Ukraine: Field Test of the Great Reset

https://gatesofvienna.net/2022/03/ukraine-field-test-of-the-great-reset/

Recommended by Janet Levy.

Many thanks to Hellequin GB for translating this article from the Austrian weekly Der Wochenblick:

In the shadow of war: Ukraine as the Great Reset laboratory of the global tech elite

While a very real conflict is raging in Ukraine, naturally no spotlight falls on the digital distribution battles. The advocates of radical world restructuring and total surveillance have long recognized the potential of the Eastern European country. With the strong participation of President Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine would not only be a Mecca for US bio-weapons laboratories, but also pave the way for digital networking, the Metaverse and the transparent citizen. The lynchpin is the digital ID app “DiiA”, an abbreviation for “The State and I”.

Zelensky’s social credit system

The journey takes us back to 2019. Zelensky had only been a few months in office, and founded a “Ministry for Digital Transformation”. Its most important task was to create a platform for the “state on a smartphone”, the DiiA app finally rolled out in February of 2020. Since then everything has been going fast: more than 50 applications, proofs and official channels are now running via the app: driver’s license, Covid vaccination pass, student card, starting a business, insurance, social benefits. A French tech portal writes: “A model that we only knew from China with its social credit system.” By the way: “ID Austria” is supposed to go in this direction in the final phase.

Ketanji Brown Jackson getting the respect that Amy Coney Barrett was denied The lack of clarity around Ketanji Brown Jackson’s judicial philosophy will be a key question as her Supreme Court confirmation hearings unfold. Jonathan Turley

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnists/2022/03/22/ketanji-brown-jackson-amy-coney-barrett/7113216001/

The lack of clarity around Ketanji Brown Jackson’s judicial philosophy will be a key question as her Supreme Court confirmation hearings unfold.

The famous “gonzo journalist” Hunter S. Thompson once said, “Politics is the art of controlling your environment.” The confirmation hearing of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson is about to vividly show what Thompson meant. Less than two years after the abusive treatment of Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the Senate is holding a hearing that is dramatically different in the treatment of the Supreme Court nominee and the issues considered relevant to her confirmation.

For those with memories going back to 2020, there have been striking differences in how the news media haved covered Jackson’s nomination in recent weeks. When Barrett was nominated, the media ran unrelenting attacks on her and her background. Nothing was viewed as out of bounds, from her religion to her personal life to fabricated theories of prior assurances on pending cases.

From the start of the Jackson hearing, this is clearly different in both optics and approaches. Barrett was surrounded by pictures of people relying on the Affordable Care Act, a framing to portray Barrett as threatening the very lives of sick people. It was all part of an absurd claim (fostered by liberal legal experts) that Barrett was appointed to kill the ACA.

I objected at the time that senators were radically misconstruing the pending case and that Barrett was more likely to vote to preserve the ACA. (Barrett ultimately voted to preserve the act, as expected.)

Lia Thomas doesn’t deserve our compassion The only way to ensure fair competition is for biological men and women to compete in separate categories Amber Athey

https://spectatorworld.com/life/lia-thomas-compassion-swimming-transgender-upenn/

Reka Gyorgy showed commendable courage this weekend for finally speaking out against the National College Athletic Association’s rules regarding trans competitors. The Virginia Tech swimmer and Olympian was bumped out of a finals spot in the 500 free due to transgender University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas’s participation.

In a letter posted to her Instagram account, Gyorgy wrote, “It feels like that final spot was taken away from me because of the NCAA’s decision to let someone who is not a biological female compete… [Thursday] is the result of the NCAA and their lack of interest in protecting their athletes.”

Gyorgy is one of the first NCAA female swimmers to speak publicly about the negative impact Thomas’s participation in the sport has on women. She deserves massive credit for putting her name to her views while others cower in fear of being called transphobic. But even Gyorgy couched her criticism of the NCAA’s rules with an entire paragraph expressing that she “respects” and “fully stands” with Thomas.

Joe Biden’s Lust By Joan Swirsky

https://www.thepostemail.com/2022/03/22/joe-bidens-lust/

“ANTI-SEMITISM ON STEROIDS”

(March 22, 2022)—Let’s dispense with the Mt. Everest of words that have been written to rationalize Joe Biden & Company’s passion––indeed, lust––to put nuclear weapons in the hands of the fanatical mullahs in the terrorist-run state of Iran.

