Month: April 2024

Author Jeremy Carl joins Tucker Carlson

In his latest episode, Uncensored: Systemic Racism Against White Americans, Tucker Carlson asks, “There is systemic racism in the United States against whites. Everyone knows it. Nobody says it. How come?”

Jeremy Carl, author of The Unprotected Class, How anti-White Racism Is Tearing America Apart joined him to discuss the issue.

Tucker Carlson:  If somehow you were able to be airlifted directly or teleported directly from 1994 to 2024, you’d notice an awful lot of changes. Primary among them would be the internet. But the biggest change you’d probably notice about our public conversation is how white people were so openly attacked and denigrated. Yes, a racial group. So in 1994, you were about 30 years past the civil rights movement. And in 1994, the operating assumption of virtually everyone in the United States was the main lesson of the civil rights movement. Of the letter from the Birmingham Jail on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, and all the different sacred moments that we grew up hearing about.

The main lesson of those moments was it is immoral, in fact, unacceptable to attack people on the basis of their race.

So then, if you fast forward 30 years to find the same country engaged in a public hate frenzy against people because of their race, you would find that bewildering. How did this happen? Of course, there would be the discrimination, the institutional racism of hurting people on the basis of their race in hiring, in admissions to schools, in federal contracting, in promotions, there would be all of that.

But there would also be the public manifestation of it, of saying out loud, “We just don’t like you. You’re not as good. You are morally defective because of your skin color.” You say this about white people, people who founded the United States. You’d be shocked by that. And then to turn on the TV and see the President of the United States do the very same thing. You’d think maybe you’d been drinking ayahuasca. You’d see Joe Biden say things like this:

Biden Soundbites:” History has thrust one more urgent task on us. Will we be the generation that finally wipes out the stain of racism from our national character? We’ve all seen the injustice on the neck of Black Americans. Racism, nativism, fear, demonization, have long torn us apart.

“But a black parent, no matter how wealthy or how poor they are, has to teach their child. When you’re walking down the street, don’t have a hoodie on when you go across the street.”

“Domestic terrorism from white supremacists is the most lethal terrorist threat in the homeland.”

News Soundbite: If I were your daughter, what advice would you give me the next time I am stopped by the police?

Biden Soundbite: If you’re my daughter, you’d be a Caucasian girl and you wouldn’t be pulled over.

Carlson: White supremacy is the most lethal threat to the United States. White people are the threat. They are evil and they are dangerous. That’s not just a senile President making that one statement. That is the people in charge of the country reinforcing that statement and that theme every single day of the year, not just by their words, but with their deeds.

What is this? Why does no one mention it’s happening? Why does anyone who does mention it’s happening get attacked as a white supremacist for complaining about racism? And maybe more important, where does it go? Is there any other ending to the story but hurting people physically, lots of people? Could we have a resolution that doesn’t look like Rwanda? J

Jeremy Carl is an author who’s thought a lot about this. He’s got a brand new book called The Unprotected Class, How anti-White Racism Is Tearing America Apart.

He joins us now. Jeremy, thanks so much for coming on. It may be a an advantage or maybe disadvantage of being a little bit older that it’s this is like the one thing you never thought or I never thought you would see in America, which is our leaders openly attacking people on the basis of their race. Just 60 years after the civil rights movement that supposedly taught us the opposite lesson in the Civil Rights Act. So how did this happen, do you think?

Jeremy Carl: Well, it’s an interesting question, right. And I think you just hit on a key point, which is 60 years. We are as far now from the Civil Rights Act as they were basically from the Wright brothers. So there’s been a lot of time that’s kind of, a lot of water under the bridge since that time. And a lot of things have happened. And I think it was begun with very sincere intentions, but I think rather quickly, certainly, you know, 10, 20, 30 years down the line, it got really hijacked to the point that we went from trying to treat people equally to what has eventually amounted to reverse racism.

Carlson: Right? Or just I guess I would just call it racism, because it seems like the standard would remain the same. No matter the race of the person being discriminated against. You can’t attack people. You can’t punish people for the color of their skin for how they were born. So like that seems like a pretty easy principle to uphold, is pretty straightforward.

Carl:  Well, I would agree with you, Tucker, but it’s, you know, nonetheless, we’re really seeing throughout, and this is what I really wrote the book about, throughout many different areas of endeavor, and whether that be when we’re looking at how, crime gets talked about to what’s going on in Hollywood, to the educational system and monuments coming down and everything you could imagine, kind of the white person is kind of the great enemy. It’s the, the kind of, the evil guy in 1984, the kind of two minutes of hate we have to have against him. The Emanuel Goldstein figure, kind of is the white person in particularly the Democratic Party’s discourse today.

Carlson:  What’s interesting, though, is it typically when you see these moments of scapegoating, which are clearly, you know, kind of inherent to people, I mean, they pop up in every society at every time through history, like there’s something in people that wants to separate a small group and like, blame all its problems in that group. But it’s usually it’s the minority. Of course, you know, the persecuted minority, whites are still, for at least as of today, probably change soon, of course, but they are still the majority in the country. So like, have you ever seen anything like that happen?

Carl:  You know, I haven’t Tucker. It’s it’s kind of amazing to watch because this is whites are still a 58% majority. It’s no longer a majority of the under 18, but of adults it’s still a solid majority. It’s a super majority of our voters, still, in every presidential election, although just barely in the last presidential election. And yet they’ve become this figure of hate. And it’s really been kind of fascinating and disturbing to watch and to kind of think about why that happened.

And one of the things I suggest in my book is that really, ultimately, this is a legitimizing ideology for ultimately resource transfer and resource confiscation. And that takes, the form of some of this reparations conversation or land back or some of these other things, and they sort of start out on the extreme left and everybody goes, oh, well, that’s silly. That’s never going to happen. And then all of a sudden, you know, it is happening and you’re a racist if you think it’s a bad idea.

