NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Jonathan Turley: Facebook vs. Trump – Big Tech has allowed for the creation of a state media without the state Facebook, Twitter and other companies now openly engage in what they like to euphemistically call ‘content modification’

Posted By on May 5th, 2021

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/facebook-trump-board-lifetime-ban-jonathan-turley

The decision of the Facebook board to uphold the decision to ban former President Donald Trump but reconsider his lifetime ban may seem transparently convenient for many. However, there is precedent. 

One of my favorite trial accounts is from Ireland, where an Englishman accused an Irishman of stealing a pair of boots. The guilt of the defendant was absolutely clear but the Irish jury could not get itself to rule for the Englishman. Instead, it acquitted the Irishman but added a line, “We do believe O’Brien should give the Englishman back his boots.” Case closed.

Few people thought that, after expanding the censorship of political figures like Trump for years, Facebook could ever summon the courage to declare itself wrong in the ban first imposed on Jan. 7, 2021. Instead, the board ruled that it was absolutely right to suspend Trump but it may want to reconsider the permanent ban given the absence of any objective standard to support it. So Trump will still get the boot for now.

It may be too harsh to expect anything more from a board that literally monitors one of the world’s largest censorship programs. 

Facebook, Twitter and other companies now openly engage in what they like to euphemistically call “content modification.” The decision reflects the convoluted logic of censor’s free speech review board. The company – and the board – start from the assumption that it can and should censor views deemed “misinformation” or dangerous. The starting position therefore is that censorship is justified and that content neutrality is dangerous.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Supreme Court Declines to Hear Arizona Election Fraud Challenge By Jack Phillips

Posted By on May 5th, 2021

https://www.theepochtimes.com/supreme-court-declines-to-hear-arizona-election-fraud-challenge_3801903.html

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday dismissed a challenge filed by an Arizona resident who had sought to prove claims of election fraud during the Nov. 3 election in her state.

The nine justices, without comment, dismissed (pdf) a request by Pinal County resident Staci Burk to find evidence of election fraud. Burk had sought access to ballots to prove that some were invalid or fraudulent.

Earlier this year, the Arizona Supreme Court issued a ruling that agreed with a trial court judge in Pinal County that Burk lacked the right to contest the election. The reason given was that she wasn’t a registered voter at the time she filed her lawsuit, as required in state election contests. Both courts also agreed that she made her legal challenge too late, after the five-day period for filing such an action had passed.

Burk said in her lawsuit that she was a qualified Arizona voter, but officials said they discovered she wasn’t registered to vote. She later said she mistakenly thought “qualified electors” were people who were merely eligible to vote, and that her voter registration was canceled because election workers were unable to verify her address.

“There is nothing before the Court to indicate that Appellant timely contacted the appropriate authorities to correct any problems with her voter registration,” Arizona Supreme Court Chief Justice Robert Brutinel wrote. “An election challenge … is not the proper vehicle to reinstate voter registration.”

Brutinel also said that Burk had admitted “that she was well aware before the election that she would not be able to vote in the general election … There is nothing before the court to indicate that [Burk] timely contacted the appropriate authorities to correct any problems with her voter registration.”

In her petition to the Supreme Court, Burk wanted a hearing over the question about whether she was an “elector.”

Meanwhile, an audit ordered by the Arizona state Senate of nearly 2.1 million Maricopa County, Arizona, ballots could last for weeks, according to former Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett, the Senate audit liaison.

Bennett said over the weekend that there is “no deadline” and added that the Senate has been granted permission to the state fairgrounds “for as long as we need it.”

Earlier this year, the Supreme Court threw out a slew of election-related lawsuits, including former President Donald Trump’s last remaining challenge.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Arabs Warn West: Do Not Let Iran Fool You by Khaled Abu Toameh

Posted By on May 5th, 2021

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17299/arabs-warn-west-iran-deception

“Those who commit the same mistakes and expect different results are deceiving themselves.” — Abdullah bin Bajad Al-Otibi, Saudi writer and researcher, Alarabiya.net, April 19, 2021.

