“The group claims white supremacy culture can show up in the classroom in various ways, including when ‘the focus is on getting the ‘right’ answer,’ and when ‘students are required to ‘show their work.'”
“The group also says educators should try to ‘center ethnomathematics’ by identifying and challenging the ways that ‘math is used to uphold capitalist, imperialist, and racist views.'”
” Now mathematics is being nudged into a specifically political direction by educators who call themselves “critical theorists.” They advocate using mathematics as a tool to advance social justice. Social justice math relies on political and cultural relevance to guide math instruction. One of its precepts is “ethnomathematics,” that is, the belief that different cultures have evolved different ways of using mathematics, and that students will learn best if taught in the ways that relate to their ancestral culture…The culturally attuned teacher will learn about the counting system of the ancient Mayans, ancient Africans, Papua New Guineans, and other ‘non-mainstream’ cultures… Partisans of social justice mathematics advocate an explicitly political agenda in the classroom… Teachers are supposed to vary the teaching of mathematics in relation to their students’ race, gender, ethnicity, and community.”
The University of Oxford is considering proposals that would remove sheet music from its curriculum over woke claims that teaching the Western form of musical notation has roots in “colonialism” and “complicity in white supremacy”.
In response to widespread Black Lives Matter protesters and riots last year in the United Kingdom, music educators at Oxford University have joined the wider iconoclastic movement which has been sweeping through British academia.
The music department at the prestigious and ancient university has seen calls to remove music notation from the curriculum as professors seek to focus less on white European heritage and culture, according to documents seen by The Telegraph.
The woke educators went on to claim that musical notation itself is a “colonialist representational system” that has “complicity to white supremacy”. The claim is similar to leftist pronouncements in America that mathematics is inherently racist.
The Oxford academics went on to pronounce that teaching the piano or conducting orchestras could cause “students of colour great distress” as the skills involved are closely tied to “white European music”.
Professors at the university said that the classical music which is taught at Oxford, which includes Beethoven, Mozart, and Schubert, among others, is too focused on “white European music from the slave period”.
The assertion is somewhat dubious, as Western classical music, as well as the practice of sheet music notation, predates the Atlantic slave trade, stemming back to musical traditions from the medieval period such as Gregorian chanting.
In response to student demands “arising from international Black Lives Matter demonstrations,” the Oxford faculty is also considering placing a heavier emphasis on “non-Eurocentric” musical traditions such as Hip-Hop and Jazz, as well as “African and African Diasporic Musics” and “Global Musics”.
The curriculum could also place more importance on pop music and culture, with suggested topics including “Artists Demanding Trump Stop Using Their Songs” at campaign rallies and “Dua Lipa’s Record-Breaking Livestream”.
Mocking the woke push from the university, London mayoral candidate and Heritage Party leader David Kurten said: “For goodness sake. Oxford is supposed to be one of our top Universities that promotes academic rigour and excellence. It should not be peddling woke nonsense like ‘classical music is racist and ‘sheet music is non-inclusive’”.
The proposals come amid a wider push throughout British academia to “decolonise the curriculum” in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement.
In February, for example, the University of Leicester caused uproar after it proposed cutting courses in Medieval English literature — removing seminal works such as Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and the Anglo-Saxon epic poem Beowulf — in favour of focusing more heavily on texts relating to sexuality, diversity, race, and ethnicity.
The woke push has also seen the introduction of speech codes, with the University of Manchester telling staff to refrain from using gendered words such as “father” or “mother” in favour of more “inclusive language”.
CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky became emotional at a White House coronavirus press briefing on Monday — her voice breaking as she warned that the US is facing “impending doom” as COVID-19 cases rise again.
“I’m gonna lose the script and I’m going to reflect on the recurring feeling I have of impending doom,” Walensky told reporters at the briefing.
“We have so much to look forward to, so much promise and potential of where we are, and so much reason for hope. But right now I’m scared.”
“I know what it’s like as a physician to stand in that patient room, gowned, gloved, masked, shielded and to be the last person to touch some else’s loved one because their loved one couldn’t be there,” she continued.
“And I know what it’s like to pull up to your hospital every day and see an extra morgue sitting outside.”
Walensky said she feared that the US is headed down a similar path to many European countries, which have had to issue lockdowns again amid surges in cases.
“The trajectory of the pandemic in the United States looks similar to many other countries in Europe, including Germany, Italy, and France looked like just a few weeks ago and since that time those countries have experienced a consistent and worrying spike in cases,” she said.
