It could be an early “Spring Break” field trip to Little Havana and Calle Ocho in Miami. Let our kids hear the first-hand stories of families who bought the lie of Socialism and Communism under the Castro regime. The sudden loss of property, businesses, homes, lives, and freedoms. The worst of any government overwhelmed the people of Cuba and left them devastated and hopeless for over 60 years now.
Some were able to escape like my friend Dr. Nick Sanchez who at the age of 15 arrived in America together with his cousin under operation Pedro Pan. He explained that he came to America from Cuba with ten cents in his pockets. Fortunately, he had relatives who took them in a few months later until the arrival of his parents a year later.
He, his brother, and his sister are yet another of millions of terrific immigrant success stories. They assimilated, contributed, substantiated, and added to the American Dream. Something that would never have happened in communist Cuba. As Dr. Sanchez adds, “All three of us kids, received Ph.D.’s from an American University.”
In my interview this week with Attorney Ed Pozzuoli, the president of Florida-based law firm Tripp Scott, we discussed this unique opportunity of having our kids come to Miami for an eye and heart-opening experience based on real-life experiences.
Ed even suggested lunch or dinner at the infamous Versailles Restaurant. Cubans know and do great food and they know communism sadly.
I’m sure the teacher’s union and Professors who have been peddling the Marxist propaganda would do all they could to block buses traveling to Miami. Education is powerful, especially when it’s true and legitimate. The last thing they want our kids to realize is that they’ve been lied to.
The tens of thousands of personal experiences and stories about communism in their homeland are heartbreaking. Our kids who have been raised on performance trophies and entitlements have no idea just how destructive a totalitarian government can be. It is unimaginable until you find yourself inescapably trapped and without freedom.
Shouts of Libertad (Liberty) and the American flag are the voices and images seen and heard in Miami and Cuba just 90 miles south of Florida. Who would have thought the Cubans would be teaching Americans the value of freedom and our flag that it represents? God bless los Cubanos and their homeland of Cuba.
Bill Martinez is an award-winning marketing and broadcast journalist and host of the nationally syndicated radio show, The Bill Martinez Show. Find out more at billmartinezshow.com
(Christian Today) Richard Page, a Christian family magistrate who was sacked after saying children do best when raised by a mother and father, has died. He was 74.
Page was a magistrate for 15 years and non-executive director of an NHS trust. In deliberations on an adoption case with two other magistrates, he said it was best for children to be placed with a mother and a father where possible. He also expressed this view publicly in the media.
Page was then removed as a magistrate by the then justice secretary Michael Gove and Lord Chief Justice Lord Thomas for supposedly being “biased and prejudiced against single sex adopters” and bringing the magistrates’ courts into disrepute.
He was also let go from his position with the NHS trust.
He commenced legal proceedings against his sackings but lost at the Court of Appeal earlier this year.
In his judgment, Lord Justice Underhill said that “the freedom to express religious or any other beliefs cannot be unlimited”.
“In particular, so far as the present case is concerned, there are circumstances in which it is right to expect Christians (and others) who work for an institution, especially if they hold a high-profile position, to accept some limitations on how they express in public their beliefs on matters of particular sensitivity,” he stated.
At the time of his death, Page had been planning to take his case to the Supreme Court.
Andrea Williams, Chief Executive of the Christian Legal Centre, which was supporting Page, said his case may still go to the Supreme Court.
In a moving tribute on the Christian Concern website, she called him “a modern-day hero of faith”.
“In Richard’s case we have judges at the highest level saying that they are unable to take judicial notice of the fact that Christians believe marriage is between a man and a woman,” she wrote.
“The judgments in his case, right up to the Court of Appeal, are a stark picture of how a man like Richard who holds passionately to his Saviour Jesus can be left out in the cold.”
In his latter years, Page had been suffering from Alzheimer’s and his passing follows that of his wife, Jane, last year.
Williams added, “At Christian Concern, with the permission of Richard’s family, we hope to take his case to the Supreme Court.
“He always knew the case was much bigger than him. In many ways, and Richard would agree, the case was not just about justice for him but about contending for Christian truth in public life.
“Richard and Jane, their faith-full, faith-filled lives will forever be in my heart.”
In a new research paper published in the journal Toxicology Reports, author Neil Z. Miller found that out of a total of 2,605 infant deaths reported to VAERS between 1990 and 2019, 58% occurred within three days of vaccination, and 78% occurred within seven days of vaccination.
In a new research paper published in the journal Toxicology Reports, author Neil Z. Miller reports on the relationship between sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) death and the timing of vaccination, based on the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) database.
SIDS is defined as the sudden and unexpected death of an infant that remains unexplained after a thorough investigation. Although there are no specific symptoms associated with SIDS, an autopsy often reveals congestion and edema of the lungs and inflammatory changes in the respiratory system, according to the National Center for Health Statistics Vital Statistics of the United States 1988, Volume II, Mortality, Part A, Public Health Service, 1991.
Prior to contemporary vaccination programs, SIDS — sometimes referred to as “crib death” — was so infrequent it was not mentioned in infant mortality statistics.
After the national immunization campaigns were initiated in the U.S. in the 1960s, for the first time in history, most U.S. infants were required to receive several doses of DPT, polio, measles, mumps and rubella vaccines.