After the deal expires in a few years…. Iran may build as many nuclear weapons as it wants. In that sense, the JCPOA deal was a runway to a full-blown nuclear weapons program.

“[T]he agreement did not address the Iranian regime’s ambitions of hegemony and its blatant interference in the internal affairs of Arab countries through direct and semi-direct occupation in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen…. Iran today is targeting Saudi oil and global energy supplies, as well as civilians, as the world is watching.” — Abdullah bin Bajad Al-Otibi, Alarabiya.net, April 19, 2021.

“All the concessions that the Western powers intend to make to Tehran do not bind anyone in the Middle East, and cannot force Israel or the Arab countries to respect the outcome of the talks in Vienna, especially if these negotiations increase the danger of the Tehran regime to stability and security.” — Syrian writer Bahaa Al-Alawam, Al-Ain, April 19, 2021

“The truth is that there is a political, military, security and economic Iranian occupation of four Arab countries – Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen.” — Former Jordanian Minister of Information and Culture Saleh Al-Kallab, Asharq Al-Awsat, April 15, 2021.

This message, directed mainly at the Biden administration, accuses the West of ignoring Iran’s ongoing occupation and terrorism in the Arab countries. Evidently, there is a profound fear among Arabs that a revival of the nuclear deal will add fuel to the mullahs’ fire and support their slash-and-burn policies of destabilizing Arab countries and promoting terrorism through their proxies, including Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthi militias in Yemen.

Arabs are growing increasingly concerned about Iran’s sinister intentions and deception as the Iranians and representatives of Germany, France, Britain, Russia, and China continue their negotiations in Vienna about reviving the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, which the Trump administration abandoned in 2018.

The deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), is ostensibly aimed at preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Under the JCPOA, Iran agreed to eliminate its stockpile of medium-enriched uranium, cut its stockpile of low-enriched uranium by 98%, and reduce by about two-thirds the number of uranium gas centrifuges for 13 years. After the deal expires in a few years, however, Iran may build as many nuclear weapons as it wants. In that sense, the JCPOA deal was a runway to a full-blown nuclear weapons program.

On May 8, 2019, Trump announced the US withdrawal from the JCPOA, which Iran had been secretly violating, and Iran has been repeatedly violating the terms of the accord ever since.

The Iranians appear optimistic that the talks will bring the US back to the deal, saying a “new understanding” seems to be taking shape.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

The Immense Education ‘Investment’ Fraud What the teachers unions and its allies in the media call an “investment” is really nothing more than the ongoing pillaging of taxpaying Americans. By Larry Sand

Posted By on May 5th, 2021

https://amgreatness.com/2021/05/04/the-immense-education-investment-fraud/

As reported by the estimable Just Facts, federal, state, and local governments in the U.S. spent $1.02 trillion on education in 2019. This breaks down to $7,945 for every household in the country. It’s worth noting that these figures do not include land that is purchased for schools and other facilities, some of the costs of durable items like buildings and computers, and unfunded liabilities of post-employment non-pension benefits (health insurance e.g.). Here in California, when all costs are considered, the state spends over $20,000 per pupil.

But for Joe Biden, a trillion isn’t nearly enough. In March the President, or whoever is handling him these days, rolled out a $1.9 trillion “federal relief package” which includes $126 billion for schools. What the teachers unions and its allies in the media call an “investment” is really nothing more than the ongoing pillaging of taxpaying Americans who are already facing debt of gargantuan proportions. 

Then last week, Biden piled on with the American Family Plan, a $1.8 trillion giveaway which includes $554 billion for education—payments in-full for community college and preschool, to address the (alleged) “growing teacher shortage,” and a host of other “investments”—a word that appears in some form 58 times in the plan’s fact sheet.

