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Shame the FBI or Abuses Will Escalate If the FBI can selectively leak portions of the affidavit agents used to justify the search of Mar-a-Lago, then why should it be allowed to conceal the rest of the affidavit? By Adam Mill

Posted By on August 19th, 2022

https://amgreatness.com/2022/08/18/shame-the-fbi-or-abuses-will-escalate/

I have been unable to locate any condemnation by the FBI of the leaks to the New York Times of the “highly sensitive information about witnesses, including witnesses interviewed by the government,” in connection with the Mar-a-Lago raid. That’s strange because only a day earlier the Justice Department told a federal judge that releasing the names of these witnesses would, “jeopardize the integrity of this national security investigation.” The silence is deafening. 

On Monday, the Department of Justice filed an opposition to the release of the affidavit the FBI used to justify its “panty raid” on Mar-a-Lago.“Disclosure at this juncture of the affidavit supporting probable cause would, by contrast, cause significant and irreparable damage to this ongoing criminal investigation,”  the government argued. “As the Court is aware from its review of the affidavit, it contains, among other critically important and detailed investigative facts: highly sensitive information about witnesses, including witnesses interviewed by the government.”

The very next day, within 24 hours, the Times published an article exposing “Pat A. Cipollone and Patrick F. Philbin, the White House counsel and his deputy under President Donald J. Trump,” as the very witnesses whose identity the Department of Justice said it wanted to protect. If this were a real investigation, the target would now be warned to be careful talking to these two witnesses. 

The source for the Times article? “Three people familiar with the matter.” It’s conceivable that at the very moment a Justice Department lawyer wrote the warning to the court about revealing witness identities, three of the involved FBI agents were doing just that. 

Of course, there will be no condemnation of the leaks of the identity of these witnesses because it’s part of the FBI’s public relations campaign and election interference strategy. In spite of the FBI constantly seeking secrecy to protect its “sources and methods,” it’s more than happy to leak its sources as one of its very dirty methods. 

HISTORY Comments turned off

The Truth and Post-Truth about Slavery Eugene Alexander Donnini

Posted By on August 19th, 2022

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2022/07-08/the-truth-and-post-truth-about-slavery/

EXCERPTS:

Deconstructionism  is selectively used by the Left, not only to silence the scientific community, and any empirical critique of the Left’s ideology and objectives, but to reject the validity of the scientific method. Deconstructionism, has, over several decades, attached itself like a parasite to the syllabi of the Social Sciences and Humanities departments of Western universities, where it has also embraced contemporary Marxist theory, which includes the study of history.

For half a century the postmodern Left have been doing their best to debunk the concept of objective truth wherever it dares to question the validity of their totalitarian ideology. Take, for example, the theory of transgenderism which, like Pascoe’s Dark Emu, is a compendium of touchy-feely, anti-scientific, anti-historical balderdash that asserts that women can have penises and men can give birth. The critics of post-truth are considered cold-hearted reactionaries, to whom facts are more important than feelings.

The post-truth fabrication of history articulated mostly by Marxist literary and social theorists is also at the core of, and what fuels the racism of the neo-fascist Left today—particularly against white people—when it comes to the history, not only of colonialism, but of slavery itself, of which the exploitation of indigenous people was the most prominent part, along with the exploitation of poor white people. Generally speaking, the great bulk of post-truth leftist books on the subject seem to attribute the invention and perpetuation of slavery to white people, and have linked skin colour to a “historical guilt complex”, believing that this generation and future generations of Caucasian people should carry the shame, guilt and burden of the past—of people and institutions they have no connection with whatsoever. In fact, as we shall see, many of their white ancestors were transported to the New World as slaves and indentured servants, or migrated from Europe long after institutionalised slavery in the New World was brought to an end after a moral crusade by white people.

