In 2015, the “Defend the Guard Act” was introduced in the West Virginia legislature, aiming to bring sanity to our nation’s foreign policy and the legal abuses foisted upon our servicemen within our state’s National Guard.
This proposed law emerged from long forgotten principles, pieced together into legislation that was committed to the idea that our troops ought to only be sent into foreign wars with a declaration of war by the U.S. Congress—a constitutional mandate forsaken for over eighty years now.
With the Congress renouncing its solemn responsibility, over time, the process of throwing American troops into foreign wars has become a matter of unilateral decree by the president, an office swayed carelessly by the administrative state and impulsive bureaucrats from the Pentagon.
The consequences of this radical departure from our nation’s traditional governance have been predictable: a catastrophic state of “Forever Warfare,” financially and morally bankrupting our country.
The Defend the Guard Act, then, is a last-ditch effort to reassert legislative oversight before it’s too late, and force Washington to confront the neglected ethics long held by the Western “Just War Tradition”—that armed conflict should always be a measure of last resort.
The legislation, however, is more than just a simple procedural check. A crucial aspect is its focus on keeping our Guard units at home, where they’re needed most. A state’s National Guard is essential for handling local emergencies like floods and storms or securing our borders.
Over the years, a troubling trend has emerged: many of the National Guard members who have been cut down on the front lines of Washington’s perpetual foreign wars hail from rural states akin to West Virginia—states like Arkansas, Ohio, and Kentucky, or Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming.
This disproportionate burden of foreign wars borne by our country’s rural regions—areas often dismissed by the elites of this nation as “flyover country”—is not just a tragedy, it’s an outrage. To the ruling coastal elite, our servicemen from such states are seen as expendable.
During the height of the Iraq War, for instance, nearly half of all combat brigades were National Guardsmen, a great many from rural states held in contempt by the managerial ruling class, who don’t think twice about them or their families.
Central to this entire affair has been the incredible efforts of Sgt. Dan McKnight (Ret) and the organization he formed, Bring Our Troops Home. Dan’s leadership and organizational skills have propelled this idea from a meager initiative in West Virginia to a national movement.
Dan’s devotion to the cause, coupled with his talent to articulate its urgency, has galvanized massive support and brought critical attention to the subject—amplifying the voices of combat veterans everywhere and motivating state legislators across the country to take action.
Each year, as we’ve fought to advance this ‘Defend the Guard’ legislation, formidable resistance is encountered, primarily from the Pentagon and their bureaucratic lackeys. The “Brass” and the useful idiots sent to carry out their bidding employ a wide range of sordid tactics; from disingenuous accusations of “failing to support the troops,” to more aggressive methods behind closed doors—like threats of federal-funding cuts and hints of public defamation against those who support the legislation—the hostility has only intensified.
The escalation of these schemes if a sign of their growing desperation. It’s quite common now for uniformed general officers to patrol the halls of state capitols, lobbying state legislators against the bill with Machiavellian tactics.
These blatant measures on behalf of public “servants” attached to the Pentagon pose a direct challenge to the fundamental American principle of civilian authority over the military—raising questions as to who really controls the armed forces of this country anymore.
Despite this ordeal, the Defend the Guard Act has begun to spread like wildfire, thanks again in large part to Dan McKnight’s heroic efforts. This once-regional idea has now found resonance in dozens of state capitols across the nation.
Huge victories have been achieved with the bill’s passage in the Arizona Senate, and—as of four days ago—its success through the New Hampshire House, marking an even bigger milestone. With the potential to reach up to 40 states this coming year, a pivotal turning point is at hand.
The success of this movement underscores a very critical moment for our states to leverage their inherent powers within our country’s federalist framework, compelling the federal government in Washington to adhere to its foundational principles.
Paramount in this endeavor is the protection of our courageous servicemen within the National Guard—along with the prudent treatment of all of our country’s warriors, who honor their sacred oaths they swore to the Almighty when they donned the uniform.
By reviving long-neglected political principles and promoting the classical virtues, true leaders can be encouraged to emerge and drive efforts that can also safeguard our nation as a whole.
Next week, for the tenth consecutive year, I’ll re-introduce the Defend the Guard Act here in West Virginia. As the idea spreads, I’m hopeful a growing resolve to uphold the virtues our country was founded upon will as well.
Pat McGeehan is a member of the West Virginia House of Delegates representing the first district.
January 8, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Militarism | United States |
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“Endless hysteria will keep you free,” said none of the Founding Fathers. But President Joe Biden missed that message before his absurdly overheated speech last Friday near Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. Biden draped himself in Revolutionary War virtue as he demanded that Americans quiver in fear at the prospect of his reign ending. Biden invoked the third anniversary of the January 6 Capitol clash to effectively call for canceling the 2024 presidential election.
At a minimum, Biden wants to turn the November election into a referendum on Adolf Hitler. Biden boasted, “We are still a nation that gives hate no safe harbor.” A few minutes before that uplifting assertion, Biden accused Donald Trump of “echoing the same exact language used in Nazi Germany.” CNN reported last week that Biden campaign aides plan to go “full Hitler” on Trump, making “a direct comparison to the Nazi leader rather than couching their attacks by saying Trump ‘parroted’ him.” A few weeks ago, the Biden campaign posted a graphic on Twitter comparing Trump and Hitler’s rhetoric.
Biden continually equated democracy with freedom. And whatever is good for democracy is “close enough for government work” to freedom. Biden declared, “Democracy means having the freedom to speak your mind.” Unless Team Biden disapproves of your thoughts, of course.
Biden neglected to explain why his vision of democracy justifies the near-total suppression of freedom of speech for his opponents. On July 4, Federal Judge Terry Doughty condemned the Biden administration for potentially “the most massive attack against free speech in United States history,” and a federal appeals court condemned Team Biden for “suppressing millions of protected free-speech postings by American citizens”—mostly by conservatives and Republicans.