While educrats drool, many with a firm grip on reality are horrified at the government’s tax antics. As policy writer Brad Polumbo points out, tuition at the average community college for an in-district student is just $3,770. “But it’s even less than that for students who qualify for existing grants and financial aid, which cover nearly all the expenses.” Polumbo goes on to say that the majority of students of who attend community college end up dropping out, and research has shown that those students who actually pay for their own schooling tend to work harder and get better grades.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

As ‘Things Fall Apart,’ People Seem to ‘Lack All Conviction’ Roger Kimball

Posted By on May 5th, 2021

https://www.theepochtimes.com/as-things-fall-apart-people-seem-to-lack-all-conviction_3801729.html?utm_source=partner&utm_campaign=RCP

The American poet Delmore Schwartz (1913–1968) had a number of good one-liners.

His mot about existentialism, for example, is hard to beat: “Existentialism,” he said, “means no one else can take a bath for you.”

Given the level of pretension that surrounded the French-German import, and given its dour currency in the academic stock market at the time, that deflationary observation was just the thing.

Schwartz’s comment seized upon something essential in that school of philosophy—its radical individualism—and then gave it a comic twist. Not the Heideggerian “Dasein,” whose essence is “being-unto-death,” but a nice warm bath that is yours and yours alone. It was nicely done.

Another comment by Schwartz has special relevance to our own situation. I mean his observation that “Even paranoids have enemies.”

I reckon that Rudy Giuliani can savor the truth of that apothegm. Likewise, Victoria Toensing. Both were raided by Joe Biden’s secret police, the NKFBI, last week.

Ditto Paul and Marilyn Hueper.

The Alaska couple were enjoying a little sleep-in on April 28, when “a dozen armed FBI agents kicked down their front door in an investigation associated with Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s stolen laptop.”

The agents, with guns drawn, handcuffed the couple and interrogated them for nearly three hours.

The Huepers, you see, had been in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 6 for the big Trump rally.

BOOKS Comments turned off

Aldous Huxley foresaw our despots – Fauci, Gates and their vaccine crusaders By Patricia McCarthy

Posted By on May 5th, 2021

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/05/aldous_huxley_foresaw_our_despots__fauci_gates_and_their_vaccine_crusaders.html

In 1949, sometime after the publication of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, Aldous Huxley, the author of Brave New World (1931) wrote to Orwell who by then was living in California.  Huxley had briefly taught French to Orwell as a student in high school at Eton.  Huxley generally praises Orwell’s novel which to many seemed very similar to Brave New World in its dystopian view of a possible future.  Huxley politely voices his opinion that his own version of what might come to pass would be truer than Orwell’s.  Huxley observed that the philosophy of the ruling minority in Nineteen Eight-Four is sadism whereas his own version is more likely, that controlling an ignorant and unsuspecting public would be less arduous, less wasteful by other means.  Huxley’s masses are seduced by a mind-numbing drug, Orwell’s with sadism and fear. 

The most powerful quote In Huxley’s letter to Orwell is this: 

“Within the next generation I believe that the world’s rulers will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging and kicking them into obedience.”

Aldous Huxley

Could Huxley have more prescient?  What do we see around us?  Masses of people dependent upon drugs, legal and illegal.  The majority of advertisements that air on television seem to be for prescription drugs, some of them miraculous but most of them unnecessary.  Then comes covid, a quite possibly weaponized virus from the Fauci-funded-with-taxpayer-dollars lab in Wuhan, China.  The powers that be tragically deferred to the malevolent Fauci who had long been hoping for just such an opportunity.  Suddenly there was an opportunity to test the mRNA vaccines that had been in the works for nearly twenty years.  They could be authorized as an emergency measure but were still highly experimental.  These jabs are not really vaccines at all but a form of gene therapy.  There are potential disastrous consequences down the road. Govenment experiments on the public are nothing new.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Our Country Was Founded by Geniuses, but It’s Being Run by Idiots By J.B. Shurk

Posted By on May 5th, 2021

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/05/our_country_was_founded_by_geniuses_but_its_being_run_by_idiots.html

The eminently quotable Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana said sometime back: “Our country was founded by geniuses, but it’s being run by idiots.”  I heartily agree, and the problem is not self-correcting.  

