrat sans Bernie Sanders and voted for this earth-shattering and expensive bill with lightning speed.

Even if one agrees there is a need to somehow pick winners and losers, we should have at least secured provisions ensuring that China can’t steal our technology, that the jobs and supply chain remain here in the United States, and that these companies can’t promote wokeness, and we should have addressed oversight issues of privacy and health concerns with 5G. Rather than addressing the insane regulatory burden that has broken our domestic supply chains, this bill will further incentivize and invest in the current globalist system that sells out America to China. Absent large-scale policy reforms, more funding of supposed “American” tech giants is tantamount to funding China. The GOP’s answer to everything we don’t like is to add more spending to it.

To make matters worse, in the final days, the bill added hundreds of pages and hundreds of billions of dollars to fund the broken “science” agencies that should be shuttered. This includes a five-year $102 billion authorization for the National Science Foundation, Commerce Department, and National Institute of Standards and Technology to increase investments, which represents a $52 billion increase in baseline spending of these bloated and unnecessary agencies. It also includes billions of extra funding for “basic energy sciences” and “environmental sciences.” It appears that McConnell and company still “trust the science.”

In other words, even in the minority under a very radical and unpopular Democrat regime, Republicans think that the base spending bills weren’t enough and desire to increase funding for everything that is wrong with government. Republicans will wax poetic today about inflation, yet when it came to the issues that mattered – COVID, Ukraine, and now a massive Big Tech bill – they not only fail to filibuster big budget bills, but they will even vote for new massive spending bills while in the minority. At least in the past they used to be righteous in the minority and screwed conservatives only after winning elections.

Although there are some House Democrats who are at least consistent in their hate for big business and will oppose this corporate welfare, Republicans plan to supply the votes.

 

This is part of a broader betrayal of passing red-flag laws, flirting with gay marriage, and passing an NDAA funding the woke and broke military that is mandating the shots on soldiers.

To add insult to injury, McConnell originally promised that if Democrats didn’t give up on plans to pass budget reconciliation, he would block passage of the chips bill. A budget reconciliation bill is the only maneuver by which Democrats could attempt to ram through a transcendent policy change without facing a filibuster, assuming they keep every Democrat senator in line. Yet McConnell then votes for the bill, and within hours of its passage yesterday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced plans to pursue a reconciliation resolution.

After months of a stalemate with Senator Joe Manchin, Schumer announced plans to pass a $370 billion “climate and energy” bill, funding the Great Reset, three years of subsidies for the health care cartel under Obamacare, and more handouts for Big Pharma. They are calling it “the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022” because it purports to pay for the spending with tax increases, and somehow that would reduce inflation.

 

 

Thus, when Democrats pass that bill next week and all these same McConnell Republicans vote against it, just know that McConnell gave up his leverage and is responsible for that massive tax-and-spend giveaway to woke industries because he agreed to pass another massive corporate welfare bill. Nor do they have any plans to hold up the NDAA or the fiscal year 2023 budget bill when it comes due at the end of September.

But fear not. Spend the next few months campaigning for this same party so that none other than a Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is waiting for you as the reward for your hard work.

 

Daniel Horowitz

Source: https://www.conservativereview.com/horowitz-mcconnell-helps-dems-pass-280-billion-big-tech-corporate-welfare-bill-schumer-betrays-him-in-return-theblaze-2657771261.html

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Pelosi’s January 6th Committee and the Death of American Justice - Ed Brodow

 

​ by Ed Brodow

The Committee's real agenda.

 


One of my favorite Hollywood movies is John Frankenheimer’s thriller, “Seven Days in May,” which describes an attempted military takeover of the US government. Written by “Twilight Zone” fabulist Rod Serling, the plot seemed far-fetched back in 1964. We knew that could never happen in America. Something equally sinister is playing out right now, only this time it is not a movie. The very cornerstone of our republic, the American justice system, is being sabotaged by the Democratic Party with the eager collaboration of the Biden administration.

