Stunningly Ridiculous, ODNI Report For Media Consumption: “Attractive Target for RMVE-WS”

posted by Sundance at Conservative Treehouse

The JoeBama administration has one arrow in their divisive quiver they are stunningly committed to overusing: ‘racism to divide our nation and serve their political interests’.  However, the lengths they are willing to go to in their effort to continue using this narrative have become absurd in the extreme.

I want you to look at the official headline from this report (CBS’s Herridge source), and keep in mind this is an official intelligence product from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence:

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Look at that headline: “Commemoration of Tulsa Race Massacre Probably an Attractive Target for Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremist-White Supremacists.”  This is literally something you would see on MSNBC or another far-left production created by the leftist narrative engineers.   Stuff like this “probably” shouldn’t surprise us any longer, yet this one does.  They are not even attempting to cloud how politicized the intelligence apparatus has become.

In the larger picture “racism” is the fulcrum of the current far-left ideological advance.  It was the specific decision, after lengthy internal club meetings to use racism as a political tool, that led to the Chicago network (Obama and Perez) organizing with the AME network (Clyburn and CBC) to support Joe Biden as the avatar for Obama’s third term.

It was literally a strategic decision, without any input from those around Joe Biden, for Obama’s network to advance their objectives by installing the puppet they could control.  The DNC (Tom Perez Chairman) then set about his part of the goal to install the puppet Obama selected.  Perez tells the other candidates to drop out; the club insiders tell the other candidates to comply; they did – and it was all a quick downhill from there.

Obama and Clyburn then coordinate the addition of Kamala Harris… and this racism narrative becomes, yet again, the fulcrum of the political plan.  Obama’s “Anger Games” triggered once again, and everything downstream comes as a consequence.

To see the headline on this 2021 ODNI report is to admit just how manipulated our internal intelligence and law enforcement institutions have become to the narrative engineering of the intolerant and toxic Obama crew.

June 2020:

At the time the Obama crew made the plan, we called it out.

Right before the 2020 SC Primary the DNC Club knew they had a problem with the Bernie Sanders momentum.  An urgent assembly of all party control officers was called. The DNC Club designed a plan around using James Clyburn as the official spark for Joe Biden to take back control of the primary outcome.

Former President Obama was initiated by the Club to contact all candidates and inform them when and how they would quit the race and fall-in-line behind Joe Biden.

Clyburn was then triggered to initiate his endorsement and begin the rapid-fire process.

Within 48 hours all members of the club and candidates had their instructions and proceeded to follow-through on the plan.  They had no choice.  If they did not comply they would suffer the consequences of a fully aligned club hierarchy who would target them personally and financially.

The plan worked flawlessly.

As part of the coordinated deal Representative James Clyburn was put in charge of the Biden campaign; Clyburn stunningly admitted this immediately after the strategy went public.  James Clyburn will also select/appoint the vice-presidential nominee.

Joe Biden has early-onset dementia. Everyone knows this to be true.

The Biden candidacy is a front; a ruse, a manipulative scheme that needs a face… That’s Joe Biden.

A Biden presidency would be a complete farce.  The Club would be in control of everything behind the scenes.  All policy would be Club policy; and, specifically because of their importance in triggering the origin of the entire enterprise, the primary policy stakeholders will be the congressional black caucus (CBC) led by James Clyburn.

That BIG PICTURE is the reason for the House to assemble another Trump removal committee today, headed by James Clyburn.   The club isn’t even trying to put on the pretense of hiding it… their openness and hubris is quite remarkable.

Perhaps the DNC confidence toward pulling this off is driven by their confidence in using the coronavirus to get mail-in vote ballots approved on a state-by-state basis.  The DNC Club controls the mail…. and the ballot counting…  in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan…. ergo the DNC Club controls the 2020 election.

One thing is sure, Clyburn’s Trump Removal Committee will find or create every possible controversy, and manufacture whatever they cannot find, to outline President Trump as the cause for suffering in the U.S. with coronavirus.   A big part of that plan will be to highlight the coronavirus impact on the black and minority communities.