To be sure, the powers-in-power––more accurately those who are pulling their strings––have been busy creating distractions like Covid-19, the corrupt investigation into the January 6th so-called insurrection, and the strange “war” between Russia and Ukraine. But while Biden & Co. rally against Vladimir Putin, the U.S. continues to buy millions of dollars a day of Russian oil, in essence helping to finance the war against Ukraine, and Biden continues to count on ole Vlad to broker the new Iran deal with U.S. negotiators in Vienna.

Looking back, it is more than fishy that on his first day in office, according to Jim Hoft of The Gateway Pundit, “Joe Biden killed off 42,100 jobs in America by ending construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline,” and not long after “waived sanctions on Russia’s gas pipeline to Germany.”

Clearly, this was to set the stage for the Biden regime to actualize their real goal, their mission, their obsession–––finally, finally, finally to get rid of the arch nemesis of all of them: Israel, with the bonus being half of all the Jews on earth.

America’s New Terrorist Allies: ‘The Mother of all Disasters’ by Khaled Abu Toameh

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18350/america-terrorist-allies

The Gulf states, in particular Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, are already under attack by the Iranian-backed Houthi militia in Yemen. The Biden administration removed the Houthis from the list of foreign terrorist organizations and has since refused to reclassify it as a terrorist organization, despite the missile and drone attacks on Washington’s Arab allies and friends as recently as this week.

“It is true that the United States wants to withdraw from the region, but Washington will then have given China, Russia and Iran unprecedented strength…. By removing the Revolutionary Guards from the list of terrorist organizations, Washington will grant Iran the freedom to move and act in the region in the context of a Russian-Chinese-Iranian alliance.” — Tarik Al-Hamid, Saudi journalist, former editor-in-chief of the pan-Arab Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper, March 20, 2022.

Al-Hamid reminded the Biden administration that Saudi Arabia “is the exact opposite of Iran, as it does not want control, but rather the stability and independence of countries.” — Tarik Al-Hamid, Asharq Al-Awsat, March 20, 2022.

“Lifting the sanctions while Hezbollah revels in Lebanon and Syria, and Iranian militias wreak havoc in Iraq amid Iran’s continued support for the Houthis in Yemen, is nothing but a crime against our region.” — Tarik Al-Hamid, Asharq Al-Awsat, March 20, 2022.

“The problem with this American change is that it came while Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are leading internal and regional efforts to bring stability and moderation.” — Saudi political analyst Abdullah bin Bejad Al-Otaibi, Asharq Al-Awsat, March 20, 2022.

“There is an American and Western policy that cannot be condoned, which is the insistence on making Saudi Arabia and the UAE militarily exposed to the attacks of the Iranian Houthi militia in Yemen, ballistic missiles and drones, and imposing illogical requirements on the export of arms to confront these serious threats.” — Abdullah bin Bejad Al-Otaibi, Asharq Al-Awsat, March 20, 2022.

“The hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan, which enabled the Taliban to seize control of the country, removing the Houthi militia from the terrorism list, seeking to remove the Iranian Revolutionary Guard from the list of terrorism, silence about Iranian bombing of Iraqi Kurdistan – these are very dangerous policies for the world and the Arab countries that support stability and peace.” — Abdullah bin Bejad Al-Otaibi, Asharq Al-Awsat, March 20, 2022.

The IRGC and the mullahs are “the head of regional and international terrorism, from Al-Qaeda to ISIS, and from the Lebanese Hezbollah to the Shiite terror militias all over the world.” — Abdullah bin Bejad Al-Otaibi, Asharq Al-Awsat, March 20, 2022.

“Have you seen bigger liars?” — Dr. Mahmoud Al-Shami, Syrian writer, Twitter, March 20, 2022.

“What did the Revolutionary Guard offer America as a price for the reward of being removed from the list of terrorist organizations and making billions of dollars available to it by lifting sanctions on Iran so that it could finance its terrorist activities at the expense of threatening the security of the Gulf and the stability of the Middle East?” — Dr. Mohamed El-Sherif, Egyptian, Twitter, March 20, 2022.

“Mr. Blinken, it will be a true holiday for Iranians when they get rid of the murderous [Iranian] regime to which you are making terrible concessions. Mr. Blinken, the Iranian people will not forgive the US if the Revolutionary Guard, the largest terrorist organization backed by an official government, is removed from the list of terrorism.” — Masood A. R., an Iranian opponent of the mullahs, addressing the US Secretary of State, Twitter, March 20, 2022.