“If only Uncle Joe had known about that abuse,” right? Like hell. Biden’s Justice Department is fighting tooth and nail at the Supreme Court to preserve his power to secretly censor anyone the feds claim is spouting disinformation, perhaps including denying that Biden is God’s gift to America.
Another key to Biden’s vision of democracy is that the president is entitled to imprison peaceful protestors who opposed him. Biden proved the villainy of Trump supporters by touting case numbers from January 6: “Since that day more than 1,200 people have been charged for the assault on the capitol, and nearly 900 of them have been convicted and they have been sentenced to more than 840 years in prison.”
Biden neglected to quote the bombshell Washington Post report today revealing that vast numbers of the January 6 charges have been crap cases. Federal judges have rejected Biden Justice Department sentencing demands in almost 90% of the January 6 cases—an astounding record. If those cases were not being tried by juries overstocked with federal employees and NPR devotees, the prosecutions would have crashed and burned long ago.
The Supreme Court may obliterate many of the cases. More than 320 of the convictions against J-6 protestors hinge on a bizarre contortion of the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley law enacted after corporations destroyed documents sought by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
“The average sentence for those convicted of obstructing an official proceeding has been 39 months,” the Post reported. Former federal prosecutor Gene Rossi warns that the Supreme Court taking that case is a “red flag and a loud gong” because that law was the “North Star” used by prosecutors. If the Supreme Court strikes down the Biden twist of the 2002 law, that will make the January 6 prosecutions look like one of the worst witch hunts in American history.
Yet, according to Team Biden, the real problem is that not enough lives have been ruined for sinful thoughts on January 6. Last Thursday, Matthew Graves, Biden’s chief prosecutor for the District of Columbia, issued a warning of potentially thousands of more January 6 indictments: “If a person knowingly entered a restricted area [near the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021] without authorization, they already committed a federal crime. Make no mistake: Thousands of people occupied that area that they were not authorized to be present in in the first place.” Talking about hounding people who merely were in the general vicinity of the Capitol confirms that for Team Biden, “Trespassing plus thought crimes equals terrorism.”
Actually, Biden’s FBI already classifies all the people arrested for January 6 Capitol clash offenses as domestic terrorists—even people busted for “parading without a permit.” The FBI presumes that any American suspected of supporting the January 6, 2021 protests forfeited his constitutional rights. An FBI whistleblower revealed in congressional testimony in May 2023 that FBI headquarters pressured FBI agents to treat anyone who attended the January 6 protests as a criminal suspect. Roughly 2,000 pro-Trump protestors (including an unknown number of undercover agents and informants) entered the Capitol that day. But an FBI analyst exploited the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to unjustifiably conduct warrantless searches on 23,132 Americans citizens suspected of January 6 offenses “to find evidence of possible foreign influence, although the analyst conducting the queries had no indications of foreign influence,” according to FISA Chief Judge Rudolph Contreras.
Biden assured the audience that “we still believe that no one, not even the president, is above the law.” Okay, but what if the president or the vice president uses the names Robert Peters, Robin Ware, and JRB Ware as email aliases to hustle business deals for a family member? Is it OK for them to slip the law then?
The only way to assume that Biden is not “above the law” is to assume that his decrees alone are the law. The Supreme Court struck down his COVID vaccine mandate, his moratorium for evicting deadbeat renters, his $500 billion federal student loan forgiveness scheme, and numerous other Biden policies.
Biden spent half an hour fearmongering and then closed by promising “freedom from fear.” This is the famous Biden two-step—demagoguing to his heart’s content and then closing with a few schmaltzy uplift lines, entitling the media to re-christen him as an idealist.
Biden castigated Trump as the “Election Denier in Chief,” a new offense not yet been codified in the statute book. Biden endlessly warned that Trump posed a deadly threat to both freedom and democracy. Biden campaign masterminds were clever enough to permit an unknown local politician to deliver the “takeaway” from the day’s events. Biden was preceded at the podium by Dauphin County commissioner candidate Justin Douglass, who proclaimed that “Donald Trump represents a clear and present danger” to democracy. Since Trump is the ultimate enemy of the Constitution, anything that Biden and his campaign does to banish Trump from the ballot will be pro-democracy.
Obviously, if Americans value democracy, then the presidential candidate favored by the most voters in recent polls must not be allowed on the ballot. Team Biden favors a version of “Guardian Democracy” where voters are only permitted to cast ballots for candidates that the ruling class approves. This is part and parcel with the Democratic Party’s plan to let all future elections be determined by ballot harvesting and tsunamis of unverified mail-in ballots.
Why should we believe that democracy dies unless Biden gets four more years to violate the Constitution, censor and jail his opponents, and domineer practically every aspect of Americans’ lives (“step away from that gas stove before we have to hurt you”)? As Thomas Jefferson declared long ago, “An elective despotism is not the government we fought for.”
January 8, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | FBI, Human rights, United States |
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As one digests Rupert Darwall’s latest report for the RealClear Foundation, the well-known quote from Spanish philosopher George Santayana might ring through the mind: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
Anyone looking to combat the activists pushing a ‘net zero’ agenda here in the U.S. would be wise to read Darwall’s piece, entitled “The Folly of Climate Leadership.”
The analysis tells the story of Great Britain heeding the cries for decarbonization, starting when Parliament wrote an 80% decrease in emissions target into law in 2008. They raised it to 100% – or “net zero” – in 2019. The results have clearly been catastrophic.
Since decarbonization efforts commenced, Britain’s economy has grown at half the rate as it did from 1990-2008. According to a research study from noted British economic historian Nicholas Crafts, that’s the second-worst period of British peacetime growth since 1780.
In addition to the economic malaise, British energy prices have skyrocketed, and Britons are now concerned with how to survive the effect of those costs on their wallets, as they look to heat and power their homes and businesses, travel for work and pleasure and live life as best they can.
The differences between British energy costs and those here in the U.S. are staggering: Britons paid an average of $228 per megawatt hour (MWh) for electricity generated from coal in 2022, whereas Americans paid an average of $27 per MWh. For natural gas, 2022 saw Britons paying $251 per MWh, versus American consumers averaging $61 per MWh for their power.
