InfoWars’ Owen Shroyer has been charged with participating in the January 6 riot on Capitol Hill. Shroyer, a co-host of controversial media personality Alex Jones, says he’s innocent of the charges, which include violent entry.
Shroyer was charged on Thursday with knowingly entering a restricted building, and with violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds.
New: Infowars host Owen Shroyer has been charged in connection with the Jan. 6 riots at the Capitol — feds say he went into a restricted area outside on the grounds https://t.co/Z7RY4jpv53pic.twitter.com/A7lgch5F3m
The charges are no more severe than those faced by most of the 500 or so rioters who entered the Capitol that day to protest the certification of Joe Biden’s electoral win, but Shroyer at the time was already barred from demonstrating on Capitol grounds after he live-streamed himself accusing Democrat Rep. Jerry Nadler (New York) of “treason” during a House Judiciary Committee hearing on the second impeachment of former President Donald Trump.
The FBI complaint against Shroyer alleges that the InfoWars host marched to the Capitol and simply stood in a restricted area outside the building. The violent and disorderly conduct charge stems from Shroyer allegedly shouting “they stole the election, we know they stole it, and we aren’t going to accept it!”
The complaint included a warrant for Shroyer’s arrest, and speaking on his InfoWars show later on Friday, Shroyer told viewers that he had to “turn [himself] in by Monday morning.”
“I plan on declaring my innocence of these charges, because I am,” Shroyer announced.
here's infowars host owen shroyer telling his audience that there is a warrant out for his arrest regarding January 6 pic.twitter.com/B5EzCf9Nru
Shroyer is the number two host at InfoWars, alongside stalwart conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. Both Shroyer and Jones, along with the InfoWars channel, have been banned from multiple social media platforms, for allegedly spreading hate speech.
Shroyer is probably the most recognizable name on the American Right charged in connection with the Capitol riot. Others charged range from militia members accused of conspiracy, to so-called ‘MAGA Moms’ whose only crimes involved walking into the Capitol and snapping selfies.
(American Thinker) Probably the most truthful thing Nancy Pelosi has ever uttered is “We [Democrats] don’t agonize. We organize.” For decades, Democrats have been strategically honing extensive networks that coordinate action and funding between government agencies, elected officials, NGOs, corporations, schools, houses of worship, cultural institutions, unions, industries, and now the military. They are the industrious ant colonies of politics.
Republicans, on the other hand, do not organize. We agonize. We are more comfortable wringing our hands, quoting the Founding Fathers, listening to talk radio, and going on cruises than organizing and taking meaningful action. We are the Woody Allens of politics.
No doubt there are Republicans and conservatives who indefatigably dedicate endless hours to politics. But for those who’ve tried to herd conservative cats and nudge them to action, the “assiduous conservative activist” appears to be an outlier.
I honestly don’t know why, so I fall back on It’s just not in our DNA. Maybe we so value our privacy that we prefer going it alone? Maybe our rugged individualism makes us hopelessly self-sufficient? Maybe Don’t Tread on Me implicitly promises And I Won’t Tread on You?
Whatever the reason, the country is under a coordinated attack from within and if we don’t organize and take action, America will wither on the vine.
The good news is that Democrats have so wildly overplayed their hand, they’ve proven they aren’t sincere negotiating partners who share our goals for America. There is no reason, then, for Republicans to cross the aisle.
What about their Achilles Heel? Ask any Republican to pinpoint a major weakness of the American left and the silence is deafening. How can we defeat a political enemy without identifying its vulnerabilities?
The answer is in plain sight: when conservatives threaten, pressure, or forcefully engage the left; push and punch back harder than pushed or punched; or do the unexpected — the left panics and exposes their anti-American, anti-family, anti-freedom underbelly.
Independents and moderates don’t like this any more than we do. They understand that Democrats destabilize our democracy when they flout the law, disregard the Constitution, or defund the police. They see the hypocrisy in opening the border with no restrictions for COVID, criminality, or skills, yet closing it to Cubans or Afghans escaping real persecution. They fear being silenced by the Army of the Woke or petty authoritarians using COVID to curtail their freedoms. They’re revolted by demands to end racism with racism and nullify all of education and history, achievement, and progress in the name of white supremacy and privilege. They justifiably recoil when activists co-opt their children’s mental health with fanciful notions that something humankind has always taken for granted, is a choice along an ever-changing gender continuum.
