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.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) has filed for retirement benefits days before he leaves the governor’s office after resigning over a sexual harassment scandal.
Cuomo’s retirement benefits will become active on Sept. 1, a spokesperson for the New York comptroller’s office said on Wednesday, Rochester First reported.
The office said a person must file for the benefits between 15 days before leaving office and 90 days after leaving office.
Cuomo resigned from office after the New York attorney general’s office released a report alleging the governor sexually harassed multiple women and threatened to retaliate against one who was going to speak up about it.
Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) will succeed Cuomo, becoming the first female governor of the state, on Aug. 24.
Cuomo maintains his innocence and says he would have beat the impeachment trial the state legislature was planning for the governor.
“I’m not gonna drag the state through the mud, through a three-month, four-month impeachment and then win and have made the state legislature and the state government look like a ship of fools when everything I’ve done all my life was for the exact opposite,” Cuomo said. “I’m not doing that. I feel good. I’m not a martyr. It’s just, I saw the options: option A, option B.”
The annual pension for the governor is estimated to be $50,000, according to the local outlet, unless he gets convicted of a felony.
The Hill has reached out to the comptroller’s office and Cuomo’s office for comment.
Propaganda videos show Taliban fighters carrying U.S. and U.S. ally-made weapons
A Taliban fighting unit called the Badri 313 Battalion was spotted patrolling Afghanistan with U.S.-made gear, and posting one photo appearing to mock the iconic World War II photo, Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima.
Propaganda videos posted this week on channels affiliated with the Taliban show soldiers in the little-known Badri 313 Battalion carrying U.S. and U.S. ally-made weapons and gear that appear to be stolen from allied militaries while patrolling parts of Kabul.
In one propaganda photo, members of the Badri 313 Battalion are seen hoisting a Taliban flag in a similar fashion to the six U.S. Marines who raised the U.S. flag on Mount Suribachi during the Battle of Iwo Jima in 1945.
“This has only been recently revealed, is a militia, a special operations unit of the Taliban that is being deployed not just in Kabul but elsewhere as well that has provided a completely different picture. No more just the sons of farmers and shepherds, a ragtag bunch of religious terrorists, but a special operations group comparable, perhaps, with the best in the world,” senior editor and television anchor at India Today, Shiv Aroor, said in a news segment this week.
The Badri 313 special unit differs from typical Taliban fighters as they are made to look more like U.S. soldiers, with camouflage, combat boots, and body armor. They also carry M4 carbines and drive armored Humvees, the Sinclair Broadcasting Group reported.
“With the Taliban now in power, there is every reason to believe the militia could grow in strength,” Aroor added. “Expect to see much more of the Badri 313 in the weeks and months ahead.”
President and founder of Eurasia Group, Ian Bremmer, also posted a photo of Taliban fighters “with their new American gear” on Twitter Saturday morning.
The U.S. gave Afghan forces an estimated $28 billion in weaponry between 2002 and 2017. But now, “everything that hasn’t been destroyed is the Taliban’s now,” a U.S. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told Reuters.
The seizure of American weaponry, such as advanced aircraft, serves as a propaganda tool, as insurgents are unable to operate the aircraft without training.
“When an armed group gets their hands on American-made weaponry, it’s sort of a status symbol. It’s a psychological win,” Elias Yousif, deputy director of the Center for International Policy’s Security Assistance Monitor, told The Hill.
“Clearly, this is an indictment of the U.S. security cooperation enterprise broadly,” he added. “It really should raise a lot of concerns about what is the wider enterprise that is going on every single day, whether that’s in the Middle East, Sub-Saharan Africa, East Asia.”
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Tuesday that, “we don’t have a complete picture, obviously, of where every article of defense materials has gone.”
“But certainly a fair amount of it has fallen into the hands of the Taliban,” he continued. “And obviously, we don’t have a sense that they are going to readily hand it over to us at the airport.”
The FBI has turned up no evidence that the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol was a coordinated attempt to launch an insurrection against the United States government by overturning the results of the presidential election, according to officials who spoke to Reuters Friday.