Darwall’s report also highlights the effects of unchecked and anti-market driven government investment in ‘green’ energy on grid reliability, as intermittent production from wind and solar – coupled with a lack of utility-grade energy storage – dropped electricity generated per gigawatt of capacity falling 28% since 2009.
The same arguments that have crippled Britain’s economy are now being used by the Biden Administration here at home, with zealots in Cabinet-level positions – including Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, and EPA Director Michael Regan – pushing the message from their bully pulpits.
The recent – and completely misnamed – Inflation Reduction Act passed by Congress provided the zealots with nearly $400 billion to dole out to supportive organizations and start-ups to jump-start our nation’s push for ‘net zero.’ Those dollars – doled out with few oversights or performance metrics attached in many cases – have produced very few wins in the last year, unless a win is measured in keeping political cronies happy and rich.
Consider: wind energy projects in Nebraska, Colorado, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New Jersey were scrapped last year, even after untold millions of federal dollars went to their developers. Over 100 solar companies went bankrupt, and solar projects from California to Florida were shuttered in the middle of their development. Battery storage – a key component to offsetting the intermittency of wind and solar – also saw projects stalled, along with at least one lawsuit filed against a storage company when its solution failed.
Despite the perils of ‘green’ energy dependence shown throughout Europe, the eco-left continues to double down on ridding America of traditional energy sources. Supporting those efforts are ideologue billionaires, who continue to fund net-zero initiatives.
Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has given well over $1 billion of his personal wealth to the Sierra Club to fund its “Beyond Coal” and “Beyond Carbon” campaigns. Designed to rid the U.S. of every coal-fired power plant by 2030, the Sierra Club/Bloomberg partnership has succeeded in shutting down nearly two-thirds of the plants to-date, with most of the remaining in rural locations, including my home state of Alaska, where alternatives to existing coal plants in the state’s interior don’t readily exist. Without coal, countless Alaskans would have their livelihoods – and very lives – threatened during our long, dark and sub-zero-temperature winters.
With activists entrenched in government bureaucracy, zealots running government agencies and rich men (and women) funding these efforts, only those educated in historical failures of decarbonization – and willing to stand up and fight back against the climate warriors – stand a chance of helping stem the attacks. Darwall’s study should be required reading for anyone looking to build a fortress in their state against job-killing, family-harming decarbonization efforts.
Rick Whitbeck is the Alaska State Director for Power The Future, a national nonprofit organization that advocates for American energy jobs. Contact him at Rick@PowerTheFuture.com and follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @PTFAlaska
January 7, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | Human rights, UK, United States |
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This week, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) refuted Apple’s plea to veto a “free speech resolution” proposed by shareholders that were concerned about Apple, as a dominant Big Tech giant, to suppress speech.
This proposal, advanced by the American Family Association (AFA), pushes Apple to scrutinize its processes of content curation and to publish a report addressing fears that the corporation’s policies may inadvertently inhibit speech based on differing views.
The SEC dismissed Apple’s attempt to omit the resolution from the discussion during its 2024 Annual Meeting of Shareholders, effectively setting the stage for a vote on the resolution in spring.
Apple is known for its strict terms of use policy for all apps on the App Store. As Apple’s own App Store is the only way to get apps on its platform, this means that Apple’s is the judge, jury, and executioner when it comes to what the public is allowed to say and see.
In November of 2023, concerned about potential Apple censorship, the ADF sent a letter to the SEC insisting that Apple should not be allowed to block the resolution, as it is seen as an area of potential misuse.
Following the SEC’s decision, Jeremy Tedesco, ADF Senior Counsel and Senior Vice President for Corporate Engagement, voiced his approval, referring to the development as a “much-needed step toward transparency.”
He urged Apple to regain the trust of its shareholders and customers by clearly stating its stance on not using its power to discriminate against user’s speech and beliefs – irrespective of their political or even religious persuasion.
January 7, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Full Spectrum Dominance | Human rights, United States |
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Earlier this week, the US State Department released a statement rejecting the forced transfer and resettlement of Palestinians from Gaza, attributing the rhetoric from the Israeli side to Israeli Ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir. “We have been told repeatedly and consistently by the Government of Israel, including by the Prime Minister, that such statements do not reflect the policy of the Israeli government,” US State Department’s Spokesperson Matthew Miller declared.
Maybe the US State Department is unaware of the reports that explicitly name Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as making the suggestion during a closed-door meeting for Likud MKs. Or that the former Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon called forced transfer and the international community’s possible complicit participation “a moral imperative”. Going further back, the leaked document by Israel’s Ministry of Intelligence also lists the forced transfer of Palestinians as the preferable option for Israel.
If Israel does not go ahead with the plan, it only means that the international community is not willing to go so far as visibly aiding Israel’s colonisation after public opinion has shifted so much towards Palestine, and rightfully so. Before 7 October, the Nakba could only be imagined or read about in terms of statistics on ethnic cleansing and its related destruction. Zionism has now illustrated to the world what genocide looks like, and governments are paying slight heed, if only to prevent themselves from getting further embroiled in the repercussions of Israel’s fabricated security narrative.
To make the forced displacement of Palestinians sound like it was just the concoction of Smotrich and Ben-Gvir lends additional impunity to Israel. Israel was built upon the ethnic cleansing and forced transfer of the Palestinian people. Conceptualising the forced transfer of Gaza’s Palestinian population is a continuation of the Nakba, not an innovative idea conjured up by two far-right-wing politicians. The Times of Israel is perpetuating the narrative of forced transfer being the idea of just two politicians, both of them in the public eye for their ongoing incitement. But the Israeli settler-colonial state is an incitement in itself.
Meanwhile, in a brief interlude, an unnamed Israeli official spoke of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) for its delivery of humanitarian aid as doing its work “for the first time in its history”. There is no forgetting, however, that Israel wants to destroy UNRWA and, during the Donald Trump administration, embarked upon doing so, emboldened by the so-called “deal of the century” and the US-Israeli insistence to alter the definition of who can be classified as a Palestinian refugee.
