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You know who will cheer the death of DEI? The working class The boss class’s diversity initiatives were a knife in the heart of workplace solidarity. Brendan O’Neill

Posted By on January 14th, 2025

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/01/13/you-know-who-will-cheer-the-death-of-dei-the-working-class/

So, is it RIP DEI? The boss class’s favourite ideology certainly seems to be in trouble. Big business everywhere is rethinking its devotion to ‘diversity, equity and inclusion’. As part of his coming out as a pretty standard tech bro who bristles at woke and loves Joe Rogan, Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg has said DEI might be for the chopping block. He even instructed his minions to take the tampons out of the men’s bathrooms at Meta HQ. Expecting people who menstruate to use the ladies’ loo? Guys, this is big.

The legacy media is noisily lamenting Zuck’s bonfire of the diversity initiatives. Meta is ‘eliminating’ DEI, weeps CNN. It quotes an internal Meta memo that basically says it’s game over for ‘equity and inclusion’. To these people, Zuckerberg is an apostate. To renounce the religion of DEI, the divisive ideology that holds such fierce sway on college campuses and in HR departments, is to make oneself an enemy of the new elite. I reckon we’re days away from a Vox piece calling Zuckerberg a fascist.

And the Rogan-pilled Facebook founder is not alone. Other corporations are likewise beating a retreat from DEI. Capitalist giants including McDonald’s, Walmart, Ford and Amazon have ‘pulled the plug’ on DEI, says a clearly emotional CBS. Cue meltdown among the woke. These once right-on capitalists are capitulating to MAGA, we’re told. They’re initiating a ‘rightward shift’ ahead of the inauguration of Donald Trump. We’re witnessing a ‘conservative backlash’ against diversity, cries business bible Forbes, and the repercussions could be dire.

Of course the cultural class will mourn the flailing regime of DEI. After all, they were its architects and enforcers. Both their social sway and personal wealth were boosted by this insidious ideology that empowered them to re-educate the great unwashed in the finer details of racial correct-think. But you know who won’t mourn it? The working class. For them, this poisonous dogma was never anything more than a patrician system of moral instruction that diminished their workplace clout and divided them from their fellow workers.

DEI is always presented as a nice, fair thing. It’s about ‘embracing the differences’ that ‘everyone brings to the table’, said CNN last year. It’s about making workplaces welcoming to all, regardless of their ‘race, age, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation [or] physical ability’. These knackered platitudes mask the grim truth about DEI, which is that it is divisive rather than unifying, and spectacularly intolerant of difference – especially political difference – rather than ‘welcoming to all’.

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De Tocqueville On the Difficulty of Freedom “Those who will not be governed by God will be governed by tyrants.”Mark Lewis

Posted By on January 14th, 2025

https://www.frontpagemag.com/de-tocqueville-on-the-difficulty-of-freedom/

“Nothing is more wonderful than the art of being free, but nothing is harder to learn how to use than freedom.”  (Alexis de Tocqueville)

There have actually been people in history who have found slavery to be more comfortable than freedom, and indeed, I would argue that many such individuals exist today.  They would rather be taken care of by the government (or, socialism) than risk the “freedom of opportunity” necessary to provide for themselves.  Sadly, that just feeds the egos and lusts of power-hungry politicians who live to control other people and tell them what to do.  And when you control somebody’s finances, you definitely control them.  Congress can’t even go home for Christmas until they try to pass some kind of budget that gives them trillions of dollars to spend to enslave the masses.

We today don’t call such government oppression “slavery” (our Founding Fathers did), but in one sense, that is exactly what it is.  People are “enslaved” if it is only the government which allows them to have and do.  “Allowed freedom” is not freedom, it is indeed another term for slavery.

But many who do want freedom do not really understand what it is or where it comes from.  It is a gift of God, as Jefferson said in the Declaration of Independence, and thus is defined by that Author.  “There is no liberty without morality,” Edmund Burke wrote, and by that, he meant the morality that comes from on High.  Modern Marxist Leftism has rejected that morality for a human-defined selfishness and decadence that starts with “every man does that which is right in his own eyes.”  But this godlessness and immorality will end in tyranny, not freedom.  And Leftists know it.