“The FBI at this point believes the violence was not centrally coordinated by far-right groups or prominent supporters of then-President Donald Trump,” Reuters reports.
Further, “the FBI has so far found no evidence that [Trump] or people directly around him were involved in organizing the violence.”
Of the more than 570 individuals who have been arrested on charges related to the riot, “Ninety to ninety-five percent of these are one-off cases,” said a former senior law enforcement official with knowledge of the investigation. “Then you have five percent, maybe, of these militia groups that were more closely organized. But there was no grand scheme with Roger Stone and Alex Jones and all of these people to storm the Capitol and take hostages.”
Of those “militia groups,” FBI investigators did find that some groups like the Oath Keepers or the Proud Boys allegedly planned to break into the Capitol. “But they found no evidence that the groups had serious plans about what to do if they made it inside,” Reuters’ sources said.
The FBI has filed conspiracy charges against 40 individuals who allegedly had “engaged in some degree of planning” before the riot, but prosecutors “have steered clear of more serious, politically-loaded charges that the sources said had been initially discussed by prosecutors, such as seditious conspiracy or racketeering.”
With no evidence of a centrally coordinated plot to overthrow the U.S. government, “conspiracy charges that have been filed allege that defendants discussed their plans in the weeks before the attack and worked together on the day itself. But prosecutors have not alleged that this activity was part of a broader plot.”
The revelations run counter to the popular media narrative that former President Donald Trump incited an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol to stay in power after losing the election to Joe Biden.
On. Jan. 6, Trump gave a speech at a “Save America” rally at the Capitol in which he repeated his various claims about the election being stolen and urged then-Vice President Mike Pence to intervene during the Joint Session of Congress and reject the Electoral College results from several contested states.
“I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard,” Trump said.
But contrary to the president’s stated desire for peaceful protest, violence broke out when a mob of Trump’s supporters breached security at the Capitol building and trespassed inside, forcing members of Congress to evacuate. More than 100 police officers were injured in violent altercations with members of the mob. Rioters entered congressional offices, stole government property, and searched the building looking for lawmakers.
One woman, Ashli Babbitt, was shot and killed by a Capitol Police officer during the riot.
National headlines blamed Trump for fomenting the violence by making false claims about the election. Democrats in Congress impeached Trump on charges of “incitement of insurrection,” but the former president was acquitted by Senate vote.
The FBI’s findings will prove an obstacle to left-wing Democrats on the House Select Committee investigating the events of Jan. 6 who seek to prove that Trump and his Republican allies had a hand in organizing the riot. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has suggested that the committee will investigate GOP lawmakers who supported Trump’s effort to have the Electoral College results rejected.
But without evidence of a larger conspiracy, attempts to tie Republicans to an insurrection are purely political.
Conservative radio host and political commentator Glenn Beck urged his listeners to “give until it hurts” to help finance the rescue of thousands of Christian women and children who are stranded in Afghanistan. He called upon his audience to come together and help support those who are still struggling to get out of Afghanistan, which had been plunged into Taliban control on Sunday.
“Every single penny that you can come up with will go to flying those planes and getting those people out,” the 57 year old Beck said on Wednesday, as reported by The Independent. “We need, obviously, an enormous amount of money. These are people that are marked for death for what they believe in.”
On Friday, Beck took to Twitter to share that he was “blown away” by what his audience was able to achieve: over $20 million was raised in less than three days for The Nazarene Fund, which will benefit religious minorities from Afghanistan.
Beck added, “Your generosity toward rescuing Christians in Afghanistan will be a Moses-style miracle. And it has given me back my hope for the future.”
I’m BLOWN AWAY by what this audience has done to help rescue persecuted Christians in Afghanistan! OVER $20 MILLION raised in less than 3 days! THANK YOU! https://t.co/yt6ZHp9dMk
The Nazarene Fund‘s mission is “to liberate the captive, to free the enslaved, and to rescue, rebuild and restore the lives of Christians and other persecuted religious and ethnic minorities wherever and whenever they are in need.” In 2017, it had reportedly relocated over 10,500 refugees from northern Iraq and Syria to other host countries such as the U.S., Canada, Australia, and more.
