‘Thorny Questions’: How the Democrats and Media Enablers Censor News - Clarice Feldman

 

by Clarice Feldman

Democrats in Congress and their legacy media enablers dropped their veils this week, revealing how dear they hold their desire and capacity to censor truth.

Democrats in Congress and their legacy media enablers dropped their veils this week, revealing how dear they hold their desire and capacity to censor truth. The drop came during Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s testimony about vaccines and shows how frightened they are that he may out-primary their demented puppet Joe Biden and his cackling numbskull veep.

The New York Times' Sheryl Gay Stolberg tweeted:

“Despite the theater, the hearing raised thorny questions about free speech in a democratic society: Is misinformation protected by the First Amendment. When is it appropriate for the federal government to seek to tamp down the spread of falsehoods?”

Her comment was apparently inspired by Rep. Deborah Wasserman Schultz, who sought to hide his testimony from the public by moving it to executive session. When that failed, she and other Democrats on the committee peppered him with questions and denied him an opportunity to respond. Ranking Democrat Stacey Plaskett, in the context of an investigation of the censorship by the FBI and other agencies, said in her opening statement “I hope that [all members] recognize that there is speech that is not constitutionally protected,” referencing "hate speech." Her views, wrong as they are, echo similar censorship fan Senator Ben Cardin. 

Professor Jonathan Turley took strong issue with this distortion of the First Amendment. Surveys show that college students are especially indoctrinated to believe the Schultz-Plaskett-Stolberg fallacy about the limits on free speech. (Students surveyed indicate it should be a criminal offense to misgender someone.)  You might want to read his very sound rebuttal. Misinformation is protected, “simply stating something that others view as misleading or wrong [ed: or offensive to the listener] is protected under the First Amendment.”

That Amendment makes no distinction between different types of speech:

“Congress shall make no law …abridging the freedom of speech.”

“[I]t  is unconstitutional to criminalize lies.”

The idea that you can permit the government to decide true from false statements will always be selectively enforced to protect the interests of the officeholders.

“What is so troubling,” he concludes, “is how the ‘legacy media’ has jettisoned the most noble aspects of its legacy and has become the enabler of censors.”

Censorship, whether it is direct or indirect through threats to social media (enjoined by Judge Terry A. Doughty in Missouri v. Biden a few weeks ago) is a danger to us. We saw how the serious concerns about the COVID vaccine by reputable scientists were blocked from public view; how bad medical treatment (use of ventilators for COVID victims) and denial of alternative therapies cost lives; how exaggeration of COVID mortality locked down schools, businesses, and place of worship, magnifying terror in those who misunderstood the degree of risk. Indeed, the overblown coverage paved the way for overriding sensible election integrity laws and surely enabled fraud.

For almost three years the extensive videotapes of the J6 Capitol riot were kept hidden from the public. Now they are released and people are closely examining them. What they show in clear relief is that the crowd of thousands peacefully assembled for thirty minutes on the Capitol’s West Plaza, and were brutally and deliberately attacked for exercising their right to freely assemble.

Here is the timeline of the beginning of events there, and it is matched by videoframes of the event. 

• It begins at 1:13 when Metropolitan Police Officer Daniel Thau arrives and requests “blast munitions.”
• Four minutes later he orders the police snipers to continue firing into the crowd.
• Eleven minutes later he tased a random protestor.
• At 1:25 blast and incendiary munitions arrive and for about one hour “Capitol and DC police incite the crowd with an unrelenting barrage of grenades and mortars.”  
• Three minutes into the attack, Kevin Greeson, part of the crowd, drops dead, witnesses alleging he was killed by one of the grenades.
• Without giving the three warnings required by D.C. protocol, the police use their long-range acoustic device to clear the crowd. This conduct, which incited the peaceful crowd, violated the law. “DC police Sgt. Edwards admits to his Commander that they are inciting ten protestors for every person they hit.”
• At 2:25 more 40 mm munitions arrive and Thau orders “Officer ‘Rich’ to shoot a CS mortar ‘over the scaffolding.  Rich “misfires and gases the entire DC police line, causing them to retreat.”

It looks like something out of the Three Stooges. If you think this was not deliberate, but understandable because these officers were ill-trained, remember that outgoing President Trump asked the mayor for permission to call up the National Guard, which has better training for such things, and she refused. So did "security officials at the House and Senate" when the then-chief of the Capitol Police six times requested it.

Former chief Steven Sund -- who resigned his post last week after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called for him to step down -- made the assertions in an interview with The Washington Post published Sunday. 

Sund contradicts claims made by officials after Wednesday's assault on Capitol Hill. Sund's superiors said previously that the National Guard and other additional security support could have been provided, but no one at the Capitol requested it.

Sund told the Post that House Sergeant-at-Arms Paul Irving was concerned with the "optics" of declaring an emergency ahead of the protests and rejected a National Guard presence. He says Senate Sergeant-at-Arms Michael Stenger recommended that he informally request the Guard to be ready in case it was needed to maintain security. 

Like Sund, Irving and Stenger have also since resigned their posts.  

Irving was appointed by Nancy Pelosi, who used the occasion to invite her daughter in to videotape the event.

This is the true story of how a peaceful assembly led protestors to enter the Capitol. It has been bottled up for years, even though for many of the J6 defendants who have been jailed for years without trial, it is exculpatory evidence. It has been kept locked from view for one main reason: to advance the Democrats' narrative that this was an “insurrection” ginned up by Trump. In fact, it was a peaceful gathering, incited by outrageous and illegal conduct by the D.C. and Capitol police.