Carlson: Yeah. I mean, of course it’s happened and it’s still happening in other countries. You know, Rhodesia became Zimbabwe and the whites were killed and their land was taken and their money stolen. And it’s happening in South Africa right now. Of course, we’re not supposed to look at it, but it is happening, actually. I wonder why people are, why the majority is putting up with it?

Carl:  Well, that’s a good question, Tucker and I, I can’t even fully I don’t have the perfect answer for that myself. And ultimately, I one of the main reasons I wrote this book is because I don’t think the majority, I don’t think anybody should be putting up with it, regardless of race. I mean, we shouldn’t have, we shouldn’t be putting up with racial discrimination in our society in 2024.

But I think, you know, kind of white people, they’re almost it’s like a Stockholm syndrome, almost where they’re they’re like in a hostage mode in terms of some of the ways that they’re thinking where they they sort of are in love with their captors. And they’re not able to kind of accept what’s going on, and particularly on the left, it’s this sort of notion that, because we, of course, like every nation, have had an imperfect past, that white people have some hereditary blood guilt. And I think the balance of American history just shows that that’s a really myopic and childish way to look at our history in our country.

Carlson: Well, it’s demonstrably absurd if America is so racist, if systemic racism is such a barrier, then why are nonwhite people moving here by the millions. So obviously that’s silly, but it’s a little weird to say that, you know, you hate whites, but you need to live in a country founded by whites who systems are Anglo systems like that. I mean, maybe I’m being too logical here, but it doesn’t make any sense.

Carl:  No, it doesn’t. And I mean it sort of. It points to some of the absurdity here. And you also touched that. Of course, people from all sorts of different backgrounds are clamoring at the door. We’re right now dealing with this, of course, with illegal immigration. And even if you look at some of these groups and again, something I discuss in the book, there are all sorts of nonwhite ethnicities in this country among immigrants and among citizens, in which, particularly among Asian American groups, but not exclusively. I mean, if you were to even look at Nigerian Americans, or particularly Igbo Americans, for example, they would have an average, higher, income than the average white American. And so this kind of notion that whites are sort of on the top is really a selective editing of any story, no matter how true that belies that or any statistics that belie that. It’s one of the reasons you actually see Asian Americans frequently eliminated from these comparison sets when they’re talked about, because it doesn’t tell the story that, the left wants to tell.

Watch the full interview:

Ep. 98 There is systemic racism in the United States, against whites. Everyone knows it. Nobody says it. How come? pic.twitter.com/hSrU9BPVb4

— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) April 24, 2024

The post Tucker Carlson: There Is Systemic Racism in the U.S. – Against Whites! (Video) appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

This story originally was published by Real Clear Wire

 

Joe Feldman has faced many tough crowds in the course of successfully selling his “Grading for Equity” program to school districts across the nation. During the consultant’s presentations, teachers concerned that his approach lowers standards have rolled their eyes, questioned his understanding of students, and worse.

“A guy in the front row got his stuff together and walked out of the room,” Feldman told RealClearInvestigations.

Despite the frequent resistance from teachers, dozens of districts from California to Massachusetts are giving the consultant’s ambitious project a shot. As schools face a series of crises, including a spike in chronic absenteeism and sharp academic decline, grading for equity offers a path to better grades and higher graduation rates. Its practices include the removal of behavior in calculating grades, the end of penalties for late assignments, allowing students to retake exams, and a ban on zeros as the lowest mark.

Since the pandemic, districts have been lowering standards by making grading more lenient to help struggling students, according to several studies. But Feldman insists that his sweeping overhaul isn’t part of that controversial trend. He says the practices he promotes are a matter of fairness and accuracy in an educational system that’s stacked against blacks, Latinos and other disadvantaged students.

Grading for equity, however, stirs enough dissent among teachers and parents that some districts have dropped the difficult revamp in mid-stream. They say Feldman’s reforms are a form of leniency that brings out the worst in some students, hurting the very kids he wants to help.

“What’s most troubling are the practices that lower expectations, like giving a 50 percent grade instead of a zero even when a student doesn’t attempt the assignment,” said Meredith Coffey, a former teacher and now a researcher at Thomas B. Fordham Institute who co-wrote a report on grading for equity. “If students know that they could do nothing and get 50 percent, why would they work hard? Many would do nothing.”

In some districts, grading for equity is part of the controversial agenda that’s taken hold in urban areas and seeks to wash away perceived “systemic racism” in classrooms in the wake of the George Floyd murder in 2020. In Fairfax County, a district that’s embraced grading for equity, leaders have also pushed “anti-racist” education for students and paid author and crusader Ibram X. Kendi $20,000 to give a one-hour Zoom presentation, telling staff that anti-racism means working to achieve equitable outcomes.

Like critical race theory, cops in schools, and transgender bathrooms, grading for equity is galvanizing divisions in the cultural conflict over public education. Progressives support it as a path to closing the stubborn achievement gap between rich and poor students while conservatives fear it further undermines high expectations that encourage all students to strive to improve.

A savvy promoter, Feldman frequently posts on X, expressing his excitement to schools and conference organizers who tap his expertise. He likes to plug his book, too. “Grading for Equity,” with a second edition in 2023, has sold 175,000 copies, a top-five bestseller from publisher Corwin.

Grading for equity, a term coined by Feldman, isn’t a fringe movement. Some districts adopted pieces of the program before the pandemic undermined the ability of many students to keep up academically. Since then, many more districts have embraced it.

Last year, with Feldman’s help, Boston Public Schools approved a shift to equity grading. In Oregon, Portland Public Schools is making plans to implement similar grading reforms by 2025, and thousands of New York City and Los Angeles teachers have been trained in equitable grading practices. Smaller districts in California, Nevada, New York, and other states have also adopted the program.