Thankfully, fed-up parents are standing up to school closings, mask mandates, CRT, and Queer Theory. Popular support for President FUBAR is dwindling as “Joe’s ability to F things up” has resulted in his disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, his manufactured border chaos, and his inconsistent messaging, censorship, and authoritarianism regarding COVID — not to mention his government subsidies and economic constraints that have destroyed businesses, created a labor shortage, jacked-up wages, and fueled inflation; and his indescribable lunacy closing down our pipelines while supporting the Nord Stream 2 Pipeline and begging OPEC for oil.
An exhausted and frustrated populace finally recognizes that Democrats, who enjoy one-party rule in D.C., in some of our largest states, and most major cities, have gone bat sh-t berserk with power. If Republicans had any gumption, they’d exploit these vulnerabilities. Instead, nineteen Senate Republicans sold us out for a pork-laden “infrastructure” bill that holds them hostage to a $3.5 trillion progressive spending orgy.
The only way to demand responsible governance from Democrats and Republicans is for every one of us to consistently exert pressure on them. The cure is not at the ballot box alone. Yet, when prodded to take action, I consistently encounter two excuses from otherwise dependable conservatives: I can’t change anything or I’ve already done my time; let someone else do it.
The side that lacks the will can never win a cold civil war and leftists rely on conservatives to retreat and surrender. We should never make it so easy for them.
Is there even one Democrat who thinks like this? I burned my bra in the 60s, let someone else protest #MeToo or I squatted at Occupy Wall Street, let the BLMers take it from here or Trump won so all is lost; I’ll just smoke this weed and wait for the Trumpocalypse.
No. They swapped bras for pussy hats and OWS signs for BLM t-shirts. They stonewalled Trump appointments and sabotaged SCOTUS nominees. Democrat bureaucrats burrowed into their agencies to topple Trump from within. They fought him on every policy. They saturated traditional and social media with lies. They marshaled porn stars, creepy lawyers, socialites, invisible whistleblowers, and biased Ukrainian-born servicemen. They manufactured reasons to impeach him — twice!
The more they were proven wrong, the louder and more relentless they became, understanding that victory necessitates outrageous action, participation, and sacrifice!
Calling out President FUBAR’s dementia and waiting for 2022 isn’t enough. There are no conservative superheroes who will magically make this all disappear or conservative grassroots organizations waiting to pounce. That network the left has? Conservatives don’t have anything like it.
The Republic’s preservation is entrusted not to our representatives but to the People through our representatives. We are the ultimate check on the three branches of government. Our responsibility is to ensure that constitutional principles endure and to tenderly care for the mechanisms built into a political system that guarantees maximum freedom for the most people with the least amount of government interference.
Popular sovereignty requires the lifetime participation of all. There is no box to check that you served and can now go home. No one exemplifies this more than Washington who understood that his duty after the Revolution was to the fledgling Republic, not his farm.
This country’s survival as that shining city on a hill and all the liberties it encompasses requires constant vigilance because those who would usurp those freedoms are always on the prowl. When complacency or apathy corrupt the beneficiaries of freedom, that freedom is almost always lost.
Quotes from the Federalist Papers are just words. “It’s a Republic, if you can keep it” necessitates your participation and action.
Stop whining that America is doomed because the Dems control everything.
Snap out of your bewilderment that West Coast insanity has come to a flyover state near you. Yeah, it’s in your school, church, neighborhood, your local councils, and state legislatures. That’s no reason to flinch. Did you learn nothing from Trump? Push back harder than they push! Punch back harder than they punch!
Or, has all this talk about patriotism, liberty, the brilliance of the Founding Fathers and our constitutional republic, just been idle talk? Criticizing congressional Republicans for their linguine spines is meaningless if our spines aren’t made of granite.
This is an all-hands-on-deck-call-to-action moment for conservatives. Being busy with work and family, hosting a radio show, donating to a think tank, being a tea partier, or working on a campaign does not absolve us from our constitutional obligation to further participate.
It’s time conservatives adopted the left’s mantra that “we are the ones we’ve been waiting for.”
It’s time conservatives stop agonizing and start organizing.
Things are not going well in Australia. The once ostensibly democratic country has been the scene of some of the strictest, most irrational lockdown policies of the entire pandemic. And while their neighbor, New Zealand, has gone absolutely insane (including locking down over a single COVID case), the Aussies are right there with them.
