‘Crime Is a Construct': My Morning With the Park Slope Panthers

From Suzy Weiss, at her sister's Substack, Common Sense, "A Brooklyn man with politics ‘to the left of Lenin’ tries to organize a neighborhood watch. It didn’t go quite as planned":

In the last couple of months in Park Slope—the baby bjorn-wearing capital of bourgeois-bohemian New York—a thief absconded with $200,000 worth of jewelry in a smash and grab, three boys stole a bunch of iPhones off of subway riders, a ticked off customer attacked the owner of a bike store, $6,000 was stolen from an auto shop, and a beloved pet was catnapped from a bodega on Seventh Avenue.

But it was the death of a golden retriever mix named Moose that activated the residents of the South Brooklyn enclave.

Early in the morning on August 3, Moose and his owner—Jessica Chrustic, 41—were out on a walk when a homeless man who lives in the park gave chase. He hit them both with a large stick and threw a container of urine on Moose, while muttering about immigrants taking over the park. The dog died a few days later from internal injuries, after two emergency surgeries. The man who killed him is still at large.

A few weeks later, on August 20, Kristian Nammack issued a call to action on Nextdoor, a social media site for local organizing: “Do we want to organize a community safety patrol, and take our park back? Think what the Guardian Angels did to take back the subways in the 70s/early 80s. We may also get to wear cool berets. I’m being serious.”

Nammack, 59, had been part of the Occupy Wall Street protests in 2011, and his financial consultancy firm focuses on themes of “climate, renewable energy, gender lens, racial equity, economic advancement.” “How about PARK SLOPE PANTHERS as a group name?” he suggested. When I got to the inaugural Park Slope Panthers meeting—held last Saturday in Prospect Park, near where Chrustic was attacked—there were six people, including Nammack. We were overlooking a sloping meadow that was bathed in sunshine and filled with giggling kids and hipster couples on dates. It was one of those early fall days that reminds you why you’re willing to live in a city with more rats than human beings. Nammack was handing out pale yellow t-shirts that said “Park Slope Panthers” with a logo—two “P”s nested together—printed on the front.

Nammack explained that while we were all there because of Moose, there were other things to be concerned about. It seemed like there were more homeless people sleeping in the park, in the subway station, and on the trains and streets. There was more garbage everywhere in the neighborhood, more crappy vape shops and stores that sold Delta-8 weed, and more delivery guys on bikes blasting faster through crosswalks. Packages, bikes, and catalytic converters were getting stolen. Nammack told the group how he’d tried to help a local store owner while a group of 15-year-olds robbed his store. One of the teens had a knife.

The group—a few older, white women who love their pets; a young white man who said he was there for the sake of his younger sister’s safety; a forty-something Asian woman who wanted to “elevate Park Slope culture as a whole”—nodded along.

The Venn diagram for Park Slopers and Democratic voters is pretty much a circle. No one wanted to be labeled Park Karens. This made the whole crime-fighting thing a bit awkward: “It’s about finding a way that’s non-biased to report these things and have people feel like it’s safe here,” said Emily, one of the Panthers.“You don’t want to fall into that stereotype of privilege.”

A group of four who looked to be in their early twenties—three women and one man—rolled up about 15 minutes into the meeting. “Are y’all the Park Slope Panthers?” The one who asked was dragging a speaker on wheels and playing electronic music, presumably to drown out the meeting. “We are super not into you guys having your meeting or doing anything in the park.”

The young activist—who was white, wore glasses, grew up in Park Slope, and had a medical-grade face mask on, like his three comrades—was also super not into the cops, or anything resembling the cops. When Nammack told him we were taking turns introducing ourselves, the activist informed Nammack that he wasn’t “super into abiding by the structure that you’re setting up.”

Nammack asked them to just move along. When the glasses kid replied, “Yeah, we’re not going to do that,” Nammack invited them to sit, prompting the group of Conscientious Interrupters to decamp to a nearby tree to game plan. The park was filling. There were barbecues and birthday parties underway. Eventually the young activists decided to join the circle.

“What’s with you calling yourself the Panthers?” said another dude who had just appeared wearing a black hoodie and looking to be in his forties. He seemed more of a weathered activist, a bit more hardcore than the kids, and he didn’t want to wait his turn. He said his piece, followed by another newcomer named Damien, who wanted to join the group rather than protest it.

Nammack picked up the thread again. Back during the Occupy Wall Street days, he informed us, they took turns speaking. “I think it’s your turn, then your turn, then your turn, then your turn, then your turn,” he said. When it was his turn to introduce himself, Nammack said, “I have a non-profit and two companies. I’m too busy to run a neighborhood watch group, but I can’t help but be community-concerned.” He was from Long Island and had lived in Sweden, which he loved because it was “less hierarchical.” Nammack said he was “left of Lenin” when one of the activists accused him of being a vigilante. (When Tucker Carlson reached out to have Nammack on his show, he told Carlson to “fuck off.”)

As far as the name, and the fortysomething dude’s problem with it: “There’s two statues of panthers at an entrance to the park,” Nammack pointed out, gesturing toward the two limestone pedestals designed by Stanford White. The panthers had been sculpted by Alexander Phimister Proctor, and had been there since 1898.

Didn’t matter. “Using the Panthers as your group’s name is kind of abhorrent to me,” said one of the girls. She was white, wearing cut-off jean shorts, loafers with socks, and a Baggu purse. “It feels antithetical to what the Black Panthers would stand for.” The next girl to speak said her name was Sky. She, too, was white, and had also grown up in the neighborhood: “It’s easy to be wrong about who you’re going after, particularly when those are some of the few black people still living in the neighborhood, and they’ve been pushed out on the streets by all white, ultra-wealthy people.”

“We can be the tigers!” suggested Dionne, the middle-aged woman next to me. Sweet Dionne...

Keep reading.

They Can't Let Him Back In

From Michael Anton, at the Compact:

The people who really run the United States of America have made it clear that they can’t, and won’t, if they can help it, allow Donald Trump to be president again. In fact, they made this clear in 2020, in a series of public statements. Simply for quoting their words in an essay for The American Mind, I was mercilessly mocked and attacked. But they were quite clear. Trump won’t be president at noon, Jan. 20, 2021, even if we have to use the military to drag him out of there.

If the regime felt that strongly back then, imagine how they feel now. But you don’t have to imagine. They tell you every day. Liz Cheney, Trump’s personal Javert, has said that the 45th president is literally the greatest threat facing America today—greater than China, than our crashing economy, than our unraveling civil society.

That’s rhetoric, of course, but it isn’t merely that. It’s safer, and generally more accurate, to assume that your adversaries mean what they say. If you doubt this, ask yourself: When was the last time they acted more moderately than they talk?

Even if it is just rhetoric, the words nonetheless portend turbulence. “He who says A must say B.” The logic of statement A inevitably leads to action B, even if the speaker of A didn’t really mean it, or did mean it, but still didn’t want B. Her followers won’t get the irony and, enthused by A, will insist on B.

Take some time to listen to the mainstream media. It doesn’t have to be long; five minutes should do. Then spend another five or so reading the statements of prominent politicians other than Trump. To round it out, sacrifice another five on leading intellectuals. It should become abundantly clear: They all have said A and so must say—and do—B.

Take some time to listen to the mainstream media. It doesn’t have to be long; five minutes should do. Then spend another five or so reading the statements of prominent politicians other than Trump. To round it out, sacrifice another five on leading intellectuals. It should become abundantly clear: They all have said A and so must say—and do—B.

