August 23, 2020
By Maher Nazeh and Thaier Al-Sudani
CAMP
TAJI, Iraq (Reuters) – United States-led international coalition troops
withdrew from Iraq’s Taji military base on Sunday and handed it over to
Iraqi security forces, Reuters witnesses and the coalition said.
The
base, 20 km (12 miles) north of Baghdad, had been the site of frequent
rocket attacks by Iran-backed militias targeting U.S.-led troops in
recent months.
“The
movement of coalition military personnel is part of a long-range plan
coordinated with the government of Iraq,” the coalition said in a
statement, adding that Camp Taji has historically held up to 2,000
coalition members, most of whom have departed this summer.
Remaining
coalition troops will depart in the coming days after finalising the
handing over of equipment to Iraqi security forces, it added.
This was the eighth transfer of a coalition portion of an Iraqi base back to Iraqi forces, it said.
The
withdrawal came days after U.S. President Donald Trump redoubled his
promise to withdraw the few U.S. troops still in the country. The United
States has had about 5,000 troops stationed in the country and
coalition allies a further 2,500.
Iraq’s parliament had voted this
year for the departure of foreign troops from Iraq and U.S. and other
coalition troops have been leaving as part of a drawdown.
The vote
came after a U.S. air strike on Baghdad airport killed Iranian general
Qassem Soleimani and Iraqi militia leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis.
SENIOR JUSTICE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL: Thank you, and
good morning to all of you. Thank you for joining us this morning. By
their very nature, consulates are a base of operations for foreign
governments in the United States, including their intelligence services.
And it’s understood that there will be some activity here by those
services. But because of their location within the United States and
their status as sovereign[1] territory
of a foreign country, they can be exploited. And the espionage and
influence activities run out of a consulate can rise ultimately to a
level that threatens our national security.
Let me give you a few examples of that in the context of the
consulate closure in Houston. Yesterday we issued – we being the
Department of Justice – a press release highlighting a network of PLA
associates who concealed their military affiliation when applying for
student visas here. One of those individuals was a fugitive from justice
until last night, having received sanctuary in the San Francisco
consulate. That press release and the individuals charged there are a
microcosm, we believe, of a broader network of individuals in more than
25 cities. That network is supported through the consulates here.
Consulates have been giving individuals in that network guidance on how
to evade and obstruct our investigation, and you can infer from that the
ability to task that network of associates nationwide.
The Houston consulate was also implicated in an investigation of
grant fraud at a Texas research institution. Consulate officials
directly involved – were directly involved in communications with
researchers and guided them on what information to collect. The
consulates in Houston – including Houston promoted talent plan
memberships. Memberships in talent plans can create the incentives to
steal intellectual property and otherwise create conflicts of interest.
That talent plan is the Thousand Talents, a large and sprawling effort
on the part of the Chinese Communist Party to subvert top level
researchers in the United States and across the free world in a variety
of key fields and buy their research, which is turned over to the
People’s Liberation Army. That’s China’s ironically named military,
which liberates no one, threatens its own citizens, and helps maintain
the communists’ police state. Thousand Talents has been uncovered and
several arrests have been made this year, including the high-profile arrest of Dr. Charles Lieber of Harvard’s Dr. Lieber is one of the world’s top nanoscientists. The Department of Justice accuses him of secretly working for the communists in Beijing via the Wuhan University of Technology.
At the time of the Houston consulate’s closure, we and many others
reported that individuals were seen burning documents in the consulate’s
courtyard. Who was burning them, and for what purpose, we could only
guess. There was speculation that the consulate was somehow involved in the ongoing protests and riots in cities across the country.
In August, the Trump administration moved to ban TikTok,
the Chinese-owned social media app. The administration is threatening
to ban it unless it gets sold away from Chinese ownership. Microsoft is
said to be in the running to purchase it. TikTok is countering with a lawsuit
against the Trump administration. The ban also included Chinese social
media app WeChat, which many Chinese nationals use to connect around the
world. It is reportedly monitored and censored by the communist government.
Among other things, TikTok has been accused
of scooping up the private personal data of its users, which include
many underage children, and sending that data to servers in China.
The Trump administration has also been sharply critical of Chinese tech giant Huawei, which among other things manufactures 5G cell phone technology. The United Kingdom in July banned Huawei
from working on its 5G network, citing the company’s very close ties to
the Chinese communist government and the possibility that its tech
could be used to harm Britain’s national security.