RedState has reported on past acts of tyranny, including police beating people for refusing to comply with draconian, nonsensical mitigation measures. These latest videos are the worst we’ve seen, though. The protests are getting larger and more violent.
Here’s a stampede occurring as protesters break through the police line of defense.
You’d think you were watching a scene from some Middle Eastern dictatorship, but no, this is Australia, and the people have obviously had enough. Police are seen assaulting protesters as they break through the lines, and people begin to run down the street. The newscaster on the first video admits that people have been pushed over the edge and are now lashing out.
But can you blame them?
There is no rationale behind locking down every time there’s a single or even a few hundred COVID cases — in a country of 25 million people. That’s not a sustainable strategy, because zero COVID is not possible. Human beings are not robots. They have emotional, physical, and mental needs, all of which are being ignored by the Australian government as it continues to violate the rights of its citizens.
Social interaction and a semblance of freedom are required to function properly. At some point, the existence of risk no longer becomes the dominant factor, and that point has long since passed ‘down under.’ You cannot just lock people in their homes indefinitely.
Yes, I understand vaccination rates are low, but that’s the fault of the Australian government for failing to get a largely compliant populace what they need. For the most part, Aussies aren’t like Americans. They have tolerated tyranny under the guise of protecting their neighbors. But the situation has become untenable. There is no excuse to still have a shortage of vaccines, in a Western democracy with direct ties to the United States and the United Kingdom.
That failure should not continue to be placed on the shoulders of the people who are being abused. Australians have had enough, and things are only going to get uglier if things don’t change. You can only push people so far before they push back.
President Joe Biden has made some really awful decisions, but one reporter called him out on the most dangerous and puzzling of them all.
After Biden wrapped up his final remarks on the evacuation of Afghanistan in a carefully controlled news conference Friday, he abruptly turned his back to the media and left the lecturn as reporters peppered him with more questions.
And that was the moment when one unidentified male reporter’s voice rose above the din of the others to ask the question that every sane, informed human is wondering right now: “Why do you continue to trust the Taliban, Mr. President?”
Since announcing that American forces would be leaving Afghanistan at the end of the month, the country has swiftly begun falling back into Taliban rule.
Meanwhile, some 11,000 Americans are essentially stranded behind enemy lines with another 80,000 Afghan allies in danger and also in need of rescue, according to The Washington Post.
But Biden isn’t worried about them — America is working with the Taliban to get them out of the country, so it won’t be a problem at all, right?
Not even close. During the same news conference, Scott Detrow of NPR challenged Biden on his ridiculous earlier assertion that Americans were not having trouble leaving, but the president stuck to his story.
Detrow pointed out that the video evidence makes it abundantly clear that those fleeing are reportedly being beaten and threatened by Taliban forces at these checkpoints surrounding the Kabul airport that Biden is putting his faith into.
Still, Biden claimed all was well with the terrorist organization as the arbiters of air travel for those wishing to flee.
“To the best of our knowledge, the Taliban checkpoints, they are letting through people showing American passports,” Biden assured Detrow.
This was the same narrative Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley advanced in his remarks Wednesday, somehow also expressing faith in the Islamic extremists to “facilitate safe passage of American citizens, U.S. passport holders, to the airport.”
“And that’s the primary means, and under the current conditions, that’s the primary effort,” Milley added. “We have the capability to do other things if necessary.”
Whatever their claims, the White House and the Pentagon have left the fate of Afghanistan and all still trapped there in the hands of violent savages who have no external motivation or goodwill to do anything but slaughter and oppress.
These are the same people fond of beheadings and honor killings, a regime whose dominance is already forcing women back under head coverings with much worse likely to come — even as they pinky promise to be nice to females (America’s strongly worded statement ought to do it).
The administration apparently has so much faith in the terrorist organization that it won’t even call the Taliban an enemy, as stammering Pentagon spokesman John Kirby demonstrated earlier this week.
Because of Biden’s incompetence — or worse, calculated corruption — America has no leverage against the brutal incoming regime, nor does it even have a significant remaining presence there to help those stranded.
Biden trusts the Taliban because he has nothing else at his disposal at this point. His foreign policy blunder has assured the U.S. of that.
From start to finish, every decision the president has made furthered the humanitarian crisis and military humiliation, including trusting the Taliban to allow Americans to flee to safety.
And the only thing the American people can trust is that Biden will continue to mess it all up.
A California judge on Friday ruled that a 2020 ballot measure exempting gig companies from for providing benefits for its workers is unconstitutional, the Sacramento Bee reports.