And B is that Trump absolutely must not be allowed to take office on Jan. 20, 2025.

Why? They say Jan. 6. But their determination began much earlier.

And just what is so terrible about Trump anyway? I get many of his critics’ points, I really do. I hear them all the time from my mother. But even if we were to stipulate them all, do Trump’s faults really warrant tearing the country apart by shutting out half of it from the political process?

Love him or hate him, during Trump’s presidency, the economy was strong, markets were up, inflation was under control, gas prices were low, illegal border crossings were down, crime was lower, trade deals were renegotiated, ISIS was defeated, NATO allies were stepping up, and China was stepping back (a little). Deny all that if you want to. The point here is that something like 100 million Americans believe it, strongly, and are bewildered and angered by elite hatred for the man they think delivered it.

Nor was Trump’s record all that radical—much less so than that of Joe Biden, who is using school-lunch funding to push gender ideology on poor kids, to cite but one example. Trump’s core agenda—border protection, trade balance, foreign restraint—was quite moderate, both intrinsically and in comparison to past Republican and Democratic precedent. And that’s before we even get to the fact that Trump neglected much of his own agenda in favor of the old Chamber of Commerce, fusionist, Reaganite, Conservatism, Inc., agenda. Corporate tax cuts, deregulation, and bombing Syria: These are all things Trump’s base doesn’t want, but the oligarchs desperately do, which Trump gave them. And still they try to destroy him....

Anti-Trump hysteria is in the final analysis not about Trump. The regime can’t allow Trump to be president not because of who he is (although that grates), but because of who his followers are. That class—Angelo Codevilla’s “country class”—must not be allowed representation by candidates who might implement their preferences, which also, and above all, must not be allowed. The rubes have no legitimate standing to affect the outcome of any political process, because of who they are, but mostly because of what they want. Complaints about the nature of Trump are just proxies for objections to the nature of his base. It doesn’t help stabilize our already twitchy situation that those who bleat the loudest about democracy are also audibly and visibly determined to deny a real choice to half the country. “No matter how you vote, you will not get X”—whether X is a candidate or a policy—is guaranteed to increase discontent with the present regime. People I have known for 30 years, many of whom still claim the label “conservative,” will no longer speak to me—because I supported Trump, yes, but also because I disagree on trade, war, and the border. They call not just my positions, but me personally, unadulterated evil. I am not an isolated case. There are, as they say, “many such cases.” How are we supposed to have “democracy” when the policies and candidates my side wants and votes for are anathema and can’t be allowed? How are we supposed to live together with the constant demonization from one side against the other blaring 24/7 from the ruling class’s every propaganda organ? Why would we want to?

Keep reading.

 

'Radicals' Are Racist Criminals

From David Horowitz, at FrontPage Magazine, "Driving America towards the abyss":

The crisis currently facing our nation is a crisis of faith – faith in the Constitution that has shaped our destiny, faith in the rule of law, and faith in the principle of equality before the law. The root cause of the lawlessness that is consuming our country is the monopoly of the executive power in Washington by a political party that has fallen under the control of the radical Left. This Left describes itself as “progressive,” but is focused on the goal of “re-imagining” American institutions and principles, in other words of dismantling the constitutional order that created the prosperity and freedoms that have shaped this country since its beginnings.

Having been born into this political Left and then rejected it, I have acquired an intimate perspective on its nature, and the threat it poses to the American future, which is grave. I was raised by Communists who always referred to themselves as “progressives,” and were sworn enemies of America and its institutions, as was I. We saw ourselves as warriors for social justice, acting on the “right side” of history.

We could not have been more mistaken. The “moral arc” of history is not “bent towards justice,” as progressives like to say. If it were, the 20th Century would be the most enlightened instead of the scene of the greatest atrocities and oppressions on human record. Worse yet, for this progressive myth, these atrocities and oppressions were perpetrated by progressives in the name of “social justice.”

The practical achievement of the revolutionaries was the dismantling of whole societies, and their reconstruction as national prisons, and slave labor camps. Supported by progressives everywhere, Communists bankrupted whole continents while killing more than 100 million people – in peacetime – in order to realize their radical schemes. Their atrocities and failures continued until the day they saw their progressive future collapse under its own weight. This failure was entirely predictable because as every similar attempt to “re-imagine society” and change it by force has shown, it is simply beyond the power of human beings to create a “just” world.

Forty years ago, a series of tragic events that I have described in my autobiography, “Radical Son,” stopped me in my tracks, and caused me to re-evaluate what I had believed until then. These second thoughts turned me against the cause to which I had been devoted since my youth, and which I now saw as a threat to everything human beings hold dear. Most of my generation of radicals, however, chose to continue on their destructive course. Over the next decades I watched the radical movement I was born into infiltrate and then take control of the Democratic Party and the nation’s cultural institutions, until one of its own, Barack Obama, became President of the United States.

From the moment I joined the conservative Right forty years ago, I was impressed – and also alarmed – by the disparity in political rhetoric used by the two sides fighting this fateful conflict. My radical comrades and I always viewed these battles as episodes in a war conducted by other means – even as our opponents did not. Our rhetoric proclaimed our goals to be “peace,” “equality” and “social justice.” But this was always a deception. We used terms that demonized our opponents as “racists,” and “oppressors” because we believed our goals could only be achieved by vanquishing our opponents and destroying America’s constitutional order.

The Constitution valorized political compromise and was built on the defense of individual rights – most prominently the right to own property. America’s founders regarded property ownership as the basis of individual freedom. As radicals, we regarded property as the root cause of the evils that oppressed us. Consequently, the principles we operated under were not the same as those we gave lip service to in order to win public support.

The Bolshevik revolutionary Leon Trotsky explained our attitude in a famous pamphlet called “Their Morals and Ours.” “Their” morals, he denigrated as bourgeois morals. They were morals based on class values that served the oppressors. One can hear the same sophistry today in the Left’s attacks on meritocracy and standards as “racist,” and in their demands for equal outcomes regardless of whether they are earned or not.

While “their morals” served a ruling class, “our morals” served the people, and therefore social justice. Because we believed these propositions, “our morals” were by default Machiavellian: The end justifies the means.

Trotsky’s pamphlet was, in fact, a desperate attempt to avoid admitting that there was anything amoral or immoral in this cynical outlook. He did so by denying the existence of moral principles, claiming instead that all morality was self-interested and designed to serve a class interest. “Whoever does not care to return to Moses, Christ or Mohammed,” i.e., to accept universal moral standards, Trotsky argued, “must acknowledge that morality is a product of social development; that there is nothing invariable about it; that it serves social interests; that these interests are contradictory; that morality more than any other form of ideology has a class character.”

But this is just an admission that “our” morals were indeed accurately summarized as, “the end justifies the means.” The future we imagined we were creating was so noble that achieving it justified any means to get there, which included the lies that hid our destructive purposes, and the atrocities they led to.

The full import of this belief was brought home to me in the spring of 1975 when our so-called “anti-war movement” forced America out of Indo-China, allowing the North Vietnamese and Cambodian Communists to win. For more than a decade, we had claimed to care about the people of Indo-China, championed their rights to self-determination and condemned the war as a case of American imperialism and American racism oppressing Asian victims.

