OPINION Comments turned off

Joanna Williams The Censorship Bureaucracy Behind faceless policies on everything from emotional health to diversity, equity, and inclusion lies an impulse to control language—and thereby, thought.

Posted By on September 19th, 2023

https://media5.manhattan-institute.org/iiif/2/wp-content%2Fuploads%2Fsites%2F5%2FThe-Censorship-Bureaucracy.jpg/full/!99999,960/0/default.jpg

In a recurring sketch from a popular early 2000s U.K. comedy show called Little Britain, a bank clerk listens to customers’ queries, randomly types on a keyboard, and then deadpans the catchphrase: “computer says no.” Whatever the follow-up questions, no matter how angry or upset customers become, the response remains the same: “computer says no.” This skit lives on in Britons’ collective psyche mainly because it is funny, but also because it points to a familiar sentiment: the frustration of finding oneself stonewalled by an intransigent bureaucracy.

The sketch came to mind earlier this year when the Canadian Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship (SAFS) invited me to give its annual guest lecture. The venue was to be the public library in London, Ontario. I titled my talk “Sex, Gender, and the Limits of Free Speech on Campus” and looked forward to the occasion. Then, without any apparent sense of irony, the library cancelled my lecture with one emailed sentence: “As per the library’s policy governing room rentals, we are not able to approve the rental request.” Computer says no.

After much nudging, library staff revealed the specific policies I had unknowingly breached. My lecture was considered “likely to be in violation of library policy, including, but not limited to, the library’s rules of conduct, charter of library use or workplace harassment and sexual-harassment prevention policies.” More specifically, there was allegedly “a risk or likelihood of physical danger to participants or the audience or misuse of the property or equipment.” Finally, my speech might “negatively impact or impede the ability of others to enjoy the services and facilities of the library, and/or library operations.” Thankfully, SAFS managed to find an alternative venue, and my speech was recorded, so listeners can gauge for themselves whether I posed a risk of sexual harassment or physical danger.

Looking back at this event now, what strikes me most is the faceless, bureaucratic nature of censorship. No individual was bold enough to say: “I do not like what you have to say and I am going to prevent you from saying it.” Rather than taking responsibility for the decision to stop me from speaking —and, importantly, to prevent people from hearing what I had to say—library officials hid behind selected quotations from institutional policies. This cowardly approach gives bureaucrats plausible deniability when accused of censorship. Worse still, it allows them to appear almost apologetic: “We support free speech but, unfortunately, policy says no.”

BOOKS Comments turned off

Mark Levin’s The Democrat Party Hates America By Thomas Lifson

Posted By on September 19th, 2023

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/09/mark_levins_emthe_democrat_party_hates_americaem.html

Once again, Mark Levin has done a great service to the Republic by writing a fully documented, highly pointed book on a topic of vital national interest. Published today by the Threshold Editions imprint of Simon & Schuster, The Democrat Party Hates America is required reading for anyone who follows politics in America. That most assuredly includes those who identify as Democrats, though most will shun the book because it is too much of a challenge to their sense of self-worth and virtue. For the few who have the courage to read it, the book will be a revelation. I make no secret that I was born into a family of active Democrats, and until reality intruded well into adulthood, I shared that political attachment. I have since regarded it as a mistaken affiliation, but after reading this book I now have a sense a shame.

If it is widely enough read, and I predict that it will be a runaway best-seller, the book will change the way the public understands one of our two major political parties, forever tainting the Democrats for the racism, hypocrisy, lack of principle, and sheer ruthless pursuit of power at any cost that have permeated their party throughout its history.  If you have family members, colleagues, associates, or friends who are vocal Democrats and who do not shy away from political discussions, The Democrat Party Hates America is a cornucopia of evidence that you can use to persuade them out of their delusion that they are supporting a worthwhile political movement.

Chapter One, “The Democrat Party and Authoritarianism,” introduces several themes that weave throughout the entire text. The Democrats seek, and via their dominance of the administrative state composed of career bureaucrats exercising powers that rightly belong to Congress and even the judiciary, to monopolize political power, and have succeeded to an alarming degree. Excellent use is made of a 2017 report by Freedom House, a nonpartisan NGO founded in 1941 that has historically focused on authoritarian governments overseas, including most recently China and Russia. Mark shows in detail how the most recent report on authoritarianism overseas also applies to the United States under Democrat administrations at the state and federal level.  