Flashback: Gig companies spent over $200 million backing Prop. 22 to enshrine their workers as contractors in exchange for some limited benefits, including funding that can be used for health insurance.
They were fighting a new state law that changed rules on worker classification.
Companies like Uber, Lyft and DoorDash are now exempt from providing health care subsidies and wage floors for hundreds of thousands of drivers.
What they’re saying: Prop. 22 “limits the power of a future Legislature to define app-based drivers as workers subject to workers’ compensation law,” wrote Alameda County Superior Court Judge Frank Roesch wrote.
That means the entire measure is unenforceable, Roesch said.
Gig Workers Rising lauded the decision.Prop. 22 “has always been an illegal corporate power grab that not only stole the wages, benefits and rights owed to gig workers but also ended the regulating power of our elected officials, allowing a handful of rogue corporations to continue to act above the law,” Shona Clarkson, lead organizer for the advocacy group, said in a statement.
“This fight is not over until all gig workers receive the living wages, benefits and voice on the job they have earned.”
The other side: “We believe the judge made a serious error by ignoring a century’s worth of case law requiring the courts to guard the voters’ right of initiative,” Geoff Vetter, a spokesperson for the Protect App-Based Drivers & Services Coalition, said in a statement.
“This outrageous decision is an affront to the overwhelming majority of California voters who passed Prop. 22,” Vetter added, noting they plan to file an immediate appeal.
Our thought bubble, via Axios’ Kia Kokalitcheva: Given how dependent the companies’ business models are on Prop. 22 — and how much money they spent on the ballot measure — they’ll surely fight this ruling as long as they can.
Scientists opposed to offering booster shots to all Americans said data provided by federal health officials wasn’t compelling enough to support the recommendation — some argued boosters could lead to more vaccine-resistant variants.
Scientists criticized the Biden administration’s push to distribute COVID vaccine booster shots in the U.S. next month, saying data provided by federal health officials this week wasn’t compelling enough to recommend a third dose for most Americans.
According to Kaiser Health News, some scientists say the announcement is “rash and based on weak evidence” — and they worry it could undercut confidence in vaccines, with no clear benefit of controlling the pandemic.
Meanwhile, more information is needed on potential side effects or adverse effects from a booster shot, experts said.
The Biden administration Tuesday announced Americans should get a COVID vaccine booster dose eight months after they received their second shot, despite consensus among U.S. health experts last month there wasn’t enough data to recommend boosters for the general population.
Yep! Pharmaceutical companies + their CEOs have made billions from COVID vaccines, massive compensation packages + questionable stock sales while reassuring investors that plans were underway for boosters and annual shots.https://t.co/ydmME541qp
Officials announced Wednesday U.S. health leaders were preparing to offer booster shots to all eligible Americans in a plan outlined by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky, U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) acting Commissioner Dr. Janet Woodcock and Dr. Anthony Fauci, White House chief medical advisor.
The plan is still subject to approval from the FDA and the CDC’s vaccine advisory committee, but officials say they are prepared to begin the rollout of booster shots starting the week of Sept. 20.
However, the CDC has pushed back by one week a meeting by a group of outside advisers who were set to review COVID booster shots as debate heats up over the need for a third dose, according to Bloomberg.
The CDC’s Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices, was scheduled to meet and possibly make a recommendation about the need for boosters on Aug. 24, but is now set to convene over two days starting Aug. 30.
Officials cited data from Israel, a Mayo study not yet peer-reviewed and three new studies released by the CDC showing the vaccines’ protection against COVID diminished over several months, and was less effective against the Delta variant.
But scientists and health experts said the data cited wasn’t compelling — characterizing the administration’s push for boosters as premature, CNBC reported.
Dr. Anna Durbin, a vaccine researcher at Johns Hopkins University, said people are still highly protected against severe disease, and vaccines are doing what they’re supposed to do.
“If we start seeing significant upticks of more severe disease and hospitalizations in vaccinated people, that would be a signal to consider boosters,” Durbin said. “While the presence of antibodies induced by the vaccine may decline, resulting in a rise in breakthrough infections, the body has other mechanisms, like T cells, that may protect someone from getting seriously sick,” she added.
There are some groups in the U.S. who would benefit from a third dose right now, according to Dr. Archana Chatterjee, member of the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee.
