‘Former Pfizer Vice President Mike Yeadon discusses his thoughts as to why the lockdown was a mistake, and why the government strategies to manage the pandemic are only making things worse.’
Free Speech
Where are the moderate Muslims? In Britain ‘There was much rejoicing among Britain’s Islamists last week when the thinktank and campaigning organisation Quilliam announced that it was closing. The Islamists were pleased because for the 14 years since its founding Quilliam has been the most prominent Muslim-run organisation arguing for a progressive, non-Islamist Islam.
The exact reasons why Quilliam has shut down are not clear. The co-founder, Maajid Nawaz, has blamed the difficulties of sustaining a non-profit in the era of Covid. Perhaps it is that, or perhaps it is something else. The group never had an easy ride. But the fact that it didn’t, and that so many prominent British Muslims are celebrating its demise, points to a problem worth noting.
I was there in 2007 when Quilliam started. Like a lot of other people, I had spent some years wondering precisely where the reforming Muslims — even the ‘moderate Muslims’ — actually were. After 9/11, 7/7, the Danish cartoons and much more, our country was still going through the early-learning stages regarding Islam. Every time a terrorist attack happened we were assured that Islam was a religion of peace. But when some prominent Muslim organisation was brought forth to reassure us, all too often they tended to be nutters themselves.
Generally, after every attack they would condemn the attack. But they always had a ‘but’. They might condemn the killing of cartoonists but say that blasphemy was a very serious matter in Islam and that this was something the non-believers had to realise. They tended to condemn the destruction of the World Trade Center, but were by no means against terror if it was aimed against Israel. When they condemned the 7/7 bombings they would go straight on to denouncing British foreign policy and warning of ‘Islamophobic’ backlashes. The cumulative effect felt by a lot of us was that Islam had bigger problems than many people were willing to admit.Very few British Muslims feel represented by the communal groups who seek to speak in their name
In time our societal understanding grew more informed. For instance, it became evident that the Muslim community (like almost every other community) had a problem with its self-elected ‘representatives’. Ordinary Muslims had no more desire to presume to ‘speak for’ or ‘lead’ their fellow religionists than any healthy gay person wants to have anything to do with Stonewall. But there was another problem too: the Islamists had spent years organising and the good guys had not.
For instance, while the radicals of Jamaat-e-Islami don’t do very well in Pakistani politics, they have done well in Pakistani diaspora politics in the UK, dominating a number of the groups that like to present themselves as representative. Very few British Muslims feel that they are represented to government by the communal groups who seek to speak in their name. And in truth those communal groups have done an enormous disservice not just to British Muslims but to Britain as a whole.
In 2014 a scandal erupted over a number of state schools in Birmingham that had been taken over by Islamists. Former Met deputy assistant commissioner Peter Clarke’s investigation was detailed and troubling. Individuals involved in the education of these local children were found to be churning out a diet of conspiracist thinking (not least about terror attacks), hostility to the society and ‘a constant undercurrent of anti-western sentiment’.
Yet even now you don’t read much about the Trojan Horse affair because Britain’s hardline organisations and prominent individuals from the House of Lords down spent so much energy pouring slurry over the story. For exposing the conspiracies Peter Clarke and anybody else who expressed concern about the scandal was dismissed as a conspiracy theorist, an Islamophobe and more. To my recollection, among all the UK’s major Muslim organisations, only one accepted that the problem was real and expressed concern at what was found. That organisation was Quilliam.
It was the same with issue after issue. Quilliam was the only Muslim group that didn’t come out with condemnations only to build up to a ‘but’. Three years ago Quilliam produced a report into the ‘grooming gangs’ question — the polite term for the mass rape of thousands of children in towns across England. Because the perpetrators appeared to be disproportionately of Muslim background, Quilliam did a great service in not only addressing the issue but doing so from a Muslim direction. This suggested to Muslims and non-Muslims alike that there were Muslims in this country willing to stand up to these problems, not simply sweep them under the rug and condemn people who’d noticed them.
Once again the response was clear. Every Islamist and Islamist-sympathising group and individual in the UK lammed into Quilliam. It was accused of being ‘far right’ or aiding the ‘far right’, just as it had spent years being accused of ‘Islamophobia’.