As Miller points out in his article, the ICD category for vaccine-related death, or cause of death as “prophylactic inoculation and vaccination,” was eliminated when the ICD was revised in 1979 — despite the fact that this information would be useful in trying to understand the relationship between vaccination and death.
But Miller, a medical research journalist and the director of the Thinktwice Global Vaccine Institute, provides an alternative route for establishing such a correlation — by observing the temporal relationship between vaccines and reported infant deaths, including SIDS deaths, in the CDC’s VAERS database.
Miller found that out of a total of 2,605 infant deaths reported to VAERS from 1990 through 2019, the majority “clustered” in close temporal proximity to vaccination — 58% occurred within three days of vaccination, and 78% occurred within seven days of vaccination.
Miller found the excess deaths within these ranges were statistically significant (p<0.00001), meaning the chance that this result is random is less than 0.001%.
The same type of clustering was present in the 1,048 reports of infant deaths (out of the total 2,605) reported to VAERS specifically as SIDS.
According to Miller, if there were no correlation between vaccination and infant deaths, one would expect to see an even spacing of deaths within the time range reported prior to vaccination —- not a clustering of deaths as Miller found.
Miller included a comprehensive literature review in his paper refuting the “official” claim that the SIDS epidemic was curtailed by having infants sleep on their backs — as recommended by the “Back to Sleep” campaign, initiated in 1992 by the American Academy of Pediatrics.
The subsequent rate of SIDS dropped by an annual average of 8.6% between 1992 and 2001. However, the neonatal mortality rate due to “suffocation in bed” increased during that same time at an average annual rate of 11.2%.
Other similar causes of infant death also increased significantly during this period, as reported by Miller. Further, from 1999 through 2015, the U.S. SIDS rate declined 35.8%. while infant deaths due to accidental suffocation increased 183.8 %.
Miller also affirms his main results from the paper (i.e., the temporal clustering of SIDS deaths with vaccination) through the discussion of seven additional peer-reviewed studies and two confidential reports.
On average, these authors found that substantial proportions of infant deaths occurred within one day (mean = 25%), three days (mean = 49%) and seven days (mean = 71%) post-vaccination, matching the results of the present study.
Mechanistically, vaccine injury has been tied to SIDS multiple times. Matturri et al. (2014) examined 13 SIDS deaths occurring within seven days of a hexavalent vaccine. Analysis of the brainstem and cerebellum of the deceased infants showed brain edema and congestion in all victims.
The authors hypothesized that “several compounds and immuno-potentiation adjuvants of the hexavalent vaccine might easily go beyond the blood-brain barrier, which in the first year of life is still immature and quite permeable, inducing neuronal molecular alterations in DNA, RNA and proteins of brainstem neurons regulating vital functions, with consequent fatal disorganization of respiratory control in particularly predisposed infants.”
Specifically, these authors implicated aluminum-based adjuvants in the dysregulation of respiratory control.
Scheibner and Karlsson (1991) monitored infant breathing during sleep before and after the DPT vaccination, revealing an increase in episodes where breathing nearly ceased or stopped completely. These episodes, which continued for several weeks post-vaccination, were not seen prior to vaccination.
Despite the official insistence that SIDS deaths are not caused by vaccination, as Miller points out, the National Vaccine Injury Compensation (NVICP) is set up to compensate families of individuals who are injured and/or die from vaccine administration.
Death from vaccination is compensated with $250,000 for “pain and suffering” to family members of the deceased victim. Conditions typically leading to death that are considered “table injuries” to be compensated under the NVICP include anaphylaxis and encephalopathy or encephalitis.
‘Healthy babies just don’t die for no apparent reason’
Kari Bundy, who lost her son after his four-month vaccinations, said she’s always been “flabbergasted” at the denial of the medical community of the link between SIDS and vaccines. “For me, it was too obvious to even attempt to ignore,” Bundy said.
Bundy lost her third-born child, Mason, in 2011.
“A few days after his routine four-month vaccinations, my husband and I discovered his dead body in the middle of the night, laying on his side, his body still warm,” Bundy said
Mason’s autopsy came back “unremarkable,” aside from some thymic petechiae, which is the most common gross finding in SIDS cases at autopsy.
“I was assured time and time again that he had not suffocated,” Bundy said.
When Mason died, Bundy learned if you can’t pay for a funeral, you can’t have one. So a few months after Mason’s death, she founded a nonprofit called Mason’s Cause, to provide grants to cover funeral costs for families who had experienced the loss of a child under the age of 1.
“I never wanted any parent to experience this devastating loss and not be able to bury their child,” Bundy said. She continued running the charity for just under 2 years, during which time she worked with 94 different families who experienced the death of a child under age 1.
Of those 94 infant deaths, 87 died from SIDS, or from causes “unknown.” Of the SIDS cases, 81 — or 93% — died within seven days of routine vaccinations.
“When I realized SIDS seemed to be undeniably related to vaccines, I realized I could no longer dedicate my life to running a charity that would help bury babies,” Bundy said. “That’s when I realized I wanted to save babies by speaking out about the real risks of vaccination.”
Bundy, who works for Children’s Health Defense as translations coordinator, said she’s grateful for research like Miller’s because it shows what she and all SIDS parents already knew — healthy babies don’t just die for no apparent reason.