ISRAEL Comments turned off

The Oslo Accords Began Israel’s Folly With the Palestinians Negotiating with PLO leader Arafat instead of other local leaders has led to intractable conflict. By Amir Avivi

Posted By on September 19th, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-oslo-accords-began-israels-folly-with-the-palestinians-plo-conflict-peace-terrorist-36661be1?mod=opinion_lead_pos7

Barbara W. Tuchman opens her iconic 1984 book, “The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam,” with Rehoboam, who caused the Kingdom of Israel to splinter into Judah and Israel. If Tuchman were writing today, she might have ended it with another wretched chapter from the history of Israel—the great folly of Oslo.

Tuchman defines folly as the pursuit by government of policies contrary to its own interests, whose adverse effects are apparent in real time, with the availability of feasible alternatives. The perpetrators are a group, not a single ruler, whose leadership spans longer than a generation. Israel’s implementation of the Oslo Accords, which were signed 30 years ago this month, meets all her criteria.

The folly of Oslo lies not in the creation of Palestinian autonomy (or as Yitzhak Rabin repeatedly called it, “less than a state”), which was part of the peace agreement Menachem Begin forged between Israel and Egypt. This idea was popular in Israel. But the decision to negotiate with the Palestine Liberation Organization, a bloodthirsty terror organization devoted to the destruction of Israel, was an act of sheer folly. Viable alternatives existed, first and foremost local leaders in the Arab cities in Judea and Samaria and the Gaza Strip.

In the days between the 1991 Gulf War and Oslo, PLO leader Yasser Arafat was a regional outcast because of his support for Saddam Hussein against the American-led Arab coalition. His prestige and the PLO’s suffered greatly. Yet Israel allowed Arafat to become a global player and even furnished him with weapons.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

EU Power Grab Free and fair elections? They are so 20th century. by Bruce Bawer

Posted By on September 19th, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/eu-power-grab/

In case you missed it, September 13 was the big day – the occasion of the annual “State of the European Union” speech by European Commission President Ursula van der Leyen. Whether you voted for her or not – no, scratch that; unless you’re a member of the European Commission, which nominates its President, or the European Parliament, which chooses to ratify or reject the Commission’s selection, you can’t possibly ever have voted for her. Free and fair elections by the citizens of sovereign nations? Forget them! They’re so twentieth century. Don’t you realize that the European Union has moved far beyond such antiquated concepts, and is fast advancing toward a degree of international integration and power concentration – known in the EU lexicon as “democracy” – that it’ll make the likes of Klaus Schwab at the World Economic Forum pea-green with envy?

But before we get to van der Leyen’s speech – and to the not-to-be-missed response by Guy Verhofstadt – let’s go back briefly to the beginning. You know, of course, that the cause of European unity has a long and noble history. Napoleon did his best to bring it about in the early 1800s. A bit over a century later, Hitler gave it the old college try. After World War II, the Soviets would have had a go at it too, but the Western Allies were spoilsports. On the western side of the Iron Curtain, however, there quickly arose a postwar movement to unite Europeans under one government, whether Europeans themselves liked the idea or not. The name most intimately associated with this movement was Jean Monnet, a Frenchman from Chablis whose family business was the production of chablis and whose obsessive pursuit of European unity makes one wonder if he was guzzling too much chablis. To read about the life of this wine merchant, who became known as the “father of Europe,” is to learn about a career consisting of a long series of fancy-sounding jobs as international advisor, diplomat, and negotiator, of memberships on various blue-ribbon commissions, committees, and councils, and of the high-level hatching of various plans, projects, and programs. What you never come across is mention of an election. Because nobody ever voted for Monnet for anything.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Missing F-35 is found: Debris from $80M stealth fighter jet is recovered in a field two hours north of Charleston after pilot ejected on Sunday and plane continued in ‘zombie mode’ – sparking Pentagon to GROUND all models

Posted By on September 19th, 2023

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12532685/missing-fighter-jet-update.html?ito=windows-widget-push-notification&ci=564499

Debris from the F-35 fighter jet missing since its pilot ejected over South Carolina has been found – hours after the military asked the public for help to find it.

Joint Base Charleston had asked the public to call if they have ‘any information that may help our recovery teams locate the F-35,’ which is worth $80 million.

The pilot ejected and parachuted safely into a residential area in North Charleston around 2pm Sunday.

He was taken to a local hospital, where he was in stable condition, said Maj. Melanie Salinas.

