Ultrasound ‘window’ on the womb can shift abortion decision to pro-life, advocates say

From Washington Times.com (July 13):

Evangelical Christians say they are stepping up efforts to provide high-tech ultrasound machines to more than 2,700 pregnancy resource centers, faith-based outposts that counsel women in crisis pregnancy situations across the nation.

The devices, which can cost $30,000 to $40,000 apiece, are credited with helping change the minds of many women who were committed to having an abortion, pro-life advocates say.

Leading the effort are Focus on the Family and the Psalm 139 Project, a long-term initiative by the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC). The Psalm 139 Project said in June that it had raised $1.5 million to purchase 50 machines.

Robyn Chambers, executive director of advocacy for children at Focus on the Family, said “nearly 60% of women who are really abortion-determined will change their minds and choose life” after viewing an ultrasound image of a fetus and having one-on-one counseling.

“We hear from centers that they have clients that will come in and say, ‘I have an abortion scheduled later in the week. … You have one opportunity to basically talk me out of this,’” Ms. Chambers said. “‘Abortion-determined’ can mean that that woman has searched online, [and] she knows exactly what she’s going to do.”

She marveled over the “amazing” evolution of the technology, from analog devices producing “grainy-looking pictures” to 3D and 4D scans.

“It’s like looking at a video of your child. The skin on the baby, you know everything. You can see the definition,” Ms. Chambers said. “Depending on the gestational age, you can see that baby moving and sucking his or her thumb, and you can see them frowning or pouting.”

Obtaining the ultrasound devices is a task. The five-figure prices depend on the machines’ sophistication and features, and then there are costs to train clinic workers in the proper use of the units.

The costs of serving pregnant women in crisis situations can add up. Heidi Matzke, executive director of the Alternatives Pregnancy Center in Sacramento, California, told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday that her group spends $1 million a year helping clients, who are never charged for ultrasounds or other services.

“Ironically, many of our patients are referred to us by a well-known abortion provider,” Ms. Matzke said in prepared remarks. “A woman goes to them for an ultrasound, but that provider isn’t willing to perform one for a woman not already determined to abort her child. So they send her to us because we offer the ultrasound for free … regardless of what the woman chooses to do about her baby.”

The Psalm 139 Project, named after the biblical passage that speaks of God forming the writer “in my mother’s womb,” has long been working to equip pro-life centers with the devices.

The Rev. Richard Land, a former ERLC president who started the Psalm 139 Project years ago, told The Washington Times that the ministry started placing the machines in clinics to help women evaluate their situations.

“Once they see that sonogram, they’re much, much less likely to abort,” Mr. Land said. “It reminds me of my old Princeton professor Paul Ramsey, who said if wombs had windows, abortion would not be around.”

Seeing an image of the child “certainly makes it more difficult when you got a ‘window’ on the womb. And the sonogram machines are pretty good pictures.”

The ERLC’s interim president, the Rev. Brent Leatherwood, said the equipment-supplying effort is “a ministry that comes alongside these pro-life clinics, and we place these machines and the training necessary to operate those machines and pro-life clinics across the country.”

Now that the Supreme Court has returned the legislative decision on abortion regulations to the states, “this program is going to become even more important,” Mr. Leatherwood said. “Because while there are some states that will take action to end abortion, we also realize there’s going to be several states that do not.”

He said “pro-life clinics are … going to be on the front lines of serving vulnerable women and families in crisis. And so we are eager to team up with those clinics and get them the resources they need to save the lives of those preborn children.” [source]

Good for them.

Deconstructionist, Deconstruct Thyself

From Randall Smith on The Public Discourse (Dec. 22, 2021):

I heard a talk not long ago about how modern commentators are “retelling the history” of John Henry Newman, believing that his Apologia does not reveal “the whole truth” about him.

They seek to know the “historical” Newman—not the one created by previous historians, nor Newman as he presented himself in his writings—and then to reinterpret all his works in light of that “real” Newman: his true intentions, doubts, or worries that he never expressed directly. They ask, for instance, whether Newman was a closeted homosexual, especially toward the men with whom he was “good friends.” If he was, passages in his works that seemed innocent or pious before look very different.

Such “deconstructionism”—“unmasking” the real author by reducing him to his cultural and psychological influences—is all the rage in the academy. Many scholars are continually trying to unmask past writers to understand them better than previous readers allegedly could. In the end, however, deconstructionism is self-negating.

Historicism’s Self-Refutation

The approach of deconstructionism is very Freudian: an author writes something thinking he has one intention, but the deconstructionist psychiatrist unmasks subconscious motivations that the author is hiding from himself. (I had an English professor who insisted that only after Freud could anyone understand Shakespeare’s plays, meaning that even Shakespeare didn’t understand Shakespeare’s plays.) Everyone requires an expert to reveal why he does anything. Often one’s alleged motive ends up being something like working out problems one didn’t resolve with one’s mother or reasserting one’s masculinity against one’s sexual repression.

One cannot deny that subconscious influences act on us. But we must not reduce all actions to epiphenomena of our impulses and external influences. I am certainly influenced by the culture in which I live, but I am not reducible to it. I am not the sum of forces operating on and within me. Some part of me, perhaps at times through great effort, transcends those influences. By it I can know some things to be objectively true and choose to act accordingly.

It would be very odd if we were not free and could not know the truth. When we make choices, we act as if we were responsible for them. When we write and argue, we appeal to truths that, we believe, we have not created and that our interlocutors could recognize as well. Centuries of readers have believed they can read the works of authors from radically different cultures of earlier times and recognize truths that apply to their own lives.

Even if by some further improbable oddity all humanity has been deceived in such beliefs, it would be impossible for anyone, including the deconstructionist, to recognize that deception. From what transcendent perspective could a deconstructionist rise above the forces that he believes control everyone? If authors before him can be reduced or deconstructed, why not he? If all written works are merely products of cultural forces and historical contingencies, then so are all his critiques, including his claim that all writings are merely products of historical contingency.

As C. S. Lewis points out in his wonderful essay on “Bulverism,” such people “have sawn off the branch they were sitting on.” If Freudians and Marxists say that all thoughts are tainted by history, ideology, and self-interest, then, course, “we must remind them that Freudianism and Marxism are as much systems of thought as Christian theology or philosophical idealism. The Freudian and Marxian are in the same boat with all the rest of us, and cannot criticize us from outside.”

Honesty and integrity demand that deconstructionists turn their critical eye on themselves and inform their readers of their own cultural biases, such as their esteem for Freud, Derrida, and other postmodern thinkers. Perhaps they investigate the sexuality of Newman and take it be so important because they live in a culture that has become besotted and obsessed with sex. They may be ignoring the possibility that many people in Newman’s society, and Newman himself, were simply not obsessed with it. Perhaps some want Newman to be a homosexual because they are. Might it be that modern interpreters of Newman are eager to see Newman as motivated more by social dynamics than a deep concern for religious truth because they live in a culture that doesn’t take religious truth seriously? [read more]

The Democrats Are Attempting A Coup By Lawfare

The American Thinker.com (Jan. 15):

One way to conduct a coup is to control who can run for elected office. Examples of this abound in autocracies and police states, with the most recent being China’s coup in Hong Kong. America’s progressive left is attempting the same in this country, by targeting popular Republicans to make them ineligible for election.

Let’s start with the law and its origins. As a rule, the Constitution prevents Congress from prohibiting a person who meets the basic requirements of Article I § 2 (age, citizenship, residency) from competing in a federal election or being seated in government should they win. The sole exception, established after the Civil War in the 14th Amendment, § 3, is for those people who have “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against” our nation.

The background to this is colorful. In British-American legal history, this issue arose under King George III in the 1760s. To simplify a complex story: John Wilkes, an immensely popular firebrand, was a vocal critic of King George. The King conspired with Parliament to ensure that Wilkes, even if elected, would not be seated in the House of Commons. In 1768, the House of Commons went so far as to pass a law preventing Wilkes from even standing for election.