A Boon for Education Consultants

Feldman’s program calls for a profound change in grading practices that raises fundamental questions about human motivation. He believes the traditional practice of grading almost everything a student does is antiquated and superficial. It relies on the extrinsic motivation for points, turning students into grade grubbers, rather than the intrinsic desire to learn because the subject is inspiring and meaningful.

The consultant says the pre-eminence of grades disproportionately harms disadvantaged students, who often get dinged for missing homework, late assignments, and misbehavior – issues that can stem from a lack of parental support and resources at home, research shows.

Feldman asserts that schools have a “moral obligation” to close the achievement gap, and his fix is far-reaching: no points for daily homework and classroom behavior, eliminating the distinction in the gradebook between students who lead discussions and those who disrupt them, and no penalties for the late submission of assignments, which shouldn’t be given much weight in grading.

Grades are all about tests. Teachers assess only what really matters – learning – based on a set of well-defined standards and demonstrated on a test at the end of a unit. This summative evaluation doesn’t really count either, because students who don’t ace it get a chance to review their mistakes and take the exam again, and possibly a third time. It’s better to encourage them to master the material, the consultant says, than accept a demoralizing low mark.

Here’s the kicker: Even the student who keeps failing the test, or doesn’t show up to take it, gets 50% credit. On a 100-point scale, Feldman says, a zero is disproportionately punitive for the lowest mark, when a passing grade begins at 60%.

Teachers who support Feldman’s program say it gives them better insight into students’ academic progress and problems, making them more effective. “I have more meaningful conversations with students about the English standards and how grades are not arbitrary points for effort, but directly reflect their knowledge of the skills,” said Savannah Berry, a high school English teacher in the predominately Latino and black San Leandro district in California.

Fewer Students Fail

School districts and their elected boards tout the program’s main result – fewer kids fail – and that plays well politically in many communities. In an examination of four high schools that have embraced grading for equity, non-white students had 37% fewer Ds and Fs at the end of a school year, and white students, no longer benefiting from extra credit and good behavior points, saw a 19% drop in As, according to a report by Feldman’s firm.

In Virginia’s diverse Fairfax County Public Schools, the significant drop in Ds and Fs for blacks and Latinos led to a 4% increase in the graduation rate between 2018 and 2022.

Critics dismiss such progress as a mirage produced by lenient practices that inflate low grades. Students are also getting the wrong message about the importance of meeting expectations, several teachers told RCI, leading some to blow off studying and just coast. With less focus in class, more kids are also misbehaving.

Zenaida Perez says half of the teachers in her Fairfax district, the largest in Virginia, oppose grading for equity but are afraid to speak up because they fear retaliation. “At least 30 percent of my students definitely make less effort,” said Perez, who has taught in the district for 16 years. “Sometimes they do not come to school and I still must give them a 50%. That is absolutely ridiculous.”

In some ways, Feldman’s biggest roadblock are the students, who like all humans procrastinate if given the chance. DePaul University psychologist Joe Ferrari, who has written extensively about the condition, says 20% of people are chronic procrastinators. If schools remove deadlines with penalties, he says most students would likely also delay and delay doing their work. “People will always gravitate to the easiest path,” he said. “Humans seek pleasure and avoid pain.”

The Worth of Consultants

Feldman didn’t come up with the grading practices he tirelessly promotes. He borrowed the ideas from others, including consultant Ken O’Connor, a pioneer in standards-based grading, and reframed them with a lens on equity for disadvantaged kids.

“All of the basic ideas in Feldman’s book are exactly the same as my guidelines,” said O’Connor, who published his first paper on standards-based grading in 1995. “His popularity is probably from having the right idea at the right time. I respect his work.”

Feldman’s boutique shop in Oakland, Calif., operates with seven staffers, including a chief operations officer and a marketer. Education consultants say their fee averages between $5,000 and $10,000 a day. Feldman says he might charge a couple hundred thousand dollars to help a district roll out his program over three years.

“We are not making much money,” he said. “If people think I’m buying a boat, that is not happening. I’m not trying to gouge districts.”

Consultants tap into the big bucket of funds that districts set aside for the professional development of teachers. In a study by education nonprofit TNTP, districts spent about $18,000 per teacher each year, or the equivalent of perhaps a third of their salaries, on “PD,” as it’s known.

The study and other research found that despite spending almost 20 days a year in PD sessions, most teachers don’t become more effective over time because of the training. They learn more from classroom experience and peers than from consultants who often pitch the latest educational gimmicks, says Tim Daly, the president of TNTP when the 2015 study was done.

“Teachers don’t see PD as a primary vehicle for improving,” said Daly, a former teacher and now CEO of EdNavigator. “It’s something for the most part that they tolerate, not something that they look forward to.”

That’s particularly true when consultants push ambitious programs like grading for equity. At its core, it requires a new way of thinking about education for everyone in a school, overturning an embedded tradition that awards points on a frequent basis to keep students on track toward a final goal of a good grade. Since many students have yet to develop executive functioning skills, or the ability to create their own study plan and stick to it, external pressures from deadlines play a key role in education, researchers say.

For students to develop a new mindset about the value of doing work without getting an immediate reward takes a tremendous amount of persistence and encouragement by teachers, says O’Connor, who has consulted with schools in 47 states. He says students must think like athletes, who devote themselves to weeks of hard practice in hopes of later excelling in a competition. One school brought in a football coach to give students pep talks on the importance of practice.

Beyond the students, all the stakeholders in a district have to be willing to change their views on the role of grading. While board members debate the practices for months, and teachers sit in days of training, administrators must sell the plan to families and deal with the inevitable complaints and protests. Even the district’s grading software needs to be updated.

