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March 2021

How Democracy Dies: Big Tech Becomes Big Brother by Leni Friedman Valenta with Dr. Jiri Valenta

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17104/big-tech-big-brother

The power-sharing of the U.S. Federal government with Big Tech appears a recipe for unharnessed power and corruption. Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny caught on right away, saying: “This precedent will be exploited by the enemies of freedom of speech around the world. In Russia as well. Every time when they need to silence someone, they will say: ‘this is just common practice, even Trump got blocked on Twitter.'”

Fortunately, governors such as Ron DeSantis in Florida, Greg Abbott in Texas and Kevin Stitt in Oklahoma are now moving legislatively to counter federal laws that may have adverse effects on freedom of speech, jobs, election integrity, the energy industry, the first or second amendments and general constitutional rights.

Democracy cannot survive in a country where a few technocrats and oligarchs can choose to deny access to information or platforms to candidates running for office. It is simply unacceptable that they alone — unelected, unappointed, untransparent and unaccountable — can deem what is “harmful” to society. The job now for all of us is to prevent the United States from slowly becoming a full-blown tyranny.

“Digital giants have been playing an increasingly significant role in wider society… how well does this monopolism correlate with the public interest?,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said on January 27, 2021.

“Where is the distinction between successful global businesses, sought-after services and big data consolidation on the one hand, and the efforts to rule society[…] by substituting legitimate democratic institutions, by restricting the natural right for people to decide how to live and what view to express freely on the other hand?”

Was Mr. Putin defending democracy? Hardly. What apparently worries him is that the Big Tech might gain the power to control society at the expense of his government. What must be a nightmare for him — as for many Americans — is that the Tech giants were able to censor news favorable to Trump and then censor Trump himself. How could the U.S. do this to the president of a great and free country?

Supreme Court to Hear First of Many Election-Related Lawsuits After 2020 Election By Eric Lendrum

https://amgreatness.com/2021/03/02/supreme-court-to-hear-first-of-many-election-related-lawsuits-after-2020-election/

In the aftermath of the 2020 election, numerous bills introduced in state legislatures across the country are most likely heading for the same place: The Supreme Court, where they will be scrutinized under the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The first of many such cases will begin on Tuesday, according to ABC News.

After widespread voter fraud in multiple key swing states that some say may have been enough to change the outcome of the election in favor of Joe Biden and other Democrats, over 250 bills have been introduced across 43 states, aimed at such measures as reducing voter fraud, restricting vote-by-mail, and requiring some form of photographic ID in order to vote. The Brennan Center for Justice, a far-left advocacy group, has falsely claimed that such bills are attempting to suppress non-White voters.

Activists at the Brennan Center and elsewhere are seeking to challenge most of these laws in court using the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits “a denial or abridgment of the right of any citizen of the U.S. to vote on account of race or color,” even though none of the proposed laws mention race in any way.

“The court needs to send a strong statement that the Voting Rights Act will be there for the American public,” said a spokeswoman for the Brennan Center, “especially at a time when we see politicians trying to put barriers in front of the ballot box.” The spokeswoman provided no evidence to back up this statement.

The concerns over election fraud arise from the fact that, supposedly, nearly 67 percent of the voting-age population cast a vote in 2020, which would by far be the highest turnout in over 100 years, but was due in large part to vote-by-mail being made more widely accessible due to the coronavirus pandemic. Vote-by-mail, which makes it much easier for people to vote who otherwise would most likely not cast a ballot, is also ripe for fraud and suppression.

‘America Is Back,’ Unfortunately The Biden Administration’s new slogan means open-ended U.S. military commitments to the Middle East and elsewhere. By Christopher Roach

https://amgreatness.com/2021/03/02/america-is-back-unfortunately/

Bragging about his restoration of the pre-Trump neoliberal foreign policy, Joe Biden proudly declared “America is back.” What this means in practice is that barely a month into Biden’s term, America is back to bombing Syria for alleged provocations by Iranian-backed militias. 

While ordinary Americans on both the Left and Right are wary of dreams of empire and want to focus instead on pressing domestic challenges, Biden’s paeans to America’s pre-Trump foreign policy—including its disastrous run in the Middle East—suggest someone unwilling and unable to learn from events. 

A Dubious Return to Regime Change in Syria

For example, this recent attack supposedly was a response to an Iranian-backed militia, but this prompts the question: Why are our troops still in Syria and Iraq? On what authority and for what purpose does this mission continue? Biden’s recent approval of a limited bombing did almost nothing to justify the decision to the American people, nor did he attempt to justify the continued presence of U.S. troops in a danger zone. Instead, the White House sent a pro forma statement to Congress, and that’s about it. 