Walensky — speaking, she said, not just as the CDC director but “as a wife, as a mother, as a daughter” — urged Americans to “hold on a little longer” until they can get vaccinated against the coronavirus.
“We are not powerless. We can change this trajectory of the pandemic, but it will take all of us recommitting to following the public health prevention strategies consistently, while we work to get the American public vaccinated,” she said.
Following the mass shooting in Boulder Colorado, globalists and leftists joined arm in arm in blaming White Americans for mass shootings in America.
Once it was revealed that the shooter was actually a Syrian native who came to America as a child who was a devout Muslim and alleged ISIS sympathizer who hated Donald Trump and some of his major platforms, they quickly adjusted
But, the inevitable gun grabs began and the intentional false impression has been left on masses of Americans by these racist politicians and media personalities that white people are to blame for most mass shootings.
I’m hearing it repeated as gospel truth that “nearly all” American mass shooters are white. Here are the photos of mass shooters from 2019 (defined as four or more shot in a single incident). It shows quite a diverse set of faces. #Boulder#Atlantapic.twitter.com/z4eGq8mCiW
However, a photo collage released by journalist Andy Ngo on Twitter allegedly shows who is responsible for the known mass shootings in America. And, if there is one slogan to describe mass shooters in America, it might be:
A 2020 photo collage from Andy Ngo reveals a similar trend:
The Gateway Pundit provides additional context to the photos as well as caveats:
“Democrats continue to push the ridiculous talking point that white men commit the majority of mass shootings in the United States. The left continues to push this with every mass shooting.
A Wiki Page was created to list every mass shooting in the US in 2019.
The list does not include those shootings where no one will speak to police.
At least 20 of the mass shootings in 2019 were in Chicago, Illinois.
More than 140 mass shootings are unsolved largely because no one will give descriptions to the police.
Of course, most of these shootings took place in the inner city. Democrats don’t care about those shootings. They never make the splash headlines for days.
It doesn’t fit their agenda.”
There are also some other interesting facts that pertain to the false narrative that white people commit most mass shootings and that government regulations make anything better:
Black people make up roughly 13% of the US population while white non-Hispanic people make up roughly 61%, so we might expect to see roughly 5 times more white people committing any given crime-including mass shootings. Yet we do not. Why?
Many mass shootings are part of gang violence.
It should be noted that non-whites make up nearly 88% all of the gang members in America despite being minority populations. Interestingly, the large number of gang members and their demographic makeup were not always this way. Perhaps, they are now because government began destroying the black family the mid-1900s as well as flooding the country with impoverished immigrants since the 1965 Hart-Seller Act while promoting a massive welfare state to promote single motherhood. Black single motherhood has skyrocketed from about 20% in the 1920s to about 76%, today. People who come from broken homes tend to have more mental issues, less wealth, and tend toward more crimes. This may lead them to seek out familial relationships in gangs much more often than those who come from solid homes in solid neighborhoods.
Bring back the family, promote the true American citizenry and the US Constitution, and reward meritorious hard work.
This is not a race issue. This is a massive government meddling issue.
“If you catch 100 red fire ants as well as 100 large black ants, and put them in a jar, at first, nothing will happen. However, if you violently shake the jar and dump them back on the ground the ants will fight until they eventually kill each other. The thing is, the red ants think the black ants are the enemy and vice versa, when in reality, the real enemy is the person who shook the jar. This is exactly what’s happening in society today. Liberal vs. Conservative. Black vs. White. Pro Mask vs. Anti-Mask. Vax vs. Anti-vax. Rich vs. poor. Man vs. woman. Cop vs. citizen. The real question we need to be asking ourselves is who’s shaking the jar… and why?” – Shera Starr
A few weeks ago, I saw the above quote in Jeff Thomas’ article Learning from Ants, and it has been reverberating in my mind ever since. It is a perfect analogy for what has been happening in this country for years, with the jar lately being shaken at a rate faster than a Biden vote count increase at 3:00 am in a swing state. Everyone in this country, and the world, is at each other’s throats. Who is shaking the jar? Why are they shaking the jar? Why do they want us fighting each other?
If they keep us focused on fighting each other, they believe we will not notice their reprehensible criminality, as they manipulate the masses through psychological engineering and the employment of propaganda techniques to push their desired narrative. If you ask someone – who is shaking the jar? – they will likely answer based on the standard left vs right, liberal vs conservative, white vs black paradigm which has been created by those benefiting from conflict. It is always a safe bet to follow the money when trying to identify the culprits.