Over the past few weeks, France has extended COVID pass requirements to nearly all basic venues including bars, cafés, restaurants, cinemas, trains, stadiums, and gyms. Supermarkets are the latest addition to this list.
Some French supermarkets are now requiring their customers to show a COVID pass before entering.
The measure is sparking much controversy as a video showing police blocking the entrance of a supermarket to a group of people has immerged on Twitter.
Over the past few weeks, France has extended COVID pass requirements to nearly all basic venues including bars, cafés, restaurants, cinemas, trains, stadiums, and gyms. Supermarkets are the latest addition to this list. This week, some French supermarket chains have announced that they are now requiring customers to show a valid COVID pass before entering stores whose surfaces exceed 20,000 square meters (approximately 215,278 square feet), in areas where the COVID incidence rate is over 200 per 100,000 inhabitants.
Notices informing shoppers of the new regulation have been placed at the entrance of many supermarkets. One from Carrefour (see above) reads: “Welcome! From Monday August 16 onward, have your COVID passes ready for a serene shopping experience.”
There are only two ways French citizens can obtain the “sanitary pass.” One is to show proof of a “full vaccination package” which becomes valid a week after receiving both shots of a COVID-19 vaccine. The other is to show proof of a negative PCR or antigen test result obtained within the last 72 hours (an extension from the previous standard of 48 hours). The cost of PCR tests is currently covered by French social security, but as of mid-October this will no longer be the case.
A fine of up to 750 euros (approx. $818 US) is applicable to people presenting a fake or fraudulent COVID pass. The fine increases to 1500 euros (approx. $1754 US) for a second offense and to 3750 euros (approx. $4384 US) for a third.
The French department (administrative region) of Gironde, which launched the use of COVID bracelets on Wednesday, is one of 24 departments where the new measure applies. A prefectorial decree released on August 13 indicated that the COVID pass would be required to access the ten biggest supermarkets in the department from Monday, August 16 to Tuesday, August 31.
The document states: “Because of the active circulation of the virus (…) COVID pass checks will be carried out at the entrance of the stores before people are allowed to move freely.”
According to Franceinfo, the 24 departments have enforced the COVID pass since August 16 for access to a total of 144 supermarkets.
The new measure is not universally popular. Some claim it has no legal basis, even according to Decree 2021-1059 of August 7, that is, the new French law on the management of the COVID crisis. This legislation specifies that the extension of the COVID pass must be carried out “with conditions guaranteeing access to essential goods and services, including, in some cases, public transport.” Those against the new measure interpret this passage in a way that would make barring access to supermarkets to people without a COVID pass illegal.
Companies raise prices in response to higher labor costs, fanning inflation further
U.S. inflation showed some cooling off in July after posting large gains in prior months. Consumer prices rose at their slowest monthly pace since February, providing some relief to those in the “transitory” camp, who hold that this bout of inflation isn’t a long-term phenomenon.
But, inflation fears still linger. The year-on-year increase in consumer prices remained stubbornly high at 5.4 percent, the same as in June.
While it’s unclear when inflation could return to a level closer to its 2 percent long-term trend, economists are increasingly talking about a gradual slowdown in inflation in the months and quarters ahead.
In a recent note, Goldman Sachs economists state that current levels of inflation will prove transitory, although a rapidly tightening labor market poses a risk as it could “translate into more persistent inflation pressures down the road.”
A swift rebound in the economy and a tight labor supply have returned the upper hand to American workers. Employers are competing to attract qualified candidates by raising wages and offering bonuses and other perks.
Companies are passing along these higher labor costs to consumers via price increases, hence adding to the inflationary pressures. And a record level of open job positions in the country suggests that businesses may continue to raise wages to attract people, which could in turn boost consumer prices further.