It is interesting, this disproportionate vitriol targeted not just at reformers but at real prominent moderates within Islam. The hatred and venom aimed at Nawaz and his colleagues has been exceptional. They have literally had to fear for their lives. And the hatred has far outweighed any aimed at Islamist groups operating in Britain. Certainly the moderates have got far more flak than the Hamas leaders living here. Or the Jamaat types and other backward tribalists who populate the discourse and occasionally the airwaves. And why should that be?
For two decades now, that has been perhaps the most suggestive question. Outside a school in Batley in recent weeks some Muslims have been organising to intimidate a teacher, his family, bosses and colleagues. Will there be campaigns against them? Will the ‘mainstream’ Muslim organisations do anything to de-escalate the problem? As always they will pretend to be brokers between people who can’t be negotiated with and the state.
I don’t say this with any glee, but anybody who put their chips on Islamic reformation or moderate Islam saving everyone should think on the demise of Quilliam. Some of this country’s best citizens, who happened also to be Muslims, gave Islamic reform a good shot here. But it was they — and not their critics — who as a result became the principal target. Not a good sign. Not a good sign at all.’https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/what-the-demise-of-quilliam-teaches-us-about-britain-and-Islam
The following is adapted from a lecture delivered at Hillsdale College on March 30, 2021.
‘Critical race theory is fast becoming America’s new institutional orthodoxy. Yet most Americans have never heard of it—and of those who have, many don’t understand it. It’s time for this to change. We need to know what it is so we can know how to fight it.
In explaining critical race theory, it helps to begin with a brief history of Marxism. Originally, the Marxist Left built its political program on the theory of class conflict. Marx believed that the primary characteristic of industrial societies was the imbalance of power between capitalists and workers. The solution to that imbalance, according to Marx, was revolution: the workers would eventually gain consciousness of their plight, seize the means of production, overthrow the capitalist class, and usher in a new socialist society.
During the 20th century, a number of regimes underwent Marxist-style revolutions, and each ended in disaster. Socialist governments in the Soviet Union, China, Cambodia, Cuba, and elsewhere racked up a body count of nearly 100 million of their own people. They are remembered for their gulags, show trials, executions, and mass starvations. In practice, Marx’s ideas unleashed man’s darkest brutalities.
By the mid-1960s, Marxist intellectuals in the West had begun to acknowledge these failures. They recoiled at revelations of Soviet atrocities and came to realize that workers’ revolutions would never occur in Western Europe or the United States, where there were large middle classes and rapidly improving standards of living. Americans in particular had never developed a sense of class consciousness or class division. Most Americans believed in the American dream—the idea that they could transcend their origins through education, hard work, and good citizenship.
But rather than abandon their Leftist political project, Marxist scholars in the West simply adapted their revolutionary theory to the social and racial unrest of the 1960s. Abandoning Marx’s economic dialectic of capitalists and workers, they substituted race for class and sought to create a revolutionary coalition of the dispossessed based on racial and ethnic categories.
Fortunately, the early proponents of this revolutionary coalition in the U.S. lost out in the 1960s to the civil rights movement, which sought instead the fulfillment of the American promise of freedom and equality under the law. Americans preferred the idea of improving their country to that of overthrowing it. The vision of Martin Luther King, Jr., President Johnson’s pursuit of the Great Society, and the restoration of law and order promised by President Nixon in his 1968 campaign defined the post-1960s American political consensus.
But the radical Left has proved resilient and enduring—which is where critical race theory comes in.
WHAT IT IS
Critical race theory is an academic discipline, formulated in the 1990s, built on the intellectual framework of identity-based Marxism. Relegated for many years to universities and obscure academic journals, over the past decade it has increasingly become the default ideology in our public institutions. It has been injected into government agencies, public school systems, teacher training programs, and corporate human resources departments in the form of diversity training programs, human resources modules, public policy frameworks, and school curricula.
There are a series of euphemisms deployed by its supporters to describe critical race theory, including “equity,” “social justice,” “diversity and inclusion,” and “culturally responsive teaching.” Critical race theorists, masters of language construction, realize that “neo-Marxism” would be a hard sell. Equity, on the other hand, sounds non-threatening and is easily confused with the American principle of equality. But the distinction is vast and important. Indeed, equality—the principle proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence, defended in the Civil War, and codified into law with the 14th and 15th Amendments, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965—is explicitly rejected by critical race theorists. To them, equality represents “mere nondiscrimination” and provides “camouflage” for white supremacy, patriarchy, and oppression.