Wilkes was a consequential figure in our history and a favored household name among our Founders. Because they were familiar with his travails, Wilkes’s actions and the actions King George and Parliament took against him gave rise to two clauses in the U.S. Constitution and two clauses in the Bill of Rights.

As to the latter, when our Founders drafted the Bill of Rights, the First Amendment’s protection of freedom of the press and the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition of general warrants owed much to Wilkes. In the body of the Constitution, the protection given representatives for speech on the floor of Congress owes much to Wilkes. And lastly, the fact that Congress cannot normally control who can run for election and then be seated in Congress owes almost entirely to John Wilkes.

In 1782, Wilkes convinced Parliament to expunge the law prohibiting him from standing for election. Five years later, as recounted in the 1969 Supreme Court case of Powell v. McCormack, 395 U.S. 486, James Madison adopted Wilkes’s arguments before Parliament to argue at our Constitutional Convention against giving Congress unlimited discretion to exclude people elected to that body. To do so, he said, would be to vest

an improper & dangerous power in the Legislature. The qualifications of electors and elected were fundamental articles in a Republican Govt. and ought to be fixed by the Constitution. If the Legislature could regulate those of either, it can by degrees subvert the Constitution. A Republic may be converted into an aristocracy or oligarchy as well by limiting the number capable of being elected, as the number authorized to elect. . . . It was a power also, which might be made subservient to the views of one faction against another. Qualifications founded on artificial distinctions may be devised, by the stronger in order to keep out partisans of (a weaker) faction.’

The only exception to this power written into our constitutional law came with the passage of the 14th Amendment on the heels of the Civil War after 1,500,000 Americans were killed or wounded and one of John Wilkes’s distant relatives assassinated a president. That limited exception is that people who have committed rebellion or insurrection against the U.S. may be excluded from running for office or excluded from office if they win an election.

The progressive left is going all out to paint conservatives as “domestic terrorists” and to claim that the January 6 riot—a riot of a few hours by people with no weapons and carried out virtually without violence (and that may have been part of an FBI entrapment scheme)—is tantamount to our Civil War of 1861-1865. This is so far beyond ludicrous it is stunning. Yet progressives fully embrace this tactic as their only hope to stop a popular vote that promises to be a wave election in 2022 and an Electoral College vote that might return Trump to power in 2024.

The despicable Marc Elias, the man who paid for the Steele Dossier, stated in a series of tweets last month:

Before the midterm election, we will have a serious discussion about whether individual Republican House Members are disqualified by Section 3 of the 14th Amendment from serving in Congress.

We may even see litigation.

...

I am making clear that members of Congress who engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the United States are not eligible to serve in Congress.

And miracle dictu, we already have our first lawsuit trying to keep a Republican off the 2022 ballot. On Monday, two far-left groups, one of which is associated with Bernie Sanders, filed a lawsuit “in North Carolina before the state board of elections to challenge the candidacy of Rep. Madison Cawthorn.” They claim that Cawthorn committed the crime of insurrection by challenging the election results and speaking at the peaceful January 6 rally.

This attempted coup by lawfare is not aimed merely at Republican congresspeople. It is very much aimed at Donald Trump and the presidency as well. As Liz Cheney, a “Republican” house member sitting on the left’s kangaroo “January 6 Committee,” recently stated during a CBS interview:

I’m very focused right now...on the work of the select committee.... I can tell you that the single most important thing, though, is to ensure that Donald Trump is not the Republican nominee and that he certainly is not anywhere close to the Oval Office ever again.

There is no other way to describe this tactic than as an attempted coup using our courts, carried out by a deeply disingenuous group of people motivated solely by an unquenchable thirst for power. This is a deeply cynical attack on our Republic and our democratic traditions. Indeed, if the progressives succeed in their lawfare, they will have managed a coup, obscenely relying on the Constitution to, de facto, end our experiment as a constitutional republic.

Henry Ford boasted in his 1922 autobiography that he once stated, “Any customer can have a car painted any color he wants so long as it is black.” One hundred years later, the progressive left has taken that concept for its own. Between the effort to federalize election laws and its attempted coup through disqualifying Republicans, the progressive left is essentially saying to the electorate, “American citizens can vote for any candidate they like, so long as the candidate is a Democrat.” [source]

COVID virus made in Chinese lab as bat vaccine, Marine researcher says

From Washington Times.com (Jan. 12):

A Marine Corps officer working with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency disclosed in a memorandum last August that his study of the virus behind the COVID-19 pandemic concluded that it was produced as part of vaccine research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, according to documents made public by a conservative investigative group.

Maj. Joseph P. Murphy notified the Pentagon inspector general that his analysis of the virus origin concluded the nongovernment organization EcoHealth Alliance, the National Institutes of Health, and the Wuhan Institute of Virology produced the virus known as SARS-CoV-2 through controversial gain-of-function research outlined in a Pentagon grant proposal.

“SARS-CoV-2 is an American-created recombinant bat vaccine, or its precursor virus,” Maj. Murphy stated in an August 13, 2021, memo made public this week by Project Veritas. “It was created by an EcoHealth Alliance program at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), as suggested by the reporting surrounding the lab leak hypothesis.”

Asked about the 24 pages of internal documents made public by Project Veritas, DARPA spokesman Jared Adams told Inside the Ring in an email that federal regulations prohibit the agency from commenting on DARPA programs or documents.

“We are precluded by Federal Acquisition Regulations from discussing who may or may not have bid on a DARPA program, and are unable to confirm the authenticity of the documents Project Veritas has published,” Mr. Adams wrote.

Maj. Murphy and the Office of Naval Research did not immediately respond to an email request for comment.

According to Project Veritas, Maj. Murphy declined to discuss the document but told the group: “To those that seek answers I offer encouragement. There are good people striving for truth, working together in and out of government, and they succeed. … Don’t let a lie be our legacy to posterity.”

According to Maj. Murphy, now with the Office of Naval Research, details of the program were hidden since the pandemic began in Wuhan, China in December 2019. New facts were uncovered by Maj. Murphy from a grant proposal made to DARPA by the New York-based EcoHealth Alliance in March 2018 and “not publicly disclosed,” he stated.

The proposal was made in response to DARPA’s Project Defuse, aimed at addressing what the agency called the threat posed by bat-borne coronaviruses. SARS-CoV-2 is a bat coronavirus.

The proposal lists several U.S. researchers who would take part in the work and included the Wuhan Institute of Virology, located in the city considered the epicenter of the possible pandemic.

China’s government has denied the virus leaked from any of its laboratories, but has refused to provide information about the virus’s origin. Beijing also has accused the U.S. military of launching the pandemic.

The $14 million grant proposal to DARPA was produced by Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth Alliance who worked closely on dangerous virus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Mr. Daszak did not immediately respond to an email request for comment.

DARPA rejected the grant as potentially dangerous virus work, despite Mr. Daszak claiming in the proposal that the work would not violate U.S. restrictions on gain-of-function research.

However, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, headed by Anthony Fauci, approved a grant for the EcoHealth Alliance, and work on bat coronaviruses continued until halted by the federal government in April 2020.

Dr. Fauci has repeatedly denied during congressional testimony that the U.S. government funded any gain-of-function virus research in China.

In the 2018 proposal, Mr. Daszak stated that “we will intensively sample bats at our field sites where we have identified high spillover risk SARSr-CoVs” – the term for bat coronaviruses.

“We will sequence their spike protein, reverse engineer them to conduct binding assays and insert them into bat SARS-CoVs (WIV1, SHC014) backbones (these use bat-SARSr-CoV backbones, not SARS-CoV, and are exempt from dual-use and gain of function concerns) to infect humanized mice and assess capacity to cause SARS-like disease,” Mr. Daszak stated.