The principles behind the formation of America’s government were and are exquisite, but the American government, like all forms of government, is corrupt as hell.  This isn’t an extraordinary statement.  Exquisite things often break, and even the noblest of institutions become distorted over time until the original purposes for their creation are eclipsed (and often contradicted) by the personal motives of the men running those institutions into the ground.  

This phenomenon is apparent anywhere there is power. 

John O’Sullivan, a senior policy adviser for Prime Minister Thatcher, wrote a short essay thirty years ago that should have made freedom-minded conservatives rethink any lingering attachments to institutional authorities.   

He asked a question we often ask ourselves: how is it that almost all institutional bodies — whether governmental agencies or purportedly “nonpartisan” scientific academies or even religious groups and charities — transform over time into left-leaning entities?  In grappling with what might seem inexplicable, he corralled three insights about organizational behavior: (1) Robert Michels’s Iron Law of Oligarchy asserting that all forms of organization, regardless of how democratic their foundations, will come to be run by an elite group of people; (2) Robert Conquest’s Second Law stating that every organization behaves as if “headed by secret agents of its opponents”; and (3) O’Sullivan’s very own First Law positing that “[a]ll organizations that are not actually right-wing will over time become left-wing.”  In other words, Michels tells us that the key to understanding any institution is its leadership, not its charter.  Conquest argues that the leadership will always have objectives at odds with the organization’s intended purpose, if for no other reason than that the leadership’s continued employment and future power paradoxically depend upon never completely succeeding.  And O’Sullivan takes this insight farther by noting that the type of person who staffs such organizations tends to disdain private profit and the historic composition of Western civilization’s free-market culture.  

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Federal Biden Inquisitors FBI sends the wrong signals for Biden’s campaign against “domestic terrorism.” Lloyd Billingsley

Posted By on May 5th, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/05/federal-biden-inquisitors-lloyd-billingsley-0/

Last week, Jill Sanborn, assistant director of the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division, told lawmakers that James Hodgkinson “intended for the shooting to be his final act on Earth,” when he attacked Republican lawmakers on June 14, 2017, nearly killing Rep. Steve Scalise. According to Sanborn, Hodgkinson knew  “he would likely be killed,” a tacit acknowledgement that the FBI had indeed classified the attack as “suicide by cop,” not an act of terrorism.

“I am not aware of the rationale,” Sanborn told lawmakers. “I was not in my seat at the time, so I would have to get back to you on the specifics of what the rationale was.” In the seat of acting FBI director at the time was Andrew McCabe, a Clinton crony and major player in the Russia hoax. McCabe did not testify about the rationale for calling the attack suicide by cop. 

“If it were to happen today, we would open it as a domestic terrorism case,” Sanborn testified. DOJ assistant attorney general Brad Wiegmann told legislators that James Hodgkinson was a domestic terrorist, nearly four years after the FBI failed to do so. All told, it was quite a performance from the FBI-DOJ duo. 

Hodgkinson, a supporter of Bernie Sanders, carried a list of Republican lawmakers and belonged to a Facebook group called “Terminate the Republican Party.” Hodgkinson purchased an SKS rifle, a Russian or Chinese made precursor to the AK-47, and practiced his marksmanship. Hodgkinson also recorded a video of the field where Republican lawmakers played baseball. 

On June 14, 2017, as the Republicans practiced, Hodgkinson opened fire, seriously wounding Rep. Steve Scalise and Zack Barth, an aide to Rep. Roger Williams. The Sanders supporter then engaged the Capitol Police in a gun battle, not what one would expect from someone out to commit suicide by cop. That absurd designation recalls an episode from the composite character president David Garrow described in Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

‘They Are Burning Us Alive!’ Say Sinai’s Coptic Christians Liquidated. Raymond Ibrahim

Posted By on May 5th, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/05/they-are-burning-us-alive-say-sinais-coptic-raymond-ibrahim/

The recent execution of a Coptic Christian man in the Sinai is a reminder that the peninsula is a hotbed of wanton, jihadi terrorism in dire need of a crackdown.