The historical reality of slavery, particularly in the Americas, is very different from the racist rants and accusations against white people perpetrated by post-truth progressive academics and BLM activists, that has now been formulated into the doctrine of Critical Race Theory, which draws on the work of postmodern Marxist Antonio Gramsci: a radical teaching that focuses on race as the key to understanding society, and objectifies people based on race, like Nazi racial doctrine with its hierarchical tribal blood relationships.

But as any empirical study of history will reveal, unequivocally, white people were the least interested in institutionalised slavery, and those who profited from it were not the people per se, but the ruling and aristocratic elites. These historical facts have been suppressed, censored or hidden. So, let’s look at some of the major ones as they relate to the institution of slavery: first, in the United States; second, in South America; and finally, slavery as it exists in the world today.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Suppression of the Truth: The Order of Our Day And the lifeblood of the Left. Matthew Hanley

Posted By on August 19th, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/08/suppressio-veri-order-our-day-matthew-hanley/

In Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff’s recent, perfectly entitled book: The Truth is No Defense, she recounts how her life as an Austrian woman was turned upside down because she accurately articulated things that Islam deems permissible and virtuous. Including child marriage. As per Mohammed’s example.

For her trouble, she was subject to burdensome litigation that wound its way up to Europe’s highest court. And she lost. Although what she communicated was true – factually correct – the court ruled that expressing some truths may be hurtful, and therefore must be disallowed due to the overriding need to protect the feelings of Muslims.

That Muslim authorities themselves defend child marriage (and other unflattering practices) as something beyond reproach and therefore by definition not hurtful is a massive inconsistency worthy of further exploration another time.

For now, I wish to stress that Suppressio Veri – suppression of the truth – was literally a court order.  Not only because properly functioning courts are specifically meant to venerate the truth and rule against its disregard either by acts of commission or omission. But because it strikes me that, more broadly, Suppressio Veri is quite simply the order of the day – the defining characteristic of our era, along with its correlate Suggestio Falsi – the insinuation of an untruth.

Suppressio Veri most certainly is the lifeblood of the Left. Examples abound so that they can hardly be enumerated. The transgender falsehood is almost too obvious to mention. Yet we have a man named Richard calling himself Rachel serving as the Assistant Secretary for Health for the HHS, and no one bats an eye. Everyone pretends – as if at the point of a sword – that this is real.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Enormous Amounts of Money Flow into the Bottomless Education Pit How much will it really help student achievement? Larry Sand

Posted By on August 19th, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/08/enormous-amounts-money-continue-flow-bottomless-larry-sand/

Spurred by the Covid panic, schools have been the recipient of ungodly sums of money. And it’s not as if the beast was starving before. To put things into perspective, the U.S. spends about $800 billion on national defense, more than China, Russia, India, the U.K., France, Saudi Arabia, Germany and Japan combined, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. America now spends even more on k-12 education, with an outlay of about $900 billion dollars a year, which includes an additional $122 billion from the Covid-related American Rescue Plan. While we have a military that is second to none, our education spending does not lead to a similar result. Our annual education outlay is second highest in the world, trailing only Norway. But in achievement, we are in the middle of the pack. For example, the 2018 rankings by the Programme for International Student Assessment, or PISA, has the U.S. 36th out of the 79 countries that participated in the math test, which is given to 15-year-olds.     

So where does all this money go?

Not much for the kids. In fact, Over 80% of it goes to salaries and benefits for teachers and other employees.

Maybe the money will help alleviate the teacher shortage?

Hardly. The teacher shortage writ large is non-existent. Using data from a National Education Association report, Mike Antonucci writes that  there were 48,985,186 students enrolled in the nation’s public school system in 2021, about 256,000 fewer than in 2012. But school districts hired an additional 276,000 instructional staff during the same period. He adds that student enrollment fell 2.4 percent in the U.S. from fall 2019 to fall 2020, falling in every state and the District of Columbia, yet 17 states added teachers.