The pilot’s name has not been released. On Monday afternoon, the military said debris from the plane had been found. 

HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

Mexican cartel bases used to spy on enemies, dispatch hitmen The ‘intelligence bunkers’ are active on the Mexico/US border By Luis Chaparro

Posted By on September 18th, 2023

https://www.foxnews.com/world/mexican-cartel-bases-used-to-spy-on-enemies-dispatch-hitmen

The different cartels operating in Mexican border cities are setting up their own “intelligence centers” equipped with cameras, communications and a rudimentary dispatch office from where they send information gathered by their cameras, lookouts or sources to their operators. 

Criminal organizations like the Sinaloa cartel or the Jalisco New Generation cartel are setting up proper “intelligence bunkers” from where they keep a tight watch on authorities, citizens and “enemies” along the U.S.-Mexico border, according to Mexican officials and cartel members speaking with Fox News Digital.

In July, the local authorities of the Mexican border city of Tecate, Baja California, found over a dozen “illegal security cameras” around the city allegedly owned by the Sinaloa cartel.

“After an investigation we found these cameras didn’t belong to any of the city or state security forces and decided to remove them in an attempt to combat the criminal organizations operating here,” Tecate’s chief of police, Leopoldo Tizoc Durán, said in a press release. 

In Tijuana, the cartel pays a monthly rent to home or business owners to install security cameras on their properties, according to a Sinaloa cartel operative speaking with Fox News Digital anonymously.

“We pay from 500 pesos to 1,000 ($25 to $50) for installing a couple of cameras around their property,” the operative said. “Those images go straight to a safe house where we have people sending out reports.” 

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

How Biden Will Circle the Wagons As impeachment becomes inevitable, the President’s defense schemes are predictable By Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on September 18th, 2023

https://amgreatness.com/2023/09/18/how-biden-will-circle-the-wagons/

The strategies of saving the Biden presidency from an impeachment and a Senate trial despite overwhelming evidence of his corruption are starting to emerge.

The Family is confronted with damning evidence from the laptop, from the testimonies of Hunter’s business associates Bobulinksi and Archer, from Ukrainian oligarchs and Viktor Shokin, from IRS whistleblowers, from FBI writs, from a likely pseudonymous Biden trove of 4,000 emails to his son and associates, and from the absolute paranoia of a White House that must constantly change its narrative of denials to adjust to a growing portrait of utter corruption, bribery, and perhaps even the treason of warping U.S. policy to fit Biden family interests.

The Defense in Depth 

One of their strategies is to deny, then hedge, then ignore, then grow silent—and repeat the wash/rinse/spin cycle of stonewalling as many times as necessary to evade the mounting truth.

Insidiously Joe Biden has retreated from his once loud protestations that he supposedly had no idea of what Hunter and his associates were doing. Such a patently dishonest denial set the model that the President would have no compunction about lying to the American people until the evidence of his wrongdoing becomes overwhelming.

But this first line of defense did not crumble for years—only to be replaced by a second line of denial: Biden may have known of Hunter’s shenanigans, but he had no business interests with him. That was another blatant untruth.

And that additional stalling also allowed Biden to ignore the closing walls of incrimination for even more months. When these two forward lines of defense collapsed, as the Biden consortium knew they eventually would, a retreat to a third line of defense followed: yes, Joe knew, after all, of Hunter’s miscreant shakedowns; and, yes, Joe, after all, conceded that from time to time he did meet Hunter’s business associates, and upon requests made phone calls to Hunter’s clientele. But he did not profit from such knowledge and associations. Instead an upright old Joe from Scranton was playing along with the “illusion” of influence peddling: Scranton naiveté is not D.C. criminality.

Biden’s tripartite lines of defense always got shorter and shallower as evidence mounted. But so far Biden has managed to consume 31 months of his presidency through these strategic retreats. His fourth and final line of defense will likely be that he was involved, that he had rather than feigned contact, but that he did nothing other than what scores of other high-ranking politicians do who rub shoulders with would-be miscreants, sycophants, and crooks—and so did not knowingly take “loans” and “gifts” that had strings attached.

MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

To those Relatives and Friends who still Doubt Covid treatments Eileen F. Toplansky

Posted By on September 18th, 2023

NO URL…THIS IS AN ORIGINAL COLUMN

Jews worldwide are commemorating the Jewish New Year and as they eat their challah and munch on honey and apples, conversations emerge that covid cases are increasing.  Yet, most around the lavishly adorned dining room table still resist any information about ivermectin and the thousands of adverse reactions from the covid “vaccine.” 