In contrast to equality, equity as defined and promoted by critical race theorists is little more than reformulated Marxism. In the name of equity, UCLA Law Professor and critical race theorist Cheryl Harris has proposed suspending private property rights, seizing land and wealth and redistributing them along racial lines. Critical race guru Ibram X. Kendi, who directs the Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University, has proposed the creation of a federal Department of Antiracism. This department would be independent of (i.e., unaccountable to) the elected branches of government, and would have the power to nullify, veto, or abolish any law at any level of government and curtail the speech of political leaders and others who are deemed insufficiently “antiracist.”
One practical result of the creation of such a department would be the overthrow of capitalism, since according to Kendi, “In order to truly be antiracist, you also have to truly be anti-capitalist.” In other words, identity is the means and Marxism is the end.
An equity-based form of government would mean the end not only of private property, but also of individual rights, equality under the law, federalism, and freedom of speech. These would be replaced by race-based redistribution of wealth, group-based rights, active discrimination, and omnipotent bureaucratic authority. Historically, the accusation of “anti-Americanism” has been overused. But in this case, it’s not a matter of interpretation—critical race theory prescribes a revolutionary program that would overturn the principles of the Declaration and destroy the remaining structure of the Constitution.
HOW IT WORKS
What does critical race theory look like in practice? Last year, I authored a series of reports focused on critical race theory in the federal government. The FBI was holding workshops on intersectionality theory. The Department of Homeland Security was telling white employees they were committing “microinequities” and had been “socialized into oppressor roles.” The Treasury Department held a training session telling staff members that “virtually all white people contribute to racism” and that they must convert “everyone in the federal government” to the ideology of “antiracism.” And the Sandia National Laboratories, which designs America’s nuclear arsenal, sent white male executives to a three-day reeducation camp, where they were told that “white male culture” was analogous to the “KKK,” “white supremacists,” and “mass killings.” The executives were then forced to renounce their “white male privilege” and write letters of apology to fictitious women and people of color.
This year, I produced another series of reports focused on critical race theory in education. In Cupertino, California, an elementary school forced first-graders to deconstruct their racial and sexual identities, and rank themselves according to their “power and privilege.” In Springfield, Missouri, a middle school forced teachers to locate themselves on an “oppression matrix,” based on the idea that straight, white, English-speaking, Christian males are members of the oppressor class and must atone for their privilege and “covert white supremacy.” In Philadelphia, an elementary school forced fifth-graders to celebrate “Black communism” and simulate a Black Power rally to free 1960s radical Angela Davis from prison, where she had once been held on charges of murder. And in Seattle, the school district told white teachers that they are guilty of “spirit murder” against black children and must “bankrupt [their] privilege in acknowledgement of [their] thieved inheritance.”
I’m just one investigative journalist, but I’ve developed a database of more than 1,000 of these stories. When I say that critical race theory is becoming the operating ideology of our public institutions, it is not an exaggeration—from the universities to bureaucracies to k-12 school systems, critical race theory has permeated the collective intelligence and decision-making process of American government, with no sign of slowing down.
This is a revolutionary change. When originally established, these government institutions were presented as neutral, technocratic, and oriented towards broadly-held perceptions of the public good. Today, under the increasing sway of critical race theory and related ideologies, they are being turned against the American people. This isn’t limited to the permanent bureaucracy in Washington, D.C., but is true as well of institutions in the states, even in red states, and it is spreading to county public health departments, small Midwestern school districts, and more. This ideology will not stop until it has devoured all of our institutions.
FUTILE RESISTANCE
Thus far, attempts to halt the encroachment of critical race theory have been ineffective. There are a number of reasons for this.
First, too many Americans have developed an acute fear of speaking up about social and political issues, especially those involving race. According to a recent Gallup poll, 77 percent of conservatives are afraid to share their political beliefs publicly. Worried about getting mobbed on social media, fired from their jobs, or worse, they remain quiet, largely ceding the public debate to those pushing these anti-American ideologies. Consequently, the institutions themselves become monocultures: dogmatic, suspicious, and hostile to a diversity of opinion. Conservatives in both the federal government and public school systems have told me that their “equity and inclusion” departments serve as political offices, searching for and stamping out any dissent from the official orthodoxy.