Starting prior to the 2020 election and lasting until this week, the FBI bottled up evidence that President Biden, beginning when he was vice-president, received substantial bribes from foreign governments that he had threatened. Last week Senator Chuck Grassley made public a redacted version of FBI Form 1023 detailing a number of damaging accusations from an FBI informant, accusations buttressed by bank records, with a promise of more to come.

Grassley wants to know why the FBI failed to investigate these credible allegations and hid them from Congress and the American people. Guess!

I think it’s for the same reason the FBI never investigates what appear to be multiple crimes by Hunter Biden on his laptop, which the agency knew was authentic at the time that 51 fomer IC officials publicly claimed it was “likely Russian disinformation,” a claim concocted by the Hillary Clinton campaign. And for the same reason the reporter who broke the story about the laptop Hunter left at a computer repair shop was muzzled by the government, social media, and legacy media. 

Almost everything you have read or viewed by legacy media has been damn lies. Almost everything that is truthful has been kept hidden by the government, Democrat officials, and social media. Now you know why they all insist the First Amendment doesn’t say what it says.

Clarice Feldman

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/07/thorny_questions_how_the_democrats_and_media_enablers_censor_news.html

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'The Perfect Crime': Tech Companies Are Manipulating Our Elections and Indoctrinating Our Children — How We Can Stop Them - Robert Epstein

 

by Robert Epstein

The Big Tech companies that exploded into existence over the past 20 years – as some of their prominent insiders have stated – have undermined our democracy, indoctrinated our children, and increasingly turned our freedom into an illusion.

• Big Tech companies are deliberately manipulating the outcomes of our elections and the thinking and beliefs of our children. And they are having an enormous impact.

• Consider this: The GOP currently has a slim 10-seat majority in the House of Representatives. Without Google's interference in 2022, it would likely now have a majority of between 27 and 59 seats.

• If Google had not interfered in the 2022 midterm elections, the GOP would likely have ended up with a Senate majority of up to eight seats.

• The Big Tech companies that exploded into existence over the past 20 years – as some of their prominent insiders have stated – have undermined our democracy, indoctrinated our children, and increasingly turned our freedom into an illusion.

• The techniques we have discovered – the Search Engine Manipulation Effect, the Answer Bot Effect, the Targeted Messaging Effect, and others – can easily shift the opinions and voting preferences of undecided voters by between 20% and 80% after just one manipulation. Google can also repeat these manipulations many times over a period of months prior to an election.

• Assuming the effects of these techniques are additive, Google can likely produce even larger shifts in opinions and voting preferences than the ones from a single manipulation used just once.

• Google also knows exactly who is vulnerable to these manipulations – who is still undecided before Election Day, for example – so they can target and bombard just the right people on a massive scale 24 hours a day.

• Our research has shown repeatedly that the manipulations used can make them invisible to people, and can often produce shifts of 40% or more in the voting preferences of undecided voters without anyone having the slightest idea they have been manipulated. They feel free, even while they are being strongly controlled. As one journalist wrote, "It really is the perfect crime."

• Finally, our research measures the influence of "ephemeral experiences" -- their term -- meaning content that is seen briefly, affects the user, and then disappears forever, leaving no paper trail for authorities to trace, Most online content – search results, newsfeeds, video sequence, and so on – are ephemeral.

• Can Google deliberately use ephemeral content to manipulate people? You bet. If you doubt that, read this 2018 article from the Wall Street Journal about some leaked emails from the company.

• In the days leading up to the 2022 midterms, the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology... preserved overwhelming evidence of Google's manipulations on their search engine, on their video recommendations on YouTube (owned by Google), and even on their homepage on Election Day. On that day in Florida, for example, 100% of liberals received go-vote reminders on their version of Google's homepage, but only 59% of conservatives did.

• If, in 2024, 158 million people cast ballots, as they did in 2020, it means Google could likely shift the votes of between 6.4 and 25.5 million people, thereby easily controlling the outcome of any election in which the projected win margin is less than 4%. No laws or regulations are in place to stop them, but our monitoring can. We are monitoring their systems and doing to them what they do to us. When the Big Tech companies know that their manipulations are being watched, they back off. It has already worked to completely shut down manipulations in one important election.

• On November 5, 2020, three U.S. Senators sent a strong warning letter to the CEO of Google expressing concern about the extreme political bias our monitoring system had detected in the days leading up to the presidential election – bias sufficient to have shifted at least 6 million votes to Joe Biden.

• As a result, Google immediately shut down its election manipulations in the two upcoming Senate runoff elections in Georgia.... Go-vote reminders ceased, and so did bias in Google search results.

• In other words, monitoring, combined with political pressure from our leaders and our public, can and will force Google and other tech companies to stay clear of our elections and our children. It will also give legislators, regulators, and litigants the ammunition they need to challenge both the company and its executives in court.

• Yes, they do mess with us. As explained in "How Google Stopped the Red Wave," whenever you see online content screaming about Democrats who have perpetrated widespread ballot harvesting or ballot box stuffing, you are being manipulated by Google-and-the-Gang. It is their algorithms – controlled very precisely by their employees – that decide what content goes viral and what content is suppressed... because Google-and-the-Gang want them to. Why? So you will not look at them – at the tech companies themselves.