Detroit’s Big Three automakers plan to announce on Thursday that they aspire to have 40% to 50% of new vehicle sales by 2030 be electric models as they call for billions in U.S. government assistance to meet aggressive targets, sources briefed on the matter said.
The White House is planning an event on electric vehicles and fuel economy standards with President Joe Biden and chief executives from General Motors Co (GM.N), Ford Motor Co (F.N) and Chrysler parent Stellantis NV (STLA.MI). The administration this week plans to propose revisions to fuel economy requirements through the 2026 model year.
The three automakers declined to comment on Wednesday, as did the White House. Some major foreign automakers are also expected to support the aspiration target.
The administration has been pressing automakers to back a voluntary pledge of at least 40% of new vehicle sales being electric by 2030 as it works to reduce greenhouse gas pollution, Reuters reported last week.
Automakers are spending tens of billions of dollars to speed EV adoption, even though U.S. EV sales outside Tesla Inc’s (TSLA.O) remain small.
Consulting firm AlixPartners in June said investments in electric vehicles by 2025 could total $330 billion, a 41% increase from the firm’s comparable five-year investment outlook a year ago. As of now, electric vehicles represent about 2% of total global vehicle sales, and will be about 24% of total sales by 2030, the firm forecast.
Biden has resisted calls from many Democrats to set a binding target for EV adoption or to follow California or some countries in setting 2035 as a date to phase out the sale of new gasoline-powered light duty vehicles.
Some environmental groups have been calling for enforceable requirements and tough vehicle emissions rules through 2026.
Automakers’ target includes full-battery electric, plug-in electric hybrid vehicles, which also have gasoline engines, and hydrogen fuel cell models, sources said.
The automakers will make clear in a joint statement that the aggressive EV targets are contingent on additional government support for EVs and the charging industry. The sources said the wording of the statement could still change before Thursday.
Biden has called for $174 billion in government spending to boost EVs, including $100 billion in consumer incentives. A bipartisan Senate infrastructure bill includes $7.5 billion for EV charging stations but no money for new consumer incentives.
Last month Stellantis said it was targeting over 40% of U.S. vehicles be low-emission by 2030.
GM has said it aspires to end sales of new U.S. gasoline-powered light duty vehicles by 2035, and said on Wednesday it is focused on full electric vehicles rather than plug-in hybrid vehicles. Ford has said it plans “at least 40% of our global vehicle volume being all-electric by 2030.”
The United Auto Workers union, which has been involved in White House and automaker discussions in recent weeks, has opposed EV mandates, warning it could put jobs at risk.
This week, U.S. regulators plan propose revising former President Donald Trump’s March 2020 rollback of fuel economy standards. Trump required 1.5% annual increases in efficiency through 2026, well below the 5% yearly boosts set in 2012 by President Barack Obama’s administration.
Biden’s proposed rules, which would cover 2023-2026, are expected to be similar in overall vehicle emissions reductions to California’s 2019 deal with some automakers that aims to improve fuel economy 3.7% annually through 2026, sources told Reuters.
The 2026 requirements are expected to exceed the Obama-era 5% annual improvements.
The United States pledged at a global climate summit this year to reduce emissions 50% to 52% by 2030, compared with 2005 levels.
In March, a group of 71 Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives urged Biden to set tough emissions rules to ensure that 60% of new passenger cars and trucks sold are zero-emission by 2030.
The professional conservative movement should be moving massive amounts of money to support parents’ efforts and harden them as a target of this leftist onslaught.
For the first time in ages, the political right has had a massive boon dropped right into its lap. Democrats are shaking in their boots over the political implications of their institutional support for the state-sponsored racism known as critical race theory.
Their initial attempts to Jedi mind trick away people’s concern by insisting CRT isn’t real failed, and even Nancy Pelosi mouthpiece Politico is reporting how CRT in schools is deeply offending the independent and Democrat voters crucial to the Democrat Party’s competing grievance groups.
So what is the institutional right doing to capitalize on this amazing opportunity? A few states are banning it from classrooms — amid the usual friendly fire butt-covering for do-nothing Republican politicians — while Democrats prepare for total war to maintain their control of the national child-indoctrination apparatus known as public schooling.
If the conservative movement and Republican Party were serious like the left is serious, here’s what it would be doing to use the CRT uproar for tactical advantage instead of maxing out their energies on chest-thumping panel discussions and TV appearances while parents with kids and full-time jobs try to do all the groundwork without air cover.
1. Counter the Unions with a Litigation Army
The nation’s largest teachers union announced it’s filled a $5 million war chest to provide legal defenses for any teachers caught pushing CRT. The Biden administration has nominated to a key U.S. Department of Education legal post a leftist extremist who previously wielded federal power to institute racist policies that forced schools to discipline children according to their skin color instead of their actions: “Under her leadership, civil rights investigations became tools of harassment to coerce changes in school policies.”
These institutions are going to use the might of the federal government, an army of lawyers, and the nation’s largest teachers union to defend their territory. Who is helping parents go on the offensive against state-sponsored racism?
One-man journalist army Chris Rufo is recruiting lawyer volunteers via Twitter. That’s great, but he shouldn’t have to do this himself. The professional conservative movement should be moving massive amounts of money to support parents’ efforts and harden them as a target of this leftist legal onslaught. Stop platforming leftist propaganda outlets and start hiring effective marketing strategists, investigative journalists, and scads of lawyers.