U.S. job openings reached an all-time high of 10.1 million in June. Layoffs also hit a record low as companies want to hold onto their employees to weather the labor crisis in the country.
Meanwhile, optimism among U.S. small businesses is dipping as labor shortage and supply chain constraints continue to cripple their business operations. The NFIB Small Business Optimism survey in July showed that a record-high 49 percent of small firms struggled to find workers to fill open positions.
The survey also found that 52 percent of small business owners raised the prices of their goods and services to mitigate higher costs.
Companies, both small and large, currently face no difficulty in passing along labor cost increases to consumers, according to Scott Anderson, chief economist of Bank of the West. And this suggests that “inflationary pressures will dissipate more gradually than expected six months ago,” he wrote in a recent report.
Supply Chain Constraints
In addition, the COVID-19 Delta variant is deepening already substantial supply chain disruptions, putting pressure on prices. For example, setbacks in the Asia-Pacific region, according to Goldman Sachs, are delaying the normalization of car prices.
The semiconductor shortage amid the pandemic continues to hammer auto production worldwide. Nissan announced on Aug. 10 that it would close its large factory in Tennessee for two weeks because of computer chip shortages. More than a dozen factories in North America and Europe have halted or reduced operations in recent weeks.
The global scarcity of chips has tightened new and used vehicle inventories and pushed up prices this year. Prices of new and used vehicles have been on the rise for months, making them a major driver of inflation.
While used car prices stabilized in July, rising only 0.2 percent over the month, they are still over 40 percent above their pre-COVID trend. And the yearly inflation for new vehicles stood at 6.4 percent in July, the largest gain in nearly four decades.
As noted by Elon Musk, founder and CEO of Tesla, during an earnings call in late July, the chip shortage is “out of control,” and it’s hard for carmakers to predict how long this will last.
Persistent supply shortages have gone beyond the auto sector and affected prices of consumer electronics and shipping, as well. Many areas of the economy are now facing supply shortages, including raw materials, housing, freight, and labor, which could take more than a year to normalize, according to analysts.
How Sticky Is Inflation?
Inflation has turned into a major source of disagreement among economists, as they are divided over the key question of how long high inflation could stick around.
The Federal Reserve’s latest forecast shows that the inflation will be 3.4 percent this year, before settling back down to just over 2 percent in 2022 and 2023.
“The risk is that higher inflation may have a longer-than-expected ‘tail’ before normalizing, or perhaps a more enduring structural component,” Nanette Abuhoff Jacobson, global investment strategist at Hartford Funds, said in a report.
One area to watch closely, she said, is rents and shelter, the largest component in the consumer price index.
Rents dropped significantly during the pandemic across the country, but now they’re surging at a rapid pace, as more workers return to metro areas, boosting demand for rental apartments. A sustained increase in rents could lead to more persistent inflation, as price increases are hard to reverse.
“We’re going to head into a very high rent period in the next 10 years,” Ken McElroy, CEO of MC Companies, a real estate investment firm, said in an interview.
Soaring home prices are also pushing people to the rental market. Home prices nationwide rose by 16.6 percent in May, setting a record, according to the S&P CoreLogic Case–Shiller index.
If rents track home prices as in the past, then this could be “a big deal” for inflation, according to Jacobson, as shelter costs have historically lagged home prices by around 18 months.
In addition, surging gas prices have had a significant effect on inflation. In the past year, gasoline prices have risen 41.8 percent, becoming a concern for the Biden administration. The White House on Aug. 11 issued a statement urging the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and Russia (OPEC+) to address rising gasoline costs by boosting oil production. Analysts believe strong demand and slow growth in supplies will likely push energy prices higher in the coming months.
Excessive government stimulus and ever-growing national debt are also fueling inflation fears. The International Monetary Fund warned in July that more fiscal spending could increase inflationary pressures in the United States, pushing the Federal Reserve to take preemptive action.