• The problem is: unless we can find additional major funding soon, we will have to start scaling down our effort in August and may have to shut it down completely soon after.

• If this type of election interference continues unmonitored and unchallenged, could the GOP itself – and ultimately all of American democracy – become ephemeral experiences?

Big Tech companies are deliberately manipulating the outcomes of our elections. In Florida, for example, on Election Day of the 2022 midterms, 100% of liberals received go-vote reminders on their version of Google's homepage, but only 59% of conservatives did. Figure 1. A go-vote reminder on Google's home page on Election Day, 2022.

Big Tech companies are deliberately manipulating the outcomes of our elections and the thinking and beliefs of our children. And they are having an enormous impact.

If you doubt that, consider this latest snippet of data from my lab, the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology (AIBRT).

Consider this: The GOP currently has a slim 10-seat majority in the House of Representatives. Without Google's interference in 2022, it would likely now have a majority of between 27 and 59 seats.

The 2022 midterm elections that gave the Democrats a two-vote majority in the U.S. Senate had quite a bit of help from Google, and, to a lesser extent, from a couple of other major tech companies.

If Google had not interfered in the 2022 midterm elections, the GOP would likely have ended up with a Senate majority of up to eight seats.

The Big Tech companies that exploded into existence over the past 20 years -- as some of their prominent insiders have stated – have undermined our democracy, indoctrinated our children, and increasingly turned our freedom into an illusion.

Tristan Harris, a former "design ethicist" at Google, says that he was a member of a team at the company, whose job it was to influence "a billion people's attention and thoughts every day." Jaron Lanier, a computer scientist and one of the early investors in Google and Facebook, claims that Big Tech content has "morphed into continuous behavior modification on a mass basis." Another early investor in these companies, the prominent author and venture capitalist Roger McNamee, has said that he now regrets having financed them, and asserts that they constitute "a menace to public health and to democracy."

Rigorous Research

Such concerns are valid and the Senate numbers correct: we have been using rigorous, scientific methods to study Google and other tech companies for more than 10 years. During this time, we have discovered and quantified about a dozen powerful new forms of influence that the internet has made possible. We have also developed and deployed monitoring systems that track, record, and analyze the personalized content that Google and other tech companies send to voters and children 24 hours a day – in other words, we are monitoring their systems and doing to them what they do to us.

Our basic scientific, peer-reviewed studies clearly show the power that Google and other companies have to alter thinking and behavior. Our monitoring systems confirm that these companies are actually using these techniques, as confirmed by company whistleblowers, as well as by leaks of documents, emails, videos, and other materials from Google, Facebook, and Twitter.

The techniques we have discovered – the Search Engine Manipulation Effect, the Answer Bot Effect, the Targeted Messaging Effect, and others – can easily shift the opinions and voting preferences of undecided voters by between 20% and 80% after just one manipulation. Google can also repeat these manipulations many times over a period of months prior to an election.

Assuming the effects of these techniques are additive, Google can likely produce even larger shifts in opinions and voting preferences than the ones from a single manipulation used just once.

Google also knows exactly who is vulnerable to these manipulations – who is still undecided before Election Day, for example – so they can target and bombard just the right people on a massive scale 24 hours a day.

Our research has shown repeatedly that the manipulations used can make them invisible to people, and can often produce shifts of 40% or more in the voting preferences of undecided voters without anyone having the slightest idea they have been manipulated. They feel free, even while they are being strongly controlled. As one journalist wrote, "It really is the perfect crime."

Finally, our research measures the influence of "ephemeral experiences" -- their term -- meaning content that is seen briefly, affects the user, and then disappears forever, leaving no paper trail for authorities to trace, Most online content – search results, newsfeeds, video sequence, and so on – are ephemeral.

Can Google deliberately use ephemeral content to manipulate people? You bet. If you doubt that, read this 2018 article from the Wall Street Journal about some leaked emails from the company. In that email exchange, Googlers are discussing how they might use "ephemeral experiences" to change people's views about Trump's temporary 2017 travel ban on visitors from seven majority-Muslim countries.

Rapidly Growing Monitoring Capabilities

In the days leading up to the 2022 midterms, the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology monitored Big Tech content through the computers of 2,742 registered voters in 10 swing states, and preserved more than 2.5 million ephemeral experiences – data that is normally lost forever – on Google and other platforms.

We preserved overwhelming evidence of Google's manipulations on their search engine, on their video recommendations on YouTube (owned by Google), and even on their homepage on Election Day. On that day in Florida, for example, 100% of liberals received go-vote reminders on their version of Google's homepage (Figure 1), but only 59% of conservatives did (Figure 2).

Figure 2. Proportion of go-vote reminders on Google's home page, broken down by the political leaning of the recipients.

The Tried and Tested Solution: a Permanent, Self-Sustaining Monitoring System

Google can, overall, easily shift the votes of between 20-80% of undecided voters; right now, that is about 40% of the electorate. This could be enormously consequential. By mid-2024, 20% of voters will likely still not have made up their minds on who to support. At that point, Google will still be able to shift up to 80% of the votes of those individuals -- or up to 16% percent of the electorate.