2. Vote Against All Nominees Who Support Disparate Impact Racism
Max Eden points out in City Journal that when racial extremist Catherine Lhamon underwent confirmation hearings as Joe Biden’s nominee for assistant secretary of USDOE’s Office of Civil Rights: “Republican senators… did not challenge Lhamon on her record on school discipline. Nor did they ask any questions on the issue at the forefront of so many voters’ minds: critical race theory.”
Later, one senator, Ranking Member Richard Burr, sent Lhamon written questions about racial extremism and Llamon dodged, claiming she could not answer any “hypothetical” questions. Eden notes:
While Burr deserves credit for forcing Lhamon to make her ambivalence about racial discrimination a matter of public record, it is a shame that no Senator was willing to ask her any of these questions directly during her hearing. The American people deserved to witness her reluctance to condemn racial discrimination. The exchange could have made national news and framed Lhamon’s nomination as what it likely is: a referendum on whether or not the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights should permit anti-white racial discrimination.
Republican senators are not elected by the people of their states to rubberstamp racial extremism. The least we ought to be able to expect them to do is probe and bring out nominees’ unfitness for office, then vote against those nominees as a consequence. Explaining that vote to constituents should be a no-brainer. Get better, Republicans. Kids being recruited by racists are counting on you.
Here is Northshore School District's "Intersectionality Diversity Flower," which shockingly puts Race at the center of everything. This is Critical Race Theory at work, and it is racist and harmful and divisive. #walegpic.twitter.com/cebyfia2zB
3. Make Effectively Opposing CRT a Litmus Test for Office
It should also be a complete no-brainer to make effective opposition to critical race theory a litmus test for public office, including appointments and judges. Not just saying “I oppose CRT,” but displaying an effective track record of opposing it or things like it, or presenting a specific plan about how the candidate proposes to combat it with the power he wants voters to grant him.
We’re talking about an ideology that pushes eight-year-olds to rank themselves and their classmates according to their racial and sexual (?!) “privilege,” demonizes people according to their skin color, says babies can be racists, and encourages leading children in chants to an Aztec god. Opposing CRT should be like taking candy from a baby. If a candidate can’t or won’t do it, he’s worthless and better disposed of.
4. Pressure Elected Officials with Ads and Primaries
How does one dispose of weak public officials who won’t stop taxpayer dollars from funding racists? Pressure. The Republican Party and all its various local branches should make CRT opposition a requirement for getting their campaign dollars and other assistance.
If primary season is coming up, primary them. If it’s not, run ads pressuring them. Send journalists to look into the public money and institutions politicians oversee and whether it’s funding CRT, and ask them to comment on why this is allowed. Get allies to go on TV and ask why Politician A who oversees the education committee wouldn’t comment about evidence of tax dollars funding racism. This is politics 101, people. Lefties do this in their sleep.
5. Map the CRT-Enabling Policies to Destroy
Richard Hanania pointed out earlier this year that, months into the CRT explosion, National Review editor Ramesh Ponnuru and Republican Sen. Tom Cotton publicly stated that neither had any policy ideas about how to fight cancel culture. Hanania responded by noting that the cancel culture use of “racism” to tar and feather perfectly normal and nonbigoted ideas is backed by an entire legal apparatus that has accreted over the years under the “disparate impact” doctrine, sprouted from race-conscious “diversity” laws and jurisprudence.
“Disparate impact” is, of course, what critical theorists use to absurdly accuse the United States, babies, and white males of inherent and systemic racism. It is very much linked to policies that can and should be reformed. Hanania gives these suggestions for such anti-CRT reforms:
1) Eliminating disparate impact, making the law require evidence of intentional discrimination.
2) Getting rid of the concept of hostile work environment, or defining it in extremely narrow and explicit terms, making sure that it does not restrict political or religious speech.
3) Repealing the executive orders that created and expanded affirmative action among government contractors and the federal workforce.
This is a starting point for think tanks to delve into various laws and regulations to put out actually useful whitepapers. Give politicians and bureaucrats a map of exactly what policies the real antiracists want them to search out and destroy. That way we can better hold them to it.
6. Fund CRT Escape Pods
Philanthropists should get together and stick a bunch of money into an endowment — or endowments! — that distributes “critical race theory escape scholarships” for families stuck in school systems that are trying to make their kids racists.
State lawmakers should sponsor bills to create “antiracism choice scholarships” that make state funds available to families in school districts that are found to be teaching racism. As Chris Bedford notes, this is the time to institute universal backpack funding so parents never have to negotiate with racial terrorists again. Churches should step up to their historic commitments to provide a Christian education to all Christian children, and to serve the poor, by starting schools or crowdfunding CRT escape scholarships.
State think tanks should help fundraise for any and all of these, or provide startup funding and assistance to groups of parents to start non-racist charter and private schools, education “pods,” and homeschool communities. The possibilities for direct action to give affected children immediate lifeboats out of desperate situations are myriad.
7. Give Chris Rufo a Journalism Army
Parents need help using research skills such as filing open records requests to find out what their school systems are doing with their kids and tax dollars. They may also need lawyers to send threatening letters and even file lawsuits if school districts refuse to disclose this public information. This kind of discovery, and amplifying it, would be largely the work of journalists if the profession weren’t such a mess.