The elevated intensity of manipulation by those pulling the strings of societal discontent reveals much about their level of desperation in creating more chaos, because the awakening of more to the truth, endangers their wealth, power, and control. They have turned the shaking power up to eleven in the last year, as an implosion of the Ponzi financial system was looming as we entered 2020, and the Deep State oligarchs needed cover to implement a massive injection of liquidity into the veins of Wall Street bankers, the medical industrial complex, and mega-corporations like Amazon, Wal-Mart and Target.
The weaponization of a contagious, but highly non-lethal to anyone under 80 years old, flu became the perfect camouflage of fear to bailout the teetering financial system and creating turmoil, chaos, and distrust among the populace. The non-stop fear mongering was purposely ramped to keep the public distracted while the national wealth pillaging operation proceeded at a breakneck pace behind the scenes. $600 for you and $10 trillion for them.
The monstrous effort to polarize the country by the psychopaths in suits pulling the strings of societal disgruntlement has the ultimate purpose of subjugation and dominion over every aspect of our lives. They no longer feel the need to conceal their treachery, as they openly proclaim their Great Reset, where you will own nothing and be happy – living in a 200 sq ft shipping container, eating synthetic meat, drinking Gates endorsed reprocessed piss, snacking on bugs, and praying their windmill and solar power works on calm cloudy days as a frigid winter storm front arrives.
None of this is an accident. It is not occurring naturally. This is the result of a designed blueprint to control and rule the world by a relatively small cadre of billionaire oligarch globalists, Big Tech despots, bought off politicians, the banking cabal fronted by their puppets at the Federal Reserve, surveillance state operatives, military industrial complex parasites, captured corporate media, mega-corporations, and mid-level government apparatchiks sucking on the teat of the Deep State.
These people are the real government who had been pulling the strings behind the curtain, but now feel emboldened to openly execute their plans, after observing how easily the masses could be manipulated and controlled through fear during this conveniently engineered pandemic. Decades of dumbing down the populace through government run public school indoctrination disguised as education, has produced millions of non-critical thinking barely sentient consumers who have their beliefs fashioned, choices formed, and opinions dictated by manipulative men operating in the shadows.
Those pulling the strings understand the psychological processes, societal relationships, and technology driven social media addictions of the masses. They know how to sell a narrative based upon the emotions, feelings, fears and biases of the masses. With so few capable of critical thinking and seeing through their deceptive manipulation of the story-line, complete control over mainstream and social media gives those pulling the strings tremendous power over the direction of society.
And if they can keep the majority at each other’s throats, distracted by trivialities, minutia, false narratives, and unable to decipher the truth, they can keep us subjugated and constrained while they pilfer and pillage the wealth of the nation. It is a despicably audacious plan but is working to perfection. But, as always with humans, their hubris and myopia have convinced themselves they are infallible and immune to defeat. Their greed and arrogance will ultimately lead to their downfall.
Glenn Greenwald recently called out the faux journalists working in the corporate media complex for their shamefully pathetic attempt to twist the truth into the false narrative required by their Deep State puppet masters. They are nothing but highly paid whores doing tricks at the behest of their oligarch pimps.
“If you think the real power centers in the US are the Proud Boys, 4Chan & Boogaloos rather than the CIA, FBI, NSA, Wall Street and Silicon Valley, and spend most of your time battling the former while serving the latter as stenographers, your journalism is definitionally shit.” – Glenn Greenwald
Real journalists like Greenwald and Tucker Carlson are not afraid to confront those shaking the societal jar. That is why there is a concerted effort by those shaking the jar to try and destroy Substack, where Greenwald writes, after The Intercept began to censor his articles, and to force Fox to cancel Carlson by pressuring advertisers to boycott his show. This Cancel Culture tactic is being employed by those in control to crush dissent and free speech, so their narrative can dominate the airwaves and social media platforms, drowning out the truth.
There is a war for the soul of America underway and only one side is fighting – the globalist cabal along with their billionaire backers (Gates, Soros, Bloomberg), Big Tech tyrants, Big Media, Big Pharma, and Big Corporations. They have positioned their troops as attorney generals, governors, mayors, and legislators; in universities; in K-12 classrooms; in the media; on Wall Street; at the Fed; and in the Swamp of D.C. They now have a senile useful idiot in the White House, with a compliant cackling diversity hire waiting in the wings to become their new stooge.
The technique of using propaganda to manipulate the opinions of the masses, put forth by Edward Bernays almost one hundred years ago, has been enhanced and perfected by the deceitful and traitorous psychopaths operating as the shadow government, as they purposely construct false narratives and bogeymen, so they can expand their supremacy, dominion, and fortunes. It has always been this way, as human nature never changes, but the level and intensity has been ratcheted up to a degree never seen before in human history.