The Second Department of China’s People’s Liberation Army
(PLA), which is the PLA’s intelligence unit, sent staff members from a
large network company, with fake IDs, to China’s Consulate in Houston.
Those technicians used a large video platform’s backend data to identify
people who might participate in the Black Lives Matter (BLM) and
ANTIFA’s protests and then created and sent them customized videos on
how to organize riots and how to do promotions.
It sounds an awful lot like the Chinese Communist Party used PLA
officers armed with fake Huawei IDs to access TikTok data to target
likely protesters in cities around the United States.
The report further says that the videos were sent directly to likely
protest participants, so that they would not be seen by the media or the
public at large. This was then a nearly undetectable microtargeting
engagement from a communist government to like-minded Marxist groups and
individuals across the United States. TikTok, according to the report,
was its primary vehicle.
If this ChinaScope report is true, and the Houston Chinese consulate
was the hub of unrest via TikTok, it makes sense of the recent events
noted above. It also makes some sense of the riots themselves. Antifa
got its start as the communists’ street fighters in Weimar Germany. Black Lives Matters’ leaders have openly stated they are trained Marxists.
The strongest communist regime on earth today is the one in Beijing
under its most authoritarian leader in decades, Xi Jinping. The
rioters’s goal is not any particular policy outcome, but to subvert and
weaken America. Destroying our cities, defunding law enforcement,
agitating against ICE, and dividing America along racial lines all
support the goal of weakening the United States, which happens to be
China’s long-term foreign policy goal.
The Soviets used similar means to subvert the United States during
the Cold War. Among its most notable efforts was the “nuclear freeze”
movement, which pushed against the U.S. drive to modernize its nuclear
weapons arsenal and deploy that arsenal among its key European allies,
to defend them against possible Soviet invasion.
This report, if true, connects several dots and casts the riots of
the past few months in a new light. It’s an effort on the part of a
hostile regime to weaken our nation’s integrity. Its leaders and
operators on U.S. soil are, knowingly or not, doing the bidding of a
hostile foreign government.
Newt Gingrich says Trump win will be 'dramatically bigger' than expected
A Trump victory is "beginning to build," Gingrich added.
Gingrich was reacting to the Democratic Convention, saying that when the GOP gathers this week at the Republican Convention, the party needs only to continue pointing out their differences from Democrats in order to bolster Trump's chances.
"We
don't have to want to make stuff up. We don't have to invent some post
office phony scandal. We just have to tell the truth about how radical
these people are," Gingrich said.
"We just have to tell the truth about how radical these people are."
— Newt Gingrich
The
former speaker pointed to continuing chaos in places like Chicago,
Seattle and Portland, Ore. -- large American cities run by Democrats.
"Rioting
every day for 90 days, that begins to be a fact. And it was very
interesting to me that neither [Joe] Biden nor [Kamala] Harris was
willing to say a word about Antifa, [not] a word about a level of
crime."
"You
know, [we] have the mayor of Chicago announcing that she's going to
have police on her own personal street because she wants her family to
be safe. But good luck to the rest of the city," Gingrich added. "Well, I
think this stuff sinks in at a level of reality that even NBC News
can't cover up."
"The mayor of Chicago ... wants her family to be safe. But good luck to the rest of the city."
— Newt Gingrich
The Fox News contributor also blasted the Democratic presidential ticket and their chances of winning.
He
called vice presidential candidate Harris "the most radical member of
the Senate based on voting, which means she's to the left of [Bernie]
Sanders and the left of Elizabeth Warren. I mean, you know how hard that
is," Gingrich said. "Second, she's a terrible performer."
Gingrich
added that Biden, the Democratic presidential nominee, gave the best
speech of his career during the convention but believes Biden's position
in the polls "is not going to last."
"I say to myself, when
people get to know them better, just as happened with George McGovern in
1972, they're going to say, 'You know, ... I don't think so. I just I
can't vote for you.'"
On Tuesday August 18th, I had the opportunity to talk to, be interviewed by, and brief the person described as the “main guy”, the “central investigator”, “the guy who coordinates all investigative aspects” behind the John Durham investigation.
His name is William Aldenberg, and before getting to the substance of the conversation some background context is needed.
On June 7, 2018, an indictment against Senate Intelligence Committee Security Director James Wolfe was unsealed.
Approximately six weeks later, July 21, 2018, the DOJ mysteriously declassified and publicly released the Carter Page FISA application. That’s when I noticed the first two documents were related. The FISA application was the “top secret classified document” described in the Wolfe indictment.
