Two Years Later, We Know The Deadly Fall Of Kabul Didn’t Have To Happen This Way

The Marines first saw a flash of light, then felt the concussion of a blast in their chests. Everyone remained frozen while their brains attempted to process the sensory overload.

by Jerry Dunleavy & James Hassan at The Federalist

Abbey Gate, Hamid Karzai International Airport, Kabul, Afghanistan — Aug. 26, 2021

The crowd was packed shoulder to shoulder. Every man, woman, and child shouted and waved pieces of paper — their contents indiscernible — in frantic attempts to gain the attention of the U.S. Marines and Air Force special operators standing on the wall above them. The promise of a new life lay just beyond the Americans guarding the gates.

Sunset was less than an hour away, but the temperature exceeded 90 degrees Fahrenheit, and the air was filled with the stench of sweat and human excrement from the desperate souls who had been waiting outside for days with nowhere else to relieve themselves. There was no respite other than a dry wind periodically blowing from east to west, away from the gate and down the canal full of civilians struggling to shove their way to the front.

Most of the crowd had no reason to be there. They had no connection to the U.S. government and no legitimate claim to U.S. protection. Many had remained on the sidelines during the decades-long fight against the Taliban. But most of them posed no active threat, either. They knew that Afghanistan’s U.S.-backed government was no more and that Sharia law enforced by the Taliban was on the horizon, and they desperately wanted to find a way out. Some had shown up because they had sincerely believed social media posts saying that the Americans would take anyone who wanted to leave.

For men such as “Amir,” the others’ motives didn’t matter. He had a right to be there, and he was trying to push through the throngs to take his wife and four children to safety. He had served as an interpreter for U.S. special operations units and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) for nearly a decade. As such, he had an advantage over the hordes holding up clearly forged “admission documents.” U.S. troops were looking for him and had given him a call sign to confirm his identity. The U.S. veterans and intelligence operatives he’d served alongside, now back in the United States, had arranged it.

Amir could see Abbey Gate. He took a picture of the troops standing on the wall, so they’d know where to look, and another of the call sign he’d been told to paint on a placard: PALE RIDER. Then he took one more of his two sons and two daughters standing below him in the crowd. His younger son stood on the far left of the frame, and his two daughters stood on the right. His older daughter, six years old with soft brown eyes, gazed directly into the camera with an inquisitive smile. His younger daughter, the baby of the family, was distracted by the ongoing commotion and blissfully unaware of the moment. Between his younger son and daughters stood his oldest child, an 8-year-old boy with large eyes, tousled hair, and a troubled expression. He seemed to be the only one who realized that things weren’t OK.

At 5:30 p.m., Amir sent the photos to his handlers in the United States, who in turn would relay them to the troops waiting for his family. His family was a hundred feet away from freedom. The U.S.-based operatives acknowledged his message and replied with further instructions. But Amir’s transmissions went silent.

A few minutes later, the 3rd platoon of Echo Company, 2nd Battalion, 1st Marines (known as “2/1”), gathered 1,250 feet away for a group photo. In less than an hour, they’d begin their final shift at Abbey Gate. Their platoon sergeant tried his best to capture a moment to commemorate what they’d endured together. He took a few shots, then told the platoon to turn 90 degrees and face toward the gate, where the fading sunlight offered the best picture. The Marines first saw a flash of light, then felt the concussion of a blast in their chests. For a few seconds, everyone remained frozen in place while their brains attempted to process the sensory overload. Reality set in as body parts started raining down on the cement around them. The entire platoon sprinted toward the gate.

By nightfall, military officials announced that 13 U.S. service members had been killed in action in a suicide bombing at the entrance to the airfield: 11 Marines, a Navy corpsman, and an Army staff sergeant from a special operations unit. At least 170 civilians were killed in the blast as well. Amir’s oldest son was among them.

***

The deaths of the 13 American heroes of Abbey Gate — and those of the innocent civilians they were attempting to save — were neither inevitable nor the product of good-faith decisions poorly executed. The same goes for the thousands of Americans and tens of thousands of Afghan allies left behind in Afghanistan on Aug. 30, 2021. Those outcomes were caused solely by the Biden administration’s toxic combination of ignorance and self-assurance.

The wisdom of the overarching decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan is immaterial. Plenty of Americans — and plenty of Afghanistan veterans — hold differing views on that topic in good faith. No matter which side you choose in that debate, one thing is painfully clear: Things didn’t have to turn out the way they did.