If, in 2024, 158 million people cast ballots, as they did in 2020, it means Google could likely shift the votes of between 6.4 and 25.5 million people, thereby easily controlling the outcome of any election in which the projected win margin is less than 4%. No laws or regulations are in place to stop them, but our monitoring can. We are monitoring their systems and doing to them what they do to us. When the Big Tech companies know that their manipulations are being watched, they back off. It has already worked to completely shut down manipulations in one important election.

On November 5, 2020, three U.S. Senators sent a strong warning letter to the CEO of Google expressing concern about the extreme political bias our monitoring system had detected in the days leading up to the presidential election – bias sufficient to have shifted at least 6 million votes to Joe Biden.

As a result, Google immediately shut down its election manipulations in the two upcoming Senate runoff elections in Georgia.

We were monitoring Google content through the computers of a politically-balanced group of more than 1,000 registered voters in that state. Go-vote reminders ceased, and so did bias in Google search results.

In other words, monitoring, combined with political pressure from our leaders and our public, can and will force Google and other tech companies to stay clear of our elections and our children. It will also give legislators, regulators, and litigants the ammunition they need to challenge both the company and its executives in court.

Since 2016, we set up six election monitoring systems, for only the weeks leading up to each election. After the 2022 midterms – with the results being so blatant and disturbing – we decided that the time had finally come to set up a permanent monitoring system in all 50 states – a $50 million project that we were able to launch with $3 million indentations from some patriotic Americans.

Without a permanent system like this in place, we will never know the extent to which Google-and-the-Gang are messing with our elections, our kids, or even with our own heads.

Yes, they do mess with us. As explained in "How Google Stopped the Red Wave," whenever you see online content screaming about Democrats who have perpetrated widespread ballot harvesting or ballot box stuffing, you are being manipulated by Google-and-the-Gang. It is their algorithms – controlled very precisely by their employees – that decide what content goes viral and what content is suppressed. If stories about other election irregularities are spreading like wildfire online and then being echoed on the news, it is because Google-and-the-Gang want them to. Why?

So you will not look at them – at the tech companies themselves.

As of this writing, we are preserving and analyzing Big Tech content through the computers of a politically-balanced group of 9,838 registered voters in all 50 states, and we have met our minimum "representative sample" thresholds in 5 states. We are also now monitoring and preserving content – some of which is quite alarming – through the phones and mobile devices of children and teens.

Best of all, we have now preserved more than 25 million ephemeral experiences on Google and other platforms – content that is normally lost forever. Our goal is to make our findings available to the public in real time, 24 hours a day, through dashboards such as America's Digital Shield.

The problem is: unless we can find additional major funding soon, we will have to start scaling down our effort in August and may have to shut it down completely soon after.

If this type of election interference continues unmonitored and unchallenged, could the GOP itself – and ultimately all of American democracy – become ephemeral experiences?

Note from the author: If you are concerned about the dangers the Big Tech companies pose to our democracy, our children, and our autonomy, please contribute at https://MyGoogleResearch.com. All donations are fully tax-deductible.

* * *

Robert Epstein earned his Ph.D. at Harvard University in 1981. He is currently Senior Research Psychologist at the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology. He has published 15 books and more than 300 articles in both mainstream media outlets and scientific journals, among them, Science, Nature, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA. He is the former editor-in-chief of Psychology Today magazine and was a longtime contributing editor at Scientific American. His 2019 Congressional testimony about Google can be viewed at https://EpsteinTestimony.com. To support or learn about his work, visit https://MyGoogleResearch.com or https://TechWatchProject.org.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19821/tech-companies-manipulating-elections

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Secret Service vet on WH cocaine: 'Somebody's stopping this from being thoroughly investigated' - Nicholas Ballasy

 

by Nicholas Ballasy

"If you're not going to interview them, then all 500 people should never be allowed back in the White House again because they're all suspects," the former supervisory special agent says.

 

A security expert who worked with the Secret Service for over 20 years says he's "surprised" the agency is closing the investigation into how cocaine was found at "one of the most secure buildings in the world" without identifying any suspects.

In briefing Congress earlier this month about the July Fourth weekend discovery at the White House, the agency said it did not conduct interviews as part of its internal investigation, citing the roughly 500 potential suspects, and that it planned to close the probe in the coming weeks.

"I'm surprised because we're talking about agents who are extremely intelligent, dedicated and exceptional criminal investigators," Charles Marino, a former supervisory special agent, told Just the News last week. "If you tell them to go out and get to the end of something, that's exactly what they're going to do."

He also said: "You've got a designated timeframe, you've got the holiday ... in which this occurred. We're fairly certain that this item did not linger for a long period of time in the West Wing, based on the security measures that we know are in place in terms of checking on that area and conducting sweeps."

He also posed the question: Why is this being treated as if this dime bag or eight ball of cocaine was found on a street corner in a major city? And why isn't it being treated that this was found in the White House? And also, if you didn't think it was a threat, or could be a threat, why was the hazmat team called?"

He said all 500-600 people who entered the White House during the specified time-frame are potential suspects and shouldn't be allowed back into the White House if federal investigators aren't going to interview them.

"It could have been a staff member or a family member. Look, when you don't find a suspect, that means that all 500-600 people that popped up during this time-frame all remain suspects, doesn't it?

"So if that's the case, how are you not interviewing people? I want to see the investigation be handled the way it deserves to be handled."

Beyond conducting the interviews, Marino wants made public a chain-of-custody report on where this cocaine was sent to be tested and the test results, and assurance the video footage has been thoroughly reviewed. 