In 2020, American cities and towns were ravaged by marauding mobs of crazed leftists. Dozens of lives were lost and damages amounted to billions. Hundreds of businesses, the product of years of struggle and sacrifice, were utterly destroyed. Buildings were looted and burned. Statues were torn down. Innocent people were beaten and murdered. With the complicity of Democratic mayors and governors, police in 2020 were told to stand down and allow the violence to continue. As a consequence, beautiful cities like New York and San Francisco will never be the same.

In the aftermath of more than 600 violent riots, virtually no one has gone to jail and the public servants who enabled the chaos are seeking re-election. Thousands of rioters, looters, and arsonists either were not arrested or received suspended sentences. Democratic-controlled media went out of their way to label them as “peaceful demonstrators.” The laissez faire attitude toward the 2020 mayhem has encouraged all other forms of felonious activity. You are much more likely to be robbed, beaten, shot, or raped than you were before the 2020 riots. Our negligent justice system is more likely to support criminals than innocent victims of crime.

The Democratic Party, clearly responsible for the breakdown of law and order in 2020, is distracting the public’s attention by playing up the January 6, 2021, storming of the US Capitol as “the most dangerous threat to American democracy.” Pretending that the 2020 riots never occurred, the Democrats are blaming the Capitol assault on a “white nationalist insurrection.” The intent of this fiction is to convince the gullible public that extremism is coming from the Right and that we should fear an “insurrection” by white supremacists, which is really a euphemism for Republicans. “The ruling elite are pushing the notion of rampant right-wing domestic terrorists,” said cultural critic Michael McCaffrey, “in an attempt to conceal their crimes and stifle dissent.”

“Who exactly are these terrorists who threaten us so urgently?” asked Tucker Carlson on Fox. “The Biden administration declared that the ‘most lethal elements’ of today’s domestic terror threat are political conservatives. These are the people who disagree with Joe Biden. It’s a big change in the way the US government treats its own citizens,” said Carlson. 

In sharp contrast to the leniency given to the 2020 rioters, participants in the Jan. 6th event were locked up like animals. “Numerous detainees are being held in third world conditions,” Steve McCann wrote in American Thinker, “and at times in solitary confinement subject to physical abuse. All are awaiting trials that will not happen for nearly a year.” Prosecutors have failed to release exculpatory information requested by the defendants. This is right out of the KGB annals, not the American justice system.

Having failed to destroy Trump with the Russia Collusion narrative and impeachment, the Democrats formed a committee allegedly to investigate what happened at the Capitol—but the real reason for its existence is to vilify Trump in advance of the 2024 election. “The January 6th committee is a politburo-type committee set up by Nancy Pelosi loaded with the most radical leftist Democrats you can imagine and two of the worst Never-Trumper reprobates,” said political commentator Mark Levin. “They are using the committee to advance a political agenda against a former president. It is very Stalinist in its makeup. It violates the liberty and due process rights of the individuals that they’re smearing.”

“The press has already convicted Mr. Trump on everything involving January 6th, so why should the committee bother with facts or try to seek the truth?” said Bill O’Reilly. “It’s in business to damage Trump. This is called corruption.” The Jan. 6 committee ''does not want the public to hear the other side'' of the narrative, said Harvard legal scholar Alan Dershowitz on Fox. ''That's why it didn't permit any cross-examination, any confrontation, any due process, anything resembling fairness. The end of it is a report that nobody is going to believe.'' The committee stands in total repudiation of the time-honored principles of American justice.

The upshot is that if you are Democratic and liberal, the justice system will bend over backwards for you. If you are Republican and conservative, you are in a world of hurt. Biden has revived Obama’s policy of weaponizing the Deep State to attack his political enemies. Under the partisan supervision of Attorney General Merrick Garland, the Justice Department and FBI are dispensing injustice—with a bullet for conservatives—on a daily basis. "The FBI is now an organization solely focused on destroying the domestic enemies of the Democratic Party," said talk radio show host Jesse Kelly. The felonious behaviors of Hillary Clinton, James Comey, and other Democrats are scrupulously swept under the carpet while Trump supporters Paul Manafort and Roger Stone are assaulted in the middle of the night by paramilitary forces.

“We’re looking at the transformation of a democratic republic into something else,” said Tucker Carlson. “We’re looking at growing authoritarianism. That’s not an overstatement.”