Chatterjee said data do support the need for booster doses primarily among those who are moderately to severely immunocompromised. But “breakthrough infections in the general public tend to be asymptomatic or mild,” she said.
Dr. Priya Sampathkumar, an epidemiologist at the Mayo Clinic, said a booster could be needed for the general public in the future, but “there isn’t enough data to support a third booster for all at this point.”
Dr. Hooman Noorchasm, cardiothoracic surgeon and patient safety advocate — who has been outspoken on the potential harms that may ensue from vaccinating people who have natural immunity to the infection, said:
“The FDA and CDC have been ignoring the reality that indiscriminate vaccination of recently or asymptomatically COVID-19 infected persons has caused totally avoidable harm to a non-negligible number of Americans.
“Now, CDC has announced a policy of blanket ‘booster shots’ in a subset of vaccine-compliant Americans. Using this inadequately calibrated, ‘one-size-fit-all’ approach again, CDC is almost certain to magnify harm to a subset of Americans in whom booster vaccination may be unnecessary or dangerous.”
Jennifer Nuzzo, epidemiologist and associate professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said, “It would be nice to understand what side effects people have after their third dose.”
Lawrence Gostin, director of the World Health Organization’s Collaborating Center on National and Global Health Law, said federal health officials should put their focus elsewhere: on the unvaccinated, both in the U.S. and around the world.
The announcement about pending booster shots fueled deeper confusion about what Americans need to do to protect themselves from COVID.
“I think we’ve scared people,” said Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and adviser to the National Institutes of Health and the FDA.
“We sent a terrible message,” Offit said. “We just sent a message out there that people who consider themselves fully vaccinated were not fully vaccinated. And that’s the wrong message, because you are protected against serious illness.”
Walensky said staying ahead of the virus was the biggest driver of the eight-month booster recommendation. And vaccines have proved to be their best tool.
Vaccines can create endless variants that evade protection
According to an article in the BMJ, there have been eight notable variants of SARS-CoV-2 identified since September 2020, including Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, Eta, Iota, Kappa and Lambda.
A new study — yet to be peer-reviewed — published on the preprint server bioRxiv, showed the Lambda variant has acquired immune evasion capabilities above the wildtype that involves shortening of the epitopes on the viral spike protein, as well as acquiring additional sites that can be N-glycosylated.
The authors of another recent preprint study arrived at a similar conclusion. Researchers observed a seven-residue deletion at the N-terminal domain of the Lambda variant, which they said could make the Lambda variant resistant to antiviral immunity.
Researchers noted in the second bioRxiv study that the “vaccination rate in Chile is relatively high; the percentage of the people who received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine was [about] 60%.”
But, the authors warned, “nevertheless, a big COVID-19 surge has occurred in Chile in Spring 2021, suggesting that the Lambda variant is proficient in escaping from the antiviral immunity elicited by vaccination.”
Hooker said the more the variant deviates from the original sequence used for the vaccine, the less effective the vaccine will be on that variant. This could explain why fully vaccinated people are getting infected with the Delta variant, Hooker said. But this isn’t the case for natural immunity, he explained.
Hooker said:
“The vaccine focuses on the spike protein, whereas natural immunity focuses on the entire virus. Natural immunity — with a more diverse array of antibodies and T-cell receptors — will provide better protection overall as it has more targets in which to attack the virus, whereas vaccine-derived immunity only focuses on one portion of the virus, in this case, the spike protein. Once that portion of the virus has mutated sufficiently, the vaccine no longer is effective.”
According to research published July 30 in Scientific Reports, vaccinated people may play a key role in helping SARS-CoV-2 variants evolve into those that evade existing COVID vaccines.
The researchers who analyzed risk factors that favor emergence and establishment of a vaccine-resistant strain found the highest risk for establishing a resistant strain occurred when a large fraction of the population had already been vaccinated, but the transmission was not controlled.
The team of scientists who published the data in Scientific Reports said their findings follow what’s known as selective pressure — the force that drives any organism to evolve.
“Generally, the more people are infected, the more the chances for vaccine resistance to emerge,” said Fyodor Kondrashov of the Institute of Science and Technology Austria.
“So the more Delta is infectious, the more reason for concern,” Kondrashov said. “By having a situation where you vaccinate everybody, a vaccine-resistant mutant actually gains a selective advantage.”
As The Defender reported March 26, a combination of lockdowns and extreme selection pressure on the virus induced by the intense global mass vaccination program might diminish the number of cases, hospitalizations and deaths in the short-term, but ultimately, would induce the creation of more mutants of concern.