“I’m surprised that people in Washington don’t get this,” conservative economist Stephen Moore said in an interview, criticizing fiscal spending and the Fed’s ultra-accommodative monetary policy.
Sen. Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat, recently joined conservatives in sounding alarm bells on rising inflation. In a statement on Aug. 11, Manchin raised “serious concerns” about President Joe Biden’s $3.5 trillion social policy package and called rising inflation “an unavoidable tax on the wages and income of every American.”
The White House, however, is pushing back against these concerns, saying that Biden’s Build Back Better policies would address “long-standing cost pressures” facing families.
DeSantis is preparing to strip the funding of school districts violating Florida law by requiring students wear face masks
Earlier this year, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis banned mask mandates for schools. Still, some school districts sought to openly flaunt the rule of law by instituting their own mask mandates, provoking DeSantis to take action on Friday and give them 48 hours to rescind their mask mandates or face being stripped of funding. Now, the school districts have just over one day to respond.
On Friday, DeSantis gave the first two school districts flaunting the rule of law 48 hours to reverse course and drop their controversial mask mandates. Now, almost a day later, these schools have continued to defy the Florida governor and have just over one day to stop breaking the law. At present, it appears these school districts have yet to comply.
Should they refuse, “The Florida Department of Education said it will then start gradually withholding state funds – equal to 1/12 of the salaries of the school board members, monthly – ‘until each district demonstrates compliance,’” per a statement released to the media.
To make the order more punishing for the school board members who made the unscientific decision to mask children, the order prohibits the lack of funding from impacting “student services or teacher pay” and will instead directly take money meant to pay those behind the decision.
Earlier this month, DeSantis announced a policy that would allow parents to remove their children – and their taxpayer funding – from these school districts and instead send them to private schools who do not require masks in violation of Florida law with a voucher representing the taxpayer funds tied to the students. This, predictably, resulted in uproar from public school advocates and teachers unions, who sought to defend the right of school districts to break Florida law.
Also this month, the CDC admitted it over counted Florida’s COVID-19 case numbers by nearly 10,000 by attributing an entire weekend’s worth of cases to a single day. While the CDC eventually corrected its mistake, it never offered an apology, and local media used the error to slam DeSantis and his pro-freedom COVID-19 policies.
(American Thinker) Nowhere is the abuse of power in directing government manpower and spending more blatant than in the Biden administration’s promotion of Critical Race Theory (CRT) training throughout all federal government agencies. The Department of Defense (DoD) and the Department of Education (DoE) — two agencies that have the most people under their administration and instruction — have incorporated this divisive Marxist ideology-based indoctrination in the training curricula for their staff members, and to all the enlisted in the case of the military. Given that warfighting capability can be critical to a nation’s survival, and that the youth of today represent the nation’s future citizens and leaders, these decisions are not without serious repercussions.
The job of teachers and schools is straightforward: It’s to train students to achieve competence in the basic subjects of reading, writing, verbal, math, science, history, and geography. Yet according to the latest Nation’s Report Card, only 23% of 12th-grade public school students in America reach basic proficiency. So with our nation’s public school system failing in its primary mission there is no justification for diverting resources and manpower away from essential education curricula and teaching to a controversial program like CRT.
Many parents across the country passionately shared this position just months ago when the school year was coming to a close. In May and June, various videos produced by parents meeting and confronting school administrators and school boards demanding that CRT indoctrination programs be dropped went viral, being streamed cross country throughout social media. Yet the two national teachers’ unions, the NEA and AFT, whose influence reaches all 50 states, remain committed to supporting their members teaching CRT. As the academic year 2021-2022 gets underway, parents should be aware that the DOE is continuing its state grant programs that provide support for CRT. And while 21 states have introduced bills that would control teaching critical race theory or keep a tab on how teachers can discuss racism and sexism, only six states have passed legislation or had governors deliver executive orders banning explicit CRT curriculum from public schools.