And unlike the tens of thousands of Americans and Afghan allies abandoned in Afghanistan on Aug. 31, 2021, the consequences of the administration’s failures in Afghanistan have not remained in Kabul; they’ve unleashed a dangerous new global dynamic that will be felt for some time to come.

This is the prologue from “Kabul: The Untold Story of Biden’s Fiasco and the American Warriors Who Fought to the End” (Center Street, Aug. 15).

X22, Red Pill News, and more- August 15

 

Joe Biden’s Race Against the Truth ~ VDH

What is the long-term Democrat strategy that requires such short-term malodorous skullduggery?

by Victor Davis Hanson for American Greatness

Joe Biden has about 17 months left as an elected politician—if he is lucky. That projection guides most of the inexplicable and shameless behavior of the Department of Justice and Biden himself. View Biden as in a race against the truth. Will he be physically and mentally able to complete his term and head to retirement before his decades-long crimes of corruption catch up to him?

Joe Biden’s serial yarn that he never knew anything about his son Hunter’s quid pro quo grifting with rich foreign grandees has been finally exposed as the old lie it always was.

Biden’s fallback untruth—that he never got involved in Hunter’s business—proved instantly laughable, given prior damning testimonies from Hunter’s business associates, from IRS whistleblowers, from the assertions of foreign beneficiaries, from Hunter’s own laptop, and from Joe’s own earlier loudmouth braggadocio about using threats of canceling U.S. foreign aid to fire a Ukrainian prosecutor looking into corruption of the sort in which his own son was knee deep. (Did not then president Barack Obama know the nature of Biden corruption when he appointed him as point man on Ukraine)?

To his partners in corruption, Hunter referred to his father variously as the “big guy” as well as the recipient of “ten percent” of the leveraged income. And apparently as a rather greedy pop, Hunter whined that Joe himself demanded half of all Hunter’s own shake-down income from abroad—despite Hunter’s payment of many of Joe’s monthly bills incurred on his palatial lakeshore mansion.

At some point, even the corrupt leftwing media and DNC cannot continue to laugh off eyewitness testimonies, whistleblowers’ revelations, bank records, Hunter Biden’s own computer messaging, Joe Biden’s phone calls and personal appearances, and the evidence from foreign beneficiaries.

And then there is simply the power of reason and logic.

Over the last five years of this hushed-up tawdry saga, Americans knew immediately that Joe Biden was lying in all his denials of any involvement whatsoever in the procurement of a large part of his income from abroad simply because no one in the entire Biden family had any business, investment, or energy expertise. In other words, as grifters without Joe, the Bidens had zero market value.

As energy consultants, financial investors, or international analysts, they had no qualifications—a fact known and remarked upon by their corrupt foreign partners. If any doubt about that, try to guess how much the prior cash recipients Jim or Hunter or Sarah or Hallie or Kathleen Biden will be getting from foreign concerns for services rendered after Joe leaves office.

The Biden familial mediocrities had nothing to offer shady wealthy foreign interests other than they were not only related to the Vice President of the United States, but also could guarantee that Joe Biden had no scruples whatsoever, and so even while in office he would call or meet his son’s associates to substantiate Hunter’s promises of favorable diplomatic or business treatment from the Obama—or a future Biden—administration. Note Biden seemed to have no worries whether his family’s lobbying of Ukraine, Russia, or China was in conflict with the interests of his own country.

And so deals were cut, millions were rerouted to Biden accounts to avoid scrutiny, and the Biden clan got rich off Joe’s offices and his son’s rank criminality. Joe’s adjusted gross income on his 2016 return of $396,456 soared on his 2017 return to more than $11 million. No one knows whether these or any of Biden’s returns showed reported income commensurate with what either he actually received or with his lavish lifestyle, bank accounts, and his multiple expensive homes.

Rarely has any prosecutor enjoyed a more riveting confessional than Hunter Biden’s own laptop that established his credentials as a drug addict who burned up millions of dollars on his various drug and sex addictions, while confirming that his own father was central to the family consortium’s shake-downs. Without an obsequious media, a Democratic Senate, and a weaponized Department of Justice, all the Biden recipients of foreign cash would by now have been prosecuted, and likely found guilty of an array of felonies.

But like everything Joe and Hunter do to excess, they were not just shameless in their raking in money by using Joe’s senatorial and then vice presidential offices and likely presidential candidacy, but in covering up their crimes.