Second, critical race theorists have constructed their argument like a mousetrap. Disagreement with their program becomes irrefutable evidence of a dissenter’s “white fragility,” “unconscious bias,” or “internalized white supremacy.” I’ve seen this projection of false consciousness on their opponents play out dozens of times in my reporting. Diversity trainers will make an outrageous claim—such as “all whites are intrinsically oppressors” or “white teachers are guilty of spirit murdering black children”—and then when confronted with disagreement, they adopt a patronizing tone and explain that participants who feel “defensiveness” or “anger” are reacting out of guilt and shame. Dissenters are instructed to remain silent, “lean into the discomfort,” and accept their “complicity in white supremacy.”
Third, Americans across the political spectrum have failed to separate the premise of critical race theory from its conclusion. Its premise—that American history includes slavery and other injustices, and that we should examine and learn from that history—is undeniable. But its revolutionary conclusion—that America was founded on and defined by racism and that our founding principles, our Constitution, and our way of life should be overthrown—does not rightly, much less necessarily, follow.
Fourth and finally, the writers and activists who have had the courage to speak out against critical race theory have tended to address it on the theoretical level, pointing out the theory’s logical contradictions and dishonest account of history. These criticisms are worthy and good, but they move the debate into the academic realm, which is friendly terrain for proponents of critical race theory. They fail to force defenders of this revolutionary ideology to defend the practical consequences of their ideas in the realm of politics.
POLITICAL ENGAGEMENT
No longer simply an academic matter, critical race theory has become a tool of political power. To borrow a phrase from the Marxist theoretician Antonio Gramsci, it is fast achieving “cultural hegemony” in America’s public institutions. More and more, it is driving the vast machinery of the state and society. If we want to succeed in opposing it, we must address it politically at every level.
Critical race theorists must be confronted with and forced to speak to the facts. Do they support public schools separating first-graders into groups of “oppressors” and “oppressed”? Do they support mandatory curricula teaching that “all white people play a part in perpetuating systemic racism”? Do they support public schools instructing white parents to become “white traitors” and advocate for “white abolition”? Do they want those who work in government to be required to undergo this kind of reeducation? How about managers and workers in corporate America? How about the men and women in our military? How about every one of us?
There are three parts to a successful strategy to defeat the forces of critical race theory: governmental action, grassroots mobilization, and an appeal to principle.
We already see examples of governmental action. Last year, one of my reports led President Trump to issue an executive order banning critical race theory-based training programs in the federal government. President Biden rescinded this order on his first day in office, but it provides a model for governors and municipal leaders to follow. This year, several state legislatures have introduced bills to achieve the same goal: preventing public institutions from conducting programs that stereotype, scapegoat, or demean people on the basis of race. And I have organized a coalition of attorneys to file lawsuits against schools and government agencies that impose critical race theory-based programs on grounds of the First Amendment (which protects citizens from compelled speech), the Fourteenth Amendment (which provides equal protection under the law), and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (which prohibits public institutions from discriminating on the basis of race).
On the grassroots level, a multiracial and bipartisan coalition is emerging to do battle against critical race theory. Parents are mobilizing against racially divisive curricula in public schools and employees are increasingly speaking out against Orwellian reeducation in the workplace. When they see what is happening, Americans are naturally outraged that critical race theory promotes three ideas—race essentialism, collective guilt, and neo-segregation—which violate the basic principles of equality and justice. Anecdotally, many Chinese-Americans have told me that having survived the Cultural Revolution in their former country, they refuse to let the same thing happen here.
In terms of principles, we need to employ our own moral language rather than allow ourselves to be confined by the categories of critical race theory. For example, we often find ourselves debating “diversity.” Diversity as most of us understand it is generally good, all things being equal, but it is of secondary value. We should be talking about and aiming at excellence, a common standard that challenges people of all backgrounds to achieve their potential. On the scale of desirable ends, excellence beats diversity every time.
Similarly, in addition to pointing out the dishonesty of the historical narrative on which critical race theory is predicated, we must promote the true story of America—a story that is honest about injustices in American history, but that places them in the context of our nation’s high ideals and the progress we have made towards realizing them. Genuine American history is rich with stories of achievements and sacrifices that will move the hearts of Americans—in stark contrast to the grim and pessimistic narrative pressed by critical race theorists.
Above all, we must have courage—the fundamental virtue required in our time. Courage to stand and speak the truth. Courage to withstand epithets. Courage to face the mob. Courage to shrug off the scorn of the elites. When enough of us overcome the fear that currently prevents so many from speaking out, the hold of critical race theory will begin to slip. And courage begets courage. It’s easy to stop a lone dissenter; it’s much harder to stop 10, 20, 100, 1,000, 1,000,000, or more who stand up together for the principles of America.