By the time America withdrew from the conflict and abandoned its Indo-Chinese allies, I already knew that Communism was a monstrous evil. But I remained a supporter of the “anti-war” cause, and of the rights of the Indo-Chinese to self-determination. To defend the commitments I had made, I deluded myself into believing that self-determination meant the Vietnamese and Cambodians should be able to choose even this evil if they wanted. This was so much sophistry because I knew that the Communists would not give them an inch of space in which to breathe free. The end that justified my position was that I believed America was the world’s arch imperialist power and its defeat was an absolute good.

What I was not prepared for was the moral depths to which the movement I had been part of had sunk. These depths were revealed in the events that followed the Communist victory. When America left Cambodia and Vietnam, the Communists proceeded to slaughter between two and three million peasants who were “politically incorrect” and did not welcome their Communist “solutions.” It was the largest genocide since Hitler’s extermination of the Jews. In Cambodia they killed everyone who wore glasses on the grounds that as readers they would transmit the oppressive ideas of the past and obstruct the Communist future. But there was no resistance to these atrocities from the “anti-war” Left.

As the genocidal slaughter proceeded, prominent Leftists like Noam Chomsky provided cover for the Communists’ crimes by denying that the atrocities were taking place. More disturbingly, there was not a single demonstration to protest the slaughter by the activists who claimed to be “anti-war” and to care about the Cambodians and Vietnamese. This silence unmasked the true agendas of the movement I had been part of.

My comrades’ abandonment of the peoples they claimed to defend showed in a definitive manner that the anti-war movement was never “anti-war.” It was anti-American. It wanted America to lose and the Communists to win. Progressives had lied about the nature of their movement and its agendas in order to accomplish their real goal, which was the “fundamental transformation” of America and the creation of a socialist state. I had known this to be the case for many years, but had accepted the lies because they served what I imagined was a noble end. But when the lies led to the embrace of genocide, my eyes were opened to the realization that the movement I had been part of my whole life was evil.

On my way out of the Left, I spent several years re-thinking what I had believed, and trying to understand the nature of the cause that I had served. Perhaps, my most profound and certainly most disturbing conclusion was that revolutionaries were by nature – and of necessity – criminals, who would routinely lie and break laws to achieve their ends. Every radical who believed in a “revolution” or a “re-imagining” of society from the ground up, every progressive who believed in a “fundamental transformation of America” as Barack Obama described his own agenda on the eve of his 2008 election, was a criminal waiting to strike.

America’s Constitution includes methods to amend it, and therefore to reform the American social order when and where changes are needed. In making such changes there are procedures to ensure that these changes represent the will of the American people, and are done lawfully. But revolutionaries do not respect a constitutional order created by rich, white men, many of whom were slaveowners. Radicals believe instead that “social justice” requires them to dismantle the social order, and “due process” along with it. Radicals are not “reformers.” In the name of social justice, they refuse to be bound by the laws and procedures that an unjust and oppressive “ruling class” has created. The end justifies the means.

Before President Obama – a constitutional law professor – decided to break America’s immigration laws and grant 800,000 illegals resident status, he admitted to his fellow Americans on 22 public occasions that he had no constitutional authority to do so – none. Creating such an amnesty by executive order was illegal and unconstitutional. And he knew it. But he did it anyway because to him and his party, violating the fundamental law of the land was justified because the system that had created the law was oppressive and unjust – racist. In committing this crime against the nation he led, Obama was guided by a radical ideology that justified the illegal means as a victory for “social justice.”

As a former radical I understood how high the stakes had become with Obama’s election. Since the Right was defending America’s freedoms while the Left was paying lip-service to patriotic pieties but intending nothing less than the destruction of constitutional order, I also understood that the rhetorical disparity between the two factions posed a grave threat to America’s future.

In fighting this cold war, progressives regularly demonize Republicans as racists, white supremacists, insurrectionists, Nazis and traitors. Republicans respond to these reckless attacks by calling Democrats “liberals” and similarly tepid descriptions. For example, they describe Democrats as “soft on crime.” Democrats are not soft on crime. They are pro-crime: Democrat prosecutors have systematically refused to prosecute violent criminals; Democrat mayors and governors have released tens of thousands of violent criminals from America’s prisons, and abolished cash bail so that criminals are back on the streets immediately after their crimes and arrests; Democrat mayors did nothing to prevent the mass violence orchestrated by Black Lives Matter in 220 cities in the summer of 2020, provided bail for arrested felons, de-funded police forces, and instructed law enforcement to stand down in Democrat-run cities, which allowed “protesters” to loot and burn, and criminal mobs to loot and destroy downtown shopping centers.

Democrats regard the criminal riots that took place in the summer of 2020, as social justice. The riots cost $2 billion in property damage, killed scores of people and eventually thousands as their “De-Fund the Police” campaign triggered a record crime wave in America’s major cities. Democrats regard criminal lawlessness and mayhem as understandable responses to what they perceive as “social injustice” – courts and the law be damned. To them, mass lootings are “reparations,” and individual robberies and thefts a socialist redistribution of wealth.

If you are in a battle of words – which is the nature of political warfare – and you are calling your enemies “liberals,” portraying them as not really understanding the gravity of what they are doing, while they are calling you “white supremacists” and “Nazis,” you are losing the war.

Why are Republicans so self-destructively polite? Why do they fail to see, or to identify their opponents as the criminals they are – or, at least, when they are?

Ever since Donald Trump won the Republican Party’s presidential nomination in 2016, Democrats have conducted a verbal war against white America. This war has been so effective that Gallup polls show that 61% of Democrats think Republicans are white racists. At the same time the Biden administration has made “Equity” a centerpiece of its policies and programs. “Equity” is a weasel word to cover a socialist agenda. The White House defines “Equity” as privileging select racial groups with government largesse on the basis of skin color – a policy that is racist, inequitable, unconstitutional, and illegal.

Even when it is the government doing the redistribution and not street mobs, “social justice” – the policy of equalizing outcomes among politically select groups, regardless of merit – is another name for theft. Redistributing income on the basis of race is not equity, it is racism. Joe Biden is the first overt racist to occupy the White House since Woodrow Wilson – who not coincidently was also a progressive Democrat. Yet Republicans avert their eyes from this anti-American travesty. Why don’t Republicans call Democrats out for their racism?

Over the years I gave a lot of thought to these questions, and eventually I came up with an answer that should have been obvious in the first place...

 Keep reading.

Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich Attacks Oil Companies, Calls for 'Windfall Tax on Higher Profits' (VIDEO)

Secretary Reich is a smart guy --- and he's always been a man of the left --- but he used to be more free-market, more for regular labor union agitation and better wages, etc. 

Nowadays, he sounds more and more like a doctrinaire Marxist. He's a Professor of Public Policy at U.C. Berkeley, so he's being marinated in the nasty stew of woke campus leftism. 

And here he's calling for a "windfall tax" on oil companies. 

Extreme tax proposals are de rigueur for Democrats these days. Bernie Sanders is calling for a 90 percent marginal tax rate on the wealthy. Thankfully, the idiot Dems will be out of power next January. President Biden's going to have to compromise on reviving domestic energy production, and if things go right, a Republican will win the 2024 general election.

Honestly, I love the guy, but please let it not be Donald Trump. One Trump term was enough.

Watch, at CNN, "CEOs at major oil companies come under fire for high gas prices."

Justin Trudeau: A liberal Despot

This is from Megan Murphy, the righteous Canadian anti-trans feminist who was kicked off Twitter a couple of years back for violating Jack's politically incorrect diktats. She's in Mexico now, it turns out, in exile and flying under the radar. I miss her voice --- a voice of sanity in a world of madness.