"Was it at the FBI lab in Quantico, or was at another FBI facility where it was tested?" he asked. "I want to see the tests that were run on it. There should be paper trails on all of this on all of this."

Marino also argued there is no "forcing mechanism" that could give the Secret Service any leads on whose cocaine was found.

"I think the forcing mechanism has to be, 'Look, you senior staff member, you junior staff member who took a family tour through here, everybody, don't come back. I mean, what choice do you have? Somebody is stopping this from being thoroughly investigated."

He also said the Secret Service is supposed to be an "independent law enforcement agency," but the case being closed so  quickly creates the impression that political influence was involved.

"That's a situation and an assumption by the general public that the Secret Service has opened themselves up to," Marino  said.

He further argued Secret Service directors are political appointees but the director posts are career positions, which should make them "removed from the overall politics of the position or at least it's supposed to give that appearance."

Marino didn't single out Director Kimberly Cheatle, but said, "Political influence is only as effective as a particular leader will let it be. If you have a leader that is going to allow themselves to be influenced, again, not saying that it happened here, then yes, you can go down a very dark road."

Nicholas Ballasy

Source: https://justthenews.com/government/white-house/veteran-us-secret-service-surprised-agency-closing-cocaine-probe-without

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Secretary of State Blinken Can’t Discuss Response to China Hacking His Emails - Daniel Greenfield

 

by Daniel Greenfield

Defend Taiwan? We won't even defend ourselves.

 

Another lesson in smart power from the great minds that brought us the Clinton and Obama administrations.

It’s bad enough when they let our enemies beat up the country as a whole, but in this case Communist China personally targeted Secretary of State Blinken and top Biden administration officials. You would like to think that they would have some dignity and self-respect, but that’s obviously a non-starter in the face of the enemy.

Hackers linked to Beijing accessed the email account of the U.S. ambassador to China, Nicholas Burns, in an attack that is believed to have compromised at least hundreds of thousands of individual U.S. government emails, according to people familiar with the matter.

The contours of the campaign aren’t fully known. Though limited to unclassified emails, the inboxes of Burns and Kritenbrink could have allowed the hackers to glean insights into U.S. planning for a recent string of visits to China by senior Biden administration officials, as well as internal conversations about U.S. policies toward its rival amid a period of delicate diplomacy that has been challenged repeatedly in recent months.

Burns and Kritenbrink are the second and third senior Biden administration officials to be identified in news reports as having their emails hacked. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo’s email account was also compromised in the breach, U.S. officials have said.

The Chinese cyberattack apparently tried but failed to penetrate Blinken’s account or his common sense.

Secretary of State Blinken learned that China had tried to hack his emails a day before he was set to visit Beijing, and he chose to go ahead with the trip without making any public mention of it, not wanting to spoil the photo op. The previous scheduling of the trip had been bumped because of China’s spy balloon and Blinken chose to demonstrate to the enemy that no amount of abusive behavior was going to stop the Biden administration’s appeasement.

But don’t worry, Blinken had something to say to China.

Blinken “raised” the matter with Wang, and “made clear that any action that targets US government, US companies, US citizens is a big concern and we’ll respond appropriately,” a second senior State Department official said.

The official said they would not “get into the specifics” of the extent to which the hack was raised in Blinken’s meeting with Wang in Jakarta, nor would they characterize the US or Chinese response.

“We have consistently made clear that any action that targets US government, US companies, American citizens, is a deep concern to us and that we will take appropriate action to hold those responsible accountable and the secretary made that clear again tonight,” the official said.

Lots was doubtlessly “made clear again”. There are no specifics because there’s nothing to specify. And internally it’s business as usual.

Rob Joyce, the cybersecurity director at the National Security Agency, added that the hack amounted to a “fairly traditional threat” that the U.S. government is always confronting.

“It is China doing espionage,” Joyce said. “That is what nation-states do. We need to defend against it, we need to push back on it, but that is something that happens.”

Zero outrage, zero response and total surrender.

China hacks us, we’ve become conditioned to treat it as normal and do nothing about it except to try and bolster our defenses. Defend Taiwan? We won’t even defend ourselves.

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

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/secretary-of-state-blinken-cant-discuss-response-to-china-hacking-his-emails/

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Texas' Operation Lone Star results in 422 million fentanyl doses seized, 394,200 migrants stopped - Madeleine Hubbard

by Madeleine Hubbard

Texas has also bused more than 27,260 migrants to Democrat-led sanctuary cities across the U.S.

 

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott's mission to stop the influx of illegal migrants, drugs and weapons into the United States under Operation Lone Star has resulted in the seizure of over 422 million lethal fentanyl doses and the apprehension of over 394,200 illegal migrants, his office said. 

Operation Lone Star launched in March 2021, integrating the Texas Department of Public Safety with the Texas National Guard to combat smuggling into the state. 

Abbott's office on Friday said: "Since the launch of Operation Lone Star, the multi-agency effort has led to over 394,200 illegal immigrant apprehensions and more than 31,300 criminal arrests, with more than 29,100 felony charges reported. In the fight against fentanyl, Texas law enforcement has seized over 422 million lethal doses of fentanyl during this border mission."

Additionally, Texas has bused more than 27,260 migrants to Democrat-led sanctuary cities across the U.S., with most of the migrants going to Washington, D.C., and New York City.

Abbott said the operation "continues to fill the dangerous gaps created by the Biden Administration's refusal to secure the border."