The work was aimed at developing a vaccine to be sprayed on bats that the researchers believed would prevent another disease outbreak like the first SARS outbreak in China in 2003.

Mr. Daszak said the work would include Shi Zhengli, the Chinese virologist at the Wuhan Institute of Virology who was to lead research on infecting humanized mice with the lab-created bat vaccine. Ms. Shi has also denied the lab has any role in the origins of COVID-19 or its spread among the local population.

U.S. intelligence agencies concluded in a public assessment last year that the virus was caused by either a leak from a Chinese laboratory or from emergence from an infected animal. The Murphy memorandum reflects the views of a good portion of U.S. intelligence analysts who believe the virus came from the Wuhan institute.

Maj. Murphy stated that his analysis is that the COVID virus likely emerged as a precursor, “deliberately virulent, humanized recombinant” virus that was reverse-engineered into a live bat vaccine.

Regarding efforts to conceal the work, Maj. Murphy said Pentagon officials placed the unclassified EcoHealth Alliance proposal in a top-secret file within DARPA’s Biological Technologies Office.

Maj. Murphy stated that the COVID virus is a synthetic “chimera” or lab-produced virus engineered to infect human cells. The virus is likely a live vaccine that escaped from the  Chinese laboratory before it could be engineered into a less dangerous state, he added.

“It leaked and spread rapidly because it was aerosolized so it could efficiently infect bats in caves,” Maj. Murphy said, adding that initial escape took place in August 2019. The virus should be called “SARS-CoV-Wuhan,” Maj. Murphy stated.

The document also discloses the identity of a U.S. government team of experts who first concluded the virus came from a leak at the Wuhan lab. The group is called the Decentralized Radical Search Team Investigating COVID-19, or DRASTIC.

“This collection of scientists and sleuths broke open the lab-leak hypothesis into the mainstream and has picked apart Chinese and World Health Organization (WHO) reports on SARS-CoV-2’s origins in Wuhan,” he said. [read more]

Another article on the subject:  

'Synthetic' virus? COVID origin paper sparks backlash, author sees minefield in peer review

Manchurian Candidates: Chinese Communist Party influencers have Infiltrated the Highest Levels of U.S. and Western Governments

From The Gateway Pundit.com (July 11):

The Gateway Pundit has published articles (here, here, here, here and here) describing “scientific chain migration,” whereby the Chinese Communist Party has been sending its scientists to the United States, not just to access American knowledge, skills and technologies, but to colonize U.S. university, corporate and government laboratories.

Today the U.S. scientific community is a de facto extension of China’s fused military/civilian research and development program, funded by U.S. taxpayers.

It is not just science, but the highest levels of American and Western governments are now populated by individuals, who, either directly or indirectly, appear to be acting on behalf of or influenced by the Chinese Communist Party.

We are all now very familiar with Hunter Biden’s connections to China’s military intelligence and the cash paid to the Biden family by the Chinese Communist Party.

We know that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, would notify the Chinese People’s Liberation Army in advance of any potential attack by the United States against China.

It has been widely reported that Congressman Eric Swalwell, Democrat from California and a member of the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee, was, quite literally, “in bed” with a Chinese spy.

It is not just American political and military leaders who, in one form or another, have advanced the aims or narratives of the Chinese Communist Party.

Jeremy Hunt, a former British Foreign and Health Secretary, is now a candidate for the leadership of the Conservative Party and a potential future prime minister.

Lucia Guo, whose Chinese name is Ya-Li Guo, is the wife of Jeremy Hunt.

She was born in Xi’an, China. Her parents reportedly operate a military uniform factory for the People’s Liberation Army.

According to sources inside China, Lucia Guo was trained at the People’s Liberation Army’s Foreign Language Institute in Luoyang, which is subordinate to the Intelligence Bureau of the Joint Staff Department of the Central Military Commission.

In December 2021, the Daily Mail reported that Lucia Guo presented a show on China’s state-run TV that whitewashed the Communist Party’s human rights abuses:

“The programme has featured reports on the effectiveness of China’s pandemic response and about the beauty of the Xinjiang region without mentioning it is the site of ‘re-education’ camps for its persecuted Muslim Uighur population.”

In 2016, while he was British Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt led a delegation to China, which resulted in a deal that included a UK-China media production treaty and the launch of China Hour on Sky Channel 191.

According to the same sources inside China, Penny Wong, currently Australia’s Foreign Minister in the newly-elected far left Labor Party government, is also under the influence of the Chinese Communist Party.

On July 8^th, Penny Wong met with China’s Foreign Minister, Wang Yi, to discuss closer relations between the two countries.

Eight days before the 2020 Presidential election, after a four-month investigation of 600 U.S. groups linked to Chinese Communist Party, Newsweek magazine described the ways in which China uses businesses, universities, think tanks, and Chinese diaspora social and cultural organizations within the United States to further Beijing’s political and economic interests and ambitions.

Arguably, based on comments and behavior, there are Chinese nationals, who became permanent residents or U.S. citizens and have attained high positions in the United States, but whose loyalties may have remained primarily with the Chinese Communist Party.

What has been described could be considered only a tiny sliver of Chinese Communist Party influence worldwide, which provides the potential for an already established cadre in the U.S. and Western countries ready to do the bidding of Beijing in its quest for global domination. [source]

Not surprising. That’s what the communists, socialists, and the Leftists do. Politics is war to them.

The SSRI – Mass Shootings Connection

From Liberty Nation.com (July 10):

Something is very wrong with many young men in America – this much is known. We can discern this because the demographics indicate these youngsters are the primary perpetrators of mass shootings. This is not new information. While the frequency of these heinous crimes has been rising in the last few decades, the shooters’ demographics have remained remarkably constant. These senseless and very public massacres of innocent people have become a political football centered around the issue of gun control. Politicians, law enforcement, teachers, and parents point to the accessibility of firearms as the real problem. Perhaps it is time to look in another direction.

SSRIs Everywhere

An extraordinary number of these boys are taking psychiatric medicines known as selective serotonin uptake inhibitors (SSRIs). Thus, it is at least worth exploring whether there is a connection between the high level of SSRI usage in these shooters and their homicidal behaviors. After all, psychiatric drugs are meant to alter one’s behavior. Of course, they are not designed to produce homicidal maniacs, but the incidence of SSRI use in these youngsters is so prevalent that it is a subject worth examining.

Selective serotonin uptake inhibitors are the most commonly prescribed antidepressants intended to “ease symptoms of moderate to severe depression,” according to the Mayo Clinic. They increase levels of serotonin in the brain. The use of these psychiatric drugs has exploded in recent years. Between 1991 and 2018, SSRI use skyrocketed by more than 3,000%. According to the Berkeley Political Review, one in six Americans are using some form of antidepressant.

Mass Shootings By The Numbers

The number of mass shooters taking these drugs is astounding: One of the Columbine killers, Eric Harris, was taking Zoloft and Luvox. Fifteen-year-old Kipland Philip Kinkel – who was on Prozac – murdered his parents and then went to his former high school, killing two students and wounding 25 more. Jeff Weise was 16 when he killed his grandfather and another nine people before taking his own life. He was on Prozac, too. Dylann Roof, who shot up a church in Charleston, SC, was also on SSRIs. So were Steven Kazmierczak, James Holmes, Aaron Alexis, and Seung-Hui Cho – all mass shooters on some form of antidepressant. In 2019, Jerome London categorized 39 mass shooters taking SSRIs – or who had abruptly quit taking them – before they went on shooting sprees.

And therein could be a big part of the problem. Psychiatric medications aren’t meant to be stopped abruptly; doctors warn their patients against this. Young people, however, might be more cavalier about the pharmaceuticals they take, causing adverse side effects that results in violent behavior.