 

Ed Brodow

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/07/pelosis-january-6th-committee-and-death-american-ed-brodow/

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Hassan Nasrallah Backtracks From War Talk - Hugh Fitzgerald

 

​ by Hugh Fitzgerald

Feeling the sting of Lebanese fury.

 


Upon briefly emerging from his hideout in mid-July, Hassan Nasrallah proceeded to threaten to make war on the Zionists. They would not be allowed, he said, to exploit the “oil” (sic) resources of the Karish gas field in the Mediterranean, which he claimed belonged to Lebanon. To prove he was serious, he sent three unarmed drones to scare the crews on the gas rig; they never made it to their target, but were shot down early in their trajectory by the Israelis. He then said that that had been just a preliminary warning, and he was prepared to go to war to protect Lebanon’s “oil” (gas) fields from Israel.

Now, it seems, Nasrallah has been having second thoughts. The Lebanese negotiating with the Israelis over their respective maritime economic zones in the eastern Mediterranean appear on the verge of an agreement. In exchange for Lebanon recognizing Israel’s exclusive right to the Karish gas field, the Israelis will agree to Lebanon’s exclusive right to the Qana gas field. Such an agreement will allow Lebanon to finally begin exploiting that field, and bring in much-needed revenue for a country that is on the brink of an economic abyss, with the Lebanese pound having lost 90% of its value in the last two years, with two-thirds of the Lebanese now living below the poverty line.

A report on Nasrallah’s rethinking his previous war talk is here: “Hezbollah Chief: ‘Not Certain’ If Heading to War With Israel Over Maritime Dispute,” Algemeiner, July 20, 2022:

The head of the Lebanon-based terrorist group Hezbollah said on Tuesday night that war with Israel over a maritime boundary is “not certain,” amid ongoing negotiations between Jerusalem and Beirut to resolve the dispute.

This remark comes just a week after Nasrallah had threatened war with Israel. “Nasrallah threatens war over Israel-Lebanon maritime border dispute,” by Tobias Siegal, Times of Israel, July 13, 2022:

“Lebanon’s leverage and only source of power in the maritime border negotiations [with Israel] is its resistance and strength. We must utilize this. This isn’t psychological warfare, we are serious about this,” he said.

“We possess options in air, land and sea. They are all on the table. We will respond with appropriate force at the appropriate time and place. War is much more honorable than the situation Lebanon is heading to now — collapse and starvation.”

The Hezbollah leader also sent a direct threat to Defense Minister Benny Gantz, who said after the drone incident that Israel would “defend its infrastructure in the face of any threat” and accused Hezbollah of “undermining the Lebanese state’s ability to reach an agreement” with Israel over the maritime border.

In April, Gantz threatened to “use the necessary force against the right targets” in Lebanon, following rockets launched toward northern Israel.

“All Israelis are aware that Gantz’s threats regarding Lebanon are empty and void,” Nasrallah said Wednesday [July 12].

Addressing the ongoing negotiations between Israel and Lebanon about the maritime border between the countries, Nasrallah said: “Don’t believe the Americans.

“If you don’t implement our rights until September, the outcome will be severe,” he added, calling on Lebanese authorities to “use Hezbollah as leverage against Israel during the negotiations.”

Nasrallah, who dragged Lebanon into a war with Israel in 2006 that most Lebanese did not want, and from which they suffered greatly, is now presenting Hezbollah as the only real “resistance” to the Zionist aggressors, the only force in Lebanon that can prevent Israel from exploiting a gas field that by rights belongs to Lebanon. Judging by the Hezbollah drones Israel so quickly dispatched, the terror group is not exactly scaring the Zionists. But Nasrallah is proving to be an unwelcome interference with the Lebanese-Israeli negotiations. More from the Times of Israel report:

Last month, US energy envoy Amos Hochstein discussed with Israel’s negotiating team a Lebanese proposal to resolve the maritime dispute.

According to Hochstein, Lebanon had agreed to drop demands for control of part of the Karish field claimed by Israel, asking in exchange for full control of the Qana gas field that also straddles the countries’ offshore economic zones.