A Report Card on Grading for Equity

The report card on grading for equity is mixed. After districts hire Feldman and start making changes, a “significant number” abandon the project, the consultant says. A lack of follow-through from school leaders to stick with the overhaul and opposition from teachers are often to blame.

New York City made a mess of grading for equity. While suffering an exodus of students in the wake of the pandemic, officials tapped Feldman for help. Teachers in District 6 attended his workshop at the National Museum of the American Indian. They received a copy of Feldman’s book and were urged to bring his ideas back to their schools and lead the effort to implement them.

Janessa Tamayo, a high school math teacher who attended the training session, says she initially saw value in the program for her students from low-income families. But the grading changes she made backfired, with fewer students participating in class and doing homework. When she offered retakes on tests, she was frustrated that many students didn’t bother to take them.

“To participate and turn assignments in on time is a life skill these students need to learn to be successful,” Tamayo said. “Grading for equity works fine for the small percentage of kids who are highly motivated. For the rest, it encouraged them to do the minimum.”

After teachers tested the program for a year, Tamayo says, administrators never followed up to assess its effect. No one collected data and asked for feedback. The program just faded away. Teachers like Tamayo have mostly returned to their old grading practices.

Arlington Public Schools in Virginia had big plans for Feldman, hiring him for what was envisioned to be a three-year project. But teachers at Wakefield High, a school with mostly Latino and black students, sent a letter to the board and superintendent, saying the changes would harm students by removing accountability and high expectations. Early this year, the district backtracked on several of Feldman’s practices, allowing penalties for late work and limiting retakes of exams.

“It’s the politics of the place, whose voices are loud,” Feldman said of the rollback in Arlington. “They could resolve it and continue down the path.”

To be sure, some districts make it to the finish line. Solon, a small, mostly white and high-achieving district near Iowa City, pulled off grading reform, thanks to the devotion of its then leader, Matt Townsley. It took four sometimes rocky years, with a handful of teachers quitting.

Townsley, now a professor of education and consultant, says districts must hang on through the tough times to get through the “implementation dip.” Initially, there’s a big decline in effort, with some districts seeing less than half of the students doing their work. But eventually, the vast majority of students get over the dip, realizing that practice prevents them from bombing the test, and taking it again.

Placer Union, another small and predominately white district in Northern California, also made it work. With Feldman’s support, the high-performing district directly involved teachers in shaping the program – a key to winning their support. For students who used to struggle and give up, retakes on exams gives them hope that they can achieve academically, says Superintendent Jeff Tooker.

“This process takes patience, support, communication, grace, and a lot of time,” he said.

Are Students Learning More?

Even for districts that fully implement grading for equity, a big question looms: Does it result in more learning, the ultimate goal of public education? No one knows for sure. Feldman says he would like to know if his program improves state test scores, the most objective measurement of learning, but researchers haven’t tackled this question.

Several studies, including a peer-reviewed examination by Fordham’s research director Adam Tyner, have looked at what happens with learning when grading standards are lifted – test scores go up too. Tyner says students strive to meet the expectations that teachers set for them, whether high or low.

“The grading for equity advocates don’t have any research showing that their changes lead to greater learning, and that’s very concerning,” said Tyner.

The post ‘Grading for Equity’: Promoting Students by Banning Grades of Zero and Leaving No Class Cut-Ups Behind appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

AI-generated image

This article was written by Swedish independent journalist Peter Imanuelsen, also known as PeterSweden. You can follow him at PeterSweden.com.

New poll finds that a large majority of Swedish people want to keep physical cash

I have some good news to bring you from my home country of Sweden.

A new poll finds that a whopping 83% of people want to keep using cash as a payment option in the future, a new record high!

Looks like people are beginning to realize that the cashless society is not what we want after all.

The biggest reason that people want to keep cash was for emergency preparedness, with 51% giving that as their main reason. But 29% of people said that freedom of choice was the main reason for wanting to keep cash, and another 19% said that inclusion was their reason.

So it appears one major reason for people wanting to keep cash is because of FREEDOM.

As we all know, going cashless would make it very easy for the state to keep track of everything that people do. Dissidents could easily be locked out from buying and selling.

Sweden has been one of the main countries pushing for a cashless society for many years now.

For example, over 6000 people have already gotten microchip implants in their hands to use for cashless payments. You can read all about that here.

Many shops in Sweden have gone cashless. For example, I visited a Burger King last year that had a sign proudly stating that they were cashless.

But things seem to be changing.

Independent journalist Peter Imanuelsen has dedicated years to reporting the things the mainstream media ignores. You can follow him at https://petersweden.com/

The post Peter Sweden: GOOD NEWS: Swedes REJECT Cashless Agenda appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

Until I Find You: Disappeared Children and Coercive Adoptions in Guatemala, by Rachel Nolan, Harvard University Press

International adoption has sharply declined over the last 15 years, but the fraud and corruption that characterized many countries’ adoption systems in its heyday is only now coming to light. One of the worst offenders was Guatemala, where the government used international adoption to cover up domestic problems such as disintegrated families, mass poverty, and genocide. Historian Rachel Nolan tells the sad tale in her new book Until I Find You: Disappeared Children and Coercive Adoptions in Guatemala.

The numbers are astounding. Despite its relatively small population, Guatemala overtook Russia and South Korea in the “sender” nation rankings in the 1990s, meaning more total children were adopted from Guatemala than from those much larger nations. In 2007, the zenith of international adoption in Guatemala, one in 100 native-born children were adopted by parents in the U.S., Canada, Sweden, or other Western countries. 

Adult adoptees, equipped with advancements in DNA testing and social media connectivity, are now returning to Guatemala to find their birth parents. Few find the answers they crave. One story that Nolan tells culminates in justice: Via DNA testing, adoptee Dolores Preat finds her birth family and learns that a neighbor kidnapped her as an infant. The neighbor, who pretended to be her birth mother and sold her to a lawyer in Guatemala City, was sentenced to 15 years in prison in 2015.