Burke explained this very nicely:  “Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within [i.e., self-control], the more there must be without [government].  It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free.  Their passions forge their fetters.”  Self-government is not Washington, D.C.  Self-government is a person governing themselves, controlling themselves in harmony with the laws of God, which provide true freedom.  Otherwise, as Burke said, a person’s “passions forge their fetters.”  They will be self-destructive, and destructive of others.

Burke further wrote:  “But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint.”  This is what de Tocqueville meant in the quote at the beginning of this article.  Too many people do not know how to use freedom for they do not know from whence it comes.  Such has long been a curse of man and the main reason why “slavery” (government oppression) is far more common in history than true freedom is.

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Qatar’s Al-Jazeera, Bullhorn for the Muslim Brotherhood, Promotes Jihad, Radical Islam, Terrorism. Even Israelis and Palestinians Agree! by Khaled Abu Toameh

Posted By on January 14th, 2025

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21311/qatar-al-jazeera-palestinians

“Among the Islamist terrorist organizations that Qatar and Al-Jazeera have supported over the years are the Muslim Brotherhood, Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, Hezbollah, the Al-Nusrah Front/Hay’at Tahrir Al-Sham, ISIS, Hamas, and even the Shiite proxies in Yemen, Ansar Allah (the Houthis).” — MEMRI.org , May 6, 2024

“The Al-Jazeera TV network is an arm of the Qatari regime. It is owned by the government and carries out its foreign policy by means of indoctrination of the Arabic-speaking masses worldwide. Al-Jazeera, therefore, should not be discussed as a means of telecommunications, but instead as an unyielding and forceful political tool of Qatari foreign policy under the guise of a mass media network. )” — MEMRI.org May 6, 2024

The MEMRI report points out that Al-Jazeera was the prime power for toppling the secular authoritarian regime in Egypt, when Qatar, by means of Al-Jazeera, supported the Muslim Brotherhood in ousting then Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Al-Jazeera, the single most significant platform for mainstreaming Jihadi and Muslim Brotherhood ideology, was the power that accorded [Muslim Brotherhood presidential candidate] Mohamed Morsi his victory.

Al-Jazeera’s role in providing a platform for promoting extremist Islamist ideologies goes back decades: “The case of promoting Al-Qaeda is of particular interest…. Al-Jazeera’s official role in the current Israel-Hamas war is nowhere more evident that its exclusive broadcast of Hamas military commander Mohammed Deif… at the very time that Hamas terrorists were carrying out their mega-terror attack in Israel… Deif declared the launch of ‘Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’ and incited all Palestinians to join the war, using all means in their possession – guns, knives, Molotov cocktails, and vehicles.” — MEMRI.org , May 6, 2024

They [Israelis and Palestinians] have both come to the conclusion that Al-Jazeera’s goal is to promote radical Islam and terrorism. It now remains to be seen whether the US and other countries will follow suit and stop the Qatari-owned TV station from supporting terrorism, poisoning the hearts and minds of millions worldwide, and ravaging global security.

The Palestinians have finally discovered that Qatar’s Al-Jazeera television network — which has long been serving as a mouthpiece for the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, and virtually all other Islamic terrorist groups — is “broadcasting inciteful content, spreading misinformation, and interfering in internal Palestinian affairs, which [the Palestinian Authority Ministerial Committee] claimed stirred division and instability.”

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Sweden: A New Hotbed of Jihad Terror A rapidly Islamizing country is turning out jihadis regularly. by Robert Spencer

Posted By on January 14th, 2025

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm-plus/sweden-a-new-hotbed-of-jihad-terror/

Welcome to the new, multicultural Sweden: in early Dec. 2024,according toRemix News, “four men, including two Swedish brothers who converted to Islam, have been charged with preparing to commit acts of terror and involvement in a terrorist organization, according to an indictment submitted to Nacka District Court. The group is accused of acting on behalf of the Islamic State in Somalia, with plans allegedly targeting Jewish individuals as part of their intended ‘jihad.’”