Technological advances have allowed these evil men to reinforce their narrative, while suppressing the truth tellers, and brainwashing the masses to do as they are told. Over the last five to ten years, they have convinced a vast swath of the population to believe utter nonsense, cower in their basements on command, and buy into false narratives and fake news that a sixth-grade level IQ should be able to see through. I have never lived through the final days of an empire, but this must be how it feels.
Those shaking the jar understand the mental processes of the ants because the indoctrination curriculum instilled in their brains by government controlled public schools through sub-mediocre, union worshiping, social justice warrior teachers has been designed to make them obedient, non-thinking, susceptible to psychological manipulation consumers.
The controllers know which buttons to push to keep the masses at each other’s throats: Democrat vs. Republican; liberals vs. conservatives; black vs. white; male vs. female; gay vs. straight; young vs. old; rich vs. poor; capitalists vs. socialists; white collar vs. blue collar; essential vs. non-essential; police vs. citizens; military vs. civilian and numerous variations on these categories of warring factions. Below is only a partial list of false narratives, fake news and outright lies over the last several years used by the powers that be to keep the ants fighting each other:MUST-SEE SHOWDOWN: WHAT’S AHEAD FOR YOUR MONEY DURING THE BIDEN PRESIDENCYThe Oxford Communique
The Russiagate conspiracy created by the Obama and Hillary acolytes, in conspiracy with the leaders of the FBI, CIA, and DOJ to take down a duly elected president was a coup built upon nothing but lies, fomented and spread by the seditious corporate media. If the country were ruled by honest, forthright, law abiding people, Obama, Hillary, Brennan, Clapper, Comey, and dozens of underlings would be in prison for this plot to unseat Trump.
The Mueller investigation cost the American taxpayer tens of millions; produced thousands of hours of fake news reports by CNN, MSNBC, the NYT and the rest of the left-wing media; ruined the lives and reputations of dozens; distracted Trump from governing for two years; and resulted in absolutely zero proof of any wrongdoing or collusion with the Russians. The entire episode was created to distract from Hillary’s emails, the murder of Seth Rich for providing the info to Julian Assange, and the filthy dealings of the Clinton Foundation.
The lies about kids in cages and children being torn from the arms of their loving parents at the border, with photo shoots of AOC crying in an empty parking lot, was nothing but tripe. The “cage” pictures were taken during the Obama administration. It seems those cages are being used again, with Biden inviting millions to cross our unprotected border, but now the narrative is one humanity and caring. The hypocrisy of these feckless idiots knows no bounds.
The “fine people” hoax regarding the Charlottesville protests and clashes in 2017 had been used by the Democrats and their media mouthpieces for three years to make it appear Trump supported white supremacy. It was a complete and utter lie, and they knew it. Of course, the full airing of his real comments was played during the latest impeachment hoax, clearly vindicating Trump. But liberals still latch onto this false narrative like an infant with a bottle. The infantilization of the masses appears to be working, as they cry at every perceived micro-aggression.
George Soros and his Open Society organization is intent on destroying all societal norms and community standards which have bound us together for generations. His desire is to destroy the family unit and replace it with the state. He openly funds anything and anyone who will further this agenda. He encourages things like Drag Queen Story Hour at public libraries where purveyors of pedophilia freaks teach five-year-olds how to twerk and attempt to legitimize their mental illness as normal. This brain washing of children is child abuse. Soros has spent tens of millions to get sociopath District Attorneys elected in Democrat run urban shitholes, whose sole purpose is to encourage crime, not prosecute murderers and thieves, and allow havoc and chaos to engulf their cities. Mission accomplished, as murder rates have skyrocketed in every Democrat run urban paradise in America – and the killing is not being committed by white supremacists. Soros is tearing down our society so it can be built back in his dystopian communist vision of the future.
The entire Jeffrey Epstein episode is another false narrative created by the jar shakers because they were the perverts, pedophiles, and deviants who Epstein was blackmailing with secret videotapes and whatever took place on his private island. Clinton, Gates, Dershowitz, Prince Andrew, John Roberts and dozens more sociopaths were all implicated. Everyone knows Epstein did not kill himself. He was murdered by those at the top to shield themselves from revelations of their perversions and crimes. When you control the narrative, you can get away with anything. Maxwell will not talk. She knows her fate if she does.