Perverse incentives plagued the Guatemalan adoption industry. A privatized system enriched lawyers who looked the other way as their underlings bribed and deceived birth mothers. Western nations, including the U.S., were complicit in numerous ways. American evangelical Christians were key in providing relief after a devastating earthquake killed more than 20,000 Guatemalans in 1976, but they also pushed for increased international adoption in Guatemala without understanding that the system was rife with abuse. Birth mothers were often illiterate and spoke Mayan languages instead of Spanish, which was used in adoption proceedings and documents. Nolan questions how many of these mothers truly understood the permanence of an international adoption arrangement.

And, of course, there’s the fact that so many of these mothers were desperately poor. Many felt pressured to relinquish their children after hearing adoption advocates describe the improvements to the children’s “material lives” that were only possible in wealthy countries. A middle-class lifestyle in the U.S. seemed unimaginably privileged to most Guatemalans. But those material advantages came at a cost. Preat, when seeking criminal charges against her kidnapper, cited among the harms she has suffered her loss of “family, identity, and culture.”

In Nolan’s view, U.S. policymakers contributed to immiseration in Guatemala and its neighbors. She cites decades of interference, from the CIA-backed coup in the 1950s to American funding for population control methods that meant giving Guatemalan women IUDs but no subsequent medical care for complications or removals. Nolan also mentions the uptick in Guatemalan men migrating to the U.S. to look for work in the 1980s and how the families they left behind struggled financially, leading many mothers to relinquish children of all ages. U.S. policy has only become more permissive of the constant stream of Central American men illegally crossing the southern border.

Guatemala is an extreme example of what happens when adoption is about finding children for would-be parents instead of the other way around. Nolan reviewed hundreds of adoption files and found examples of adoptive parents making specific requests for the gender, age, and even skin tone of the children they wanted to adopt. Lawyers facilitating the adoptions then dispatched women known as jaladoras, or baby brokers, to find the best matches. Many Guatemalans looked at jaladoras the way New Testament Jews looked at tax collectors like Zaccheus: as traitors. Jaladoras were often willing to do whatever it took to meet their quotas, including, in an extreme case, murder.

Nolan details a sensational quadruple murder orchestrated by an adoption ring to get rid of pesky family members asking about a young boy’s whereabouts after he was trafficked out of the country. In an extra sickening twist, the family was murdered at what was supposed to be a piñata party. But shocking and scandalous crimes aren’t the point of Nolan’s book. Instead, she wants readers to understand that the main factor behind Guatemala’s broken adoption system was mundane: poverty. In such circumstances, a mother’s decision to give up her child was something less than a free choice.

International adoptions closed in Guatemala in 2008, largely as the result of a national panic that foreigners were adopting Guatemalan children to harvest their organs (such rumors and press stories were unfounded). The underlying issues that fueled the Guatemalan adoption industry haven’t disappeared, though, only morphed.

“Dawning awareness of ethical concerns is one reason international adoption is declining around the world,” Nolan writes. “The United States remains the largest receiving country, but the high-water mark was 22,884 children adopted from all over the world in 2004. Since then, numbers of international adoptions are falling fast, even as international surrogacy, which raises parallel ethical issues, is on the rise.”

Nolan, who lists “human rights and social justice” as a specialization on her Boston University bio page, is an unlikely bedfellow for conservatives raising questions about gestational surrogacy, but she is among a cohort of left-leaning academics digging deeper on such issues. Another example is Gretchen Sisson, author of Relinquished: The Politics of Adoption and the Privilege of American Motherhood, published February 2024. On the right, activists like Katy Faust, an adoptive parent and former adoption agency employee, are addressing children’s rights and what a healthy family looks like. Their starting points are different, but they often end up in the same place: giving a voice to society’s voiceless—children.

Unfortunately, Nolan and Sisson’s idea of the voiceless doesn’t include the unborn. Nolan highlights the lack of legal abortion in Guatemala in Until I Find You; Sisson is a co-founder of a group called the Abortion Bridge Collaborative Fund. For Nolan, adoption is coercion, but abortion is a solution. It’s plain to see the logical disconnect: In a society where getting rid of a baby through adoption is the only choice for a single mother, whether she wants to or not, how could abortion be any less coerced?

In most chapters of Until I Find You, the forces separating mothers and children are banal: social stigma, grinding poverty, overreaching social workers. The parts of the book that unmask true evil are the chapters on disappeared children under Efraín Ríos Montt’s short-lived dictatorship in the 1980s. In an attempt to eliminate communist guerrillas and their “seed,” Montt’s forces massacred indigenous villagers and re-educated surviving children. Whether this was accomplished by turning a young child into a gofer for soldiers or sending him to be adopted by a wealthy foreign couple, the regime didn’t care. (Actually, many Guatemalan officials preferred the latter; they stood to make much more money that way.) Adoption files were used as evidence of genocide in the 2013 trial that resulted in Montt’s conviction for crimes against humanity.

Those who control the education and upbringing of children control the future. In Nolan’s estimation, the Guatemalan government seriously undervalued its future by undervaluing its children, turning to international adoption to save money on orphanage costs instead of addressing root causes. International adoption seemed like a salve, but the wound left untreated continued to fester.

The post The Worst-Case Scenario of International Adoption appeared first on The American Conservative.

When the Civil War ended, and after Republican President Abraham Lincoln liberated the slaves, Democrats initiated Jim Crow laws to punish blacks.

Democrats continued for decades to discriminate against blacks. In fact, the KKK, was founded as the the terrorist wing of the Democrat Party.

The Ku Klux Klan assassinated hundreds of Republicans and their supporters, including Republican Representative James M. Hinds (December 5, 1833—October 22, 1868) of Little Rock.