Nothing is more emblematic of that brazenness than Biden aide and future Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s phone call to a former CIA interim director to round up 50 intelligence “authorities” to lie on the eve of the 2020 debate and election that the laptop was likely “Russian disinformation.” To go to such extremes to leverage proverbially retired “wise men” to so blatantly misinform, disinform and warp a presidential election reflects the paranoia of the Biden family over Hunter’s laptop confessional.

Enter Merrick Garland. Like Blinken, his job description entailed hiding the truth about Hunter Biden’s incriminating evidence. First, Garland had assured the nation that no special counsel was needed to investigate the Bidens’ influence peddling. And on spec his lieutenant Delaware prosecutor David Weiss slow walked for years all investigations of Biden family wrongdoing.

The Biden Department of Justice since January 2021 assumed that with a Democratic House and an obsequious media, it could simply run out the clock on any of the many Biden crimes that were not sufficiently covered up. Any problematic data or testimony that eventually entered the public domain, would do so only after the statute of limitations had expired. This cover-up continued to work well for the first two years of the Biden administration.

But then the unexpected happened. First, the Republicans took the House in 2022 and suddenly had the ability to subpoena witnesses and documents over the objections of the media and Democratic congressional toadies.

Second, the Ukraine war broke out and had refocused popular interest in the past Biden-Ukrainian profiteering.

Third, when Donald Trump announced his reelection candidacy, he was soon met with a cohort of weaponized leftwing prosecutors. Immediately he and his supporters legitimately pointed out that while he was being politically neutered by the left, his possible 2024 opponent Joe Biden was given de facto exemptions.

Finally, the congressional testimonies and whistleblowers grew so embarrassing, and the stark contrast between the government coverup of Biden crimes and the weaponized effort to destroy Trump so glaring, that even Biden’s handlers and Merrick Garland were forced to act—at least sort of.

So last week the DOJ flipped. It abruptly announced that after years of a deliberately stalled David Weiss investigation and the collapse of Weiss’s own phony plea deal before an honest judge, Garland would now appoint a special counsel, after all—again, sort of.

Garland then did something so outrageous that it eclipsed even his prior blatant politicalization of his department. First, he violated the special counsel statute by hiring an inside government attorney—another apparent confirmation that Garland and Biden were paranoid that any legitimate outside counsel might well tap into a gold mine of Biden family felonies.

Second, he selected as independent counsel none other than David Weiss, the very prosecutor who had tried but failed to fool a judge into accepting a laughable Hunter Biden plea deal. Weiss’s only other alluring recommendation was that he had previously spearheaded and slow walked the DOJ non-investigation of Hunter.

Third, by elevating the title—but not the mission—of Weiss in a manner that previously he promised he would not, Garland cleverly ensured that Weiss would likely not show up  to testify before the House about prior and ongoing whistleblower allegations that prosecutor Weiss had blocked investigations concerning Hunter that otherwise might well have led to multiple felony indictments. Now as special counsel, Weiss will even likely refuse congressional subpoenas concerning incriminating Biden information on grounds they would prejudice or interfere with his own special counsel inquiries.

How could Garland believe he could fool the American people with the veneer of a special counsel appointee and then violate the very spirit and text of the law about such appointments by naming Weiss?

Reason is not what guides the petulant Garland, who has never recovered from the trauma of being humiliated when his Barack Obama lame-duck supreme court appointment was recessed by a Republican Senate. Instead, Biden rescued Garland from bitter obscurity with the implied rationale, as Joe himself has mused openly to friends, that Garland should go after Trump, Biden’s past nemesis, and now his leading opponent in the 2024 presidential race.

What then is the long-term Democrat strategy that requires such short-term malodorous skullduggery?

Biden must be healthy and crime-free enough to finish his remaining term, but at all costs not run for reelection. A full one-term Biden prevents a 2023 or 2024 presidency of an utterly incompetent Kamala Harris and thus in addition her route to the 2024 Democratic nomination—and in theory perhaps even a longer presidential tenure.

Democrats will have enough trouble keeping Biden semi-coherent and upright over the 17 months without a string of indictments involving high crimes and misdemeanors from bribery to treason, if indeed Biden did alter U.S. policy at the bequest of his paymasters in China, Russia, Ukraine or Romania.

In other words, Weiss was selected for his past loyal suppression of the Hunter investigation and his future further quashing indictments as special counsel. That fact almost ensures that Biden can finish his first term without an impeachment trial in the Senate or a forced Nixon-style resignation, given the enormity of his own illegality.