They were just one such group among many. The Swedish-language Fria Tider reported in late Nov. 2024 that “two Afghans with connections to the terrorist group IS-K are on trial in Germany – suspected of plans to carry out a terrorist attack against Sweden’s parliament and kill at least ten people. The oldest of the defendants, a 30-year-old, has admitted to the plans during the ongoing trial in Germany. He states that he was brainwashed by the Islamic State and was motivated by the Koran burnings in Sweden.”

The Swedish government has taken a strong stand regarding those Qur’an burnings: Agence France Presse reported on Nov.5, 2024 that a Swedish court court had “sentenced a Swedish-Danish right-wing activist to four months in jail for inciting ethnic hatred at two 2022 protests that included the burning of Korans. Rasmus Paludan provoked rioting in Sweden in 2022 when he went on a tour of the country and publicly burned copies of the Koran. In August, prosecutors charged him with ‘agitation against an ethnic group’ over a protest in the southern city of Malmo in April 2022, where he desecrated and set fire to the Muslim holy book while making disparaging comments about Muslims.”

This has been a long time coming. Sweden’s third-largest city, Malmö, had by 2004 become one-quarter Muslim, and that number was rapidly growing. Nor were the Muslims of Malmö inclined to demonstrate their moderation. Even the police were afraid: “If we park our car it will be damaged — so we have to go very often in two vehicles, one just to protect the other vehicle,” reported a police officer in Malmö. Meanwhile, Swedish ambulance drivers would not enter some areas of Malmö unless police accompanied them.”

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Zuckerberg: “People In The Biden Administration” Told Us To Censor True Information About Vaccine Side-Effects Posted By Tim Hains

Posted By on January 14th, 2025

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2025/01/10/zuckerberg_people_in_the_biden_administraiton_told_us_to_censor_true_information_about_vaccine_side-effects.html

Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg told Joe Rogan an interview that aired Friday that “people in the Biden administration” pressured them to take down posts on Facebook and Instagram that discussed vaccine side effects, whether the claims were true or not:

MARK ZUCKERBERG: So, in the beginning, it kind of seemed like, OK, we should give a little bit of deference to the government and the health authorities on how we should play this.

But when it went from, you know, 2 weeks to flatten the curve to, you know, in like in the beginning, it was like, “OK, there aren’t enough masks, masks aren’t that important,” to then it’s like, “Oh no, now you have to wear a mask.” And, you know, like everything was shifting around.

It beaome very difficult to kind of follow, and this really hit the most extreme, I’d say during the Biden administration when they were trying to roll out the vaccine program. Yeah, I’m generally like pretty pro-rolling out vaccines. I think on balance the vaccines are more positive than negative.

But I think that while they’re trying to push that program, they also tried to censor anyone who is basically arguing against it, and they pushed us super hard to take down things that were honestly were true, right? I mean, they, they basically pushed us and said, you know, “Anything that says that vaccines might have side effects, you basically need to take down.”

And I was just like, well, we’re not gonna do that. Like we’re we’re clearly not gonna do that. I mean that that that that is kind of inarguably true.

JOE ROGAN: Who’s telling you to take down things to talk about vaccine side effects?

MARK ZUCKERBERG: It was people in the Biden administration.

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Biden EV Road Trip Stunt Was Worse Than First Thought

Posted By on January 14th, 2025

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/01/14/biden-ev-road-trip-stunt-was-worse-than-first-thought/

When Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm and her staff of clowns bungled a four-day ramble in 2023 to show off the wonder of electric vehicles, the lasting impression would be the report of her advance team blocking an open charger so she wouldn’t have to wait for one. A federal report, however, reveals details that cast the entire charade in an even worse light.