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Parent Sues School Over Transgender Brainwashing Proselytizing California groomers are running wild. Matthew Vadum

Posted By on August 19th, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/08/parent-sues-school-over-transgender-brainwashing-matthew-vadum/

California parent Jessica Konen is suing her local school district for secretly indoctrinating her 6th grade daughter into the cult of transgenderism, convincing her to change her gender identity, all while urging her not to discuss the situation with her mother because she could not be “trusted.”

The behavior of these woke teachers matters not only because parents – as opposed to the government – are supposed to be in charge of raising their own children, but also because transgenderism is a treacherous ideology that threatens the very underpinnings of both our society and Western civilization as a whole.

It is not about homosexuality or bisexuality, which Americans have become increasingly tolerant of in recent years. Many Americans are even supportive of transgender people when they are consenting adults, but they do not support groomers’ efforts to force impressionable children to renounce their birth sex and pretend to be something they are not. The rise of groups such as Gays Against Groomers, whose members are aghast at reports of little kids being forced to attend drag queen performances, shows that plenty of gays recognize it is wrong to push transgender ideology onto children.

It is about totalitarian thought control. The advocates of transgenderism, backed by the Biden-Harris regime, would force Americans to recognize an individual’s professed gender identity even if it doesn’t match the person’s birth sex. Forcing people to say things they know aren’t true is the essence of totalitarianism.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Prominent Putin Critic Dies under Mysterious Circumstances in D.C., Friends Suspect Foul Play By Diana Glebova

Posted By on August 19th, 2022

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/prominent-putin-critic-dies-under-mysterious-circumstances-in-d-c-friends-suspect-foul-play/

A fierce Latvian-American critic of Vladimir Putin living in exile in Washington, D.C., was found dead Sunday evening on the sidewalk outside his apartment building, police said.

Authorities told National Review they don’t suspect foul play, but those close to 52-year-old businessman Dan Rapoport are raising questions about the circumstances surrounding his death, which they doubt was the result of suicide.

“The stakes of getting to the bottom of [Rapoport’s death] are high,” prominent Russia historian and journalist David Satter, who was a friend of Rapoport, told National Review.

“So much in this doesn’t make sense, that clarifying this has got to be a very, very high priority,” Satter said, adding that his death could possibly be an “organized assignation” carried out by Russia in the streets of America’s capital, but that more information needed to be released to determine how Rapoport died.

The Metropolitan Police Department responded “in reference to a jumper,” and filed a police report about their discovery at 8:50 p.m. on Sunday.

Police officers found articles of clothing, a broken headphone, a cracked cellphone, $2,620 and a Florida driver’s license at the scene, according to the police report.

Rapoport was pronounced dead at the hospital.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

On the Guilty Plea of Trump’s Finance Guy, Weisselberg By Andrew C. McCarthy

Posted By on August 19th, 2022

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/on-the-guilty-plea-of-trumps-finance-guy-weisselberg/?utm_s

With all the violent crime that goes unaddressed in New York City, how great to see that Alvin Bragg has resources to prosecute septuagenarians for failing to report their grandchildren’s comped school tuition to the taxman. But, for whatever it’s worth to him, the Manhattan DA has gotten his man — or at least a man close to his man. To settle the case against him, Allen Weisselberg, longtime financial officer for Donald Trump’s real-estate organization, was made to plead guilty to 15 counts of behavior so serious that he’ll be looking at . . . yes . . . 100 days in prison.

As the New York Times put it, with surprising bluntness, Bragg will “gain a victory” here because “Mr. Weisselberg, an accountant who served a vital role as the company’s financial gatekeeper, will be branded as a felon.” So will Trump’s organization when the case against it comes up in October, unless there is a plea before then. This is an exercise in branding political enemies, and the media will speak about the dispositions in those terms. The fact, however, is that the DA is settling for a puny case against the company because it can’t hook the big fish.

MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

The CDC’s Big Fail On COVID-19: Where’s The Real Accountability?