Ensuring the viability of Biden’s next year-and-half will mean Kamala Harris does not inherit the presidency from either a physically or mentally incompetent Biden—or a president so reduced by bribery and racketeering counts that he is forced to resign.

Biden then will likely not run for reelection, pleading age rather than his own and family’s blatant corruption. That will be another subtext for Weiss’s slothful investigation to be ground down into oblivion. Harris will not be president, and be reduced to just another wannabe 2024 primary candidate. She will likely, as in 2016, not win a single delegate.

By 2024, Democrats will be seeking a young Gavin Newson-like candidate. Harris will not be the nominee, much less President by default. And Joe will likely be so bewildered that Weiss in a few months “for the sake of the country” will not hound either an enfeebled ex-president or his dutiful son.

DOJ lawfare then works in two ways: by commission in neutering the presidential candidacy of Donald Trump after trying to ensure that he will win the Republican primary and nomination; by omission, in de facto suppressing momentum for Biden indictments and thus allowing the Biden family to be prison-free through 2024 and onto retirement—and thus sparing the nation a Harris presidency.

What My Family’s Bloody History In The Spanish Civil War Teaches About The FBI’s Assault On Catholics

Authoritarian governments have always hated Christians.

posted by Evita Duffy-Alfonso at The Federalist

It’s time to revisit the Spanish Civil War — a bloody three-year conflict spanning from 1936 to 1939 in which communists massacred Catholics because the church’s doctrine and its head, Jesus Christ, stood in opposition to their ideology and authority. 

Many Americans have never heard of the Spanish Civil War because it’s often ignored by the history books or overshadowed by World War II, but its history is important given the context of our government’s current demonization and targeting of Catholics.

On Wednesday, House Republicans revealed that FBI Director Christopher Wray lied when he testified that only one field office was involved in a memo labeling traditional Catholics as potential domestic terrorists. Subpoenaed documents, which the FBI attempted to withhold from Congress, revealed that multiple FBI field offices were involved in drafting the memo.   

Moreover, the FBI lied when it stated after a whistleblower exposed the memo that the bureau “will never conduct investigative activities or open an investigation based solely on First Amendment protected activity.” The GOP-released documents show in detail that the FBI has already infiltrated Catholic communities with various informants to create the infamous memo.

The revelations have been shocking for many Americans who still believe American officials somewhat respect things like the Constitution and its First Amendment. This is why history is key.

In the 1930s, virtually the entire Spanish government was run by left-wing, anti-religious radicals who called themselves “Republicans.” These communist radicals engaged in the widespread persecution of Spanish intellectuals, the upper class, devout Catholics, and clerics. Inequality and terror imposed on the non-communists during the lead-up to the war eventually became intolerable and provoked revolution, with Gen. Francisco Franco staging a right-wing military uprising in 1936 to overthrow the Republican government.

In the run-up to the civil war, the Republicans began their campaign of religious persecution with simple anti-religious policies, such as the banning of all religious schools and removing crucifixes from classrooms. Then they deemed all religious marriages invalid in the eyes of the state.

Anti-church propaganda eventually escalated from smear campaigns to the burning of churches and mass executions of Catholic religious and laypeople by the end of the war. Properties were seized and stolen, and conservatives were convicted of crimes in kangaroo court rulings, leading to unjust executions. 

My great-grandmother and great-grandfather lived through the war, and being middle-class Catholic intellectuals and vocal opponents of communism, it is no surprise they were primary targets of Republican aggression. My grandmother, in particular, was considered a threat to the Republicans, as she was a prolific writer who poured her thoughts on medicine, politics, and Catholicism into hundreds of articles during the lead-up to the war. 

My great-grandfather was the subdirector of a large metal company in Madrid. He was not rich by any means, but he did have a little piece of land outside Madrid. During the war, my great-grandfather was captured by Republicans who, following a kangaroo court proceeding, had him incarcerated. 

At the time, the communists made prisons out of anything. My great-grandfather was imprisoned in a building in Madrid with three of his friends, one of whom was a priest. In the middle of the war, for reasons I do not know, the communists ordered that my great-grandfather and his fellow inmates be released. My great-grandfather took his release papers and left immediately without picking up his belongings, going into hiding for the remainder of the war. 