The bottom line here, however, is that Israel’s expectation that the international community clears up the mess after its atrocities knows no limit. Had Israel not bombed Gaza and rendered 85 per cent of the population forcibly displaced, the current humanitarian catastrophe could have been avoided. As things stand, and with Gaza almost completely destroyed, Israel and the international community can maintain the humanitarian paradigm for Palestinians because basic needs will always be perceived as more important than a political process where Palestinians are concerned. Colonisation required complicity, and there is no proposal Israeli officials come up with that can be separated from the narrative of Israel’s settler-colonial existence.
January 7, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | Israel, Palestine, United States, Zionism |
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College instructors, particularly those in Europe and North America, are generally limited when it comes to meaningful intervention in imperialist horrors afflicting the Global South. Nevertheless, it is usually their governments either orchestrating or abetting the horror. They ought to do something, then, even if it seems pyrrhic or inadequate.
People around the world are now witnessing a particularly gruesome event as the Zionist entity, armed by its U.S. sponsor and enjoying the support of capitalist institutions across the globe, commits one atrocity after the other in the Gaza Strip (along with the West Bank and at times further afield). The atrocities, anyone with a modicum of integrity agrees, add up to genocide. The depth of grief and suffering Palestinians now experience is indescribable, immeasurable.
Do professors and other campus workers have any ability to mitigate the grief and suffering? Not really. But we’re not entirely powerless, either. Higher education is an important sector for information and activism and an industry where participants like to contemplate the role of both exceptional and ordinary people in making a better world. Like anybody else, teachers and researchers can be most effective in their own communities, which are not inoculated from the genocide. Zionist groups have organized hundreds of defamation campaigns against Palestinian students and faculty, often resulting in employment termination and other serious forms of recrimination. These campaigns don’t exist in a vacuum. Targeting Palestinians and anti-Zionists is an extension of the genocide, or at least one of its attendant tactics. And then, of course, many of the campuses are somehow invested in the Zionist entity—financially, politically, or logistically. It does no good to say that “we” aren’t affected by what happens “there.”
The following is a list of suggestions for Western academics, with the understanding that not all professors are equal and each campus is different in terms of its cultural and economic composition. In turn, I have tried to be comprehensive, offering comments that I hope will be useful to everyone from contingent faculty whose employment is precarious to senior scholars with big platforms at elite institutions. (The latter are much more likely to be facilitating the genocide, either obliquely or explicitly, but nevertheless.)
One thing is clear: the world is now experiencing a moral crisis whose enormity will reshape political attitudes and alliances for generations to come. Pretending that life, no matter how sheltered or comfortable, can simply continue as normal is its own kind of moral crisis.
Try one or more of the following if you can:
Defend Palestinian Students: Be it from forces on or off campus, or be it individuals you know or don’t know personally, it is reprehensible that students should suffer doxing and harassment, whether it is orchestrated by skeezy has-beens like Michael Rapaport or hysterical faculty on their own campus. Speak on behalf of your students. It can be done publicly through the usual channels or in private communication with chairs, deans, and other administrators. Or keep it simpler: reach out to the students and offer yourself as a resource.
Defend Palestinian Colleagues: The same idea holds, but with a quick addendum. Being a Palestinian in Western academe can be deeply alienating, in no small part because shitting on Palestinians is a reliable method of upward mobility. I’m sure some of your Palestinian colleagues will appreciate any gesture that might make them feel slightly less alone.
Boycott: Up to this point, academic boycott of Israeli universities has been controversial, even in supposedly progressive quarters of the industry. The facts, however, are clear. Israel has destroyed every institution of higher learning in the Gaza Strip. It has murdered dozens of faculty and administrators, including university presidents, and an untold number of students. There is no academic freedom in Palestine. There is no academe at all in Gaza. Reluctance to boycott is no longer acceptable. It is the baseline of political decency. Anybody who continues to oppose or dissemble about academic boycott should be regarded as untrustworthy on everything else.
Divest: Start or join a local campaign to force your university to divest any holdings from the Zionist entity. Divestment can include study abroad programs in Israel, which inherently discriminate against Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim students. In the past decade, students have successfully passed divestment resolutions at numerous universities, but management simply ignores them. Faculty voices will help these efforts.
Invite People from Gaza: Surely the rank-and-file in academe are tired of the same few dozen big-name professors and celebrity activists saying the same three or four things in the lucrative lecture economy. Decisionmakers on campus invite speakers for prestige, for the brand, or else to network or be in the presence of fame. The habit needs to die and there’s no better time than now. Instead of summoning the usual Endowed Chair of Gobbledygook at Wealthy Private University to deliver radical affectations at a cost of multiple thousands, reach out to scholars and journalists from Gaza (and for God’s sake give them a proper honorarium). They will assuredly be more insightful than warmed-over relics of the pre-millennial theory craze. Likewise: recruit graduate students from Palestine. You can also look into bringing Palestinians as visiting writers/scholars or as researchers/consultants in any effort to document the genocide. Start with people who are currently outside of Gaza; when conditions are better, reach out to those still inside the territory. Gaza is filled with individuals of remarkable talent. You will be better off for having sought it.
Organize or Attend a Demonstration: You don’t need to be a seasoned organizer to raise hell about the abomination that is the Zionist entity.
Direct Action: Why should students always be the ones to shut down administrative offices or gum up the machinery of genocide? Professors can participate, as well. I’m not saying you need to do it. I just want you to bear in mind that nobody, no matter how urbane or well-published, is too good to get fired or sit in jail for a few hours in solidarity with a people whose heroism is known and admired around the world.