At Spiked, "The Canadian PM has invoked emergency powers to crush the truckers’ peaceful protest":

The Emergencies Act has never been used before in Canadian history. Its predecessor, the War Measures Act, was invoked only once during peacetime – by Justin’s father, then prime minister Pierre Trudeau, in the 1970s. The War Measures Act was used to give sweeping powers of arrest and internment to the police in response to a Quebecois separatist group, Front de libération du Québec (FLQ), which, in 1970, kidnapped and murdered the deputy premier of Quebec, Pierre Laporte. At the time the powers were invoked, 23 members of the FLQ were already in prison, including four who had been convicted of murder. This was an actual terrorist group, responsible for illegal activities, including bombings, kidnapping and murder – not tens of thousands of happy Canadians, peacefully protesting by playing street hockey, singing the national anthem, dancing, barbequeing and setting up bouncy castles for kids, as we see in Ottawa today.

The Emergencies Act defines a national emergency as an ‘urgent and critical situation’ that ‘seriously endangers the lives, health or safety of Canadians and is of such proportions or nature as to exceed the capacity or authority of a province to deal with it’. The Act cannot be applied to lawful advocacy, protest or dissent.

Tellingly, even when the War Measures Act was invoked by Pierre Trudeau in the 1970s, in response to a group causing actual violence and perpetrating illegal acts, this was widely criticised as an infringement on civil liberties. During what was called the October Crisis, the military was deployed in Quebec and about 400 people were arrested under the measure.

Invoking the Emergency Act now, in response to peaceful Canadians engaging in legal protest, is a stretch of epic and frightening proportions. Yet many progressive Canadians seem relieved at Trudeau’s decision and thankful he is finally ‘taking action’ against the nuisance of having to confront diversity of opinion in their country, after having spent the past two years in a virtual bubble, away from people who hold different views and perspectives to themselves.

The response to the convoy and its supporters has, from the get go, been both inspiring and appalling. Across Canada people have expressed a long forgotten sense of pride in their country. So many – myself included – had lost faith that Canadians would ever push back against the Liberal government’s ongoing abuse of power against its citizens. At the same time, progressives and the mainstream media have engaged in an abhorrent and endless deluge of hateful and defamatory attacks on their neighbours. Claims that protesters are white nationalist, violent terrorists continue to dominate the narrative, without evidence, fuelled by a prime minister intent on pitting Canadians against one another and on ignoring our charter rights.

Ironically, considering the claims of those who insist the Freedom Convoy is a dangerous movement, it is the protesters and their supporters who have faced the most vicious attacks. For instance, GiveSendGo – the crowdfunding platform convoy organisers began using to fundraise in support of the truckers for things like food, lodging and fuel – was hacked this week after it refused to comply with an order from the Superior Court of Justice in Ontario to prevent disbursement of funds. Tammy Giuliani, the owner of a gelato café in Ottawa, was forced to close this week after a list of donors to the convoy’s fundraising campaign was leaked via the hack and those opposing the protests began threatening Giuliani, her staff and the shop. Major banks have frozen accounts collecting funds for the truckers, and the Canadian government has threatened to freeze the bank accounts and suspend the vehicle insurance of truckers who continue to participate in the protests.

Trudeau’s decision to invoke the Emergency Act is nothing less than an attack on democracy...

RTWT. 

As Ottawa Tries to Stop the Flow of Money to Protesters, Questions Remain on Who Will Be Targeted – and Whether the Tactics Will Work (VIDEO)

Totalitarians.

At Blazing Cat Fur:

Ottawa’s new emergency law enlists a huge range of financial players in a bid to cut off funds to protesters tied to the trucker blockades, but questions remain about who will be targeted and whether it will even work.

A new order and regulations under the Emergencies Act, which the federal government invoked on Monday, requires a long list of entities — this includes banks, insurance companies, credit unions, trust and loan companies, payment processors and online fundraising platforms — to continuously determine whether they should freeze accounts and halt services for individuals or companies tied to illegal assemblies and blockades that have gripped the country for weeks...

The World's Proletarian Working-Class Has Awoken! (And Progressive-Socialist Elites Won't Stand For It.)

Following up, "Prime Minister Justin Trudeau Invokes Canada's 'Emergencies Act' to Shut Down Truckers' Protest (VIDEO)."

The radical left in power is crushing dissent? Burying the working-class, the alleged dialectical-historic force now driving the world's workers toward the proletarian utopia? 

You don't say? 

Here's Batya:

The workers of the world are literally uniting. And yet these truckers have not been embraced by the left. Instead they have been tagged as fascists and racists by progressive pundits, activists, and politicians—those who tweeted “Stay Home! Slow the Spread!” while truckers delivered their Amazon Prime packages.

This spectacle—of workers fulfilling Marx’s fantasy, only to be smeared by the very people who claim to prioritize the working class—captures in stark relief the split emerging between the working class and the left that used to represent them...

Well, everything's upside down, so what the fuck? The populist-nationalists are gaining the upper hand, and idiot left-progressives are basically propelling the "far right" that they so much hate straight into power. 

Idiots. Bloody idiots, the lot of them.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau Invokes Canada's 'Emergencies Act' to Shut Down Truckers' Protest (VIDEO)

This is tantamount to declaring martial law, over peaceful truckers protesting pandemic tyranny. Seriously. 

And Canada's supposed to be the West's model democracy, a nirvana of progressive tolerance and a social safety-net paradise.

Well, no. It's a dystopian nightmare with a disgusting black-face hypocrite tin-pot leader bringing back communist repression in real time. 

The New York Times nails it here, "Trudeau Declares Rare Public Emergency to Quell Protests":

The invocation of the Emergencies Act confers enormous, if temporary, power on the federal government.

It allows the authorities to move aggressively to restore public order, including banning public assembly and restricting travel to and from specific areas. But Mr. Trudeau and members of his cabinet offered repeated assurance that the act would not be used to suspend “fundamental rights.”

It has been half a century since emergency powers were last invoked in Canada. Mr. Trudeau’s father, Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, imposed them during a terrorism crisis in Quebec. Monday was the first time that the 1988 Emergencies Act has been used.

The response by the police and all levels of government to the crisis, which included an almost weeklong blockade of an economically critical border crossing with the United States, has been widely criticized as inadequate. Mr. Trudeau, some critics contend, should have intervened earlier and perhaps even deployed troops to break up the protest.

On Monday, Mr. Trudeau said he would not use his authority under the declaration, which will last for 30 days, to bring in the military, reiterating his previous position against intervention by the armed forces...

Thirty days? Pfft. 

No one believes that. This is a state crackdown on popular dissent. The truckers' right to protest is substantiated by the majority in public opinion, though other surveys cast light on a different majority of Canadians, some hateful fire-breathing fascists looking to crush the truck convoy by military force. Trudeau claims he won't bring out the military, but who needs that when you've got your own gestapo arresting people in their own homes for not wearing a mask.

More, updates at the Ottawa Citizen, "Truck convoy: Trudeau invokes Emergencies Act; Judge approves city's injunction; 'Several' trucks moved off residential streets." 

And at the Wall Street Journal, "Canada’s Trudeau Invokes Emergency Powers to Address Trucker Protests":

OTTAWA—In a highly unusual move, the Canadian government on Monday invoked a series of emergency powers that include limits on public gatherings in a bid to end disruptive demonstrations in the capital city and along the Canada-U.S. border.

The measures, announced by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, represent one of the most striking responses by a Western government against protests by those opposing Covid-19 vaccine mandates and social restrictions in response to the pandemic, and immediately drew fire from some Canadian leaders and civil-liberties groups.

