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February 2022

The Witch in the Closet How leftist educators and the media are scaring – and scarring – our children. Larry Sand

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/02/witch-closet-larry-sand/

I was afraid of witches as a child. Indeed, I was convinced that there was an old crone hanging out in my bedroom closet just waiting to pounce. Not sure where or how it began, but it ended when I decided to take every bit of clothing and assorted junk out of my closet to convince myself that there was no witch stirring her cauldron there. Tragically, kids today have so much more than one imaginary hag scaring the living daylights out of them. In fact, there are enough witches these days to make a sizable coven.

Robert Pondiscio, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, gets to the meat of the matter in “The Unbearable Bleakness of American Schooling.” He writes that “this pedagogy of the depressed—America the Problematic—is thought to be a virtue among professional educators who view it as a mark of seriousness and sophistication.” He goes on to point out that “contemporary education fetishizes the bad and the broken in American life.” Clearly this has become all the rage. At the heart of the problem is that it really isn’t education, it’s indoctrination. The doomsters see only problems to be solved. Teaching about the existing good – and even celebrating it – is nowhere to be found in the indoctrinator’s playbook.

A major source of fear in children is climate change, which used to be known as global warming, and before that, global cooling. According to a British poll, one in five children have nightmares about climate change. Another survey reveals that 59% of people aged 16-25 are very or extremely worried and 84% are at least moderately worried about atmospheric change. “More than 45% of respondents said their feelings about climate change negatively affected their daily life and functioning, and many reported a high number of negative thoughts about climate change.” A full 75% said that they think “the future is frightening.” The reality is, yes, the climate is changing, but then again, it always has. And, while it is possible that we may need to do some very  minor adjusting, the academic alarmists and their hysterical media toadies are doing damage far greater than anything climate change will ever do.

The “America is racist” mantra has been exploited maximally by all the usual suspects. School children are placed in groups, labeled oppressors and victims, and taught that America’s system is rigged against persons of color. For example, an elementary school in Cupertino, California – a Silicon Valley community with a median home price of $2.3 million – recently forced a class of third-graders to “deconstruct their racial identities, then rank themselves according to their ‘power and privilege.’” This type of scaremongering has worked, according to the “Coming Together: Family Reflections on Racism” study conducted by Sesame Workshop, which reports that 86% of children believe that people of different races are not treated fairly in this country.

New Evidence Reveals Extent of Iranian Support for Houthi Terrorists by Con Coughlin

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18236/iran-support-houthi-terrorists

According to Western security officials, the high level meetings between senior members of the Houthi terrorist organisation and Iran illustrate the close coordination that is taking place between Iran and the Houthis over the rebel group’s terrorist operations.

“There has been mounting evidence of deepening cooperation between Iran and the Houthis, especially in terms of Iran supplying the Houthis with sophisticated weapons, such as missiles and drones,” a senior Western security official told the author. “The meetings that took place in January prior to the attacks on the UAE suggest the cooperation between Iran and the Houthis has increased dramatically.”

At the very least, the Biden administration needs to concentrate its energies on both confronting the Houthis’ terrorist network, as well as providing its Gulf allies with the protection they need to defend themselves against further attacks by the Iranian-backed rebels.

Following last month’s attacks, senior UAE officials renewed calls for the Biden administration to reimpose Washington’s terrorist designation against the Houthis, which was lifted soon after US President Joe Biden took office last year as a goodwill gesture to Iran.

Since then there has been a marked increase in Houthi-inspired terrorist activity…..

New evidence revealing how Houthi rebels in Yemen cooperate with their main backers in Iran has shed fresh light on how Tehran is actively directing their terrorist activities.

Iran’s links with the Yemeni-based terrorist group have been under renewed scrutiny in recent weeks after the Houthis launched a series of unprovoked attacks against the United Arab Emirates (UAE) last month, killing three civilians and injuring six more.

LGBTQ education and Israel’s illiberal Left  By Ruthie Blum

Israeli animal-rights and vegan activist Tal Gilboa was treated to a social-media slaughter this week, and it wasn’t a kosher one.

Despite her dedication to typically liberal causes, Gilboa couldn’t possibly be considered one of “them” when she joined former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party prior to the 2019 Knesset elections and later became his adviser on animal rights.

Nor was this her only crime against the Hebrew version of Orwellian doublethink. Expressing opposition last December to a program launched on January 1 in 77 kindergartens across the country to “promote gender equality and inculcate gender thinking from an early age, when perceptions, beliefs and stereotypes begin to take shape” put her smack in the doghouse – pun intended.

Having a complex view of the joint Education/Social Equality Ministries’ plan, she was accused of “contradicting herself.” The real reason for the attack, however, was that she violated a key rule of political correctness: daring to suggest that “we women don’t want men who play with dolls; we want men who play soccer.”

It was thus that her subsequent clarification – that “girls and boys can play with whatever they wish; enough of this madness already” – became fodder for ridicule.

THE ABOVE was a feminist storm in a teacup compared to the LGBTQ tsunami she unleashed this week by coming out against educational activities in schools to enlighten kids about the gay community.