This is the result of what vaccinologist Geert Vanden Bossche calls “immune escape” (i.e., incomplete sterilization of the virus by the human immune system, even following vaccine administration).
This will trigger vaccine companies to further refine vaccines that will add to — not reduce — the selection pressure, producing ever more transmissible and potentially deadly variants.
Selection pressure causes greater convergence in mutations that affect the critical spike protein of the virus responsible for breaking through the mucosal surfaces of our airways — the route used by the virus to enter the human body, Vanden Bossche argued.
The virus will effectively outsmart the highly specific antigen-based vaccines that are being used and tweaked, depending on the circulating variants and this could lead to a hockey stick-like increase in serious and potentially lethal cases — in effect, an out-of-control pandemic.
Stunning new poll numbers from Rasmussen Reports suggest nearly 1 in 10 Democrats regret their vote in the 2020 Presidential election, with 12 percent of ‘Moderates’ saying the same, and 14 percent of Black Americans expressing regret.
Furthermore, asked how people would vote if a presidential election were held today, just 37 percent said they would vote for Joe Biden, down from 45 percent who said they did. Forty-three percent said they would vote for Donald Trump.
Just 37 percent of voters say they would vote for Biden today;
13 percent of Democrats say they would vote for Trump today;
Moderate voters support for Biden has plummeted 13 points, while Trump has gained;
11 percent of 18-39 year olds regret their 2020 vote;
14 percent of Black Americans regret their 2020 vote;
9 percent of Democrats regret their 2020 vote;
12 percent of Moderates regret their 2020 vote.
Read the Crosstabs:
RASMUSSEN NUMBERS ARE DAMNING FOR BIDEN. CLICK TO ENLARGE.
Joe Biden’s approval numbers continue to decline, while numbers from Real Clear Politics reveal that while up to 55 percent of Americans thought the country was on the right track in March, that number has plummeted to 31 percent today.
On Tuesday, President Obama’s Director of Global Engagement called for the firing of Biden National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, following on from the Afghanistan debacle.
“President Biden needs to fire his national security adviser and several other senior leaders who oversaw the botched execution of our withdrawal from Afghanistan,” the former diplomat wrote.
“Those he has chosen for key positions have repeatedly failed to challenge their own assumptions. It sadly led to the most unnecessarily embarrassing day in the history of the National Security Council (NSC).”
Like many other Biden appointees, Jake Sullivan has worked closely with Chinese Communist Party influence groups and think-tanks.
Sullivan has previously called for “China’s rise” – a goal aided by his failure in Afghanistan.
In the course of hectoring the United States for its “bungled and embarrassing withdraw from Afghanistan” on Thursday, China’s state-run Global Times admitted Beijing has a rapacious interest in Afghanistan’s vast rare-earths mineral resources and snarled it was none of America’s business if China makes deals with the Taliban to get what it wants.
The Global Times accused the U.S. of profiteering from Afghanistan for the past twenty years, without offering any theories on where all the plunder might have gone, and claimed America is only worried about China going after those mineral resources because the U.S. is jealous:
Rare-earth metals in Afghanistan were estimated to be worth anywhere between $1 trillion and $3 trillion in 2020. China may “align itself with Taliban and try to exploit Afghanistan’s rare-earth metals,” US media outlet CNBC reported on Tuesday, citing an investment analyst’s so-called “warning.”
The US has spent 20 years on its “anti-terror war” in Afghanistan, investing a huge amount of resources to support the government. It’s not hard to imagine that there are huge economic considerations behind this. Over the past two decades, US firms have enjoyed privileges in exploiting rare resources in Afghanistan. The US troops’ withdrawal and the drastic change in Afghanistan’s situation is undoubtedly a heavy blow to US economic interests in Afghanistan and the wider region. With many US businesses leaving due to losing their protection, the US may instead choose to obstruct future cooperation between Afghanistan and other countries. We cannot rule out the possibility that the US could launch its notorious sanction measures again to protect its economic interests in the region after US troops’ withdrawal.
However, the US is in no position to meddle with any potential cooperation between China and Afghanistan, including on rare earths. The so-called “warnings” in the CNBC report show that American firms doing business in Afghanistan are dissatisfied with Washington’s hasty evacuation and therefore the loss of their “privileges,” and it also reveals the US’ fear of possible advancement for China with regard to the rare-earth sector. After all, China has a much better track record in successfully cooperating with developing countries around the world.