The purpose of SSRIs is to elevate one’s mood and treat anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, or obsessive-compulsive behavior, among other psychiatric disorders. Certainly, SSRIs work for millions of people – but they must be handled with care and properly used. These medications carry warning labels citing the potential for increased agitation, irritability, mania, impulsivity, aggressiveness, and hostility. Is it possible they work differently in a young person’s brain than in older individuals? Could these behaviors be exacerbated if a patient stops taking them?

These young people present with similar characteristics: They are angry loners who appear not to be adapting well to adulthood. Many display suicidal tendencies and anti-social personalities. Their social media profiles are filled with violent threats, rage, and an inability to connect with peers and parents alike, and it cannot be ignored that an extraordinary number of them were taking SSRIs.

Examining this possibility is not intended to malign the good that can come from properly using such psychiatric medications. Still, if there is a connection between their use and mass shootings, it would seem prudent to study the odd phenomenon instead of continuing to regulate firearms, which are inanimate objects incapable of murder unless wielded by a mentally deranged person. [source]

“Technoshamanism”: Why a Post-Christian Future is Still Religious

From Breakpoint.org (Dec. 21, 2021):

More than a few folks, from theologian John Calvin to philosopher William James to French theologian and historian Louis Auguste Sabatier, have noted that humans are “incurably religious” creatures. In other words, religion is native to the human heart.

In the history of the world, the wholesale rejections of the supernatural is a quirk of Western secularism. At the same time, it will not ultimately survive the human longing for transcendence and communion with the supernatural, no matter how far technology advances.

Evidence for this analysis is currently on display in Dortmund, Germany. An art exhibition, entitled “Technoshamanism,” was recently highlighted in the New York Times article “Space Pagans and Smart Phone Witches: Where Tech Meets Mysticism.”

Josie Thaddeus-Jones describes the exhibition, which features the work of twelve artists and collectives, as an exploration of the “connections between technology and esoteric, ancestral belief systems.” Visitors are welcomed by quotations from French artist Lucile Olympe Haut’s “Cyberwitches Manifesto,” which urges readers to, among other things, “use smartphones and tarot cards to connect to spirits” and “manufacture D.I.Y. devices to listen to invisible worlds.”

According to the Times, the exhibition is an example of the rising interest in pagan and occult practices among “spiritual but not religious” Westerners. The new development, reports Thaddeus-Jones, is how frequently these practices are being combined with technology: “Spirituality is all over our feeds: The self-help guru Deepak Chopra has co-founded his own [Non-Fungible Token] platform, witches are reading tarot on TikTok, and the A.I.-driven astrology app Co-Star has been downloaded more than 20 million times.”

One Brazilian artist at the Technoshamanism exhibition organizes festivals where participants use robots to “connect with ancestral belief systems and the natural world.” Other artists imagine a pagan future for humanity in space, where “rituals and visions play as much of a role as solar power and artificial intelligence.” For others, animistic customs and psychedelic drugs meet virtual reality and black lights for an experience that looks part séance and part science fiction.

So, why are digital technologies and social media bringing about a resurgence of pagan spirituality? The Times cites an assistant professor at Pennsylvania State University, who says that because of the Internet, “people have access to belief traditions that were not easily accessible to them before.” This allows them to “discover, select and combine the spiritual traditions that most [appeal] to them.”

Still, availability is only part of the story. Materialists of all stripes have long predicted that the human thirst for superstition would soon vanish with the rise of science and more enlightened societies. Karl Marx famously prophesied that communism would bring the end of religion.

Yet, this renaissance of paganism continues to happen precisely in countries where science and technology have most influenced life. If the Times is right, smart devices and the Internet have only fueled the spread of pagan spirituality.

What this reveals is not only that the draw of the numinous is more enduring than 19th-century atheists ever imagined, but also that secularism isn’t satisfying as a worldview. As it turns out, it’s not so easy to disenchant the world or the human heart. We are incurably religious creatures.

At the same time, celebrations of “technoshamanism” should remind us that pagan mysticism also fails to fill the “God-shaped vacuum” in every human heart. With VR headsets and tarot apps, would-be witches may try to reimagine what pre-Christian beliefs were like, but real paganism died out in Europe over a thousand years ago. The reason was the advance of Christianity, something historian Rodney Stark has called “The Victory of Reason.” Christianity’s triumph led to expanded human rights and freedom, capitalism, and the science that made the “tech” in technoshamanism possible in the first place. 

Fundamentally, Christ supplanted paganism because His gospel was better news, and the worldview centered on His rule and reign brings rest to the restless human heart. The more secular forces and ideologies in the modern West attempt to replace Christ with belief in nothing, the more paganism rushes back to fill the vacuum. But it has already been tried and found wanting before, and it will fail again. True hope, joy, and dignity come only from Christ, no matter how tech-savvy the world becomes. [source]

Not Making Headlines: Joe Biden Repeatedly Praised Racist Democrat George Wallace and Bragged about an Award Wallace Gave Him (VIDEO)

The Gateway Pundit.com (Jan. 12):

Joe Biden flew to Atlanta, Georgia on Tuesday to push the Democrats’ “voting rights” bill that legalizes midnight ballot boxes, ballot harvesting, voting without ID and all of the other gimmicks Democrats use to steal elections.

During his speech, Joe Biden asked his Atlanta audience if they wanted to be like George Wallace, a Democrat and noted racist, or like Martin Luther King, Jr. He insisted that if you oppose their legislation to steal elections then you are a racist.

So Joe Biden tried to paint Republicans as George Wallace fans but it was actually Joe Biden who was a friend of George Wallace and he bragged about it.

Joe Biden was friends with George Wallace and actually bragged about an award he received from George Wallace. [read more]

REPORT: Oil That Biden Released From US Strategic Reserves Ended Up In China

From Daily Caller.com (July 6):

Millions of barrels of oil released last month from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve by President Joe Biden went to foreign nations, including China, according to Reuters.

Biden ordered the release of 50 million barrels of oil from Strategic Petroleum Reserve in November,  30 million barrels on March 1 and 180 million barrels on March 31, saying the “historic” actions would ease the pressure faced at pumps. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve will continue to release one million barrels a day through October, even as the Strategic Petroleum Reserve has fallen to its lowest level since 1986, according to Reuters. U.S. crude inventories are at their lowest since 2004, according to the report.

“These releases will put more than one million barrels per day on the market over the next six months, and will help address supply disruptions caused by Putin’s further invasion of Ukraine and the Price Hike that Americans are facing at the pump,” Biden said in April when announcing the release.

But it turns out millions of barrels have been sent to China and other nations, according to Reuters.

Cargoes of crude oil have been shipped to the Netherlands, a Reliance refinery in India, and China, Reuters reported, citing an industry source. China and India have steadily purchased U.S. sour crude oil produced in the Gulf of Mexico, Bloomberg previously reported.

Matt Smith, lead oil analyst at Kpler, told Reuters that the release of the oil isn’t having the intended effects.

“Crude and fuel prices would likely be higher if (the Strategic Petroleum Reserve releases) hadn’t happened, but at the same time, it isn’t really having the effect that was assumed,” Smith reportedly said.

Oil and gasoline prices have increased despite the Strategic Reserve releases. Ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee Cathy McMorris Rodgers and Energy Subcommittee Republican leader Fred Upton demanded answers from the Biden administration recently over how the releases from the Strategic Petroleum Reserves are giving our adversaries “geopolitical leverage.”

“China ramped up its purchases of crude oil from Russia and the United States to boost its own reserves, even as oil prices surged and President Biden called for a coordinated release,” Republican leaders wrote. “China is reportedly in talks with Russia to buy even more oil for its strategic reserves, while the United States and the E.U. pledged to ban Russian imports.”

“As a result, China may now control the world’s largest stockpile of oil, with total crude inventories estimated at 950 million barrels,” the letter continued. [source]

Dumb. So China needs oil more than America does? Yea, that makes sense. It seems the Biden regime cares more about other nations than America.