With regard to problems in the military that have resulted from CRT training, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), a senior member of the Armed Services Committee recently disclosed that since he launched a whistleblower tip line in May, hundreds of enlisted soldiers from all branches of the military have reported problems. Numerous sailors say that the Navy brass seems to be prioritizing diversity over combat training. 94% of those interviewed reported that the Navy now has a crisis of leadership. The recurring complaint about CRT training pushed on them is that it sets military members against one another and denigrates patriotism, which has prompted a number of soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, and guardsmen to resign.
In summary, CRT training brings division to the classroom and to military ranks. And in the case of the military, CRT appears to violate the 1976 Supreme Court decision recognizing that a civilian-controlled military requires it to be neutral and apolitical.
When things make no sense, one simply has to dig deeper to find out what’s going on.
First, it’s essential to understand that the CRT training agenda has all the trappings of a “false flag” operation being run by an enemy. That is, it preys both on peoples’ ignorance and their desire to do well, virtue signal, and stand with justice, while the real agenda is hidden and can be best understood by seeing the program’s effects. According to program feedback, CRT promotes far more racial division than racial sensitivity. Further, much CRT curricula distort America’s history and its progress by the inclusion of incorrect narratives surrounding the 17th-century introduction of slavery, while omitting the accomplishments of Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement of the 20th century.
There is no denying that CRT’s ideology is rooted in Marxism and uses race as a means of evoking moral, social, and political division, while also stoking reverse racism by impugning whites as racial supremacists. As for its history component and vision for America, CRT maintains that America is an irredeemably and systemically racist nation, with an illegitimate government based on a constitution written by white founders and ratified by six slaveholding states, which made up nearly half of the original 13 states.
What is most astonishing about the CRT project is that it shows how gullible and out of touch so many liberal elite administrators and officers are and how disrespectful they are toward the vast majority of people they oversee and serve. The debacle in Afghanistan reflects the utter failure of the armed services leadership in their main mission to manage military power to protect both strategic national interests and the welfare and American servicemen and women. The fact is that race relations among the enlisted are often exemplary, with blacks having a fast-track for promotion based on merit and blacks being overrepresented relative to their numbers as a percentage of the civilian population. It’s hard to believe that the Pentagon brass doesn’t know the state of affairs among the troops they oversee. A majority of military enlistees who go through boot camp, combat and teamwork mission training, and live and sleep in barracks or in tight quarters on ships almost all say that their experience makes the military one of the least racist institutions in America.
So if CRT training takes time, manpower, and resources away from the main missions of schools and the military, while also demoralizing most of its participants in the process, why is this happening in America at this time?
Xi Van Fleet, a Chinese immigrant mother of a child who went through Loudoun County, Virginia public schools, thinks she knows. She had a déjà vu with CRT and “wokism” being analogous to what she witnessed in Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution in China that displaced and caused the death of some 20 million during the 1960s and 1970s. At a raucous public meeting in June 2021with the Loudoun County School Board, Van Fleet spoke up, drawing parallels between what she had witnessed in China and what she sees going down with CRT in the U.S. today. ” The Communist regime used the same critical theory to divide people,” she said. “The only difference is they used class instead of race.”
“Growing up in Mao’s China, all of this seems very familiar,” she said, describing how the Cultural Revolution caused “students and teachers to turn against each other, and school names changed ‘to be politically correct,’ as they were taught to denounce our heritage.” Going further, Van Fleet said, “The Red Guards destroyed anything that is not Communist — statues, books, and anything else.”
Although her time to speak was cut short by the Loudoun County School Board, Van Fleet was tracked down by a reporter the next day and summed up her feelings: “To me, and to a lot of Chinese, it is heartbreaking that we escaped communism and now we experience communism here.”
The takeaway from so many who have lived through communist revolutions is that it appears that communists are now emboldened to commence the end game against America. They have adopted the terminology of being woke and high-minded sounding programs like Critical Race Theory, but it’s the same old playbook of the four overlapping stages of communist revolution: first, demoralize society; second, bring about societal division and destabilization; third, bring on crisis and collapse; and fourth, bring about a new normalization of the communist fait accompli.