Later in the summer, as Clyburn assembles his own fabricated dossier of manipulative virus research, Anthony Fauci will step-in to play the role of Alexander Vindman.  The media will crank-up their White House investigation sirens again… and we’ll be off to the 2020 races amid the fourth removal effort by political operatives.

Bookmark it.  These people are predictable. (link)

Once you see the strings on the grievance marionettes, you can never watch the pantomime without seeing them; thus the playbook is transparent. Team Black Lives Matter (BLM) and Team AME Church have again aligned, exactly as we expected.  Obama’s Chicago crew coordinated the merging.

From the moment representative James Clyburn aligned his network with Barack Obama’s Chicago machine there has been a strategy at work.

Clyburn uses the old-fashioned racial playbook through the AME church network. The AME network includes Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. Meanwhile Obama historically used the modern race-based network: the Nation of Islam and New Black Panther Party. The NoI and NBPP are also allied with DNC Chairman Tom Perez.

Tom Perez was the head of the DOJ Civil Rights Division… which is not coincidental because the election of 2020 is the second time both networks have merged upon, and attempted to activate, the Black Lives Matter crowd. The first time they merged was in Orlando and Miami during the 2012 “Justice for Trayvon” movement.

Black Lives Matter came out of the organization known as “The Dream Defenders”. The defenders were the younger generational version of the civil rights AME network.

In 2012/2013 President Obama and Tom Perez were able to blend the Dream Defenders into an alignment with Farakahan, the Nation of Islam, and the New Black Panther Party.

As an outcome of a more bitter ideology, the Dream Defenders became more antagonistic and combative when they launched the rebranded version, ‘Black Lives Matter’.

The newly blended Black Lives Matter network had their first heavy visibility with the “Justice for Mike Brown” movement that destroyed Ferguson, Missouri.

After the Mike Brown pretense collapsed the BLM group moved to Baltimore to exploit the false narrative that surrounded the death of Freddie Gray.

Baltimore was then set ablaze with the leadership of Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake who famously said it was important to give the riot crowd “space to destroy.”

While BLM was fulfilling their role as on-the-street activists, the parents of Trayvon Martin and Mike Brown were making financial trips through the AME church network.

AME holds the faith-based role while advancing an older and more traditional generational approach toward racial grievance. The BLM message targets a younger generation with guilt and influence to break windows and riots on behalf of ‘social justice’. To achieve their common goal each group agreed to, or should I say: ‘learned to‘, stay in their lane.

When Jesse Jackson and/or Al Sharpton made independent moves toward the younger BLM activists they were ridiculed and dispatched. Lessons were learned. The older race hustlers now stick to the AME crowd where there is a generational respect.

♦SLIGHTED – Despite Barack Obama leaning heavily on the AME network in ’07/’08, by the time you get to ’12/’13, without re-election needs, the AME was less valued. The open preference for Obama toward the BLM team was visible. After reelection in 2012 team Obama shifted toward expanding political influence through the Latino community.

Tom Perez and President Obama sought to assemble another race-based coalition with hopes they could merge Latinos (La Raza) with BLM. However, all of this focus on BLM and the “dreamers” created a problem. Without maintenance of the social network the AME connection to the Obama-controlled DNC started to fray.

Obama’s focus on a youth movement meant Democrats were taking AME support for granted. Worse yet, the older AME activists gained nothing from the modern Obama coalition; ‘gaining nothing’ means financial benefits were diminished.

Without their traditional/customary indulgence fees the national AME leadership network, the racial patriarchs of the democrat party, were not happy.

The financial disappointment shows up in many visible ways throughout 2015 and 2016, but the most visible way was in September 2016 during the all black Baptist Convention in Kansas City Missouri. (see here)

There were 25,000 participants at the KC Convention and Hillary Clinton was scheduled to deliver the keynote address. When it came time for her speech only around ten percent of the general session audience showed up.

It was the first visible sign the AME network leadership was not at all happy with the modern DNC party apparatus as constructed by the new Obama coalition.