Although the murder of 62-year-old Nabil H. Salama was videotaped in an Islamic State propaganda video—meaning it received some media attention in the West—much lesser known is that the Muslim terrorists have been terrorozing, massacring, and displacing the small Coptic community for years in the Sinai.

Early 2017 probably saw the worst atrocities.  Then, the Islamic State in Sinai had released a video promising more attacks on the “worshipers of the cross,” a reference to the Copts of Egypt; the terrorists also referred to the Copts as their “favorite prey” and the “infidels who are empowering the West against Muslim nations.”

Thereafter followed a massive “jihad” on the Copts; the following are some of the more notable examples, all occurring in early 2017, mostly in al-Arish, Sinai:

A 65-year-old Christian man was shot in the head and killed; the Copt’s 45-year-old son was then abducted and tortured by the Muslim terrorists; they then burned him alive and dumped his charred remains near a schoolyard (image here).
A 35-year-old Christian was in his small shop working with his wife and young son when three masked men walked in, opened fire on and killed him.  The Muslim murderers then sat around his shop table, eating chips and drinking soda, while the slain Copt lay in a pool of blood before his terrified wife and child.
A 57-year-old Christian laborer was shot and killed as he tried to fight off masked men trying to kidnap his young son from off a crowded street in broad daylight. After murdering the Coptic father, they seized his young son and took him to an unknown location.
A 45-year-old Christian schoolteacher was moonlighting at his shoe store with his wife, when masked men walked in the crowded shop and shot him dead.
A 40-year-old Coptic medical doctor was killed by masked men who, after forcing him to stop his car, opened fire on and killed him.  He too left a widow and two children.
A group of armed Muslims attacked St. George, a Coptic Christian church in the Sinai on Sunday 15, 2017, leaving seven—including a young child—dead, and 15, mostly women and children, wounded.   
A Christian father and his two sons were abducted; their decapitated bodies were later found discarded.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

The Zarif-Kerry Bromance Saga Continues Iran’s Foreign Minister credits Kerry for telling him about Israeli airstrikes in Syria. Joseph Klein

Posted By on May 5th, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/05/zarif-kerry-bromance-saga-continues-joseph-klein/

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif evidently had no idea that Israel had launched 200 airstrikes against Iranian targets in Syria until John Kerry, now President Biden’s climate czar, told him, according to Washington Free Beacon reporter Adam Kredo.  Kredo managed to obtain the audio file of Zarif’s leaked phone interview in which Kerry’s disclosure was revealed and had it independently translated.

“Kerry told me that Israel had launched 200 airstrikes against you [Iran],” Zarif is heard saying. “You didn’t know?” asked his interviewer. “No, no,” Zarif replied.

If this information had already been made public in the press, there would be no reason for Zarif to use what was supposed to be a confidential interview to cite Kerry as his source. In any case, whether or not Kerry was simply passing on information already reported in the press, it begs the question of what else Kerry might have shared with Zarif from intelligence sources that Zarif chose not to mention during his interview.

Kerry should be required to testify under oath to Congress about Zarif’s claim. If it turns out that Kerry was sharing any classified information with Zarif to which he had access before, during or after his term as Secretary of State, he should not only lose his government job and security clearance. He should face possible prosecution.

“These are very serious allegations and knowing the position that he holds in government and position that he did hold, yes, it should be investigated. Knowing if these are true, I think it should go beyond him just resigning,” said Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), the House Minority Leader.

Republican Rep. Lee Zeldin, a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said that “Israel remains America’s staunchest and most loyal ally in the Middle East, and the idea that America’s former top diplomat would leak sensitive information about covert military operations to the world’s largest state sponsor of terror — putting Israeli lives at risk — is massively alarming.” Rep. Zeldin added that Kerry should “immediately testify before the House Foreign Affairs Committee to address these serious allegations, and if Kerry did actively undermine Israel, he must resign from the Biden administration immediately and have his security clearance revoked​.”