Tensions surrounding the dispute have risen in recent weeks, after a gas production vessel arrived in Israel to launch extraction operations in the Karish offshore field, drawing condemnation from Lebanon, which had laid claim to parts of it.

Israel says the field is part of its UN-recognized exclusive economic zone and has been seeking to develop Karish as it tries to position itself as a natural gas supplier to Europe.

Earlier in June, Israel, Egypt and the European Union signed a memorandum of understanding in Cairo that will see Israel export its natural gas to the bloc for the first time.

So the EU is eager for Israel to start sending its natural gas to the continent, no doubt including the deposits at the Karish field, as well as the gas already flowing from the Taman and Leviathan fields. According to the MOU, Israel’s gas will be sent by pipeline to LNG facilities in Egypt, and from there will be shipped, in liquefied form, to Europe. Both Egypt and the EU now have a stake in the smooth flowing of natural gas from Israel’s offshore fields.

The leader of the group that has impoverished Lebanon is blaming Israel for the country’s impoverishment even though it was Israel which first discovered gas in that part of the Mediterranean and even though it was Israel which offered to help Lebanon develop their own gas production. “Nasrallah says war with Israel not certain,” Naharnet, July 20, 2022:

“There will be no oil extraction across the Israeli entity if Lebanon does not obtain its rights,” Nasrallah added, according to remarks published Wednesday in the pro-Hezbollah al-Akhbar newspaper.

Noting that war is “not certain,” Nasrallah said: “We’re not sure that we’re heading to a war. We might witness a surgical attack and a proportionate response, and the issue is related to the response of the Israelis, which might push things gradually to war.”

Nasrallah has now injected a note of uncertainty, where before he threatened war unconditionally should Israel start to exploit the Karish field. Obviously he’s scared of having to follow through on his threats, which he now knows Israel will respond to with overwhelming force, just as it has been doing in response to minor attacks, that caused no damage, from Hamas. More from the Algemeiner report:

“It is not our desire to open a front,” he continued. “We only want our rights and we’re escalating our rhetoric so that the Americans and Israelis submit, because the course of the collapse in Lebanon is continuing.”

Lebanon has been afflicted by a deep economic crisis since 2019, amid high national debt, political stagnation, corruption, sectarianism, and a rollback in foreign aid. The value of its currency has cratered, electricity shortages have resulted in chronic outages, and more than three-quarters of the population live below the poverty line.

Lebanon is before “a historic and golden chance to overcome its crisis,” said Nasrallah on Tuesday, adding that “if we don’t make use of it, we might not extract oil [sic] for the next 100 years.”

He asserted that while Lebanon “has offered major concessions” in the US-mediated talks, it “has not obtained the least of its demands.”

The Lebanon-Israel negotiations have not required “major concessions” by either side. In a Solomonic decision, each side agrees to give up something. Lebanon will drop its claim to a share in the Karish gas field – which is not a “major concession,” because even the UN supports Israel’s claim to Karish – and in return, Israel will allow Lebanon to exploit the Qana oil field, which will be recognized as lying in Lebanon’s exclusive economic zone. Both sides will gain, because an end to uncertainty will allow both the Israelis and the Lebanese to proceed, full speed ahead, with their exploitation of their respective fields.

A war with Israel “might escalate to [involve] the entire axis in a manner that would destroy it,” the Hezbollah chief warned — an apparent reference to the regional alliance of Shiite and other actors that, like Hezbollah, operate with Iranian support, including in Syria, Iraq, and the Gaza Strip.

Nasrallah is threatening a war between the Jewish state and other actors who, like Hezbollah itself, are local allies of Iran. He has in mind not just his own terror group, but the Alawite-led army of Bashar Assad in Syria, the Kata’ib Hezbollah militia In Iraq, and Hamas in Gaza, which, though its members are Sunni, has had no problem accepting aid from Shia Iran, as both Hamas and Iran share the same annihilationist goal for the Jewish state.

Earlier Tuesday [July 19] Prime Minister Yair Lapid warned that while Israel has “no interest in escalation, Hezbollah’s aggression is unacceptable and is liable to lead the entire region into an unnecessary escalation, just when there is a genuine opportunity for Lebanon to develop its energy resources.”