“I think that when you remove the Iranian Revolutionary Guard from the list of terrorist organizations, you will make a big mistake, and this will lead to the spread of Iranian terrorism and this will affect the region and allies, and America and Europe will be vulnerable to direct Iranian terrorism.” — Abdul Hadi Al-Shehri, Saudi writer, Twitter, March 19, 2022.

The question arises: If the Biden administration believes that the Houthi militia and the IRGC are not terrorist organizations, then why not also remove Al-Qaeda, ISIS, Hamas, Hezbollah and Palestinian Islamic Jihad from the blacklist? Indeed, if the US administration believes that it can do business with these terrorists and their sponsors in Tehran, then why not own up to its policies and straightforwardly declare all these terrorist groups as America’s newest allies?

Putin’s Russia vs. Pushkin’s Russia Gary Saul Morson

https://quillette.com/2022/03/19/putins-russian-and-pushkins-russia/

When Paolo Nori’s series of lectures on Dostoevsky at the University of Milano-Bicocca was canceled “to avoid any controversy … during a time of strong tensions” related to the Ukraine invasion, he replied: “I realize what is happening in Ukraine is horrible, and I feel like crying just thinking about it. But what is happening in Italy is ridiculous … Not only is being a living Russian wrong in Italy but also being a dead Russian.”

It isn’t only in Italy. In the Netherlands, an exhibit of avant-garde Russian art was canceled, as was a Stravinsky concert in Belgium and a Tchaikovsky performance in Britain. Even the board of the International Cat Federation (Fédération Internationale Féline, or FIFé) banned from its exhibitions not only Russian cat breeders but also cats bred in Russia. Here in the United States, Columbia University Press, having renounced Russian financing, is drastically curtailing its series of Russian classics in translation.

But as Dutch Russian expert Michel Krielaars observed, “there is Putin’s Russia and there is Pushkin’s Russia,” and the two could not differ more. In our frenzied rush to “cancel” everything Russian, we may throw away a literary tradition that displays an especially deep understanding of moral questions in all their depth and complexity. Who should grasp the nature of evil better than those who suffered so much under tsarist tyranny and then still more under the totalitarian regime that replaced it?

A character in one of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s novels asks: “hasn’t it always been understood … that a major writer in our country … is a sort of second government?” If the regime represented political power, the writer embodied moral power. The very phrase “Russian writer” designated not just someone who produces literary works but someone who, like the ancient Hebrew prophets, acts as the people’s conscience.

Mugger Money and a New Epidemic of Crime Rob Long

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2022/03/mugger-money-and-a-new-epidemic-of-crime/

Rob Long is a television writer and producer, author and journalist. He was writer and co-executive producer of the comedy series Cheers.

“Young people in this city,” a native New Yorker said to me last week, “don’t even know what mugger money is.”

He went on to explain. Mugger money was the small wad of bills most New Yorkers would carry around with them between the mayoral administrations of John V. Lindsay (1966–1973) and David N. Dinkins (1990–1993).

Mugger money was what you kept with you because you expected to be mugged eventually and you needed something to hand over to placate the attacker and persuade him not to kill you. It was kept separately from your actual money in your actual wallet—my friend told me that some more theatrical friends of his would keep their mugger money in a dressed-up fake wallet—and you’d toss it to the mugger and then make a run for it.

The criminal would get some cash and the victim would keep the bulk of his money, along with his identification—a bureaucratic nightmare to replace—and his credit cards. It was, as progressive social scientists might say, a win-win. It was the tax you paid for living in the crime-infested City That Never Sleeps.

Mugger money symbolised the thirty-year lopsided truce between the law-abiding citizens of New York and the criminals and marauders who threatened them. New York apartments in the 1970s and 1980s sported doors with multiple locks and steel bars wedged between the door and the floor. Windows were barred or bricked in. Central Park and Washington Square were drug bazaars during the day and off-limits at night. Trash-can fires blazed in the heart of Alphabet City—unattended, unnoticed and certainly ignored by police and firefighters. Times Square was a cesspool of porn and small-time gangsterism. And only fools rode the subway.