The announcement about the operation's achievements comes as the Justice Department plans to sue Texas over the state's use of a floating barrier to stop illegal migration across the Rio Grande River, which separates Texas from Mexico. Abbott has fired back against the

Madeleine Hubbard is an international correspondent for Just the News. Follow her on Twitter or Instagram.

Source: https://justthenews.com/government/state-houses/texas-operation-lone-star-results-422-million-fentanyl-doses-seized-394200

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American Friends of Judea and Samaria: How you can spread the truth on Judea and Samaria - Israel National News

 

by Israel National News

American Friends of Judea and Samaria aims to spread the truth, change the global narrative on the Jewish people's rights in its homeland.

 

American Friends of Judea and Samaria (AFJS) is a new organization which seeks to change the way the Jewish communities of Judea and Samaria are viewed by the world. AFJS chairman Rafi Lazerowitz spoke with Josh Hasten, the organization's Director of PR at the Israel National News - Arutz Sheva studios in Jerusalem.

"We're an organization that wants to be an educational organization, first and foremost, to change the narrative about what's really going on on the ground in Judea and Samaria," Lazerowitz said.

"All my life, I've had relationships with people that lived in Judea and Samaria. There were things that just hit me to the core, when there were people that were willing to stop their lives, live in caravans with their families, with four and five kids, just because they ideologically felt that this is our homeland and we have to be here and we have to keep it. Not only for themselves, but for the Jewish nation and all Jewish people around the world," he explained.

Lazerowitz said that he was "pleasantly surprised" that he visited the Knesset with an AFJS delegation earlier today, even left-wing MKs "were very pro-Judea and Samaria, voiced their opinion about it, had no problem saying it publicaly, and wished us all the luck in the world."

"We are the only organization out there that is specifically educational out there, changing the narrative, giving the people the tools that they want. Anyone around the world [who is] pro-Judea and Samaria who want the tools, we are that address to go to, to give you those tools to spread the word around the world and help us out of that narrative," he said.

The AFJS website contains a detailed history of the thousands of years of Jewish history in Judea and Samaria as well as the legal status of the territories, which has been distorted by anti-Israel ideology. Click here to take part in spreading the true story.

Israel National News

Source: https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/374466

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Watchdog: Nearly 800,000 inactive registrants in Illinois voter rolls - The Center Square Staff

 

by The Center Square Staff

Judicial Watch announced Friday a federal judge ordered the Illinois State Board of Elections to turn over voter roll data.

 

Forthcoming research from nonprofit conservative watchdog Judicial Watch indicates Illinois has close to 800,000 inactive registered voters.

Judicial Watch announced Friday a federal judge ordered the Illinois State Board of Elections to turn over voter roll data to the Illinois Conservative Union and three registered voters. The state had allowed review in person in Springfield during limited hours, but that was 200 miles from where the plaintiffs live.

Friday’s ruling means plaintiffs will get access to digital copies of voter rolls for the past 15 elections to include “registrant’s full name … residential street address … email address … telephone number, county and state voter identification number, age of the registrant, and the registrant’s status (active or inactive) and the most recent date the entry was changed.”

“Clean voter rolls mean cleaner elections,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said. “This is a victory for all legal voters in Illinois. Voters will now have the transparency that federal law requires in order to ensure elections in Illinois are more honest and cleaner.”

Judicial Watch also announced forthcoming research it plans to release based on recent census data and information Illinois reported to the federal Election Assistance Commission that shows 14% of Illinois’ counties have more registered voters than citizens over 18, indicating the state has close to 800,000 inactive registrants.

“Those are staggering numbers and the very reason why we need the openness and transparency in an effort to clean up these voter rolls, again, just another step to try and restore faith in the system, in the election system, for the voters of Illinois,” state Rep. Brad Halbrook told The Center Square.

As a member of the Illinois House Ethics and Elections Committee, Halbrook argued for changes.

“These 40 day, prior to election day, vote by mail, early voting, ballots can be counted up to 14 days, the potential with rank-choice voting on the horizon, all of this stuff is not good for clean and fair elections and has to be reformed,” Halbrook said.

Judicial Watch has a pending lawsuit challenging Illinois’ weeks-long election process, arguing federal elections should be decided on election day, not weeks after.

The Center Square Staff

Source: https://justthenews.com/nation/states/center-square/watchdog-nearly-800000-inactive-registrants-illinois-voter-rolls

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Do Leftists Believe What They Claim to Believe? - Greg Irwin

 

by Greg Irwin

The short answer is no. The long answer explains why it's impossible to have an argument with them.

Do leftists believe what they say they believe?  And if not, how would we know?

On key issues, the evidence shows that their positions cannot be taken at face value.

In "Barack Obama's Rules for Revolution: The Alinsky Model", David Horowitz quoted an SDS radical who wrote, "The issue is never the issue.  The issue is always the revolution."  In other words, when the left picks an issue to demonstrate on, the issue itself is seen as a step to bigger goals.

Let us look at a few such issues.

While many undoubtedbly believe in the dangers of man's contribution to global warming, consider Christine Stewart — former Canadian environment minister — who said, "No matter if the science is all phony, there are still collateral environmental benefits. ... Climate change [provides] the greatest chance to bring about justice and equality in the world."

So if you were to debate Christine Stewart on E.V.s or wind turbines, for example, you would not persuade her, because you would not be arguing against "social justice," which is the deeper issue.