Immediately I recognized it wasn’t just any copy of the FISA application that was released by the DOJ; but rather a very specific copy of the FISA application. What the DOJ released was the exact copy used in the leak investigation of James Wolfe. The ramifications of this specific copy being publicly released were immediately noted, although almost everyone seemed to gloss over the issue in favor of discussing the content.
Over the course of the next several months the ramifications became more clear. Despite overwhelming evidence James Wolfe was never charged with leaking the FISA application on March 17, 2017. Quite the contrary, even to this day the official position of the FBI, DOJ and U.S. government is that Wolfe *did not* leak the FISA application. There’s a very big reason for that; as both myself and special agent William Aldenberg discussed.
First, in order to fill in another corner of the interview foundation it must be remembered the goal of the DOJ under former AG Jeff Sessions, despite his recusal on all things Trump, was the removal of political influence in the DOJ. That same objective has been repeated ad infinitum by current AG Bill Barr. This approach is why everyone in/around any issue that skirts on the investigative tissue keeps saying: “a very delicate balance is being navigated”, and “very sensitive approaches” are needed.
None of the former -and some remaining embed- officials in the FBI, DOJ, or Special Counsel actors, had any aversion to the use of weaponized politics in their corrupt investigations of President Trump. However, in the current investigation of the former weaponized political investigations the primary avoidance filter is politics.
As expressed by almost everyone in and around the issue, any evidence that comes from inside the political silo is considered unusable. This sets up a rather challenging approach… hence the overused “delicate balances” etc.
This overlay, the aggressive need not to use political information, is also frustrating.
Some are beginning to question whether it is actually a shield to justify a lack of accountability or institutional preservation. Keep up the pressure, the concerns are valid. The public doesn’t draw distinctions from the origin of evidence.
Regardless of whether information comes from HPSCI ranking member Devin Nunes; and/or Senators Grassley, Johnson or Graham (political silo); or from the DOJ itself via John Bash, Jeff Jensen or John Durham; the public is absorbing all it. However, the current AG Barr instructions imply the non use of evidence emanating from the political silo in very direct terms.
After discussions with people familiar with the overall information flow I was prepared to hear about concerns of politics from the DOJ.
Exactly as anticipated lead special investigator William Aldenberg affirmed this concern multiple times. “Did anyone on The Hill assist your assembly?” …. “Did anyone related to, connected to, or in association with The Hill; or any member or person connected directly or indirectly, aid, assist, direct or by any method ‘provide‘ any of the information we are discussing?”
Various iterations of these questions were repeated several times.
Agent William Aldenberg is a polite, courteous and friendly person. He was well prepared with the materials prior to discussion and detail oriented on the specifics. He was everything one might hope from a solid investigator.
There was one month between first contact and our ultimate briefing/discussion on details. He was well prepared, open and engaging.
After introductions and formalities, Aldenberg’s first question -with a rather pronounced Boston accent- was: “how did you find me?” Again, this was not unexpected… no-one knew his role and it was completely accidental how I was able to discover him despite layers of concealment. The silo approach was/is very effective at isolating him.
With the documents in hand to walk through and review, here is the essential story as evidenced within many seemingly disconnected public records. This is what we discussed:
FBI Washington Field Office Special Agent Brian Dugan was given a task in early 2017 to see if he could track down and identify people who were leaking information related to national security. Dugan used a Top-Secret Classified Information request by SSCI Vice-Chairman Mark Warner to begin a very specific leak investigation.
On March 17, 2017, Brian Dugan picked-up a copy of the Carter Page FISA application from the FISA Court. He personally delivered that “read and return” copy to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Security Director James Wolfe. Shortly after 4:02 pm that same day, Vice-Chairman Mark Warner reviewed the FISA in the senate “scif”.
It is not known if any other SSCI committee member viewed that FISA (there is a great deal of circumstantial evidence to indicate only Wolfe and Warner saw it); however, what is factually certain – is that on the same day as Wolfe and Warner reviewed the FISA, Security Director James Wolfe leaked it to journalist Ali Watkins.
Both the New York Times and Washington Post began reporting on the FISA application.
As soon as Ms. Watkins wrote an article for Buzzfeed, April 3, 2017, outlining Carter Page as “person one” in the application, Dugan knew the FISA had been leaked.
Dugan tells us in the Wolfe indictment how the leak took place. The original FISA application is 83 pages with two mostly blank pages. Wolfe sent Ali Watkins 82 text messages (pictures), and later that evening had a lengthy phone call about it. Dugan put Wolfe under physical surveillance for several months as he gathered more information.