Nasrallah has previously spoken of war in the context of the maritime dispute. Earlier this month, he said that if “Lebanon receives no aid” and “is pushed towards collapse, hunger and people fighting one another,” then war would be a preferable alternative.

“The threat of war, and even going into war, is much more honorable and glorious,” Nasrallah claimed, according to a translation shared by the Middle East Media Research Institute. “If we decide to go to war, this alternative has a future.”

“The enemy can be defeated — before the war, when it begins, during the war, when it ends,” he added. “Then we will be able to impose our conditions, bring in hundreds of millions of dollars, and save our country.”

That was a week ago. Now Nasrallah appears to be succumbing both to his fellow Lebanese, and to his fear of an Israeli response to any further acts of aggression by his group, such as sending armed drones over the Karish oil field. The Lebanese are furious at his bellicose intervention, and want no more interference from Hezbollah – whether threatening words or drones — to get a deal done with Israel so that they can begin at once to start exploiting the Qana gas field, which will bring a much-needed boost to Lebanon’s ravaged economy.

Nasrallah has now felt the sting of Lebanese fury at his attempt to threaten war, and his sending drones to “scare the workers” at the Karish gas rig, a threat that can only complicate, and slow down, Beirut’s negotiations with Israel. The Lebanese economy needs its own gas – at the Qana field – to start flowing asap. Nasrallah has witnessed how easily Israel shot down his drones. He also saw the devastating Israeli response – the total destruction of an underground weapons factory, with sixteen tons of explosives blown up – to Hamas’ ineffectual rocket attack on the Jewish state that caused no casualties or damages. The Israelis have signaled that they mean business; there will be no more tit-for-tat. And Nasrallah has suddenly discovered that perhaps, after all, war with Israel is not the answer.

 

Hugh Fitzgerald

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/07/hassan-nasrallah-backtracks-war-talk-hugh-fitzgerald/

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Historic: Health care workers win $10.3 million settlement over COVID mandates - The Center Square Staff

 

​ by The Center Square Staff

Chicago-based NorthShore University HealthSystem has agreed to pay more than 500 current and former health workers.

 

The first settlement in the U.S. has been reached in a class action lawsuit filed by health care workers over a university system’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate.

Chicago-based NorthShore University HealthSystem has agreed to pay more than 500 current and former health-care workers a total of $10,337,500 as part of the terms of the settlement. It’s also changing its policy to accommodate religious exemption requests and rehiring former employees who were fired or forced to resign whose exemption requests were denied.

Represented by the nonprofit religious freedom organization Liberty Counsel, NorthShore employees sued, alleging they were discriminated against because they were denied religious exemptions from the company’s vaccine mandate. The settlement was filed Friday in the federal Northern District Court of Illinois.

The is the “first-of-its-kind class action settlement against a private employer who unlawfully denied hundreds of religious exemption requests to COVID-19 shots,” Liberty Counsel said. Its founder and chairman, Mat Staver, said it “should be a wake-up call to every employer that did not accommodate or exempt employees who opposed the COVID shots for religious reasons. Let this case be a warning to employers that violated Title VII.”

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex and national origin.

The settlement nearly concludes a conflict that began after NorthShore rejected employees’ religious accommodation requests to its “Mandatory COVID-19 Vaccination Policy.” Last October, Liberty Counsel sent a demand letter on behalf of the impacted employees but NorthShore didn’t change its policy. As a result, Liberty Counsel filed a class action lawsuit.

“If NorthShore had agreed then to follow the law and grant religious exemptions, the matter would have been quickly resolved and it would have cost it nothing,” Liberty Counsel said.

While the parties have agreed to the settlement, it still has to be approved by the court. Employees of NorthShore who were denied religious exemptions will receive notice of the settlement and be given an opportunity to comment, object, request to opt out, or submit a claim form for payment within deadlines yet to be established by the court.

The settlement requires NorthShore to change its “no religious accommodations” policy, which it has agreed to do, and provide religious accommodations in every position throughout its company.

Employees who were terminated because their religious exemption requests were denied are now eligible to be rehired, according to the terms of the settlement. They can apply for positions at their previously held seniority level within 90 days of the court approving the final settlement.