Yet, for those who still care about family and friends who may have been kept in deliberate ignorance by Big Pharma, and government leaders, I offer this piece.  Most people believe that in the beginning of the epidemic, there were no good treatment options and that is was sad that so many people passed away.

But there were treatment options early on that were not made available. Unfortunately, the government in tandem with Big Pharma withheld treatment options and as a consequence, thousands of people died who could have been saved. This information is emerging daily and it is a medical scandal of major proportions.  It will ultimately dwarf the DES and Thalidomide scandals of the past.

Early on, I was fortunate enough to read and hear information from informed doctors, many of whom were censored despite their knowledge and expertise. But the more I learned, the more horrified I was of the damage that was and still is being perpetuated on the American people and the world at large.

Thus, I would like to share with you some of the info I learned so you can make up your own mind.  The following hyperlinks will lead you to various sites that have explored this issue.  They are eye-openers.

At Epoch Times, the articles here expose the dangers of more covid vaccines, the actual dangers of wearing masks, and the covid 19 protocols for recovery.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

There’s a whole lot to say about the missing F-35, none of it good (but some of it funny) By Andrea Widburg

Posted By on September 18th, 2023

It’s not a news story anyone in America ever expected to read, although maybe two-and-a-half years into the Biden administration, we should have learned to expect the unexpected: An unpiloted F-35 combat aircraft is flying somewhere over America on a trajectory known only to itself. The memes are wonderful, but the facts should disturb all of us.

The story sounds like a Cold War farce but, as the local Charleston paper reports, it’s very real:

At least we know that the jet, which was designed to be a stealth fighter, lives up to that reputation.

Image: An F-35A fighter. Public domain.

But, honestly, how in the world can we have a functional military that loses $80-100 million jets? It’s one thing if we design them so that the enemy can’t spot them but did anyone in the chain of command think that we might want to find them?

The contention is that the plane’s transponder was turned off. How in the world did that happen? Was it incompetence? Or are we looking at something worse, such as sabotage or even an enemy action? Perhaps the plane is winging its way to China or Russia even as we speak. And speaking of China, maybe the Chinese weather balloon can find the jet for us.

As of this writing, the search for the missing jet is continuing:

Based on the facts available, I’m also troubled by the pilot ejecting from the plane over a heavily populated area. Of course, the plane may have ceased responding to anything he did, in which case, there was nothing he could do but save his own life.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Who is Seth Rich? Who Murdered Him? And What’s The Deep State Hiding? By Ron Wright

Posted By on September 18th, 2023

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/09/who_is_seth_rich_who_murdered_him_and_whats_the_deep_state_hiding.html

The Background:

Seth Rich, a DNC staffer, was murdered on July 10, 2016. The DC Metro Police attributed his death to a botched robbery. That’s tragic but straightforward. Why, then, is the FBI refusing to release the information from Rich’s laptop? Perhaps it’s because Rich is the key to understanding the Russian collusion narrative that the Democrats and Deep State used to such savage effect against Trump, up to and including the 2020 campaign, when operatives lied about Hunter Biden’s laptop. Anyone questioning the official narrative was immediately labeled a conspiracy theorist and canceled.

The Russian Disinformation Narrative – The Con:

The convenient Russian collusion claim had its roots in 2016 when the FBI knowingly used the false Russian narrative to weave together a FISA search warrant affidavit alleging that two low-level Trump campaign volunteers, Carter Page, and George Papadopoulos, were Russian assets. They were not. However, unaware of that fact, the FISA court issued a search warrant and three subsequent warrants for counter-espionage surveillance authorizations.

Special Counsel John Durham’s team thoroughly debunked the Russian collusion narrative during the trial of Attorney Michael Sussman. From the trial testimony and evidence introduced, we learned that the Russian collusion narrative was created, paid for, and leaked to the media at the behest of Hillary Clinton and her operatives, and aided by the FBI and CIA in a domestic disinformation operation.

The FBI retargeted the fabricated counter-espionage investigation to spy illegally, first, on candidate and, then, on President-elect Trump. The FBI knowingly failed to disclose the dual-purpose nature of these warrants to the FISA judge(s) who reviewed and issued these warrants. The FBI agents, including then-Director James Comey, lied by omission to the FISA court, as they later did in the Mar-a-Lago warrant. To this day, there has been no criminal accountability for these FBI agents.