The United States has been involved in Syria since 2011. First, we set out under Barack Obama to remove Bashar al-Assad by arming the so-called Free Syrian Army. Then, having armed the anti-Assad rebels, many of them became unmanageable and joined ISIS, wreaking havoc in Syria, in Europe, and here at home. President Trump then proceeded to devise policies to destroy ISIS, which the military largely achieved.

But now what? Does Biden still mean to remove Assad? And, if so, why are we so sure that what comes next won’t resemble ISIS? 

Trump faced a lot of criticism for ordering our troops out of Syria after the ISIS mission was complete. He was then persuaded into keeping some forces there—ostensibly to guard both critical oil resources and our Kurdish allies. Key government officials, including his Syrian envoy, lied to him about the numbers and status of American forces. 

On Gravity—and the Truth of Science By David Solway

“Here I should add an explanatory remark to the reader. Though in my daily work I continue to focus on politics and social commentary, I am convinced that absolute truth—or at least stable truths—can be found only in the scientific realm, in chemistry, physics and math, founded on fundamental principles of observation, testable theory, experimental confirmation and Karl Popper’s notion of falsifiability, articulated in his The Logic of Scientific Theory. For a theory to be accepted as scientific, it must be able to be proven false. The problem with the discursive fields of commentary, scholarship, the misnamed “social sciences,” and the Humanities in general (with the exception of music, which is built on mathematical ratios) is the inevitability of bias, prior convictions and assumptions, and partisan viewpoints that can never be ruled out. ”

I have always been fascinated by gravity, mainly because I never understood it. Richard Feynman, who gave us the heuristic diagrams of quantum interactions, famously observed that “Nobody understands quantum mechanics”; the same is true of gravity. Like everyone, I know it as a tugging force, dragging you back as you climb a hill, pulling you forward as you descend—a force needing to be fought, to struggle against going up or coming down. Seeing images of astronauts floating in their space capsules was a reconciling factor; at least we were grounded, a relief not to find oneself in a condition of permanent levitation. Yet it remains a mystery defying resolution and comprehension.

It’s common knowledge that gravity is one of the four fundamental forces of nature. The strong force binds the fundamental particles of matter together to form larger particles. The electromagnetic force consists of two parts, electricity and magnetism.  The so-called weak force is responsible for particle decay, Schrödinger’s Cat, and radioactivity, and has been descriptively combined with the former as the electroweak force—models predict it can be united with the strong force as the electronuclear force. Gravity is the feeblest of these forces especially at atomic and quantum scales, resisting unification with the other forces into a single equation. 

Texas and Mississippi announce a return to the Old Normal By Andrea Widburg

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/03/texas_and_mississippi_announce_a_return_to_the_old_normal.html

March 2 was a red-letter day in America because Texas announced that all COVID restrictions are henceforth over. Additionally, Mississippi, while it didn’t go quite as far, did end mask mandates. Individual citizens in those states can still make their own choices about masks, social distancing, and their business plans but the government is no longer riding herd on its citizens over a disease that is fading away.

On Monday, the New York Times expressed a panicky concern that life in America might one day return to normal:

Covid-19: The U.S. Is Edging Toward Normal, Alarming Some Officials

Across the country, the first day of March brought a wave of reopenings and liftings of pandemic restrictions, signs that more Americans were tentatively emerging from months of isolation, even if not everyone agrees that the time is ripe.

If the Capitol Riot was “Domestic Terrorism”, Why Wasn’t the BLM Attack on the White House? Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2021/03/if-capitol-riot-was-domestic-terrorism-why-wasnt-daniel-greenfield/

Simple question.

The incredibly inept and useless FBI boss has declared that the FBI “views” the Capitol Riot as “domestic terrorism”. 

Had the FBI declared Black Lives Matter riots to be domestic terrorism, the media and the ACLU would have been first in line to condemn that. There’s a generally understood line between riots and terrorism. What happened at the Capitol was, despite false claims by Democrats and the media, a riot.

Like the leftist riots that had been happening throughout 2020.

If the Capitol Riot was domestic terrorism, then when Black Lives Matter besieged the White House, set fire to its gatehouse and to the Church of Presidents, why wasn’t that domestic terrorism?

There’s no coherent answer, except perhaps Merrick Garland’s answer that it happened at night?

But the White House is always the center of government. President Trump and his family had to be rushed to the bunker when BLM attacked. Why doesn’t that fit Wray and Garland’s definition of domestic terrorism?

The obvious answer is the familiar one: it’s different when they do it.