The AME network felt slighted and they literally left Clinton with tens-of-thousands of empty seats at the convention. CTH noticed but the media mostly ignored. Those of you around at the time will remember the CTH position after this convention optic was the 2016 election looked solid for Donald Trump.

LESSON LEARNED – Fast forward to just before Super Tuesday 2020. Bernie Sanders has momentum, and is about to become unstoppable. Bernie was a threat to remove DNC leadership power the same way Trump removed RNC party power in 2016. Party power is money; billions from the big club at stake. Now we see why it was critical for Team Obama (BLM) and the AME team to unite quickly that Super-Tuesday weekend; which is exactly what they did.

While James Clyburn quickly notified the AME network, former President Barack Obama activated his control over the DNC network; and signaled to all other primary candidates they needed to drop out in a designed sequence. The DNC Club made offers they could not refuse. Remember, club rules.

James Clyburn delivered on his end (AME), and Obama delivered on his (DNC/BLM). The rest is history. However, within that history is also a realization that all the alignment means nothing if they don’t successfully activate the network.

That unified activation is exactly what is driving the racism narrative now in the U.S.

The BLM team has been reactivated back onto the streets to create the Alinsky inspired chaos. Meanwhile the AME team openly embrace Joe, as a result the optics of Joe Biden taking a knee are: heavily scripted, carefully planned and ironically very appropriate.

The tone-deaf and arrogant lessons from Hillary in 2016 loom heavy as a stark reminder of just how important Clyburn is to JoeBama’s political operations.  The message from James Clyburn to DNC Chairman Tom Perez was really simple:  form a partnership to eliminate Bernie Sanders, and the DNC will benefit from the alignment of Barack Obama and the AME network.  He can use Joe to get whatever he needs in his third term.

JBS: World's largest meat supplier hit by cyber-attack

 

The world's largest meat processing company has been targeted by a sophisticated cyber-attack.

Computer networks at JBS were hacked, causing some operations in Australia, Canada and the US to temporarily shut down, affecting thousands of workers.

The company believes the ransomware attack originated from a criminal group likely based in Russia, the White House said.

It follows a similar attack last month on the largest fuel pipeline in the US.

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In a ransomware attack, hackers get into a computer network and threaten to cause disruption or delete files unless a ransom is paid.

The White House says the FBI is investigating the attack.

"JBS notified [the White House] that the ransom demand came from a criminal organisation likely based in Russia," White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre said on Tuesday.

"The White House is engaging directly with the Russian government on this matter and delivering the message that responsible states do not harbour ransomware criminals," she added.

 

 

 

JBS said it suspended all affected IT systems as soon as the attack was detected, and that its backup servers were not hacked. However many affected plants are still unable to operate.

"Resolution of the incident will take time, which may delay certain transactions with customers and suppliers," JBS said in a statement.

According to the trade group Beef Central, "supermarkets and other large end-users like the McDonald's burger pattie supply network will be some of the most immediately impacted customers, due to their need for consistent supply".

JBS, which is a Brazilian company, is the world's biggest supplier of chicken, beef and pork.

The company's five biggest beef plants are in the US, and the shutdowns have halted a fifth of meat production there, according to Bloomberg.

JBS is also Australia's largest meat processor, with 47 facilities in several states. The Australian Federal Police have launched an investigation into the attack.

The company's Canadian plant in Alberta was also affected, with shifts cancelled for two days, according to a JBS Canada Facebook page.

However the company's South American operations have not been disrupted.

 

 

 

Last month, fuel delivery in the south east of the US was crippled for several days after a ransomware attack targeted the Colonial Pipeline. Investigators say that attack was also linked to a group with ties to Russia.

Colonial Pipeline has confirmed it paid a $4.4m (£3.1m) ransom to the cyber-criminal gang responsible.

The US government has recommended in the past that companies do not pay criminals over ransomware attacks, in case they invite further hacks in the future.