Hinds represented Arkansas in the United States Congress from June 24, 1868 through October 22, 1868 before his death.

Democrats murdered him.

The Ku Klux Klan was founded as the activist wing of the Democratic Party.

On September 28, 1868, a mob of Democrats massacred nearly 300 African-American Republicans in Opelousas, Louisiana. The savagery began when racist Democrats attacked a newspaper editor, a white Republican and schoolteacher for ex-slaves. Several African-Americans rushed to the assistance of their friend, and in response, Democrats went on a “Negro hunt,” killing every African-American (all of whom were Republicans) in the area they could find. (Via Grand Old Partisan)

Democrats in hoods slaughtered hundreds of Republicans and blacks across the country.
They beat and threatened and murdered Republicans for standing up for the black man.

On April 20, 1871 the Republicans passed the anti-Ku Klux Klan Act outlawing Democratic terrorist groups.

The last KKK official to serve in Washington DC was former Senator Robert Byrd, a KKK kleagle. Byrd was a top Democrat and friend of Joe Biden.

Today in history: Democrats gather to hold their first KKK national convention

Grand Old Partisan reminds us that on April 24, 1867, Democrats held their first national KKK convention  at the Maxwell House in Nashville to establish a nationwide organization.

The first Imperial Wizard was a former Confederate general, Nathan Bedford Forrest. He said that the KKK’s goal was to eradicate the GOP in southern states by terrorizing Republican activists.

This is a reminder of the Democrat Party’s vicious past – and the once brave Republicans who stood for righteousness.

The post Today in History: Democrats Gather to Hold Their First KKK National Convention in Nashville, Tennessee appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

Washington, DC, is an irrational city; its conspicuous sobriety and even dullness do not diminish its irrationality. The imperial capital is laid out on a supremely systematic grid that fosters some of the worst traffic conditions in the country; Los Angeles had to go out of its way to destroy its original planning to achieve the same levels of automotive misery. If you are lucky enough to be on foot, the madness within the system is no less evident. A walk from The American Conservative’s offices toward the White House features an amble down a little vestige of Connecticut Avenue between green spaces, past the Bombay Club and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. This stretch is lined with young trees to alleviate a forbidding, unusually broad stretch of hot concrete. Look closer: They’re sweet gums, which, in their maturity, will drop spiny fruits all autumn, making the pleasant avenue a Highway of Death for the formally shod apparatchiks hustling to and fro. DC is a place where processes carry themselves forward without any regard for purpose or consequences. Things just happen.

It is perhaps no surprise, then, that the powers and principalities decided that what this nutty burg needs is to decriminalize psychedelics. A three-block walk from the TAC offices up Connecticut Avenue and down a side street (away from the White House, for those following along with map and pencil at home), your prowling columnist and his intrepid investigative sidekick may find a converted townhouse in which the purveyors of rare herbs and prescribed chemicals ply their trade. 

Not in a sub rosa way, either. Thanks to the Entheogenic Plant and Fungus Policy Act of 2020, a ballot initiative that met with the approval of three quarters of the voting citizens of the federal district, the Metropolitan Police are mandated not to enforce laws against LSD, magic mushrooms, ayahuasca, non-synthetic DMT, mescaline, and all that jazz so long as there are any other laws that need enforcing—the same mechanism that was used for DC’s 2014 decriminalization of cannabis. The cops have their hands full with the other leisure activities of the district’s unruly denizens, guaranteeing that the “porh&pc” can operate with the insolent openness of an Apple Store.

The Apple Store or something like it seems to be the inspiration for “Wellness Dreams Weed Dispensary LLC”; white plastic and glass surfaces dominate, accented with fake plants and art in a style that we’ll call Corporate Psychedelic. Floor displays are minimal; you order your rh&pc via an iPad at the counter. It’s all very Crate & Barrel, if Crate & Barrel reeked of cannabis and played shuddering modern rap instead of Regina Spektor. 

The spell of Obama-era retail interiors is broken by the staff, who seem undifferentiated from the porh&pc of the benighted era before the Entheogenic Plant and Fungus Policy Act of 2020. Your prowling columnist and his investigative sidekick were served by a visibly high man in a sweatshirt. Have you guys ever done mushrooms before? (Slightly shamefacedly: No.) Are you guys doing them together? (We don’t know.) People usually start with the Albino Penis Envy. (This, it turns out, is the name of a mushroom.) If you take it with people, make sure it’s people you feel good about, because if there’s anyone you, like, feel shady about, it could sour your trip. (Noted.) Much beyond this brief conversational decision tree, our guru’s comments became hazy and impressionistic. He told us Dream Wellness Weed Dispensary LLC, despite its name, sells a lot more mushrooms than weed. He told us the Albino Penis Envy was from California, he thinks, probably. (Does Gavin Newsom know this?) He told us to drink orange juice if the mushrooms turned our stomachs. He told us about the time he did DMT in the store. Who buys all this? “Like, veterans with, like, PSD [sic] and stuff.” (The other customers, while we were there, were two standard-issue 20-year-old wastoids and a guy in a button-down with one of those official corporate or government name tags.) We walked out with $60 worth of Albino Penis Envy, bundled in a paper bag with no information on it besides Dream Wellness Weed Dispensary LLC’s rainbow logo.

This all will end in tears. As with cannabis legalization, psychedelic legalization has relied on an equivocation between recreation and medication. (In DC, the mascot for the shrooms ballot measure was a young mother self-treating for postpartum depression.) Yet in the gap between the two, the normal structures of responsibility for either recreation or medication have been lost. If your bartender were drunk on the job, that would be a problem. If your doctor, psychiatrist, or pharmacist were to hand out controlled substances without any real instructions, that would also be a problem. If you didn’t know where those substances came from, that would be a problem, too. 