The FBI's Broken Relationship with Us

From American Thinker.com (Jan. 13):

All large organizations suffer from the occasional presence of bad actors.  The FBI is no exception.  But it managed to retain a good relationship with the public in spite of its flaws because it was still solving rather than creating crimes.

But something fundamentally changed in the last five years.  The Comey clown car arrived in the center ring and unloaded under the spotlight.  As the public watched the comedy of James "The Cardinal" Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, and Lisa Page, searching for phantom Russian colluders under the bed, while actual Russian colluders cheered them on, we knew we needed to take a closer look.  The examination has been shocking.

The "Midyear Exam," the bureau's name for the Hillary Clinton email investigation, was a farce.  No subpoenas were issued, central figures were given immunity without cooperation, evidence was destroyed by the FBI, and then the attorney general had a clandestine meeting with "Slick Willy" Clinton — the husband of the target.  Surprise: No charges were filed.  "The Cardinal" Comey held a press conference and announced that even though Hillary had broken numerous laws, she didn't mean it, so he was giving her a pass.  It must have been an accident that an email server, containing classified documents, appeared in her bathroom — with a support staff.

"Crossfire Hurricane" was the investigation into alleged Trump collusion with Russia to steal an election.  Within a couple of months, the bureau knew that the whole thing was a hoax created by Hillary, yet the investigation continued for three years — eventually transitioning into a special counsel investigation.  Peter Strzok called "Crossfire Hurricane" the bureau's insurance policy — against a Trump presidency.  It was a good way to show off for his mistress, Lisa Page — a rabid anti-Trump FBI lawyer.

The "Midyear Exam" was a cover-up, and "Crossfire Hurricane" was a setup.  Both were exposed by the clown show the FBI put on.  Now the public is paying attention.  Conspiracies that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago seem entirely plausible now.

We were told that the FBI heroically thwarted a kidnapping attempt of Governor Gretchen Whitmer.  Then we learned that there wasn't one informant involved.  There were twelve informants — involved in every aspect of recruiting and planning.  Next, the lead agent, Richard Trask, was fired from the FBI after being arrested for beating his wife after a swingers' party.  Prior to his arrest, Trask was the public face of the investigation — and filed the original criminal complaint under oath.  Last month, Will Cain, sitting in for Tucker Carlson, revealed that two more agents (unnamed) have been removed from the case and will not be testifying.  Was the kidnapping a thwarted crime or a setup?  It seems fair to ask, doesn't it?

Then came the "January 6 insurrection" investigation and the mystery of the missing provocateurs.  A number of individuals are seen on video inciting the riot.  Yet none of them is among the hundreds who have been arrested.  One such individual, Ray Epps, is clearly seen on video encouraging the crowd to enter the Capitol.  Epps was included on the FBI's "most wanted" list — that is, until internet sleuths identified and located Epps.  Was he summarily arrested?  Nope, he was removed from the "most wanted" list and is a free man to this day.  Again, we have to ask — was January 6 a set-up?

The fact that these are reasonable questions to ask shows how damaged the FBI's relationship with the public has become.  Corruption within the FBI is undeniable — to everyone but Christopher Wray and Merrick Garland.  The Democrats aren't raising the issue because the bureau is currently doing their dirty work.  That's shortsighted and will not last.  A corrupt organization eventually evolves to serve only itself.  Everything else must be broken to its will — including the Democrat party.

How badly has the FBI damaged its reputation?  Quentin Smith and I recently did a series of articles proposing rehabilitation of the bureau (here, here, and here).  The emails we received were telling.  Many told us we were nuts, that the FBI is beyond repair and must be shut down.  Here's a representative example from a private citizen:

They do not serve we the people. We are treated like we are their property, as slaves to plunder. Slaves who think we are free. There is no way in hell you can convince honest hard-working Americans that all of a sudden, our police state just started to become corrupt. [read more]

Other articles about the FBI’s abuse of power:

• FBI insiders say agents who took a knee during BLM protests were rewarded
• Is FBI using security clearances to muzzle critics? Whistleblower's lawyer says yes
• FBI Stole More Than Documents During Unlawful Raid of Mar-a-Lago – Stole 1,800 Other Items as Well
• FBI-SWAT veteran suspended after refusing to participate in allegedly politicized raid, claims FBI is exaggerating extremist threats
• Jim Jordan: FBI 'Woke Analyst' Labeled Veterans-Led Group 'Domestic Terrorist' Organization
• GOP leader suggests homes of dozens of Trump supporters may soon be raided by FBI
• FBI Conceals Chinese Infiltration of U.S. Election Software
• FBI secretly pressured Americans to 'voluntarily' give up gun rights
• Think The FBI Deserves The Benefit Of The Doubt? This Laundry List Of Corruption Should Make You Think Again
• FBI Agent Pleads Guilty to Destroying Evidence to Frame Pro-Trump Political Prisoner
• BREAKING: FBI Now Going After Pennsylvania’s 2020 Alternate Electors Who Were Selected in Response to Stolen 2020 Election
• Leaked Documents Show FBI Equating Basic American Terminology With 'Violent Extremism'
• EXCLUSIVE: Audit reveals FBI rule-breaking in probes involving politicians, religious groups, media
• Whistleblowers: FBI probed parents under counterterrorism ‘threat tag’ for protesting school boards
• FBI whistleblowers: Hundreds of agents have resigned to escape sexual misconduct allegations
• FBI wrongly told its agents Trump-Russia collusion claims had come from DOJ, bombshell document reveals
• A new report shows the FBI spied on 3.3 million Americans without a warrant
• FBI Team Involved in Censorship of Hunter Biden Laptop Story Identified
• ‘Guns Pointed at Me’: FBI Arrests Father of 11 in Front of His Children for Pro-Life Work

Treasury Dept. blocking probe into Hunter Biden’s business dealings, says top GOP lawmaker

From Washington Times.com (July 7):

The Treasury Department has been accused of stonewalling lawmakers’ requests into the business dealings of President Biden’s son Hunter Biden.

Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, the top Republican on the House Oversight and Reform Committee, said Treasury officials refused to hand over suspicious activity reports, or SARs, unless the committee’s Democratic leaders signed off on the request.

“Despite Treasury’s assertion in the press that it ‘provides SARs to Congress in a manner that enables robust oversight,’ Treasury is refusing to release SARs connected with Hunter Biden or his family and associates — including the President,” Mr. Comer wrote in a letter Wednesday to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.

He said Treasury outright denied the Republicans’ request to hand over the reports in a phone call with committee staff on June 13.

The Treasury Department and White House did not respond to requests for comment.

“The American people deserve to know whether the President’s connections to his son’s business deals occurred at the expense of the United States’ interests and whether they represent a national security threat,” Mr. Comer said in the letter.

Hunter Biden’s business deals with foreign countries such as China and Ukraine have been closely scrutinized since his father was vice president in the Obama administration. Accusations of nepotism and influence peddling have swirled around Mr. Biden as he and others in the Biden clan made a fortune in far-flung enterprises.

The Department of Justice is investigating Hunter Biden for suspected crimes involving taxes, money laundering and acting as an unregistered foreign agent, according to reports.

Mr. Biden’s attorney did not respond to a request for comment.

In May, Mr. Comer wrote to Ms. Yellen requesting information on financial transactions flagged by U.S. banks. SARs provide banks with a reporting mechanism to flag suspicious transactions for the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.

In the letter, Mr. Comer cited media reports claiming that “more than 150 of Hunter Biden and the Biden network’s international business transactions have generated suspicious activity reports by U.S. banks for further review by the Treasury Department to determine if there is illegal activity or a threat to national security.”

“The Treasury Department used to provide these reports to Congress, but the Biden Administration has restricted access to them, raising questions about a possible effort to hide the Biden network’s suspicious business dealings,” Mr. Comer wrote in the May letter.

He requested that the Treasury Department hand over the reports by June 8.