Teach Palestine: Hundreds of Palestinian poets, novelists, and essayists write in English or are available in translation. Consider including them on your syllabus. So what if your courses don’t focus on Palestine or the surrounding region? If you’re a modernist, then assign Fadwa Tuqan or Mahmoud Darwish. If you’re in gender studies, look up Fatima Bernawi or Rasmea Odeh. If you teach novels, try Susan Abulhawa, Susan Muaddi Darraj, Sahar Mustafah… on goes the list. If you’re an Americanist, there are numerous options. Same for Latin Americanists. A critical theorist? No problem: there’s Elias Sanbar and Bassel Al-Araj and Ghassan Kanafani. And if you’re, say, a medievalist? That’s no problem, either.
Stop Pandering to Customs of Civility: You don’t need to condemn “Hamas.” You don’t need to “affirm Israel’s right to exist.” You don’t need to bang on about “democratic values.” You don’t need to be “nuanced.” You need to defend the people suffering a genocide. Not a single one of them is asking for anything else. (“Who is my audience?” keep asking yourself. If the answer is anything other than “the dispossessed,” then recalibrate your ethics and try again.)
Shun the Genocidaires: Those rationalizing or cheering on the genocide are personae non grata from here on out. No co-authoring articles with them. No sitting together on conference panels. No buddy-buddy bullshit on the networking circuit. Sure, sometimes circumstance will force you onto the same committee or whatever, but, if the association is voluntary, then decline the opportunity and find colleagues who don’t celebrate mass murder.
Speak: [speak]
Or better still: Listen.
January 7, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism | European Union, Human rights, Israel, Palestine, UK, United States, Zionism |
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A renowned French historian and sociologist better known for predicting the Soviet Union’s dissolution well in advance now foretells the West’s overthrow in his newest book.
French historian Emmanuel Todd believes that NATO is already losing the Ukrainian conflict. He likewise concluded that the defeat would eventually culminate in Russia’s reconciliation with Europe and its rapprochement with Germany, contrary to the wishes of the United States.
This view was expressed to Le Point Magazine during an interview ahead the release of his new book La Defaite de L’Occident (The Defeat of the West).
In the book, he denounces the Western attitude toward Russia, stating that “Avoiding the rapprochement between Germany and Russia was one of the US goals. This rapprochement would have signed the ejection of the United States from the European system of power. Americans have preferred to destroy Europe rather than save the West.”
Todd’s La Defaite de L’Occident excerpt highlights America’s waning status as a global superpower and its weak military-industrial complex.
The French historian also underlined the diminished influence of Europe, once represented by a strong partnership between France and Germany, highlighting that Germany has taken a dominant role since the 2007-2008 financial crisis.
Furthermore, he pointed out that in the wake of the Ukrainian conflict, the European Union has distanced itself from Russia, therefore hurting its own trade and energy interests.
“We also saw Emmanuel Macron’s France vaporize on the international stage, while Poland became Washington’s main agent in the European Union, succeeding in the role of the United Kingdom that became outside the Union by the grace of Brexit… On the mainland, overall, the Paris-Berlin axis replaced a London-Warsaw-Kiev axis piloted from Washington,” Todd opined.
Todd decried the dominant narrative in the West about the conflict in Ukraine: “We are in a completely Putinophobic and Russophobic world.” He went on to argue for a pluralistic view that recognizes different perspectives. “I am fighting to keep the West pluralistic. If we look for my values, they are values of truth and pluralism,” he remarked.
Addressing the question of how this year’s US election might alter the trajectory of the Ukrainian conflict, the expert highlighted Russia’s steadfast commitment to its existing course. “For the Russians, it makes no difference. For Russia is at war with America, and they ignore changes in rulers,” according to Todd.
January 7, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Book Review, Russophobia, Timeless or most popular | European Union, France, Germany, Russia, Ukraine, United States |
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January 6th WAS an insurrection.
But it was not Trump supporters who overthrew the United States. It was intelligence assets who entrapped Trump supporters in a planned false flag event, to justify certifying a stolen election without hearing evidence of fraud in Congress.
Pence promised electors they would have their day in court in Congress to air the widespread evidence of voter fraud. Those grievances were never heard, because Pence decided to certify the election the next day, and stated he did not need to give electors their day in Congress, because the actions of Trump supporters were so heinous on January 6th.
Then they intentionally withheld the footage from you, only showing the negative optics, so they could shape the perception of the event, and use it to prevent Trump from becoming POTUS in 2020 AND in 2024.
Then they used the “insurrection” as justification to purge virtually all Trump supporters from all social media, and censor ANY talk of election fraud.
You witnessed an insurrection that day, but it was the Deep State who undermined, conspired against, and overthrew the duly elected President of the United States, Donald J. Trump.
Our country was stolen from us, but we are about to take it back. And swift retribution is the first thing on the agenda.
TREASON!
January 7, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Deception | United States |
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Democrats have resorted to nothing short of “ballot cleansing” as they try to bar Republican candidates for Congress under the 14th Amendment theory, writes renowned American legal expert Jonathan Turley, warning against placing the US on a slippery slope to political chaos.
Several US voters in Illinois and Massachusetts have filed motions seeking to remove former President Donald Trump from each state’s primary ballot for the 2024 election. Earlier, Colorado and Maine moved to disqualify the ex-president.
Jonathan Turley, a renowned US legal scholar, raised the red flag over Colorado’s Supreme Court decision to bar Trump from the 2024 election last month, stressing that the state’s justices “put this country on one of the most dangerous paths in its history.”
The unusual initiative is driven by Democrat politicians who decided to utilize Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which says that any candidates who have engaged in acts of insurrection after vowing to defend the US Constitution should be barred from holding political office. The amendment was ratified in 1868. Now, the Dems are arguing that the January 6 riots were a full-fledged “insurrection” and that the law could be applied to the former president.
“In December 1865 many in Washington were shocked to see Alexander Stephens, the Confederacy’s onetime vice president, waiting to take the same oath that he took before joining the Southern rebellion,” Turley wrote on December 22. “So Congress declared that it could bar those ‘who have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.’”
According to the legal expert, the January 6 events – no matter how bad they were – cannot be compared to the US Civil War (1861-1865) and qualified as an “insurrection.”