Again, Rufo is amazing, but he should be duplicated as much as possible. Get the guy a research assistant, and journalists and lawyers to extend his work to as many school districts as possible. How many parents really know what their children are being told in school? Very few.
Scared parents in my local district in a red state recently sent around an “I do not consent” form letter to bring to school this fall stating that they don’t want their children taught critical race theory. How is that enforceable? How would they know if the school went ahead and ignored them? Why is it even a thing that parents should feel the need to send letters like this to an institution they are funding and sending their children to? Who is backing them up?
I know who it should be: Those with the resources to make their concerns heard and enforced, through as many avenues as possible. The time to press this advantage — one of the few people on the political right have right now — is immediately, and as hard as possible. Don’t squander this moment. Who knows if and when another one like it will arise.
The Biden administration on Tuesday announced a new ban on evictions for many renters just days after the White House allowed a nationwide moratorium to expire, infuriating progressive House Democrats who warned that millions of Americans could lose their homes.
Officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention drafted a new eviction moratorium aimed at protecting tenants in counties with “substantial and high levels of community transmission” of COVID-19, affecting roughly 90% of the U.S. population.
The two-month moratorium expires Oct. 3.
“The emergence of the delta variant has led to a rapid acceleration of community transmission in the United States, putting more Americans at increased risk, especially if they are unvaccinated,” CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said. “This moratorium is the right thing to do to keep people in their homes and out of congregate settings where COVID-19 spreads.”
Consideration of another pause came after immense pressure from progressive lawmakers for Biden to act quickly and extend the moratorium after the White House punted the issue to Congress last week, arguing their hands were tied by a recent Supreme Court ruling that implied most justices believed the CDC had exceeded its authority with the ban.
On Monday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Biden had asked the CDC on Sunday to consider extending the moratorium for 30 days, but said the agency had “been unable to find legal authority for a new, targeted eviction moratorium. Our team is redoubling efforts to identify all available legal authorities to provide necessary protections.”
Psaki said Tuesday the administration was considering installing a “partial limited short term extension,” though she said no decisions had been made yet.
A similar eleventh-hour effort in the House to keep the ban alive until the end of the year also failed after Democrats were unable to secure the necessary support from at least a dozen members of their own caucus. Even if the House had passed a measure extending the ban, it almost certainly would have died in the 50-50 Senate.
House Democrats and the White House both shifted their attention over the weekend to expediting the distribution of $46 billion in rental assistance that Congress approved in December and March. Treasury data show that just $3 billion, or roughly 6.6% of the money, was doled out during the first half of the year.
“There can be no excuse for any state or locality not accelerating funds to landlords and tenants that have been hurt during this pandemic,” Biden said in a statement on Friday evening.
Still, Democrats were unrelenting in their urging of Biden to extend the ban unilaterally.
“I wish that the president, the CDC, would have gone forward and extended the moratorium,” Rep. Maxine Waters, the chairwoman of the House Financial Services Committee, told the Times on Monday. “They have the power to do that. I think he should have gone in and he should have done it, and let the chips fall where they may.”
Progressive lawmakers celebrated the news on Tuesday.
“Grateful,” tweeted. Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo., sharing an image of several House Democrats who camped outside of the Capitol in protest of the eviction ban’s end.
Without the eviction halt, which the CDC first implemented last September, more than 15 million people living in the U.S. who were behind on their rental payments could have faced eviction, according to a study published Wednesday by the Aspen Institute and COVID-19 Eviction Defense Project.
An Asia Society effort – advised by several Chinese Communist Party-linked individuals – has partnered with schools across the U.S. to shape curricula and teaching faculty to become consistent with a “social justice” approach to education that encourages “teaching activism” in favor of left-wing causes such as “equity,” “globalism,” and “unraveling systemic racism.”
Based in the U.S., the Asia Society describes its mission as “preparing Asians and Americans for a shared future” and is favored by current and former high-level Chinese Communist Party officials.
The group’s Center For Global Education outlines its mission as “transforming education to build a more just and equal society” and partners with schools and school districts throughout the U.S. to do so. The center is expected to reach 4,000,000 students and 100,000 educators through various partnerships including dictating curricula and establishing schools alongside the Department of Education in states such as Ohio and Colorado.
Serving on the center’s board, however, are several Chinese Communist Party apparatchiks. The co-chair of the effort, Yu Lizhong, is the former president of two Chinese Communist Party-run universities and has held leadership roles at several state-run groups:
Dr. Yu was the vice chairman of Chinese Geography Association. He is the chairman of Geographic Education Commission of Chinese Education Society, chairman of Shanghai Science Promotion Committee for Youth, and senior adviser of Shanghai Association of Science and Technology.
Advisors also include former President of state-run Shanghai Normal University, a former President of the Clinton Foundation, and former Director at Chinese the military proxy, China Mobile.
The map below demonstrates the coast-to-coast reach of the program, which arose out of a 2015 agreement between Asia Society President and CEO Josette Sheeran and United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Director-General Irina Bokova. “Welcoming the agreement, the Director-General stressed the heightened relevance of global citizenship education for countering violent extremism and promoting human rights, respect for diversity and a sense of solidarity and shared responsibility towards the future,” a press release summarized.
SCHOOL MAP.
The United Nations and Chinese Communist Party-backed effort has led to the adoption of “social justice” teaching methods, as outlined in a 2018 curricula guide published by the Asia Society.