 

 

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-57318965?xtor=AL-72-%5Bpartner%5D-%5Bbbc.news.twitter%5D-%5Bheadline%5D-%5Bnews%5D-%5Bbizdev%5D-%5Bisapi%5D&at_campaign=64&at_custom3=%40BBCWorld&at_custom1=%5Bpost+type%5D&at_custom2=twitter&at_medium=custom7&at_custom4=B3F18CE6-C318-11EB-8A98-3DCD4744363C 

 

 

 

The Continuing Fictitious Struggle

Antifascists and others on the Left like to believe they have been struggling against the same Right for almost 100 years. But there is little evidence for this assumption.

by Paul Gottfried for American Greatness

Breitbart last week published a commentary about homosexuals who were demonstrating against the Israelis and calling themselves “Queers for Palestine.” The commentator reminded the activists that while the Israelis are quite tolerant of gays, the Palestinians treat them rather brutally. This may all be true but is also irrelevant for why gays, Black Lives Matter, and other groups on the intersectional Left have taken the side of the Palestinians (really Hamas) against the Israelis. They are siding with what they imagine to be a permanent revolutionary Left, all the parts of which form a harmonious whole. 

According to this enduring myth, which finds expression in, among other sources, Mark Bray’s The Anti-Fascist Handbook, the current Left is a continuation of the Communist-led Popular Front of the 1930s, while the unchanging enemy is fascism. While the fascist enemy may vary, depending on what the self-described Left decides to crusade against, the Republican Party and the Israeli government are now stand-ins for Hitler, the former apartheid government in South Africa, and other villains of the Left. 

What happens politically or culturally must be understood through these ideologically shaped lenses: Antifascists believe they are still in a struggle that erupted between Right and Left almost 90 years ago, and whomever they designate as “fascists” become the heavies in this morality play. 

There are two problems with this game. First, the Right—or what is designated as such—keeps changing so that it ceases to resemble what it once was. Second, the antifascist, pro-LGBT, feminist Left is not the equivalent of the old interwar Left. The fascist enemy, one may be led to believe from reading Bray or Jason Stanley, the author of How Fascism Works, is white, male, Christian, and a sworn enemy of Third World immigration, gay marriage, and other current sacred cows. 

Among their other enormities, fascists are also occupying land that nonwhites or Muslims are now claiming. The Israelis, for example, are surrogates for the hated Christian West, who keep postcolonial Muslim revolutionaries from taking back Palestine, where presumably they would erect an antifascist state. If there is a connection between Hitler’s Third Reich and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, we may have to leave it to antifascist luminaries to explain it to us.

It is also hard to figure out how immigration restrictionists are fascists, since fascists were typically expansionists, not people who wanted to close their borders and hang out with their own kind. According to Jason Stanley, “Fascist opposition to gender studies flows from its patriarchal ideology.” It may be difficult to pin this on the interwar Right since the present feminist movement with its list of demands (for lesbians, the transgendered, etc.) did not exist in the 1930s, except as a very marginal presence. It is hard to imagine any political faction in the 1930s, whether on the Left or on the Right, coming out for “gender studies” that advocate sex-change operations and declare gender differences to be social constructs. 

Antifascists also blame the real or alleged Right for what its own protected groups do. Thus, when Muslim enthusiasts attacked Jews wearing Kippoth in Berlin during the recent clash between Israel and Hamas, German politician Manfred Weber (who belongs to the onetime conservative Christian Social Union) blamed the Alternative für Deutschland and the French Rassemblement National for these regrettable assaults. Weber denounced the very parties that have consistently warned against the reckless admission of Muslim migrants. By some peculiar logic, parties that issue such warnings are necessarily fascist or at least right-wing extremists and therefore responsible for anti-Semitic outbursts committed by groups favored by the Left. 

Even more significantly, the Left in the past, and especially Communists, were guilty of all the extreme rightist attitudes that antifascists now level against their opposition. Communist parties and leaders were explicitly homophobic, opposed Third World immigration as a danger to the indigenous working class, and in the case of leftist icon, Che Guevara, mocked the black race. 