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's chief of staff, Saikat Chakrabarti, admitted that the true motivation behind her Green New Deal, which proposes transitioning the U.S. economy away from all fossil fuels in ten years, is to overhaul the "entire economy."  Note that AOC didn't call the Green New Deal the "Socialist New Deal," even though the Green Party site says it is a "major step towards ending unemployment for good and a tool to fight the corporate takeover of our democracy and exploitation of the poor."

Sometimes the deeper agenda reveals contradictions.  For instance, Jane Fonda, a famous (and very left-wing) actress, said this:

[L]et us commit to freeing ourselves, our country and its institutions from white supremacy, the enabler of climate destruction. And let us all work to truly understand why the two are inseparable.

Jane conveniently ignored the fact that China, which is certainly not run by white men, is by far the largest emitter of greenhouse gases today.  Pointing this fact out to her would get you nowhere because of a deeper worldview.  (Jane also once said, "If you understood what communism was, you would hope, you would pray on your knees that we would someday become communist.")

What about the issue of increasing welfare payments?

Richard Cloward and Frances Piven were both professors at Columbia University.  They had a goal, and they had a strategy.  The goal was "to wipe out poverty by establishing a guaranteed annual income."  To achieve this goal, the strategy was to overwhelm the welfare system with applicants until it failed and caused divisions in the coalition that a Democrat government relies on, thus forcing the Democrat administration to solve poverty with a guaranteed income.

If you were to argue with Piven about welfare eligibility, you would get nowhere, because her agenda is a guaranteed income, not tinkering with criteria for eligibility.  (You might spot a practical problem: if the government can't pay the welfare burden, how will it afford a guaranteed income?)

We can agree with leftists that we should take care of children — their hearts must be in the right place — it is just a question of means, not ends.  Right?

Well, no.

Ellen Willis — progressive, journalism professor, and writer for Rolling Stone and the Nation, said this: "The object of every feminist reform ... [including] child care programs, is to undermine traditional family values."

So arguing with Willis about pros and cons of daycare centers would be a waste of time.

At least the advocates of more immigration feel we would be enriched by the aspiring entrepreneurs of other nations, right?  The huddled masses yearning to breathe free?  We can agree with them on part of their agenda, right?

Well, no.

In the U.K.: "The huge increases in migrants over the last decade were partly due to a politically motivated attempt by [Labor] ministers to radically change the country and 'rub the Right's nose in diversity', according to Andrew Neather, a former adviser to Tony Blair."

The motivations of the left can be truly hard to fathom.  Karl Marx, who developed a whole theory of class that convinced many an idealistic adherent, actually laughed at those who believed in "that class s---."  So if Marx himself didn't believe it, why write books about it?

Apart from hiding a real agenda, even when the agenda is transparent, there is what Dr. Susan Crockford calls "noble cause corruption."  The idea is that people lie to advance what they believe is a noble cause.  One of the lies was how polar bears were dying because of global warming.  Dr. Susan Crockford was fired from her job after she pointed out that the population of polar bears was increasing.

To sum up this article, if you are a conservative arguing with the left (assuming that's even possible nowadays), it is not possible to have an honest debate when the "cause is not the cause" and you are debating a goal put forward as part of a strategy, instead of the real goal behind the strategy.

Image: Praveenp via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped).

Greg Irwin

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/07/do_leftists_believe_what_they_claim_to_believe.html

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Final debate on Israeli reasonableness bill begins in Knesset plenum - Eliav Breuer, Jerusalem Post Staff

 

by Eliav Breuer, Jerusalem Post Staff

"The current situation is not democracy, and not the rule of law," Simcha Rothman said. "The High Court will not determine what is reasonable, the ministers will determine [that]."

 

Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana is seen at a discussion and a vote on the reasonableness standard bill at the assembly hall of the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, in Jerusalem on July 23, 2023.

(photo credit: YONATAN SINDEL/FLASH90)

The final debate on the reasonableness standard bill began on Sunday morning in the Knesset plenum and will last for 26 straight hours until Monday at 12:00 p.m. The plenum is then scheduled to begin voting on the bill, which will take a number of hours. The bill is expected to pass into law at some point on Monday afternoon.

Knesset Constitution, Law, and Justice Committee chairman MK Simcha Rothman (Religious Zionist Party) presented the bill.

"The current situation is not democracy, and not the rule of law," Rothman said. "The High Court of Justice will not determine what is reasonable, the ministers will determine [that]," he added.

According to Rothman, the bill's purpose was to reign in the use of the reasonableness standard to what it was 40 years ago.

"Stop deceiving the people of Israel," Rothman said. He argued that there was no basis to the claim that the bill's purpose was to enable the current government to carry out certain moves, such as appointing Shas chairman MK Arye Deri as a minister, after the Supreme Court used the reasonableness standard to strike down his initial appointment in January, or firing Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara.

MK Simcha Rothman, head of the Constitution, Law and Justice Committee leads a Committee meeting on the planned judicial reform, at the Knesset in Jerusalem on July 12, 2023. (credit: YONATAN SINDEL/FLASH90)

Rather, members of the opposition who supported the bill in the past were opposing it now simply because they lost in the election, Rothman accused.

Opposition leader and Yesh Atid chairman MK Yair Lapid spoke next in the name of the opposition.