One reason China’s propagandists are so peeved at the CNBC report mentioned above is that one of its contributors, AllianceBernstein director of emerging market debt Shamaila Khan, said it was a “very dangerous proposition for the world” to let the Taliban (and, by extension, its new best friends in Beijing) control those much-needed minerals.
Taliban fighters stand guard in front of the Hamid Karzai International Airport, in Kabul, Afghanistan, August 16, 2021. Thousands of people packed into the Afghan capital’s airport on Monday, rushing the tarmac and pushing onto planes in desperate attempts to flee the country after the Taliban overthrew the Western-backed government. (AP Photo/Rahmat Gul)
“It should be an international initiative to make sure that if any country is agreeing to exploit its minerals on behalf of the Taliban, to only do it under strict humanitarian conditions where human rights, and rights for women are preserved in the situation,” Khan said.
China is reliably enraged by discussions of its human rights abuses and rejects all Western efforts to hold it, or its allies, to high standards. Chinese propagandists portray the international human rights establishment as a scam designed to keep developing nations from reaching their full potential.
The Global Times added that China is skilled at mining rare earths and desperately needs them to fuel its industrial growth, so the civilized world should withhold its criticisms of whatever deals Beijing strikes with the Taliban to exploit those resources – or to preserve its massive existing investments in Afghanistan, such as the $4.2 billion Anyak copper mine, the China National Petroleum Corporation’s oil projects, $550 million in annual bilateral trade, and $630 billion in infrastructure projects.
Chinese street vendors and customers gather at a local market outside a state-owned coal-fired power plant near the site of a large floating solar farm project under construction by the Sungrow Power Supply Company on a lake caused by a collapsed and flooded coal mine on June 14, 2017, in Huainan, Anhui province, China. (Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)
“As the largest neighbor of Afghanistan, China is a vigorous partner for the war-battered country to get its economy back on track, given China’s experience and capability in related areas, such as agriculture and industrial infrastructure,” the Chinese Communist newspaper lectured. “By sharp contrast, U.S.-led predatory resource exploitation in the country has not delivered tangible benefit to ordinary Afghan people or benefits to the nation’s economic growth.”
India’s Business Standard noted on Thursday the rare earths China desires “are a key component for a host of advanced technologies like iPhones and hi-tech missile guidance systems,” as well as “rechargeable batteries for electric and hybrid cars, advanced ceramics, computers, DVD players, wind turbines, catalysts in cars and oil refineries, monitors, televisions, lighting, lasers, fiber optics, superconductors and glass polishing.”
The Business Standard observed that China is already the world’s top supplier of rare earths and controls about two-thirds of the global supply, so seizing Afghanistan’s minerals will help Beijing preserve its monopolistic position by making it harder for other countries to decouple from Chinese supply lines.
In this undated photo, employees work on a battery production line at a factory in an eastern Chinese province. (STR/AFP via Getty Images)
Afghanistan could become an especially important source of lithium, which is crucial for building electric car batteries. The largest established reserves of lithium are in Bolivia, but the U.S. government believes Afghanistan could have even more if enough security and political stability is given to explore the country’s mineral resources.
Forced school to ‘acknowledge the difference between education and indoctrination’
(Conservative Playlist) Timothy Keiderling’s decision to enroll in the Princeton Theological Seminary reflected his commitment “to give my life to work for justice and to live out the values of the Kingdom of God.” In a letter to the seminary’s president, Craig Barnes, he wrote that he “would sacrifice anything to make sure that my brothers and sisters see relief from their oppression.”
But the seminary’s concept of justice clashed with Keiderling’s conscience when PTS required him to attend “anti-racism” training sessions that he considered a form of indoctrination. He refused to participate in the sessions even after being reminded that they were mandatory. And then – early this year, with the potent support of the newly founded Academic Freedom Alliance (AFA) – he convinced the seminary to exempt him from the training.
It was “a real victory which can advance the academic freedom cause substantially,” says Princeton Professor Robert George, a leader of the AFA who acted as an adviser to Keiderling, and whom the latter credits with making his victory possible. “Instead of a victim, we have a victor — one who stuck to his guns and persuaded his institution not only to respect his right of conscience, but to acknowledge the difference between education and indoctrination.”