The intersectional Left is mostly a contemporary phenomenon and its exaltation of Communism and other past Lefts is based largely on an effort to manufacture for itself a venerable genealogy. When the Spanish Left, which is now in power, claims as antecedents the Communists and Anarchists of the Spanish Civil War, it is giving itself a questionable past. Spanish Communists in the 1930s did not celebrate homosexuals or the transgendered; nor did they welcome to their country Muslim fundamentalists to express their antifascism. Barack Obama might have imagined that the Castro brothers, whom he fawned over like a puppy during his visit to Cuba, previewed his own radicalism. But unlike American leftists, Cuban Communists have not glorified homosexuals; they’ve imprisoned and tortured them. 

Antifascist polemicists and others on the Left like to believe they represent a side that has been struggling against the same Right for almost 100 years. But there is little evidence for this assumption.

eBay sellers can no longer use PayPal under new terms

 

New terms of use for eBay have come into effect which mean the online auction house will now pay sellers directly rather than through PayPal.

PayPal was acquired by eBay in its early days in 2002, and the two firms have worked in partnership ever since.

The changes mean that while eBay buyers can still pay with PayPal, sellers will be paid straight into their bank accounts.

But some sellers have threatened to stop using the service over the move.

EBay's forums have several posts from sellers who say they are reluctant to use the new system and give eBay direct debit access to their personal bank accounts.

But the new terms, effective from 1 June, say the new "managed payments" system is compulsory, and the company has the power to limit or remove listings from sellers who refuse to use it.

The company says the new system is simpler, convenient, and gives buyers more payment options - and the rollout will be gradual.

It marks a significant change in an almost two-decade partnership with PayPal, which split from eBay in 2015.

 

 

What's changing?

The managed payments system means that PayPal fees will no longer be added to the process, though eBay has made its own fees slightly higher.

But the company claims most people will pay the same as - or less than - before.

The new system is 12.8% of the final amount including delivery, plus 30p in the UK ($0.30 in the US). The old system was 10% for eBay, plus PayPal's fees, plus 30p. The difference favours the new system to the tune of pennies for most transactions.

The move also means that buyers will automatically have access to every payment option available - including credit and debit cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal, and PayPal Credit. 

 

 

 

However, payments will now take two working days to be transferred, while PayPal was usually on the same day.

The feature has been rolled out since about 2018, an eBay spokesperson said - with business sellers moving first. An estimated four million sellers are already using it.

The deadlines for all users are phased - so while many sellers are required to move to the new system from 1 June, others will receive a message from eBay in the coming weeks and months.

What's the problem?

The terms and conditions make using the new system mandatory.

In part, the reluctance is because eBay has a strong reputation for protecting buyers - sometimes at the expense of sellers. Some unscrupulous fraudsters have been known to buy a product on eBay, swap it for a damaged or different item, and return the package demanding a refund. 

 

 

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-57318294?xtor=AL-72-%5Bpartner%5D-%5Bbbc.news.twitter%5D-%5Bheadline%5D-%5Bnews%5D-%5Bbizdev%5D-%5Bisapi%5D&at_campaign=64&at_custom3=%40BBCWorld&at_custom1=%5Bpost+type%5D&at_custom2=twitter&at_medium=custom7&at_custom4=05341BF6-C2DC-11EB-A0C3-1F17BECD475E 

 

 

 

US Should Make China Cancel Debt Over COVID-19 says Retired Lt. General

by Jack Phillips for Epoch Times

Retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg suggested that the United States should force China to cancel U.S. debt for what he said is the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) having allowed COVID-19 to spread.

“Why don’t we tell the Chinese, OK, it came from you, we believe it, you ought to cancel the debt to the United States of America, you know, the debt that we owe you, or something extreme like that,” Kellogg, who also had served in the Trump administration, told Just The News this week.

“It killed 500,000 Americans.”