The government also said Monday the country was extending laws targeting money laundering to capture transactions, including cryptocurrencies, on crowdfunding platforms like GoFundMe.

“It is now clear that there are serious challenges to law-enforcement’s ability to effectively enforce the law,” Mr. Trudeau said at a news conference. “We cannot and will not allow illegal and dangerous activities to continue.”

Mr. Trudeau’s move to invoke emergency powers comes after police on Sunday reopened access to the Ambassador Bridge, which connects Detroit with the city of Windsor, Ontario. Up until late Sunday night, demonstrators had blocked incoming U.S. vehicles from entering Canada for roughly a week.

Officials said these extraordinary measures were necessary because of the damage done to the economy with the blocking of U.S.-Canada trade. Further, “we’ve seen intimidation, harassment and expressions of hate,” said Canada’s Public Safety Minister, Marco Mendicino, adding scenes in Ottawa have at times represented lawlessness. “That is one of the reasons why we’ve had to take [this] very careful and deliberate step.”

The prime minister’s decision to invoke the special powers faced sharp criticism Monday from both rights groups and some provincial leaders.

Quebec Premier François Legault said he can understand the sentiment that “enough is enough” in Ottawa but believes the planned measures aren’t needed in his province and could be damaging.

“We really need not to put oil on the fire,” Mr. Legault said.

An earlier and much more restrictive version of the legislation, called the War Measures Act, was invoked three times in Canadian history. Its most controversial use was in 1970, when Mr. Trudeau’s father, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, used the act when he was prime minister to squelch a militant separatist group in Quebec, known as the FLQ.

The government said its invocation of the act doesn’t undermine Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which came into force in 1982 and protects rights considered essential to preserving a free and democratic society. However, there is a debate about whether the government is overstepping in applying the act to those participating in protests and blockades.

Leah West, a national-security expert at Carleton University in Ottawa, said it is unclear that the current protests—in the capital, Ottawa, and at two border crossings in western Canada—meet the legal threshold of a national emergency. Invoking the Emergencies Act if that threshold isn’t met, she said, “sets a precedent that unpopular dissent against the government is enough for the government to take these extraordinary powers into its own hands.”

Prof. West said Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms protects civil liberties, but protection isn’t absolute. She said that means rights can be limited and still comply with the Charter.

The measures come into effect immediately but Mr. Trudeau must present his reasoning for using the act to parliament and hold a vote within seven days. The leader of the New Democratic Party, Jagmeet Singh, said he would support the move, thereby giving the incumbent Liberals enough votes to ensure passage.

Mr. Trudeau said the military wasn’t being deployed against the protesters, and the government wasn’t suspending rights guaranteed under the country’s constitution. He added the measures, which local police forces would enforce, are meant to target specific regions in the country where protests are judged to pose a threat. Mr. Trudeau described the demonstration in Ottawa, now in its 18th day, as “an illegal occupation.”

City of Ottawa officials say the local police force doesn’t have the necessary resources to quell the demonstration, and have asked the federal government for an additional 1,800 officers.

Despite the government’s hard line, protesters believe their message is resonating.

“Any government that’s ever taken freedoms away from people never gives them back,” said Tyler Chiliak, a farmer from western Canada who has been in Ottawa since the Covid-19 protests began.

When he isn’t out commiserating with fellow protesters, he is keeping warm inside his cargo trailer, where he cooks food, keeps bottled water and sleeps.

“It may take a while before we accomplish our goals so to speak. But whether they like it or not things are happening because we are here,” Mr. Chiliak said.

Canadian Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland also said the country was extending laws targeting money laundering. All crowdfunding platforms and the payment-service provider they use must register with Canada’s financial-intelligence agency, and report what they deem as large, suspicious donations. The recent protests had success in raising money on GoFundMe...

At the video up top, check out this masked Canadian Karen, at 1:57 minutes, who's ashamed of the truckers' exercise of freedom and natural rights: "I just feel I'm living in another country, like I'm in the states ...," one of the most embarrassing things she's ever seen. 

She's embarrassed. At her fellow countrymen. For standing up against the despotism of the Canadian state.

Oh this world. I can't...

Victor Davis Hanson for Hillsdale College (VIDEO)

Here's his book, The Dying Citizen: How Progressive Elites, Tribalism, and Globalization Are Destroying the Idea of America.

And the video:

Protesters at Arizona State Hold 'DEATH 2 AMERICA' Sign at Kyle Rittenhouse Protest

Arizona State's in Tempe, just outside of Phoenix. It's a really university, but I wouldn't want to go there.

See, "Arizona State University Defends ‘Death 2 America’ Sign at Anti-Rittenhouse Rally."

Representative Rashida Tlaib Struggles to Defend Closure of Federal Prisons

She sponsored a House bill called the BREATHE Act.

It's the Black Live Matter bill. According to Wikipedia:

The BREATHE Act's most notable diversion from past reform efforts is its explicit demand that Congress repeal the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, colloquially known as the "crime bill." For example, the BREATHE Act would repeal the "three-strikes law," which when it passed in 1994 was seen as a rule that would deter repeat criminal activity, and prohibit use of the modern Taser, which was developed in the '90s by a private company and subsequently marketed as a way to prevent police killings as an alternative to firearms.They bill's supporters argue that these practices and policies have been harmful and dangerous.

The bill also stipulates that all federal prisons would be closed within ten years of passage into legislation. This is, in other words, bat-shit crazy.

More here, "The Ghost of Defund Comes for Rashida Tlaib."

And her embarrassing interview with Axios' Jonathan Swan:

 

9/11, Twenty Years Later

From Brian Stewart, at Commentary, "A new book highlights the enduring failure of liberalism’s approach to terrorism."

Stewart reviews Spencer Ackerman's, Reign of Terror: How the 9/11 Era Destabilized America and Produced Trump.

In doing so, he focuses a scorching microscope on the evil (but not new) anti-Americanism that has poisoned American politics in the wake of the September 11 attacks. 

Remembering 9/11 With Taliban Victory

From American Military News, at Pamela Geller's:

What we remember and forget on 9/11. The boy clings to the undercarriage of an evacuation plane leaving Kabul.

Remember Todd Beamer of United 93. His heroism on 9/11 drew from a lifetime of faith and character.

The Bush White House reveals its unfiltered 9/11 story in new documentary. The documentary “9/11: Inside the President’s War Room” looks at how the Bush White House responded to the events of Sept. 11, 2001, by interviewing officials about how they reacted in real time to events throughout the day.

Between then and now, they did not die in vain. I was among the first to parachute into Afghanistan in 2001. This is how I will remember the war.

The tragic price of forgetting 9/11. We will never forget. That was the solemn promise we heard again and again from our nation’s leaders after the devastation of 9/11.

Biden’s Afghan Disaster

SECDEF: al-Qaida may seek comeback in Afghanistan. The Taliban had provided al-Qaida with sanctuary while it ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001.

Biden is embracing a redefinition of war — but not an alternative to war. For those of us present at the beginning of the war on terrorism, the effective surrender of Afghanistan to the Taliban just in time for the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks has been a very jagged pill.

US Afghanistan withdrawal becomes ammo for disinformation attacks. The U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan has given NATO’s adversaries ammunition for disinformation attacks intended to sow doubt about America’s reliability as a security partner, officials here say.

Army chief calls for Afghanistan review: ‘Let the cards fall where they fall.’ The Army’s chief of staff wants a review of the decisions that led to the fall of Kabul and the U.S. military’s withdrawal.

Countries are establishing relations with the Taliban even though none has offered formal recognition of the militant government. Nearly a month after its takeover, there has been no formal recognition of the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan. But that step appears increasingly irrelevant, at least for the short and medium term, as countries around the world have established varying degrees of relations with the militant regime.

AFGHAN EVACUATION

White House approves ‘partnership’ with vets evacuating U.S. citizens, Afghan allies. The White House has approved a recommendation by the nation’s top military officer that the administration create a “public/private partnership” with the ad hoc groups that have been working to evacuate American citizens and at-risk Afghans from the country, two State Department officials told POLITICO.

Dozens of Americans, other Westerners, to fly from Kabul on commercial flight. The large group of foreigners would depart Thursday on a Qatar Airways flight. Americans refuse to leave Afghanistan without their families as evacuation flights resume. In the days and weeks before the U.S. military’s hectic departure from Afghanistan, two former interpreters for the American military already resettled in the United States — one a naturalized U.S. citizen, the other a holder of a green card — journeyed back into the war zone to rescue stranded female relatives.

National Security

A ‘persistent, proximate threat’: Why the Navy is preparing for a fight under the sea. As Russia and China bolster their own submarine fleets and capabilities, the U.S. Navy has renewed its focus on undersea threats and has labeled anti-submarine warfare a priority for all sailors — and perhaps some Marines, too.

China, Russia loom over routine air operations across the globe. “What happens when our diplomats no longer have the might of the U.S. military or our economy as their backstop?” said Chief of Staff Gen. Charles “CQ” Brown.

The world 9/11 created: The waning of the American superpower. The aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks marked the height of a particular American moment on the world stage.

China Threat

Taiwan commissions homemade ‘carrier killer’ warship. Taiwan’s president oversaw the commissioning of a new domestically made warship Thursday as part of the island’s plan to boost indigenous defense capacity amid heightened tensions with China.

Another Japan-based F-35 squadron is ready for operations. A second U.S. Marine Corps squadron in Japan has declared its F-35B fighters are ready for operations, less than a year after officially kicking off the process of transitioning to the stealthy fifth-generation aircraft.

Military

Less door-kicking, more resistance: Inside Army SOF’s return to unconventional warfare. For much of the past two decades, the American public has associated the Army’s special operations forces with counterterrorism, often conjuring images of night-time direct action raids.

Pentagon Watch

YES. THEY ARE – Army chief: We’re not pushing critical race theory. Just one day after the removal of Richmond’s Robert E. Lee statue, Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville pushed back on claims that the military is attempting to “indoctrinate” troops into critical race theory.

Who Is Responsible for the Darkness That Has Descended on Us?

From David Horowitz, at FrontPage Magazine, "The Treason Party":

The late author Susan Sontag once famously said, “Communism is fascism with a human face.” A more perfect description of what the Democrat Party has become would be hard to come by. For five years the Democrats have focused their energies on laying the foundations of a communist economy and a one-party state. In pursuit of the latter, they have tried to abolish the electoral college, change the election laws to undermine the integrity of the voting system, give non-citizens the right to vote, eliminate voter I.D.’s which connect legitimate voters to their ballots, pack the Supreme Court, end the filibuster, pass legislation that would put control of presidential elections in the hands of the Democrat-favoring Washington bureaucracy and remove that control from the fifty states, as the Constitution now requires.

These efforts led to massive irregularities in the presidential election results that put the brain-damaged, pathological liar in the White House and led directly to the crises on the southern border, in America’s streets, and in Afghanistan. They were accompanied by a campaign to demonize former President Trump and the 74 million Americans who voted for him as “white supremacists” and “cultists.” This was itself a dagger aimed directly at the heart of the democratic process which depends on respect for the political opposition and compromise on legislation. If an opposing political party is placed beyond the pale, the inevitable result is a one-party state.

Character assassination has become the Democrats’ first weapon of choice, with Trump’s multiple bogus impeachments providing examples of how far Democrats are prepared to go to tear up the Constitution and two-hundred and forty years of American political tradition. Trump is no longer president but as a private citizen he is still the target of a Pelosi “commission” or “committee,” stacked completely with members who voted to impeach him, whose sole purpose is to convict Trump of inciting a fake “insurrection” in an attempt to overthrow the government of the United States. This is one more despicable effort to demonize Trump and his 74 million voters as “domestic terrorists” and therefore enemies of America to be dealt with as such.

The same result is the purpose of Critical Race Theory, the 1619 Project and the Black Lives Matter racist narratives, developed by American Marxists, currently being inflicted on all the men and women who have volunteered to defend their country in America’s armed services. This travesty comes courtesy of a General Staff deliberately politicized by the Obama administration. The consequence of training enlisted personnel to view America as a racist slave state founded in 1619, which has racism in its DNA (as Obama proclaimed) and is “systemically racist” (as Biden maintains) is to undermine military morale and program soldiers to regard “white America” as the enemy rather than the Islamic terrorists who seek to murder and destroy us.

Yet this demonizing creed was the preoccupation of Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Joint Chiefs’ Chairman General Mark Milley in the months they should have been focused on the withdrawal from Afghanistan and the potential massacre of Americans and their Afghan allies if the withdrawal wasn’t properly planned.

Inevitably that withdrawal was not properly planned. If the Chinese Communists had used their hammer over Joe Biden to dictate his decisions, the suicidal choices for which Biden is responsible wouldn’t be one iota different from the ones he actually made. No one in his or her right mind would have withdrawn American troops and abandoned American bases (and their weaponry) first, and then depended on the good will of Taliban terrorists not to behead the thousands of Afghans who had helped us during the twenty years we occupied their country.

“Partnering” with the Taliban, legitimizing them as a responsible government are the latest capitulations committed by Biden’s fascist-with-a-human face regime. Their cover for this betrayal is that the Taliban has changed and will be a responsible partner.

But here is what the religious zealots of the Taliban actually say: “We are the Taliban and this is our way and this will be our way till Judgement Day.” To encourage Biden’s treachery the Taliban’s spokesman put forward the reasonable-sounding offer to respect our culture if we will respect theirs. But what is their culture? Their culture is to throw acid in the face of any woman whose required Burka shows too much flesh, and to murder them if they are guilty of “fornication” - after a trial in which the jury is all male. Their culture is to behead an entire family in front of its father and then to behead him for working for the Americans. This atrocity occurred during the Kabul airlift after Joe Biden had made these barbaric killers the security for America’s withdrawal.

And it’s worse. Fearing America’s military might, which Joe Biden was busily crippling, the Taliban had actually offered America the privilege of providing the security for its withdrawal, which would have saved countless lives. Joe Biden rejected the offer.

In normal times, the remedy for Biden’s treason would be a firing squad or a life-term in a military prison. Today, who knows? Not a single general has been court-martialed for this disgraceful and dangerous surrender of American power, pride and national security. It is a surrender that will cost the lives of countless innocents not only in Afghanistan but around the world and in America itself. Biden’s response to this debacle? Full steam ahead and pretend defeat is - in Joe’s words - “an amazing success.” This is exactly the kind of response one would expect from a one-party regime.

After the Taliban took Kabul, and the country fell into the grips of Islamic barbarians, the Democrats in Congress were sitting up late into the night in the Capitol working on another emergency. They were putting together a $3.5 to $5 trillion bill to socialize the economy, and make every man, woman, and child in America dependent on the state. Their leader in this communist enterprise was Senator Bernie Sanders a lifelong half-wit supporter of Communist dictatorships and their failed economies, who is now the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee.