The other three prisoners went to collect their belongings that were confiscated when they began their time in prison. My great-grandfather would later learn that all three of those men were summarily executed when they went to pick up their things. 

During that time, my great-grandmother did not know if her husband was captured or escaped, dead or alive, but she lived in fear that the Republicans would come for her too. In the dead of night, she left her home in Madrid, escaping on a midnight train with her four children, aged 1, 2, 3, and 4, and her typewriter. She lived out the remainder of the war with her children and father in a rented room in Santander. 

My great-grandparents suffered greatly in the war. They lost their house, their savings, possessions, and each other, only reuniting when the war was over in 1939. Even greater victims of the war, however, were countless other religious people. 

One of my great-grandmother’s extended family members was a priest during the war. He was captured by communists and was forced to dig his own grave. He stood before a firing squad on the edge of his self-dug grave. When the squad fired, only his arm was grazed. He begged the men to shoot him, but instead, his executioners buried him alive. 

By the end of the war, a reported “13 bishops, 4,172 priests, 2,364 monks and friars and 283 nuns and sisters,” and an unknown number of lay people were killed.

We cannot be apathetic toward the FBI’s targeting of Catholics, nor can we fail to speak out against the cultural demonization of Christians, whether that be at Dodgers games or on the lips of Vice President Kamala Harris. 

We have already seen physical assaults on the church. During the 2020 summer of rage, churches and religious statues across the country were torched, looted, and vandalized by Marxist rioters. After the overturning of Roe v. Wade, pro-life centers, many of which were Catholic-run, were burned to the ground by pro-abortion terrorists, and to this day the FBI has done virtually nothing about it. Meanwhile, peaceful Christian pro-lifers have had their homes raided by federal agents and faced steep fines and prison time. 

Surveillance techniques once reserved for foreign terrorists are being used on faithful Catholics, not because the FBI truly believes Christians are racist, but because the FBI is threatened by Catholic theology, just like the communists in Spain. 

To be clear, all Christians pose a threat to irreligious, authoritarian governments. Catholics, however, with their centuries-old hierarchy, traditions, and unchanging stances on things like abortion, birth control, and marriage, have been uniquely positioned to oppose Marxism and therefore uniquely targeted throughout history.

This is why the persecution of Catholics in our country should send up smoke signals to everyone. American cultural Marxism and our increasingly Chinese-style socialist market economy are incompatible with Christianity, and if we’ve learned anything from the Spanish Civil War, the result will go far beyond unconstitutional surveillance. It will end in bloodshed.

Anti-Gunners Hope to Use Lawfare to Curb Gun Ownership

posted Jeff Charles at RedStateVIP 

Ever since President Joe Biden took office, he and his merry band of Democrats in Congress have been trying to concoct legislative schemes to impose more restrictions on gun ownership in America. Their efforts have not borne much fruit due to the makeup of Congress and the refusal of Republican lawmakers to sign on to the anti-gun agenda.

Still, Democrats are looking at other ways to make it harder for responsible Americans to keep and bear arms. This is where Illinois’ state legislature comes in.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker on Saturday signed a bill into law that would allow people to sue companies that manufacture firearms to hold them civilly liable for acts of gun violence:

The new move, the Firearm Industry Responsibility Act, bans advertising or marketing that encourages paramilitary or unlawful private militia activity. It bans advertising firearms to people under 18 and limits the kinds of imagery that can be used in ads. And it allows people to sue manufacturers.

Pritzker said this law follows standards set in other industries.

“We hold opioid manufacturers accountable,” he said. “We hold vaping companies accountable. We hold predatory lenders accountable. Gun manufacturers shouldn’t get to hide from law, and now they won’t be able to.”

The new law sparked criticism from pro-Second Amendment organizations and praise from the anti-gunner lobby:

“It is really a bill to harass gun manufacturers,” said Richard Pearson with the Illinois State Rifle Association. “No gun manufacturer I know of would do anything like this, but it opens them up to frivolous lawsuits, which is designed to bankrupt them in one way or another.”

The state is ready to defend the new law in court.

“What this law does is clarify that the firearm industry, like any other business, must comply with the Consumer Fraud and Deceptive Practices Act,” said Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul.

But regulations enforced in other industries might not apply to weapon manufacturing for one key reason.

“Those other products that you just mentioned aren’t mentioned in the Constitution. Prohibitions, that has always been the roadblock, the Second Amendment,” said [CBS 2 Legal Analyst Irv] Miller.