As universities across the country careen more and more to the left – amid attacks not only on conservative and moderate students and faculty but also on liberals targeted for not being radical enough – mandatory instruction in far-left views on race, gender, and sexuality is on the rise. Students and faculty are told what they must think and say while submitting to “trainings” that require them to confess to, or otherwise accept guilt for, the taint of whiteness, or to defer to nonwhite and LGBTQ students or both.
Keiderling’s case matters because – at a time when critical race theory and anti-racism training are routinely described in the media as benign ways to encourage meaningful conversations – his experience opens a window into the often coercive and radical nature of those efforts. His willingness to push back against being told what he must think and to hint at a possible lawsuit to protect his right to think for himself may presage something like the broad pushback that has taken place in the courts against unfair procedures in campus sexual assault cases, suggested George.
Keiderling, who hails from the New Paltz, N.Y., area, said he entered PTS in August 2019, at the age of 24, hoping to learn the variety of opinions on the big questions about the New Testament, including nondenominational, outside-the-box perspectives.
He enjoyed most of his first year at PTS and his roughly 360 fellow graduate students and other friends in Princeton. But that year was a turbulent time, as the seminary was in the midst of an intensive, multi-year analysis of its ties to slavery, its “ongoing legacy of racism” since its founding in 1812, and its need for “confession and repentance.” And in Keiderling’s second year – after police killings of George Floyd and others had rocked the school along with the rest of the country – the seminary became focused on race, gender, and causes including “social justice” and “a serious overhaul in the nation’s approach to policing.” Beginning in August 2020, he said, he and his classmates were required to submit to direction by PTS in how they must think and speak about matters of race, gender and sexuality.
The Pentagon announced on Saturday 17,000 people have been evacuated from Afghanistan since last week after the Taliban‘s growth in the region culminated in Sunday’s takeover of the capital city of Kabul.
Army Major Gen. William Taylor said that six U.S. C-17 aircraft and 32 charter planes departed Kabul “within the past 24 hours,” noting the passenger count on all of those flights was “approximately 3,800.”
“Since the end of July, we have relocated approximately 22,000 people. Since the beginning of this evacuation operation on Aug. 14, we’ve evacuated approximately 17,000,” Taylor said during a press conference Saturday.
The Army major general added that “a number of C-17s are moving between Qatar and Germany, providing critical relief that will increase our input to those intermediate staging bases, noting that “three flights landed at Dulles International Airport” between Friday and Saturday.
When asked about U.S. Embassy alerts on Saturday indicating “potential security threats outside the gates at the Kabul” and “advising U.S. citizens to avoid traveling to the airport and to avoid airport gates at this time unless you receive individual instructions from a U.S. government representative to do so,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said the “very, very fluid and dynamic” situation at the airport “changes almost by the hour, and it changes in locations around the airport.”
“So, what you’re seeing out of our State Department colleagues, I think, is prudent notification to make sure that whatever movement there is to the gates from outside the airport is done as safely as possible and that people have the information they need to make the best decisions for themselves going forward,” Kirby said in response to the alert, declining to provide specific information about security threats.
Pentagon officials did not specify how many of the 17,000 evacuated since last week were Afghan recipients of Special Immigrant Visas or other eligible persons for evacuation, but they estimated 2,500 U.S. citizens were included in that number. Kirby also said officials do not have a concrete number of U.S. citizens remaining in Afghanistan.
The Pentagon spokesman said defense officials are aware of a “small number of cases” in which some U.S. citizens and Afghans have been “harassed and in some cases, beaten,” adding that “we don’t believe it is a very large number.”
The scene at Kabul’s airport has been plagued by chaos throughout the week following a desperate rush from hundreds of Afghans to board evacuation flights on Sunday, with some people falling to their deaths after attempting to cling to the outside of the planes as they departed.
President Joe Bidensaid Friday he would “mobilize every resource necessary” to accomplish all evacuations.
“Let me be clear: Any American who wants to come home, we will get you home,” Biden said.
In a departure from his previous efforts to withdraw all forces by Aug. 31, the president said on Aug. 14 he would send an additional 1,000 troops to Afghanistan to complement the 1,000 troops already in the country and the 3,000-troop surge he announced the week prior.
The only way to demand responsible governance from Democrats and Republicans is for every one of us to consistently exert pressure on them. The cure is not at the ballot box alone. Yet, when prodded to take action, I consistently encounter two excuses from otherwise dependable conservatives: I can’t change anything or I’ve already done my time; let someone else do it.