The United States should also change its approach to how it deals with the CCP, Kellogg noted, and he referenced how the United States treated the Soviet Union during the decades-long Cold War. It’s because the CCP won’t provide U.S. investigators with “the right information,” and “you can’t believe the Chinese will give you that,” he added.

In recent days, a growing number of U.S. officials have suggested that the CCP virus, otherwise known as the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19, escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology—a top-security lab that allegedly performed “gain of function” research.

President Joe Biden, in a White House-released statement, noted that some members of the U.S. Intelligence Community believe the virus emerged due to a “laboratory accident” in China.

“After I became President, in March, I had my National Security Advisor task the Intelligence Community to prepare a report on their most up-to-date analysis of the origins of COVID-19, including whether it emerged from human contact with an infected animal or from a laboratory accident,” Biden said on May 26, adding that he wanted intelligence agents to “redouble” their efforts in finding the origin of the virus.

“As of today, the U.S. Intelligence Community has ‘coalesced around two likely scenarios’ but has not reached a definitive conclusion on this question,” Biden also said. “Here is their current position: ‘while two elements in the IC leans toward the former scenario and one leans more toward the latter—each with low or moderate confidence—the majority of elements do not believe there is sufficient information to assess one to be more likely than the other.’”

Kellogg previously served as a national security adviser to Vice President Mike Pence, and he’s now the co-chairman of the Center for American Security at America First Policy Institute.

Former President Donald Trump and GOP lawmakers have, since the beginning of the pandemic, suggested that the virus escaped from the Wuhan lab. The CCP has claimed that the virus was transmitted from an unnamed animal to people at a wet market in Wuhan in late 2019, although the regime has been accused of engaging in a significant coverup to silence whistleblowers and doctors who have spoken out.

High-ranking FBI agent 'groped 3 of his female subordinates, made sexually inappropriate comments and drank on the job'

by Harriet Alexander for Daily Mail

A senior FBI agent described by his colleagues as 'slimy' and 'creepy' groped three of his subordinates, made inappropriate sexual comments and drank while working, according to an internal investigation.

The unnamed agent was a supervisory assistant special agent in charge, and worked in New York.

He was investigated by the Department of Justice Inspector General's Office, and the investigation was concluded in December.

It was unclear whether he was ever punished.

The FBI, with more than 35,000 employees, keeps a notoriously tight lid on such allegations. The last time the Office of Inspector General did an extensive probe of sexual misconduct within the FBI, it tallied 343 'offenses' from fiscal years 2009 to 2012, including three instances of 'videotaping undressed women without consent,' Associated Press reported in December. 

The documents detailing the New York investigation, obtained by The New York Post via a Freedom of Information Act request, show that he would target his junior colleagues at alcohol-fueled after-work events at bars and in the office.

In one incident, he groped a woman while they were standing at a bar, with two other colleagues.

He allegedly asked one of his colleagues: 'Do you think I should try to sleep with her?'

He then openly groped her, and 'rubbed her vagina and buttocks over her clothing with his hand on multiple occasions for a few seconds each time,' the documents state.

A friend who witnessed the groping texted the victim later that night to check on her.

The friend wrote: 'You okay? I know I asked already, but we put up with a lot for the sake of not rocking the boat, so I just want to make sure.'

The victim replied: 'It was gross and creepy, he was touching the same parts of me repeatedly so not by accident. But like you said, we put up with a lot so as not to rock the boat.'

The victim filed a criminal complaint with an unspecified law enforcement body, but federal and state prosecution was declined, the Inspector General's Office said. The agent denied the allegation to investigators.

Another woman told investigators he would rub her shoulders while they worked together after saying 'she seemed tense.'

At a social event after work at a bar, he told her: 'Tell me that you want me,' and grabbed her behind.

He was enraged by her, and once yelled at her in front of other FBI employees, unintentionally spitting on her while screaming at her.

Other witnesses told investigators that he was 'over the top' and 'slimy.'

Another witness said he once asked about a female colleague: 'Do you think she does anal?'

He was also known to drink while at work.

Investigators found two bottles of wine and an empty box of Glenlivet Scotch under the agent's desk.