The reach of Chinese communism into the United States is far greater today than Soviet communism ever was, when at its peak there were at most about 150 Soviet agents working mainly in the federal government, with high-profile people like Alger Hiss serving as FDR’s key trusted advisor at Yalta. The chief reason for the blooming of woke culture and CRT acceptance throughout the United States may in part be related to far larger numbers of Chinese agents operating in the U.S. Analyst Charles High reports that there may be as many as 100,000 Chinese working within U.S. companies, mainly in the technology sector. Some of those conduct conventional spying to steal U.S. intellectual property and military secrets, while others are sleepers or agents of influence, whose purpose is to protect and promote various narratives in the interest of China.
Additionally, there are direct parallels between what happened in China during the Cultural Revolution and what is happening right now in America. And this is all the more disturbing with our current president, Joe Biden, who seems to have been more “installed” than elected and now — with declining mental competence — appears controlled by people behind the scenes. And of course, the real question is who has the most control over Joe Biden. The silence about the implications of Chinese money received through son Hunter’s $1.5 billion Chinese “private equity deal” on father Biden’s presidential administration is troubling and has no good explanation.
Americans have overcome many daunting challenges throughout their nation’s past, often waking up at the 11th hour before taking action and prevailing. Protecting our citizens’ freedom and saving America as a beacon of freedom in the world should be our top priority. That starts with overcoming denial about enemies foreign and domestic. Then we need to deal with these enemies with courage and dispatch, and proceed with correctives using skill and resourcefulness greater than that of the destroyers, but with none of their malice.
Companies are rolling out perks at a feverish clip to lure employees.
Why it matters: The economy is roaring back. Companies are pulling out all stops to win over the workers they need to meet demand.
What’s happening:Walmart and Target say they will pay tuition for certain college programs for millions of employees.
Businesses are also offering extended time off, free Pelotons or one-time bonuses to attract workers — and keep the ones they have.
Yes, but: What’s actually enticing workers is the most old-fashioned perk: higher wages.
“After we made our announcement [to raise pay] back in April, we’re getting close to full staffing levels,” McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski told investors.
The intrigue: Nearly 2 in 3 workers say they are looking for a new job, per a new survey by PwC. Employees said more money was the top reason they considered quitting.
The survey also finds a huge gulf between what employees want and what companies are offering.
Touting company values and culture, plus offering location flexibility, are the most common ways employers say they are trying to retain and attract workers.
But that’s on the bottom of the priority list for employees. At the top: more flexible schedules, higher pay and expanded benefits.
By the numbers: Employers are meeting the moment by steadily raising wages. In July, pay was 4% higher than this time last year.
Wages in the hospitality sector — where worker shortage complaints are most acute — are 10% higher from last July as hiring rebounds.
Cuomo files for retirement benefits
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) has filed for retirement benefits days before he leaves the governor’s office after resigning over a sexual harassment scandal.
Cuomo’s retirement benefits will become active on Sept. 1, a spokesperson for the New York comptroller’s office said on Wednesday, Rochester First reported.
The office said a person must file for the benefits between 15 days before leaving office and 90 days after leaving office.
Cuomo resigned from office after the New York attorney general’s office released a report alleging the governor sexually harassed multiple women and threatened to retaliate against one who was going to speak up about it.
Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) will succeed Cuomo, becoming the first female governor of the state, on Aug. 24.
Cuomo maintains his innocence and says he would have beat the impeachment trial the state legislature was planning for the governor.
“I’m not gonna drag the state through the mud, through a three-month, four-month impeachment and then win and have made the state legislature and the state government look like a ship of fools when everything I’ve done all my life was for the exact opposite,” Cuomo said. “I’m not doing that. I feel good. I’m not a martyr. It’s just, I saw the options: option A, option B.”
The annual pension for the governor is estimated to be $50,000, according to the local outlet, unless he gets convicted of a felony.
The Hill has reached out to the comptroller’s office and Cuomo’s office for comment.