Truth and justice are on our side. If we can muster the courage, we will win.’https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/critical-race-theory-fight/?utm_campaign=imprimis&utm_medium=email&_hsmi=121792381&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-9MbG_CCSTOxYtkWZIAJ6rPkKi91EAgHQcSl9wvcQk7Duk9NL0XocHqKLjJPQq52cC63XkDVbJoesoZn8_BAitcX85Vog&utm_content=121790319&utm_source=hs_email
The CCP is taking the West without shooting a shot. One of the many ways the CCP is taking us over is through the China virus and the China virus vaccines. Our governments are either complicit or just stupid! Fortunately ‘In an effort to combat Big Pharma Corporate Media and Big Tech censorship, doctors around the world are frantically trying to warn the masses of the devastating effects of the experimental COVID vaccines about to be mass injected into the unsuspecting public assisted by military forces around the world.
What could possibly motivate these doctors, nurses, scientists, and other health professionals to make such an impassioned plea? What do they have to gain by taking the time to educate the public on the hidden dangers of a new class of vaccine about to be inflicted upon the citizens of countries around the world?
They have NOTHING TO GAIN, and much to lose, including their careers, and possibly even their lives.
So why are they doing this? Why are these doctors and professionals being censored so much if the new COVID vaccines are in fact “safe and effective”? What is it that the media and the government are hiding that they don’t want the public to know?
They are doing this because they are doctors and scientists who actually understand the REAL science here, and who know the devastating potential consequences of those who choose to get this very toxic and dangerous vaccine, and they are trying to save as many people as possible from the carnage this vaccine is going to cause, which will include DEATH, brain injuries, life-long autoimmune disease, infertility, and more.’ https://rumble.com/vdbg4t-doctors-around-the-world-issue-dire-warning-do-not-get-the-experimental-cov.html?mref=6zof&mrefc=3
If anyone SHOULD celebrate FREE SPEECH it would be a law school; Right?! Well, not so fast!
‘SAN DIEGO, Calif., April 13, 2021 — Almost a month after launching a preliminary investigation into law professor Tom Smith’s online comments criticizing the Chinese government, the University of San Diego School of Law is doubling down on its violation of Smith’s expressive rights. In defiance of free speech advocacy efforts by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education and others, the law school has now passed the investigation to the university for an official review.
“We have an oppressive institution cracking down on dissent by investigating a professor for criticizing an oppressive government cracking down on dissent,” said Sabrina Conza, FIRE program analyst. “USD’s unconscionable treatment of Smith is a delight for fans of irony and censorship alike.”
On March 10, Smith posted an excerpt from a Wall Street Journal op-ed on his personal blog, along with his own commentary: “If you believe that the coronavirus did not escape from the lab in Wuhan, you have to at least consider that you are an idiot who is swallowing whole a lot [sic] of Chinese cock swaddle.”
After the post prompted cries of racism from student groups, the university opened an investigation into Smith’s reference to “Chinese cock swaddle.” In response to the criticism, Smith updated the post to clarify that he was referring to the Chinese government, not to Chinese people generally.
FIRE defended Smith’s freedom of expression in March with a letter to the university. The university’s general counsel responded, offering only that USD was “reviewing the matter and expeditiously will take action as appropriate.” FIRE sent a second letter on April 1 expressing its disappointment with the tepid response and reminding the university that investigations alone are enough to create an impermissible chilling effect on campus.
“It’s easy to say that you have the right to free speech, but there’s a climate where there’s so much that you risk by exercising that right,” Smith told FIRE. “And it ends up really diminishing academic freedom.”
FIRE received no response to its second letter, but Smith let FIRE know on April 6 that rather than backing down, the university launched an official “review.”
“Against the objections of free speech advocates and all common sense, and in defiance of its own promises to protect extramural expression, USD continues to obsess over Smith’s comments,” said Conza. “The school must immediately end its review so that all faculty can feel free to express themselves and engage in open dialogue.”
In his inaugural address as president, USD President James Harris said the university can set an example in higher education by playing a “central role as a bastion of free speech and open dialogue in a free and democratic society.”