This act mirrors other efforts to target gun manufacturers. Over the past two years, the Mexican government has been allying with Democrats in a lawsuitagainst American gun companies to hold them liable for widespread and constant violence in Mexico:

“More than a dozen Republican attorneys general are defending American gun manufacturers against a lawsuit from Mexico that says the companies should be liable for gun violence south of the border, an argument that California and other Democrat-led states are supporting,” according to Fox News Digital.

The report continued:

Mexico’s lawsuit claims U.S. gun manufacturers like Smith & Wesson, Ruger and others are liable for gun violence south of the border because they are aware that their firearms are being trafficked into the country.

Mexico’s lawsuit was dismissed by a federal judge in Massachusetts last year, but Mexico appealed its case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, and the suit is supported by California and other Democrat-led states.

Democratic attorneys general in twelve states signed onto an amicus brief filed with the court encouraging it to rule in favor of the Mexican government. The anti-gunner lobby is so desperate to keep Americans unarmed that they are willing to partner with a foreign government to attack our Second Amendment rights.

People who favor using gun violence to attack manufacturers might argue that it would stop them from advertising firearms to minors. However, they have yet to show how these companies are actively trying to get minors to buy guns, so the comparison to tobacco and vaping companies does not seem to wash. Besides, it is far easier for a minor to buy cigarettes and vapes from gas stations than it is for them to purchase a firearm from a gun store.

Those arguing against this type of legislation would point out that it will only result in frivolous lawsuits that will cause financial problems for gun manufacturers. Moreover, it does not make sense to punish gun manufacturers for the actions of those who use their products. It would be like blaming a car manufacturer if someone uses a vehicle to run someone over.

Further, there is absolutely no indication that this legislation will save a single life. Blaming gun manufacturers for the actions of people who use their products won’t save anyone – especially since most gun violence is committed using guns that are obtained illegally. This is not an issue that gun companies can solve.

Let’s be clear about this. The anti-gunner lobby knows that these laws won’t protect anyone. Instead, the idea is to harm gun companies through the use of lawfare. By attacking their finances, they will force these companies to raise prices, which will make it more expensive for people to own firearms. This will disproportionately impact low-income Americans – especially blacks and Hispanics. These lawsuits could also harm small gun manufacturers who do not possess the resources necessary to fight these legal actions.

This is the plan. It has nothing to do with saving lives. Rather, it is about preventing people from arming themselves. Hopefully, the Supreme Court’s ruling in Bruen will enable those favoring gun rights to get these laws struck down.

6 Takeaways From The Biden Admin’s Court Quest To Keep Censoring Americans Online

In this major case likely to hit the U.S. Supreme Court, the Biden administration is fighting to stop American citizens from sharing messages government officials don’t like.

Joy Pullman reporting for The Federalist

On Thursday afternoon, three Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals judges heard Biden administration arguments to let government keep pressuring social media monopolies to ban ideas they don’t like from the internet. On July 4, a lower court had ordered the Biden administration to cease what it called “arguably … the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history.” The Fifth Circuit paused that injunction on July 14 and heard oral arguments against it on Aug. 10 in Missouri v. Biden.

In this major case likely to hit the U.S. Supreme Court, the Biden administration is fighting to stop American citizens from sharing messages government officials don’t like. This case uncovered reams of White House and other high-level officials threatening internet monopolies with the end of their entire business model if they didn’t ban speech by Democrats’ political opponents.

“It’s far beyond the scope of what people realize,” says a lawyer for the plaintiffs, Zhonette Brown, of the public interest firm New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA).

Internal documents Twitter divulged under new owner Elon Musk provided more proof that social media monopolies are silencing Americans from Tucker Carlson and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to millions of non-famous citizens at the behest of government pressure. Here are some key takeaways from Thursday’s oral arguments and earlier revelations from this massive First Amendment case.

1. By Their Own Definition, It’s Censoring

Key to Thursday’s arguments was the question of coercion: Did government demands of internet monopolies equal coercion, or were those merely officials advocating for their views?

“If the government was doing something like that in a coercive manner, then that could be the subject of a proper injunction,” Department of Justice lawyer Daniel Bentele Hahs Tenny told the court in his opening remarks. “The problem is that what you would have to do is say, ‘Here is what the government is doing that’s coercive, and I’m enjoining that.'”

Judge Don Willett responded: “How do you define coercive?”