When your side does something wrong, then there it’s a “tiny minority of extremists” from a “mostly peaceful protest”. That’s spin. And spin is second nature in politics. The problem kicks in when spin becomes the law. That’s no longer politics, it’s political discrimination.

If the FBI and the AG want to use the media’s definition of domestic terrorism, they’re going to have to explain the double standard on the lefty attack on the White House.

Video: Coca-Cola & Being ‘Less White’ The sick and twisted world of ‘diversity training.’

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/03/video-coca-cola-being-less-white-frontpagemagcom/

This new Glazov Gang episode features Will Johnson, the Founder of UniteAmericaFirst.com.

Will focuses on Coca-Cola & Being ‘Less White’, unveiling The sick and twisted world of “diversity training.”

Don’t miss it!

International Criminal Court Targets Israel Netanyahu fires back. Joseph Puder

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/03/israel-reacts-icc-decision-joseph-puder/

The seemingly biased decision of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague (Netherlands), to investigate Israeli actions during the 2014 Gaza War, prompted a sharp reaction from Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Prime Minister Netanyahu observed in his statement that Israel (as well as the US) is not a member of the ICC. He stated that, “Today the Court (ICC) proved once again that it is a political body and not a judicial institution.” He added, “The Court ignores real war crimes and instead persecutes the State of Israel, a state with a firm democratic government which sanctifies the rule of law, and it is not a member of the Court.”  

The US State Department also reacted to the political nature of the ICC determination. A pretrial chamber of the ICC determined on Friday, February 5, 2021 that it has jurisdiction to probe Israel and Hamas on the 2014 Gaza war, as well as Israel’s settlement policy, and Israel Defense Forces (IDF) actions on the Gaza border. 

Ned Price, the State Department spokesperson tweeted that, “The US objects to today’s ICC decision regarding the Palestinian situation. Israel is not a State party to the Rome Statute. (The ICC was established in 2002 in Rome).” Price added, “We will continue to uphold President Joe Biden’s strong commitment to Israel and its security, including opposing actions that seek to target Israel unfairly.”  

The decision of the ICC is a precedent-setting one, and it comes more than a year after ICC prosecutor Patou Bensouda requested the Court to confirm its jurisdiction in this case. This case is essentially the Court’s way of appeasing the Palestinians, and the dominant Arab-Muslim bloc at the UN. Naturally, the Palestinians have hailed the decision as a victory. Israel, on the other hand, excoriated the decision as a contentious political move without a valid legal basis.  

Texas Gov. Abbott Will Open State ‘100 Percent,’ Lift Mask Mandate By Brittany Bernstein

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/texas-gov-abbott-will-open-state-100-percent-lift-mask-mandate/

Texas Governor Greg Abbott announced Tuesday that he will reopen the state “at 100 percent” and will rescind the statewide mask mandate beginning next Wednesday.

“Too many Texans have been sidelined from employment opportunities,” Abbott said. “Too many small business owners have struggled to pay their bills. This must end. It is now time to open Texas 100 percent.”

“Every business that wants to be open should be open,” he said.

However, he warned that removing the mandates “does not end personal responsibility.”

“Personal vigilance to follow the safe standards is still needed to contain COVID. It’s just that now state mandates are no longer needed,” he said.

He said the state’s vaccination efforts, as well as decreasing COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations will allow for the state to safely reopen. The state has the lowest positivity rate it has seen in months.

Investigate Biden Insiders For Offenses Against The Republic

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/03/03/investigate-bidens-handlers-for-crimes-against-the-republic/

It was clear during the 2020 presidential campaign that Joe Biden was a man in decline. Yet the Democrats ran him as their candidate anyway. Was their obsession with removing Donald Trump from the White House worth turning over the federal machine, with its nuclear codes and ability to destroy innocent people, to a man whose faculties are failing him?

Biden’s cognitive challenges have been obvious to anyone who’s willing to make an honest assessment. In both public appearances and in controlled conditions, he’s slurred words, spewed gibberish, stumbled through remarks even with the aid of a teleprompter, and often had the look of a man lost. His lowlights of 2020 include calling the Declaration of Independence “the thing,” appearing to think he was still in the 1970s, 1980s or 1990s running for the U.S Senate, and bumbling basic facts.

Ted Rall, a man of the left and no friend of Trump, complained a year ago – in March 2020, not in September or October – that Democrats were “conspiring to gaslight the American people by engineering the presidential election of a man clearly suffering from dementia, Joe Biden.” At roughly the same time, Eoin Higgins, no Republican he, tweeted that “Biden clearly has serious cognitive issues.”