Though USD is a private institution not bound by the First Amendment, it is required to live up to its promises of free expression.’https://www.thefire.org/a-professor-is-under-investigation-for-criticizing-the-chinese-government-defend-his-rights-with-two-clicks/
Bill and Hillary ought to be proud of their leftist cancel culture daughter! Yes, ‘Chelsea Clinton wants Facebook to ban Fox News host Tucker Carlson from its website after a clip from Carlson’s program casting doubt on the effectiveness of coronavirus vaccines went viral this week.’https://www.theblaze.com/news/chelsea-clinton-facebook-ban-tucker-carlson?utm_source=theblaze-dailyPM&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Daily-Newsletter__PM%202021-04-15&utm_term=ACTIVE%20LIST%20-%20TheBlaze%20Daily%20PM
Here in Australia who knows when normality will again allow us to fly overseas again? As hard as they (whoever ‘they’ are) made it to go through airports before the China virus one wonders how hard it will be after? Are you going to get a China virus Passport? I am not! Well, that’s not really the reason for this article but this is. We belong to United Airlines Mileage Plus program and received the following email today. These corporations, United included, must be led by Earth worshipping pagans who seem to think we humans can save the earth! There is only one Saviour and He came over two thousand years ago and died and rose again to not save the earth but to save sinners!! Whatever, we do in our daily living is NOT going to save the earth! Oh, I also wasn’t aware that these pagans not not only have Earth day but now they have EARTH MONTH! Well, anyway here is the email from United.
‘This Earth Month, we have a lot to celebrate at United. We’ve committed to being 100% green by reducing our carbon emissions 100% by 2050 and have invested in ground-breaking technology to make our goal a reality. But there’s still a long way to go. And today, we’re launching an industry-first effort that has the potential to play a significant role in the global fight against climate change.
The Eco-Skies Alliance program is a new way for companies to join United in our investment in sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), the fastest and most effective way to reduce emissions across our fleet.
We’re already the largest airline purchaser of SAF in the world, and today, big brands like Deloitte, DHL Global Forwarding, HP Inc. and Siemens will join us to purchase the emissions reductions from approximately 3.4 million gallons of SAF this year. That’s enough to fly travelers over 220 million miles. By joining forces, we’re demonstrating what companies can achieve when they come together for the greater good.
At the same time, we know our customers are looking for ways to do their part, so we’re giving you an easy way to participate and take action. Right now, you can make a personal contribution for our purchase of SAF. Since strong federal and state policy leadership are essential to making change happen, you can also get involved by connecting with your elected officials to advocate for policies that could make air travel more sustainable.
This is just the beginning. We expect to add more corporate partners to our Eco-Skies Alliance program this year, and we’re planning to give you even more visibility into the carbon impact of air travel — including easy ways for you to help contribute to real, scalable solutions.
As the Eco-Skies Alliance program continues to grow, we’ll keep connecting the world while ensuring it has a bright, sustainable future.’ (An Email from United)
1John 5:11,12 And this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. 12 He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life.
Sleepy and most if not all those he appoints to various positions conduct themselves according to the dictates of that one who deceived Eve in the Garden and continues to deceive through various lies of which one is climate change! Sleepy and those working with him loath America and this is vividly seen when ‘In February, Beverly Wright linked the legacy of slavery and the Jim Crow era with energy development. In March, President Joe Biden appointed Wright to his White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council.
Wright, the founder of the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice, is joined on the council by Jade Begay of the Indigenous Environmental Network, who co-wrote a 2018 op-ed in EcoWatch contending that climate change is “colonialism” and “cultural genocide.”
President Joe Biden (left) greets John Kerry, the special presidential envoy for climate, on Jan. 27 as he arrives at the White House to speak on climate change. (Photo: Mandel Ngan/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images)
Biden has named several activists that tie energy development to racial bigotry to the Environmental Justice Advisory Council.
The appointments came just as the Biden administration was purging several scientists appointed by President Donald Trump from two Environmental Protection Agency panels, the Science Advisory Board, and the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee.
“We know that we cannot achieve health justice, economic justice, racial justice, or educational justice without environmental justice,” Vice President Kamala Harris said in a statement announcing the advisory council, adding:
That is why President Biden and I are committed to addressing environmental injustice. This historic White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council will ensure that our administration’s work is informed by the insights, expertise, and lived experience of environmental justice leaders from across the nation.
The White House did not immediately respond to an inquiry from The Daily Signal on Friday.
Biden has been aggressive on environmental issues since taking office in January.
The Biden administration’s budget proposal includes $1.4 billion on “environmental justice” initiatives.