Tenny: “I don’t think there’s too much disagreement on this point. Coercive is where a reasonable person would construe it to be backed by a threat of government action against a party if it didn’t comply.”

That’s exactly what the government did, the voluminous documents already discovered in this case show. In just one of the examples, Meta executive Nick Clegg, a former high-ranking U.K. official, told his bosses Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg: “We are facing continued pressure from external stakeholders, including the White House and the press, to remove more COVID-19 vaccine discouraging content” (emphasis original).

Clegg also characterized to colleagues an interaction with Andy Slavitt, a White House Covid adviser, this way: “[H]e was outraged – not too strong a word to describe his reaction – that we did not remove this post” of a meme about trial lawyers getting 10 years of vaccine-injured clients from government mandates.

2. Government Officials Treated Internet Monopolies Like Their Subordinates

The Fifth Circuit panel demonstrated familiarity with the numerous examples of this kind of government behavior, such as this email exchange between White House digital director Rob Flaherty and Facebook, in which Flaherty swears at Facebook engineers, “Are you guys f-cking serious? I want an answer on what happened here and I want it today.”

“What appears to be in the record are these irate messages from time to time from high-ranking government officials that say, “You didn’t do this yet,’” Judge Jennifer Walker Elrod told Tenny. “And that’s my toning down the language. … So it’s like, ‘Jump!’ and, ‘How high?’”

The judges also noted the White House publicly threatened the business model of all online communications monopolies through potentially revoking Section 230 and launching antitrust lawsuits. The lawsuit documentation shows leading Democrats making the same public threats, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and multiple U.S. senators.

Joe Biden even threatened to hold Zuckerberg criminally liable for not running Facebook the way Biden wanted. In office, Biden also famously accused Facebook of “killing people” by not doing enough to spread the administration’s message and suppress opposing messages. FBI agent Elvis Chan‘s deposition in this case noted federal officials showed adverse legislation to social media monopolies’ leaders as examples of what the government would do to them if they didn’t ban Americans’ speech.

“It’s not like, ‘We think this would be a good public policy and we want to explain to you why that would be a good policy,” Elrod said. “There seems to be some very close relationship that they’re having these — ‘This isn’t being done fast enough’ you know, like it’s a supervisor complaining about a worker.”

3. They Behaved Like Mobsters

Tenny claimed there was no “or else” explaining what the government “would do” if the internet monopolies didn’t obey, so there was no government coercion present.

“This is an analogy, probably an inapt analogy, so if you’ll excuse me — like if somebody is in these movies we see with the mob or something. They don’t spell out things but they have these ongoing relationships and they never actually say, ‘Go do this or else you’re going to have this consequence,’ but everybody just knows,” Elrod replied. “And I’m certainly not equating the federal government with anybody in illegal organized crime, but there are certain relationships that people know things without always saying the ‘Or else.'”

Willett followed that up by commenting the case documentation makes it look like the government is “relying on a fairly unsubtle kind of strong-arming and veiled or not so veiled threats. ‘That’s a really nice social media platform you got there, it’d be a shame if something happened to it.'”

4. Censorship Is Election Interference

The lead attorney for the plaintiffs, John Sauer, initiated this case as Louisiana’s solicitor general. In representing state government interests to the judges, he noted that elected officials have to pay attention to what their constituents are saying online, or they won’t have a good read on what voters what them to do in office.

“We’ve gotta be able to craft messages and know what policies we’re adopting to be responsive to our citizens,” he summarized from statements submitted to the court from multiple state officials. “…Going back to 1863, as everyone knows, going back to the Federalist number 56 where [Bill of Rights author James] Madison said it, everyone knows state legislators have a sovereign interest in knowing what their constituents think and feel, and that’s directly impacted.”

When the federal government silences some Americans’ views online, Sauer said, it makes it harder for elected representatives to actually represent them. Two of the state injuries the plaintiffs assert against the federal government’s censorship are “Interference with our ability to hear our constituents’ voices on social media” and “interference with our ability to have a fair and unbiased process for our people to organize and petition the government for grievances.”

Court documents also revealed the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, a federal agency, set up a private entity to ban and throttle election-related online speech Democrats dislike. Much of the information choked by this algorithmic censorship operation is true, such as the legitimacy of Hunter Biden’s laptop, investigations and members of Congress have noted.

“They invented a whole new word, ‘mal-information,’ to justify going after the censorship of true speech and ideas,” Sauer said last month in a public discussion of the case that YouTube banned.