The hysteria ensued after she participated in Channel 14’s The Patriots panel on Tuesday and explained: “The science says that about 10% of animals are homosexual; it’s innate. But today we’re already talking about its being acquired, as well. My 13-year-old daughter came out of the closet. I phoned her teacher to tell her about it, and she told me that people from the entire LGBTQ spectrum, transgender people and others, regularly visit the school and spend whole days talking to the students and teaching them what they can and cannot be. I said to her, “Excuse me? What [gives you the right] to put such things in my daughter’s head?”

Netflix: American Patriots = Neo-Nazis A time-travel thriller demonizes Hollywood’s favorite targets as terrorists. Mark Tapson

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/02/netflix-neo-nazis-american-patriots-mark-tapson/

The Nazis have always been Hollywood’s go-to villains, the bad guys every American who isn’t an antisemite or eugenicist can agree are the epitome of evil. They also serve as a convenient substitute when Hollywood doesn’t want to address America’s real-world enemies; in 2001, for example, when filmmakers were adapting Tom Clancy’s thriller The Sum of All Fears for the big screen, they changed the antagonists from Arab terrorists to European neo-Nazis. But Hollywood’s neo-Nazis of today are – you guessed it – American patriots.

Case in point: In the Shadow of the Moon, a late 2019 addition to Netflix’s repertoire which is unlikely to have been seen by the vast and growing numbers of conservatives who have cancelled their subscription to the left-leaning streaming giant, the home of production deals with such radicals as Barack and Michelle Obama, Black Lives Matter founder Patrisse Cullors, and anthem-protesting Colin Kaepernick. For that matter, the movie is unlikely to have been seen by very many people of any political stripe, because it’s not worth watching; its audience rating at the Rotten Tomatoes movie review site is a blah 40, and the rating at Metacritics isn’t much higher (I watch these things so you don’t have to). But the film is notable as a reminder that the entertainment industry is the left’s most powerful weapon for fashioning and disseminating the narrative that American patriots are actually white supremacist domestic terrorists threatening to push the country into a hot civil war.

‘A Political Prisoner of the Democratic Party’ There is one standard of justice for rioters and cops on the side of the Biden Regime, and another for everyone else. By Julie Kelly

https://amgreatness.com/2022/02/17/a-political-prisoner-of-the-democratic-party/

Three months after Ashli Babbitt, an unarmed veteran and Trump supporter, was killed by a Capitol police officer on January 6, 2021, the Justice Department’s Civil Rights division closed its investigation into the fatal shooting.

Omitting the name of Lieutenant Michael Byrd—the media, law enforcement officials, and congressional leaders concealed his identity for months—the Justice Department concluded Byrd did not violate 18 U.S.C., section 242, a federal criminal civil rights statute, when he shot Babbitt at point-blank range without warning, barely missing her face, around 2:45 p.m. that day. “The investigation revealed no evidence to establish beyond a reasonable doubt that the officer willfully committed a violation of 18 U.S.C. § 242,” the Justice Department said in an April 2021 statement.

Reports later revealed that Byrd had refused to participate in any substantive probe of his conduct on January 6. Not only did Byrd escape criminal charges or any internal reprimand, he is still employed as head of security for the House of Representatives and heralded as a hero in many quarters, including the national news media. 

Byrd was cleared not because he was innocent but because he shot and killed a Trump supporter, someone considered a subhuman terrorist by the Biden regime.

At the same time the civil rights division exonerated Byrd of any wrongdoing, the office was investigating a Louisville police officer for allegedly violating the civil rights of a Black Lives Matter protester during riots in that city following the police-involved deaths of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd. Louisville, Taylor’s hometown, was rocked by nights of violent protests resulting in millions of dollars in damages. Seven people were shot on the evening of May 28, 2020; rioters vandalized government buildings and looted stores downtown while attacking officers attempting to restore order.

For the Biden Administration, National Security is ‘Mission Irrelevant’ USCIS Mission Statement underscores dangerous priorities. Michael Cutler

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/02/biden-administration-national-security-mission-michael-cutler

The term “Mission Statement” has been defined as: a formal summary of the aims and values of a company, organization, or individual.

In other words, the mission statement concisely establishes the goals and priorities of an organization for both the general the public and for the employees of that organization.

The organization we will consider in my commentary today article is United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). This agency operates under the aegis of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and is charged with adjudicating applications for various immigration benefits that include the permitting aliens to change immigration status in the United States to acquire political asylum, lawful immigrant status (signified by being issued a “Green Card”), and United States citizenship.

I have come to think of USCIS as “America’s locksmith” because aliens who has been granted lawful status may easily enter the United States through ports of entry and remain in the United States permanently.  For such aliens border walls are irrelevant.

Celebs Backed BLM Fund That Bailed Out a BLM Assassin The creator of “Hamilton,” rappers, actors, and TV stars all donated. Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/02/celebs-backed-blm-fund-bailed-out-blm-assassin-daniel-greenfield/

Quintez Brown, a Black Lives Matter activist, walked into the campaign office of a Louisville political candidate and opened fire. Bullets grazed the clothing of Craig Greenberg, a local businessman running in the mayoral election, as people ran for cover from the shooter.