NorthShore’s director of PR, Colette Urban, told The Center Square, “We continue to support system-wide, evidence-based vaccination requirements for everyone who works at NorthShore – Edward-Elmhurst Health and thank our team members for helping to keep our communities safe.

“The settlement reflects implementation of a new system-wide vaccine policy which will include accommodation for team members with approved exemptions, including former employees who are rehired.”

The amount individuals will receive in payments will depend on how many valid and timely claim forms are submitted. If all, or nearly all, affected employees file valid and timely claims, it’s estimated that those who were fired or forced to resign after their religious exemption requests were denied will receive approximately $25,000 each. Those who were vaccinated under duress in order to keep their jobs and against their religious beliefs will receive about $3,000 each.

The 13 employees who were the lead plaintiffs will receive an additional payment of roughly $20,000 each. Liberty Counsel will receive 20% of the settlement amount of $2,061,500 to cover attorney fees and costs.

Liberty Counsel’s VP of Legal Affairs and Chief Litigation Counsel Horatio G. Mihet said, “The drastic policy change and substantial monetary relief required by the settlement will bring a strong measure of justice to NorthShore’s employees who were callously forced to choose between their conscience and their jobs. This settlement should also serve as a strong warning to employers across the nation that they cannot refuse to accommodate those with sincere religious objections to forced vaccination mandates.”

Staver added that it was “especially significant and gratifying that this first classwide COVID settlement protects health care workers. Health care workers are heroes who daily give their lives to protect and treat their patients. They are needed now more than ever.”

 

The Center Square Staff

Source: https://justthenews.com/nation/states/center-square/first-settlement-reached-health-care-workers-lawsuit-filed-over-covid

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War on words: Left seeks to redefine terms like female, pedophile and even recession - Natalia Mittelstadt

 

​ by Natalia Mittelstadt

"There's either no distinction between a man and a woman, or it's important that a woman is on the Supreme Court — but there's no bloody way I'm giving you both," said Jordan Peterson.

The left and its allies in the media have long manipulated the meaning of words for political advantage. For instance, "illegal aliens" became "undocumented workers" in most news stories about a decade ago. But the war on words has been escalating as the left presses LGBTQ+ rights and seeks to obscure the reality of a Biden recession.

The Merriam-Webster dictionary, for instance, has changed the definitions for "female," "male," "they," "boy," and "girl" to fit with gender identity ideology. While these changes were made in 2019 and 2020, The Daily Wire podcast host Matt Walsh and conservative account Libs of TikTok posted tweets about the definition changes last week.

For "male" and "female," listed definitions include "having a gender identity that is the opposite of female" and "having a gender identity that is the opposite of male," respectively.

For "they," one of the definitions is "a single person whose gender identity is nonbinary."

"Boy" and "girl" are defined as "a child whose gender identity is male" and "a person whose gender identity is female," respectively.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, meanwhile, has updated its guidance on COVID-19 illness for "Pregnant and Recently Pregnant People." Instead of calling those who are pregnant "women," the page adopts the gender-neutral term "people" to blur the biological (as opposed to social) basis of male-female differences. Only once does the updated guidance mention "pregnant women" — although the studies it cites on COVID risks associated with pregnancy and childbirth freely refer to "women."

During Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson's nomination hearing, she said she couldn't define what a woman was because she wasn't a biologist.

In June, Walsh released a documentary with The Daily Wire entitled "What is a woman?" that sees the narrator travel the world to get an answer to the question. On release day, The Daily Wire's website experienced a DDoS attack, where hackers disrupt a website with bot traffic to prevent users from accessing it. Despite this, the film was the most-streamed in the history of the site, co-CEO Jeremy Boreing said.

Walsh was suspended from Twitter earlier this year for tweeting: "The greatest female 'Jeopardy!' champion of all time is a man. The top female college swimmer is a man. The first female four-star admiral in the Public Health Service is a man. Men have dominated female high school track and the female MMA circuit. The patriarchy wins in the end."