Dugan obtained enough evidence surrounding Watkins participation to gain a search warrant for her email, electronic communication and phone records. At the same time it appears Dugan obtained the text messages between Chris Steele’s lawyer, Adam Waldman, and Vice-Chairman Mark Warner. The dates of both captures are very similar.
After more investigative paths were followed; and after more surveillance was conducted; eventually Wolfe was confronted. He lied three times over two dates until eventually Dugan put the direct evidence in front of him, and on December 15, 2017, Wolfe admitted to the leak. He was fired from the SSCI.
Sometime around mid-January 2018 Dugan wrapped up his investigation. However, because the special counsel held investigative authority over everything Trump-Russia, which included the FISA application, Dugan’s entire investigative file had to transfer over to the special counsel for review before going to the DC U.S. Attorney for a grand jury. That moment is when things get really troublesome.
Dugan’s delivery of the investigative file to Main Justice (mid January ’18) was the first time the special counsel knew of the totality of the investigation, and the issues with a trail of evidence going back to a serious SSCI compromise. The special counsel group took the Dugan file apart and began providing cover for their political allies. That’s why the Mark Warner text messages were released on February 9, 2018.
The Wolfe leak was toxic to the purpose of the special counsel. There were also serious issues with an intelligence compromise, a national security compromise, an SSCI compromise, a gang-of-eight compromise, and a compromise between the legislative and executive branches of government. The special counsel was in damage control mode.
Despite recommendations and normal procedures, “Top FBI leadership”, including FBI Director Chris Wray, made decisions not to do a national security damage assessment based on the identified intelligence compromises. The ramifications are rather stark. Everyone was in cover-up mode.
The transfer of the investigative file into Main Justice is how the special counsel gained custody of the exact March 17, 2017, version of the FISA application which they released on July 21, 2018. Additionally, only nine days earlier, July 12, 2018, the special counsel was telling the FISA court the Carter Page FISA application was adequately predicated.
When the Brian Dugan investigative file was returned, the evidence of the Wolfe leak was scrubbed. Wolfe was only charged with lying three times to investigators. Absent the indictment for the leak Wolfe’s lawyers knew they had leverage; they threatened to subpoena the SSCI senators (remember, it’s likely only Warner was a participant in the March 17th FISA review – so the real target of that threat was Senator Mark Warner).
After the threat DC U.S. Attorney’ Office, Jessie Liu, agreed to a plea deal. They dropped the three counts of lying to federal investigators down to one count while simultaneously the media ran from the story.
On December 14, 2018, WFO Special Agent Brian Dugan filed an attachment, Government Exhibit 13, to the final sentencing recommendation – and in that two page sworn statement, under penalty of perjury, SSA Brian Dugan attested to Wolfe leaking the FISA application for the final time.
Everyone ignored it.
The cover-up was complete.
All of the direct evidence of this series of events, and a lot more not in this written summary, is included in a series of public documents released over a period of about twelve months. Because the documents were released out of sequence and seemingly disconnected no-one caught on to the backstory.
This evidence was directly provided to special investigator William Aldenberg who was very apt at asking questions as each document was reviewed. By the end of our discussion there were no questions remaining; and none of it was based on supposition, innuendo, speculation or inference.
Mr. Aldenberg could not affirm or attest to the implications of the information as provided; however, he did accept the briefing was clear and articulately grounded on the evidence within the documents provided.
After answering a series of questions about how this was found; direct inquiry into the provenance; and several questions surrounding how I was able to retrieve this information into a singular timeline of sequential events that seemed disconnected over two years; I reminded Mr. Aldenberg that SSA Brian Dugan was still employed at the FBI Washington Field Office and it should be a very simple conversation to confirm.
Mr Aldenberg and I exchanged direct contact information, and concluded our conversation.
It was always the primary objective to carry this information directly to those badges who are positioned to do something about it. That mission is accomplished.
DOJ investigators are now aware of the issues and evidence that has remained hidden for years.
More importantlythey now know that we know.
Perhaps even more importantly, none of this evidence comes from within a political silo; all of it was attained from outside the DC system; none of the more illegal activity is based on political lies; and all of issues point to a direct national security threat, including the overarching possibility of blackmail against those who are currently charged with intelligence oversight. Lastly, all of the events to cover-up the Wolfe leak involve direct criminal conduct.
