RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2021/05/07/team_biden_flogs_russian_interference_in_us_vote_no_matter_what_its_intel_agencies_say_776083.html

In his big speech last week, President Biden complained about “Russia’s interference in our elections” but his intelligence community, led by his appointee Avril Haines, right, says there wasn’t any.

The Biden administration is misquoting its own intelligence findings on Russia in what some former U.S. intelligence officials say is a subtle but significant effort to continue to delegitimize the Trump presidency.

In his speech before a joint session of Congress last week, President Biden complained about “Russia’s interference in our elections,” even though his intelligence czar had released a report the previous month formally dismissing the idea Moscow had interfered in the 2020 election or the 2016 election.

In an “Intelligence Community Assessment” on foreign threats to U.S. elections released March 10, Biden’s Office of the Director of National Intelligence, run by Democratic appointee Avril Haines, made a distinction between efforts to influence and efforts to interfere with American elections. Although this sounds like semantics, in the field of international norms, it represents a crucial difference.

The ICA defined “election influence” as “overt or covert efforts by foreign governments or actors” to indirectly affect an election through “candidates, political parties, voters or their preferences, or political processes.” In contrast, it defined “election interference” as the far more serious matter of foreign states targeting “the technical aspects of the election,” including “casting and counting ballots, or reporting results.”

https://weingarten.substack.com/p/antiracism-is-racist-on-its-own-terms?token=eyJ1

Perhaps the central animating principle underlying the Woke agenda is that equity in outcomes must supplant equality in rights, treatment under the law and general life opportunities.

The Woke ideal is for all to be represented in every aspect of society proportional to their group—the diversity of skills, abilities, interests and myriad other factors inherent to every individual be damned. All policies must revolve around this singularly preeminent goal.

At least this is what the Woke tell us.

So-called “antiracism” is at the core of the Wokeism that has overtaken much of the federal government, our corporate boardrooms and our schools. Antiracists suggest that one can judge a policy as antiracist by whether such policy contributes to achieving “equity”—and a person as antiracist by whether he actively supports such policy. Get with the Woke program, in other words, or you are “Jim Eagle.” In some ways, then, antiracism might be thought of more as a tactic to bully people into submission to racialist progressivism than it is a true philosophy or worldview.

But for the sake of argument, let’s entertain the antiracists’ stated views. Let’s also set aside that alongside Woke true believers are cynics who likely believe they can exploit Wokeism to accrue more power, narrow opportunists who think they can profit by aligning themselves with the Woke and cowards generally fearful of the vengeful Woke mob.

Antiracists believe it is wholly justifiable to engage in outright discrimination and bigotry—abrogating rights, treating us as unequal under the law and rigging opportunities—to the extent it advances the cause of “equity.” This experiment in social engineering is a recipe for disaster, eroding liberty and justice, fomenting societal rancor and division, and ultimately leaving us a poorer, less secure country.

But even setting these points aside, there is a fatal flaw among the antiracists that ought to be emphasized: Antiracists are racist on their own terms to the extent their favored policies contribute to inequity. In fact, many such policies seemingly will, and historically have.Consider policing, for example. Antiracists see the criminal justice system as systemically racist, in large part because minorities are incarcerated at disproportionate rates—rejecting or ignoring that those rates might reflect disproportionate underlying criminal activity. Therefore, antiracists argue that equity demands a raft of policies aimed at weakening the power of police forces, up to and sometimes including abolishing them outright. But it is only logical that if the authorities are to back off, if not disband altogether, then crime-ridden areas will get significantly worse.

https://us7.campaign-archive.com/?e=a9fdc67db9&u=9d011a88d8fe324cae8c084c5&id=db371f8e73

JP Morgan Chase — it’s hard to find a more “woke” company than that one. Under celebrity CEO Jamie Dimon, JPM in its corporate pronouncements consistently positions itself at the most exquisitely correct end of the politically correct spectrum.

But reality can be tough. In its email of a couple of days ago, the Global Warming Policy Foundation links to JPM’s 2021 Annual Energy Paper. The Paper comes from JPM’s Asset and Wealth Management Group. The lead author is a guy named Michael Cembalest, who appears to have his ear right down on the ground of the global energy business. The bottom line is that all the talk about “deep de-carbonization” of the world economy any time soon is a ridiculous fantasy. Fossil fuels are not going away for a long time, if ever. Carbon emissions into the atmosphere are increasing? You’d better get used to that.

Once again, this “deep de-carbonization” thing is a case of the really “smart” people deceiving you, or maybe themselves; or more likely, both.

For starters, let’s consider some of the extreme wokeism that issues from the executive suites in JPMville. This is not limited to matters of “climate,” but extends as well to other usual topics, like for example “systemic racism.” On that subject, here is JPM CEO Jamie Dimon, as quoted in Forbes in October 2020:

“Systemic racism is a tragic part of America’s history. We can do more and do better to break down systems that have propagated racism and widespread economic inequality, especially for Black and Latinx people. It’s long past time that society addresses racial inequities in a more tangible, meaningful way.”

Meanwhile, over in the climate arena, JPM’s high-level pronouncements totally buy into the idea that we’re going to save the planet by financing a bunch of wind turbines, or something. Last October, JPM put out a big statement with the pompous title of “How one of the world’s biggest banks plans to tackle climate change.” Excerpt:

Climate change is among the most urgent problems facing humanity; businesses and governments have an imperative to act. Achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement, which aims to restrict a rise in the world’s average temperature, would enable us to take a giant step towards a safer, greener, more sustainable future. . . . For the world to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, there needs to be an acceleration of emerging technologies that are not yet widely commercially available or economically viable. . . . Our company, JPMorgan Chase, announced this month that we will start aligning our financing portfolio to meet the Paris goals.

Then just a couple of weeks ago, on April 15, JPM followed up by announcing a big new plan to “Advance Climate Action and Sustainable Development” with some $2.5 trillion in investments: