Why let Chicago, Detroit and New York have all the fun? Hawaii corruption by the party of crime also deserves <a href="https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/ex-hawaii-senator-sentenced-to-40-months-for-taking-bribes/ar-AAZeUqu">a little attention</a>.


	English announced he was retiring last year due to health issues. His retirement will have to take place behind bars.

<blockquote>
	
		Former Senate Majority Leader J. Kalani English, 55, pleaded guilty to honest services wire fraud in February, admitting he accepted bribes from a Hawaii business owner in exchange for shaping legislation that would benefit a company involved in publicly financed cesspool conversion projects...

	
		English “peddled the power and influence of his position as a Hawaii State Senator and Majority Leader to enrich himself and betray the trust bestowed upon him by those he was elected to serve,” U.S. prosecutors said in a sentencing memo urging the judge to send him to prison for three-and-a-half years.

	
		The sentence, a little more than three years, must send a “stern and lasting message” that corruption of elected officials will be punished, the memo said.
</blockquote>


	Not all that long ago, English was <a href="https://www.breitbart.com/news/hawaii-obamas-birthplace-and-refuge/">praising</a> Obama.

<blockquote>
	
		“Hawaiians love Obama,” says J. Kalani English, a Democratic state senator. “He is one of us — he understands what aloha is, he understand what mana is.”&nbsp;
</blockquote>


	Obama and English both understand<a href="https://www.civilbeat.org/2022/07/feds-want-former-hawaii-lawmaker-who-took-bribes-to-spend-more-than-3-years-in-prison/"> "mana"</a> really well.

<blockquote>
	
		English pleaded guilty in February and&nbsp;admitted to accepting cash and other payments&nbsp;totaling more than $18,000 from Honolulu businessman Milton Choy. English leaked documents related to a wastewater working group to Choy in exchange for cash payments. He also accepted more money to first introduce, and then kill a bill that could have benefitted Choy’s business.

	
		“As the investigation progressed it became astoundingly clear that no matter the legislative ask, the answer from English would almost certainly be ‘yes.’ English’s behavior signaled that it was systemically normal for him to accept, and indeed expect, financial benefits in return for legislative favors,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Kenneth Sorenson wrote in a sentencing memorandum Friday.
</blockquote>


	And the party may just be<a href="https://www.civilbeat.org/2022/02/honolulu-businessman-milton-choy-had-been-working-for-years-with-feds-on-legislative-bribery-case/"> getting started</a>.

<blockquote>
	
		Choy is a prolific donor, as are his immediate family members and business associates. Choy, his family members, and his employees from various companies have donated more than $356,000 to political campaigns since 2014, according to campaign finance data. Of that, Choy has contributed more than $160,000 to the elections and reelections of numerous Democrats.

	
		Choy himself has donated to 55 campaigns — including 29 sitting lawmakers — since 2014. Money has gone to former Gov. Neil Abercrombie and current Gov. David Ige. He has most recently contributed to former Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell’s campaign for governor, and to Honolulu Mayor Rick Blangiardi’s campaign.
</blockquote>


	Culture of corruption.

Hawaii Senate Dem Majority Leader Gets 3 Years in Prison for Bribery

Why let Chicago, Detroit and New York have all the fun? Hawaii corruption by the party of crime also deserves a little attention.


	English announced he

Hawaii Senate Dem Majority Leader Gets 3 Years in Prison for Bribery

Dumping the country's oil reserves was the only strategy to lower energy prices that Biden would accept. He continues blocking domestic drilling and taxes remain high. The practical impact&nbsp;of the reserve releases was negligible and, worse still, 5 million barrels of oil from the reserve were actually <a href="https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/oil-from-u.s.-reserves-sent-overseas-as-gasoline-prices-stay-high">exported abroad</a>.

<blockquote>
	
		More than 5 million barrels of oil that were part of a historic U.S. emergency reserves release to lower domestic fuel prices were exported to Europe and Asia last month, according to data and sources, even as U.S. gasoline and diesel prices hit record highs.

	
		About 1 million barrels per day is being released from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) through October. The flow is draining the SPR, which last month fell to the lowest since 1986.&nbsp;
</blockquote>


	Considering the scale of even the national use, 20 million a day, there was never going to be much of an impact here.

<blockquote>
	
		U.S. officials have said oil prices could be higher if the SPR had not been tapped.
</blockquote>


	Ah, the hypothetical.&nbsp;


	Anyway the oil went all over.

<blockquote>
	
		The fourth-largest U.S. oil refiner, Phillips 66&nbsp;PSX.N, shipped about 470,000 barrels of sour crude from the Big Hill SPR storage site in Texas to Trieste, Italy, according to U.S. Customs data. Trieste is home to a pipeline that sends oil to refineries in central Europe.

	
		Atlantic Trading &amp; Marketing (ATMI), an arm of French oil major TotalEnergies&nbsp;TTEF.PA, exported 2 cargoes of 560,000 barrels each, the data showed.

	
		Cargoes of SPR crude were also headed to the Netherlands and to a Reliance&nbsp;RELI.NS&nbsp;refinery in India, an industry source said. A third cargo headed to China, another source said.
</blockquote>


	Yes, the story wouldn't be complete without China. Much like the PPP disaster, the government efforts invariably only punish Americans and reward Communist China.

Barrels of Oil Released by Biden From Reserve Were Sent to China

Dumping the country's oil reserves was the only strategy to lower energy prices that Biden would accept. He continues blocking domestic drilling and taxes

Barrels of Oil Released by Biden From Reserve Were Sent to China

Racist DOJ official&nbsp;Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke announced that the Biden administration is targeting Arizona for trying to prevent non-citizens from voting.


	At issue is an Arizona law asking voters to show proof of citizenship. What should be an elementary and common sense requirement is being opposed by the Biden administration, officially on technical grounds, but as a practical matter because it is trying to protect voter fraud.


	Why fight against asking voters to show a legal right to vote unless...


	1. They are your voters


	2. You believe that they don't have a legal right to vote


	“The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Arizona is dedicated to protecting voters in the state,” said U.S. Attorney Gary M. Restaino for the District of Arizona. “We are proud to join the Civil Rights Division in bringing this lawsuit to ensure that all eligible citizens in Arizona have the opportunity to register to vote and exercise their fundamental right to participate in our elections.”&nbsp;


	Voters have the right to vote. And they have the right to protect the legitimacy of their vote by passing common sense voter tests to fight fraud.

Biden Administration's Racist DOJ Official Seeks to Protect Non-Citizen Voting in Arizona

Racist DOJ official&nbsp;Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke announced that the Biden administration is targeting Arizona for trying to prevent non-

Biden Administration's Racist DOJ Official Seeks to Protect Non-Citizen Voting in Arizona

Democrats want to make the midterms about abortion. There's one big problem. Americans are upset about the economy and don't care about abortion.&nbsp;


	In the latest <a href="https://www.monmouth.edu/polling-institute/reports/MonmouthPoll_US_070522/">Monmouth poll</a>,&nbsp;33% of Americans rank inflation as their top concern while 15% list gas prices. 9% mention the economy and 6% grocery prices. And only 5% list abortion.


	Over 70% list various economic concerns. Social hot button issues are on the back burner. So is national security. And the second amendment.


	57% also say that the actions of the federal government have hurt them, only 8% say that they have helped them.


	So much for the abortion or BLM or gender identity midterms. When people can't afford to eat or drive, they don't care about the hot button issues.

33% of Americans Worry About Inflation, 15% Gas Prices, 5% Abortion

Democrats want to make the midterms about abortion. There's one big problem. Americans are upset about the economy and don't care about abortion.&nbsp;

33% of Americans Worry About Inflation, 15% Gas Prices, 5% Abortion

For the past few years, the entertainment industry inhabited a strange world in which massive amounts of streaming programming were unleashed on an unprecedented level. Led by Netflix, Amazon&nbsp;and followed by tradiitional&nbsp;industry competitors like Disney&nbsp;and HBO Max, the sheer amount of money being spent was astronomical, in the billions, and the hours of programming, the number of shows made it Peak TV.


	And then Netflix and its business model crashed.


	In the familiar Dot Com pattern, a whole lot of money was chasing the promise of endless growth that would usher in its own business model. Now the crash <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2022-07-04/the-age-of-peak-tv-is-ending-an-age-of-austerity-is-beginning">has ended Peak TV.</a>

<blockquote>
	
		The sudden decline in Netflix’s share price&nbsp;and the&nbsp;growing fear of a recession&nbsp;have forced&nbsp;Hollywood into a new period of fiscal austerity. This manifests in ways big and small. A TV director who made&nbsp;$4 million a year is now getting $750,000. Mid-budget movies are being shelved. Broadcast TV budgets have dropped more than 30%...

	
		This is a significant departure from&nbsp;the last few years when&nbsp;media companies tripped over themselves to produce any halfway decent idea. The industry made 559 scripted shows last year, up more than 200 since 2013, the year “House of Cards” debuted...

	
		But the age of peak TV is coming&nbsp;to a close, and that will impact&nbsp;almost every sector of an industry where budgets, valuations and strategic plans were predicated on a booming&nbsp;market for new programming.&nbsp;

	
		Just a few months ago, any production company with a few credits to its name was suddenly worth&nbsp;hundreds of millions of dollars. (It helped if you were aligned with a celebrity like&nbsp;Reese Witherspoon&nbsp;or LeBron James.) Now many of the companies looking to raise capital or sell themselves are&nbsp;having a harder time.
</blockquote>


	Did Hollywood nuke its own business model?


	Streaming was supposed to be the future. Hollywood cannibalized its theatrical business for streaming. Every studio either tried to become Netflix or market to it. Or both.


	What's the future now? The plan to have every studio sell membership to its gated subscription service looks increasingly shaky especially in a troubled economy. Amazon and Netflix still want to be the dominant platform. Hollywood tried to compete with them and the result broke everyone.&nbsp;


	The entertainment industry can't grow further without China. And China wants to grow its own industry. And investors will now be skeptical of dot com promises of infinite growth.&nbsp;


	 
	&nbsp;

Hollywood Nuked Itself

For the past few years, the entertainment industry inhabited a strange world in which massive amounts of streaming programming were unleashed on an

Hollywood Nuked Itself

Within one week, the Left's allies in the political Establishment joined forces in their quest to destroy democracy for the sake of saving democracy.


	On April 21, President Barack Obama <a href="https://reclaimthenet.org/transcript-of-president-barack-obamas-speech-at-stanford-april-21-2022/?msclkid=7a2b5c58c67511ec9b63012f85b49947">spoke</a> at a symposium Stanford organized to address social media problems. His recommendations included more government regulation against "toxic information," which he defined as "lies, conspiracy theories, junk science, quackery, White supremacist, racist tracts, misogynist screeds."


	"You just have to raise enough questions, spread enough dirt, plant enough conspiracy theorizing that citizens no longer know what to believe," Obama said. "Once they lose trust in their leaders, in mainstream media, in political institutions, in each other, in the possibility of truth, the game’s won.”


	On the same day, Hillary Clinton tweeted support for the European Union's Digital Services Act, which "sets for the first time the rules on how Big Tech should keep users safe online," especially regarding "misinformation or propaganda in light of Covid-19," the Financial Times reported.


	"For too long, tech platforms have amplified disinformation and extremism with no accountability," Clinton <a href="https://twitter.com/hillaryclinton/status/1517247388716613634?msclkid=7aa4fd17c68011ecb2c230d4d1d5bc3b">tweeted</a>. "The EU is poised to do something about it. I urge our transatlantic allies to push the Digital Services Act across the finish line and bolster global democracy before it's too late."


	Then on April 27, the Department of Homeland Security announced the creation of a Disinformation Governance Board, which would promote the Biden "Administration's" narrative on "irregular migration and Russia."


	It should surprise nobody that those actions coincided with Elon Musk's attempt to buy Twitter, increasingly known for banishing users who express opinions that contradict "woke" ideology or the Democratic Party's policies. But the Left's panic represents far more than fear over losing a convenient means to control narratives.


	Such panic reflects the pervasive influence of an idea that violates the nation's basic political and cultural values.


	That idea is repressive tolerance, a concept philosopher Herbert <a href="https://www.marxists.org/glossary/people/m/a.htm#marcuse-herbert">Marcuse</a> promoted. A member of the neo-Marxist <a href="https://www.marxists.org/subject/frankfurt-school/index.htm">Frankfurt School</a> that developed "critical theory," Marcuse provided the foundation for today's cancel culture, university speech codes and online censorship.


	In his 1965 <a href="https://www.marcuse.org/herbert/publications/1960s/1965-repressive-tolerance-1969.pdf?msclkid=62f715b2c68311ecb51ab03559878cb9">essay</a>, "Repressive Tolerance," Marcuse dismissed the traditional definition of tolerance. Instead, he advocated an institutional bias that advances left-wing ideas and suppresses opposing ones.


	"Liberating tolerance, then, would mean intolerance against movements from the Right, and toleration of movements from the Left," Marcuse wrote. "As to the scope of this tolerance and intolerance ... it would extend to the stage of action as well as of discussion and propaganda, of deed as well as of word."


	Marcuse even advocated "undemocratic means" in the name of social justice to allow a "subversive majority" to realign society. The means Marcuse outlined are all-too-familiar today:


	"They would include the withdrawal of toleration of speech and assembly from groups and movements which promote aggressive policies, armament, chauvinism, discrimination on the grounds of race and religion, or which oppose the extension of public services, social security, medical care, etc.


	"Moreover, the restoration of freedom of thought may necessitate new and rigid restrictions on teachings and practices in the educational institutions which, by their very methods and concepts, serve to enclose the mind within the established universe of discourse and behavior -- thereby precluding a priori a rational evaluation of the alternatives."


	In other words, only left-wing ideas and solutions could be discussed, considered and adopted, as Marcuse reiterated in a second essay in 1968:


	"Tolerance would be restricted with respect to movements of a demonstrably aggressive or destructive character (destructive of the prospects for peace, justice, and freedom for all). Such discrimination would also be applied to movements opposing the extension of social legislation to the poor, weak, disabled. (Parenthesis in original)


	"As against the virulent denunciations that such a policy would do away with the sacred liberalistic principle of equality for 'the other side,' I maintain that there are issues where either there is no 'other side' in any more than a formalistic sense, or where 'the other side' is demonstrably 'regressive' and impedes possible improvement of the human condition."


	Compare Marcuse's position with some of Obama's comments at Stanford:


	"A regulatory structure, a smart one, needs to be in place, designed in consultation with tech companies, and experts and communities that are affected, including communities of color and others that sometimes are not well represented here in Silicon Valley, that will allow these companies to operate effectively while also slowing the spread of harmful content.


	"It’s not just that these platforms have -- with narrow exceptions -- been largely agnostic regarding the kind of information available and connections made on their sites. It’s that in the competition between truth and falsehood, cooperation and conflict, the very design of these platforms seems to be tilting us in the wrong direction."


	Obama even manufactured a moral equivalence between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Steve Bannon, President Donald Trump's former campaign advisor and host of the podcast, "War Room," to reinforce his point:


	"People like Putin and Steve Bannon, for that matter, understand it’s not necessary for people to believe this information in order to weaken democratic institutions. You just have to flood a country’s public square with enough raw sewage."


	Repressive tolerance aggravates a phenomenon that goes beyond "woke" ideology, one that FrontPage Magazine <a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/02/what-if-conspiracy-real-joseph-hippolito/">twice</a> <a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/03/big-media-and-big-tech-collude-control-thought-joseph-hippolito/">examined</a>. Political and corporate interests use social media to manufacture supposedly grass-roots opinion. Techniques include building ostensibly independent social media accounts that disguise the interests behind them.


	Those campaigns received a cynical nickname: astroturf.


	"The whole point of astroturf is to try to give the impression there’s widespread support for or against an agenda when there’s not," <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bYAQ-ZZtEU">said</a> independent journalist Sharyl Attkisson, who won five Emmys at CBS News. "Astroturf seeks to manipulate you into changing your opinion by making you feel as if you’re an outlier when you’re not.


	"Special interests have unlimited time and money to figure out new ways to spin us while cloaking their role. Surreptitious astroturf methods are now more important to these interests than traditional lobbying of Congress. There’s an entire industry built around it in Washington."


	Astroturfing includes manipulating Wikipedia, arguably the most used online resource.


	"Anonymous Wikipedia editors control and co-opt pages on behalf of special interests," Attkisson said. "They forbid and reverse edits that go against their agenda. They skew and delete information in blatant violation of Wikipedia's own established policies with impunity."


	Another technique involves making incessant personal attacks, essential parts of the "woke" arsenal.


	"Hallmarks of astroturf include use of inflammatory language, such as 'crank,' 'quack,' 'nutty', 'lies,' 'paranoid,' 'pseudo,' and 'conspiracy,' " Attkisson said. "Use of the charged language tests well. People hear something's a myth, maybe they find it on Snopes and they instantly declare themselves too smart to fall for it."


	Add such epithets as "racist," "homophobe," "climate denier," "insurrectionist" and "anti-vaxxer."


	"Be aware when interests attack an issue by controversializing or attacking the people, personalities, and organizations surrounding rather than addressing the facts," Attkisson said. "That could be astroturf."


	Personal attacks intend to intimidate anyone questioning a prevailing narrative.


	"Astroturfers tend to reserve all of their public skepticism for those exposing wrongdoing rather than the wrongdoers," Attkisson said. "In other words, instead of questioning authority, they question those who question authority."


	Obama combined astroturf and the idea of repressive tolerance in his speech to address two ongoing issues: the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines and the integrity of the 2020 Presidential election.


	"The fact that scientists developed safe, effective vaccines in record time is an unbelievable achievement," he said. "And yet despite the fact that we’ve now, essentially clinically tested the vaccine on billions of people worldwide, around one in five Americans is still willing to put themselves at risk and put their families at risk rather than get vaccinated. People are dying because of misinformation.”


	Those remarks ignore the growing evidence that those vaccines <a href="https://www.journalofinfection.com/article/S0163-4453(21)00593-4/fulltext">fail</a> to prevent the spread of COVID-19, contain deadly <a href="https://www.theepochtimes.com/newly-released-pfizer-documents-reveal-covid-jab-dangers_4355020.html?est=6k6WQbVrWy%2B2GIXEoMZQUvpoeRaSlKBYo7aTPjqUaFiB%2BiBbmefDe4RbXO8%3D">side effects</a>, especially for the <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/safety/myocarditis.html?s_cid=11374:pericarditis%20vaccine:sem.ga:p:RG:GM:gen:PTN:FY21">heart</a>, and <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8538446/#sec3-viruses-13-02056title">irreparably damage immune systems</a>.


	In December, FrontPage Magazine <a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/12/brave-new-world-athletes-heart-problems-joseph-hippolito/">reported</a> on the possibility that COVID-19 vaccines and boosters cause heart problems in highly trained athletes. More <a href="https://www.theepochtimes.com/the-alarming-trends-in-covid-jab-side-effects_4319841.html?rs=SHRWCNMH">recent</a> <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.30.21262866v1">studies</a> <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8912977/">confirmed</a> the links between the vaccines, pericarditis and myocarditis, especially in children and young adults.


	When addressing the 2020 Presidential election, Obama dismissed the idea of potential fraud:


	"President Trump’s own attorney general has said that the Justice Department uncovered no evidence of widespread voter fraud. A review of the ballots in Arizona’s largest county, the results of which were endorsed by some pretty courageous local Republicans, because many of them were harassed and received death threats, actually found more votes for President Biden and fewer votes for President Trump. And yet today, as we speak, a majority of Republicans still insist that President Biden’s victory was not legitimate. That’s a lot of people."


	One county in Arizona, however, signifies no trend. Increasing <a href="https://2020electionirregularities.com/">evidence</a> shows numerous irregularities in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin -- at least. So does Dinesh D'Souza's documentary, "2000 Mules," which chronicles nationwide ballot stuffing.


	But the DHS's Disinformation Governance Board represents the ultimate embrace of repressive tolerance. Serving as director is Nina Jankowicz, who <a href="https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/biden-s-disinformation-chief-is-trump-dossier-author-fan-and-hunter-laptop-doubter/ar-AAWG5q8">promoted</a> the now-discredited ideas that Hunter Biden's laptop was what she called a "Trump campaign product," and that Trump colluded with Russian agents to win the 2016 election.


	Given the Biden "Administration's" embrace of the kind of "woke" ideology Marcuse would favor, that board represents the ultimate rejection of the marketplace of ideas, which forms the philosophical basis for the Constitution.


	Joseph Hippolito is a freelance writer and a regular contributor to FrontPage Magazine. His commentaries have appeared in The Federalist, The Stream, Wall Street Journal, Jerusalem Post and National Post.

The 'Woke' Rationale for Censorship

Within one week, the Left's allies in the political Establishment joined forces in their quest to destroy democracy for the sake of saving democracy.


	On

Californians received a reprieve from a bill that would force workers to get COVID-19 vaccines, yet the state's residents still face proposals to make similar mandates permanent in other areas of life.


	On March 29, Assembly Member Buffy Wicks <a href="https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-03-29/one-of-the-most-far-reaching-vaccine-mandate-bills-in-california-will-not-move-forward">withdrew</a> AB 1993 less than 24 hours before its first <a href="https://albr.assembly.ca.gov/sites/albr.assembly.ca.gov/files/Agenda%203-30-22.pdf">reading</a> in a committee hearing. Had the Legislature passed <a href="https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220AB1993">AB 1993</a>, all employees and contractors would have to prove they received two doses of an approved COVID-19 vaccine within 45 days, as FrontPage Magazine <a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/03/coming-medical-dictatorship-joseph-hippolito/">reported</a>. The state's Department of Fair Employment and Housing, the Department of Public Health and the Division of Occupational Safety and Health would determine exemptions.


	But Wicks and her fellow members of the self-proclaimed <a href="https://sd06.senate.ca.gov/news/2022-01-19-legislators-form-vaccine-work-group-boost-public-health-policies">Vaccine Work Group</a> introduced six other bills that would turn California into a medical dictatorship. The all-Democratic group includes Assembly Members Cecilia Aguiar-Curry, Evan Low and Akilah Weber, and Senators Josh Newman, Richard Pan, and Scott Wiener.


	Three weeks into the Legislature's current session, the Vaccine Work Group <a href="https://calmatters.org/health/coronavirus/2022/03/california-vaccine-laws/">went to work</a>. On Jan. 20, Wiener and Pan introduced <a href="https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB866">Senate Bill 866</a>, which would enable teens aged 12-18 to get COVID-19 vaccines without their parents’ knowledge.


	Pan followed Jan. 24 with <a href="https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB871">SB 871</a>, which requires children to be immunized against COVID-19. On Feb. 7, Weber introduced <a href="https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220AB1797">AB 1797</a>, which forces doctors and pharmacists to send vaccination information on children to the state's immunization registry. That information must be grouped by race and ethnicity.


	Wicks joined Aguiar-Curry, Low and Weber to introduce AB 1993 on Feb. 10. Four days later, Low <a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/03/coming-medical-dictatorship-joseph-hippolito/">presented</a> AB 2098, which would allow the state to suspend the license of any doctor who spreads "misinformation" about COVID-19 or vaccines. Pan finished the onslaught Feb. 18 with two bills. <a href="https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1464">SB 1464</a> would require police and sheriffs to enforce public health orders or lose state funding. <a href="https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB1479">SB 1479</a> would force all schools to test teachers, students and staff members for COVID-19.


	Ironically, all that legislation contradicts the science that Democrats claim to revere. Four of the bills concern children and teenagers, yet The Lancet <a href="https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanchi/article/PIIS2352-4642(21)00066-3/fulltext">indicated</a> that children are far less likely to contract COVID-19 because they have natural immunity, a fact that the British Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunization <a href="https://www.theepochtimes.com/the-alarming-trends-in-covid-jab-side-effects_4319841.html?utm_source=ref_share&amp;utm_campaign=copy&amp;rs=SHRWCNMH&amp;">reinforced</a>.


	In June, the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) followed by publishing <a href="https://www.theepochtimes.com/the-alarming-trends-in-covid-jab-side-effects_4319841.html?utm_source=ref_share&amp;utm_campaign=copy&amp;rs=SHRWCNMH&amp;">data</a> that showed the mRNA vaccine's dangers for children and teenagers. The chance of developing heart problems increased dramatically for anyone aged 12-17 who received a second dose of a COVID-19 vaccine with mRNA. A <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.30.21262866v1">second</a> study published in September revealed similar findings. In both studies, boys experienced an especially dangerous risk.


	A Brazilian study published in February determined that the mRNA vaccines <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Cadegiani-Flavio/publication/358834540_Catecholamines_are_the_key_trigger_of_mRNA_SARS-CoV-2_and_mRNA_COVID-19_vaccine-induced_myocarditis_and_sudden_deaths_a_compelling_hypothesis_supported_by_epidemiological_anatomopathological_molecular/links/621b97b99947d339eb6e529a/Catecholamines-are-the-key-trigger-of-mRNA-SARS-CoV-2-and-mRNA-COVID-19-vaccine-induced-myocarditis-and-sudden-deaths-a-compelling-hypothesis-supported-by-epidemiological-anatomopathological-molecul.pdf?origin=publication_detail">increase</a> the production of substances that trigger myocarditis and sudden death.


	Stephanie Seneff, a senior research scientist from MIT, and Kathy Dopp, an independent policy analyst, found even more frightening <a href="https://www.skirsch.com/covid/Seneff_costBenefit.pdf">tendencies</a> after analyzing vaccination data. Children and teenagers were 51 times more likely to die from the vaccine itself than from COVID-19 if they had never been inoculated. Seneff and Dopp also found that the mRNA vaccines actually increase the chance of contracting and dying from COVID-19.


	That finding corresponds with a <a href="https://www.journalofinfection.com/article/S0163-4453(21)00392-3/fulltext">study</a> published in August in the Journal of Infection, a peer-reviewed magazine from the British Infection Association. The study found that the mRNA vaccine increased the chances of being infected with the Delta variant. The researchers even recommended that manufacturers change their vaccines to reduce the risk.


	In December, the Journal published <a href="https://www.journalofinfection.com/article/S0163-4453(21)00593-4/fulltext">another</a> study showing that a second COVID-19 shot failed to increase immunity in anyone who had the disease and already had been vaccinated.


	In its Feb. 24 <a href="https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1057599/Vaccine_surveillance_report_-_week-8.pdf?fbclid=IwAR1BzxlfpPgI7PNnE3twD8bL7dWSDYANBrfK4wktcVM8Fn48McDClFUb0T0">report</a> on COVID-19, the United Kingdom's Health Security Agency <a href="https://dailyexpose.uk/2022/03/01/russia-distraction-uk-gov-revealed-triple-vaccinated-account-9-in-10-covid-deaths/">revealed</a> that between Jan. 24 and Feb. 20:


	-- 72.8 percent of vaccinated British patients contracted COVID-19, including 50.5 percent of the triple vaccinated.


	-- Among patients hospitalized with COVID-19, 72.8 percent took the vaccine, and 53.5 percent received three shots.


	-- 88.5 percent of those who died from COVID-19 were vaccinated, including 64.2 percent of the triple vaccinated. Out of the total number of deaths, only 11.5 percent were not vaccinated.


	Given their own research, Seneff and Dopp reached a logical <a href="https://www.skirsch.com/covid/Seneff_costBenefit.pdf">conclusion</a>.


	"There is no evidence that vaccines reduce community spread and transmission," they wrote. "Thus, vaccine mandates are not based on sound science and are ill-advised."


	So why does the Vaccine Work Group and its Democratic allies promote them? Because instead of working for the people those legislators represent, they work for the drug companies that fill their campaign treasuries.


	As FrontPage Magazine <a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/03/coming-medical-dictatorship-joseph-hippolito/">reported</a> in “The Coming Medical Dictatorship,” four members of the Vaccine Work Group plus two of AB 1993's co-authors received substantial donations from pharmaceutical corporations and trade associations for the legislators' 2020 campaigns. FrontPage Magazine also revealed in the same <a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/03/coming-medical-dictatorship-joseph-hippolito/">article</a> Big Pharma's attempts to influence not only state legislatures but such federal agencies as the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control.


	Campaign contributions, however, pale compared to raw power. The Vaccine Work Group's activism represents the Democratic Party’s embrace of despotism to promote the supposed common good. As Breitbart's John Hayward <a href="https://twitter.com/Doc_0/status/1493575465956696066">wrote</a>, extending a public emergency and instilling mass fear become effective techniques for amassing power.


	"Perpetual states of emergency have replaced perpetual states of war as the preferred vehicle for increasing authoritarian power,” Hayward wrote. “Emergencies also encourage a more submissive mindset, which is essential for political power to grow. Obedience is the necessary fuel for power…. Submission nourishes obedience.”


	Submission also demands suppressing information, as AB 2098 would do.


	“The pandemic greatly increased the free world’s appetite for ‘controlled’ authoritarianism,” Hayward <a href="https://twitter.com/Doc_0/status/1493575465956696066">wrote</a> before continuing in a sarcastic vein. “A good emergency can be kept rolling indefinitely. People are prone to consuming misinformation and turning against their wise rulers. They can thwart the noble efforts of visionary politicians by voting them out of office.”


	Now imagine that most of the Vaccine Work Group's remaining legislation, if not all of it, passes. As FrontPage Magazine asked, how far would California’s Democrats go, given the Left’s alliance with Silicon Valley?


	ResearchandMarkets.com provides a terrifying answer. In December, the website began offering a <a href="https://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/5134311/socialcredit-market-by-physical-and-cyber">report</a> that shows the opportunities in the emerging social credit market. Social credit is the technological system China uses to monitor its citizens and enforce politically acceptable behavior.


	The COVID-19 pandemic provided the impetus for massive interest in social credit systems, the report stated. Those systems would provide $16.1 billion in investment opportunities by 2026, when social credit will become mainstream, the report added. Such systems would include advanced computing, AI and biometrics. Optical equipment alone represents a $723 million opportunity.


	Among the companies the report mentions are Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, Tencent and Toshiba.


	"Social credit systems represent the ability to identify (mostly people but also some 'things') and track activities for purposes of grading behaviors and applying 'social credit' scoring," ResearchandMarkets.com summarized. "A given grading/scoring methodology depends largely on social credit system objectives and metrics."


	So if legislators are willing to accept campaign contributions from Big Pharma, why not from Big Tech firms that want to implement the kind of societal oppression Democrats increasingly favor?


	Hayward provided the obvious <a href="https://twitter.com/Doc_0/status/1496481556734656523">answer</a>:

<blockquote>
	
		Beware the myth of Benevolent Authoritarianism, because it's never benevolent at all, not even at the outset. Those managing the system simply cannot respect their subjects as equals, even if they claim to love them and want the best for them.

	
		Liberty dies, absent respect.
</blockquote>


	Joseph Hippolito is a freelance writer and a regular contributor to FrontPage Magazine. His commentaries have appeared in The Federalist, The Stream, Wall Street Journal, Jerusalem Post and National Post.

California’s Democrats Pull One Vaccine Mandate Bill

Californians received a reprieve from a bill that would force workers to get COVID-19 vaccines, yet the state's residents still face proposals to make similar

The world's most respected producer of family entertainment has decided to sacrifice children to the deities of "woke" ideology.


	Disney -- which gave the world Mickey Mouse, Disneyland and other beloved aspects of popular culture -- announced it will actively promote normalizing homosexual and transgender identity while resisting any opposition to the LGBTQ agenda.


	The entertainment giant made that decision as part of its fight against two Southern governors trying to protect children and reinforce parental authority. Disney opposed a Florida bill, which Gov. Ron DeSantis signed March 28, that prohibited school authorities from encouraging “classroom discussion about sexual orientation or gender identity in primary grade levels.”


	Meanwhile, Disney joined other corporations such as Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft in opposing Texas Gov. Greg Abbott's order to investigate sex-change operations on children as illegal and possible child abuse. In a Feb. 22 letter the governor sent to Jaime Masters, commissioner for the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, Abbott wrote:

<blockquote>
	
		"It is already against the law to subject Texas children to a wide variety of elective procedures for gender transitioning, including reassignment surgeries that can cause sterilization, mastectomies, removals of otherwise healthy body parts, and administration of puberty-blocking drugs or supraphysiologic doses of testosterone or estrogen."
</blockquote>


	Disney CEO Bob Chapek disclosed the company's decision to fight Abbott's order during a March 21 meeting, which featured another announcement: Disney will create a task force to design more children's content featuring homosexual and transgender identity and behavior.


	"The company said the task force will enlist the help of experts to develop a concrete plan to ensure Disney is ‘a force for good’ for LGBTQ+ communities, especially children and family," Reuters reported March 22.


	As part of that commitment, a same-sex kiss cut from the new film Lightyear, part of the Toy Story franchise, would be restored.


	"We know the moment requires urgency, and words are not enough," Chapek said. "So we are taking some actions right now."


	Chapek's comment reflects his desire to appease an increasingly "woke" base of executives, employees and contractors who went apoplectic on social media when Florida's legislature passed the aforementioned bill March 9. The CEO contacted De Santis that day "to express our disappointment and concern that if the legislation becomes law, it could be used to unfairly target gay, lesbian, non-binary and transgender kids and families," Chapek said.


	“We were opposed to the bill from the outset,” he added. “But we chose not to take a public position on it because we thought we could be more effective working behind-the-scenes, engaging directly with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.”


	DeSantis replied the next day.


	"When you have companies that have made a fortune out of being family-friendly and catering to families and young kids, they should understand that parents of young kids do not want this injected into their kindergarten classroom," he said. "In Florida, our policies are going to be based on the best interests of Florida citizens, not on the musing of ‘woke’ corporations"


	In response, Disney employees who supported the LGBTQ agenda staged walkouts. ESPN, which Disney owns, even interrupted its coverage of the NCAA women's basketball tournament March 18 with two minutes of silence to support transgender athletes. On March 22, ESPN followed with a Twitter thread that began with this statement:

<blockquote>
	
		"ESPN believes in inclusivity and denounces legislation and actions across the United States that infringe on any human rights. We stand with our LGBTQIA+ colleagues, friends, families and fans."
</blockquote>


	But Disney goes beyond human rights, as the Manhattan Institute's Christopher Rufo demonstrated March 30.


	Rufo posted three brief Twitter videos showing Disney executives embracing and promoting the alphabet agenda. Executive Producer Latoya Raveneau said Disney management "has been so welcoming to my not-at-all secret gay agenda" before continuing in a happily animated vein.


	"Whenever I could, I was just basically adding queerness," Raveneau said. "No one would stop me, and no one was trying to stop me."


	Colin Wright, an evolutionary biologist and a contributing editor at Quillette, described Raveneau's enthusiasm succinctly:

<blockquote>
	
		"Gender ideology indoctrination is gay conversion therapy."
</blockquote>


	Disney is so committed that not only is it removing "gendered greetings," as Diversity and Inclusion Manager Vivian Ware described them. It purportedly plans to create 50 percent of its future characters with homosexual or transgender identities.


	Instead of welcoming visitors to Disneyland and Walt Disney World with "Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls," Ware said she trained employees to say, "Hello, everyone," "Hello, friends," "Dreamers of all ages" and similar phrases. Ware added she is training employees in concessions and souvenirs to be more aware of gender identity.


	"We don't want to just assume because somebody might be presenting as female in our interpretation, that they may not want to be called 'princess,' " Ware said. "Let's think differently about how we really engage with our guests in a meaningful and inclusive way that makes it magical and memorable for everyone."


	Karey Burke, president of Disney General Entertainment Content, emphasized more overt homosexual and transgender identities for future characters, with perhaps as many as 50 percent representing the alphabet community.


	"One of our execs stood up and said, 'You know, we only had a handful of queer leads in our content,' " Burke said. "I went, 'What? That can't be true!' And I realized, 'Oh, it actually is true.' We have many, many, many LGBTQIA characters in our stories and yet, we don't have enough leads and narratives in which gay characters just get to be gay characters and not have to be about gay stories. That's been very, very eye opening for me."


	Such a philosophy permeated the March 21 meeting, as the Daily Wire's Megan Basham reported. After Chapek spoke, “a panel of LGBT activists gave a talk one Disney staffer said was 'about wanting Disney to indoctrinate kids,' " Basham reported.


	The staffer described similar presentations "as a strategy session for circumventing the will of mothers and fathers," Basham reported.


	"These activist employees and outside organizations recognize Disney’s cultural significance," the employee told Basham. "They want to use the company to make an end-run around parents through content creation and political pressure. They see it as their mission to rescue the next generation from their conservative parents."


	Rescued for what? The sheriff's department in Polk County, Fla. provides a possible and disturbing answer.


	On March 16, the department announced that a sting operation resulted in 108 suspects being arrested for human trafficking. Four worked for Disney.


	A 27-year-old lifeguard at Disney’s Polynesian Village Resort at Walt Disney World allegedly sent sexually explicit pictures and messages to an undercover agent posing as a 14-year-old girl. Another suspect was a 24-year-old man who worked at a restaurant in the park. Two others were a 45-year-old IT expert and a 27-year-old software developer.


	"Four arrests of this magnitude in a week is simply remarkable," Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said March 16.


	Disney has long had problems with child predators in its work force, as Ruso wrote March 31 for City Journal. In 2014, for example, CNN published its six-month investigation showing that at least 35 Disney employees were arrested for sex crimes against children in the previous eight years. Charges included owning child pornography and arranging to meet children and teenagers for sex.


	Yet despite the risks in embracing the alphabet agenda, Burke spoke with the assurance of radical utopians throughout history when she declared, "we just can't allow each other to go backwards."


	Ironically, by embracing that agenda, Disney is doing more than going backwards. It is destroying its historical identity.


	"This is a complete institutional takeover," the anonymous staffer told the Daily Wire. "Disney is lost."


	Joseph Hippolito is a freelance writer and a regular contributor to FrontPage Magazine. His commentaries have appeared in The Federalist, The Stream, Wall Street Journal, Jerusalem Post and National Post.

Disney's Child Sacrifice

The world's most respected producer of family entertainment has decided to sacrifice children to the deities of "woke" ideology.


	Disney -- which gave the

Today, Canada. Tomorrow, California?


	If that state's Democrats have their way, the Golden State could well become this nation's version of the Great White North.


	Two bills introduced five days apart in the Assembly, the Legislature's lower house, expose the Democrats' plan to exploit COVID-19 to seize absolute power.


	On Feb. 10, four Assembly members introduced <a href="https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220AB1993">AB 1993</a>, a bill that would force anybody with a job -- whether full-time employees or independent contractors -- to prove they were vaccinated against COVID-19. The bill states its provisions would expire when “the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices determines that COVID-19 vaccinations are no longer necessary for the health and safety of individuals."


	Then on Feb. 15, one of the members who introduced that bill proposed <a href="https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220AB2098">AB 2098</a>, which would rescind the medical license of any doctor circulating "misinformation" about COVID-19 or vaccines designed to treat it.


	Six Democrats are promoting both bills. They are Assembly members Buffy Wicks, Evan Low, Cecilia Aguiar-Curry and Akilah Weber, and state senators Richard Pan and Scott Wiener. Four other Democrats are among AB 1993's co-authors. Senators Bill Dodd and Josh Newman are listed as principal co-authors, with Assemblymen Bill Quirk and Mark Stone as secondary co-authors.


	Low joined Wicks, Aguiar-Curry and Akilah Weber in presenting AB 1998 before introducing AB 2098 by himself. The second bill lists Aguiar-Curry, Weber and Wicks as co-authors. Pan and Wiener served as co-authors for both bills.


	As FrontPage Magazine <a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/09/vaccines-today-social-credit-tomorrow-joseph-hippolito/">reported</a>, Wicks tried to manipulate the legislative process last year to impose vaccine mandates. She used a technique called "gut and amend" to turn her own transportation bill, AB 455, into one demanding proof of vaccination for employees, contractors and anyone patronizing such businesses as restaurants, gyms and theaters. Only the Legislature's scheduled adjournment and Gov. Gavin Newsom's recall killed that revised bill.


	Since Democrats hold 75 percent of the Legislature's seats, and since Newsom used the pandemic to impose emergency restrictions arbitrarily for nearly two years, both AB 1998 and AB 2098 have a serious chance of becoming law.


	Not to be outdone, Newsom <a href="https://californiaglobe.com/articles/gov-newsom-announces-full-time-team-to-combat-covid-propaganda-machines/">announced</a> plans Feb. 17 to create "a brand new unit in State Government working full time on" stifling any information contradicting the narrative surrounding COVID+19 and vaccines. Newsom also said he has members of the Department of Health and Human Services “battling in the trenches and on social media trying to push back.”


	In the process, Newsom called conservative outlets who challenge the narrative part of a "propaganda machine." Specifically, the governor cited One America News as a "great disinformation spreader," he said, and Fox News' "propaganda lineup," he said.


	Why are California's Democrats so willing to undertake these blatantly unconstitutional measures? Follow the money.


	Out of the 10 California Democrats involved with it, six took <a href="https://www.statnews.com/feature/prescription-politics/state-full-data-set/">significant contributions</a> from drug companies for their 2020 election campaigns. Aguiar-Curry received the most: $46,950. Johnson &amp; Johnson, which suspended producing its COVID-19 vaccine, led all contributors with $6,200.


	Low collected $38,100, with $6,500 coming from the three major vaccine producers: Pfizer, AstraZeneca and Johnson &amp; Johnson. Pan, a pediatrician, received $31,700 from Big Pharma. That total included $5,000 from AstraZeneca.


	Dodd accepted $23,100. More than one-fourth of Dodd's donations, $6,600, came from the three COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers. Out of the $19,000 Wiener received, 42 percent came from AstraZeneca ($2,000), Pfizer ($1,500) and PhRMA ($4,500), a trade association. Contributions from Johnson &amp; Johnson and AstraZeneca ($2,000 apiece) constituted 25 percent of Quirk's $16,000.


	Those figures “might be a pittance when it comes to campaign contributions at the federal level,” <a href="https://www.statnews.com/feature/prescription-politics/state-level-examination/">wrote</a> Lev Facher from STAT News, which reports on the medical profession. But such contributions can “have a significant impact on a smaller, cheaper, and less scrutinized state election,” Facher added.


	A <a href="https://www.statnews.com/feature/prescription-politics/state-full-data-set/">survey</a> from STAT News showed that 81.7 percent of California's legislators received campaign contributions from pharmaceutical firms for the 2020 election. That percentage ranks second nationally, behind only Louisiana. Pfizer donated to the most candidates, 1,048, in 43 states. Those candidates received $1.27 million. PhRMA contributed $1.58 million, more than any other manufacturer or industry group.


	Big Pharma's attempts to influence state governments belong to a wider strategy described by Christopher Cole, the FDA's executive officer who specializes in medical countermeasures. In two <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nSXHrmOy8o">undercover</a> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ay2_AY9uyOU">interviews</a> by Project Veritas, Cole exposed the collusion between his agency and drug manufacturers.


	"(FDA officials) know they're dependent on the drug companies, the vaccine companies and these other companies for their agency to operate," Cole said. "There's almost a billion dollars a year going into the FDA's budget from the people we regulate.


	"Basically, we charge the industry millions of dollars in order to hire more drug reviewers and vaccine reviewers, which will speed up the approval process so they make more money. If they can get every person required at an annual vaccine, that is a recurring return of money going into their company."


	COVID-19, therefore, means a financial windfall for vaccine manufacturers, who use Joe Biden as cover.


	"Biden wants to inoculate as many people as possible," Cole said. "There's a money incentive for Pfizer and the drug companies to promote additional vaccinations. It'll be a recurring fountain of revenue. It might not be that much, initially, but if they can get every person required (to get) an annual vaccine, that is a recurring return of money going into their company.


	That includes children, despite studies showing that children are the least likely to contract COVID-19.


	"Schools are going to mandate it," Cole said. "They're looking at trying to inoculate kids between six months and 5-years old. Just from everything I've heard, they're not going to not approve it. I mean, it hasn't been formally announced yet because they don't want to rile everyone up."


	The new <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Real-Anthony-Fauci-Democracy-Childrens-ebook/dp/B08XQYGC68">book</a> by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma and the Global War against Democracy and Public Health, reveals the massive corruption within the FDA, WHO and CDC. FrontPage Magazine recently <a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/02/real-anthony-fauci-joseph-hippolito/">interviewed</a> the publisher, Tony Lyons.


	In other words, contrary to AB 1993's language, the CDC will never declare COVID-19 vaccinations to be unnecessary as long as Big Pharma can make money from the now-weakening pandemic.


	Now suppose both bills pass and Newsom creates his "anti-misinformation" agency. What will happen to Californians who refuse to get COVID-19 vaccines? What will happen to doctors who expose manipulated science or refuse to prescribe state-mandated treatments? What will happen to anybody who dares organize peaceful protests against excessive government power?


	More importantly, does anybody seriously believe that California's Democrats would stop at COVID-19?


	Perhaps a Canadian trucker could best answer those questions.


	Joseph Hippolito is a freelance writer and a regular contributor to FrontPage Magazine. His commentaries have appeared in The Federalist, The Stream, Wall Street Journal, Jerusalem Post and National Post.

The Coming Medical Dictatorship

Today, Canada. Tomorrow, California?


	If that state's Democrats have their way, the Golden State could well become this nation's version of the Great

Two weeks before Presidents' Day and two days before Abraham Lincoln's birthday, a conservative outlet exposed perhaps the most singularly idiotic decision since the Constitution mandated the Executive Branch.


	On Feb. 7, the Washington Free Beacon <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://freebeacon.com/biden-administration/biden-admin-to-fund-crack-pipe-distribution-to-advance-racial-equity/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1644973334956000&amp;usg=AOvVaw147KEDlfVoc5jEpl3W41zG" href="https://freebeacon.com/biden-administration/biden-admin-to-fund-crack-pipe-distribution-to-advance-racial-equity/" target="_blank">reported</a> that Joe Biden's Department of Health and Human Services made $29.25 million in <a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.samhsa.gov/sites/default/files/grants/pdf/fy22-harm-reduction-nofo.pdf&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1644973334956000&amp;usg=AOvVaw2WhAtmAbvl2DE73SZGp-Rj" href="https://www.samhsa.gov/sites/default/files/grants/pdf/fy22-harm-reduction-nofo.pdf" target="_blank">grants</a> available to government agencies and community groups to purchase syringes, fentanyl strips and "smoking kits'' -- also known as crack pipes -- for drug prevention programs. HHS's stated goal was to reduce the addicts' risk of contracting substance abuse disorders or sexually transmitted diseases.


	In other words, the virtual president's "administration" wants to enable illicit drug use for the sake of public health.


	"Unsafe smoking practices can lead to open sores, burns and cuts on the lips, and can increase the risk of infection among people who smoke drugs," HHS spokesman Chris Garrett <a href="https://freebeacon.com/biden-administration/biden-admin-says-pipes-not-included-in-taxpayer-funded-crack-smoking-kits/">told</a> the Free Beacon. "Safe smoking kits have been identified to reduce the spread of disease."


	Public outcry forced the HHS to <a href="https://twitter.com/GlennKesslerWP/status/1491514904230117376">reverse</a> its course on crack pipes Feb. 9. Yet this play from the theater of the absurd contains a second act.


	As the grant application <a href="https://www.samhsa.gov/sites/default/files/grants/pdf/fy22-harm-reduction-nofo.pdf">stated</a>, "priority populations for this program are underserved communities that are greatly impacted by" substance abuse disorders. "Underserved communities" include "Black, Latino, and Indigenous and Native American persons, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders and other persons of color; members of religious minorities; lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) persons," among others, stated an executive order Biden <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2021/01/20/executive-order-advancing-racial-equity-and-support-for-underserved-communities-through-the-federal-government/">signed</a> on his first day in office.


	In other words, furnishing drug paraphernalia to members of "underserved communities" is the new "anti-racism."


	But the grant goes beyond "woke" propaganda or the virtual president's incompetence. It raises a frightening possibility that undergirds the turbulence engulfing this nation.


	Illustrating that possibility is this question: Who actually benefits? Consider that question in the context of two of the biggest stories of the past year: Biden's refusal to control the border with Mexico and the United States' chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan.


	The open border provides an open invitation for drug traffickers. More than three months into Biden's term, U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/fentanyl-seized-cbp-2021-2020/story?id=77744071">seizing</a> 6,494 pounds of fentanyl during the first seven months of fiscal year 2021. By comparison, agents <a href="https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/drug-seizure-statistics">confiscated</a> 4,791 pounds in all of fiscal year 2020.


	"When you talk about that amount, how many communities and people that will affect and how many deaths that will be associated with it, you can't even comprehend it just because it's not fathomable," <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/fentanyl-seized-cbp-2021-2020/story?id=77744071">said</a> Dr. Darien Sutton, who prescribes fentanyl in micrograms as an emergency-room doctor. Two milligrams of fentanyl are <a href="https://www.dea.gov/resources/facts-about-fentanyl">fatal</a>.


	When fiscal 2021 ended, CBP had <a href="https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/drug-seizure-statistics">confiscated</a> 11,201 pounds of fentanyl, <a href="https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/drug-seizure-statistics">94.5 percent</a> of it at the southern border. In just the first three months of fiscal 2022, which ended Dec. 31, agents <a href="https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/drug-seizure-statistics">seized</a> 2,707 pounds, <a href="https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/drug-seizure-statistics">90.5 percent</a> at the border with Mexico.


	Not surprisingly, China plays a paramount role in the problem.


	China <a href="https://insightcrime.org/investigations/fentanyl-summary-major-findings/">leads</a> the world in fentanyl production. Chinese laboratories manufacture raw fentanyl and its components, then <a href="https://finance.yahoo.com/news/chinas-role-in-the-us-fentanyl-epidemic-152338423.html">ship</a> them to <a href="https://insightcrime.org/investigations/fentanyl-trade-mexico-explained-8-graphs/">Mexico</a>, where cartels engage in production and distribution. With <a href="https://insightcrime.org/investigations/fentanyl-trade-mexico-explained-8-graphs/">75 percent</a> of customs seizures taking place at the border crossing between San Diego and Tijuana, cartels use human couriers called "mules" to bring fentanyl and other illegal drugs across rural areas of the unprotected southern border.


	Investigative reporter Ben Westhoff travelled to China to learn how fentanyl was made. Posing undercover as a drug dealer, Westhoff visited two drug labs and made a breathtaking discovery.


	"What I learned was that these companies making fentanyl and other dangerous drugs are subsidized by the government," Westhoff <a href="https://finance.yahoo.com/news/chinas-role-in-the-us-fentanyl-epidemic-152338423.html">said</a>. "So when they work in these suburban office parks, for example, the building, the costs for research and development, they have these development zones, they get export tax breaks." (Emphasis added)


	Biden's immigration "policy" enables the collusion between China and the cartels. On his first day in office, Biden ended construction of President Donald Trump's border wall and rescinded Trump's expansion of domestic immigration enforcement.


	Of the 64 <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2021/politics/biden-executive-orders/index.html">executive actions</a> Biden signed in his first 100 days in office, 12 concerned immigration, more than any other subject outside of COVID-19. Of those 12, 10 reversed Trump's policies.


	Claire Gute from the Asia Pacific Media Center at Loyola Marymount University <a href="https://asiamedia.lmu.edu/2021/11/03/china-fentanyl-trafficking-is-devastating-u-s-citizens/">criticized</a> Biden's failure to solve the problem.


	"While Biden has promised to do something about the epidemic, his rhetoric is contradictory to his border policy decisions," Gute wrote. "The administration must control and monitor the borders to a much greater extent, which will reduce the amount of illegal drugs pouring into the Southern border from China.


	"Securing the border is essential in protecting both Americans’ and immigrants’ lives from the illicit drugs that are ravaging communities. It should be a top priority for the Biden Administration to uphold its promise of ending the opioid crisis. Wasn’t that a major part of his campaign?"


	China also might have played a pivotal role in Biden's demand for American troops to leave Afghanistan.


	In August, FrontPage Magazine <a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/08/how-bidens-decisions-afghanistan-benefit-china-joseph-hippolito/">examined</a> in detail the possibility that by ordering such an abrupt withdrawal, Biden deliberately helped China. His stubborn insistence disregarded warnings from Congress, the State Department and the military.


	So how would China benefit? One way would be acquiring the sophisticated military equipment the Americans abandoned. The Chinese could study it to reverse engineer it or develop countermeasures.


	More importantly, the Chinese would have unrestrained access to Afghanistan's mineral <a href="https://thediplomat.com/2020/02/afghanistans-mineral-resources-are-a-lost-opportunity-and-a-threat/">wealth</a>. The country contains such raw materials as iron ore, gold, uranium, copper and rare earths, which are essential for consumer and military electronics. Before the Taliban filled the political void after the withdrawal, China had spent <a href="https://insiderpaper.com/china-belt-and-road-afghanistan-us-forces-leave/">$62 billion</a> on energy, communications and transportation infrastructure in Afghanistan through the Belt and Road Initiative.


	Behind those two major news stories lie the suspicious activities involving Biden and his son, Hunter.


	Those activities go beyond the <a href="https://nypost.com/2020/10/27/hunters-biz-partner-tells-all-on-meeting-with-joe-biden-goodwin/">financial arrangements</a> with Chinese firms that benefited both men, with the elder Biden, known as <a href="https://nypost.com/2020/10/15/emails-reveal-how-hunter-biden-tried-to-cash-in-big-with-chinese-firm/">"the big guy"</a> in e-mails, getting a 10 percent kickback, as the New York Post reported in depth.


	As FrontPage Magazine's Jamie Glazov <a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/02/peter-schweizer-video-joe-biden-target-chinese-frontpagemagcom/">explored</a>, Peter Schweizer <a href="https://dailycaller.com/2022/02/04/peter-schweizer-joe-biden-hunter-biden-helping-china-win-new-book/">asserts</a> that the Bidens received $31 million from Chinese business associates affiliated with the upper echelons of China’s intelligence agencies.


	The Chinese government also made <a href="https://cbnc.com/nlpc-china-increased-donation-to-upenns-biden-center-by-400-percent-after-biden-announced-2020-presidential-campaign/">massive</a> contributions to the University of Pennsylvania's Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement. In addition, numerous administration officials have links to China's government and Communist Party. They <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/biden-administration-china-ties-reveal-deeper-disturbing-truth-opinion-1572589">include</a> Press Secretary Jen Psaki, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken.


	Meanwhile, Hunter Biden's lust for drugs and sex make him vulnerable. As FrontPage Magazine <a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/05/hunter-biden-female-chinese-operative-joseph-hippolito/">reported</a> in May, a young Chinese operative, JiaQi Bao, used her role as his secretary, confidant and likely sexual liaison to influence and entrap him. Bao even used Biden to convince his father to run for President by providing opposition research against Trump.


	Perhaps nothing describes the family's grifting better than the elder Biden's appearance at the Council on Foreign Relations, where he <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u27qy5YViFs">bragged</a> with breathless arrogance about successfully intimidating a Ukrainian prosecutor investigating his son.


	Combining those factors leads to even more disturbing questions.


	Are members of the federal government being bribed or blackmailed by foreign parties and drug cartels? If so, how many? By whom? How often? For what?


	If the assumptions behind those questions are true, they generate the most alarming question of all.


	Are elected officials and unelected bureaucrats -- men and women who have sworn to uphold the Constitution -- willing to sacrifice every American on the altar of graft?


	Joseph Hippolito is a freelance writer and a regular contributor to&nbsp;FrontPage Magazine. His commentaries have appeared in&nbsp;The Federalist,&nbsp;The Stream,&nbsp;Wall Street Journal,&nbsp;Jerusalem Post&nbsp;and&nbsp;National Post.

Biden, Crack Pipes and the China Link

Two weeks before Presidents' Day and two days before Abraham Lincoln's birthday, a conservative outlet exposed perhaps the most singularly idiotic decision

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., founder and chairman of Children's Health Defense, reveals the collusion between the federal government and pharmaceutical firms with meticulous detail in his new <a href="http://amazon.com/Real-Anthony-Fauci-Democracy-Childrens/dp/1510766804">book</a>, The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health. In the process, Kennedy exposes Fauci as a self-serving, manipulative bureaucrat who "implemented a system of dysfunctional conflicts and a transactional culture" that enabled Fauci's National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases to become "a seamless appendage of Big Pharma," Kennedy wrote.


	Part of the book describes how Fauci manipulated the AIDS crisis during the 1980s to promote a dangerous drug, AZT, which made patients sicker but made a lot of money for its manufacturer, Burroughs Wellcome. The AIDS crisis became the template for Fauci's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, Kennedy asserts. FrontPage Magazine <a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/10/trust-fauci-and-bureaucrats-joseph-hippolito/">discussed</a> Fauci's role in the AIDS crisis in October in "Trust Fauci and the Bureaucrats?"


	Kennedy, who founded Children's Health Defense in 2016, is a vocal opponent of government vaccination mandates. His father served as President John F. Kennedy's attorney general before becoming a Senator from New York. He was seeking the Democratic Party's Presidential nomination when he was assassinated in 1968.


	Since Kennedy was not available, his publisher, Tony Lyons from Skyhorse Publishing, agreed to the following interview.


	JH: So who is the real Anthony Fauci?


	TL: The real Anthony Fauci is somebody who prioritizes financial return on investment over public health. That's the real Anthony Fauci that is described in The Real Anthony Fauci by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. If he disagrees with that, he should respond. I mean, these are serious allegations of corruption. He should respond to them and disprove them if they're untrue.


	JH: How does the book help people understand and negotiate the rapidly changing information maze surrounding COVID-19?


	TL: It makes them understand that the mainstream narrative that they're given requires them to do more research. So whatever they hear, they have to recognize that it may be misinformation. Or, to be more clear, it may be disinformation. They should do more research, and this book helps them do that research. The end of each chapter has a QR code that gives you all of the latest research that the nonprofit Children's Health Defense has uncovered since the book was published. So it's meant to be kind of a living document that gives you resources so that you can do further research.


	JH: The introduction states Fauci played a major role in making Americans "among the least healthy citizens on the planet." How was he able to do this and how does that specific problem manifest itself in today's society?


	TL: The book claims that the financial entanglements he has orchestrated over his 50 years in power has led him to always prioritize medical interventions or products or vaccines or drugs that make a lot of money for a pharmaceutical company, and that are protected by patents, rather than anything that might be cheaper and readily available. So by not prioritizing public health, he has led to a situation where people are misled, and where they don't really know or have access to information that could be helpful to them.


	JH: How does Fauci benefit from this financially?


	TL: As is described in the book, he's the highest paid public official. But it appears that there are also complex, additional sources of income that come to him and to people who he's worked with and empowered through patents. So it is possible for public employees, for government employees, to make additional revenue based on owning a share of a patent.


	JH: How great a role did he play in corrupting the FDA, the CDC, possibly the World Health Organization? How compromised are those organizations?


	TK: The book alleges that they are incredibly compromised. Dr. Fauci repeatedly says his favorite book is The Godfather, and his favorite line from that book is, "It's not personal. It's just business." That, I think, has been his mantra. It's about business. It's not about people. It's not personal. It's not about public health.


	JH: The book says that from the start, Fauci knew the pandemic models were inaccurate, and that masks and social distancing would be ineffective. So why did he advocate those measures if he knew that? What was he trying to do?


	TL: He says repeatedly that he represents science, and that if you disagree with him on anything, you're anti-science. Any disagreement by any other doctor or scientist is then misinformation. So clearly, he doesn't have a problem telling the public to do things that aren't true, and that he knows aren't true. That comes out in some of his e-mails that contradict his public statements. So I think that by doing those kinds of things, he wanted to maintain his position as the ultimate arbiter of what people should do, even though he knew that things were complicated. That's just my own view of it there.


	JH: The book goes into great detail about how Fauci manipulated the AIDS crisis. Can you go into that?


	TL: The book is meticulously researched with literally more than 2,000 citations. It says that throughout his career, he has steered the public towards drugs and vaccines that were covered by patents, that were expensive, and could make a big return on investment for his pharmaceutical partners.


	JH: Why hasn't anybody in Congress investigated him until now? It's an interesting question, given all the research.


	TL: I think this book serves as a blueprint for Congressional hearings on the subjects that are covered because the claims are dramatic. If the claims are true, then he is responsible for people dying as a result of not getting access to viable remedies. So it's an important investigation for Congress to engage in. Because if true, we really need an overhaul of the CDC, the NIH, and the FDA.


	JH: How do Fauci and Bill Gates mutually benefit from their relationship?


	TL: They engaged in sort of public-private partnerships. That. I think, is a piece of it. They had a joint interest, once again, in furthering the use of expensive drugs, and vaccines, versus remedies of any kind that were not covered by patent."


	JH: How do Fauci, Gates and pharmaceutical firms threaten democracy? How does the book outline the threats to democracy?


	TL: The threats to democracy come in a bunch of different ways, but one of them is the idea that Dr. Fauci represents science, like I said before, and he can't be questioned. So in a democracy, you have to be allowed to question and there has to be a role for dissent. There has to be a role for dialogue and debate. So if you take out that role, then what you have is not a democracy anymore. One of the additional things that he did, or that he seems to have taken part in, is in the censorship of any kind of dissent. He would vilify anybody who disagreed with him. So by doing that, he not only was trying to maximize his own power. He was making it difficult for there to be scientific progress, because for scientific progress, you need to have competing points of view. It has to be possible, for example, for doctors and scientists to publish dissenting views in scientific journals, and for investigative journalists to disagree with, for example, the CDC or the NIH.


	JH: One of the things I found fascinating about the book is at the very end, it includes a bracket similar to the kind Americans see everywhere during "March Madness," the NCAA basketball tournament, that Fauci designed. In his bracket, COVID-19 beats out such diseases as Zika and SARS for the championship. How does that reflect Fauci's character or approach to his job?


	TL: I think it shows that to Dr. Fauci, this was a game. He's trying to win. He's trying to maximize his own power. He's trying to control people. Doctors and scientists are prevented from publishing dissenting views and investigative journalists are working at newspapers that refuse to allow them to really investigate things, like this book (has), that haven't been covered in any newspaper at all. The only thing that's been covered is that Dr. Fauci and, presumably, people who agree with him have decided that you should attack the messenger in order to discredit the messenger, so that people don't take even meticulously researched writing or research or studies coming out of reputable doctors and scientists seriously. So rather than address the claims that are made in this book, or in other studies, you attack all of the people who disagree.


	JH: What kind of a response has the book received since it came out in November?


	TL: It's received no response from the mainstream media. It was so badly received that you couldn't even advertise for the book. The New York Times refused to take an advertisement. The big tech platforms all refuse to take advertisements for it. They refused even to allow a book signing and Q &amp; A on YouTube. Even interviews that I had to discuss censorship of the book were themselves censored. But what I find really fascinating is how well the book has done notwithstanding all of the censorship, the boycotts, the media blackout and the lack of reviews. So what it really shows, which I find fascinating, is that people are beginning to recognize that they're not getting the full story. And they're seeking out alternative sources of information, alternative platforms, where things are not censored, because they want to make their own decisions about what they believe and not just be force fed one preconceived narrative.


	Joseph Hippolito is a freelance writer and a regular contributor to FrontPage Magazine. His commentaries have appeared in The Federalist, The Stream, Wall Street Journal, Jerusalem Post and National Post.

The Real Anthony Fauci

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., founder and chairman of Children's Health Defense, reveals the collusion between the federal government and pharmaceutical firms with

On Jan. 23, thousands of <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/washington-dc-defeat-mandates-march-covid-vaccine">protesters</a> appeared in Washington, D.C. to demand an end to vaccine mandates. The fact that the protest took place six days after the nation commemorated the life of Martin Luther King Jr. holds profound significance.


	More than five decades after King's assassination, Americans face the worst segregation since the civil rights movement. That segregation has nothing to do with the myth of "systemic racism" decried by the "woke." It has nothing to do with race, creed or gender. It does, however, have everything to do with the authoritarian agenda the "woke" seek to promote.


	Just as equal access to facilities, opportunities and legal status motivated King and his contemporaries, so has equal access for the unvaccinated and unmasked become the civil-rights issue of our time. Just as segregationists sought to limit access for the sake of an alleged greater social good, so do the "progressives" who demand that vaccinations and mandates continue indefinitely for the sake of "public health" and "the common good."


	Just as bigoted segregationists viewed African-Americans as second-class citizens whose every movement must be closely monitored and controlled, so do bigoted “progressives” view the unvaccinated.


	Los Angeles recently provided a disturbing example. On Jan. 18, New West Charter School, a public school in the Los Angeles Unified School District for Grades 8-12, not only prohibited unvaccinated students from attending class. They were <a href="https://twitter.com/letthem_breathe/status/1483529211671425031?cxt=HHwWjsC5uaf9xpYpAAAA">forced</a> to stand outside behind police tape. Almost every student was wearing a mask.


	"They asked for chairs, were denied &amp; are sitting on the pavement, not allowed to even use restroom," a group called Let Them Breathe <a href="https://twitter.com/letthem_breathe/status/1483516345300008963">posted</a> on Twitter. "LAPD is on site but not intervening."


	All this happened despite the fact that on Dec. 14, the district chose to <a href="https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-12-14/lausd-student-covid-vaccinations-fall-2022">delay</a> its vaccine mandate until the fall.


	Principal Shannon Weir even publicly told parents that any student who did not leave campus would be <a href="https://twitter.com/letthem_breathe/status/1483529976653787141?cxt=HHwWisC9geupx5YpAAAA">suspended</a>. Weir refused to answer questions.


	"We're being <a href="https://twitter.com/letthem_breathe/status/1483516345300008963">threatened</a> to be suspended because we don't have the COVID-19 vaccine," one student said on Twitter. "We're being refused the right to attend school. We're being segregated from the rest of the school."


	Another student said on Twitter, "I feel embarrassed and <a href="https://twitter.com/letthem_breathe/status/1483544670789677056?cxt=HHwWgMC97ZKBzpYpAAAA">segregated</a> right now."


	How is the situation in Los Angeles any different than the situation in the Jim Crow South, where African-Americans were routinely and arbitrarily refused admittance to schools and services at various businesses? Where a female seamstress ignited the civil rights movement merely by <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/rosa-parks">sitting</a> where she wanted to sit on a racially segregated bus?


	Segregation mania even reached Utah, one of the nation's least "woke" areas. On Jan. 15, while claiming that state officials were "waving the white flag of surrender in the battle against" COVID-19, the Salt Lake Tribune published an editorial that advocated this <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/editorial/2022/01/15/utah-leaders-have/">breathtaking</a> measure:


	"Were Utah a truly civilized place, the governor’s next move would be to find a way to mandate the kind of mass vaccination campaign we should have launched a year ago, going as far as to deploy the National Guard to ensure that people without proof of vaccination would not be allowed, well, anywhere." (emphasis added)


	The fact that a newspaper with an obviously <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/">"progressive"</a> bent considers such a measure "truly civilized" is truly frightening.


	How many racial segregationists justified their position as "truly civilized," given the assumed inferiority of African-Americans? More importantly, how far would the Tribune's editorial board go to ensure a "truly civilized" Utah? Would they go as far as "Bull" Connor, the commissioner of public safety for Birmingham, Ala., the man who used <a href="https://www.history.com/news/childrens-crusade-birmingham-civil-rights">police dogs and high-pressure fire hoses</a> against legitimately peaceful protesters, including children?


	Would the editorial board go as far as the Nazis, who viewed Jews and other "non-Aryans" as threats to racial health and dealt with them brutally?


	All this panic not only disregards <a href="https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1027511/Vaccine-surveillance-report-week-42.pdf">studies</a> showing that COVID-19 <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8607534/">vaccines</a> and <a href="https://palexander.substack.com/p/over-150-studies-and-pieces-of-evidence">masks</a> can be detrimental, let alone ineffective, or statistics showing the vaccinated to be more likely to be <a href="https://dailyexpose.uk/2022/01/20/public-health-data-confirms-vaccinated-more-likely-to-die-of-covid/">infected</a> with variants. It disregards the growing number of countries discontinuing vaccination and mask mandates as both detrimental and ineffective – including Great Britain, which had adopted some of the strictest measures.


	Perhaps more tellingly, the panic disregards the Supreme Court's decision against the federal government's quest to impose mandates on private businesses.


	Yet power can be a robust intoxicant, and panic an even more robust accelerant. On Jan. 13, Rasmussen released a poll of 1,016 likely voters. The poll, with a sampling error of plus-or-minus three percentage points, showed some <a href="https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/partner_surveys/jan_2022/covid_19_democratic_voters_support_harsh_measures_against_unvaccinated">alarming findings</a>:


	-- 59 percent of Democrats support forcing the unvaccinated to stay home at all times, except for emergencies.


	-- 55 percent of Democrats approve of levying fines against anyone who chooses not to get a COVID-19 vaccine.


	-- 48 percent of Democrats endorse imposing fines or imprisoning anybody who questions the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines.


	-- 47 percent of Democrats support a government tracing program to track anybody who refuses the vaccines.


	-- 45 percent of Democrats agree with forcing the unvaccinated to live in "designated facilities," such as the internment camps Australia established.


	-- 29 percent of Democrats favor the state temporarily removing parental custody of children if the parents refuse to get COVID-19 vaccines.


	By contrast, substantial majorities of both Republicans and likely voters in general opposed each measure.


	These Democrats are the same people who brag about being "compassionate" and "inclusive," who constantly demand "social justice."


	If "segregation" fails to describe any of the policies listed, then the term holds no meaning.


	However, the tide might be turning, with the recent <a href="https://rescue.substack.com/p/the-march-of-everyone-on-washington">protest</a> providing just one example.


	At Stanford, one of the "wokest" of the nation's "woke" precincts, more than 1,000 students signed a <a href="https://www.mercurynews.com/2022/01/18/hundreds-sign-petition-to-repeal-stanford-universitys-covid-19-booster-vaccine-mandate/?campaign=sjmnbreakingnews&amp;utm_email=943AB464143804D905E08500E8&amp;g2i_eui=brO5qYfMRn034%2bzOdjn5d%2fdwsqZ4npYX&amp;g2i_source=newsletter&amp;active=no&amp;lctg=943AB464143804D905E08500E8&amp;utm_source=listrak&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_term=https%3a%2f%2fwww.mercurynews.com%2f2022%2f01%2f18%2fhundreds-sign-petition-to-repeal-stanford-universitys-covid-19-booster-vaccine-mandate%2f&amp;utm_campaign=bang-sjmn-nl-breaking-news-alerts-nl&amp;utm_content=alert">petition</a> demanding that the administration rescind mandates for vaccine boosters. A doctoral candidate, Monte Fischer, began the drive and gathered 1,600 signatures in the first week.


	"We are not anti-booster or anti-vaccination," the petition states. "We are pro-bodily autonomy and support the rights of Stanford students to evaluate the data and make their own medical choices."


	In an interview with the San Jose Mercury News, Fischer went further.


	"I, along with many Stanford community members," he said, "believe that it is paternalistic and coercive to mandate boosters in the light of so much evidence suggesting that boosters confer little benefit to young people and carry real risks, both known and unknown."


	"Paternalistic" and "coercive" also describe the segregation King and his associates confronted.


	Fischer found support from two physicians and professors: Dr. Jay Bhattacharya from Stanford's medical school and Dr. Vinay Prasad, an associate professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at UC San Francisco. Bhattacharya initiated the Great Barrington Declaration, a statement from doctors worldwide who opposed comprehensive lockdowns.


	"This type of overreach poisons trust in Public Health," <a href="https://twitter.com/VPrasadMDMPH/status/1483470610541862917?cxt=HHwWioCjgaOqrJYpAAAA">tweeted</a> Prasad, who mentioned that Dr. Paul Offit, an award-winning pediatrician who specializes in immunology and vaccines, recommended that his 20-year-old son not get the mRNA vaccine.


	Bhattacharya also used Twitter to describe the <a href="https://twitter.com/DrJBhattacharya/status/1482070394131476481?cxt=HHwWgsCj5fnKr5EpAAAA">intimidating climate</a> on campus.


	"To my discredit, I have been reluctant to engage in local advocacy, in part because of the stifling, hostile atmosphere<a href="https://twitter.com/Stanford"> @Stanford</a> to dissent against lockdowns and mandates," he tweeted. "I am grateful for<a href="https://twitter.com/themontefischer"> @themontefischer</a>'s call to let the winds of freedom blow again."


	Students at other universities are <a href="https://www.thecollegefix.com/college-students-nationwide-protest-covid-booster-mandates/">following suit</a> with similar petitions. But what if the powers-that-be ignore them?


	Perhaps students could adopt a technique from the turbulent 1960s: <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/21/arts/columbia-university-1968-protest.html">sit-ins</a> at the offices of university administrators. Another <a href="https://www.history.com/news/greensboro-four-sit-in-civil-rights">technique</a> from the civil rights movement could prove decisive in smashing arbitrary mandates.


	Young African-Americans protested the <a href="http://crdl.usg.edu/events/sit_ins_atlanta_ga/?Welcome">segregation of lunch counters</a> by actually sitting at those counters. Unvaccinated, unmasked citizens could protest similarly by organizing large groups to patronize businesses, libraries, schools or other places that demand masks or proof of vaccination. Yes, people will get arrested, just as the young African-Americans did six decades ago. But unjust laws that violate the American spirit and Constitution fail to disappear on their own.


	Policy analyst Anthony LaMesa provided the perfect <a href="https://vinayprasadmdmph.substack.com/p/anthony-lamesa-the-interview">rejoinder</a> to officials who wish to segregate the unvaccinated.


	"Democracies are fragile," LaMesa said, "and a novel respiratory virus circulating is not a good reason to suspend basic rights and constitutional protections for years on end."


	But when it comes to respect for the Constitution and its values, today's "progressives" are no different than yesterday's bigoted segregationists.


	Joseph Hippolito is a freelance writer and a regular contributor to FrontPage Magazine. His commentaries have appeared in The Federalist, The Stream, Wall Street Journal, Jerusalem Post and National Post.

Segregation Now, Segregation Forever?

On Jan. 23, thousands of protesters appeared in Washington, D.C. to demand an end to vaccine mandates. The fact that the protest took place six days after the

One of the world's best soccer players recently and inadvertently issued a frightening warning to the world, though neither he nor the world probably recognize it as such.


	Argentina's Sergio Aguero announced his <a href="https://www.espn.com/soccer/barcelona-espbarcelona/story/4527274/barcelonas-sergio-aguero-announces-retirement-from-football-due-to-heart-condition">retirement</a> Dec. 15 after suffering a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-m1bcIzqx0">heart attack</a> six weeks earlier during a game. While playing for FC Barcelona on Oct. 31, Aguero bent at the waist, experienced breathing problems, grabbed his lungs, lay on his back and received treatment from trainers before going to the hospital, where doctors diagnosed him with an irregular heartbeat.


	Aguero -- who played for Argentina in three World Cups and set Manchester City's career scoring record -- is 33. In two decades as a professional, Aguero <a href="https://www.transfermarkt.us/sergio-aguero/verletzungen/spieler/26399">never</a> previously experienced heart problems that kept him off the field.


	Aguero is not <a href="https://stevekirsch.substack.com/p/60x-increase-in-athletes-dropping">alone</a>. This year, more than 300 athletes around the world -- some as young as 12 -- <a href="https://goodsciencing.com/covid/athletes-suffer-cardiac-arrest-die-after-covid-shot/">collapsed</a> unexpectedly, mostly due to heart problems. Nearly 200 of them died.


	What did they have in common? The vast majority, if not all of them, received the experimental COVID-19 vaccines based on mRNA spike proteins. That relationship appears not to be coincidental, despite attempts to dismiss the possibility.


	Aguero, who contracted the disease in January, not only received an injection. He recorded a brief <a href="https://t.me/LauraAbolichannel/7784">public-service announcement</a> advocating that everyone 12 and older should get vaccinated. But Aguero's unexpected heart attack represents a more powerful message than the one he intended.


	Aguero thus joins such fellow soccer players as Manchester United's Victor <a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/sport/football/17012211/victor-lindelof-heart-scare-man-utd/">Lindelof</a>, the captain for Sweden's national team. On Dec. 11, Lindelof, 27, had to leave a game after complaining of chest pains and an accelerated heartbeat.


	"Lindelof was in respiratory distress for about 10 minutes," United coach Ralf Rangnick <a href="https://thecovidworld.com/two-top-professional-footballers-struck-by-chest-pain-in-the-past-2-days/">said</a>. "His heart rate was higher than normal. He was shocked and didn’t know what to do."


	Lindelof's wife said she and her husband were vaccinated, the website <a href="https://goodsciencing.com/covid/athletes-suffer-cardiac-arrest-die-after-covid-shot/">Real Science</a> reported. Britain's Daily Express added that Lindelof now wears a <a href="https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1537763/heart-problem-Christian-Eriksen-Matt-Le-Tissier-football-aguero-vaccine-vn">heart monitor</a>.


	In July, a 16-year-old weightlifter from Singapore collapsed from heart failure after lifting heavy weights. Six days earlier, he received his first dose of Pfizer's vaccine. Information on the vaccine's insert warned that the shot could <a href="https://uncoverdc.com/2021/11/23/the-comirnaty-package-insert/">increase</a> the risks of myocarditis and pericarditis "particularly within seven days following the second dose."


	Myocarditis occurs when the heart muscle itself becomes inflamed. Pericarditis results when the tissue around the heart swells.


	Two cyclists, road racer Greg Luyssens and mountain biker Kyle Warner, developed heart problems after receiving a second dose of Pfizer's vaccine. In September, the 22-year-old Luyssens had to <a href="https://www.sportworldnews.org/cycling/news/7616/greg-luyssen-is-ending-his-career-due-to-heart-problems-after-the-vaccine/">retire</a> after experiencing heart failure during a race. In June, the 29-year-old Warner contracted <a href="https://www.sportworldnews.org/cycling/news/7555/kyle-warner-was-diagnosed-with-pericarditis-after-being-vaccinated/">pericarditis</a>.


	"I fear that my career has officially been ended," Warner <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAQudZhZNSQ">told</a> a Senate committee in November. "I have been bedridden, unable to work and unable to exercise for months."


	British ballroom dancer Maxwell Harrison, 21, also <a href="https://twitter.com/GBNEWS/status/1470450211910787073">developed</a> pericarditis after his second Pfizer dose. Leading British cardiologists told Harrison that the vaccine led to the condition. Harrison, previously a contender for international honors, now cannot compete for 8-to-12 months.


	Health experts are noticing. In November, the American Heart Association <a href="https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/abs/10.1161/circ.144.suppl_1.10712">warned</a> in a study that mRNA vaccines "dramatically" increase acute coronary syndrome, which the Mayo Clinic <a href="https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/acute-coronary-syndrome/symptoms-causes/syc-20352136">defines</a> as "a range of conditions associated with a sudden, reduced blood flow to the heart." Symptoms include chest pain and shortage of breath -- which Aguero and Lindelof experienced.


	The study specifically mentions a dramatic inflammation of the endothelium and an increasing number of T-cells in the heart. The endothelium, a thin membrane that lines the heart, produces chemicals to control clotting, the contraction of blood vessels and the immune system. Excessive numbers of T-cells in the heart can prove fatal.


	On Dec. 4, Japan's health ministry also <a href="https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20211204_12/">warned</a> that Pfizer's and Moderna's vaccines could increase heart inflammation in young men. The ministry will order hospitals to report whether patients developed such problems within 28 days after their vaccination. Even the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) now <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/safety/myocarditis.html?s_cid=11374:pericarditis%20vaccine:sem.ga:p:RG:GM:gen:PTN:FY21">admit</a> that pericarditis and myocarditis are <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/covid-19/clinical-considerations/myocarditis.html">side effects</a> from the two manufacturers' vaccines. Those side effects develop usually in young men and usually after the second dose, the CDC reported.


	But in response to personal tragedies and scientific findings, some suspicious things are happening.


	Aguero's personal cardiologist, Roberto Peidro, <a href="https://www.irishpost.com/sport/sergio-agueros-cardiologist-says-vaccine-not-reason-for-retirement-226615">said</a> the Argentine foward's heart attack had nothing to do with either COVID-19 or the vaccine. Instead, a small scar less than a millimeter long caused an irregular heartbeat.


	Peidro has been treating Aguero since 2004, when the forward began experiencing heart palpitations as a 16-year-old player in Argentina.


	"What was done using a catheter was to burn that area where the arrhythmias were coming out," Peidro said. "We burnt that arrhythmia but this one is completely unrelated and much less benign. The most common scenario is that the small scar found is produced by a virus he's suffered at some point in his life and wasn't ever detected. But it has nothing to do with COVID or the COVID vaccine."


	Peidro's comments make no sense, especially given Aguero's productivity and <a href="https://www.spotrac.com/epl/manchester-city-fc/sergio-aguero-22881/">expense</a>. Before retiring, Aguero ranked fourth among the Premier League's all-time scorers and third in career scoring for his national team.


	In 2014, Aguero signed a five-year contract extension with Manchester City worth $57.2 million. He followed that in 2019 with a two-year contract worth more than $30 million.


	During Aguero's career, Manchester City won five league championships and finished second in the UEFA Champions League, the world's most prestigious club competition. Aguero also helped Argentina win the 2008 Olympic gold medal and the 2021 Copa America, South America's championship, and helped his homeland finish second in the 2014 World Cup.


	Any experienced cardiologist treating such a valuable player for nearly two decades would make a point to defuse any potential problems before they arose. Is Peidro admitting that he missed this "much less benign" scar that he said caused Aguero's heart attack?


	Like Peidro, British cardiologist Sanjay Sharma, who works with several Premier League clubs, also <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/sportsnews/article-10314165/Football-seen-worrying-spike-cardiac-arrests-heart-related-issues-2021.html">denied</a> the possibility of mRNA vaccines causing heart problems, despite claiming to keep an "open mind" on the issue. Sharma is considered the country’s leading sports cardiologist.


	"It's worrying that there is suddenly a whole load of young men who are supposed to epitomize the healthier segment of our society suddenly crashing with cardiac problems," Sharma said. "Is there an issue? Are people being tested properly? Is the game doing it? Is there something in the air to cause an increase? I'm keeping an open mind. My feeling is that this is probably a statistical cluster rather than something on the rise.


	"Everyone is jumping to the conclusion that it is COVID-related or, even worse, that vaccine-related myocarditis may be responsible."


	In November, Israeli medical journalist Yaffa Shir-Raz <a href="https://twitter.com/YaffaRaz/status/1460311509213536265">reported</a> that since December 2020, the number of soccer players worldwide who suddenly died increased 500 percent, to 183. Most died from heart problems or blood clots. But when confronted with the information, FIFA, international soccer's governing body, said it <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-coronavirus-fifa/fact-check-fifa-unaware-of-rise-in-players-having-cardiac-arrests-on-football-pitches-and-such-incidents-not-flagged-as-being-linked-to-covid-19-vaccines-idUSL1N2SL1NJ?back=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Fsearch%3Fclient%3Dsafari%26as_qdr%3Dall%26as_occt%3Dany%26safe%3Dactive%26as_q%3DHow+many+soccer+players+have+died+since+the+vaccine%26channel%3Daplab%26source%3Da-app1%26hl%3Den">knew nothing</a> about those deaths.


	"FIFA is not aware of a rise in episodes of cardiac arrests, and no cases have been flagged in relation to individuals receiving a COVID vaccine," a spokesman told Reuters. "Generally speaking FIFA is in regular contact with leading research centers and experts to do research on a variety of medical topics." (emphasis added)


	Given how <a href="https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/the-god-that-failed?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjoxNTY1MDY1MiwicG9zdF9pZCI6NDUwMjM4ODgsIl8iOiJSa1pnbCIsImlhdCI6MTYzODc1MTczMywiZXhwIjoxNjM4NzU1MzMzLCJpc3MiOiJwdWItMzYzMDgwIiwic3ViIjoicG9zdC1yZWFjdGlvbiJ9.FLNO7BSs-YSjVN95xqc4uSCDRq3ILbs5e87pQpweVEA">compromised</a> many of those authorities might be, would they want to tell FIFA something that could hurt their own pocketbooks?


	In December, Pfizer <a href="https://www.pharmaceutical-technology.com/news/pfizer-agreement-arena-pharmaceuticals/">purchased</a> Arena Pharmaceuticals for $6.7 billion in cash. Arena is developing two heart medications. One, <a href="https://www.arenapharm.com/pipeline/temanogrel/">temanogrel</a>, treats damaged smaller blood vessels in the heart. The other, <a href="https://www.arenapharm.com/pipeline/apd418/">APD 418</a>, improves the heart's ability to pump blood in patients with acute heart failure. Both are being used in clinical trials and have not yet been approved.


	By purchasing Arena, is Pfizer admitting that its mRNA vaccines have dangerous coronary side effects? If temanogrel and APD 418 receive approval, does Pfizer plan to increase the price to make more profit? Or will Pfizer discontinue research into those medications?


	Matt Le Tissier wants answers. Le Tissier, who played in both the English Premier League and England's national team before becoming a television analyst, <a href="https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1537763/heart-problem-Christian-Eriksen-Matt-Le-Tissier-football-aguero-vaccine-vn">demanded</a> a national investigation during an interview with GB News.


	"Even saying that deems you to be some kind of anti-vaxxer, which is absolutely disgusting," Le Tissier said about the name-calling from mRNA vaccine advocates. "It’s been very concerning for me watching the sport that I love and I played for 17 years. In all that time that I played I never once saw any footballer leave the pitch because of heart issues.


	"It might not be to do with the vaccine, it may not be, but let’s have an investigation to find out what it is. I want just some information, I want people to take a look at what is happening in football, have a proper investigation and give us some answers as to why so many sports people are suffering with heart issues. It’s not difficult."


	It is, however, if the powers-that-be want nobody to know why.


	Joseph Hippolito is a freelance writer and a regular contributor to FrontPage Magazine. His commentaries have appeared in The Federalist, The Stream, Wall Street Journal, Jerusalem Post and National Post.

The Brave New World of Athletes’ Heart Problems

One of the world's best soccer players recently and inadvertently issued a frightening warning to the world, though neither he nor the world probably recognize

An NBA player used his shoes to send a colorful, imaginative and devastating message to the league's preeminent superstar when their teams met recently.


	Through provocative <a href="https://twitter.com/EnesKanter/status/1461380967197814785" target="_blank">art</a> on his footwear, the Boston Celtics' Enes Kanter rebuked the Los Angeles Lakers' LeBron James for his self-serving attitude toward "social justice" during their game Nov. 19. In the process, Kanter inadvertently asked a disturbing question: are James and the NBA unwittingly acting as a fifth column for China's geopolitical agenda?


	Kanter uses James' nickname, "The King," to mock him. The outside of Kanter's black left shoe shows <a href="https://twitter.com/EnesKanter/status/1461380967197814785/photo/4" target="_blank">rioters</a> looting and burning, much like the protests after George Floyd's death. The instep features <a href="https://twitter.com/EnesKanter/status/1461380967197814785/photo/3" target="_blank">emblems</a> representing Tibet and the Muslim Uyghurs whom China persecutes.


	In between at the heel is James, kneeling as if he were responding to the national anthem, carrying a large, stuffed moneybag and wearing a crown emblazoned with the word, <a href="https://twitter.com/EnesKanter/status/1461380967197814785/photo/4" target="_blank">"silence."</a>


	But Kanter's red right shoe provides the most stinging rebuke. It shows James <a href="https://twitter.com/EnesKanter/status/1461380967197814785/photo/1" target="_blank">kneeling</a> before Chinese President Xi Jinping, who is coronating him with a crown featuring the symbol for China's currency, the yuan. Behind James lie bulging sacks of money. Over the superstar's shoulders are the five stars featured in the canton of China's flag.


	Kanter's shoes even engage in dialogue. On the instep of the right shoe is a mock <a href="https://twitter.com/EnesKanter/status/1461380967197814785/photo/3" target="_blank">quote</a> from James: "I am informed and educated of the situation." That comment refers to pro-freedom demonstrations in Hong Kong. On the instep of the left shoe is a <a href="https://twitter.com/EnesKanter/status/1461380967197814785/photo/2" target="_blank">question</a> from Kanter: "Hey, still researching and getting educated?" That question refers to James' public apathy concerning China's oppression of Tibetans and Uyghurs.


	Unlike James, Kanter dedicates himself to ending that oppression. On Oct. 22, he used <a href="https://twitter.com/EnesKanter/status/1451581224087134209" target="_blank">Twitter</a> to call Xi a "brutal dictator" and to support independence for Tibet, which China annexed in 1951. Nine days later, Kanter led a <a href="https://www.voanews.com/a/nba-player-enes-kanter-leads-rally-against-uyghur-forced-labor/6292922.html" target="_blank">protest</a> in Washington, D.C. against China's use of Uyghurs as slave labor. Kanter wants Congress to pass a bill forbidding any Chinese goods made with slave labor to be sold in the United States.


	China <a href="https://www.axios.com/china-boston-celtics-enes-kanter-xi-jinping-tibet-6ecd1060-37c6-4b6e-96e0-56694a142b7b.html" target="_blank">retaliated</a> by preventing the Celtics' games from being shown there. Undaunted, Kanter not only displayed another pair of <a href="https://twitter.com/EnesKanter/status/1462812280215818248" target="_blank">shoes</a> condemning China's intrusive surveillance policies; he leads a campaign to convince the International Olympic Committee to <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/enes-kanter-move-the-olympics-for-peng-shuais-sake-11637444316?page=1/" target="_blank">move</a> this February's Winter Games from Beijing.


	Unlike James, Kanter, a Turkish Muslim, has paid a steep personal price for his activism. After he called Turkish President Recep Erdogan "the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2017/may/22/enes-kanter-airport-detainment-romania-turkey-passport-nba" target="_blank">Hitler</a> of our century," Kanter's family disowned him publicly, probably under government pressure. His father, a medical doctor and professor, lost his academic position, faced <a href="https://apnews.com/article/ecb2a2bc6ea5424084b5292a289f0c14" target="_blank">trial</a> for belonging to a terrorist group and briefly spent time in prison.


	Kanter himself faced similar charges after Turkey revoked his <a href="https://www.theplayerstribune.com/articles/enes-kanter-turkey-passport" target="_blank">passport</a>, demanded his extradition and threatened to try him in absentia. The center so fears for his safety that he lives in <a href="https://www.nbcsports.com/northwest/trail-blazers/enes-kanter-considers-adding-american-name-once-he-becomes-us-citizen" target="_blank">hotels</a> and even refused to travel to <a href="https://www.si.com/nba/2019/02/28/enes-kanter-not-traveling-toronto-fears-arrest" target="_blank">Canada</a> and <a href="https://www.cbssports.com/nba/news/knicks-enes-kanter-wont-travel-with-knicks-to-london-says-he-can-get-killed-out-there/" target="_blank">Great Britain</a> with his NBA teams. Just last month, Kanter became an American citizen.


	If "systemic racism" truly permeates a nation ruled by "white supremacists," especially in the White House, as "woke" activists constantly claimed during President&nbsp;Donald Trump's administration, then James would neither live in luxury nor receive acclaim from his homeland's <a href="https://www.si.com/nba/2020/10/27/barack-obama-join-lebron-james-the-shop-episode-voting" target="_blank">elite</a> for superficial gestures.


	For James, <a href="https://www.etonline.com/lebron-james-and-fellow-nba-players-kneel-for-national-anthem-in-black-lives-matter-shirts-as" target="_blank">kneeling</a> during the national anthem, <a href="https://www.pressreader.com/usa/usa-today-us-edition/20200831/282046214488480" target="_blank">speaking</a> at post-game press conferences, wearing a T-shirt proclaiming "Black Lives Matter," <a href="https://www.pressreader.com/usa/usa-today-us-edition/20200831/282046214488480" target="_blank">supporting</a> a plan to boycott the NBA's playoffs after Jacob Blake's death, and <a href="https://twitter.com/KingJames/status/1458619464329670657" target="_blank">mocking</a> a defendant's tears during a criminal trial constitutes "activism."


	"He cares about his PR more than anything," Kanter <a href="https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1462562681651548160?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1462563789379751938%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es2_&amp;ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fdailycaller.com%2F2021%2F11%2F22%2Fenes-kanter-lebron-james-social-activism-former-teammates-pr%2F" target="_blank">told</a> CNN on Nov. 21. "I had so many conversations with LeBron's ex-teammates. They are the ones who told me that all LeBron's doing is (for) PR."


	That explains James' <a href="https://twitter.com/Ballislife/status/1462074239973007364?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1462074239973007364%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&amp;ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fdailycaller.com%2F2021%2F11%2F22%2Fenes-kanter-lebron-james-social-activism-former-teammates-pr%2F" target="_blank">reaction</a> to Kanter's message following the Lakers' 130-108 loss Nov. 19: "He’s definitely not someone I would give my energy to. He’s trying to use my name to create an opportunity for himself."


	It also explains James' reluctance to confront China, where he is extremely <a href="https://www.espn.com/nba/news/story?id=3398947" target="_blank">popular</a>. As early as 2008, the superstar not only had two shoe designs sold exclusively in China but also his own museum in Shanghai, complete with personal mementos.


	In 2018, James made <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nba/2019/10/17/lebron-james-nike-china-revenue/3989915002/" target="_blank">$32 million</a> from Nike, which earned more than <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/241724/nikes-sales-in-the-asia-pacific-region-by-area-since-2007/" target="_blank">$8.3 billion</a> from sales in China during the past fiscal year. He has <a href="https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/27847951/daryl-morey-was-misinformed-sending-tweet-china-hong-kong" target="_blank">travelled</a> to China at least 15 times to promote Nike's and the NBA's interests, not to mention his own.


	China has become <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikeozanian/2018/02/26/mark-tatum-talks-about-the-nbas-enormous-success-in-china/?sh=65ae99a518b6#5310cb7b518b%5D" target="_blank">fundamental</a> to the NBA's financial success. Mark Tatum, the league's deputy commissioner, told Forbes in 2018 that the NBA makes between $4 billion and $4.3 billion from its investments in China. More than 300 million Chinese play basketball&nbsp;and about 144 million follow the NBA on social media.


	"In my opinion, China is the biggest growth engine of the NBA, in terms of what we're going to see in three, four, five years down&nbsp;the road," Forbes' Mike Ozanian said in 2018.


	So in October 2019, when Daryl Morey, the Houston Rockets' general manager at the time, tweeted <a href="https://www.ebar.com/news/news/282852" target="_blank">support</a> for demonstrators in Hong Kong wanting freedom, James rebuked him.


	"I believe he wasn't educated on the situation at hand," James <a href="https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/27847951/daryl-morey-was-misinformed-sending-tweet-china-hong-kong" target="_blank">told</a> reporters before elaborating on Twitter: "My team and this league just went through a <a href="https://twitter.com/KingJames/status/1183934569411530752" target="_blank">difficult</a> week. I think people need to understand what a tweet or statement can do to others.&nbsp; And I believe nobody stopped and considered what would happen. Could have waited a week to send it."


	James' motivation came not from the protection of Hong Kong's residents but from the comfort of his teammates, members of the Brooklyn Nets and NBA Commissioner Adam Silver. All of them had to confront tension from authorities and unwanted exposure while visiting China for exhibition games that month.


	More than a decade earlier, James expressed similar reticence concerning China's policies.


	In a 2007 piece for the Christian Science Monitor, Jonathan Zimmerman called James <a href="https://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0524/p09s01-coop.html" target="_blank">"cowardly"</a> for not signing a teammate's open letter condemning China's role in enabling the Darfur genocide in Sudan.


	At the time, China spent billions of dollars to purchase as much as two-thirds of Sudan's oil. Sudan's government funneled some of that money to Arab militia groups that murdered, raped and dismembered <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Darfur#Rape_of_women_and_young_girls" target="_blank">Black Sudanese</a> during a civil war.


	James, then with the Cleveland Cavaliers, was one of only two players not to join their teammates in signing. The other had an endorsement contract with a new Chinese sporting goods firm.


	The following year, James helped the United States win Olympic gold in men's basketball at the Games in Beijing.


	James, of course, is not the only NBA figure engaged in "social justice." Several players and coaches used Twitter to <a href="https://www.sportingnews.com/us/nba/news/nba-reacts-to-kyle-rittenhouse-verdict/3cgwaz96g5f81fumw7vrm41jg" target="_blank">bemoan</a> Kyle Rittenhouse's acquittal. "We are treading down a dangerous path," tweeted Steve Kerr, the Golden State Warriors' coach and a noted Trump critic. "The system is broken," added the Minnesota Timberwolves' Karl-Anthony Towns.


	The more such "woke" sentiments become part of American conventional wisdom, the more China benefits. As FrontPage Magazine <a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/06/china-virus-indeed-joseph-hippolito/" target="_blank">reported</a> in June, China not only seeks to benefit from American controversy, but to cause it.


	"We first need to create the conditions to make it easier for the United States to make mistakes," <a href="https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_breakingnews/xi-jinpings-adviser-outlines-plan-for-ccp-to-defeat-us-including-manipulating-elections_3748196.html?&amp;amp;utm_source=newsnoe&amp;amp;utm_medium=email2&amp;amp;utm_campaign=breaking-2021-03-26-2&amp;amp;mktids=dba4bb8baf9e74e6463c0e9108f5d3ae" target="_blank">said</a> Jin Canrong, associate dean of Renmin University's School of International Studies and an advisor to China's Communist Party. "Second, we should make it as busy as possible, to the extent that it will feel depressed and want to give up. Third, we should become intertwined with the United States, so that it can’t attack us.


	"The task of our next generation is to put the U.S. under our jurisdiction/management, too. But the premise is that we need to do a good job in our generation."


	Black Lives Matter plays a pivotal role in China's quest to sabotage the United States, as FrontPage Magazine <a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/06/beijings-lies-matter-joseph-hippolito/" target="_blank">reported</a> in "Beijing's Lies Matter."


	For example, BLM co-founder Alicia Garza, a native of the Bay Area, has been <a href="https://www.theepochtimes.com/black-lives-matter-is-actually-part-of-the-maoist-playbook-against-america_3765998.html" target="_blank">working</a> with the San Francisco chapter of the Chinese Progressive Association since 2012. The CPA helps fund the Black Futures Lab, which Garza formed to create policies and organize Blacks. BLM <a href="https://cpasf.ourpowerbase.net/civicrm/contribute/transact?reset=1&amp;id=45" target="_blank">calls</a> the Black Futures Lab "a fiscally sponsored project of the Chinese Protective Association."


	"Black Lives Matter is a <a href="https://www.theepochtimes.com/black-lives-matter-is-actually-part-of-the-maoist-playbook-against-america_3765998.html" target="_blank">Communist</a> organization 100 percent, tied to foreign Communists and directly to the Communist Party of China," said Trevor Loudon, an author and filmmaker who has studied Marxist movements for more than 30 years.


	The NBA's substantial investment in China enables the Chinese to peddle their influence subtly, yet effectively.


	"If they cultivate enough people in the right places," Jamestown Foundation fellow Peter Mattis <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/11/28/this-beijing-linked-billionaire-is-funding-policy-research-at-washingtons-most-influential-institutions-china-dc/" target="_blank">said</a>, "they start to change the debate without having to directly inject their own voice."


	If James provides an obvious example of that policy, Gregg Popovich serves as a more understated one. Popovich, the San Antonio Spurs' president and head coach, has called anyone offended by BLM <a href="https://www.mysanantonio.com/spurs-nation/article/Popovich-continues-to-be-vocal-about-the-BLM-15439324.php" target="_blank">"ignorant"</a> and even <a href="https://www.outkick.com/gregg-popovich-compares-christopher-columbus-to-hitler/" target="_blank">equated Columbus with Hitler</a>. Nevertheless, his <a href="https://www.outkick.com/gregg-popovich-praises-enes-kanter-for-speaking-out-on-china-without-mentioning-china/" target="_blank">limp</a> praise for Kanter obscures the refusal to address China's unjust policies forthrightly.


	"I am glad that Enes speaks up when he feels like it," Popovich said. "I think it’s great. No reason not to."


	Kanter reached the ultimate <a href="https://twitter.com/EnesKanter/status/1461380967197814785" target="_blank">conclusion</a> when he displayed his controversial shoes on Twitter.


	"Sad &amp; disgusting how these athletes pretend they care about social justice," he wrote. "They really do 'shut up and dribble' when Big Boss says so."


	After the phrase, "Big Boss," Kanter included a small picture of China's flag.


	Joseph Hippolito is a freelance writer and a regular contributor to&nbsp;FrontPage Magazine. His commentaries have appeared in&nbsp;The Federalist,&nbsp;The Stream,&nbsp;Wall Street Journal,&nbsp;Jerusalem Post&nbsp;and&nbsp;National Post.

Patriotic NBA Star Slams LeBron James' Support for Communist Regime

An NBA player used his shoes to send a colorful, imaginative and devastating message to the league's preeminent superstar when their teams met recently.

A British journalist, writing in one of the world's most respected newspapers, recently declared something that almost none of his American colleagues dare to utter: Last year's presidential election&nbsp;was <a href="https://archive.ph/2021.09.27-215723/https:/www.thetimes.co.uk/article/so-trump-was-right-the-election-was-rigged-and-our-next-one-will-be-too-n0x3lv7fv" target="_blank">rigged</a> for Joe Biden.


	Rod Liddle, associate editor of The Spectator, <a href="https://archive.ph/2021.09.27-215723/https:/www.thetimes.co.uk/article/so-trump-was-right-the-election-was-rigged-and-our-next-one-will-be-too-n0x3lv7fv">made that assertion</a> in The Times of London on Sept. 26. In doing so, he also blistered Biden's incompetence and physical problems, which the leftist U.S. Establishment Media also largely ignores.


	"The American public is slowly waking up to the fact that they are being led by an ineffectually devious, senile halfwit," Liddle wrote. "Soon the public will wake up to something even more unpleasant and sinister: that the last presidential election was a fraud, rigged by big business, the labor unions and, more than anything, the media and the tech companies.


	"If that election had taken place in any other country, it would have been called 'unfree.'"


	FrontPage Magazine has previously discussed the possibility of foreign and domestic 2020 election interference in "<a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/11/beijing-called-biden-joseph-hippolito/">Beijing</a> is Called For Biden," "Why Trump <a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/11/why-trump-will-win-joseph-hippolito/">Will</a> Win" and "The <a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/12/serbian-connection-joseph-hippolito/">Serbian</a> Connection.”


	But Liddle -- who edits a publication with nearly 200 years of credibility as the world's <a href="https://www.spectator.co.uk/about">oldest</a> weekly magazine -- ventures beyond possibility. He states his charge as categorical fact.


	So far, no American commentator has rebutted his accusation, which attacks the fiber of American political legitimacy.


	Liddle made his assertions while Arizona's Maricopa County was conducting a forensic audit of the November election's votes. That audit&nbsp;found <a href="https://c692f527-da75-4c86-b5d1-8b3d5d4d5b43.filesusr.com/ugd/2f3470_d36cb5eaca56435d84171b4fe7ee6919.pdf" target="_blank">numerous</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/JovanHPulitzer/status/1445395784300650506" target="_blank">discrepancies</a>.


	For example, 3,432 more ballots were cast than there were people who voted. Nearly 300 dead people voted. There were more than 17,000 duplicate votes. More than 23,000 voters who mailed their ballots did so after the mail-in deadline. Of those, more than 9,000 returned more ballots than they received.


	Biden won Arizona by 10,457 votes but the audit showed problems with more than 50,000 ballots in Maricopa County. Other states are considering similar audits.


	Liddle's criticism, however, excludes&nbsp;support for President Donald Trump. He displayed his contempt for Biden's predecessor when mentioning Trump's lead in opinion polls. "Imagine how awful a president must be if people would rather that sack of meat with mittens were back in charge," Liddle wrote.


	Yet contempt for Trump, in Liddle's view, fails to justify what the columnist calls "a grotesque manipulation of democracy," even if Trump was "unhinged," with Liddle quoting one of the favorite phrases Trump's detractors used.


	"Was he?" Liddle asked. "I don’t know. He didn’t seem terribly hinged to me, but then Americans rarely do. But more unhinged than your average American -- or Joe Biden?


	"Whatever the case, that election one year ago was plainly rigged. Not by fraudulent postal votes. But by an affluent elite conspiring, brutally at times, to ensure that the American public heard only one side of the story.”


	Liddle cited three examples. One was Trump's ejection from social media. Another was the squelching of any story, especially from the <a href="https://nypost.com/2020/10/27/hunters-biz-partner-tells-all-on-meeting-with-joe-biden-goodwin/" target="_blank">New</a>&nbsp;<a href="https://nypost.com/2020/10/22/hunter-biden-ex-business-partner-told-dont-mention-joe-in-text/" target="_blank">York</a> <a href="https://nypost.com/2020/10/22/hunter-ex-partner-tony-bobulinski-calls-joe-biden-a-liar/" target="_blank">Post</a>,&nbsp;alleging corruption&nbsp;on the part of either Joe Biden or his son, <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8901193/National-security-nightmare-Hunter-Bidens-laptop.html" target="_blank">Hunter</a>.


	"We already knew, even as Biden was declaring victory, that Facebook and Twitter had cut off Donald Trump’s access to the electorate," Liddle wrote. "He was deliberately rendered voiceless. Before then, they -- and the national media -- had smothered stories alleging the Biden family’s peddling of influence and Biden’s crackhead son and his dubious business interests in Ukraine. False news, we were informed. Nope, not all of it was false at all, it transpired."


	But the most damning evidence, Liddle argued, appeared in February, when Time magazine published its <a href="https://time.com/5936036/secret-2020-election-campaign/" target="_blank">article</a> on the election. Time's Molly Ball described a "conspiracy" involving "an informal alliance between left-wing activists and business titans," including the AFL-CIO and the United States Chamber of Commerce, she wrote.


	Those parties joined what Ball called "a loosely organized coalition of operatives" across the political spectrum who had been active for more than a year.


	"Their work touched every aspect of the election," Ball wrote. "They got states to change voting systems and laws, and helped secure hundreds of millions (of dollars) in public and private funding. They fended off voter-suppression lawsuits, recruited millions of poll workers and got millions of people to vote by mail for the first time.

<blockquote>
	
		They successfully pressured social media companies to take a harder line against disinformation and used data-driven strategies to fight viral smears. They executed public awareness campaigns that helped Americans understand how the vote count would unfold over days or weeks, preventing Trump's conspiracy theories and false claims of victory from getting more traction. After Election Day, they monitored every pressure point to ensure that Trump could not overturn the result.
</blockquote>


	Ball described the operation as "fortifying" the election. Liddle called it a way "to manage what information was available to the voting public."


	"Its aim, as The Wall Street Journal put it, was to 'suppress unwanted elements of U.S. political conversation,' " he continued. "What a wonderful phrase. Time magazine reported this as if the cabal -- it called the arrangement a cabal -- had been acting heroically. To save the U.S. public from making the same mistake again and electing that Brobdingnagian boor -- and to do so by suppressing stories favorable to him."


	Even after the election, Washington's establishment worked secretly to sabotage Trump, Liddle wrote.


	The columnist mentioned that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley, told Chinese officials "he would countermand any order from Trump to attack China -- which seems to a lot of U.S. conservatives to be an act of pure treason." Liddle added that Milley "went behind his president’s back to connive with" Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the house.


	Liddle made the same <a href="https://www.the-sun.com/news/3583943/joe-biden-cosmic-uselesness-rod-liddle/" target="_blank">arguments</a> Sept. 1, when he condemned Biden's chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in a column for The Sun, a tabloid.


	"If Trump -- whose foreign policy record was pretty good -- had failed even half as spectacularly as Biden," Liddle wrote, "the media would be calling for his head."


	Liddle then accused the "liberal establishment" of rigging last year's election.


	"Millions of Americans are now kicking themselves, wondering why they voted for this gormless wazzock," Liddle wrote in alluding to Biden. "They did so because the media -- virtually all of it -- told them they had to.&nbsp;The outgoing President was even banned from Twitter and Facebook, so single-minded was the liberal establishment in getting rid of Trump." 
	 
	He continued:

<blockquote>
	
		And yet Trump had been able to keep North Korea and China in check. He ­brokered peace deals between Israel and moderate Arab countries in the Middle East. Coarse and grotesque though he was at times, Trump was ten times better as a president than Joe Biden.&nbsp;The liberal establishment saddled the USA with Biden as President.&nbsp;Through an election which was astonishing and, frankly, utterly undemocratic in its treatment of the two candidates.
</blockquote>


	Given the tendency for Big Media and Big Tech to <a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/03/big-media-and-big-tech-collude-control-thought-joseph-hippolito/">collude</a> and <a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/01/people-lie-joseph-hippolito/">manipulate</a> information, as FrontPage Magazine has also reported, Liddle’s charge appears to warrant discussion and examination.


	An important question arises: Why would Liddle write about this election nearly a year later? First, he expressed concern that Britain's elite, notably the BBC, would attempt something similar for the next general election in 2024. More importantly, however, he expressed dismay at what he sees as other commentators' inability to see the obvious.


	"What worries me most is that so few liberal commentators seem capable of understanding that this was a grotesque manipulation of democracy," Liddle wrote in the Times of London. "And yet, surely, they must see it, no matter how appalling Trump seemed to them (and indeed, quite often, to me). Instead, those very acts that subverted democracy are depicted as valorous.”


	In other words,&nbsp;Liddle believes that if it can happen once, it can happen again. And if Americans fail to pay attention, it just might.

A British Journalist Calls Biden’s Election Victory 'Rigged'

A British journalist, writing in one of the world's most respected newspapers, recently declared something that almost none of his American colleagues dare to

Today's controversy surrounding COVID-19 vaccines might seem unprecedented. But nearly four decades ago, the now-famous doctor encouraging them advocated an ineffective, dangerous medication for a far deadlier disease -- and got away&nbsp;with it.


	During the 1980s, when the AIDS epidemic ravaged the world and long before Dr. Anthony Fauci became a household name, he promoted AZT as a treatment for HIV in his role as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious&nbsp;Diseases. Doctors once used AZT in cancer chemotherapy. But AZT not only failed to treat HIV. It made patients sicker.


	The way that medical, pharmaceutical and political bureaucracies handled that crisis resembles the way they handle COVID-19. More importantly, both episodes suggest possible conflicts of interest among those charged with protecting public health.


	Spin&nbsp;Magazine's Celia Farber exposed the AZT debacle in her 1989 <a href="https://www.spin.com/featured/aids-and-the-azt-scandal-spin-1989-feature-sins-of-omission/">article</a>, "Sins of Omission." Farber described how the federal government, corporate media and a major pharmaceutical firm responded to public panic about AIDS by approving AZT and promoting it even after it proved to be deadly.


	Doctors withdrew AZT as a cancer treatment because it destroys cells indiscriminately. But Burroughs Wellcome submitted it under an anonymous description to the National Cancer Institute in 1987, and AZT killed HIV in laboratory conditions. However, doctors at the Food and Drug Administration expressed extreme reluctance to approve AZT.


	"We do not know what will happen a year from now," said Dr. Itzhak Brook, the panel's chairman. "The data is just too premature, and the statistics are not really well done. The drug could actually be detrimental."


	Despite Burroughs Wellcome's promise to provide updated data every two years -- a promise the firm never kept -- and to limit AZT to emergency use for extremely ill patients, the panel considered rejecting&nbsp;the drug. Then FDA bureaucrats got involved.


	"Once the FDA realized we were intending to reject it, they applied political pressure,"&nbsp;Brook said. "At about 4 p.m., the head of the FDA’s Center for Drugs and Biologics asked permission to speak, which is extremely unusual. Usually they leave us alone. But he said to us, 'Look, if you approve the drug, we can assure you that we will work together with Burroughs Wellcome and make sure the drug is given to the right people.' It was like saying 'Please do it.' "


	As a result, the panel approved AZT, with Brook providing the only "no" vote. Two years later, Fauci "was now pushing to expand prescription," despite the fact that the study promoting AZT "has long been declared invalid," Farber wrote.


	"In mitigating a disease, Tony Fauci does only things that they can patent," <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-19-exclusive-top-scientist-hiv-aids-research-pioneer/id1491435111?i=1000472156718">said</a> Dr. Judy&nbsp;Mikovits, who worked with Fauci at the National Cancer Institute.


	AZT became a financial boon. In 1989, annual treatment cost $8,000 per patient -- or nearly $18,000 today.


	"Burroughs Wellcome’s gross profits for next year are estimated at $230 million,"&nbsp;Farber wrote in&nbsp;1989. "Stock market analysts predict that Burroughs Wellcome may be selling as much as $2 billion worth of AZT, under the brand name Retrovir, each year by the mid-1990s -- matching Burroughs Wellcome’s total sales for all its products last year."


	Government agencies became so busy conducting trials for AZT that they ignored more than 100 other promising, less expensive drugs.


	But AZT's tendency to destroy cells indiscriminately made HIV patients worse by annihilating T-4 cells, a special kind of white blood cell needed to fight the deadly virus.


	“Undeniably, AZT kills T-4 cells," said Dr. Harvey Bialy, a molecular biologist with a doctorate from UC Berkeley. “No one can argue with that.&nbsp;I can’t see how this drug could be doing anything other than making people very sick."


	Farber's description of the debate between AZT's champions and critics sounds eerily similar to today's arguments surrounding COVID-19 vaccines.


	"When promoters of AZT are pressed on key scientific points, whether at the (National Institutes of Health), FDA, Burroughs Wellcome, or an AIDS organization, they often become angry," she wrote. "The idea that the drug is 'doing something,' even though this is invariably followed with irritable admissions that there are 'mechanisms about the drug and disease we don’t understand,' is desperately clung to.


	"It is as if, in the eye of the AIDS storm, the official, government-agency sanctioned position is immunized against critique. Skepticism and challenge, so essential to scientific progress and so prevalent in every other area of scientific endeavor, is not welcome in the AZT debate, where it is arguably needed more than anywhere else.”


	Just as AZT made HIV patients more vulnerable to that virus, mRNA vaccines increase the risk of COVID-19 infection, as one scientific study shows.


	In August, the&nbsp;Journal of Infection, a&nbsp;peer-reviewed&nbsp;monthly from the British Infection Association, published a <a href="https://www.journalofinfection.com/article/S0163-4453(21)00392-3/fulltext">study</a> showing that mRNA vaccines wreaked havoc on the immune system. The vaccines actually make the recipient more&nbsp;susceptible&nbsp;to COVID variants. The study's authors recommended that pharmaceutical firms change the vaccines to eliminate the flaw.


	Luc Montagnier, a French virologist who won the Nobel Prize for isolating the virus causing HIV, said the vaccines' spike proteins actually <a href="https://uncoverdc.com/2021/08/23/nobel-laureate-warns-covid-vaccine-is-creating-variants/">create</a> the variants, since resulting antibodies force the virus to adapt quickly or die.


	"The history books will show that it is the vaccination that is creating the variants," Montagnier said. "There are antibodies created by the vaccine. This is where the variants are created."


	Geert Vanden Bossche, a Belgian virologist who once worked for the Bill &amp; Melinda Gates Foundation, explained the <a href="https://www.geertvandenbossche.org/post/a-last-word-of-caution-to-all-those-pretending-the-covid-19-pandemic-is-toning-down">process</a>. The mRNA vaccines produce antibodies that adhere to the spike protein but fail to penetrate the virus. Consequently, the virus overwhelms the immune system and becomes more potent.


	That tendency would explain the meteoric rise in COVID-19 infection rates among the vaccinated in such nations as <a href="https://m-jpost-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/m.jpost.com/health-science/israels-two-week-window-to-halt-the-4th-covid-19-wave-675199/amp?amp_js_v=a6&amp;amp_gsa=1&amp;usqp=mq331AQKKAFQArABIIACAw%3D%3D#aoh=16283403996339&amp;referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&amp;amp_tf=From%20%251%24s&amp;ampshare=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.jpost.com%2Fhealth-science%2Fisraels-two-week-window-to-halt-the-4th-covid-19-wave-675199">Israel</a>, where 85 percent of the population received shots and 58 percent was considered fully vaccinated in August.


	Just as Fauci recommended AZT, he promoted another expensive drug to treat COVID-19 last year before vaccines became available. As FrontPage Magazine <a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/08/hydroxychloroquine-follies-joseph-hippolito/">reported</a> in "Hydroxychloroquine Follies," Fauci <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/29/dr-anthony-fauci-says-data-from-remdesivir-coronavirus-drug-trial-shows-quite-good-news.html">called</a> Gilead Sciences' Remdesivir&nbsp;the "standard of care."


	Fauci's agency conducted a clinical trial for the drug, which the FDA approved unusually quickly for emergency use in hospitals. But critics remained skeptical.


	"It is unusual to call a drug the ‘standard of care’ until peer review of data and publication, and before studies have shown benefit in mortality,"&nbsp;<a href="https://aapsonline.org/a-tale-of-two-drugs-money-vs-medical-wisdom/" target="_blank">said</a>&nbsp;Dr. Michele Barry, director of Stanford's Center for Innovation in Global Health.


	But Remdesivir&nbsp;could&nbsp;make a lot of money. Under Gilead's recommendations last year,&nbsp;Remdesivir&nbsp;would <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/06/29/884648842/remdesivir-priced-at-more-than-3-100-for-a-course-of-treatment">cost</a>&nbsp;$3,120 for five days of treatment. That price could <a href="https://icer.org/news-insights/press-releases/updated_icer-covid_models_june_24/">rise</a> to as much as $5,080 per patient, stated the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review, which sets cost parameters for medications.


	Making Fauci's endorsement more <a href="https://aapsonline.org/a-tale-of-two-drugs-money-vs-medical-wisdom/">suspicious</a> are these facts: Nine members of a government panel that formulated COVID-19 treatment guidelines had ties to Gilead. Seven of them, including two of the panel's leaders, failed to disclose those ties for 11 months. Two others belonged to Gilead's advisory board.


	Burroughs Wellcome's broken promise to provide data on AZT would resonate in 2018 in a lawsuit against the Department of Health and Human Services.


	Robert F. Kennedy Jr., son of the former Presidential candidate and&nbsp;an activist for children's health, joined&nbsp;the Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN) in <a href="http://www.icandecide.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Stipulated-Order-copy-1.pdf">suing</a> HHS for information about vaccine safety, as FrontPage Magazine <a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/03/big-media-and-big-tech-collude-control-thought-joseph-hippolito/">reported</a> in March. The National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 demands that HHS regulate vaccine safety and effectiveness, and submit reports to Congress every two years.


	Kennedy and ICAN requested those reports through the Freedom of Information Act. But when HHS refused to provide them, the lawsuit ensued.


	HHS responded by stating that after "a thorough search of its document tracking systems" and "a comprehensive review of all relevant indexes," the reports were missing. HHS "had to finally and shockingly admit that it never, not even once, submitted a single biennial report to Congress detailing the improvements in vaccine safety," stated an ICAN press release.


	California's Legislature provided a more recent -- and blatant – example of possible collusion between Big Government and Big Pharma.


	As the Legislature was about to adjourn before Gov. Gavin Newsom faced recall, Democrats in the Assembly, the Legislature's lower house, tried to rewrite a <a href="https://californiaglobe.com/articles/another-gutted-bill-amended-to-compel-ca-employers-to-require-covid-vaccine-as-condition-of-employment/">bill</a> regulating&nbsp;telephone medical services. The new bill would require businesses to demand vaccination records for customers, employees, apprentices and interns, as FrontPage Magazine <a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/09/vaccines-today-social-credit-tomorrow-joseph-hippolito/">reported</a>.


	The rewritten bill, which has been tabled, <a href="https://californiaglobe.com/articles/another-gutted-bill-amended-to-compel-ca-employers-to-require-covid-vaccine-as-condition-of-employment/">specified</a> the "Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, and Janssen vaccines" as most effective. How often do brand names receive the kind of free advertising provided by proposed legislation?


	As he discussed the controversy surrounding AZT in 1989, Dr. Joseph Sonnabend, one of the pioneers of HIV research, <a href="https://www.spin.com/featured/aids-and-the-azt-scandal-spin-1989-feature-sins-of-omission/">described</a> the kind of climate that demands expediency over truth, a climate that dominates today's discussion of COVID-19.


	"The name of the game is to protect your grant, don’t open your mouth," Sonnabend said. "It’s all about money. It’s grounds for just following the party line and not being critical, when there are obviously financial and political forces driving this."


	Mikovits describes the similarities more bluntly.


	"For 40 years," she <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-19-exclusive-top-scientist-hiv-aids-research-pioneer/id1491435111?i=1000472156718">said</a>, "they've been perpetrating the fraud on not only the American people, but the world."


	Joseph Hippolito is a freelance writer and a regular contributor to&nbsp;FrontPage Magazine. His commentaries have appeared in&nbsp;The Federalist,&nbsp;The Stream,&nbsp;Wall Street Journal,&nbsp;Jerusalem Post&nbsp;and&nbsp;National Post.

Trust Fauci and the Bureaucrats?

Today's controversy surrounding COVID-19 vaccines might seem unprecedented. But nearly four decades ago, the now-famous doctor encouraging them advocated an

If California's Democrats get their way, their state will become the first to write vaccine mandates into law. If California's Democrats succeed, they will take the nation down a dangerous path, one that could lead to a social credit system.


	Democrats in the Assembly, the state legislature's lower house, want&nbsp;to rewrite drafts of current bills and transform them into vaccine mandates. The process earned a colloquial nickname: gut and amend.


	"Gut-and-amend bills can be particularly insidious," <a href="https://californiaglobe.com/articles/california-legislature-guts-transportation-bill-to-create-vaccine-mandate-on-private-industry/">wrote</a> Katy Grimes in the California Globe, a political website.

<blockquote>
	
		This secretive process often leaves lawmakers, as well as the public, little or no time to review entirely new legislation dropped into an old bill. And usually, the subject of the legislation has nothing to do with the bill’s previous legislative issue.Gut-and-amend typically happens with budget issues and heavy special interest legislation. Lawmakers have complained loudly for years that the gut-and-amend process has been grossly abused by whichever party is in power.
</blockquote>


	The Democrats first tried this tactic with&nbsp;<a href="https://californiaglobe.com/articles/california-legislature-guts-transportation-bill-to-create-vaccine-mandate-on-private-industry/" target="_blank">AB 455</a>, a transportation bill. The&nbsp;Los Angeles Times&nbsp;<a href="https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-08-26/california-lawmakers-grapple-with-statewide-covid-19-vaccine-mandate" target="_blank">obtained</a>&nbsp;a draft version stipulating that Californians must present vaccination proof to enter a restaurant, theater, gym, hotel or sports arena. The revised bill also demanded that employees, job applicants and independent contractors must provide similar proof or take weekly COVID-19 tests.


	But since the Legislature adjourns Sept.10 for four months, and since Gov. Gavin Newsom faces a recall election Sept. 14, Democrats faced <a href="https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-08-26/california-lawmakers-grapple-with-statewide-covid-19-vaccine-mandate">difficulties</a> organizing and coordinating enough support from labor and business to make the revision work.


	However, the Assembly's Democrats refuse to relent. <a href="https://californiaglobe.com/articles/another-gutted-bill-amended-to-compel-ca-employers-to-require-covid-vaccine-as-condition-of-employment/" target="_blank">AB 1102</a>, originally dealing with telephone medical services, includes a provision that protects businesses from lawsuits. The bill now would require businesses to demand proof of vaccination not only for customers but also for employees, apprentices and interns. In lieu of such proof, customers, employees and interns must submit to COVID-19 testing.


	To protect businesses, the bill would re-write California's anti-discrimination laws.


	Interestingly, the bill&nbsp;specifies the "Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, and Janssen vaccines" as most effective. Would it be fair to assume that lobbyists for those firms made promises or payments to the Assembly's members for that kind of testimonial?


	"It’s pathetic," a source <a href="https://californiaglobe.com/articles/another-gutted-bill-amended-to-compel-ca-employers-to-require-covid-vaccine-as-condition-of-employment/">told</a> the&nbsp;Globe. "The progressive legislators play ‘Vax for the win’ while the people of California have to walk down-urine soaked streets and needle strewn parks. Pathetic."&nbsp;


	Perhaps more interestingly, another Democratic Assemblyman, Marc Levine from liberal Marin County, introduced a more&nbsp;<a href="https://californiaglobe.com/articles/california-assembly-members-compelled-to-show-proof-of-covid-vaccine-or-lose-salary-new-legislation-says/" target="_blank">arbitrary</a>&nbsp;resolution. Under Levine’s measure, Assembly members could neither participate in legislative sessions nor receive salaries without vaccination proof.


	“This seems like it disenfranchises millions of voters who voted for these people,”&nbsp;a source <a href="https://californiaglobe.com/articles/california-assembly-members-compelled-to-show-proof-of-covid-vaccine-or-lose-salary-new-legislation-says/">told</a> the&nbsp;Globe. “Is this voter suppression?"


	Though Levine's resolution lost, passage might not have been his point.


	"While this is a resolution which is not officially enforceable," Grimes&nbsp;<a href="https://californiaglobe.com/articles/california-assembly-members-compelled-to-show-proof-of-covid-vaccine-or-lose-salary-new-legislation-says/" target="_blank">wrote</a>, "a resolution is often used ahead of controversial legislation&nbsp;to ease legislators into the concept."&nbsp; (emphasis added)


	Helping the Democrats' cause is the fact that they hold 75 percent of the seats in each house of California's Legislature, so they could override any gubernatorial veto should Newsom lose the recall.


	If vaccine mandates become state law, California would have the legal foundation to install a social credit system that monitors personal behavior. China uses cell phones connected to government databases to issue rewards for complying with government mandates -- and punishments for refusing to comply.


	Other nations have manipulated the pandemic to create limited prototypes. In August, France <a href="https://apnews.com/article/europe-business-health-france-coronavirus-pandemic-655d8451d7494f8663ce2072e64cf7a6" target="_blank">mandated</a> proof of vaccination through a QR code on phones to use long-distance transportation, enter a hospital or patronize a restaurant or cafe. In response to increasingly restrictive mandates, the French have been <a href="https://mobile.twitter.com/eha_news/status/1434128991368122371" target="_blank">staging</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/TheInsiderPaper/status/1418960168801427465?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1418960168801427465%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&amp;ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Funcoverdc.com%2F2021%2F07%2F30%2Fmassive-protests-worldwide-against-vaccine-passports%2F" target="_blank">massive</a> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3YVSDcKkfI" target="_blank">protests</a> for <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9g3st66Gvg" target="_blank">months</a>.


	Australia's <a href="https://amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/619940/">autocratic</a> enforcement of quarantines and vaccine mandates is starting to resemble China's technological <a href="https://amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/619940/" target="_blank">tyranny</a>. One of Australia's states, South Australia, provides the testing ground for a national program. Anyone quarantining at home after international or long-distance domestic travel must download a phone <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-08-23/how-will-south-australias-home-quarantine-trial-work/100398878">app</a> that recognizes individual faces and determines locations.


	South Australia's health ministry will send random texts to that app. Within 15 minutes, the phone's owner must reply with a picture of his or her face at the location where he or she claims to be. Otherwise, the health ministry will dispatch the local police.


	"We don't tell them how often or when, on a random basis, (but) they have to reply within 15 minutes," South Australia Premier Steven Marshall said. "I think every South Australian should feel pretty proud that we are the national pilot for the home-based quarantine app."


	The state government would not keep the information, Marshall said. The&nbsp;state government might not need to keep it. The national government could do so, given the parameters of another program using technological surveillance.


	Called "a radical plan to crack down on social media abuse," Australia's parliament is considering a plan to <a href="https://thepostmillennial.com/watch-australian-government-plans-chinese-style-social-credit-system-for-social-media-users" target="_blank">demand</a> social media users to provide police with 100 points of personal identification, such as a driver's license or passport number. Police thus could gain access to those accounts, and would use personal data to identify anyone engaged in abusive behavior. Violators could face defamation suits and criminal prosecution.


	So the technology exists to monitor an individual's movements, to identify social media users and to greatly expand the powers of local police. Given the alliance between Big Tech, Big Pharma, Big Business and Big Government, does anybody believe such technology would be used only to ensure public health?


	Perhaps the Chinese can best answer that question.


	Joseph Hippolito is a freelance writer and a regular contributor to&nbsp;FrontPage Magazine. His commentaries have appeared in&nbsp;The Federalist,&nbsp;The Stream,&nbsp;Wall Street Journal,&nbsp;Jerusalem Post&nbsp;and&nbsp;National Post.


	&nbsp;

Vaccines Mandates Today, China's Social Credit System Tomorrow?

If California's Democrats get their way, their state will become the first to write vaccine mandates into law. If California's Democrats succeed, they will

Biden, Afghanistan and China

No matter what else he might do, Joe Biden will be remembered forever for inciting the United States' chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, abandoning American

The federal government has become so desperate to get Americans vaccinated against COVID-19 that it plans to hold Medicare and Medicaid payments hostage.


	On Wednesday, Joe Biden, the virtual president, <a href="https://apnews.com/article/business-health-coronavirus-pandemic-nursing-homes-2e6189cd41068b1e0f643ee7e4bfbb92">announced</a> that nursing homes will receive federal money for Medicare and Medicaid expenses only if their employees&nbsp;are vaccinated.


	The "Delta variant", it appears, justified the step.


	"I’m using the power of the federal government as a payer of healthcare costs to ensure we reduce those risks to our most vulnerable seniors," Biden&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-to-tell-nursing-homes-to-require-staff-to-be-vaccinated-to-keep-federal-funding-11629313862" target="_blank">said</a>.&nbsp;The Department of Human Services will issue the mandate, which will take effect in September, in conjunction with the&nbsp;Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).


	Biden made his announcement less than two weeks after&nbsp;a left-wing think tank made a wider-ranging proposal along similar lines.&nbsp;On Aug. 6, three members of the Center for American Progress&nbsp;proposed linking Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement&nbsp;for all health-care providers to staff vaccinations. The three made their&nbsp;<a href="https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/healthcare/news/2021/08/06/502409/mandatory-covid-19-vaccination-health-care-workers-condition-medicare-medicaid-participation/" target="_blank">argument</a>&nbsp;on the center's website.


	"Making COVID-19 vaccination mandatory for providers participating in Medicare and Medicaid would protect vulnerable patients, set a positive example for other employers, and contribute to the national effort to contain the virus," wrote Jill Rosenthal, Emily Gee and Maura Calsyn. Rosenthal is the center's director of public health policy, Gee is its senior economist on the subject, and Calsyn is the center's vice president and coordinator for health policy.


	The think tank was created by John Podesta, President Bill Clinton's former chief of staff and the former chairman of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign.


	While the authors made no mention of&nbsp;making individual&nbsp;benefits dependent upon vaccination, their proposal raises that frightening possibility.&nbsp;Since the&nbsp;federal government adopted part of that recommendation, what would prevent those who need Medicare and Medicaid from eventually being targeted?


	Rosenthal, Gee and Calsyn justified their position by citing one example of how Medicare demanded social change. In 1966, Medicare's first year, hospitals had to end racial <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15757920/">segregation</a>&nbsp;to receive reimbursement. That mandate led "more than 1,000 hospitals to integrate their medical staffs and hospital floors in less than four months," the authors wrote.


	But the authors make a substantial mistake in logic by equating mandatory vaccination with mandatory desegregation. Integration remedied long-standing violations of Constitutional rights. Mandatory vaccination, however, violates employees' rights not to receive shots that remain experimental. Most importantly, the authors ignore the concerns of many health-care workers about the&nbsp;vaccines' safety.


	Last month, the CDC reported that 74 percent of new COVID-19 cases in Massachusetts came from <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/30/cdc-study-shows-74percent-of-people-infected-in-massachusetts-covid-outbreak-were-fully-vaccinated.html" target="_blank">vaccinated</a> patients. Cases also rose dramatically in Israel, where 85 percent of the population received at least one shot and 58 percent are fully vaccinated. The health ministry <a href="https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/coronavirus-in-israel-3843-new-cases-379-percent-of-tests-return-positive-676024">reported</a> 3,843 new cases Aug. 5.


	At Jerusalem's Herzog Hospital, which specializes in caring for the elderly, vaccinated Israelis represented 85 percent to 90 percent of new admissions, <a href="https://twitter.com/JCConradson/status/1424035882454065155?s=19">said</a> Dr. Kobi Haviv, the medical director. Haviv also said that 95 percent of patients with "severe" COVID-19 cases took the vaccine.


	"We are going to be right in the same spot that we were exactly one year ago,"&nbsp;<a href="https://m-jpost-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/m.jpost.com/health-science/israels-two-week-window-to-halt-the-4th-covid-19-wave-675199/amp?amp_js_v=a6&amp;amp_gsa=1&amp;usqp=mq331AQKKAFQArABIIACAw%3D%3D#aoh=16283403996339&amp;referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&amp;amp_tf=From%20%251%24s&amp;ampshare=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.jpost.com%2Fhealth-science%2Fisraels-two-week-window-to-halt-the-4th-covid-19-wave-675199" target="_blank">said</a>&nbsp;Dr. Eitan Wertheim, director general of the Rabin Medical Center near Tel Aviv. "We are on the same route."


	On Aug. 9, the Journal of Infection, the British Infection Association's monthly, published a peer-reviewed study that disputes the narrative. The study showed that the spike proteins in mRNA vaccines increase the chances of being <a href="https://www.journalofinfection.com/article/S0163-4453(21)00392-3/fulltext" target="_blank">infected</a> with the Delta variant. It also recommended that manufacturers fix their COVID-19 vaccines to eliminate that risk.


	The Food and Drug Administration lists "vaccine-enhanced disease" as one of the possible side effects. Others include severe inflammation of the brain and spinal cord, stroke and severe heart attack. A <a href="https://thetruedefender.com/wow-fda-accidentally-displayed-the-list-of-vaccines-side-effects/" target="_blank">slide</a> listing those effects appeared during an FDA video presentation -- for less than a second.


	But Rosenthal, Gee and Calsyn argue that the CMS can force health-care employees to be vaccinated, even without public input and discussion. The CMS can make the demand by including it in the center's Conditions of Participation and Conditions for Coverage, which establish the health and safety criteria that doctors, hospitals and nursing homes must meet to receive federal reimbursement.


	"The Medicare and Medicaid Conditions of Participation and Conditions for Coverage are untapped levers the federal government can use to support this effort," wrote the authors, who added that those mandates "are national in scope, making them a powerful tool to effectuate change when there is local or regional reluctance."


	Normally,&nbsp;any change in those mandates must follow&nbsp;public input and discussion. But the CMS can <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/1395hh" target="_blank">waive</a> that requirement when "impracticable, unnecessary, or contrary to the public interest." CMS did so last August by imposing <a href="https://www.cms.gov/files/document/covid-ifc-3-8-25-20.pdf" target="_blank">contact tracing</a> in hospitals, in May by mandating education about the vaccines in <a href="https://www.cms.gov/files/document/qso-21-19-nh.pdf" target="_blank">nursing homes</a>&nbsp;and this week with its announcement.


	"CMS strongly encourages nursing home residents and staff members to get vaccinated as the Agency undergoes the necessary steps in the rule-making process over the course of the next several weeks," a <a href="https://apnews.com/article/business-health-coronavirus-pandemic-nursing-homes-2e6189cd41068b1e0f643ee7e4bfbb92" target="_blank">release</a> stated. "CMS expects nursing home operators to act in the best interest of residents and their staff by complying with these new rules, which the Agency expects to issue in September."


	But what if vaccination rates keep failing to meet projected targets? How far would the federal government go?


	On Aug. 12, Biden suggested&nbsp;<a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/biden-eyes-tougher-vaccine-rules-provoking-backlash-79435161" target="_blank">vaccine passports</a> for interstate travel. Three days&nbsp;earlier, French President Emmanuel Macron already issued a similar <a href="https://apnews.com/article/europe-business-health-france-coronavirus-pandemic-655d8451d7494f8663ce2072e64cf7a6">order</a>. Other mandates elsewhere demand vaccination for university students to use campus <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/18/us/quinnipiac-unvaccinated-internet-restrictions/index.html">Wi-Fi</a>, or for residents of a large city in the Philippines to buy <a href="https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/mayor-in-philippines-announces-policy-banning-unvaccinated-from-supermarkets-grocery-stores/">food</a>.


	Since Rosenthal, Gee and Calsyn support linking reimbursement&nbsp;to vaccination, what would prevent tying entitlement benefits to it? Would state governments adopt the idea for their own entitlement&nbsp;programs?


	All those questions reflect one that is more fundamental and baffling.


	Why are authorities promoting a&nbsp;vaccine that appears to be making things worse?

No Jab, No Medicare?

The federal government has become so desperate to get Americans vaccinated against COVID-19 that it plans to hold Medicare and Medicaid payments hostage

In the United States of Woke, a futuristic dystopia where "progressives" run amok, the widespread use of air conditioning likely would be banned, even in the midst of summer's oppressive heat and humidity.


	Why? Because air conditioning not only threatens Mother Earth. It represents racism and "white supremacy," which means it contradicts social, economic and environmental justice.


	So states Eric Dean Wilson, an instructor and graduate student at the City University of New York. In a recent article for Time magazine, Wilson&nbsp;<a href="https://time.com/6077220/air-conditioning-bad-for-planet-how-to-fix/" target="_blank">wrote</a> about how air conditioning will destroy the planet. By doing so, Wilson demonstrates how the confluence of such "woke" dogmas as critical race theory, equity, environmental extremism and opposition to capitalism define the "progressive" approach to solving problems.


	Wilson has no training in climate science or mechanical engineering. Nevertheless, he <a href="https://ericdeanwilson.commons.gc.cuny.edu/" target="_blank">teaches</a> "climate-themed writing and environmental justice" at CUNY's Queens College. Wilson <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/eric-dean-wilson-9ab73634/" target="_blank">describes</a> his recent book, <a href="https://bookshop.org/a/4973/9781982111298" target="_blank">After Cooling: On Freon, Global Warming, and the Terrible Cost of Comfort</a>, as "a look at air conditioning's contribution to climate violence, and a critique of the American addiction to personal comfort."


	According to that critique, inventors developed "mechanical cooling," as Wilson describes it, to help business. As air conditioning became more widespread and available for homes, it "conveyed class status" that "often fell starkly along the color line, too, especially in the South" while "cleaving the world into civilized cooling and barbaric heat," he wrote.


	Though Wilson offers some technological alternatives, he believes the ultimate solution lies beyond science.


	"Renewable energy infrastructure can take us only so far," he wrote. "The rest of the work is cultural."


	Wilson's solution combines the cultural and technological. He believes in enacting policies that emphasize public comfort over personal comfort. Specifically, those policies&nbsp;would involve&nbsp;"ensuring that the most vulnerable among the planet’s human inhabitants can keep cool through better access to public cooling centers, shade-giving trees, safe green spaces, water infrastructure to cool, and smart design," he wrote.


	Wilson's conclusion not only summarizes the worldview of the fashionably "woke." It reflects their panic.


	"Privatized air conditioning survived the ozone crisis, but its power to separate -- by class, by race, by nation, by ability -- has survived, too," he wrote. "Comfort for some comes at the expense of the life on this planet.


	"It's time we became more comfortable with discomfort. Our survival may depend on it."


	Yet several realities intrude on Wilson's dreams of utopian justice.


	Those realities include two he readily concedes. Air conditioning increased productivity and created new possibilities. It protected such commodities as cotton that were vulnerable to prolonged heat, therefore improving the transportation, quantity and quality of available goods. It enabled extremely hot, humid places to be inhabited, therefore helping reduce population density. It allowed people to gain more control over their own lives.


	More importantly, air conditioning has helped save lives. Before the advent of "mechanical cooling," severe heat waves could prove deadly. In France in 1911, more than 41,000 people <a href="https://www.leparisien.fr/societe/en-1911-paris-suffoquait-deja-sous-la-canicule-29-06-2019-8106210.php" target="_blank">died</a> from a heat wave that lasted from early July to mid-September. For 15 consecutive days, Paris' temperature dipped no lower than 86 degrees. In London, Bordeaux and Lyon, temperatures reached 104 degrees.


	Most of the 41,000 who died were elderly or children younger than 2-years old. As a result, infant mortality increased 20 percent.


	But human nature provides the most inconvenient reality. Every innovation or invention came from the natural human desire to make things more efficient, better, healthier, simpler, easier -- and, yes, more comfortable. Wilson's demand for others to become comfortable with discomfort not only ignores the spirit that&nbsp;led to human progress. It rejects that spirit.


	If Wilson wants to dismiss comfort, then he should relinquish all of his electronic devices, his automobile, his appliances, any medicines he might be taking and his indoor plumbing.&nbsp;


	The demand to become "comfortable with discomfort" means abandoning initiative and imagination, and submitting blindly to collective will or even superstition. It gives corporate tyrannies in the public and private sectors the excuse to&nbsp;impose themselves on their frustrated subjects. Consider, for example, how radicalized school <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/us/virginia-loudoun-county-school-board-mulls-transgender-critical-race-theory-policies">boards</a> and teachers' <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/teachers-union-critical-race-theory-weingarten/2021/07/06/ef327c20-de61-11eb-9f54-7eee10b5fcd2_story.html">unions</a> dismiss parental concerns about critical race theory.


	Ultimately, Wilson's desired utopia has nothing to do with environmental reform or social justice. It has everything to do with centralized power enforcing a bland mediocrity that sabotages excellence, let alone true progress.


	If hospitals become burdened by patients suffering heat stroke in the process -- or if the very oldest and the very youngest must sacrifice their lives to preserve the planet -- who cares?


	Joseph Hippolito is a freelance writer and a regular contributor to&nbsp;FrontPage Magazine. His commentaries have appeared in&nbsp;The Federalist, The Stream, Wall Street Journal, Jerusalem Post&nbsp;and&nbsp;National Post.&nbsp;&nbsp;

Wokeness vs. Air Conditioning

In the United States of Woke, a futuristic dystopia where "progressives" run amok, the widespread use of air conditioning likely would be banned, even in the

Hunter Biden appears to have everything a materialistic narcissist would want. Wealth. Power. Fame (Infamy, actually, but why quibble?). Sex. Drugs. Connections to more of the same. A battalion&nbsp;of enablers ranging from his family to a dominant political party to a nation's corporate news industry.


	Yet something appears to be missing. Apparently, the son of the virtual President has been choking his inner muse. Why else would this most fortunate son take up art at the ripe old age of 51?


	Well, making a little extra money never hurts. Biden's paintings, drawings and collages will sell for between $75,000 and $500,000, said his art dealer, Georges Berges.


	That can buy a lot of crack and <a href="https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2021/06/23/it-looks-like-joe-biden-might-have-picked-up-the-tab-for-hunters-wild-night-of-crack-cocaine-and-hookers-n2591408">hookers</a>.


	Yet something seems amiss. Only anonymous and confidential buyers will be eligible to purchase pieces from Biden's oeuvre.


	What? You mean no respectable art connoisseur or benefactor wants to be associated with an up-and-coming Picasso, Rembrandt or even Warhol? Or does the precocious artiste&nbsp;refuse&nbsp;to have the work of his innermost soul exposed to some of art's more influential patrons?


	Sarcasm aside, Biden's foray into art is anything but humorous. Not only does it reflect the Biden penchant for selling influence; it could enable some of the&nbsp;family's more noxious associates to avoid sanctions or launder money.


	The Daily Mail's Geoff Earle <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9769107/White-House-helped-Hunter-Biden-reach-deal-buyers-paintings-confidential.html">discussed</a> those dangers while writing about the impending auction of young Biden's work.


	"Experts are already warning of the risks of influence peddling or at least the appearance of ethical conflict," Earle wrote, "when people buy paintings by the president's son in a market where sales are already murky and prices extremely difficult to evaluate in an industry that can be used for money laundering."


	One of those experts is Richard Painter, the chief ethics counsel for President George W. Bush from 2005 to 2007. Painter <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/deal-of-the-art-white-house-grapples-with-ethics-of-hunter-bidens-pricey-paintings/2021/07/07/97e0528c-da72-11eb-9bbb-37c30dcf9363_story.html?utm_campaign=wp_politics_am&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_source=newsletter&amp;wpisrc=nl_politics&amp;carta-url=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.washingtonpost.com%2Fcar-ln-tr%2F341a33f%2F60e6e3549d2fda8060fc82be%2F596d104dade4e24119dbd5b0%2F12%2F52%2F60e6e3549d2fda8060fc82be">told</a> the Washington Post&nbsp;that two groups of buyers could provide a lucrative market for Biden's art: lobbyists who want to earn favor with the virtual president, and surreptitious representatives of foreign governments that want to evade economic sanctions.


	The Treasury Department specifically <a href="https://home.treasury.gov/system/files/126/ofac_art_advisory_10302020.pdf">addressed</a> those&nbsp;dangers. In October, it warned that individuals, groups or governments could use "high-value art transactions" to avoid sanctions and gain access to American markets and financial institutions. Bad actors could exploit inherent weaknesses in the art market, such as "a lack of transparency and a high degree of anonymity and confidentiality, especially with respect to the sale and purchase of high-value artworks," the department's release warned.


	"Shell companies and intermediaries are also frequently used to purchase, hold, or sell such artworks, as well as to remit and receive payments," it continued. "These avenues for maintaining anonymity allow blocked persons and other illicit actors to obscure their true identities from other market participants, and help to hide prohibited conduct from law enforcement and regulators. The mobility, concealability, and subjective value of artwork further exacerbate its vulnerability to sanctions evasion."


	The expensive price range for work from a middle-aged artist with no previous track record also raises questions.


	"There has to be a résumé that reasonably supports when you get that high," <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/deal-of-the-art-white-house-grapples-with-ethics-of-hunter-bidens-pricey-paintings/2021/07/07/97e0528c-da72-11eb-9bbb-37c30dcf9363_story.html?utm_campaign=wp_politics_am&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_source=newsletter&amp;wpisrc=nl_politics&amp;carta-url=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.washingtonpost.com%2Fcar-ln-tr%2F341a33f%2F60e6e3549d2fda8060fc82be%2F596d104dade4e24119dbd5b0%2F12%2F52%2F60e6e3549d2fda8060fc82be">said</a> Marc Straus, who owns a gallery in Manhattan. "To me, it’s pure ‘How good is it and what’s this artist’s potential? What’s the résumé?' On that basis, it would be an entirely different price. But you give it a name like Hunter Biden, maybe they’ll get the price."


	Scott Indrisek, Modern Painters magazine's former editor-in-chief and <a href="https://www.artsy.net/">Artsy's</a> former deputy editor, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/deal-of-the-art-white-house-grapples-with-ethics-of-hunter-bidens-pricey-paintings/2021/07/07/97e0528c-da72-11eb-9bbb-37c30dcf9363_story.html?utm_campaign=wp_politics_am&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_source=newsletter&amp;wpisrc=nl_politics&amp;carta-url=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.washingtonpost.com%2Fcar-ln-tr%2F341a33f%2F60e6e3549d2fda8060fc82be%2F596d104dade4e24119dbd5b0%2F12%2F52%2F60e6e3549d2fda8060fc82be">believes</a> that mere name recognition is the point.


	"If he wanted to be judged on his work alone," Indrisek said, "he’d show them under the name Hunter Wilson or something."


	By contrast, Andy Warhol's "Endangered Species," a series of 10 screenprints he produced in 1983, <a href="https://www.antiquetrader.com/art/warhol-endangered-species-sets-record-selling-for-725k">sold</a> for $725,000 in 2015. That figure constituted a record for a numbered series.


	Two other facts increase suspicion. First, the Justice Department has been <a href="https://nypost.com/2020/10/29/fbi-investigating-hunter-biden-over-money-laundering-allegations-report/">investigating</a> the younger Biden since 2019 for money laundering. Second, Peter Schweizer, who runs the Government Accountability Institute and has written extensively about government corruption, said on Sean Hannity’s syndicated radio show July 12 that Joe Biden "was a direct <a href="https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/07/12/peter-schweizer-our-copy-of-hunter-bidens-laptop-confirms-joe-biden-was-a-direct-beneficiary-of-his-sons-deals/">beneficiary</a>" of his son's business arrangements.


	Nevertheless, the White House <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9769107/White-House-helped-Hunter-Biden-reach-deal-buyers-paintings-confidential.html">contacted</a> young Biden's lawyers to devise an <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/deal-of-the-art-white-house-grapples-with-ethics-of-hunter-bidens-pricey-paintings/2021/07/07/97e0528c-da72-11eb-9bbb-37c30dcf9363_story.html?utm_campaign=wp_politics_am&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_source=newsletter&amp;wpisrc=nl_politics&amp;carta-url=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.washingtonpost.com%2Fcar-ln-tr%2F341a33f%2F60e6e3549d2fda8060fc82be%2F596d104dade4e24119dbd5b0%2F12%2F52%2F60e6e3549d2fda8060fc82be">arrangement</a> that allows&nbsp;any buyers to remain anonymous. Ostensibly, such a plan would satisfy any ethical concerns by preventing Biden from knowing the identities of anyone buying or even expressing interest in his work. The plan also would allow Berges to reject suspicious offers.


	But Berges, like his famous client, has <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgINNeMzN3s">ties</a> to China. He has traveled to Beijing and Shanghai to purchase work from Chinese artists, regularly exhibits modern Chinese art, and even considered opening galleries in both cities. "The question that I always had was, 'How’s China changing the world in terms of art and culture?' " Berges <a href="https://nypost.com/2021/01/30/hunter-biden-now-laying-low-in-la-focusing-on-a-new-art-career/">said</a> in 2014 to China Daily, which the Chinese Communist Party <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Daily">publishes</a>.


	Walter Shaub, former director of the United States Office of Government Ethics, expressed his&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/waltshaub/status/1413099329057865732">disgust</a> on Twitter.


	"So instead of disclosing who is paying outrageous sums for Hunter Biden’s artwork so that we could monitor whether the purchasers are gaining access to government, the WH tried to make sure we will never know who they are," Shaub tweeted. "That’s very disappointing.


	"The idea’s that even Hunter won’t know, but the WH has outsourced government ethics to a private art dealer. We’re supposed to trust a merchant in an industry that’s fertile ground for money laundering, as well as unknown buyers who could tell Hunter or WH officials? No thanks."


	If nothing else, the arrangement provides a similar kind of protective veneer Tony Bobulinski mentioned to the New York Post in October. Bobulinski, one of the Biden family's former business associates, told the Post about Joe Biden's pivotal <a href="https://nypost.com/2020/10/22/hunter-biden-ex-business-partner-told-dont-mention-joe-in-text/">role</a> in helping Hunter secure lucrative overseas contracts, despite the elder Biden's denials.


	Jim Biden, Joe's brother, described that <a href="https://nypost.com/2020/10/27/hunters-biz-partner-tells-all-on-meeting-with-joe-biden-goodwin/">protective</a> veneer in 2017, when Bobulinski asked whether Joe's involvement could sabotage Presidential ambitions.


	"I said, 'Jim, how are you guys doing this? This seems crazy,’ " Bobulinski said. "He looks at me and kind of chuckles and says, 'Plausible deniability.' "


	Joseph Hippolito is a free-lance writer and a regular contributor to FrontPage Magazine. His commentaries have appeared in The Federalist, The Stream, Wall Street Journal, Jerusalem Post and National Post.

The Strange New Career of Hunter Biden - Artiste

Hunter Biden appears to have everything a materialistic narcissist would want. Wealth. Power. Fame (Infamy, actually, but why quibble?). Sex. Drugs.

As the nation prepares to celebrate the 245th anniversary of its independence, Americans face perhaps their biggest existential crisis, one reflecting the issues that led to the Revolutionary War.


	That crisis extends beyond critical race theory and Covid-19 vaccination. Those issues merely reflect a far deeper crisis: the demand by the powers-that-be for Americans to think of themselves as subjects rather than citizens.


	Silverton, Colo., a town with about 600 residents, provides a succinct illustration. On June 14, Mayor Shane Fuhrman unilaterally <a href="https://kdvr.com/news/silverton-nixes-pledge-of-allegiance-at-town-hall-meetings/">banned</a> the Pledge of Allegiance at meetings of the town's trustees. When 10 people and two trustees responded by rising to recite the pledge, Fuhrman threatened to expel anyone who followed suit.


	"To tell members of the public they are not allowed to say the Pledge of Allegiance during public comment and threaten to have them removed ... violates every single one of their First Amendment rights," Trustee Molly Barela <a href="https://kdvr.com/news/silverton-nixes-pledge-of-allegiance-at-town-hall-meetings/">told</a> Denver's KDVR-TV.


	Meanwhile, school boards planning to implement critical race theory and transgender policy face passionate resistance from parents and students across the country. In Loudoun County, Va., opposition <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/us/virginia-loudoun-county-school-board-mulls-transgender-critical-race-theory-policies">erupted</a> after the school board fired a physical education teacher who expressed opposition to transgender policy during a board meeting. One parent, a spokesman for a group seeking to recall the board's members, said the board wanted to stifle the parents' role in their children's education.


	In response, former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/us/mcauliffe-critical-race-theory-right-wing-conspiracy">dismissed</a> concerns about critical race theory as conspiracy theories.


	Yet critical race theory reflects the Maoist approach to Marxist revolution,&nbsp;as FrontPage Magazine <a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/06/beijings-lies-matter-joseph-hippolito/">reported</a> in "Beijing's Lies Matter." As <a href="https://www.marxists.org/subject/china/peking-review/1966/PR1966-33h.htm">Mao</a> said in 1963:&nbsp;"The evil system of colonialism and imperialism arose and thrived with the enslavement of Negroes and the trade in Negroes, and it will surely come to its end with the complete emancipation of the black people."


	Black theologian James Cone developed critical race theory while two activists and scholars, Theodore Allen and Noel Ignatiev, crystallized Marxist thought on "white supremacy" and "white privilege." Allen and Ignatiev joined the Maoists when splits arose among American communists.


	Elsewhere, influencers tell Americans to "trust the science" while&nbsp;demanding mass vaccination against Covid-19. Influencers even advocate "vaccine passports" to ensure compliance by holding shopping, employment and school attendance hostage. On Tuesday, the Henry Ford Health System in Michigan <a href="https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/detroit-city/2021/06/29/all-henry-ford-health-workers-must-vaccinated-sept-10/7794415002/">announced</a>&nbsp;that all employees must be vaccinated by Sept. 10 or lose their jobs.


	Houston Methodist's health-care system made the same demand in March. When nearly 120 of those employees sued, a federal judge&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/covid-vaccine-lawsuit-dismissed-houston-methodist-hospital-system/" target="_blank">dismissed</a>&nbsp;their case. Since then, more than 150 employees have&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/houston-methodist-hospital-system-workers-fired-quit-covid-19-vaccine/" target="_blank">quit</a>&nbsp;or been fired.


	Yet one <a href="https://www.news-medical.net/news/20210608/No-point-vaccinating-those-whoe28099ve-had-COVID-19-Findings-of-Cleveland-Clinic-study.aspx">study</a> of 52,000 employees at the Cleveland Clinic showed no significant difference in infection rates between those who took the vaccine and those who declined despite being infected previously.&nbsp;Dr. Byram Bridle, an immunologist who conducted research for a Covid-19 vaccine, even described the spike protein in mRNA vaccines as a <a href="https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/vaccine-researcher-admits-big-mistake-says-spike-protein-is-dangerous-toxin">pathogen</a> that can damage vital organs. On June 25, the FDA admitted the increased <a href="https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/coronavirus-covid-19-update-june-25-2021">risk</a> of heart inflammation with mRNA vaccines.


	Nevertheless, most news outlets minimize or dismiss information contradicting the conventional narrative. They even ignore perhaps the most newsworthy story of the year: an audit of the Presidential election results in Maricopa County, Ariz. That audit could trigger similar audits in other states, which could substantiate claims of alleged electoral fraud that put Joe Biden in the White House.


	But those questioning the narrative get derided as "cranks," "conspiracy nuts," or other epithets,&nbsp;or get censored and de-platformed on social media. That tactic reflects a deliberate strategy called "astroturf," referring to fake grass roots,&nbsp;as FrontPage Magazine <a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/01/people-lie-joseph-hippolito/">reported</a> in "People of the Lie."


	"Astroturf seeks to manipulate you into changing your opinion by making you feel as if you’re an outlier when you’re not," said former&nbsp;CBS journalist Sharyl Attkisson. "Hallmarks include use of inflammatory language, such as ‘crank,’ ‘quack,’ ‘nutty,’ ‘lies,’ ‘paranoid,’ ‘pseudo’ and ‘conspiracy.’ Use of the charged language tests well


	"Special interests have unlimited time and money to figure out new ways to spin us while cloaking their role. Surreptitious astroturf methods are now more important to these interests than traditional lobbying of Congress. There’s an entire industry built around it in Washington.


	That industry serves those who seek to solidify corporatist power and destroy individual liberty.


	"The new elites are trying to run the board," Shmuel Klatzkin <a href="https://spectator.org/america-new-nomenklatura/">wrote</a> in The American Spectator. "We cannot be allowed to think on any matter that we can judge the correctness or lack of same of a given idea.&nbsp;Private reality ... is forever subject to revision as the expression of political power requires it."


	Accomplishing that goal means, "grinding down American social and cultural norms to prepare the population for Father Government to step into every aspect of our lives, no matter the topic," said a caller who conveyed Andrew Klavan's ideas on Andrew Wilkow's Sirius XM program.


	"Essentially (it's) governance taking over liberty," the caller continued. "It's not government led by the people. It's government leading the people."


	In the 18th century, British elites wanted colonists to think of themselves as unquestioningly subordinate to leaders whom those colonists had no role in selecting. In the 21st century, American elites in government, business, entertainment, academia and the media want citizens to be similarly subordinate.


	If today's elites succeed, they will have undone the painful work accomplished by Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Franklin and thousands of anonymous Americans who fought and died for the values that the Fourth of July represents.

It’s 1776 All Over Again

As the nation prepares to celebrate the 245th anniversary of its independence, Americans face perhaps their biggest existential crisis, one reflecting the

Six months before controversy surrounded Dr. Anthony Fauci's <a href="https://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2021/05/12/people-bring-the-receipts-after-fauci-attempts-to-dodge-connections-to-wuhan-lab-n2589274">role</a> in gain-of-function virus research, a Chinese professor put the COVID-19 pandemic in a frightening light.


	Chen Ping, a senior research fellow at Fudan University's Center for New Political Economy, essentially called COVID-19 a <a href="https://www.jenniferzengblog.com/home/2021/5/20/top-ccp-advisor-china-won-the-biological-war-of-2020-and-will-lead-the-new-modernization-after-the-biology-revolution">bioweapon</a>.


	“In 2020, China won the trade war, science and technology war, and especially the biological war," Chen said in January. "The achievement is unprecedented. This is an epoch-making historical record. So for the liberal, America-worshiping cult within China, their worship of the U.S. is actually unfounded. After this trade war and biological warfare, the U.S. was beaten back to its original shape."


	Chen made a point to contrast those ostensible achievements with President Donald Trump's policies.


	“So I think Trump's attempt to restore the declining international status of the U.S. during his four years has failed," said Chen, a doctor of physics. "This failure is not only the failure of Trump's personal campaign for re-election as president, but also the failure of the neo-liberalism-led globalization of the past four decades led by the U.S. and the U.K. Therefore, the development and modernization model of the U.S. and Europe is not worthy of China's imitation and repetition."


	Chen's remarks, made for domestic consumption, expose COVID-19 as a significant tactic in China's multi-faceted strategy to attain international dominance by sabotaging the United States.


	Jin Canrong, associate dean of Renmin University's School of International Studies and an advisor to China's Communist Party, <a href="https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_breakingnews/xi-jinpings-adviser-outlines-plan-for-ccp-to-defeat-us-including-manipulating-elections_3748196.html?&amp;amp;utm_source=newsnoe&amp;amp;utm_medium=email2&amp;amp;utm_campaign=breaking-2021-03-26-2&amp;amp;mktids=dba4bb8baf9e74e6463c0e9108f5d3ae">described</a> the basic goal at a conference in Guangzhou in 2016.


	"We do not need to talk to Americans directly about surpassing the United Kingdom and catching up with the United States," Jin said. "In fact, there is a standard official answer to this, and it is called the realization of two hundred-year goals. This is the goal of the national rejuvenation set by the 18th National Congress.


	"The task of our next generation is to put the U.S. under our jurisdiction/management, too. But the premise is that we need to do a good job in our generation."


	COVID-19 fits the strategy of overwhelming the United States on all fronts.


	“We first need to create the conditions to make it easier for the United States to make mistakes," Jin said. "Second, we should make it as busy as possible, to the extent that it will feel depressed and want to give up. Third, we should become intertwined with the United States, so that it can’t attack us.”


	In 2015, a year before Jin’s speech, the People’s Liberation Army and Chinese health officials published, “The Unnatural Origin of SARS and New Species of Man-Made Viruses as Genetic <a href="https://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/chinese-document-discussing-weaponising-coronaviruses-provides-chilling-information/video/a8dd96147958fffbfc1b1c7ed203e9d3">Bioweapons</a>.”


	That study discussed coronaviruses as part of a “new era in genetic weapons” that can be "artificially manipulated into an emerging human disease virus, then weaponized and unleashed in a way never seen before,” it stated.


	The study addressed the best way to unleash viral bioweapons so they can cause the greatest amount of logistical damage and emotional havoc. Bioweapons “could cause the enemy’s medical system to collapse” and “cause acute and chronic psychological and mental illnesses, such as acute stress reactions,” the study reported.


	The editor in chief, Xu Dezhong, led a group from China’s Ministry of Health that analyzed the SARS outbreak in 2003. During that outbreak, Xu regularly reported to the Communist Party’s Central Committee.


	"It's chilling," Sky News Australia's Sharri Markson said. "The significance of this paper is that it offers a rare insight into how senior scientists at one of the PLA’s most prominent military universities, where high levels of defense research were conducted, were thinking about biological research."


	But for the past three months, a high-ranking Chinese <a href="https://redstate.com/jenvanlaar/2021/06/17/breaking-chinese-defector-confirmed-as-top-counterintelligence-official-n398374">defector</a> has been giving American intelligence valuable <a href="https://redstate.com/jenvanlaar/2021/06/04/exclusive-high-ranking-chinese-defector-has-direct-knowledge-of-several-chinese-special-weapons-programs-n391238">information</a> about COVID-19.


	Dong Jingwei, a former vice minister for state security, provided proof that COVID-19 was man-made and leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, <a href="https://redstate.com/jenvanlaar/2021/06/11/exclusive-defector-provides-evidence-that-the-chinese-military-orchestrated-the-creation-of-covid-19-and-lab-leak-n395384">reported</a> RedState.com's Jennifer Van Laar in an exclusive. Dong also confirmed a <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/world/chinese-virologist-coronavirus-cover-up-flee-hong-kong-whistleblower">report</a> from another defector, Dr. Yan Li-Meng, that the PLA ran the institute.


	Yan, an expert in virology and immunology, worked at the Hong Kong Institute of Public Health before coming to the United States in April. Yan left family and friends behind, and said she never expects to see them again.


	"Technical details provided by the defector, RedState is told, were given to scientists (who were not told how that information was given to the government) who then re-analyzed data from published sources in conjunction with the new data and concluded that the SARS-CoV-2 virus was engineered," Van Laar wrote. "And, the defector was able to confirm numerous non-public details Yan provided the U.S. government." (parentheses in original)


	Dong provided the Defense Intelligence Agency with initial studies of the pathogen, models predicting its spread and destructive capability, and financial records showing which organizations and foreign governments funded research not only on coronavirus but also other potential bioweapons.


	Dong's information corroborates the views of two American virologists, who noted that the coronavirus's unique genetic identity indicates it was <a href="https://redstate.com/scotthounsell/2021/06/09/expert-virologist-claims-scientific-evidence-points-to-the-conclusion-that-the-virus-was-developed-in-a-lab-n394006">man-made</a>.


	"The coronavirus, with all its random possibilities, took the rare and unnatural combination used by human researchers," which "implies that the leading theory for the origin of the coronavirus must be laboratory escape," <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-science-suggests-a-wuhan-lab-leak-11622995184">wrote</a> Stephen Quay and Richard Muller in the Wall Street Journal.


	Both men also wrote that scientific research "points to CoV-2's gain-of-function (research) origin," since that virus has a vastly different genetic identity than other coronaviruses that cause respiratory problems.


	Dong's information also could implicate Fauci's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and the National Institutes of Health. Both agencies combined to give $4.57 million in taxpayer funds to the Wuhan institute for "Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence." Fauci's NIAID <a href="https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9819304">contributed</a> $3.75 million, with the <a href="https://www.judicialwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/JW-v-HHS-NIAID-Wuhan-June-2021-00692-pgs-74-75.pdf">remaining</a> $826,277 coming from the NIH.


	Those funds went to the EcoHealth Alliance, a non-profit organization not affiliated with any government, which channeled them to the institute. EcoHealth Alliance's president, Peter Daszak, <a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4966182/user-clip-daszak-2016-describing-chinas-colleagues-work-coronavirus-spike-protein">described</a> the work at a professional conference in 2016.


	"We sequenced the spike protein, the protein that attaches to cells," Daszak said. "My colleagues in China did the work. When you get a (genetic) sequence, and it looks like a relative of a known nasty pathogen, then you create pseudo-particles. You insert the spike proteins from those viruses and see if they bind to human cells.


	"You end up with a small number of viruses that really do look like killers. You look at the people in the region that live where this animal lives and say, 'Do we see antibodies specific to that virus?' "


	Daszak's colleagues included Zhou Yusen, a military scientist who received decorations from the People's Liberation Army. Before he died under mysterious circumstances, Zhou applied for a vaccine <a href="https://nypost.com/2021/06/04/chinese-scientist-filed-covid-vaccine-patent-after-contagion-emerged-report/">patent</a> in February 2020 through the Institute of Military Medicine, run by the PLA's Academy of Military Sciences.


	Another colleague was Dr. Shi Zhengli, who directs the institute's Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases. Nicknamed "Bat Woman" for her work on bat coronaviruses, Shi and Zhou wrote a research paper on antibody development for the American Society for Microbiology's Journal of Virology in November 2019.


	"National security sources said the ties between Zhou and Dr. Shi ­supported claims by U.S. intelligence that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was engaged in 'secret military activity,' " <a href="https://www.theaustralian.com.au/subscribe/news/1/?sourceCode=TAWEB_WRE170_a&amp;amp;dest=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theaustralian.com.au%2Fscience%2Fus-paid-chinese-peoples-liberation-army-to-engineer-coronavirus%2Fnews-story%2F4adee56c1433fad332a76ffe043390ea&amp;amp;memtype=anonymous&amp;amp;mode=premium">wrote</a> Markson in The Australian, where she broke the story.


	Despite previous denials, the Wuhan institute housed the bats used for research, Markson <a href="https://thenationalpulse.com/breaking/footage-reveals-live-bats-in-wuhan-lab/">reported</a>. Video from the laboratory showed a bat in a cage, a scientist feeding another bat and more scientists in the wild capturing bats.


	"This footage, had it been available early last year, may have reshaped the entire narrative around the potential origin of COVID-19," Markson said. "Back then, we were told there were no bats at the lab."


	Instead, a cover story circulated blaming the Wuhan wet market for selling and butchering infected bats as food. Daszak <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/wuhan-lab-video-shows-bats-cages-speculation-covid19-pandemic-origins-1600748">discouraged</a> any inquiry, using Twitter to call the idea of laboratory bats "a widely circulated conspiracy theory."


	Why would Daszak want to maintain the cover story? Perhaps because he wanted to hide his and Fauci's financial connections to the institute.


	For Van Laar, the <a href="https://redstate.com/jenvanlaar/2021/06/11/exclusive-defector-provides-evidence-that-the-chinese-military-orchestrated-the-creation-of-covid-19-and-lab-leak-n395384">implications</a> are obvious.


	"Pause for a moment and consider this," she wrote. "Our government now has additional evidence that a virus that killed 600,000 Americans, sickened millions more, nearly destroyed our economy, and inflicted untold collateral damage was a bioweapon created by the Chinese military and deliberately released."


	If true, that would make Fauci, Daszak and other colleagues co-conspirators -- accidental or otherwise.

China Virus, Indeed

Six months before controversy surrounded Dr. Anthony Fauci's role in gain-of-function virus research, a Chinese professor put the COVID-19 pandemic in a

One year after George Floyd died in the custody of Minneapolis police, one year after riots ravaged the nation in his name, the founder of Black Lives Matter's chapter in nearby St. Paul <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wncYj2xfV6A">quit</a>.


	“After a year on the inside, I learned they had little concern for rebuilding black families, and they cared even less about improving the quality of education for students in Minneapolis,” Rashard Turner said in a video May 26. One week later, Turner provided specifics in an <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpkrjlpuq0o">interview</a> with Fox News.


	"When you call for a moratorium on charter schools, that is a direct attack on black families, on black children," Turner said. "We know that charter schools are creating opportunities. Anyone who is in opposition to school choice, charter schools, I would say they're racist.


	"I was an insider in Black Lives Matter, and I learned the ugly truth."


	That ugly truth goes beyond BLM's professional hypocrisy. It extends to an even uglier truth: BLM knowingly plays a pivotal role in China's quest to attain geopolitical and ideological supremacy by destabilizing the United States.


	BLM's role is so pivotal that many of the group's leaders and affiliated bodies have relationships with organizations that are connected to China through fronts or diplomatic contacts.


	"Black Lives Matter is a <a href="https://www.theepochtimes.com/black-lives-matter-is-actually-part-of-the-maoist-playbook-against-america_3765998.html">Communist</a> organization 100 percent, tied to foreign Communists and directly to the Communist Party of China," said Trevor Loudon, an author and filmmaker from New Zealand who has studied Marxist movements for more than 30 years.


	BLM embodies Mao Zedong's quest to foment revolution through race, as he succinctly <a href="https://www.theepochtimes.com/black-lives-matter-is-actually-part-of-the-maoist-playbook-against-america_3765998.html">stated</a>:

<blockquote>
	
		"The evil system of colonialism and imperialism arose and thrived with the enslavement of Negroes and the trade in Negroes, and it will surely come to its end with the complete emancipation of the black people."
</blockquote>


	Mao took that approach because China had neither an industrialized working class nor an organized labor movement.


	"So he really had to use race, ethnicity and cultural differences to start the revolution," Loudon <a href="https://www.theepochtimes.com/black-lives-matter-is-actually-part-of-the-maoist-playbook-against-america_3765998.html">said</a>. "The best way to have a revolution is to utilize racial differences. In modern America, the Maoists all say, 'The people of color -- the black, Latino, Asian-American, Native American -- are being oppressed by the white, Christian, capitalist patriarchy.'


	"The only way you can get rid of that oppression, get rid of that racism, is to overthrow the white, Christian, capitalist patriarchy. It's Marxist revolution based on color, rather than class."


	Compare Loudon's and Mao's comments to <a href="https://dailycaller.com/2020/09/15/black-lives-matter-cofounder-alicia-garza-abolish-capitalism/?s=03">remarks</a> made by BLM co-founder Alicia Garza to a left-wing convention in 2015:


	"It's not possible for a world to emerge where black lives matter if it's under capitalism, and it's not possible to abolish capitalism without a struggle against national oppression and gender oppression."


	As FrontPage Magazine <a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/09/blm-antifa-and-communist-strategy-destroy-united-joseph-hippolito/">reported</a> last year, Mao encouraged like-minded black activists, such as Robert Williams, who <a href="https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/1960-1970/crusader/5-4.pdf">advocated</a> violent revolution. Williams even <a href="https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/1960-1970/crusader/8-1.pdf">visited</a> Mao in 1966 in Beijing, where he gave an address.


	After Mao's death, China used more sophisticated methods to gain increasingly pervasive influence in the West. The China-United States Exchange Foundation, founded in 2008, courts professors, <a href="https://www.cusef.org.hk/en/what-we-do/in-country-programs/creating-relationships-through-education/columbia-university-sipa-students">students</a>, government officials and <a href="https://stream.org/how-the-chinese-communist-party-influences-corporate-news-giants/">reporters</a> through tours, private discussions, dinners and joint research. The targets <a href="https://dailycaller.com/2021/03/28/chinese-propaganda-historically-black-colleges/">include</a> historically black colleges and universities (HBCU), and the Congressional Black Caucus.


	For the past four years, CUSEF paid an American consulting firm almost $670,000 to influence black students, professors and Congressional representatives. That firm, Wilson Global, also oversees the HBCU-China Scholarship Network.


	Interestingly, President Barack Obama contacted China's government in 2014 about enabling black students to take classes there. As a result, the China Education Association for International Exchange made 1,000 <a href="https://sites.ed.gov/whhbcu/2014/07/09/press-release-chinese-government-signs-mou-with-historically-black-colleges-universities-in-beijing-today/">scholarships</a> available for students at historically black campuses.


	But the CUSEF is linked to China's Communist Party through the United Front, a <a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Front_(China)">network</a> of party organizations. The United Front works overseas "to co-opt and neutralize potential sources of opposition to the policies and authority" of the Communist Party, and encourages its targets "to take actions or adopt positions supportive of Beijing’s preferred policies," <a href="https://www.uscc.gov/sites/default/files/Research/China's%20Overseas%20United%20Front%20Work%20-%20Background%20and%20Implications%20for%20US_final_0.pdf">stated</a> the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review.


	Or as Jamestown Foundation fellow Peter Mattis <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/11/28/this-beijing-linked-billionaire-is-funding-policy-research-at-washingtons-most-influential-institutions-china-dc/">said</a> about the Chinese, "If they cultivate enough people in the right places, they start to change the debate without having to directly inject their own voice."


	Black professors and politicians under Chinese influence make the perfect exponents of critical race theory and opponents of "white privilege," both of which came from Marxist intellectuals in the West.


	James <a href="https://www.theepochtimes.com/black-lives-matter-is-actually-part-of-the-maoist-playbook-against-america_3765998.html">Cone</a>, a professor at the liberal Union Theological Seminary, developed critical race theory. His Marxist pedigree includes visiting Fidel Castro's Cuba in 1984, along with Rev. Jesse Jackson and Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama's pastor in Chicago. Meanwhile, Theodore <a href="https://m.theepochtimes.com/black-lives-matter-is-actually-part-of-the-maoist-playbook-against-america_3765998.html">Allen</a>&nbsp;and Noel <a href="https://www.theepochtimes.com/black-lives-matter-is-actually-part-of-the-maoist-playbook-against-america_3765998.html">Ignatiev</a> developed the idea of "white privilege" as a Marxist construct. Both men joined the Maoist branch of Marxism when Marxist groups in the United States split over ideology.


	But intellectual revolution needs street activism to reach the proletariat. Enter Black Lives Matter.


	When a security guard killed Trayvon Martin in 2013, Garza joined with Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tonetti to <a href="https://www.theepochtimes.com/black-lives-matter-is-actually-part-of-the-maoist-playbook-against-america_3765998.html">create</a> the organization through a hashtag, #BlackLivesMatter. All three <a href="https://www.theepochtimes.com/black-lives-matter-is-actually-part-of-the-maoist-playbook-against-america_3765998.html">belonged</a> to Liberation Road, an ideological descendant of the <a href="https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/ncm-5/index.htm">Maoist</a> New Communist Movement. Garza also belongs to Left Roots, a subsidiary of Liberation Road.


	"It really was a scam from start to finish," Loudon <a href="https://www.theepochtimes.com/black-lives-matter-is-actually-part-of-the-maoist-playbook-against-america_3765998.html">said</a>. "They came up with the hashtag, put it out there and all the Liberation Road front groups and friendly media all around the country re-tweeted it, elevated it and made it into a movement. There's nothing spontaneous about this whatsoever."


	Garza, a native of the Bay Area, also had been <a href="https://www.theepochtimes.com/black-lives-matter-is-actually-part-of-the-maoist-playbook-against-america_3765998.html">working</a> with the San Francisco chapter of the Chinese Progressive Association since 2012. The CPA provides funding for the Black Futures Lab, a BLM subsidiary that Garza created to create policies and organize blacks. BLM <a href="https://cpasf.ourpowerbase.net/civicrm/contribute/transact?reset=1&amp;id=45">calls</a> the Black Futures Lab "a fiscally sponsored project of the Chinese Protective Association."


	One of Garza's close friends is Alex Tom, a fellow student activist when both <a href="https://www.theepochtimes.com/black-lives-matter-is-actually-part-of-the-maoist-playbook-against-america_3765998.html">attended</a> UC San Diego. Tom not only led the Chinese Progressive Association. He organized delegations to China, "boasts of his close association with Chinese diplomats in San Francisco (and) boasts of defending China," Loudon <a href="https://www.theepochtimes.com/black-lives-matter-is-actually-part-of-the-maoist-playbook-against-america_3765998.html">said</a>.


	"This is basically a Chinese operation," Loudon called the CPA, "a Communist Chinese operation."


	So were the riots in Ferguson, Mo. in 2014 after Michael Brown's death and in Minneapolis last year after Floyd's death. A group called Organization for Black Struggle <a href="https://www.theepochtimes.com/black-lives-matter-is-actually-part-of-the-maoist-playbook-against-america_3765998.html">organized</a> the violence in Ferguson. Leading that group was Jamala Rogers, a long-time member of Liberation Road.


	"They brought 10,000 people from out of town to burn down Ferguson," Loudon <a href="https://www.theepochtimes.com/black-lives-matter-is-actually-part-of-the-maoist-playbook-against-america_3765998.html">said</a>. "They were visited by delegations of Left Roots and Liberation Road members, some of whom had just returned from a visit to Communist China, where they met with Chinese Communist Party members, by their own admission."


	Most of the businesses they destroyed were owned by African-Americans.


	"The revolution doesn't want prosperous black people," Loudon <a href="https://www.theepochtimes.com/black-lives-matter-is-actually-part-of-the-maoist-playbook-against-america_3765998.html">said</a>. "They only want oppressed, poverty-stricken, embittered black people."


	That explains BLM's opposition to charter schools. It also explains BLM's silence on the death of David Dorn, a retired black police captain who was protecting a friend's store when a young black man killed him during last year's riots in St. Louis.


	The riots in Minneapolis came under the <a href="https://www.theepochtimes.com/black-lives-matter-is-actually-part-of-the-maoist-playbook-against-america_3765998.html">jurisdiction</a> of that city's affiliate of the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Oppression, a group founded by a member of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization, another group of Maoists that split from Liberation Road.


	Jess Sundin, who runs the affiliate, is married to Steff Yorek, the Freedom Road Socialist Organization's political secretary.


	"Jess Sundin admits she started the riots," Loudon <a href="https://www.theepochtimes.com/black-lives-matter-is-actually-part-of-the-maoist-playbook-against-america_3765998.html">said</a>. "She admits she did the organizing for this. I've got her on tape talking about her organizational role. I've got her on tape talking about the joy she felt when Precinct 3, the police station in that area, burned to the ground, and that the looting and rioting was an integral part of the movement.


	"It wasn't peaceful demonstrators hijacked by radicals. It was radical right from the start. It was pro-China right from Day One."


	Following Floyd's death, a BLM <a href="https://www.theepochtimes.com/black-lives-matter-is-actually-part-of-the-maoist-playbook-against-america_3765998.html">affiliate</a> called the Movement 4 Black Lives, organized the ensuing mayhem nationwide.


	"These are the people who coordinated riots and demonstrations all over the country for week after week after week," said Loudon, who identified them as "people directly affiliated to the Chinese consulate in San Francisco, people who travel to China to meet with Communist Party officials."


	For Loudon, the implications are obvious.


	"They are deliberately using America's racial differences to stir Americans up, to bring about a civil war, to weaken this country and destroy President [Donald] Trump," Loudon said about the <a href="https://www.theepochtimes.com/black-lives-matter-is-actually-part-of-the-maoist-playbook-against-america_3765998.html">Chinese</a>. "This, to me, is an act of war."

Beijing’s Lies Matter

One year after George Floyd died in the custody of Minneapolis police, one year after riots ravaged the nation in his name, the founder of Black Lives Matter's

For centuries, the Catholic Church represented unmitigated opposition to abortion. But as recent events seem to indicate, Pope Francis is preparing to sacrifice that historic position -- and those it protects -- on the altar of his globalist agenda.


	On May 7, Cardinal Luis Ladaria issued a <a href="https://www.ncronline.org/news/politics/cardinal-ladaria-cautions-us-bishops-politicians-and-communion">letter</a> from the Vatican discouraging American bishops from preventing elected officials who support abortion to receive Communion. Only the pope himself ranks higher as a theological authority than&nbsp;Ladaria, prefect of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.


	Ladaria released the letter after several bishops <a href="https://apnews.com/article/health-coronavirus-government-and-politics-religion-22e0d1ba299fe8693013036e3cc85c81">publicly</a> said Joe Biden, the virtual president who supports abortion, should not receive Communion.&nbsp;San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone even wrote a <a href="https://www.sfarch.org/inthewomb">forceful</a> pastoral letter on the subject, without mentioning Biden.&nbsp;But other bishops, such as Cardinal Wilton Gregory of Washington, D.C., said they would welcome Biden at Communion.


	A church-going Catholic, Biden was <a href="https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/42659/biden-denied-communion-at-sc-parish-over-abortion-stance">denied</a> Communion by a priest in Charleston, S.C. while campaigning in that state&nbsp;in 2019. Since replacing President Donald Trump, Biden has used legislation and executive action to <a href="https://www.dailysignal.com/2021/05/25/bidens-taxpayer-funding-for-abortion-far-outspends-obama/">give</a> abortion providers nearly $500 billion from taxpayers.


	At that pace, Biden will have provided more federal funding for abortion than any President in American history.


	The Catholic catechism <a href="https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P7Z.HTM">describes</a> abortion a "moral evil," quotes a pastoral document in calling it and infanticide "abominable crimes," and demands excommunication for anyone involved in "formal cooperation." Catholic canon law also <a href="https://www.vatican.va/archive/cod-iuris-canonici/eng/documents/cic_lib4-cann879-958_en.html">states</a> that Catholics "persevering in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to holy communion," and that Catholics who "are conscious of grave sin" must not receive Communion "without previous sacramental confession."


	If giving $500 billion to abortion providers fails to constitute "formal cooperation" with a "moral evil," then what does?


	But Ladaria's letter not only appears to contradict canon law. It de-emphasizes abortion as a moral criterion.


	Ladaria <a href="https://www.ncregister.com/cna/congregation-for-the-doctrine-of-the-faith-highlights-doctrinal-note-on-catholics-in-politics-in-letter-to-us-bishops-on-eucharistic-coherence">wrote</a> that any policy the American bishops develop "would best be framed within the broad context of worthiness for the reception of Holy Communion on the part of all the faithful ... reflecting their obligation to conform their lives to the entire Gospel of Jesus Christ as they prepare to receive the sacrament."


	"It would be misleading," Ladaria <a href="https://www.ncregister.com/cna/congregation-for-the-doctrine-of-the-faith-highlights-doctrinal-note-on-catholics-in-politics-in-letter-to-us-bishops-on-eucharistic-coherence">added</a>, "if such a (policy) were to give the impression that abortion and euthanasia alone constitute the only grave matters of Catholic moral and social teaching that demand the fullest level of accountability on the part of Catholics."


	Ladaria even described Catholics who support abortion as "pro-choice." Observers believe his letter was the <a href="https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/vatican-uses-pro-abortion-terminology-pro-choice-for-first-time-in-abdication-of-moral-authority">first</a> official Vatican document to use the term.


	Ladaria's letter demonstrates how Francis need not make a formal announcement to nullify teaching on abortion. The pope merely can let it wither through neglect. Even if the catechism and canon law state moral theology and penalties, those are worthless if nobody enforces them.


	Francis' relaxed attitude also revealed itself one day before Ladaria issued his letter, when the Vatican began a three-day conference on health care. Some of the main speakers held positions that opposed Catholic moral teaching.


	For example, Chelsea Clinton, vice-chair of the Clinton Foundation,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/chelsea-clinton-makes-a-terrible-argument-for-abortion/">supports</a>&nbsp;Roe v. Wade passionately. Yet that support provided no impediment for her to <a href="https://online.flippingbook.com/view/934051129/10/">participate</a> in a panel&nbsp;on "Building a More Equitable Health Care System for All."


	Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes for Health, <a href="https://online.flippingbook.com/view/934051129/8/">spoke</a> on "Bridging Science and Faith" despite his support for&nbsp;research using <a href="https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/12/nih-chief-defends-use-human-fetal-tissue-opponents-decry-it-congress">fetal</a> tissue. Moderna's presence provided an even more significant clue to the church's direction.


	Moderna not only supplied major <a href="https://vaticanconference2021.org/supporters-and-grantors/">funding</a> for the conference. CEO Stephane Bancel <a href="https://online.flippingbook.com/view/934051129/6/">addressed</a> the potential for experimental mRNA vaccine therapy, the basis for the firm's Covid-19 vaccine,&nbsp;beyond the pandemic.&nbsp;But Moderna used <a href="https://cogforlife.org/2020/03/25/much-hyped-moderna-mrna-1273-covid-19-vaccine-uses-aborted-fetal-cells-sanofi-pasteurs-version-does-not/">aborted</a> fetal cells to produce the spike protein for its vaccine.


	Five months earlier, Francis gave <a href="https://www.vaticannews.va/en/vatican-city/news/2020-12/vatican-cdf-note-covid-vaccine-morality-abortion.html">permission</a> for Catholics to use Covid-19 vaccines made from aborted fetal cells. A letter Ladaria <a href="https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20201221_nota-vaccini-anticovid_en.html">issued</a> Dec. 20 allowed their use&nbsp;"when&nbsp;ethically irreproachable Covid-19 vaccines are not available."


	"The moral duty to avoid such passive material cooperation is not obligatory if there is a grave danger, such as the otherwise uncontainable spread of a serious pathological agent," the letter continued. "Those who, however, for reasons of conscience, refuse vaccines produced with cell lines from aborted fetuses, must do their utmost to avoid, by other prophylactic means and appropriate behavior, becoming vehicles for the transmission of the infectious agent."


	In other words, protection from Covid-19 matters more than using ethically reproachable vaccines.


	Opposing abortion proves inconvenient beyond Francis' pandemic policies. It threatens his desire to make environmental sustainability and economic redistribution the hallmarks of his papacy. Two encyclicals, Laudato Si on the <a href="https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html">environment</a>&nbsp;and Fratelli Tutti on economic&nbsp;<a href="https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20201003_enciclica-fratelli-tutti.html">equity</a>, express Francis' fundamental worldview.&nbsp;


	Consider the words of Cardinal Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo, the chancellor of the Pontifical Councils of Science and Social Science.


	"Right now, those who are implementing the Church's social doctrine the best are the <a href="https://remnantnewspaper.com/web/index.php/fetzen-fliegen/item/3889-new-world-church">Chinese</a>. They search for the common good and subordinate everything to the general welfare," Sorondo said in 2018 during diplomatic negotiations between China and the Vatican.


	Sorondo even <a href="https://remnantnewspaper.com/web/index.php/fetzen-fliegen/item/3889-new-world-church">praised</a> China's implementation of Laudato Si&nbsp;for "defending the dignity of the person" and "assuming a moral leadership that others have left," meaning the United States' withdrawal from the Paris Agreement on carbon-dioxide emissions.


	Never mind that China ranks among the world's worst air polluters, performs between 10 million and 23 million abortions a year -- many of them forced by the government -- and persecutes Christians who worship outside of state-approved churches.


	Perhaps the most alarming indication of Francis' long-term intentions is Jeffrey Sachs' status as a papal <a href="https://www.ncregister.com/blog/population-control-advocate-jeffrey-sachs-attacks-trump-administration-at-vatican-gathering">advisor</a> on sustainability. Sachs, an economist from Columbia University, wrote the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals.&nbsp;He also <a href="https://www.breitbart.com/faith/2019/09/22/vatican-names-abortion-promoter-jeffrey-sachs-as-special-invitee-to-amazon-synod/">supports</a> abortion as a means to limit world population.


	In his book "Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet," Sachs called abortion "a lower-risk and lower-cost option" to prevent the birth of "unwanted children." Legalizing abortion, Sachs wrote, "reduces a country's total fertility rate significantly, by as much as half a child on average."


	Why would any pope, let alone Francis, have someone with Sachs' views as an advisor? Because Francis represents the logical consequence of the Vatican's embrace of materialist humanism, as FrontPage Magazine detailed last year in "The Roman <a href="https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/05/roman-globalist-church-joseph-hippolito/">Globalist</a> Church" and "The Vatican vs. <a href="https://cms.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/06/vatican-vs-trump-joseph-hippolito">Trump</a>." That embrace includes <a href="https://www.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-vi_enc_26031967_populorum.html">endorsing</a> global governance.


	In 2009, Benedict XVI <a href="https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20090629_caritas-in-veritate.html">crystallized</a> nearly five decades of Vatican thought in his encyclical, Caritas et Veritate. Francis' predecessor advocated that the United Nations govern international and domestic economics.


	"There is a strongly felt need ... for a reform of the United Nations ... and, likewise, of economic institutions and international finance, so that the concept of the family of nations can have real teeth," Benedict wrote. "To manage the global economy ... to bring about integral and timely disarmament, food security and peace; to guarantee the protection of the environment and to regulate migration: for all this, there is urgent need of a true world political authority."


	Such an authority, Benedict wrote, must "have the authority to ensure compliance with its decisions from all parties" as it seeks to "establish the common good."


	So what is that common good? A "directed" global economy that will "open up the unprecedented possibility of large-scale redistribution of wealth on a world-wide scale," Benedict wrote, including "a worldwide redistribution of energy resources, so that countries lacking those resources can have access to them."


	Benedict's&nbsp;objectives <a href="https://sdgs.un.org/goals">match</a> the UN's Sustainable Development Goals.


	Francis is accelerating the pace to reach those objectives. On May 14, one week after Ladaria's letter to the American bishops, the Vatican held another conference, "Dreaming of a Better <a href="https://www.segib.org/wp-content/uploads/14.05-Better-Restart-Booklet-v.15.pdf">Restart</a>," that featured two sessions. Sachs participated in the first, "Financial and Tax Solidarity." John Kerry, Biden's climate envoy, gave the keynote address for the second, "Integral Ecological Sustainability."


	Then on May 25, Francis announced creation of the Laudato Si <a href="https://www.laudatosi.org/action/laudato-si-action-platform/">Platform</a>, a seven-year campaign dedicated to environmental rescue. The campaign includes fighting climate change and implementing the UN's Sustainable Development Goals.


	Francis described the campaign as part of a larger effort to <a href="https://www.breitbart.com/environment/2021/05/25/pope-francis-calls-for-green-economics-green-education-green-spirituality/">emphasize</a> what he called "green economics," "green education" and "green spirituality."&nbsp;Kerry -- another Catholic who <a href="https://www.ontheissues.org/2004/John_Kerry_Abortion.htm">supports</a> legalized abortion -- <a href="https://www.vaticannews.va/en/world/news/2021-05/pope-francis-meets-with-us-envoy-for-climate-john-kerry.html">praised</a> Francis as "one of the great voices of reason and compelling moral authority on the subject of the climate crisis."


	A voice that roars to support obtuse environmentalist ideology becomes muted when confronted with unborn human beings.

Suffer the Little Children

For centuries, the Catholic Church represented unmitigated opposition to abortion. But as recent events seem to indicate, Pope Francis is preparing to

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