Maryland and Georgia Governors Suspend State Gas Taxes to Offset Fuel Prices By Eric Lendrum

https://amgreatness.com/2022/03/21/maryland-and-georgia-governors-suspend-state-gas-taxes-to-offset-fuel-prices/

On Friday, governors in two different states signed bills into law to suspend each of their respective statewide gas taxes, in order to offset the financial burden of rising gas prices on consumers.

The Daily Wire reports that Governors Larry Hogan (R-Md.) and Brian Kemp (R-Ga.) signed such legislation after the bills had already passed through the state legislatures, with Maryland’s gas tax being suspended for the next 30 days, while Georgia’s will be suspended through the end of May. Other states currently considering similar action include California, Michigan, and New Hampshire.

“This bipartisan action will provide some relief from the pain at the pump,” Hogan announced at a press conference prior to the signing of the bill, “and it is possible because of the prudent fiscal steps we have taken, which have resulted in a record budget surplus.”

“This is, of course, not a cure-all, and market instability will continue to lead to fluctuations in prices,” Hogan continued, “but we will continue to use every tool at our disposal to provide relief for Marylanders.” The bill in Maryland had passed through both houses of the state legislature with unanimous support.

A Trump-Hating Backer of Biden’s Supreme Court Nominee Is Married to the Top J6 Prosecutor. By Julie Kelly

https://amgreatness.com/2022/03/21/a-trump-hating-backer-of-bidens-supreme-court-nominee-is-married-to-the-top-j6-prosecutor/

Confirmation hearings for D.C. Circuit Court Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, Joe Biden’s first U.S. Supreme Court nominee, began Monday before the Senate Judiciary Committee. During an event in Washington, D.C. on Monday morning, activists gathered to rally on behalf of the nominee who could be the first black woman seated on the nation’s highest court.

“It’s also, for so many of us, a moment that is personal,” Fatima Goss Graves, president and CEO of the National Women’s Law Center, told the crowd. “It is personal if you have ever been the only person sitting in a room. It is personal if you have ever wondered, ‘Is that for me?’” Over the past several weeks, Graves, a graduate of Yale Law school, has given dozens of interviews in support of Jackson’s nomination.

In a January column for CNN, Graves denounced “the current homogeneity of the legal profession and judicial system” and claimed “the perspective of White men has been treated as the default” in court proceedings.

Graves’ D.C.-based nonprofit promotes any number of radical causes including unfettered access to abortion, gender “justice,” free child care, and LGBTQ equity. Appointed to lead NWLC one month after Trump’s inauguration, Graves was an outspoken critic of the president; she co-founded the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund in 2018 in the aftermath of the #MeToo movement and strongly opposed the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh.

After the media declared Joe Biden the winner of the 2020 presidential election, Graves, in a racist screed, berated the 55 percent of white women who voted for President Trump:

[Most] White women who support Trump are not blindly voting against their own self-interest. These Trump supporters, aided by a toxic mix of racism and disinformation, seem to be consciously supporting what they believe to be their own group interest, putting them on the same team as the White men society has been largely built to benefit. The right-wing has long focused its sales pitch to White women on the promise of preserving the modest gains a misogynistic system has allowed them—advancing a delusion of forced scarcity that pits White, cisgender, heterosexual women against all others in a zero-sum fight for survival.

THE LEFT FEARS AND HATES THE INTREPID LARA LOGAN: VICTOR SHARPE

https://www.renewamerica.com/columns/sharpe/220320

Many of us who daily scan the so-called mainstream media (MSM) know only too well how their vicious barbs are aimed at conservative writers, reporters, and talk show hosts, including such luminaries as Sebastian Gorka, Dennis Prager, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, Tucker Carlson, Lars Larson, et al. With apologies for not mentioning the many other fine conservative hosts.

Among those who receive particularly egregious and venomous leftwing harangues is Lara Logan. For the Left, her sin? Exposing those media apparatchiks who are deeply mired in spewing Leftist, Socialist, Islamist, Marxist, and frankly anti-American falsehoods.

Ms. Logan was a former correspondent for CBS’s “60 Minutes” and later a contributor on Fox Nation’s “Lara Logan Has No Agenda.” She has opined on many occasions about the transformation of the media from what it was meant to be, with many journalists now blurring the lines between fact and opinion.

“They’re not journalists,” Logan has argued, “they’re political assassins, working on behalf of political operatives and propagandists. A lot of media entities are increasingly working hand in hand with Big Tech companies to shape narratives and public discourse.”