Now you know why I focused on James Wolfe. It’s not political, it’s criminal.
Be of good cheer.
Sundance
MOST OF THE CITATIONS:
The sequence is critical:
1. Adam Waldman text messages. (release date Feb 9, 2018)
4. FISC / Senate Judiciary Letter (public release April, 2020 – event date July 12, 2018) The letter from DOJ-NSD (Mueller Special Proseuctors) to the FISC is important.
Virgil: Reparations for Everyone — What Do We Do if We’re All Victims and Victimizers?
As we all know, talk of reparations for injustice is everywhere.But here’s a headline, appearing in the British Spectator
magazine, that hit home to Virgil, old Roman that he is: “Italy owes
Wales reparations for the wrongs of the Roman Empire.” The author, one
Lloyd Evans—an impeccable Welsh name, that—declared:
Let me add my voice to the clamour on behalf of this island’s indigenous Celtic people.My
family are from Llanelli in Carmarthenshire and I believe that my
compatriots have an excellent case to make against the Roman Empire.
Yes, Evans said he wants reparations for the Roman invasion of Great
Britain, launched by Julius Caesar in 55 BC; it was a bloody business,
leading to the subjugation of the island’s Celtic inhabitants, including
those in Wales.
Indeed, Evans went further in his demand for compensation; he
recalled that later on, in the 5th and 6th centuries, AD, the Welsh were
once again conquered, victims of “Anglo-Saxon aggression.”That
is, the Angles and the Saxons, two tribes coming across the sea from
Germany, drove out the Romans but still kept the Celts in bondage.So
Evans’ logic would suggest that the Celts today have a claim against
not only Italy and Germany, but also, of course, against descendants of
past invaders still living with them—quite likely, after all these
centuries, in their own families—in what’s now the United Kingdom.
Yet then, to Virgil’s great relief, it turns out that Evans was kidding in his demand for reparations.As he put it, “The idea of ‘you owe me money because your ancestors wronged my ancestors’ doesn’t sound like justice to me.It has the air of a ghost-story.”
Yes, human history is full of ghosts—and all of them have suffered a wound and thus hold a grievance against other ghosts.We might recall the cry of the ancient British king Calgacus,
who said of the Romans, “To robbery, slaughter, plunder, they give the
lying name of empire; they make a wasteland and call it peace.”
Indeed, at its largest extent, the Roman Empire extended to all or part of what today are 46 countries; so as we can see, many different peoples were victims.Thus
everyone from the Scots, at the northern edge of the old empire, to the
Saudi Arabians, at the southern edge, could have a claim against the
successors to the Romans, the people of Italy.
Yet if claims against the ancient Romans are being advanced playfully, other claims are being pressed seriously.For instance, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX), has long been pushing a bill calling
for a “study” on the need for reparations for American slavery. (It’s
not hard to guess what the results of the study might be.) Jackson Lee
hasn’t had much support for her legislation in the past, although in
recent weeks, according to the Wall Street Journal, Democratic support has been increasing—it now has the support of Joe Biden. Indeed, in a June speech
to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People,
Biden said, “If, in fact, there are ways to get direct payments for
reparations, I want to see it,” adding, “Why are we waiting around for
the study?We can deal with this stuff.”
To be sure, a July Washington Post/ABC News poll
found that a full 63 percent of Americans oppose reparations for
slavery, and yet if Biden and the Democrats win this year, reparations
are a distinct possibility, public opinion notwithstanding.
So we might ask: How would such a reparations program work?For sure, that’s a mind-boggling question.Look, it was I, Virgil, who wrote The Aeneid, the epic poem about the founding of the Roman Empire, and so I’m used to thinking big.Yet still, my imagination reels at the thought of how a reparations program would actually be administered.
Let’s start with who in the U.S. would be eligible: How to determine who is the descendant of a slave?And for that matter, how to determine who is black?After
all, genetic-testing services such as 23 and Me have opened our eyes to
the plenteous biological mix of the American population.
Indeed, back in 2014, The American Journal of Human Genetics found that the genome of the average American black is just 73.2 percent African.At the same time, the average Hispanic has 6.2 percent African ancestry.In fact, some 3.5 percent of European-Americans have African blood. Also, as recalled here
at Breitbart News, in 2019 Housing and Urban Development secretary Ben
Carson recalled, “I did my DNA analysis. . . . I’m 77 percent
sub-Saharan African, 20 percent European, three percent Asian. So how
do you proportion that out to everybody?” Good question, Mr. Secretary.