“The [fiscal year] 2022 discretionary request for EPA makes historic investments to tackle the climate crisis and to make sure that all communities, regardless of their [ZIP] code, have clean air, clean water, and safe places to live and work,” EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan said Friday in a statement.
The council has 26 members representing six regions across the country as well as Puerto Rico, plus officials from the EPA and the White House Council on Environmental Quality.
Biden also appointed Susana Almanza, founder of the Austin, Texas-based People Organized in Defense of Earth and Her Resources, to the council.
A mostly favorable 2019 article in Hilltop Views, the student newspaper of St. Edward’s University in Austin, noted that Almanza’s office had a poster on the wall of Che Guevara, a murderous military commander in Fidel Castro’s Cuban communist regime.
The article quoted Almanza saying of energy companies, “we are fighting big monsters; they’re not little ones.” She added that zoning of polluting chemical plants “look[ed] at people of color as indispensable [sic] … like ‘it’s OK if we pollute them and if they die or if they get cancer.’”
Biden also named Tom Cormons, of Appalachian Voices—an environmental group operating in Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee—to the council. Cormons wrote in 2012 that fossil fuels pose the greatest threat to the next generation when commenting on a project by Dominion Virginia Power.
“Dominion plans to continue locking us into dependence on the fossil fuels that are one of the greatest threats to our children’s future,” Cormons wrote in a piece published by C-Ville, the website of a magazine covering Charlottesville, Virginia.
Seven members of Biden’s environmental justice council, including Wright, were signatories to a July 2019 Equitable and Just National Climate Platform, which was a partnership between the National Resources Defense Council and the Center for American Progress, both advocacy groups on the left.
The others members of the White House council that were signatories to the 2019 project were Robert Bullard of the East Michigan Environmental Action Council; Richard Moore of the Los Jardines Institute; Harold Mitchell of ReGenesis; Michele Roberts of the Environmental Justice Health Alliance; Nicky Sheats of both the New Jersey Environmental Justice Alliance and the Center for the Urban Environment of the John S. Watson Institute for Public Policy at Thomas Edison State University; and Peggy Shepard of WE ACT for Environmental Justice.
The Center for American Progress and National Resources Defense Council environmental justice platform states:
For too long, systemic racism and injustice has left economically disadvantaged communities, tribal communities, and communities of color exposed to the highest levels of toxic pollution from the burning of fossil fuels.
These vulnerable communities are increasingly affected by climate change, and they also have the fewest resources to prepare for and recover from its harm and hazard.
The platform also asserts: “Unless justice and equity are central aspects of our climate agenda, the inequality of the carbon-based economy will be replicated as we build a new clean and renewable energy economy.”
In February, Vox reported on Wright’s conflating racial discrimination and energy development.
“People often forget the legacies of slavery, of Jim Crow segregation, and out of that chain, laws that were deeply entrenched within the social structure of the Southern environment that worsened our quality of life,” she told Vox.
“That legacy resulted in communities that had been inundated with toxic facilities, impacting our health, the value of the homes where people live, causing them to have higher cancer rates, and to eventually be relocated from within the midst of these facilities,” Wright said.
Days before her March 29 appointment to the White House council, Wright gave testimony at a Department of Interior forum, asserting racism is “central” to fossil fuel operations, saying that she hopes Interior Secretary Deb Haaland takes action.
“I urge Secretary Haaland to undertake an environmental justice review of the federal oil and gas program in order to address the racial discrimination that is central to oil and gas operations,” Wright said.
Begay’s 2018 op-ed, written with Ayse Gursoz of the Rainforest Action Network, asserted a racial element of pollution.
“It’s essential to note that Indigenous vulnerability and resilience to climate change cannot be detached from the context of colonialism, which created both the economic conditions for climate change and the social conditions that continue to limit the capacity for Indigenous resistance and resilience,” the EcoWatch piece said.
Both historically and in the present, climate change itself is thoroughly tied to colonial practices. Greenhouse-gas production over the last two centuries hinged on the dispossession of Indigenous lands and resources.
In an interview with gal-dem.com, a media outlet that describes itself as a publication telling stories of people of color and “marginalized genders,” Begay said, “We are the ones who know how to maintain ecological balance and the most important action needed now is to stop all new fossil fuel development.”’https://papundits.wordpress.com/2021/04/12/biden-environmental-justice-appointees-equate-energy-production-fossil-fuels-with-racism/
I wonder if Twitter will block this? We’ll see.
whatyareckon 