The faked chemical weapons attack in Syria, blamed on the Assad regime, was completely fabricated and staged. It resulted in president Trump launching a missile attack against the Syrian government. Everything reported by the corporate media over the last decade has been built upon lies. Obama created ISIS, with the support of McCain and the neo-cons, to overthrow the regime of Assad. They did such a bang-up job turning Libya from the richest country in Africa to a 3rd world ungovernable hellhole, they wanted to accomplish the same in Syria. It was only after Putin’s military began obliterating ISIS, the U.S. was shamed and reluctantly joined, and then took full credit for their defeat.
Blaming Russia for everything bad that happens in our country, run by incompetent corrupt boobs, has become the go to lie by Democrats and their media lapdogs at CNN, Washington Post, NYT and MSNBC. They were accused of hacking into our electrical grid in 2016, with the entire story debunked in days. The Washington Post claimed 200 websites had been infiltrated by the Russians, accusing Ron Paul and Tulsi Gabbard of being Russian assets. The laughability of these claims by Hillary’s army did not stop useful idiots from believing. The Russians were accused of using sonic and microwave weapons to cause brain damage to U.S. personnel in the US embassy in Cuba. It was determined the sounds were male crickets during mating season. The bullshit continues to this day, as Biden has accused Putin of interfering in the 2020 election and calling him a killer. Maybe the Russians interfered to get Biden elected, knowing he is a dementia racked bumbling fool.
The first ridiculous impeachment of Trump was based on a phone call with the Ukraine president regarding the actual corruption and payoffs to Hunter Biden and the Biden crime family to influence U.S. policy in the Ukraine. The U.S. had already funded and aided in the coup against the democratically elected president and encouraged the civil war that followed. The real crimes were committed by Hunter selling influence and the Big Guy having the Ukrainian prosecutor investigating Hunter fired. Ironically, two key figures in the impeachment hearings Eric “the farter” Swalwell and Diane ‘the crypt keeper” Feinstein had much bigger skeletons in their closets – sleeping with a Chinese spy and employing a Chinese spy for almost twenty years as her driver.
The second, more ridiculous, impeachment of Trump was such a shitshow, John Roberts refused to participate in the farce. This travesty of justice was conducted to send a message to all Trump supporters they will be painted with the brush of insurrectionists and white supremacists. The absurd charade was conducted after Trump was already out of office. Swalwell and his parade of woke jokes doctored evidence, lied and exaggerated the claims against Trump, and were ultimately eviscerated and embarrassed by Trump’s defense team on national TV. But they convinced their faithful intellectually deficient dupes Trump had provoked an armed insurrection, no matter the verdict.
The false narrative of the January 6th “armed insurrection” is blatantly false and continues to be flogged by the dutifully deceptive defecators on the payroll of CNN and MSNBC. There is only one requirement for an armed insurrection. Somebody must be armed. Not one firearm was used by any of the selfie taking boobs wandering around the Capitol. I guess someone could have been gored by the buffalo dude. The fake news about a Capitol cop beaten to death with a fire extinguisher was peddled for months by CNN and MSNBC. It was 100% fake news. He died of a stroke a day after the protest. The only person killed was an unarmed female who posed no threat to anyone. They still have not revealed the name of the cop that executed her. The presence of ANTIFA plants, paid by CNN, instigating the crowd, has been memory-holed by the malleable media.
The “armed insurrection” by “white supremacists” false narrative has been exploited by the hateful shrew Pelosi to turn D.C. into an armed fortress with national guard members pretending to protect the Capital from imminent attack by the Trump militia armies. The FBI does their part by fear mongering about non-existent right wing domestic terrorists, while Democrat run cities continue to be terrorized and burned by real ANTIFA and BLM terrorists, with Federal buildings under armed attack and set on fire. The diversity hire Defense Secretary is busy purging white Trump supporters from the ranks, while encouraging the feminization of his forces, to the delight of Russia and China. Pelosi and Schumer will never tear down those walls. They know their far-left agenda will ultimately result in chaos and revolution. They want to extinguish our exiting civilization, so they can “build back better” as a globalist utopia where the few, like Gates, Soros and Schwab, rule over the many, and you will own nothing and be happy – or else.