The Democrats proposed and inflicted all this damage with a one-vote majority in the Congress, which is the ultimate expression of their contempt for democratic order and their determination to establish a one-party state.

Unfortunately for them, but a light at the end of the tunnel for all Americans who love their country, the Democrat atrocities, aggressions, and failures have produced a reaction – a pro-American, pro-democracy counter-revolution that began with a parental revolt against indoctrination in the schools. This counter-revolution will sweep the Democrats from power in the coming mid-term elections, a transformation that cannot happen too quickly or too completely. The hour is very late and the condition of our country and our way of life is critical.

You Don't Say? Black Lives Matter Co-Founder, Patrisse Khan-Cullors, Has Purchased $1.4 Million Home in Secluded -- All White! -- Topanga Canyon

Woo boy, this story's a doozy, but entirely predictable, sadly. 

From Jonathan Turley, "Twitter Censors Criticism of BLM Founder Buying $1.4 Million Home In Predominantly White Neighborhood":

We have been discussing the expanding censorship on Twitter and social media. The latest example involves the story of Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Khan-Cullors, 37, and her purchase of a $1.4 million home in a secluded area of Los Angeles whose population is reputedly less than 2% black. The professed Marxist received considerable criticism for the purchase, including from Jason Whitlock, an African-America sports critic who has also been a critic of BLM. When Whitlock called out Khan-Cullors, Twitter promptly censored the tweet — leaving a notice that it was “no longer available.”

Last week, various cites like dirt.com reported, “A secluded mini-compound tucked into L.A.’s rustic and semi-remote Topanga Canyon was recently sold for a tad more than $1.4 million to a corporate entity that public records show is controlled by Patrisse Khan-Cullors, 37-year-old social justice visionary and co-founder of the galvanizing and, for some, controversial Black Lives Matter movement.”

It produced a firestorm of critics who noted that Cullors has long insisted that she and her BLM co-founder “are trained Marxists. We are super versed on, sort of, ideological theories.” Critics like Nick Arama of RedState pointed out: “[I]t’s interesting to note that the demographics of the area are only about 1.4% black people there. So not exactly living up to her creed there.”

Jason Whitlock posted a link to a story but was promptly censored by Twitter:

[SCREENSHOT HERE]

The controversy is illustrative of the age of Internet censors. Tweets, and in some cases Twitter accounts, vanish without explanation. Twitter is notorious for not responding to media inquiries over such censorship and even less forthcoming on the decision-making process behind such decisions.

If Whitlock was expressing his contempt for the purchase, it is core political speech.

Even the head of New York City’s Black Lives Matter chapter is calling for an independent investigation into the organization’s finances in the wake of the controversy. This controversy follows an Atlanta-based figure being criminally charged with fraud. According to the Justice Department, Sir Maejor Page, or Tyree Conyers-Page is accused of using a Facebook page called “Black Lives Matter of Greater Atlanta.”

The New York Post and other publications have reported that Cullors is eyeing expensive properties in other locations, including the Bahamas. However, it is not clear if this money came from BLM which has reportedly raised almost $100 million in donations from corporations and other sources. Indeed, Cullors seems to have ample sources of funds. She is married to Janaya Khan, a leader of BLM in Toronto, and published a best selling memoir of her life and then a follow up book. She also signed a lucrative deal with Warner Bros to develop and produce original programming across all platforms, including broadcast, cable and streaming. She has also been featured in various magazines like her recent collaboration with Jane Fonda.

The issue for me is not the house or claimed hypocrisy. It is the censorship of Twitter of such criticism. Cullors is a public figure who is subject to public scrutiny and commentary. Twitter is rife with a such criticism over the lifestyle choices of figures on the right ranging from Donald Trump Jr. to Rand Paul. That is an unfortunate aspect of being in a high visibility position. I would be equally concerned if criticism of Trump Jr.’s big game hunting exploits or Giuliani’s lavish tastes were censored...

Still more.

And at London's Daily Mail, "BLM founder is branded a 'FRAUD' after buying a $1.4 million home in an upscale mostly white enclave in L.A." 

Personally, I don't care much that this woman bought a ritzy house in "exclusive" Topanga Canyon (good for her!); and the Twitter censorship is par for the course, in any case; and is, perhaps, less interesting to me than it is to Mr. Turley.

It's the hypocrisy and --- the literally satanic --- double-standards. Not only can I not stand "Black Lives Matter," as their movement is, obviously, a sham that's virtually 100 percent responsible for the "B.L.M." riots last summer than burned down darned near every Democrat-run city in the entire country, but this woman, as noted above by Mr. Turley, is a self-declared "Marxist"; that is, she's a real, dyed-in-the-wool communist, and for her to be out there scooping up million dollar properties, not just in L.A., but perhaps in the Caribbean as well, that's a bit rich for me, and I find it absolutely disgusting. (As, for one thing, the wealth-creation derived from such purchases is literally the same anathema that these ideological and partisan ghouls are always yapping about, and, frankly, I often sympathize with these very same "concerns" that they have about "capitalist racist oppression" or "structural racism," or, well, on and on and on, blah blah). 

What is more, as political science professor, at a genuinely "minority-majority" college, a place really filled with the kind of "marginalized" kids that these "B.L.M." hacks and liars constantly say they're "all about," I can't even say how much this pissed me right the f*ck off. But that's life, and honestly, lately I mostly just "get with the program" at my school, because radical leftists already tried to get me fired ("cancelled") 10 years ago, and I have no interest in dealing with any such sort of related campus-based ideological conflicts again, despite the fact that I'm tenured. It's just too much. You become a pariah, and it's even worse, because you become a pariah to a lot of people with whom you'd had perfectly fine and collegial relationships prior to such libelous, illegal, and FUBAR attacks. 

I mean, if you've heard folks online, or in commentary pieces, etc., argue that "it's hard" for conservative faculty members on America's college and university campuses these days, well, you have no idea. And take it from me, because I'm a pretty hardy soul, but also pretty mellow and totally friendly to those with whom I work, but no matter: All that good cheer and outstanding professionalism (and professional relationships) goes out the window should you wind up in the cross-hairs of these truly satanic ideological and partisan monsters. 

While I would never say this to a student of mine, I really don't recommend anyone WHO IS NOT a freakin' Marxist to go into college or university teaching, and that's to say nothing of just recommending graduate training in the humanities or social sciences (or even English literature, etc.) to my students, because as bad as it all is, I'm not one to crush a young person's dreams, and I'll only speak frankly on the cancerous toxicity of "academe" if the student brings it up herself (or himself, or "themselves," or whatever). 

'Seig Heil for Hyatt'? Despicable Twitter Leftists Attack American Conservative Union for Imaginary 'Nazi Rune' at CPAC

I can't even on this one. 

I mean, who even notices this stuff? You'd have to be deranged and sickly obsessed demons pointing to something like this --- which is obviously true --- and clearly just one more attempt to disparage, libel, and destroy the obviously ordinary folks chanting "We Love You" for Donald Trump, and presumable other conservatives speaking at the conference, like awesome South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem.

And keep in mind, I haven't been to CPAC in over 10 years. It's a fun one-time experience, but it's not cheap. Besides, in the 2010s, lots of longstanding conservatives quit attending, because, for one thing, the place became more of a "meat-market" for teeny-boppers than a forum for serious political engagement. (And that's not to mention the awful treatment that Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer were subjected to, among others, basically being banned because they were, allegedly, "Islamophobic.")