The Granholm tour was to take her from Charlotte, N.C., to Memphis, Tenn., and was intended to justify the billions of taxpayers’ dollars the Biden administration was pouring into green energy initiatives. The message was lost when it was learned, two months after the incident, that “an Energy Department staffer tried parking a nonelectric vehicle” by a charger “to reserve a spot for the approaching secretary,” according to National Public Radio reporter Camila Domonoske, who was along for the ride.

Granholm’s “caravan of EVs — including a luxury Cadillac Lyriq, a hefty Ford F-150, and an affordable Bolt electric utility vehicle — was planning to fast-charge in Grovetown, a suburb of Augusta, Ga.,” said Domonoske. But “one of the station’s four chargers was broken, and others were occupied.”

It wouldn’t look good for the troupe to have to wait for a charge. After all, the entire purpose of the junket was to show the public that EVs are the way to travel. The optics became worse, though, when Granholm’s team “boxed out — on a sweltering day” a family “with a baby in the vehicle” using a car with an internal-combustion engine, Domonoske reported. 

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“Blame It on the Jews!” by Nils A. Haug

Posted By on January 13th, 2025

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21308/blame-it-on-jews

To their enemies, the Jews cannot do anything right. They are hated when they are strong; they are hated when they are weak. They are hated when they are poor; they are hated when they are rich. They are hated when they win; they are hated when they lose.

How this unfounded, blatantly anti-Semitic blaming of innocent Jews arose is difficult to fathom — particularly as the traditional custodians and purveyors of Judeo-Christian moral-ethical precepts are, in fact, the Jews. It is their principles — the Judeo-Christian values — that underpin Western Civilization…

Even after the unspeakable events in Israel of October 7, 2023, with the slaughter of more than 1,200 innocents, many onlookers held Israel and the Jews — not Hamas and Iran — primarily responsible for the horror.

Frequently, the small population of Jews are held responsible for geopolitical and other events far beyond their control. Last month, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin accused “ethnic Jews” of “tearing apart Russian Orthodox Church.” How this unfounded, blatantly anti-Semitic blaming of innocent Jews arose is difficult to fathom — particularly as the traditional custodians and purveyors of Judeo-Christian moral-ethical precepts are, in fact, the Jews. Pictured: Putin speaks to the media at Igora ski resort in the Leningrad region on December 26, 2024. (Photo by Alexei Danichev/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)

Frequently, the small population of Jews are held responsible for geopolitical and other events far beyond their control.

This week, two American “far-left” anti-Israel groups — Code Pink and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), among others — actually blamed Israel for the ongoing California wildfires.

“When US taxes go to burning people alive in Gaza, we can’t be surprised when those fires come home,” Code Pink posted on Instagram.

It was, in fact, Palestinians from Gaza who burned Israelis alive — including infants — that started the current conflict. If you do not want your people killed, do not start a war.

Code Pink apparently receives a major portion of its funding from an American couple, Sri-Lankan-born Neville Roy Singham and his wife Jodie Evans, based in Shanghai.

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The National Institutes of Health Needs an Overhaul By John Early & Terence Kealey

Posted By on January 13th, 2025

https://www.nationalreview.com/2025/01/the-national-institutes-of-health-needs-an-overhaul/

The agency is driven by activity, not results, and wastes money on pointless and counterproductive projects and DEI initiatives.

During the first 60 years of the 20th century, United States life expectancy rose, on average, by 0.37 years per year. After 1960, the rate of improvement suddenly dropped by more than half to 0.15 years per year before the Covid-19 effects.

A significant factor in this slowdown was rapid expansion of and mismanagement by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). During the first 60 years, NIH spending increased by $139 million per year in inflation-adjusted 2022 dollars. After 1960, it increased by five times that amount — $703 million per year:

(NIH, CDC, and the Bureau of Economic Analysis)

The nomination of Jay Bhattacharya to lead NIH, with his openness to change and dedication to rigorous science,  offers an opportunity to fix the agency’s failures. There are talented scientists funded by NIH grants achieving important breakthroughs. Unfortunately, the size and failures of NIH result in wasted money and too-slow progress toward improved health.