The false narrative they have been beating to death since the election is the Qanon conspiracy of a vast array of right-wing domestic terrorists planning a takeover of the government. They were blamed for the January 6th non-insurrection and are being used as the excuse to keep 12-foot walls around the Capitol. This entire storyline is laughable, except brainless twits in the corporate media flog it to benefit Pelosi and her parade of congressional dimwits as they intentionally mislead the public about the real threats in this country. If 5% of Trump voters had ever heard of Qanon, I would be shocked. If .00001% of the public believed the fairy tales spun on 4Chan or 8Chan or whatever Chan, then I would be flabbergasted. In retrospect, it is evident this was a Psy-Op conducted by the surveillance state to lure people into a trap of hope, and now is being used to paint all Trump supporters as crazy white supremacists, intent on overthrowing the government. Mission accomplished by the jar shakers.
In Part 2 of this article, I will detail the extraordinary efforts by those in power to cover-up the ultimately fatal levels of debt endangering the American Empire, by creating trillions more in debt, and pondering what happens next on our road to perdition.
1. The leader of the free world is often lost at sea and says many things that are blatantly false.
2. The media is in the tank and cannot be trusted to hold him accountable.
3. Because of Nos. 1 and 2, America is headed for serious trouble.
For this sickening spectacle we had to wait 64 days?
Still, the event was meaningful in one distressing way. Now we know beyond all doubt there is no way to deny the terrifying truth.
This was Biden’s coming out party, and the nation faces a mess that will only grow worse in time. The man who campaigned on unity is hell-bent on permanent polarization, meaning cancel culture and the super-charged racial climate are here to stay.
Biden gave license to the worst instincts on the left with his repeated sneering references to all Republicans and especially Donald Trump. At one point, he actually accused Trump of letting immigrant children “starve to death on the other side” of the Mexican border.
He said it in a room full of 30 supposed journalists and not a single one challenged him or even asked whether he meant it literally. In fact, not a single one challenged him on any of his falsehoods.
Nor did anyone ask him why he read from prepared talking points during answers to three questions on foreign policy. No recent president has felt the need to do that.
There also were moments when he talked himself into dead ends, yet there were no questions about when he would release the health reports he’s been hiding.
Regarding his agenda, a report that Biden sees himself as the new FDR gives credence to the idea that he’s all in for every big, crazy idea left-wings Dem can cook up.
The Green New Deal, open borders, removing voting safeguards, endless tax hikes, statehood for D.C. — they’re all on track and bound for glory. The only obstacle is the Senate filibuster, which requires 60 votes to pass legislation, but Biden left no doubt he would be willing to do away with it.
“I want to get things done,” he said.Biden answers question about running for re-electionPlay Video
Each piece of his party’s planned utopia is unprecedentedly radical in its own way, but not nearly radical enough for the media. Their performance was pathetic not just in what questions they asked and didn’t ask, but how they asked them. The dominant theme was that Biden and his team are not moving fast enough to turn America upside down and inside out.
Why don’t you, when will you, why haven’t you? Over and over, the aim was not to ask a question but to speed up an agenda.
Naturally, this was the complete opposite of the way some of the same people behaved during the Trump presidency. Then the questions were outraged expressions that aimed at stopping the administration. Now they are pleas aimed at pushing this one forward faster.
As such, the 10 people Biden called on generally followed the script laid out in the Washington Post and elsewhere. Columnist Margaret Sullivan had warned reporters not to try to “show how tough” they were being on Biden to please “Trump allies.” She even downplayed the border crisis, suggesting it was getting too much attention.
It got the most attention Thursday, but only in ways that reinforced the idea that it is the milk of human compassion to invite Central Americans to make the long trek north. Violence is rampant and coyotes, human traffickers and the cartels are making a mint, but not a peep about that from the president or his media helpers.
Nor was there any hint that perhaps stricter enforcement was compassionate to Americans in border towns and taxpayers everywhere. Instead, the underlying assumption seemed to be that any suffering experienced by migrants once they got to the border was proof of heartlessness and had to be remedied as quickly as possible.
As for the pandemic, apparently it’s no longer a problem. Pictures showing migrants crowded together in cages and reports that many are released despite testing positive for COVID never came up. No sense spoiling the good vibes.
The facts of illegal immigration are fairly simple. Trump campaigned on the issue and after false starts and despite unified Democratic opposition, eventually stitched together a series of policies and actions that stemmed the tide. He built large sections of wall, deported criminal aliens and struck an agreement with Mexico that those making asylum claims would have to wait in Mexico.
It is also a fact that Biden blew up each of those pillars, yet now claims he inherited a mess. Strangely, he also insisted that the numbers surging now “happens every single, solitary year. Nothing has changed.”
He’s either misinformed or lying. Record numbers of arrivals are being reported daily, and NBC recently called the crossings the highest in 20 years.
Again, Biden was not challenged.