Brown’s bag carried extra magazines suggesting that he had come prepared for a massacre or an extended firefight. However the people in the office barricaded the door and the Black Lives Matter activist ran for it.

The police caught him anyway.

After years of campaigning against the police with BLM, the arrest came as poetic justice, but it was followed by BLM’s Louisville Community Bail Fund bailing out the assassin.

“It is nearly impossible to believe that someone can attempt murder on Monday and walk out of jail on Wednesday,” Mayoral candidate Craig Greenberg said.

Another Issue Dems Want to Sweep Under the Rug Until After the Midterms By Matt Margolis

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2022/02/17/look-another-issue-dems-want-to-sweep-under-the-rug-until-after-the-midterms-n1559967

With their party expected to take a huge beating at the ballot box in November, Democrats fighting tough battles to save their careers are distancing themselves from the unpopular Joe Biden as well as key issues in their party platform. House Democrats are actually being advised to deny supporting amnesty and open borders, critical race theory, or defunding the police in order to salvage their campaigns.

And yet, there’s still another issue Democrats won’t touch with a ten-foot pole, either … at least, not until after the midterms. You know, when it’s safer.

That issue is gun control.

Despite Joe Biden calling for more gun control legislation, members of his party have “little appetite” for pursuing it before November, reports The Hill. Two gun control measures passed the House in March of 2021, but have gathered dust in the Senate since.

And with good reason: it’s a political loser for them. Most adults want existing laws to be enforced, not new laws to be passed.

The Real Pandemic By David Solway

https://pjmedia.com/columns/david-solway-2/2022/02/17/the-real-pandemic-n1560170

In a Nov. 19, 2021 address to Hillsdale College, its president Larry Arnn identified the three factors recognized by the Constitution as the natural rights of human beings: the right to earn a living, the right to raise our children, and the right to participate in government.

“These facts about nature,” he pointed out, “were well known during the American Revolution … It was the interference with the colonists’ natural rights by that former ruling class that led to the American Revolution.” Such interference, he argues, is occurring today on both a national and global scale.

Nationally, a bureaucratic colossus has taken control of regulative governance, as evidenced by the collective response to the COVID-19 virus: the isolation of the nation’s citizenry via lockdowns, a form of house arrest; the virtual destruction of the economy; and the collusion between Big Pharma, major corporations, government, medical agencies, mainstream media, and the education establishment. This vast and nefarious consortium has nullified what Arnn enumerated as the basis of life in a democratic polity— the three fundamental rights which the COVID mandarin class has stripped from its citizenry.

The right to make a living has been ruthlessly and severely compromised. As is well known, small business has been decimated and millions of people thrown out of work or driven into bankruptcy. Whether this was part of a deliberate plan or a poorly thought-through strategy for dealing with the pandemic is an open question—but suspicions ramify. The vaccine mandates have only exacerbated the disaster.
The right to raise their children as parents see fit has been overridden by government edict and/or agency control. Children, who are effectively immune to the virus, are forced to wear masks in order to attend school and are being injected with entirely unnecessary and potentially harmful vaccines. Witness, too, the imposition of Critical Race Theory on school curricula by school boards and government fiat across the nation. In my own country, Canada, Bill C-4 prohibits what is called conversion therapy, making parents’ concern about transgender indoctrination of their children and intervention in the process a criminal offense. In all such cases, the state insists on acting in loco parentis, reducing parents to the status of daycare operators.
The right to participate in government has been stifled by oppressive and unnavigable bureaucracies whose regulative incontinence has closed almost every avenue of individual involvement in the apparatus of governance. Political authority has become both unrepresentative and unaccountable. Indifference to citizen opposition regarding policy measures and legislative enactments is the official version of a barricaded street.

Hillary Campaign Is Now Panicking Over Durham Probe By Matt Margolis

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2022/02/17/hillary-campaign-is-now-panicking-over-durham-probe-n1560091

On Thursday, attorneys for Michael Sussmann, the lawyer from Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign who was charged last year with lying to federal agents, filed a motion to dismiss Special Counsel John Durham’s case against him, reports the New York Post. The lawyers called the matter “extraordinary prosecutorial overreach.”

Sussmann’s legal team insists that he didn’t make false statements to the FBI and that he’s being targeted on a technicality. Sussman voluntarily approached FBI agents in Sept. 2016 to “pass along information that raised national security concerns.” Instead, Sussman came to them with bogus information linking the Trump Organization and the Kremlin-linked Alfa-Bank.

“He met with the FBI, in other words, to provide a tip. There is no allegation in the indictment that the tip he provided was false. And there is no allegation that he believed that the tip he provided was false,” Sussman’s lawyer’s motion reads. “Rather, Mr. Sussmann has been charged with making a false statement about an entirely ancillary matter — about who his client may have been when he met with the FBI — which is a fact that even the special counsel’s own indictment fails to allege had any effect on the FBI’s decision to open an investigation. Allowing this case to go forward would risk criminalizing ordinary conduct, raise First Amendment concerns, dissuade honest citizens from coming forward with tips, and chill the advocacy of lawyers who interact with the government.”