Twitter has also now banned the use of the word "groomers" on its platform. The term came into wide usage after opponents of Florida's Parental Rights in Education bill labeled the measure the "Don't Say Gay" bill, despite the legislation only banning developmentally inappropriate instruction on gender identity and sexual orientation in public schools for grades K-3. Those mischaracterizing the measure were in turn labeled "groomers" by some supporters of the bill.

The term is now covered under Twitter's "Hateful Conduct policy when it is used as a descriptor, in context of discussion of gender identity," Twitter's health product communications lead Lauren Alexander told the Daily Dot.

"'Grooming' is a slur that that falsely equates being LGBTQ with being a pedophile," the Daily Dot reported.

"'Groomer' isn't an anti LGBTQ slur," Christina Pushaw, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' press secretary, replied on Twitter. "It's a description of an evil behavior that sick adults of all sexual and gender identities engage in. Why do you conflate this behavior with LGBTQ?"

On Monday, Twitter suspended journalist and podcaster Tim Pool for using the word "groomers."

Pool deleted the offending tweet, saying that he didn't "care enough about twitter for the tweet to stay up so whatever."

He later tweeted, "Twitter allows pedophiles to groom your kids on the platform."

His next tweet read, "from now on i [sic] just straight up call them pedophiles."

Meanwhile, some identity politics ideologues are now urging adoption of the term "minor-attracted people" to denote pedophiles. 

In November, former Old Dominion University professor Allyn Walker, author of the book "A Long Dark Shadow: Minor-Attracted People and Their Pursuit of Dignity," stepped down from the university following an uproar over comments the academic made in an interview about the book.  

The euphemism "minor-attracted people" is "less stigmatizing than other terms like pedophile," Walker explained. "A lot of people when they hear the term pedophile, they automatically assume that it means a sex offender. And that isn't true. And it leads to a lot of misconceptions about attractions toward minors."

After being let go by ODU, Walker, a transwoman who identifies as nonbinary, said, "My scholarship aims to prevent child sexual abuse." Johns Hopkins University's Moore Center for Prevention of Child Sexual Abuse announced in May that Walker was joining the center as a postdoctoral fellow.

Transgender YouTuber and podcaster Blaire White mocked a perceived double standard in Twitter's treatment of the terms "groomers" and "minor-attracted people."

"Sooo we're not allowed to call anyone 'groomers' on this app but pedophiles are allowed to call themselves 'MAPs' (minor-attracted people)," White tweeted. "Just burn it all down at this point."

Twitter has also suspended users for "deadnaming" transgender persons. For instance, Canadian author Jordan Peterson was suspended last month for calling Elliot Page by the transgender actor's former name, Ellen Page.

Peterson, a clinical psychologist, tweeted: "Remember when pride was a sin? And Ellen Page just had her breasts removed by a criminal physician."

"The Rubin Report" podcast host and author Dave Rubin was then suspended on Twitter earlier this month for sharing a screenshot of Peterson's tweet.

During a book tour appearance in May, Peterson decried the intellectual confusion bred by gender identity ideology.

Observing that supporters of Jackson's Supreme Court nomination "simultaneously proclaim that a woman is absolutely necessary for the highest position in the land — or one of them" while claiming not to "even know what a woman is," he said he told Democrats:

"Look, you can have one of those. You know, there's either no distinction between a man and a woman, or it's important that a woman is on the Supreme Court. But there's no bloody way I'm giving you both, because I don't even know how to do that.' I have no idea how to do that. Like, what am I supposed to do? Celebrate womanhood and simultaneously celebrate the fact that the differences between men and women are so trivial that they're irrelevant and they can be changed at whim? That is insane. It violates the law of non-contradiction."

On Thursday, the Associated Press, taking its cue from the Biden administration, obfuscated the common, long-standing definition of "recession," saying that while it's "a common rule of thumb" that two straight quarters of economic contraction equal a recession, "it isn’t an official definition."

The White House website claims that "official determinations of recessions and economists' assessment of economic activity are based on a holistic look at the data" factoring in a wide array of variables beyond negative growth rates.

 

Natalia Mittelstadt

Source: https://justthenews.com/nation/culture/evolving-gender-identity-sexual-orientation-definitions-female-groomers-minor

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