The final proof that the press has abdicated its role was clinched when the president refused to say when he would allow more media access to the border detention facilities. He said it would have to wait until his team got its new programs working.
If Trump had said that, the sky would have fallen and democracy would be declared dead. But when Biden says it, the media rolls over.
So add transparency to the list of things that don’t matter anymore.
“There is a real double standard at work. It is a glaring one, not the one President-elect Biden and Vice President-elect Harris claim exists but, rather, the one they want to gaslight us into accepting.”
The bar for calling something “racist” in the United States has apparently dropped so low that it is now okay to concoct an utterly topsy-turvy narrative in order to call out an allegedly racist double standard in the way the Capitol Riots vs. the #BLM riots have been treated by the powers-that-be.
Although I, like many of us by this point, have become so numb to the incoherent shrieks of “racism” echoing out in every direction that I am quite comfortable dismissing nearly all of them as vacuous posturing by celebrities and social media influencers, virtue-signaling by white elites and woke corporations, or cynical profiteering by the outrage-clickbait-peddling media, this one still threw me for a loop: I could hardly believe my ears when I heard President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, parroted by the usualorgans of the mainstreammedia, cry racism in characterizing the reaction of authorities to incensed supporters of President Donald Trump storming the United States Capitol on January 6th.
“No one can tell me that if that had been a group of Black Lives Matter protesting yesterday, they wouldn’t have been treated very, very differently than the mob of thugs that stormed the Capitol,” President-elect Biden said. “We have witnessed two systems of justice: one that let extremists storm the U.S. Capitol yesterday, and another that released tear gas on peaceful protestors last summer. It’s simply unacceptable,” Vice President-elect Harris tweeted.
Yes, the law enforcement response to the Capitol Riots was unquestionably a failure on every level. But racism? All I could think was how dumb do these people think we are? Do they really think we have forgotten the actual events of this summer so soon?
Do they think those like me who witnessed the #BLM riots with their own eyes in New York City (or in the many other cities across the nation shaken by #BLM’s violence this summer) have already forgotten how roving bands of almost exclusively black teens and twenty-somethings rioted and looted, breaking into high-end SoHo boutiques and struggling small businesses already ravaged by the Coronavirus (COVID-19), absconding with millions in merchandise and causing billions in damage, while our spineless leaders stood by doing nothing and left those businesses to board up and fend for themselves for days on end?
Do they think we have forgotten how prominent #BLM leaders defended this summer’s looting or labeled it “reparations,” while establishment media outlets—the same ones that had no problem referring to the Trump supporters in Washington on January 6th as a “mob” of “rioters”—had continued to insist back in June, against the evidence of our own senses and the empirical findings showing a trail of violence across the country brought by the #BLM mob, that we were watching “peaceful protests”? NPR even gave a platform to someone hawking a book entitled In Defense of Looting.
CNN, New York Times and Washington Post online headlines on January 6th, when these outlets suddenly had no problem calling things by their true names.
Do they think we have forgotten how newly woke corporations fearful of #BLM shakedowns donated to the cause, coming forward with statements of full-throated support and new diversity and hiring policies, while pretending that the hateful anti-cop, anti-white, anti-American rhetoric we were hearing (and the crude graffiti and retrograde violence we were seeing) in previously sacrosanct public spaces was somehow a progressive accomplishment, even as the media did its darndest to sell us on an empirically unsupportable narrative that the freak incident in which one bad cop in Minneapolis unjustifiably killed the career criminal George Floyd was a commonplace occurrence representative of ubiquitous “systemic racism”?
The graffiti defacing New York’s City Hall left untouched for weeks on end:
Do they think we have forgotten how people—from social media influencers to politicians like our incoming Vice President nominated for her race after #BLM—elevated their careers championing #BLM while, today, we are seeing people losing their jobs for joining (or persecuted for donating to) the pro-Trump assault on the Capitol?
No, we have not forgotten, and we will not forget. There is a real double standard at work. It is a glaring one, not the one President-elect Biden and Vice President-elect Harris claim exists but, rather, the one they want to gaslight us into accepting. That double standard being perpetuated by all the organs of the elite media, Big Tech, woke capital, the celebrity class, and the political class is precisely what has led to so many of President Trump’s supporters resorting to violence; they and their concerns are not being heard. Their anger, like #BLM’s anger, is no excuse for violence. I believe in a single standard for everyone, and that those who break the law in the name of any cause should be held to account. For reasons I have previously explained, I voted for President Trump in 2020 despite his many flaws, and yet I think his behavior since the election has been childish, irresponsible, dangerous, and unbecoming of the Presidency. I will make no excuses for him or for his more intemperate supporters. But as long as one side of the equation—with its angry, racially divisive rhetoric and its violent actions to undermine law and order and shake America to its foundations—keeps getting a free pass, the other side of the equation will never add up, and the delicate balance between them will never amount to a functional democracy that works for everyone.