The most recent letter adds to growing calls from Republican lawmakers to investigate the scandal-plagued 52-year-old’s business dealings.

In a New York Post op-ed last week, Mr. Comer was joined by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California and Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio in pledging to investigate Hunter Biden’s “shady business dealings” should Republicans win the majority in this year’s midterm elections.

“A Republican majority will be committed to uncovering the facts the Democrats, Big Tech and the legacy media have suppressed,” the lawmakers wrote.

Republicans, who have eyed Hunter Biden’s business dealings in Ukraine and China during his father’s term as vice president, have been closing in on the president’s son ever since a trove of data stored on an abandoned laptop surfaced just before the 2020 election.

Among their accusations is that Hunter Biden, who sat on the board of a Ukrainian oil and gas company, profited from his father’s position in government.

Mr. Biden has denied ever discussing his son’s business dealings, but recordings on his son’s laptop indicate otherwise.

In one voicemail recording from 2018 recovered from the laptop, Mr. Biden told his son, “I think you’re in the clear.” He was referring to an article in The New York Times about the arrest of Chinese energy executive Ye Jianming in China and the prosecution of his lieutenant, Patrick Ho, in the U.S. on bribery charges.

The White House has also faced increasing questions from the press corps amid the slow trickle of information from the laptop.

Earlier this week, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre refused to answer questions on the laptop material or Mr. Biden’s previous assertion that he has not commented on his son’s business dealings.

“I am not going to talk about the alleged materials from the laptop,” Ms. Jean-Pierre said. “I refer you to [Hunter Biden’s] representatives.” [source]

Not surprising. It seems most of the gov’t agencies are protecting the Biden administration.

For example: DOJ Refusing to Turn Over Docs About Biden 'Plan' to Intervene in Elections

The woke alphabet

From Eric Utter on American Thinker.com (Dec. 19, 2021):

When I was learning to spell in elementary school, ‘A’ was for apple.

Not anymore. Wokeism has escaped from college campuses, matriculated through high schools, and taken over our grade schools, all the way down through kindergarten.

Now, ‘A’ is for ‘Antifa’ or maybe ‘anogender.’

The following is a progressive woke version of our alphabet, at least two of which are real examples from an actual grammar school.

• ‘A’ is for anogender (The completely normal feeling we all have at times of a gender that fades into something else and then goes back to its original state)
• ‘B’ is for bisexual (A completely normal person who is attracted to both boys and girls)
• ‘C’ is for capitalism (An evil economic system designed to oppress minorities and the differently-abled)
• ‘D’ is for Democrat (The American political party that cares about the planet and people’s feelings)
• ‘E’ is for evil (Like Trump and the Republican Party)
• ‘F’ is for Fox News (An illegitimate cable television network that serves the Republican Party)
• ‘G’ is for gay (Gay people are attracted to members of their own sex. Yay gay!)
• ‘H’ is for health (Always wear your mask and get fully vaccinated! Listen to Dr. Fauci!)
• ‘I’ is for intolerance (Intolerance is always bad…unless it is of the unvaccinated and/or Republicans)
• ‘J’ is for justice (Justice is always good…unless it is for the unvaccinated and/or Republicans)
• ‘K’ is for kink (The fondness for abnormal sexual practices. This is completely normal)
• ‘L’ is for lesbian (Females that are attracted to other females. A good thing)
• ‘M’ is for male (Males often oppress females and many possess toxic masculinity. This/they are bad)
• ‘N’ is for nationalism (Love of one’s country. This is a bad thing, especially love of the United States)
• ‘O’ is for oppression (What white people do to people of color and men do to women)
• ‘P’ is for the patriarchy (A system of society in which men totally unjustly hold power over women)
• ‘Q’ is for queer (A gender identity that does not correspond to established ideas of sexuality and gender, especially heterosexual norms. Another word for ‘gay.’)
• ‘R’ is for racist (Someone who discriminates against others because of their race. Also, someone who doesn’t recognize race. Also, someone who claims to not be a racist)
• ‘S’ is for sexist (Someone who discriminates against those who identify as female)
• ‘T’ is for transgender (Denotes a person whose sense of personal identity and gender does not correspond with their birth sex. A person who identifies as a member of the opposite sex. A hero)
• ‘U’ is for unsafe (This is how someone who disagrees with you on something makes you feel. Not good)
• ‘V’ is for Vapogender (A gender that sort of feels like smoke; it can be seen on a shallow level but once you go deeper, it disappears and you are left with no gender and only tiny wisps of what you thought it was)
• ‘W’ is for woke (Always being alert to injustice in society, especially racism. We pledge to be woke!)
• ‘X’ is for xenophobia (Prejudice against people from other countries. We don’t like xenophobia!)
• ‘Y’ is for yes we can! (Rid the world of straight, white Christians!)
• ‘Z’ is for zero tolerance (Of straight, white Christians. And other bad things!)

[source]

The Real Battle Over Education

From American Thinker.com (Jan. 12):

When Democrat Terry McAuliffe said he didn’t want parents to have influence over their children’s education, it wasn’t a gaffe; he meant it.

The new totalitarians cannot abide by freedom, especially freedom of education which ensures parents have influence over their children’s education and, therefore, future. The allies of the new totalitarians, however, agree with McAuliffe and other Bolsheviks.

The real reason is that education shapes and molds people; if the educational juggernaut has complete control over education, they have complete control over the next generation, and, therefore, complete control over the future of American society.

Education, as envisioned by leftists, is about control. It’s about power. It’s about propaganda. It’s about ensuring their vision of remaking society is safe and secure.

There are two competing strands of education. The public school system and elite aristocratic control of prestigious institutions like my alma mater Yale are about indoctrinating the next generation into what to properly believe and how to properly act on those beliefs. There is no free inquiry of the mind or soul. Education is put to the service of the politics of activism and reform, the politics of remaking society, and knowing what to remake because of one’s education.

The other strand of education goes back to Christianity with antecedent roots in Greece and Rome. We call this humanistic education. It came into its mature form in the Late Renaissance, emerged in its highest form in Protestant England (Cambridge and Oxford, when they were good schools to attend), and was brought to America with the arrival of the Puritans and their establishment of Harvard and Yale (when they were good schools).

The impetus of humanistic education is about becoming a better human being, a soul sharpened by the skills of critical inquiry and exposure to the best writing, rhetoric, and scholarship to help one navigate the “big questions” of life. The goal of a humanistic education, or a liberal arts education, is about a true exposure to diverse intellectual issues to help you be a better, more well-rounded, human being. The ultimate end of this ideal of education is self-sufficient and autonomous individuals, not a collectivized frenzied mob marching down streets shouting the same slogan ad nauseum with the same signs repeating the same phrases.

Moreover, the humanistic ideal of education extends beyond the classroom. One should continue one's love of learning in the company of family and friends, thereby forming a community of learning rooted in love. For love builds up all things and leads to gratitude.

Totalitarians cannot abide by an educational philosophy that aims at instilling love, for one doesn’t destroy what one loves.

Thus, the totalitarians who wish to control the next generation from preschool to collegiate graduation want to instill a philosophy of hatred and resentment into students. Resentment for what we have and hatred toward what we’ve done. This spirit of hatred and resentment is meant to motivate students, as they take their place in society, to destroy and remake all that they resent and hate into what they’ve been told for 20 years to believe in: the communist Utopia, even if not all have been explicitly told that’s the goal.

What unites the totalitarians is not a love of learning but hatred and resentment. But this is no way to form a strong society. Hatred and resentment are always shifting, always demanding a scapegoat, an other, to be the target of said hatred and resentment that only temporarily unites people.

There is an irony, of course, in a movement that speaks of inclusion and love and ending “otherizing” while their entire life philosophy is predicated on exclusive otherizing and hatred toward the irredeemable other.