One case study highlighted by the group reveals a high school math teacher introducing “discussions of social justice issues in her algebra classes”:
“Rachel Fruin, a high school math teacher in Naperville, Illinois, in the United States uses newspaper stories as the starting point for brief math-informed discussions of social justice issues in her algebra classes.”
The document also reveals how this ideology has even permeated the hiring process for teachers, as Denver Center for International Studies (DCIS) principal Vanessa Acevedo admits to hiring people who are “committed to social justice and equity”:
“In hiring teachers, Acevedo looks for candidates who have had experiences with other cultures, such as people who have served in the Peace Corps, or who have traveled extensively. “My hope is that, if you come to DCIS, you will have some passion about learning about the world, or are an avid traveler,” she says, adding that she also looks for people who understand how to teach in culturally responsive ways and who are committed to social justice and equity.”
Among the recommend “educator resources” are classroom exercises that have students craft a social media campaign aimed at “unraveling systemic racism in schools” and infographics that articulate “the challenges of xenophobia.” Another resource calls for “teacher activism” in the classroom, urging teachers to “suggest students write essays, blogs, pen letters to editors, and other types of advocacy”:
“There is a tendency to shy away from “teaching activism” in the classroom, due to beliefs that activism is too radical for a space like a school. The ultimate goal of developing global competence, though, is to grow students who can take action to improve their world. Educators should address the importance of disruptive protests to social movements throughout history, such as the American Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and ’60s. Help students navigate the complexity of viewpoints on organizing tactics, talking through the utility and potential consequences of differing approaches. As a possible resource, The Chicago History Museum has developed a lesson plan around protest in American history.
For example, what are the pros and cons of staging a counter-protest at a political rally for a politician who has been vocally anti-immigrant? Perhaps even help students understand what is involved in planning an action like this this, ensuring students are aware of the legal requirements (e.g., permits, types of allowed speech), and how to deal with counter-protestors, including safety issues in light of the recent violence against protestors at Donald Trump rallies.”
Teachers also inform students how to “critically examine issues such as poverty, trade, migration, inequality, environmental justice, conflict, cultural differences, and stereotypes” – even North Korea.
An Asia Society-recommended resource instructs teachers on how to get students to “look beyond the stereotypes” of the communist country:
“North Korea is the country everyone loves to hate. Be it their leader’s idiosyncratic behavior or their insistence on making and testing nuclear weapons, media and political leaders alike focus on the strangeness of North Korea and eagerly perpetuate superficial stereotypes about the country and its people. But by using the tools of global competence as a starting point, you can empower your students to consider North Korea beyond the stereotypes and gain a better understanding of the country.”
Other initiatives sponsored by the Asia Society include the “Education for Equity” initiative which seeks to develop “materials for teachers, parents and youth themselves that enable all students to understand and act on racism as an interpersonal and structural malignancy.” Another initiative – “Teaching Truth To Power” – “looks at the root causes of systemic racism in public education, identifies exactly what it looks like, and empowers parents and educators to do something about it.”
In addition to influencing curricula, the Asia Society is actively involved with the formation of new schools as part of its International Studies Schools Network (ISSN), which boasts about teaching students the “language of globalism”:
“Six years ago, we didn’t have anything,” Sharpstown International Principal Chang Yu says. Faced with a failing school, the Houston Independent School District asked Asia Society to help start a new small school, Sharpstown International School, in the same neighborhood. The idea was to use proven reform efforts to make unsuccessful schools successful. Chang adds, without prompting or hesitation: “Without the Asia Society we wouldn’t be here.” […]
It’s not that the meat and potatoes — reading, writing and arithmetic — are neglected; in fact, students’ performances on standardized tests have risen sharply. What’s different at Sharpstown is that the words “world”, “Asia,” and “global” are in the air, painted flags decorate hallway floors, and students are fluent not only in Mandarin, say, but in what you might call the language of globalism.
The Asia Society’s subversion of American classrooms with “social justice” teaching tactics and globalist ideology follows The National Pulse unearthing the organization’s ties to the Chinese Communist Party’s controversial Confucius Institutes and their K-12 counterparts, Confucius Classrooms.
These initiatives have been described by Chinese government officials as “an important part of China’s overseas propaganda set-up” – along with intellectual property theft and espionage per the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Department of Justice (DOJ).
Amazon has drawn backlash on social media for being “nefarious” after offering people $10 to enroll in its controversial palm print recognition system. The tech uses biometric scanners to identify shoppers and verify payments.
The promotion, which was spotted by Tech Crunch and other industry outlets, offers customers $10 in promotional credit if they register their palm prints at the company’s check-out free stores and link it to their Amazon accounts.
The system, called ‘Amazon One’, was launched last September. It was billed as a quick, easy and “contactless”alternative to making physical cash and card payments at stores – as well as a potential identity verification service for event venues and businesses in the future.
After a person positions their hand over the scanner, it records and stores their unique “palm signature” down to its most “minute characteristics”. This includes “surface-area details like lines and ridges” and “subcutaneous features” like vein patterns.
The Amazon One device then uses a “process of proprietary imaging and computer vision algorithms” to “capture and encrypt your palm image” in just “seconds”.
This embedded data is then used to create a unique ‘Amazon One ID’, which automatically links to Amazon-registered email addresses, mobile phone numbers and bank cards.