“It was a protest that became a riot, not a rebellion,” Turley highlighted, arguing that the Civil War-era amendment should not be used in this case.
He warned that the Colorado court’s undemocratic decision and clear defiance of the First Amendment could result in a domino effect “where red and blue states could now engage in tit-for-tat disqualifications.”
Turley’s concerns aren’t unjustified given that Democrats have decided to bar not only Trump, but all Republican candidates for Congress who have dared to question the fairness of the 2020 elections. Some Democratic lawmakers have called for the disqualification of up to 126 Republican colleagues as “insurrectionists.” What is especially chilling is that many have supported them.
Thus, on December 11, US Rep. Bill Pascrell, Jr. (D-NJ) called on House leaders to remove congressional lawmakers who were “supporting Donald Trump’s efforts to invalidate the 2020 presidential election.”
“Stated simply, men and women who would act to tear the United States government apart cannot serve as Members of the Congress. These lawsuits seeking to obliterate public confidence in our democratic system by invalidating the clear results of the 2020 presidential election undoubtedly attack the text and spirit of the Constitution, which each Member swears to support and defend,” claimed Pascrell, citing Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.
Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) introduced a similar initiative which was supported by 63 Democratic co-sponsors, including Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Jamaal Bowman, Ritchie Torres, Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib.
Meanwhile, Turley drew attention to an obvious double-standard approach exercised by Democrats: previously, some of them have openly challenged and even sought to block certification of election results.
“Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) praised the effort then-Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) organized to challenge the certification of President George W. Bush’s 2004 re-election,” the legal scholar recalled on January 5, adding that Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) sought to block certification of the 2016 election result.
According to Turley, Democrats are increasingly using labels of “insurrectionists” and “Putin lovers” to cancel their political rivals, opponents, and even journalists. However, if the trend turns into some sort of a legal precedent, nothing would stop overzealous lawmakers from expanding this cancellation spree, according to the expert.
“That is why the [US] Supreme Court needs to take up this issue and put this pernicious theory to bed once and for all,” Turley concluded.
January 7, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite | United States |
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The societal costs of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in the U.S. are projected to reach $589 billion per year by 2030, $1.36 trillion per year by 2040 and $5.54 trillion per year by 2060 if steps are not taken to prevent the disorder, according to a study published last month.
The paper, “Autism Tsunami: The Impact of Rising Prevalence on the Societal Cost of Autism in the United States,” was first published in 2021, in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders (JADD). It was retracted almost two years later by the publisher and editor, citing “concerns” with methodology and the authors’ “non-financial interests.”
Last month, Science, Public Health Policy and the Law peer-reviewed and republished the study — the first to project present and future costs of ASD that links rising costs to the increasing prevalence of the disorder.
The authors found that previous studies, which didn’t account for increasing prevalence, tended to overestimate current costs — because they assumed prevalence rates among adults are the same as rates among children — and underestimate future costs associated with a growing autistic population with shifting care needs.
Researchers Mark Blaxill, Cynthia Nevison, Ph.D., and Toby Rogers, Ph.D., projected future ASD costs in three scenarios: a base case scenario assuming the continuation of existing trends; a low scenario providing a conservative estimate of future costs; and a prevention scenario exploring possibility of future mitigation of environmental causes.
But these two premises of the paper — that prevalence is increasing and that environmental intervention is possible — made a straightforward modeling paper controversial and were the basis of the “concerns” raised that led to its retraction.
Those premises ran counter to the deeply held assumptions of the autism research and treatment industry, which continues to sidestep the issue of increasing prevalence and holds that autism is primarily a genetic and not an environmental disease.
U.S. could surpass 6% rates of ASD in children in 2024, 7% in 2032
To build their model, the researchers estimated four key parameters: the historic and future prevalence of ASD, the future size of the ASD population, the cost per individual over the course of a lifetime, and inflation projections.
Prevalence projections were based on the California Department of Developmental Services caseload data from 1931 to 2016. The researchers used U.S. Census Bureau population predictions to translate prevalence into actual numbers of people with autism. They multiplied those by different cost categories partitioned by age group and severity of ASD and applied an inflation index to their projections.
Nevison told The Defender this approach to calculating future costs was built on previous models that similarly identified cost categories and multiplied them by autism populations in each age group.
“But we used a more sophisticated prevalence model, and that provided an advance over previous work,” she said.
Their ASD prevalence model showed that based on current trends, the U.S. could surpass 6% rates of ASD in children in 2024 and 7% in 2032, and then would likely rise more slowly after that. This differed from previous models, which predicted continuous exponential growth.
Costs associated with ASD included “non-medical services” like community care and day programs, individual and parent productivity losses, estimated special education costs, early and behavioral intervention and medical costs.
Rising prevalence itself makes costs go up, the study showed, but so does the fact that the mix of costs changes over time as the autism population ages and has different care needs.
As people age, their needs change, Blaxill told The Defender, “You’re dealing with education and parental loss productivity in the early years, and you’re dealing with residential services and medical care and lost adult productivity of disabled people. So it’s a whole different profile.”
As the first generation of parents of children of the autism epidemic, who shouldered much of the burden of care-taking, begin to die around 2040, according to the study, costs of care that had been borne by them will shift onto state and federal governments.
The cost increase, Blaxill said, “is radical, it will cost $5 trillion a year.”
Nevison told The Defender that for their “prevention” scenario they looked to an existing example with good data where ASD rates had gone down.
She and a colleague published that research in JADD in 2020, showing that while ASD rates, which had increased for all U.S. children across birth years 1993-2000, either plateaued or declined among white families living in wealthy counties, suggesting those families made changes that lowered their children’s risk of ASD.
“The Prevention scenario assumes that these parental strategies and opportunities already used by wealthy parents to lower their children’s risk of ASD can be identified and made available rapidly to lower-income children and ethnic minorities, who are currently experiencing the most rapid growth in ASD prevalence,” the “Autism Tsunami” authors wrote.