We can add that the same Breitbart News article reported on a demand by a Duke University professor that slavery reparations should total $12 trillion. With
that much money potentially at stake, the question of who would be
eligible for a reparations payment would lead to a national scramble for
free money.
Such comparative, and competitive, racial typing might seem offensive
to those who were taught that America should be a color-blind melting
pot, but if we ever were to go down this road of reparations by race,
it’s inevitable that the spoils would have to be divided somehow.
Also, we should ask: Shouldn’t some white Americans owe more than others?Owing the most, of course, might be those whose ancestors actually owned slaves—but that was only about 32 percent of the Southern white population in 1860.
Interestingly, the roster of Southern slave-owners includes the family that now owns the New York Times.This story was broken by journalist Michael Goodwin,
who detailed that not only did the Ochs family own slaves, but in
addition, those slave-owners were staunch champions of secession; a few
of them even wore the gray Confederate uniform.(And as The National Pulseadded, long after the Civil War, the Times routinely ran pro-Southern, pro-segregationist news stories and editorials.Indeed, in 1908, it published a fawning piece celebrating the centennial of the birth of Confederate president Jefferson Davis.)
Still, for the sake of administrative convenience, future authorities might declare that all
white Southerners—at least those with roots in the region—are liable
today, for the simple reason that their ancestors were a part of the
Confederacy.Except, well, that’s not true.In fact, to cite just one Southern state’s history, about three percent of white Alabamans who fought in the Civil War fought for the North.
Most notably, the 1st Alabama Cavalry Regiment, more than 2,000
strong, formed the personal escort for Union Gen. William T. Sherman.One
might think that the descendants of those white men who fought to free
black slaves would at least get some sort of discount on their
reparations bill, and perhaps even a rebate of some kind.
Moreover, there’s the white population that came here after slavery was abolished; more than 12 million immigrants passed through Ellis Island in New York between 1892 and 1954.So how much should the descendants of Ellis Islanders owe?
We might also add that the search for slavery culpability should
properly extend beyond America’s borders—extending, even, to Africa.After
all, virtually every slave brought to the Americas from the 17th to the
19th century was first captured by African slave-traders and then sold
to European slave-ship owners for transport across the Atlantic.Hence this Washington Postreport from the onetime slaving hub of Benin: “An African country reckons with its history of selling slaves.”
Indeed, the realization of ancestral slave-trading guilt can be quite personal, as this recent headline from the BBC attests: “My great-grandfather owned slaves.”Author
Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani, a Nigerian, was moved to reflect on the anguish
that comes from having uncovered a sordid slaving history: “Assessing
the people of Africa’s past by today’s standards would compel us to cast
the majority of our heroes as villains.”
Yet even as we seek to chronicle everything, we can pause to observe
that at one time or another—oftentimes, in fact, for thousands of
years—virtually every society on the planet has been a slave-holding
society.Indeed, it’s entirely possible that just about every human being on the planet today is the descendant both of slaves and of slave-holders.
While we’re at it, we must
consider another category of historical miscreant: those who supported
slavery. For instance, there’s the Greek philosopher Aristotle, about
whom a recent headline atop an op-ed in the New York Times asked, “Should
We Cancel Aristotle?” As the op-ed author pointed out, “The Greek
philosopher Aristotle did not merely condone slavery, he defended it; he
did not merely defend it, but defended it as beneficial to the slave.”
Interestingly, the author did not take note of the Times‘s
own past support for slavery; in the meantime, though, one suspects
that the purge of Aristotle from libraries and course curricula is
already under way.
Now, returning to America today, we can also ask: If reparations for
American blacks were approved, would reparations for American Indians be
far behind?And so once again, we would, to keep things honest, have to initiate racial testing to cancel the claims of faux Indians.Indeed,
we might recall that blonde-haired, blue-eyed Elizabeth Warren—who
claimed Native American ancestry for so long, and did so well by doing
so—is now demonstrably in fact 1/1024 Indian. So since she’s not completely Fauxcohontas, how much would she be entitled to?
And yet come to think of it, what percentage of the American population can claim at least a Warren’s worth of Indian heritage?So how much money for them?
Why Stop at Slavery?What About All the Other Misdeeds Around the World?
Okay, so now we’ve got this reparations train rolling.So
as we search around the globe for more compensation-worthy victims, we
might start by recalling that Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation
estimates that some 100 million people were killed by communist regimes in the 20th century, in countries ranging from Russia to China to Cambodia to Cuba.So how to get compensation for them?