The retail giant claims customers’ palm data is “stored separately” from other personal information and is “only used to generate and update” their palm signatures and identity verification. However, it admits that a “subset of anonymous data”is used to improve the system.
As well, the palm data is stored indefinitely unless users opt to delete their data and cancel their Amazon One ID once there are no outstanding transactions remaining. The data is also stored for up to two years before being deleted – if a customer does not interact with a palm scanner in that period.
The system is currently available in 50 locations across the US, including Whole Foods stores and a number of Amazon retail shops. In an April blog post, the company claimed that “thousands” of customers had enrolled in the service and touted its “contactless” design during the Covid pandemic.
Despite the apparently positive feedback for the system, the company has not spoken about the reasons behind its decision to offer $10 to entice customers to part with their palm prints. Amazon is yet to release a statement about the promotion and a number of tech outlets have said the company’s spokespeople provided no comment on it.
In addition, the majority of social media users have declined to take up the company’s offer to part with their “priceless” data, with one person telling Amazon founder Jeff Bezos to “talk to the hand”.
Several people said they would consider the offer if it added a “whole bunch of zeroes” to that amount.
“I’d do it for $10 annually, like a subscription they have to renew. I’d call it PrimePrint. Copyrighted already,” one person tweeted.
Other people joked about what they would rather do with their palm prints instead – with answers ranging from auctioningit as an NFT (non-fungible token) to using it to “somehow raise a cursed, 3,000-year-old mummy from the dead”.
Others pointed to Amazon’s track record in data privacy and biometric technology, criticizing its decision to sell data from its controversial facial recognition tech ‘Rekognition’ to law enforcement in particular.
Although the company banned the police from using its technology last year, a number of lawsuits have alleged that it broke laws against sharing personal biometric data without permission.
A number of people said Amazon would “recoup that $10” by selling palm signatures to the police or use it for other “nefarious reasons”. One user suggested a scenario where their whole body would eventually be “digitized” by the company on the grounds that the palm data alone was not “secure enough”.
Nice try Amazon but I know this will probably be used for nefarious reasons so no thank you
— 🐐G̫i̫l̫b̫e̫r̫t̫ P̫a̫p̫i̫ C̫h̫u̫l̫o̫ R̫o̫l̫a̫n̫d̫ (@YaNanous) August 3, 2021
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said Wednesday that New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo should face criminal charges following an explosive report from Attorney General Letitia James that concluded that Cuomo sexually harassed 11 women and likely “violated federal and state law.”
De Blasio, who has long feuded with his fellow Democrat, also predicted the governor will eventually resign.
“If you assault a woman, you do something against her will sexually, that’s criminal,” de Blasio said on CBS. “The Albany County District Attorney’s looking at that, and I think he should be charged.”
In fact, Albany County District Attorney David Soares said Tuesday that his office is indeed beginning a criminal investigation into Cuomo. “We are conducting our own separate investigation,” Soares said on “NBC Nightly News.”
The Democratic governor sexually harassed at least 11 women and then retaliated against at least one former employee who complained, according to a report released Tuesday by state Attorney General Letitia James. The report concluded that the governor “sexually harassed multiple women and in doing so violated federal and state law,” James said at a press conference.
The probe included interviews with 179 witnesses and a review of tens of thousands of documents, concluding that Cuomo’s office was a hostile workplace filled with fear and intimidation.
The mayor said the report will likely prompt Cuomo to step down. “I think, ultimately, he will have to resign, either because of a prosecution, wherein he makes some deal around giving up his office, or because an impeachment is imminent,” de Blasio said on “MSNBC’s Morning Joe.”
De Blasio said Cuomo’s current situation mirrors that of 2002 when Cuomo abandoned his gubernatorial campaign. “In 2002, he ran for governor. When it looked like he wasn’t going to win that primary, he got out of town before the election happened,” de Blasio said. “He literally pulled out of the election rather than suffer defeat. So I think that is a very likely scenario here.”
After the attorney general’s report came out, President Joe Biden called on Cuomo to step down. “He should resign,” Biden told reporters at the White House. Asked whether Cuomo should be impeached and removed from office if he refuses to resign, Biden said, “I understand the state legislature may decide to impeach, I do not know that for a fact.”
Cuomo release a video statement after the report and said he will not resign, denying the report’s findings and saying his actions had been mischaracterized or misinterpreted.
De Blasio ripped Cuomo’s statement.
“Putting your hand up a woman’s shirt and touching her breast is not generational,” he said on CBS. “I know plenty of guys who are older who would never in a million years do that,” he added. “Talking to 20-something year-old woman, asking if they’d date an older guy, and then leering at them — this is not acceptable behavior.”
Repurposing money allocated from last year’s pandemic-fueled CARES Act for use in this year’s bipartisan infrastructure act won’t mean that the nation won’t still have a massive debt to repay, Sen. James Lankford warned on Newsmax Wednesday.
“Our grandchildren will pay for this massive, massive bill,” the Oklahoma Republican said on Newsmax’s “Wake Up America,” pointing out that about half of the proposed $1 trillion bill hasn’t yet been funded and there has been talk about using the unspent money from the CARES Act to help with that.