Drug legalization is, by my lights, a bad idea, but there are arguments to be made for it. None of those arguments involve downplaying the fact that these are potentially dangerous substances that, in the case of psychedelics, at least temporarily derange your senses and intellect. (There is a reason that the psychedelic tradition encourages some sort of supervision for your first trip, particularly with high-test stuff like DMT—a suggestion that was conspicuously lacking from our porh&pc’s advice). They aren’t candy, any more than liquor or Thorazine are. The question with every deregulatory policy is whether the industry and its customers can be responsible with the new freedoms acquired. Observations from the field are not encouraging.

I have a mortgage and three kids. I’m not going to start taking mushrooms at this point in my life. Your prowling columnist happily left the paper bag with his investigative sidekick. Isn’t envy a sin, anyway?

The post News From the Psychedelic Front appeared first on The American Conservative.

Opponents of the military junta ruling Burma (or Myanmar) recently took another small step toward winning the ongoing civil war. The Karen National Liberation Army, an ethnic militia which has long fought for autonomy, captured some 600 government soldiers and seized Myawaddy, a busy border city. Humiliated, the regime had to fly personnel and records out of neighboring Mae Sot in Thailand. Last weekend, fighting continued as insurgents attacked retreating government forces. While the junta recaptured the city Tuesday, its gain remains tenuous. Reinforcements sent two weeks ago from a base three hours away have yet to arrive, blocked by other KNLA units.

The victory seems modest since Myawaddy has limited strategic value. Yet the town was a fixture of military control when in years past I visited the region to cover the KNLA’s fight on behalf of the largely Christian Karen people. The current battle follows a coordinated offensive last October by several other militia groups that seized several border posts in the Shan State to the north, neighboring China. Overall, the opposition controls upwards of 60 percent of the country.

Most important, the Tatmadaw, or military, is weakening. Increasing numbers of soldiers are surrendering; insurgents are cooperating more effectively; opponents are capturing abundant military materiel; fighters are targeting junta leaders. In February the so-called State Administration Council, an anodyne title for the brutal military regime, announced enforcement of universal conscription. Draft avoidance activities burgeoned, from hurried marriages to foreign flight. Potential conscripts also have joined both the ethnic militias and the People’s Defense Force, which is contesting control of the dominant Burman heartland. 

The regime retains an advantage in airpower, which it deploys ruthlessly and cruelly against insurgents and civilians alike. However, military morale is cratering. Observed Thomas Kean, a consultant with the International Crisis Group: “They have lost thousands of soldiers, either killed, wounded or taken as prisoners, and lost a huge amount of weapons.” Even before the latest losses “There was already some discontent within the military leadership and the pro-military circles.” 

Indeed, there is increasing speculation that the army, whose common soldiers are abused, underfed, isolated, and misused, might break. No longer are troops battling distant ethnic groups. Now they are fighting members of their own villages and even families. Expanding resistance across the country has stretched the Tatmadaw thin. Wives and children patrol bases in the absence of the men. Forcing regime opponents into uniform might spur resistance within the armed forces, with increased desertions, surrenders, sabotage, and attacks on officers, bringing to mind “fragging” by U.S. personnel in Vietnam. 

Disagreements are growing even among top commanders, with harsh punishments meted out to those who fail. Additional defeats will only increase tensions. Moreover, the opposition has demonstrated its ability to target military leaders and reach the capital, meaning no one is safe. Observed Terence Lee of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies: “The more disillusioned they become, the more likely they are willing to move against [coup leader] Min Aung Hlaing. He promised a bed of roses but that didn’t turn out to be the case as the country now is in civil war and many do not accept the legitimacy of the Tatmadaw.”

The military has misruled the country since 1962. The junta held elections in 1990, which resulted in a landslide victory for Aung San Suu Kyi, the daughter of an independence hero, and the National League for Democracy. The regime voided the election, triggering democracy protests that were swiftly crushed. The nation’s Burman heartland, though hostile to military rule, remained largely quiescent as conflict continued to rage in the ethnic-dominated borderlands. 

In 2010 the Tatmadaw created a hybrid system, sharing power with an elected civilian government. The Burmese military, like that in Thailand, expected to maintain control by rigging the electoral system and manipulating the government structure. Suu Kyi and the NLD, however, won overwhelmingly despite the generals’ hope to fracture the opposition. Fearing that it was losing authority, Hlaing, described as “power-hungry, slithery and wolflike,” staged a coup in February 2022. The Tatmadaw took over government agencies, abolished democratic institutions, proscribed demonstrations, arrested Suu Kyi, NLD leaders, and other military critics, and staged Stalinesque show trials of its opponents, including Suu Kyi.

Hlaing called for “unity between the military and the people,” but the latter are the junta’s primary victims. The regime soon crushed non-violent protests and mass civil disobedience, killing and imprisoning thousands. 

The Tatmadaw miscalculated. The Burmese people, especially the younger generation, had come to expect more freedom and opportunities. No longer was there peaceful acceptance of military rule. Multiple ethnic militias reignited rural insurgencies that had ebbed a decade ago and trained an influx of urban volunteers. More dramatically, opposition throughout majority Bamar or Burman territory turned violent with formation of the PDF units. An incredible 315 of 330 townships are aflame. The regime is almost alone in waging war on its population as the opposition formed the National Unity Government. 

The coup and resulting conflict have left the country in shambles. Nikkei Asia reported, “The economy and currency have tumbled perilously, the peace process with insurgent ethnic minorities has foundered, the medical system has buckled after defiant doctors and nurses quit public hospitals or were arrested, and hundreds of thousands of internally displaced people cower along remote borders.” 