He was found to have drunk during work hours with foreign law enforcement officials and members of the US military, the documents state.

The agent was well-known for hosting drinks for those he managed, with an after-hours session often on a Friday.

'He stated that at the close of the meetings, his office door would be shut and he would tell the supervisors that they were 'in the trust tree,' and offer all of them a 'single malt Scotch,'' the documents state.

The FBI has not commented about the report.

An Associated Press investigation in December identified at least six sexual misconduct allegations involving senior FBI officials over the past five years.

Each of the accused FBI officials appears to have avoided discipline, the AP found, and several were quietly transferred or retired, keeping their full pensions and benefits even when probes substantiated the sexual misconduct claims against them.

Beyond that, federal law enforcement officials are afforded anonymity even after the disciplinary process runs its course, allowing them to land on their feet in the private sector or even remain in law enforcement.

'They're sweeping it under the rug,' said a former FBI analyst who alleges in a new federal lawsuit that a supervisory special agent licked her face and groped her at a colleague's farewell party in 2017. 

She ended up leaving the FBI and has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.

'As the premier law enforcement organization that the FBI holds itself out to be, it's very disheartening when they allow people they know are criminals to retire and pursue careers in law enforcement-related fields,' said the woman. 

The recurring sexual misconduct has drawn the attention of Congress and advocacy groups, which have called for whistleblower protections for rank-and-file FBI employees and for an outside entity to review the bureau's disciplinary cases.

'They need a #MeToo moment,' said Representative Jackie Speier, a California Democrat who has been critical of the treatment of women in the male-dominated FBI.

'It's repugnant, and it underscores the fact that the FBI and many of our institutions are still good ol'-boy networks. 

'It doesn't surprise me that, in terms of sexual assault and sexual harassment, they are still in the Dark Ages.'

Federal Commission Wrongly Puts ‘Antietam’ On Confederate Names Chopping Block

 

 

Antietam

Article by Leslie McAdoo Gordon in The Federalist

Federal Commission Wrongly Puts ‘Antietam’ On Confederate Names Chopping Block

To include ‘Antietam’ in a list of names that supposedly honor the Confederacy is to completely misunderstand history. 

 

There is a move these days to revisit our monuments and the names we choose to publicly honor. This movement is good and just. It is a sign of our mature democracy that we can choose to stop honoring things that do not reflect our American ideals and celebrate those that do. In this process, however, we must guard against the lazy choice of merely casting off the past, of portraying as evil or immoral anything that is historical.

Congress has directed the U.S. Department of Defense to create a commission to review the names of military installations and vessels after Confederate figures or victories. It’s called the Commission on the Naming of Items of the Department of Defense that Commemorate the Confederate States of America or Any Person Who Served Voluntarily with the Confederate States of America. The commission will brief the secretary of defense and Congress on its work by October 2021 and present a final report by October 1, 2022.

Incredibly, the name of a U.S. Navy guided missile destroyer, the Antietam, may be included in the commission’s “broad review” of names, according to the retired admiral heading the commission. To include “Antietam” in a list of names that supposedly honor the Confederacy is to completely misunderstand history.

It is apparently a reflexive impetus to reject anything associated with the Civil War, rather than with the Confederacy. This is a grave mistake, as even the following brief description shows.

Although the Mason-Dixon Line is often called the upper boundary of the South, it is really the mighty Potomac and her tributaries that divide North and South. Antietam Creek in Washington County, Maryland, is one such tributary.

Antietam is the Union name for a battle fought on September 17, 1862, across that creek. Antietam is an Algonquian word, and it was the name of the creek long before Americans came there to kill one another in the autumn of 1862.

The Battle of Antietam is one of the few Civil War battles fought in the North. Among other things, Gen. Robert E. Lee thought the Marylanders of the agriculturally rich counties of western Maryland would rally to the Southern cause with men and supplies if he took his army into Northern territory. He was badly mistaken.