Since hatred and resentment cannot build but only destroy, we have seen over the past two years their manifestation of the totalitarian dream in action. While cities burned and fellow Americans were killed in criminal violence, the media was saying this was “mostly peaceful.” When these protests of hate and resentment dissipated, they left burned buildings, businesses, and battered communities in their wake.

This, though, is the goal: To destroy what is evil, oppressive, and the cause of our national sins (white filial suburbia).

As we enter a new year, a new semester, and a new election cycle, it is imperative for all Americans, especially those with children in education, to understand the real crisis of education and what the battle over its future entails.

We have before us two roads. Love of learning and exposure to the great beauty of our cultural patrimony, which is meant to be shared with all, or hatred and resentment of that cultural patrimony to induce division and bring destruction in its wake. Families should do everything in their capacity to ensure that love is what guides their children as they grow and graduate instead of the pernicious spirit of hatred and resentment.

This, of course, means parents need to be aware of what their children are learning. And if they object to it, parents should have every right to seek emendation (through school board elections, especially) or the freedom to decide where their children go for education (religious or private or an untainted public school). It also means that parents have responsibilities outside of the classroom too; to ensure that they counter the spirit of hatred and resentment that their children may (and often are) be exposed to and to counter that with a spirit of love, awe, and wonder for the lives we have and hope to build. [source]

Maryland surgeons successfully transplant pig heart into human patient

From NY Post.com (Jan 10):

In a medical first, doctors transplanted a pig heart into a patient in a last-ditch effort to save his life and a Maryland hospital said Monday that he’s doing well three days after the highly experimental surgery.

While it’s too soon to know if the operation really will work, it marks a step in the decades-long quest to one day use animal organs for life-saving transplants. Doctors at the University of Maryland Medical Center say the transplant showed that a heart from a genetically modified animal can function in the human body without immediate rejection.

The patient, David Bennett, a 57-year-old Maryland handyman, knew there was no guarantee the experiment would work but he was dying, ineligible for a human heart transplant and had no other option, his son told The Associated Press.

“It was either die or do this transplant. I want to live. I know it’s a shot in the dark, but it’s my last choice,” Bennett said a day before the surgery, according to a statement provided by the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

On Monday, Bennett was breathing on his own while still connected to a heart-lung machine to help his new heart. The next few weeks will be critical as Bennett recovers from the surgery and doctors carefully monitor how his heart is faring.

There’s a huge shortage of human organs donated for transplant, driving scientists to try to figure out how to use animal organs instead. Last year, there were just over 3,800 heart transplants in the U.S., a record number, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing, which oversees the nation’s transplant system.

“If this works, there will be an endless supply of these organs for patients who are suffering,” said Dr. Muhammad Mohiuddin, scientific director of the Maryland university’s animal-to-human transplant program. [read more]

Nice.

The United Nations Scrubbed This Article Heralding ‘The Benefits Of World Hunger’ From Its Website After It Went Viral

From The Gateway Pundit.com (July 6):

Mounting evidence continues to emerge proving the food shortages and supply chain disruptions are being manufactured by the United Nations, the World Economic Forum and the World Health Organization in an effort to institute a New World Order, global government and destroy the United States.

A 2009 op-ed published by the United Nations, which is now removed from its website, heralds hunger as “the foundation of wealth” and a means to bolster the world economy.

Hunger must be sustained to exploit manual labor, contends George Kent, a professor at the University of Hawaii’s political science department. who authored the November 2021 UN the document.

“We sometimes talk about hunger in the world as if it were a scourge that all of us want to see abolished, viewing it as comparable with the plague or aids. But that naïve view prevents us from coming to grips with what causes and sustains hunger. Hunger has great positive value to many people,” Kent notes. “Indeed, it is fundamental to the working of the world’s economy. Hungry people are the most productive people, especially where there is need for manual labour.”

Without “the threat of hunger,” essential low-paying jobs would become vacant, a labor shortage would emerge and the global economy would cease to exist, Kent continues.

“We in developed countries sometimes see poor people by the roadside holding up signs saying ‘Will Work For Food.” Actually, most people work for food. It is mainly because people need food to survive that they work so hard either in producing food for themselves in subsistence-level production, or by selling their services to others in exchange for money. How many of us would sell our services if it were not for the threat of hunger?

“More importantly, how many of us would sell our services so cheaply if it were not for the threat of hunger? When we sell ourselves cheaply, we enrich others, those who own factories, the machines and the lands, and ultimately own the people who work for them. For those who depend on the availability of cheap labour, hunger is the foundation of wealth.”

According to the U.N., assumptions attributing poverty and low-paying jobs to hunger are “nonsense” because people deprived of nourishment have stronger incentive to work.

“Who would have established massive biofuel production operations in Brazil if they did not know there were thousands of hungry people desperate enough to take the awful jobs they would offer?” Kent asserts. “Who would build any sort of factory if they did not know that many people would be available to take the jobs at low-pay rates?

“Much of the hunger literature talks about how it is important to assure that people are well fed so that they can be more productive. That is nonsense. No one works harder than hungry people. Yes, people who are well nourished have greater capacity for productive physical activity, but well-nourished people are far less willing to do that work.”

“Slaves to hunger” are “assets” to “people at the high end,” Kent concludes:

The non-governmental organization Free the Slaves defines slaves as people who are not allowed to walk away from their jobs. It estimates that there are about 27 million slaves in the world, including those who are literally locked into workrooms and held as bonded labourers in South Asia. However, they do not include people who might be described as slaves to hunger, that is, those who are free to walk away from their jobs but have nothing better to go to. Maybe most people who work are slaves to hunger?

For those of us at the high end of the social ladder, ending hunger globally would be a disaster. If there were no hunger in the in the world, who would plow the fields? Who would harvest our vegetables? Who would work in the rendering plants? Who would clean our toilets? We would have to produce our own food and clean our toilets. No wonder people at the high end are not rushing to solve the hunger problem. For many of us, hunger is not a problem, but an asset.

The decades-oldop-ed was removed from the United Nation’s website on Wednesday hours it went viral.

The United Nation’s Chronicle subsequently issued a statement claiming the article is “satire.”

A 2020 report published by The Rockefeller Foundation that outlines a globalist plan to transform the food system is underway began circulating across the internet on Monday.

The Rockefeller Foundation document titled, “Reset The Table: Meeting the Moment to Transform the U.S. Food System” argues the U.S. food system must be seized and transformed to advance “social justice” and “environmental protection.”

The report also calls for “numerous changes to policies, practices and norms” to modify the U.S. food supply, including data collection and online surveillance to track people’s the dietary habits. [source]

Sure it was satire. The poor can be controlled more easily. They have a hard time fighting back from the powers that are oppressing them.

George Soros Declares War on Supreme Court and Republican Party: “Enemies of Democracy”

From The Gateway Pundit.com (July 6):

US-Hungarian Billionaire George Soros declared war on the US Supreme Court and the Republican Party in an Op-Ed on his propaganda site Project Syndicate, on July 4th, of all days.

“The American public has been alarmed and aroused by the US Supreme Court’s growing extremism“, Soros claimed. “But voters need to recognize the Court’s radical majority for what it is: part of a carefully laid plan to turn the US into a repressive regime.“

Ever since the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989, George Soros has leveraged $32 billion in “donations” for his influence-peddling system called “Open Society Foundations” to manipulate governments and market prices in the ultimate insider trading deal. Working with the EU and USAID, Open Society wages war on conservative governments around the world with so-called Color Revolutions, and bears key responsibility for the current war in Ukraine.

Nevertheless, Soros has the chuzpah to claim that “democracy is now gravely endangered” by anyone who dares oppose him. While Soros correctly warns of the danger of autocratic regimes in Russia and China, his treasonous screed claims “the threat to the US from the domestic enemies of democracy is even greater.”

For the Hungarian-born naturalized citizen, these “domestic enemies” include the current Supreme Court, “which is dominated by far-right extremists, and Donald Trump’s Republican Party, which placed those extremists on the Court.”