“The problem is that the CARES Act funds also weren’t paid for,” said Lankford. “That was an actual emergency that was going on where we had to do some debt spending. This is not an emergency … only $110 billion of this bill actually pays for real infrastructure, bridges, roads, things like that.”
Meanwhile, progressive House Democrats are saying that the party won’t back the bill at all unless a separate $3.5 trillion package advances that includes non-traditional infrastructure like free college and childcare programs, and Lankford said such things are what happens when Democrats take over control of Congress.
But under former President Donald Trump and with Republicans holding the House and the Senate, “we did the largest tax decrease in American history, stimulated the economy with a tremendous number of jobs, and that helped push what happened in our economy in 2019 and early 2020,” said Lankford.
“When Democrats get control, they want to do the largest tax increase in history, and they want to do total redistribution of wealth instead of actually encouraging people to get jobs like we had encouraged before,” Lankford continued. “They’re encouraging people to stay home and we’ll just send you money for random projects … the best way to help people rise out of poverty is a job. To be able to do that, it’s also best for their family. It’s best for their kids. It’s best for the nation as a whole. Let’s do that rather than just the redistribution of wealth, which is what the Democrats are trying to be able to push now.”
Also on Wednesday, Lankford discussed reports that migrants from other places besides Mexico and Central America join in the hundreds of thousands of people coming across the U.S. border.
“Every single month, the numbers go up,” said Lankford. “March was a record number, beaten by April, beaten by May, beaten by June, now beaten by July. Even the Department of Homeland Security has now had to admit in public filings that they had to do in a court case last week that this year looks like it will be the highest number of illegal crossings in the history of keeping records. So this is an absolute catastrophe that’s happened.”
He also denied the Biden administration’s claims that the root cause of the border situation is because of situations in Central America and blamed the cause on President Joe Biden’s policies themselves.
“This has become really absurd,” said Lankford. “The American people have not moved on from this, though the national media has moved on to it because the American people really see what’s going on on the border. It’s open and we have a rolling crisis happening.”
U.S. automakers to say they aspire to up to 50% of EV sales by 2030 -sources
Detroit’s Big Three automakers plan to announce on Thursday that they aspire to have 40% to 50% of new vehicle sales by 2030 be electric models as they call for billions in U.S. government assistance to meet aggressive targets, sources briefed on the matter said.
The White House is planning an event on electric vehicles and fuel economy standards with President Joe Biden and chief executives from General Motors Co (GM.N), Ford Motor Co (F.N) and Chrysler parent Stellantis NV (STLA.MI). The administration this week plans to propose revisions to fuel economy requirements through the 2026 model year.
The three automakers declined to comment on Wednesday, as did the White House. Some major foreign automakers are also expected to support the aspiration target.
The administration has been pressing automakers to back a voluntary pledge of at least 40% of new vehicle sales being electric by 2030 as it works to reduce greenhouse gas pollution, Reuters reported last week.
Automakers are spending tens of billions of dollars to speed EV adoption, even though U.S. EV sales outside Tesla Inc’s (TSLA.O) remain small.
Consulting firm AlixPartners in June said investments in electric vehicles by 2025 could total $330 billion, a 41% increase from the firm’s comparable five-year investment outlook a year ago. As of now, electric vehicles represent about 2% of total global vehicle sales, and will be about 24% of total sales by 2030, the firm forecast.
Biden has resisted calls from many Democrats to set a binding target for EV adoption or to follow California or some countries in setting 2035 as a date to phase out the sale of new gasoline-powered light duty vehicles.
Some environmental groups have been calling for enforceable requirements and tough vehicle emissions rules through 2026.
Automakers’ target includes full-battery electric, plug-in electric hybrid vehicles, which also have gasoline engines, and hydrogen fuel cell models, sources said.
The automakers will make clear in a joint statement that the aggressive EV targets are contingent on additional government support for EVs and the charging industry. The sources said the wording of the statement could still change before Thursday.
Biden has called for $174 billion in government spending to boost EVs, including $100 billion in consumer incentives. A bipartisan Senate infrastructure bill includes $7.5 billion for EV charging stations but no money for new consumer incentives.
Last month Stellantis said it was targeting over 40% of U.S. vehicles be low-emission by 2030.
GM has said it aspires to end sales of new U.S. gasoline-powered light duty vehicles by 2035, and said on Wednesday it is focused on full electric vehicles rather than plug-in hybrid vehicles. Ford has said it plans “at least 40% of our global vehicle volume being all-electric by 2030.”
The United Auto Workers union, which has been involved in White House and automaker discussions in recent weeks, has opposed EV mandates, warning it could put jobs at risk.
This week, U.S. regulators plan propose revising former President Donald Trump’s March 2020 rollback of fuel economy standards. Trump required 1.5% annual increases in efficiency through 2026, well below the 5% yearly boosts set in 2012 by President Barack Obama’s administration.
Biden’s proposed rules, which would cover 2023-2026, are expected to be similar in overall vehicle emissions reductions to California’s 2019 deal with some automakers that aims to improve fuel economy 3.7% annually through 2026, sources told Reuters.
The 2026 requirements are expected to exceed the Obama-era 5% annual improvements.
The United States pledged at a global climate summit this year to reduce emissions 50% to 52% by 2030, compared with 2005 levels.
In March, a group of 71 Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives urged Biden to set tough emissions rules to ensure that 60% of new passenger cars and trucks sold are zero-emission by 2030.