The small, sturdy farms and towns of mountainous Western Maryland were the domains of the scrappy direct descendants of the Revolutionary generation, and largely immigrants—Germans, Dutch, Scots, Irish—who, then, as now, shared far more in common with their Appalachian cousins in staunchly Union western Pennsylvania and the soon-to-be-formed West Virginia than they did with the residents of low-lying Baltimore, Alexandria, and Richmond.

They turned a cold shoulder to Lee’s army and stayed in their homes as it marched through their towns singing “Maryland, My Maryland.” Instead, they cheered the Union’s Army of the Potomac as it arrived to stop Lee’s advance.

In local folklore, a woman in Frederick, Maryland stood in the doorway of her home with her small daughter beside her and defiantly waved the Union flag at the Confederate Army marching by toward Hagerstown, the seat of Washington County (named for the father of the Nation). A passing Confederate officer saluted her, although he demurred: “To you, madam; not your flag.”

This incident was later embellished into an epic poem once taught to Maryland schoolchildren about Barbara Fritchie, a 90-year-old denizen of Frederick who defiantly waves a Revolutionary War-era American flag at the marching Confederates from her bedroom and shames them. The poem’s famous line resounds: “Shoot, if you must, this old gray head, But spare your country’s flag,’ she said.”

In real life, the Battle of Antietam was bloody, the carnage considerable. They fought for a full day, face to face across a farmer’s cornfield, around a German Baptist church, and for control of a bridge spanning the Antietam. Matthew Brady’s famous photos show them lying side by side locked in death together where they fell.

More Americans died that day than on any single day in our entire history: 7,650 men total, more than 4,000 of them Union soldiers, a full 25 percent of the Union Army’s fighting strength that day. More than 12,000 more Union soldiers were wounded, and 10,000 for the Confederates.

But the Union army held; Lee’s was forced to retreat the following day. Thus, “Burnside Bridge,” “The Cornfield,” “Dunker Church,” and most famously, the sunken road forever-after known as “Bloody Lane,” passed into the province of history. The Antietam Battlefield was one of the first Civil War battlefields dedicated as a national site by the United States, in 1890.

Is now the name of this sanctified plot of land, a symbol of our hard-won union and its “new birth of freedom” for all, to be erased as a blight on the American nation and its fighting forces? No! For shame!

Some would argue Antietam is not a fit name for an American fighting ship because the battle was not a Union “victory.” Nonsense. Although the battle itself was a tactical stalemate, it was a resounding strategic and psychological victory for the North.

All of Lee’s strategic aims were defeated. He gathered neither men nor supplies; he suffered staggering losses instead. He failed to achieve a decisive victory in Northern territory that might have garnered international support for the South. His army was forced to retreat back across the Potomac. If defeating all your enemy’s objectives and sweeping him from your territory is not a “victory,” then the word has lost all meaning.

More importantly, the Battle of Antietam was a galvanizing event and a turning point for the war and the nation. The strategic and psychological power of the victory enabled President Abraham Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. He did so five days later.

The unprecedented photographs of the aftermath of the battle taken by Brady seared into the nation’s consciousness the immense human sacrifice her people were offering on the altars of union and universal freedom. Make no mistake, these Union soldiers died “to make men free,” as the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” puts it, in addition to holding the Union together.

For it wasn’t in just high-falutin’ hymns that the sentiment of emancipation for black Americans was sounded as a rallying cry for Northerners and for which the men of the Union army fought. The most popular ballad of the day in the North was “The Battle Cry of Freedom,” whose third verse rings out:

We will welcome to our numbers the loyal, true and brave,
Shouting the battle cry of freedom!
And although he may be poor, he shall never be a slave,
Shouting the battle cry of freedom!

The people of the Union in the 1860s knew well what Antietam stood for. They had poured out a tremendous measure of sacrifice onto that battlefield. It seems we, in 2021, have forgotten. But we must not. Keeping this name is one way to always remember.

 

https://thefederalist.com/2021/05/31/federal-commission-wrongly-puts-antietam-on-confederate-names-chopping-block/ 

 

 

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