The paper does not indicate what those changes may have been, but Blaxill told The Defender they hypothesized the changes happened among families who followed alternative vaccination schedules and other lifestyle changes.
Even in the prevention scenario, the paper found, the cost of ASD will skyrocket to $3.7 ± 0.8 trillion annually by 2060 because it still needs to account for the demographic momentum of the large ASD population born over the last three decades.
The authors concluded that rising autism rates must be taken seriously as a public health and economic policy issue.
“Paradoxically, the future costs of autism loom so large that, rather than responding with a sense of urgency as one might expect, policymakers thus far have generally failed to engage with the policy implications at all,” the authors wrote.
“We hope this paper will serve as a wake-up call for the public health emergency that the societal cost of autism represents to the economic future of the U.S.”
A ‘digital scarlet letter for eternity’
After the paper “sailed through peer review” at JADD, and became one of the journal’s most downloaded papers, there was immediate pushback, particularly in articles posted on the Spectrum News website (now The Transmitter ). Former JADD Editor-in-Chief Fred Volkmar launched an investigation into the study based on concerns raised.
One article on Spectrum even included a Twitter post that implied the authors’ idea of prevention was “eugenics,” an accusation the authors told The Defender was extremely shocking and hurtful and clearly an attempt to “cancel” them.
Rogers told The Defender, and detailed in a Substack post, that they had expected some negative response from gatekeepers, “because we broke new ground and the autism debate is always fraught in this country.”
But, he said, he and his co-authors were surprised when they were informed that Volkmar solicited new critical reviews and gave them one week to respond.
Rogers said in retrospect they realized “the die was cast at that point” and a decision had been made to undermine the article. However, the researchers “naively believed” they could provide rigorous responses to the reviews, which offered “nothing substantive” and the publication would stand.
The retraction statement indicated there were methodological concerns along with concerns that the authors, Blaxill, editor-at-large for Age of Autism and chief financial officer of the Holland Center, Nevison, a former board member of SafeMinds, and Rogers, who writes the uTobian Substack and according to Spectrum had “written for the Children’s Health Defense Fund,” had not revealed their “non-financial” conflicts of interest.
According to Spectrum News these “undeclared conflicts” were the authors’ “anti-vaccine” views. Blaxill and Nevison had both previously published papers in JADD, with no similar concerns raised.
The authors noted in their response to reviewers, that the concerns enumerated by Volkmar mirrored those in Spectrum’s “hostile blog post.”
Spectrum News is fully funded by the Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative (SFARI), from which Volkmar has received millions in research funding.
SFARI has a budget of over $100 million per year and since 2003 has dedicated almost $1 billion to autism research. That funding is largely dedicated to research focusing on the genetic basis for autism.
Rogers wrote, “The Simons Foundation has largely captured the field of autism research and they have hundreds of academics who are dependent on their largesse.”
“Rather than change direction based on new information the Simons Foundation doubled down on their wrongheaded strategy and they put the word out that ‘this article needs to get got,’” he added.
The authors also noted that no researcher in the history of JADD had listed a personal belief as an “undisclosed non-financial conflict of interest,” and that their premise that the rise in autism numbers is real and is primarily driven by environmental factors is a legitimate scientific viewpoint shared by others.
The authors also responded in detail to what they deemed to be minor comments by three reviewers.
Yet, the journal decided to retract the article, attaching what Rogers described as “a digital scarlet letter for eternity, ‘RETRACTED!’”
The authors attempted to sue but did not prevail.
“The whole process has been weaponized to serve power and money and nobody’s standing up for, or very few people are standing up for good science and proper methods and scientific norms and all that stuff that we would expect to be foundational to all this sort of thing,” Rogers told The Defender.
“We are being censored because of a word that does not even appear in the article — vaccines,” Rogers wrote.
“The unstated implication about the California study was that those parents were likely operating on different vaccine schedules or skipping vaccines. The public health agencies never investigated this trend,” Rogers said, “because they are scared that they might find an association between vaccines and autism.”
He added:
“This cowardly act of censorship by JADD and Springer [its publisher] is a stunning admission of guilt by the mainstream gatekeepers. They simply cannot have a conversation about the facts because they know that they will lose. Censorship is all that they have left.”
Study predictions proving true
Since “Autism Tsunami” was first published, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring (ADDM) Network, which conducts biannual surveillance of ASD prevalence, has issued two reports confirming a continued rise in ASD rates.
When the CDC first began collecting data in 2000, rates were 1 in 150 children diagnosed with ASD. In the 2021 report, the ADDM found that 1 in 44 or 2.27% of American 8-year-olds had ASD and in the 2023 report, it found that 1 in 36 (2.8%) 8-year-old children — 4% of boys and 1% of girls have ASD.
ADDM also reported that autism prevalence was higher among Black, Hispanic and Asian/Pacific Islander children than among white and biracial children.
Yet the CDC continues to suggest that the numbers “might reflect improved screening, awareness and access to services” rather than actual growing rates.
Nevison told The Defender that given these growing rates, she is very concerned about the future of those living with ASD, especially given that it is already apparent that public services are unable to keep up with the needs of children on the autistic spectrum.
In her own school district, there is a critical shortage of educators who could serve children with Individualized Education Plans (IEPs), many of whom have ASD.
Data from the U.S. Department of Education indicate this is a national problem — 42 states and Washington, D.C., have fewer special education teachers than schools need. Many children in special education are diagnosed with ASD.
Shortage of adult facilities already a reality in Massachusetts
“Autism Tsunami” pointed to the fact that the growing numbers of children diagnosed with ASD over the last few decades are or will be soon entering adulthood and will need different, and expensive, services from those provided by the already stretched Department of Education, such as residential care.
A new investigation on residential care for people with ASD published last week by the Boston Globe reported that the numbers predicted by “Autism Tsunami” are already materializing in Massachusetts.
“A record number of children with intellectual disabilities or autism turn 22 years old this year and qualify for adult services with the Department of Developmental Services,” the Globe wrote.