NIH applies a “pipeline” model to research where scientists pick their topics, often focusing on what they consider “basic” questions. Experience shows that pipeline research is less innovative and effective in delivering results than the alternative “mission” research model that begins with an objective such as “eliminate polio.” Most privately funded research follows the mission model, with better results.

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The Rape Jihad Is Unmentionable Because It’s Doctrinal Andrew McCarthy

Posted By on January 13th, 2025

https://www.nationalreview.com/2025/01/the-rape-jihad-is-unmentionable-because-its-doctrinal/

Yet British officials knew what was happening on a rampant scale. It was impossible not to know.

In our pages, over a decade ago, I scoffed at a colleague who had suggested that ISIS — the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, which used to be the Iraqi franchise of its now rival al-Qaeda — might be concerned that Western nations were on to its rape jihad. Even if we indulged the fantasy that jihadists were possessed of the civilized sensibility that would trigger such a concern, I countered that “the shocking Rotherham rape jihad scandal” that had erupted in England would assure them that “the West is far more likely to look the other way than to mobilize against this signature sexual abuse.”

This is akin to a point so eloquently made by such fearless truth-tellers as John O’Sullivan, Douglas Murray, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali: Among the most heinous elements of the sudden interest in the rape jihad, catalyzed by Elon Musk’s admirable hounding of Britain’s oh-so-progressive government, is that the “grooming gangs” are a very old story. The rape jihad wasn’t hiding in plain sight; it was willfully covered up by Parliament, by Britain and its allies in Europe’s transnational progressive project, and by the American cognoscenti. Talking about it was a surer guarantee of pariah status than participating in it.

And then there’s the why. Why is it a signature sexual abuse that we’re not supposed to talk about? Well, because it’s deeply rooted in Islamic scripture. If you have the temerity to notice that, there looms the risk of admonition that the problem is not the rape jihad but your “Islamophobia.”

Back in that 2014 column, written when ISIS was conquering territory the size of Britain and reveling in the spoils, I quoted one of the jihadists who was gleefully anticipating “slave market day.” The Koran, he insisted, authorizes Muslims to sexually exploit “the (captives) whom their right hands possess.”

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How Trump Plans To Take On Censors—and They Plan To Take On Trump The Trump administration’s push to end government censorship faces strong resistance, as efforts to dismantle the “Censorship Industrial Complex” encounter bureaucratic and global challenges. By Ben Weingarten

Posted By on January 13th, 2025

https://amgreatness.com/2025/01/13/how-trump-plans-to-take-on-censors-and-they-plan-to-take-on-trump/

This article was originally published by RealClearInvestigations and made available via RealClearWire.
The incoming Trump administration scored an early but possibly illusory victory last month in its effort to reform government overreach when it successfully pressured Congress to eliminate what it termed “sweetheart provisions for government censors” from a measure to stave off a government shutdown.

Funding for the State Department’s Global Engagement Center – which Republicans had attacked as a tool of domestic censorship – was stripped from the final bill, and the center announced that it was closed for good on Dec. 23. Days later, however, reporting emerged that the State Department had devised plans to shift the center’s 51 employees and millions of dollars of funding to a separate hub purportedly to counter foreign “information manipulation and interference.”

President-elect Donald Trump has not said how he will respond to this maneuver. But in extensive public comments, he has said that targeting what critics have called the Censorship Industrial Complex will be a high priority in his new administration. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s pledge to restore free expression on his platforms and join the Trump administration in its efforts to push back on global censorship, two weeks before inauguration day, indicates speech-policing forces like his may be disarming accordingly.

As the State Department’s move suggests, however, this push will likely face stiff resistance. “There will be a visceral reaction from the bureaucratic state in permanent Washington,” Sen. Eric Schmitt told RealClearInvestigations. As attorney general of Missouri, Schmitt launched the Missouri v. Biden lawsuit against federal government collusion with social media companies and nonprofits to target disfavored speech.