"We didn’t march yesterday to declare war, but to prevent one. To tell the government, if you still have any sense of fairness, stop," Lapid said.

"If you meant a single word you’ve said about national unity, stop. If you stop, we’re here. We talked to the President’s Residence. The doors there are open, waiting for us all. Waiting for us to come back and talk to prevent a disaster. To prevent the disintegration. To prevent an extreme minority from seizing control of the lives of the Israeli majority," Lapid said.

"I want to tell the government of Israel, from this podium, we don’t want to defeat anyone, because then we all lose. The truth is everyone wants a compromise, but nobody knows how to reach one or what it’ll look like.

"There’s only one way to find out: to keep trying. To stop the legislation. To go to the President’s Residence. Our legs will pray the whole way there. We need to go there and argue, fight, and speak again and again and not stop trying, because Israel’s fate depends on it," Lapid said.

Fellow opposition leader, National Unity chairman MK Benny Gantz, said that "what we are facing is a schism in the Israeli identity card, the likes of which we have never known."

"The IDF is an army of the people, and when the people are divided and conflicted – it filters down into the IDF," Gantz said.

The National Unity chairman repeated his proposal from last week, to immediately enter talks over the reasonableness standard bill and pass it into law, and then over the rest of the judicial reform via consensus only. However, agreeing to a compromise on the reasonableness standard bill without a commitment to consensus on the rest of the legislation would achieve nothing, Gantz added.

How have the Israeli government tried to get the reasonableness standard bill to pass?

According to a special protocol for the reasonableness standard bill that was approved last week in the Knesset Home Committee, the plenum will hold up to 140 votes on the over 27,000 objections filed by the opposition. The opposition will choose which objections they will put up for a vote.

Representatives of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continued on Sunday to hold talks with fellow coalition members and representatives of the President's Residence over a watered-down version of the bill.

Since the bill was already approved in the Law Committee, the only way for the bill to change is if the coalition votes to support one or more of the objections.

The "reasonableness standard bill" is an amendment to Basic Law: The Judiciary, that would block Israel's courts from applying what is known as the "reasonableness standard" to decisions made by elected officials. The standard is a common law doctrine that allows for judicial review against government administrative decisions that are deemed beyond the scope of what a responsible and reasonable authority would undertake.

The bill's current wording bars use of the standard for decisions made by the prime minister, the cabinet as a whole, or any specific minister. It also bars its use against a minister's decision not to use his or her authority, and on ministers' appointments of government workers.

Proponents of the law argue that it is a highly subjective tool for judicial activism that allows the court to subvert government policy with its own views. Critics argue that the tool is essential to counter corruption and to ensure the protection of individuals from arbitrary and capricious government decisions.

Eliav Breuer, Jerusalem Post Staff

Source: https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-752087

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Likud, anti-reform protest leaders both reject Histadrut proposal - JNS

 

by JNS

The labor federation is proposing an 18-month legislative freeze unless 62.5% of MKs favor the judicial changes.

 

Reform opponents march towards the Knesset after prayers at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, July 23, 2023. Photo by Chaim Goldberg/Flash90.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party on Sunday rejected a judicial reform proposal put forward by the Histadrut labor federation.

Histadrut chairman Arnon Bar–David and Dubi Amitai, chairman of the presidium of the Israeli Business Sector, on Sunday laid out a proposal they had submitted to Netanyahu over the weekend.

It proposes freezing the legislative process for 18 months unless at least 75 members of Knesset (62.5% of the 120 lawmakers) favor the reforms. Since the government has a narrow majority of 64 lawmakers, reaching such a broad consensus would seem impossible.

The Histadrut is also proposing a softening of the “reasonableness bill” which is being debated in the Knesset plenum on Sunday and which could see a final vote on Monday or Tuesday. The bill has drawn thousands of demonstrators to Jerusalem as mass protests continued across the country on Saturday night for the 29th consecutive week.

Bar-David made it clear that he is not seeking another general strike right now similar to the one that paralyzed the country in March. 

“The proposal would completely neuter the amendment on the issue of reasonableness and requires total concession on all the other elements of the reform,” Likud said in a statement. “We are continuing to make every effort for a real compromise.”

Opposition leader and Yesh Atid Party Yair Lapid met with Bar-David on Sunday morning.

“It is our duty to make every effort to stop the madness and reach broad agreements. I welcome the efforts of the chairman of the Histadrut, the outline laid out by the Histadrut is a basis for a joint dialogue,” Lapid said after the meeting in Bar-David’s Tel Aviv office.

But the head of the Labor Party came out against the Histadrut proposal.

MK Merav Michaeli said in a statement that the proposal amounts to “a tremendous opening for corruption, politicization of the judicial system and increased risk of harm to human rights.”

Leaders of the protest movement against judicial reform also dismissed the Histadrut’s proposal. In a statement, the heads of the “Kaplan protests” reiterated their demand that judicial reform legislation be scrapped entirely.

“Compromises in which Israel ultimately turns into a dictatorship are even worse than a decision,” they said.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog, who previously held meetings at his Jerusalem residence with the ruling coalition and the opposition in an attempt to hammer out an agreement, returned from his trip to the United States on Sunday.

Both now and during the trip, the head of state has been working “to fully explore negotiation efforts in order to reach an agreement between the sides,” a statement from Herzog’s office said.

JNS

Source: https://www.jns.org/israel-news/judicial-reform/23/7/23/304823/

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