That number has doubled in the past 10 years to more than 1,430 people “driven by the tremendous increase in children with autism. Autistic children now account for more than half of these new adults.”
“There has been very little planning to prepare for this,” Michael Borr, the parent of an adult son with autism and former chairman of Advocates for Autism of Massachusetts, told The Globe.
In the past, Borr said, “I would talk about the tsunami that is coming. It’s not coming any more; it’s here.”
The Massachusetts Department of Developmental Services, which licenses and runs group homes, last year informed the legislature that it has an “extremely limited” capacity to provide housing to autistic adults who have different needs than their typical clients.
The Globe investigation also found that many hundreds of children and adults with autism in residential schools have been physically assaulted or neglected at residences with low-paid and poorly trained caregivers.
The newspaper provided several examples of serious assaults on non-verbal residents by caregivers.
Massachusetts group homes for adults have more than 4,000 vacancies for direct care staff, which is more than one-quarter of the necessary workforce.
And “while federal law guarantees special education services for disabled children, adult services are largely dependent on eligibility criteria and funding,” according to The Globe, leading to a lot of uncertainty for the aging parents of autistic young adults.
Blaxill told The Defender that without interventions to slow ASD prevalence rates, “It’s going to grow so fast, it’ll break the system. If we go from maybe 1 or 2 million people — most of them children with autism — to 10, 15, or 20 million people with autism — most of them adults — that’s a dramatically different service population and cost problem and cost profile.”
Blaxill, who also is the parent of an autistic child, said the problem isn’t only the cost, but for people with ASD, “The parents are their advocate. We take care of them. But we’re all getting old.”
He said he’s constantly worried for his daughter’s future. “When we’re gone, who’s going to watch over her? Who’s going to advocate for her with the state? Who’s going to protect her from abuse or violence?”
“It’s a crisis,” he said.
The major barrier to confronting this crisis, Rogers told The Defender, isn’t just Big Pharma. There is an entire autism industry that has sprung up that includes pharma, but also researchers, nonprofits, academic journals and more, he said.
“That industry is worth upwards of a trillion dollars and they don’t want to have a conversation about root causes or prevention. They want to make money from the disease industry.”
Brenda Baletti Ph.D. is a reporter for The Defender. She wrote and taught about capitalism and politics for 10 years in the writing program at Duke University. She holds a Ph.D. in human geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master’s from the University of Texas at Austin.
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
January 6, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Economics, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | United States |
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For those who have not figured out Trump’s affiliation with Epstein, allow me to explain.
Trump is the one who exposed Epstein in 2008, hence why all of DC fears him. Trump is Epstein’s #1 enemy.
Epstein was running a blackmail operation. He was seeking out the most powerful people on Earth, to compromise and control them. He tried to get Trump, but Trump did not bite.
Trump banned Epstein from his properties in 2008, for hitting on the teenage daughter of a club member at Mar-a-Lago. Then a couple months later, Epstein pled guilty to State criminal charges in Florida, for paying for sexual services from a 14 year old girl.
See the timeline? Epstein, tried to get close to Trump to compromise him, Trump found out Epstein was a sicko, then Trump helped turn him in to local police. But eventually the Clinton-controlled FBI intervened, and Epstein was let off the hook.
The Deep State have been coming after Trump ever since. Why? Because if Epstein is exposed, then all of DC goes down due to the blackmail Epstein possessed on the top players in DC. Hence why Clinton barged into Vanity Fair and threatened them not to write stories about Epstein. The Clintons told the MSM to bury the story.
Then when Trump got into office, he dedicated his administration to stopping human-trafficking WORLDWIDE via multiple executive orders, seized Epstein’s island, and then arrested Epstein and his accomplices in 2019.
Executive Order 13773 (see attached), is an EO literally dedicated to taking out Epstein’s international child sex-trafficking operation. “Transnational Criminal Organizations and Preventing International Trafficking”. February 9th, 2017.
HELLOOOOO that’s literally Epstein’s entire operation. Trump used Executive Power to stop Epstein, only A MONTH into his presidency. It was one of the first things Trump did.
So for those of you that were hoping to see Trump implicated in Epstein’s criminality, you will remain disappointed. Because not only is Trump NOT one of Epstein’s clients, he is the main individual who exposed the entire thing.
Trump is Epstein’s #1 enemy, and you all were brainwashed to hate him for that very reason.
January 6, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Deception | United States |
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Three months after the escalation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict sparked by the October 7 attack by Hamas militants on Israeli territories, Tel Aviv appears intent to continue its invasion of the Gaza Strip — seemingly oblivious to the number of Palestinian civilians killed in its quest to punish Hamas.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has undertaken yet another voyage to the Middle East, meeting Turkiye’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to discuss the ongoing hostilities in the Gaza Strip.
While media reports this week suggested that Blinken will try facilitate the return of Palestinians displaced by the fighting back to their homes and to urge Israel to increase aid to Palestinians, American human rights lawyer Francis Anthony Boyle argues that the US state secretary is “up to no good.”
In an interview with Sputnik, Boyle, a professor of international law at the University of Illinois’ College of Law, suggested that Blinken headed to the Middle East to “better coordinate the escalation of conflict” there instead of trying to put an end to bloodshed.
“In fact, the Biden administration just needs to order Israel to cease fire immediately, and they will have to do it. But of course, Blinken is not going to do that. He is a diehard Zionist. He is in on the plot over there with Netanyahu to inflict outright genocide on the Palestinians,” Boyle said.
According to him, the US appears to be “just backing whatever Israel wants to do,” which currently appears to be attempting to displace over 2 million Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.
“If you look at the countries Blinken is going to, he is going to try to neutralize any opposition to this plan by Israel and see if they can pull it off,” Boyle remarked.
He also argued that the Biden administration is “complicit in Israeli genocide against the Palestinians” by supplying Israel with military hardware and munitions and by providing Tel Aviv with political support.
January 6, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | Israel, Middle East, Palestine, United States, Zionism |
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