We might note that it’s estimated that as many as 65 million of those victims were killed in China alone.Indeed, the death toll at the hands of the Chinese Communist Party could be rising even today, as Muslim Uyghurs suffer an as-yet uncounted degree of persecution, and perhaps even outright genocide. As many as 3 million Uyghur Muslims have been imprisoned in concentration camps, according to human rights reports, and many are forced to work as slave labor — with the products of their forced labor sold even in the United States and even by companies that decry racism here.
And speaking of “isms,’ what about jihadism?Do the many victims of jihadi violence deserve compensation?If so, from whom should they collect?
Moreover, since we’re allowed to think back in time in our quest for
justice, we might recall all the many past atrocities committed in the
name of faith.For instance,
both Catholics and Protestants can look back to the Reformation, and the
Wars of Religion, in the 16th and 17th centuries and find plenty of
grudge-worthy material, including mass murder and the destruction of
whole cities.
Indeed, it’s been estimated that just one particularly bad period
during that century-and-a-half of religious strife, the Thirty Years’
War, 1618-1648, claimed the lives of one-third of all Germans.So now, where do their descendants go for compensation?To the French and the Swedes, who invaded Germany many times during those three decades?Or can German Protestants collect from German Catholics—and vice versa?
Of course, we can go back even further in our search for justice.If we were to look, for example, at a map of Europe in the year 1500, we would see all sorts of kingdoms and principalities that don’t exist anymore, including Mayo, Ryazan, and the Papal States.So who wiped them out? Who should pay now for the damage done?
Similarly, if we go back to the year 1000, we see more vanished realms, such as Mumha, Arelat, and Ardil.Admittedly,
it might be hard to trace the lineage of those victimized peoples to
the present day, but with genetic science, it’s perhaps not
impossible—and it might be worth a try.
Moreover, we would be remiss if we didn’t point out that the same
cycle of conquering and being conquered has occurred not just in Europe,
but everywhere else in the world. So while an “awoken” United States
might seek to be a leader in the redressing of old wrongs, there’s
nothing stopping other countries from going on the same
historical-fiscal journey.So many victims to make whole!
But wait, there’s more!If
we’re mindful of victims in need of compensation, what about victims of
crime? What special bonus are they entitled to? And from whom? Last
month, we learned that three or more federal officers might have been permanently blinded
by laser-shining Antifa goons in Portland, Oregon. Those officers–and
the many other officers who have been killed or injured in the line of
duty–will be entitled to treatment and pensions, for them and/or their
survivors. And yet wouldn’t true reparative justice put the burden on
the specific perpetrators, just as with slavery?
And dare we ask: Should there be compensation for victims of . . .abortion?Okay, okay, it might be hard to find anyone to compensate for that loss of life.
Still, as we can see, the vistas for reparations are limitless.So
if we all do move toward reparations as a goal we’ll find that we have
to learn a lot of history, as we must seek historical evidence for our
claims, as well as evidence for our defense against the claims of
others.
Yet at the same time, there’s one other thing to keep in mind.And that is, we likely all will go mad in the process—as we attempt to juggle our dueling judgments of oppressor and oppressed.As one of Virgil’s characters in The Aeneidcries out in a moment of bewildered desperation, “What am I saying? Where am I?What madness twists my thoughts?”
They were good questions then, and they’re good questions now.
However,
they have been directed to “stand down,” allegedly by Attorney General
William Barr, literally giving the ex-president and ex-vice president de facto
immunity. President Trump recently said something along the lines that
Barr could be politically correct or he could do the right thing and
show that there are not two tiers of justice. A data point is the plea
deal with Kevin Clinesmith. Whoopee! One of the co-conspirators in
Spygate gets a literal pass. His attorney claims that Clinesmith, a
lawyer, didn’t know that he was lying to the FISA court. Add that one
to the what-a-crock barrel.
What
happened to the USDA John Huber investigation of the Clinton
Foundation? Peter Schweizer did superb investigations on the alleged
misuse of funds. Uranium One comes to mind as one of many associated
examples. AG Bill Barr shut it down. Needless to say, enthusiasm
levels for justice being served on elites has been curbed.