Soros sees the danger from this “radicalized” Supreme Court in its strict Originalist approach to the Law: “Justice Samuel Alito, the author of the majority opinion, based his ruling on the assertion that the Fourteenth Amendment protects only those rights that were generally recognized in 1868, when the amendment was ratified. But this argument endangers many other rights that have been recognized since then, among them the right to contraception, same-sex marriage, and LGBTQ rights.”

Soros seems to acknowledge that many of the “Rights” claimed by activist courts, such as the “right to contraception, same-sex marriage, and LGBTQ rights”, are not actually to be found in the Constitution and would need to be passed by the legislature, not by activist judges.

“There is only one way to rein in the Supreme Court: throw the Republican Party out of office in a landslide”, Soros writes, while acknowledging it will not be easy:

“But when it comes to organizing a landslide victory against the radicalized Republicans, opponents face almost insuperable obstacles. Republicans have not only stacked the Supreme Court and many lower courts with extremist judges. In states such as Florida, Georgia, and Texas, they have enacted a raft of laws that make voting very difficult.

While these laws focus on disenfranchising African-Americans, other minorities, and young voters generally, their ultimate goal is to help Republicans win elections. As a Florida federal judge recently wrote in striking down one of these laws, they were enacted “with the intent to restructure Florida’s election system in ways that favor the Republican Party over the Democratic Party.”

These laws would be bad enough if they only targeted who can vote. But Republicans are now going even further, by attacking the vote-counting and election-certification process. From changing the law to make subversion of the electoral system easier, to recruiting believers in Trump’s big lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him to oversee the process, we are watching Republicans attack our system of democracy from every angle. And here, too, the radical Supreme Court has done its part, gutting the federal Voting Rights Act and allowing naked partisan redistricting to weaken minority voting power.”

“We must do everything we can to prevent” the Republicans from gaining power in November 2022, Soros writes, seemingly opening the floodgates for another round of no-holds-barred Democrat cheating.

Fortunately, American patriots now know what is at stake, after the historic fraud of 2020, and are organizing in projects like the Precinct Strategy.

Game on, George. [source]

Whenever the Left talks about “democracy” they mean “socialism” or “authoritarianism.” Besides, he is just following what the democrats are saying. Or are they following him?

More on Soros:

• Soros family quietly bankrolls committees supporting 'defund the police' candidates
• Report: George Soros Funds 13 Radical Democrats Running for Congress in 2022
• Secretive Soros-funded group works behind the scenes with Biden admin on policy, documents show
• George Soros Says He Worked with Biden “Who Was Very Deeply Involved in Ukraine”
• George Soros Drops $1 Million Into Stacey Abrams’ Campaign for Georgia Governor

Orwell was Right: Control the Language, Control the World

From American Thinker.com (Dec. 18, 2021):

Of all the elements of today’s “New Normal,” the most ominous is the “reform” that effectively changed the meanings of previously accepted words or terms. The following glossary illustrates how changes to our vocabulary played a central role in making the world a more dangerous and frightening place.

New Normal - “Normal” is something that has long been the norm and is accepted as the norm. The key point is that the “old” normal no longer applies. This change in thinking provided authority figures the license to enact reforms that would not have been widely accepted in the past.

In the old normal, a citizen might not have complied with authoritarian mandates, but in the New Normal, most will… that is, if one accepts the premise that we now have a New Normal, a premise most people now accept.

Vaccine -- Previously a vaccine was an injection that provided “immunity” or prevented diseases, as well as the spread of diseases. Today, at least as it involves the COVID “vaccines,” vaccines simply (and allegedly) reduce the probability someone will develop a severe case of this disease or die from this disease.

Safe -- An activity that is not dangerous or does not cause harm.

According to public health officials and almost all doctors, COVID vaccines are “safe and effective.” According to VAERS, approximately one million Americans believe they have suffered adverse medical reactions to COVID vaccines, with approximately 20,000 deaths possibly caused by the vaccines. Several studies have concluded that VAERS captures only a small fraction of such adverse events.

Effective -- Certainly today “effective” does not mean COVID vaccines prevent infection or virus spread. In many heavily vaccinated countries, the vaccinated comprise a greater percentage of new COVID cases than the unvaccinated.

Harm -- Something that injures, perhaps even kills, or causes someone pain or discomfort. The key change here is that “harm” can now be caused by speech. The nexus that would definitively trace any alleged harm to any piece of speech is nebulous and impossible to prove.

Still, a person who composes words determined to include “misinformation” or “disinformation” is held guilty of causing potential harm to people who might read these words. Such a person can be censored, maligned, lose their jobs, or even be prosecuted. In our Old Normal, this rarely happened. In our New Normal, it happens daily.

Misinformation or Disinformation -- In its simplest terms, this would be information that is provably false.

In our “New Normal,” misinformation or disinformation is simply any information that challenges the veracity of pronouncements made by authorized experts or authorities. That is, Dr. Anthony Fauci, America’s leading public health authority, cannot be charged with producing “disinformation,” but skeptic Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. can and should be.

Also, in today’s New Normal, many people censor their own thoughts as they know “free speech” can result in personal or professional harm. By now, the censors don’t even have to censor everyone.  People do it themselves.

Science and “The science” -- A theory largely accepted by the scientific community and public.

“Science” used to be the process of testing a hypothesis and was almost never “settled.” In the past, a skeptic who examined or challenged the conclusions of peers was himself engaging in science. Today, “The Science” is what the authorized scientists and officials at public health bureaucracies say it is, and cannot or should not be challenged by other “scientists…” who perhaps should not even be called scientists and should now be labeled as “science deniers.” Or as…

Anti-vaxxer -- Technically, this would be a person who opposes all vaccines. In Newspeak, it means anyone who is against mandatory COVID vaccines. In practice, this term is used as a slur to denigrate anyone who questions the pronouncements of authorities.  If you oppose mandatory COVID vaccines for whatever reason, you are a “science denier” or “anti-science…” and, as such can and should be punished or censored because you could be causing “harm” to the public.

Free or freedom -- In “the land of the free” the definition of freedom has also been radically changed.

Today, some Americans are “free” to keep their jobs or go to a restaurant or see a play if they can prove they have received at least two injections of an experimental vaccine (a vaccine where the vaccinated waive their right to sue if they later suffer harm). Americans may be allowed to engage in “free speech” on social media… if they say the right things.

It’s not just “COVID” topics that are now being regulated by speech monitors. If you publish “extremist” speech or politically incorrect speech that can be labeled as “harmful” or “dangerous,” you also can lose your job or speech privileges.

With the precedent established that speech can cause “harm” and that the primary role of government is to protect people from harm, the harm of being “offended” by speech is now a sanctionable offense.

Patriotism or patriot -- In the past, a “patriot” was one who stood up to tyrannical governments and/or displayed a great love for their country. Today, for many Americans, a patriot is one who complies with the edicts of their government and helps attack or embarrasses those who challenge governmental authority.

Just this week, President Biden proclaimed that Americans who get vaccinated are doing their patriotic duty. This statement builds on the “us-against-them” theme, the good American vs. bad American narrative.

Public health -- This term once meant the state of overall health in hundreds of millions of people who comprise “the public.” In the last two years, it’s come to mean the “health” of people who may or may not have COVID-19.

Today, cancer, heart disease, diabetes, mental health, obesity - all the conditions that kill and harm people -- are afterthoughts when compared to “COVID health.”

All of the above was made possible by changes in accepted language. George Orwell was right. If you want to control people, first control the language.

COVID, a virus that poses no significant health risk to 98 percent of the population, has given us a “New Normal” where “vaccines” are not vaccines, where “freedom” is now a privilege granted to those who obey, and where unelected public health officials have made billions of dollars for pharmaceutical companies. [source]

Down the rabbit hole we go.