Posted By on August 19th, 2022

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/08/19/the-cdcs-big-fail-on-covid-19-wheres-the-real-accountability/

Americans, good natured as they are, often assume that government agencies deserve an implicit trust from the public that they’re sworn to serve, and that they will not violate that trust. When they do, there have to be consequences. That’s certainly the case after our two-and-a-half year COVID-19 nightmare.

It can no longer be denied that our government’s bureaucratic response to the dreaded Wuhan flu was inadequate at best, near-criminal at worst. And now the reckoning has begun.

That can be seen in the Centers for Disease Control’s new “guidance” on COVID, which is essentially an institutional mea culpa for mistakes that cost thousands of people their lives and sowed panic while doing little to halt the spread of the nasty virus.

“The new guidance, released Aug. 11, rescinds and alters a number of key recommendations, including treating unvaccinated and vaccinated people differently for many purposes, explicitly stating that people with previous infection have protection against severe illness, and removing 6-foot social distancing advice,” the Epoch Times reported in a summary the changes.

In short, it unwinds nearly all its previous COVID guidance.

MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

Fauci and Walensky Double Down on Failed Covid Response Lockdowns were oppressive and deadly. But U.S. and WHO officials plan worse for the next pandemic. By John Tierney

Posted By on August 19th, 2022

https://www.wsj.com/articles/fauci-and-walensky-double-down-on-failure-covid-pandemic-evidence-data-lockdowns-mask-mandates-restrictions-public-health-experts-11660855180?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention belatedly admitted failure this week. “For 75 years, CDC and public health have been preparing for Covid-19, and in our big moment, our performance did not reliably meet expectations,” Director Rochelle Walensky said. She vowed to establish an “action-oriented culture.”

Lockdowns and mask mandates were the most radical experiment in the history of public health, but Dr. Walensky isn’t alone in thinking they failed because they didn’t go far enough. Anthony Fauci, chief medical adviser to the president, recently said there should have been “much, much more stringent restrictions” early in the pandemic. The World Health Organization is revising its official guidance to call for stricter lockdown measures in the next pandemic, and it is even seeking a new treaty that would compel nations to adopt them. The World Economic Forum hails the Covid lockdowns as the model for a “Great Reset” empowering technocrats to dictate policies world-wide.

Yet these oppressive measures were taken against the longstanding advice of public-health experts, who warned that they would lead to catastrophe and were proved right. For all the talk from officials like Dr. Fauci about following “the science,” these leaders ignored decades of research—as well as fresh data from the pandemic—when they set strict Covid regulations. The burden of proof was on them to justify their dangerous experiment, yet they failed to conduct rigorous analyses, preferring to tout badly flawed studies while refusing to confront obvious evidence of the policies’ failure.

U.S. states with more-restrictive policies fared no better, on average, than states with less-restrictive policies.

MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

The Centers for Disease Politics The agency offers a mea minima culpa for its manifest Covid failures.

Posted By on August 19th, 2022

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-centers-for-disease-politics-rochelle-walensky-center-for-disease-control-and-prevention-covid-vaccines-11660859044?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

Regrets, Rochelle Walensky has a few, though apparently too few to specify. Amid bipartisan criticism over her agency’s bumbling virus response, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director said Wednesday she’ll reshuffle the bureaucratic deck with an emphasis on “action” and “equity.” Her diagnosis and prescription are both wrong.

Not much of the U.S. government works well these days, but the CDC once had a reputation for excellence. Covid blew that up. Its bureaucracy, with 11,000 employees and some two dozen divisions, impeded a rapid and effective response to the virus.

One problem is that bureaucracies always seek to expand their power and reach, often at the expense of their core mission. The CDC is no exception as it has sought to address social and environmental issues that are better left to the states or other agencies. Meantime, it has failed in its core responsibility, which is to track diseases, collect data to inform decision-making, and deploy resources to support local public-health responses.

At the start of the pandemic when public officials were blind to the virus spread, CDC employees failed to follow standard lab operating procedures and contaminated Covid tests. Even after the agency realized its blunders, it refused to share virus samples with private commercial labs to help develop and deploy tests.