Jack
Cashill wrote an article a few weeks ago about traveling from Kansas
City to elsewhere in the USA. My Venezuelan-born wife and I traveled
recently from Florida to California by car. We visited family as we
cruised through 15 states, including Kansas. It was wonderful to see my
wife enjoy sights that I had seen as a kid such as Mt. Rushmore and Old
Faithful at Yellowstone National Park. We were bummed out that we made
the drive to the entrance of Yosemite Park but were denied access since
we had not obtained a permit. We spent the night in Tulare, California
before going to Sequoia National Park and seeing the General Sherman
Tree. I hope the anarchists like Antifa don’t try to cut down this
living monument to a Civil War General. They would not know or care
what side he was on. We loved seeing the banners out for Congressman
Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), urging citizens to look at the facts (concerning
Obamagate/Spygate). Congressman Nunes is clearly one of our American
heroes.
As
we traveled through the states of GA, NC, TN, MO, AR, KS, NE, SD, WY,
MT, ID, WA, OR, NV, and CA, one thing struck us more than anything. We
saw “TRUMP 2020” signs in each state, even the bluest of the blue. As we were driving through the beautiful Wind River Canyon, we saw a large TRUMP 2020 banner. As we drove a few miles further we saw the only “BIDEN 2020”
sign during our 17-day trip. A former client of mine in the early '80s
married a lovely lady whose family had a ranch on the Wind River.
Their neighbor was the “swashbuckling” attorney, Gerry Spence, who made
millions by representing the little guy (e.g. Karen Silkwood). Spence
was a staunch Democrat. I thought maybe this was his family promoting
Sleepy Joe.
What struck us most was that most of the TRUMP 2020
signs were not the little “Burma Shave” signs I saw as a kid. These
were huge banners. We saw several farmers and ranchers who were
operating equipment that had banners for Trump displayed proudly as they
were operating their tractors, for example. Yes, the observations were
mostly in suburban or rural areas. But when we went to hotels and
restaurants at many locations, people, either openly or through
overheard conversations, were talking about the benefits of the Trump
presidency and its continuation for another four years. The enthusiasm
is real and electric as far as we could tell. And this cut across
racial and ethnic groups.
I wore my “Make America Great Again”
hat at Mount Rushmore. My friend gave it to me as a bit of a joke
since the words are in Russian. I was working in an FSU (former Soviet
Union) country at the time. Two different people commented on my hat
that read and spoke Russian. They both gave me thumbs up. A guy in
northern California did the same.
In
California, we noticed a couple of Trump banners on boats moored behind
the Marriott Hotel next to the San Diego Convention Center. There was a
kiosk selling Trump merchandise in La Jolla. On a trip to Julian, a
tiny town in the mountains to the east of San Diego, it was clear from
the signs we saw that President Trump is being promoted for
re-election. It was even there in the beach towns to the north. In
Capistrano Beach, there was a guy near the entrance to COSTCO selling
“(President) Trump” paraphernalia. (There's also a kiosk selling Trump merchandise on Torrey Pines Road, the biggest thoroughfare into La Jolla -ed.).
It seemed to us that the enthusiasm to re-elect our President Trump is
much higher than what we saw with the pre-election buzz of 2016.
We
have been entrenched in the oddest cyber-convention this week held by
the DNC. To be honest, after watching the Kamala Harris-Joe Biden
rollout of her candidacy we could not stomach watching any of the
“convention.” What I have read is that this has been one of the most
negative conventions in history. The theme seems to be Orange Man Bad
yet the Democrats have yet to convince anyone how they will fix these
supposed ills. Increase taxes, increase regulations, decimate the
Second Amendment, defund the police, and so forth tend to be their
remedies. As the champions of global warming attenuation by decreasing
carbon dioxide through green energy replacement of fossil fuels,
Democrats are unlikely to ask how that is working out in California with
rolling blackouts. In November 2019, I wrote an article for American Thinker
about my disappointment with San Diego California’s shift from
CNG-powered public transit buses to EV-type. The price of (Henry Hub)
natural gas then was $2.65 per million BTU versus $1.77 now. At the
time of the article I noted a 15% higher cost in energy alone for EV
versus CNG let alone the almost double initial capital cost of a bus.
The “Republican” Mayor will be replaced this November by a Democrat due
to California’s skewed-for-Democrats top-two runoff voting system.
As
I age, I wonder more often how one party lies so blatantly that they
think us common folk are dunderheads. Democrats are so vicious in their
remarks about our president they present themselves as the true
dunderheads. This venom they spout off is the catalyst that has removed
many of the curbs to the common voter’s enthusiasm as to how we will
vote in November. President Trump, my wife and I salute you and your
pledge to Keep America Great. We look to four more years under your
stewardship.