5. Free Speech for Themselves While Banning It for Their Enemies

The oral arguments also got into the FBI’s 2020 election interference in telling online monopolies that The New York Post’s reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop was foreign disinformation. Tenny claimed the FBI refused to comment on the laptop because it was a pending investigation.

Yet the FBI and other federal intelligence agencies actually did comment on the laptop by calling it “foreign disinformation,” both privately to the internet monopolies and publicly. This was false, and the FBI knew it. The lower court ruled this deception constituted coercion because it caused people to act on false information.

As Ben Weingarten notes, these lies and FBI-demanded online content bans to protect them benefitted Joe Biden in the 2020 election:

According to Elvis Chan (pdf), an FBI official leading engagement with the social media platforms, while the bureau didn’t explicitly ask the companies to change their hacked material policies, it did frequently follow up to ask whether they had changed said policies, as the FBI wanted to know how they would treat such materials.

The judges almost broached an important question: If the First Amendment protects the FBI’s lies that Hunter Biden’s laptop was disinformation, for which not one federal employee has been disciplined, how can it allow for criminalizing the same behavior by average Americans by labeling their views “disinformation” and “mal-information”?

6. Today’s Internet Is Still Massively Rigged

Taibbi also noted that court documents show the Biden administration got mad enough to fire the F-bomb at social media companies when the algorithmic censorship they demand affected Biden’s Instagram account. Instagram instantly fixed the issue for the White House, but not for non-powerful Americans.

It’s clear from the case documents and other disclosures such as the “Twitter Files” and “Facebook Files” that the algorithms controlling what Americans see online are now deeply, massively rigged. That rigging is multilayered. It includes all this government coercion of entities including Apple, Google, LinkedIn, Meta, Snapchat, Tiktok, and Twitter going back to at least 2017, as well as pressure operations from corporate media and internal employee groups.

Beyond algorithm changes, social media monopolies have also changed their terms of service in response to government demands, the NCLA attorneys noted last month. So government control of public discourse will continue even if the Fifth Circuit reinstates the injunction.

Tenny told the Fifth Circuit the Covid-era censorship that ignited this case is over because the government currently deems Covid not an emergency. In court, Sauer cited YouTube banning two weeks ago a video of attorneys discussing this case as more proof this massive censorship persists. He also cited court documents showing Americans still can’t post social media messages about censored topics.

“Attorneys present gave estimates ranging from a few weeks to two months for the panel to rule” on whether to reinstate an injunction against more of this government behavior, reported Taibbi, who attended the oral arguments in New Orleans, Louisiana. The previous injunction includes exceptions for crimes such as sex trafficking.

“The government wants to be doing something that it shouldn’t be doing, and they really, really want to be doing it,” said NCLA attorney John Vecchione in the discussion YouTube banned.

Hawaii governor says state is looking to 'acquire land' that was destroyed in fires

 On Monday, Hawaiian governor Josh Green announced that his administration was considering acquiring properties in the seaside resort town of Lahaina that had been destroyed by the recent wildfires.

He vowed to prevent foreign buyers from swooping in to exploit the tragedy, suggesting the state was better suited to take control of the land.

"I'm already thinking of ways for the state to acquire that land so that we can put it into workforce housing, to put it back into families, or make it open spaces in perpetuity as a memorial to the people who were lost," Green said while standing amongst the rubble.

"We want this to be something we remember after the pain passes as a magic place. Lahaina will rebuild. The tragedy right now is the loss of life. The buildings can be rebuilt over time, even the banyan tree may survive, but we don't want this to become a clear space where then people from overseas just come and decide they're gonna take it. The state will take it and preserve it first."   

In a separate press conference, Green reiterated his committment to ensure the land was protected for residents, and revealed that he had spoken with the Hawaiian attorney general regarding "options to do a moratorium on any sales of properties that have been damaged or destroyed."

"It's going to be a very long time before any growth or housing can be built, so you will be pretty poorly informed if you try to steal land from our people and then build here," he said, adding, "I will try to allow no one from outside our state to buy any land until we get through this crisis and decide what Lahaina should be in the future."

According to the Honolulu Civil Beat, over 2,000 structures were destroyed in the fire, three quarters of which were residential. Nearly 100 people have been found dead, though that number is expected to rise as crews continue searching the area.  

https://thepostmillennial.com/hawaii-governor-says-state-is-looking-to-acquire-land-that-was-destroyed-in-fires?utm_campaign=64483