Alexander Zubatov is a lawyer in New York, as well as an essayist and poet.
French ex-President Nicolas Sarkozy has been sentenced to three years in jail, two of them suspended, for corruption.
He was convicted of trying to bribe a judge in 2014 – after he had left office – by suggesting he could secure a prestigious job for him in return for information about a separate case.
Sarkozy, 66, is the first former French president to get a custodial sentence.
His lawyer says he will appeal. Sarkozy will remain free during that process which could take years.
In the ruling, Judge Christine Mée said the conservative politician “knew what [he] was doing was wrong”, adding that his actions and those of his lawyer had given the public “a very bad image of justice”.
The crimes were specified as influence-peddling and violation of professional secrecy.
It is a legal landmark for post-war France. The only precedent was the trial of Sarkozy’s predecessor Jacques Chirac, who got a two-year suspended sentence in 2011 for having arranged bogus jobs at Paris City Hall for allies when he was Paris mayor. Chirac died in 2019.
If Sarkozy’s appeal is unsuccessful, he could serve a year at home with an electronic tag, rather than go to prison.
His wife, supermodel and singer Carla Bruni, reacted by describing the case as “senseless persecution”, adding that “the fight continued, and truth would come out”.
Who is Nicolas Sarkozy?
Nicolas Sarkozy served one five-year term as president from 2007. He adopted tough anti-immigration policies and sought to reform France’s economy during a presidency overshadowed by the global financial crisis.
Critics nicknamed him “bling-bling”, seeing his leadership style as too brash, celebrity-driven and hyperactive for a role steeped in tradition and grandeur.
His celebrity image was reinforced by his marriage to Bruni in 2008. In 2012 he lost his re-election bid to Socialist François Hollande.
IMAGE COPYRIGHT GETTY IMAGES
Sarkozy began a much-publicised relationship with Carla Bruni after he took power in 2007
Since then he has been targeted by several criminal investigations.
In 2017 he tried to make a political comeback, but failed as his centre-right Les Républicains party chose another presidential candidate instead.
What is the corruption case about?
Sarkozy was on trial with two co-defendants, his lawyer Thierry Herzog and Gilbert Azibert, a senior judge.
The case centred on phone conversations between Sarkozy and Herzog that were taped by police in 2014.
Investigators were looking into claims that Sarkozy had accepted illicit payments from the L’Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt for his 2007 presidential campaign.
The prosecution convinced the court that Sarkozy and Herzog had sought to bribe Azibert with a prestigious job in Monaco in return for information about that investigation.
French media reported that Sarkozy was heard telling Herzog: “I’ll get him promoted, I’ll help him.”
The phone line police tapped was a secret number set up in a fictional name, Paul Bismuth, through which Sarkozy communicated with his lawyer.
On Monday Herzog and Azibert were also sentenced to three years in jail, two of them suspended.
From wronged politician to convict
Nicolas Sarkozy is no stranger to legal investigations – since he left the presidency he has been the object of half a dozen – but up until now his record sheet has been clean. There was plenty of mud, but none of it stuck.
Half an hour in a courtroom in Paris’s new Palais de Justice changed all that. Judge Mée read out a verdict that spared nothing, and no-one. Sarkozy, Thierry Herzog and Gilbert Azibert all knew perfectly well what they were doing, she said.
They were trading confidential information for professional favours. And that was corruption in any book.
It is not the end of the affair, by any stretch. The appeal could take years. His team will continue to argue that the case rested on ill-gotten evidence – chance eavesdroppings on confidential phone-chats between a man and his lawyer.
But from today Sarkozy cuts a different figure. Before he was the wronged ex-president, fighting back against a left-wing judicial cabal. Now he has been convicted in a court of law.
What other accusations is Sarkozy facing?
He is due to go on trial next month over the so-called Bygmalion affair, in which he is accused of having overspent in his unsuccessful 2012 campaign.
Prosecutors are also investigating claims that Sarkozy received funding for his 2007 campaign from Libya’s then-leader Muammar Gaddafi.
Sarkozy has already been cleared in connection with the Bettencourt case. He had said all investigations against him were politically motivated.
Despite his legal woes he has remained popular in right-wing circles, a year away from another presidential election.
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