So as you can see, I'm not a particularly big fan of the American Conservative Union, and particularly Matt Schlapp, who appears more like a glad-handing "good ole boy" than the leader of a vigorous grassroots movement. And while I like the mans's wife, Mercedes Schlapp, who was White House Director of Strategic Communications in Trump's administration, she's been back on Fox News quite a bit, and honestly, she also sounds like a puffed-up lobbyist for the G.O.P more than an oracle of movement conservatism. 

But all that said, I think the A.C.U. is absolutely right to hit back at the despicable Twitter trolls attacking Hyatt Hotels, and more importantly, repudiating Hyatt's own craven capitulation to ideological evil. See Forbes, for example, "How a Nazi Symbol at CPAC Turned Into a Massive Hyatt Public Relations Disaster."

F*cking leftist ghouls. These are people who actually deserve an American flagpole to the face. 

In any case, here's the response from David H. Safavian, General Counsel to the A.C.U, "A Response to Hyatt Hotels: We Will Not Be Canceled":

Mr. Thomas J. Pritzker 

Executive Chairman 

Hyatt Hotels 71 

South Wacker Drive 

Chicago, Illinois 60606

 

Dear Mr. Pritzker:

Contrary to Hyatt’s own mission statement of inclusivity, your company just attacked its own customer by caving into the pressures of the politically motivated social media agitators who seek to destroy CPAC, our attendees and speakers from across the country, and the millions of Americans who support our work. Hyatt made a decision to issue additional statements late last night after the conference ended that disparaged and defamed us. These statements appear to validate demonstrably false and malicious claims.

When we learned of the orchestrated assault on us, we immediately contacted your senior management to set the record straight. Together, we quickly responded to these slanderous accusations. Your hotel’s senior management was on notice and acknowledged that these claims were false and agreed to share any statement before its release. We agreed that coordination was critical so that the general public would know the truth and that you would treat your customer with honesty. Thus, we were shocked that the Hyatt waited until after the conference concluded to issue additional statements--ones that are irresponsible, untrue, and contribute to a climate of division and hatred.

For months we have collaborated with your team on logistics, including sharing, reviewing, and approving the stage design that was created by one of our subcontractors. The fact that no one on the Hyatt staff ever raised concerns during the process shows the ridiculous nature of your statements. Moreover, your statements falsely conceal your oversight role. In fact, the Hyatt Hotel, with our organization and subcontractors, approved and worked collaboratively to build this stage. Only after a coordinated far-left assault to destroy our conference arose did you succumb to lies and compound them with your own.

During this difficult time for our nation, we believe in Americans getting back to work and helping companies like yours to flourish. Indeed, you recruited us. We sought to work with you in good faith to help Hyatt workers and the Florida economy. In fact, countless employees expressed their immense gratitude for bringing CPAC to the Hyatt in Orlando, many stating that this very conference was the sole reason they had a job.

Our Jewish Board Members, staff, speakers, and attendees are appalled by the Hyatt leadership for not standing with us as we fight against antisemitism (a term that Hyatt fails to use in its statements). We would have hoped that our 10th annual Shabbat Dinner, daily Jewish prayer services, and speeches on the main stage from Jewish leaders, such as Ambassador David Friedman, Former Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel, and Rabbi Yitz Tendler would be enough to put an end to these outrageous falsehoods.

The theme of CPAC 2021 was “America UnCanceled.” It is tragic and reckless that Hyatt would choose to abandon its own mission statement of inclusivity and play into the hands of those who are attempting to silence legitimate political views.

Sincerely,

David H. Safavian

General Counsel

 

China Rations Electricity for Millions

Wow!

And just think, Gov. Gavin Newsom is trying to turn California into China! 

At NYT, "‘The Whole City Was Dark’: China Rations Electricity for Millions":

Warning of coal shortages, officials are trying to curb energy usage by telling residents not to use electric stoves and extinguishing lights on building facades and billboards.

In the city of Yiwu in eastern China, the authorities turned off streetlights for several days and ordered factories to open only part-time. In coastal Wenzhou, the government ordered some companies not to heat their offices unless temperatures are close to freezing. In southern Hunan Province, workers have reported climbing dozens of flights of stairs after elevators were shut down.

Large swaths of China are scrambling to restrict electricity use this winter, as the country’s rapid economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic and unexpectedly frigid temperatures have sent demand for power surging. Officials in at least three provinces — where a total of more than 150 million people live — have issued orders limiting energy use, warning of potential coal shortages.

Demand for coal is so high in the mining hub of Henan Province that buyers have been lining up in trucks at the gates of coal mines, jostling for access, according to a recent report in the state-run news media.

Many residents have responded to the restrictions with anxiety and confusion, worrying about being left in the cold or suffering hits to their businesses

Chinese officials have sought to remind citizens of the country’s ambitious environmental goals while reassuring them that there is plenty of energy to keep people warm and the economy humming.

“In general, please believe that our ability to ensure stable energy supply is not a problem,” Zhao Chenxin, secretary general of the National Development and Reform Commission, which steers energy policy, said on Monday.

But the drastic measures point to potential longer-term problems in China’s energy universe, as leaders juggle competing priorities.

China’s leader, Xi Jinping, has vowed to make China a climate leader and to make the country carbon-neutral by 2060. But the country still draws nearly 70 percent of its power from fossil fuels, predominantly coal, and those energy sources have helped propel China’s impressive recovery from the pandemic. By May of this year, China’s carbon dioxide emissions from energy production, cement making and other industrial uses were 4 percent higher than the year before.

“He’s got to wrestle with economic growth, economic structures, employment and the environment,” Philip Andrews-Speed, senior principal fellow at the Energy Studies Institute at the National University of Singapore, said of Mr. Xi.

Some of the present difficulties may also be self-inflicted.

Coastal areas of China depend on imported coal, including from Australia. But relations between the two countries have gone into free-fall this year, as Australia has, among other things, demanded an investigation into the origins of the coronavirus, which first emerged in China. China in turn has banned imports of Australian coal — leaving huge ships stranded at sea.

Chinese officials have denied that the ban on Australian coal is responsible for the current squeeze on energy, noting that in 2018 less than 8 percent of China’s coal consumption involved imported coal; much of Australia’s coal is also used for steel and other metals, not power. But the government has also acknowledged, with rare bluntness, the scale of the problem...

Keep reading.

How'd I Miss This?

Heh. 

I'm surprised I'm now just seeing this lady, who goes by WhatsHerFace. I'm dying.

Comparing U.S. History Textbooks in California and Texas

You gotta read this.

If you're raising a family in California, a traditional conservative family, start making plans to leave as soon as possible.

Texas would be good. Or anywhere else, sheesh.

At NYT:

1. 🚨 NEW: U.S. history textbooks are shaped by partisan politics, and then shape the next generation of voters. See how California and Texas teenagers encounter different American stories. https://t.co/bRCPbFVX6O

— Dana Goldstein (@DanaGoldstein) January 12, 2020

Democrats 'Rethink' Primary Campaign Strategy Around Race and Identity

I don't think they're really "rethinking" things so much as officially abandoning any effort to appeal to working class voters, especially white working class men in the Rustbelt. Frankly, this is like a replay of 2016, but with some scenes re-shot. More identity politics racism. More cowbell.

At Politico:

The Democratic primary, a contest once largely defined by ideology, is suddenly being re-framed around questions of race and identity https://t.co/2PDG0RCwkh

— POLITICO (@politico) November 25, 2019