As resistance has stiffened, the military has grown more murderous and destructive, killing civilians, destroying villages, and displacing residents. So far, tens of thousands of civilians have been killed and almost three million people have been driven from their homes. Some analysts fear that another million might be displaced this year by the regime’s “campaign of brutality.” 

What to do? There are no easy answers.

Washington should eschew military involvement. On my first trip to the region a quarter century ago, Bo Mya, the legendary Karen leader, asked me why Washington did not do for the Karen what it had done for the Kosovars, whom the U.S. protected from the Serb military. My cynical response was that their land held no oil. More seriously, the U.S. has no important security interests in Burma that warrant going to war. So distant is this battle that, amazingly, none of Washington’s predictable war hawks have advocated intervention. Adding another conflict would be especially foolish when the allies are engaged in a dangerous proxy war with Russia, North Korea is building ICBMs capable of hitting America, Israel’s war on Gaza has inflamed the Mideast, and American officials are threatening China if it attacks Taiwan. 

There simply is no justification for risking the lives of Americans, including military personnel, in Burma. Overthrowing the regime would be costly and transfer responsibility for Burma’s future to America, creating an unpredictable, probably violent long-term commitment. Supporting an insurgency is tempting but could go bad. The U.S. would become responsible for the outcome—and war is rarely a good humanitarian tool.

The best strategy is working with friendly states to weaken the regime. The U.S. has sanctioned Naypyidaw, but most countries in the region, including India, Japan, and the Southeast Asian states, have proved reluctant to follow suit. Resistance to targeting general commerce, most notably energy sales, which would further impoverish the general population, is understandable. Nevertheless, the regime deserves the same treatment as Russia when it comes to cutting state revenue and restricting military purchases, especially of jet fuel for the air force, as well as defunding businesses run by military elites and their cronies.

Although it is premature to recognize NUG, as the junta’s hold on power weakens Burma’s neighbors might become more willing to expand ties with it. Naypyidaw’s defeat in Myawaddy caused the Thai prime minister to suggest pushing the junta to engage the opposition. Along with official ties could come as much as a billion dollars in regime funds frozen after the coup.

Naypyidaw’s most important supporters are Russia and China. The former is unlikely to abandon the junta so long as it is under attack by the allies over Ukraine. Which is another good reason to try to end, rather than prolong, the Ukraine war. 

Beijing might be more willing to cooperate on Burma. The former’s relationship with the Tatmadaw was undermined by the former’s suspicion, even hostility. In contrast, China established good relations with the Suu Kyi government. Beijing has shown no great affection for the junta. Indeed, tired of the regime’s toleration of organized criminal activity along its border, China apparently acquiesced in last October’s insurgent operations in Shan State. Washington should disclaim any intent to push China aside in a new democratic Burma and encourage the Xi government to take a more balanced stance between regime and insurgency. Beijing might prefer a stable, prosperous though democratic neighbor which leaned its way rather than the status quo.

Finally, governments friendly with Burma’s democrats should encourage cooperation between the largely Bamar PDF and the ethnic movements. To forge a unified opposition against the junta, anti-regime elements need to build trust, especially by guaranteeing greater autonomy for ethnic minorities. Promises of financial aid from the region’s democracies, starting with Japan and India, might help encourage greater comity. 

For more than six decades the Burmese people have suffered from political oppression and economic deprivation due to military rule. A decade ago, they had reason to expect a brighter future. The Tatmadaw is delivering the opposite. The road ahead remains long and hard, but recent gains by the opposition revive hope of creating a new Burma, one in which the Burmese people finally rule.

The post Burma’s Military Junta Totters Toward the Brink appeared first on The American Conservative.

The far left Daily Show recently mocked Joe Biden for claiming his uncle was eaten by cannibals. During the segment, the host also said Biden is going to lose the election.

When Biden has lost the people at the Daily Show…

Biden tells lies like this all the time, but in this particular case, the lie was so over the top that even the left can’t ignore it.

Breitbart News reports:

Watch: ‘The Daily Show’ Mocks Biden’s ‘Cannibals’ Story — ‘You’re Going to Lose the Election’

Comedy Central’s The Daily Show took aim at President Joe Biden on Tuesday, ridiculing the commander in chief for telling a bizarre story in which he claimed his uncle was eaten by cannibals.

The Daily Show co-hosts Jordan Klepper and Ronny Chien devoted an extended segment on Tuesday’s episode to Biden’s recent speech to the United Steelworkers Union in Pittsburgh. In his speech, Biden claimed that his uncle, Ambrose Finnegan, was shot down near Papua New Guinea during World War II and that his body was never recovered because “there were a lot of cannibals” in New Guinea at the time.

Even left-wing news outlets including New York magazine and the Associated Press have cast doubt on Biden’s tale…

“You’re going to lose the election,” Chieng said to Biden.

Watch the video below:

Daily Show’s Ronny Chieng and Jordan Klepper roast Biden’s “cannibals” claim pic.twitter.com/HyKnrvYMgp

— Zachary Leeman (@WritingLeeman) April 24, 2024

It’s amazing to see Biden finally get roasted on a ‘comedy’ show. Is anyone at Saturday Night Live paying attention?

The post Left Wing Daily Show Mocks Joe Biden Over Cannibals Comments: ‘You’re Going to Lose the Election’ (VIDEO) appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

FOX News political analyst Gianno Caldwell is from Chicago and says that people in the city have had it with the influx of illegal immigrants an are very serious about voting for Trump in November.

Caldwell says that he is in regular communication with other Chicagoans and that there are enough of these voters to turn Illinois red in the 2024 election.

If you thought liberals were upset when Trump took Michigan and Pennsylvania in 2016, that was nothing compared to the meltdown we would witness if Trump takes Illinois this year.

FOX News reports:

Chicago native says residents livid over liberal mayor’s new migrant funding, ready to vote for Trump

Chicago residents are furious at Mayor Brandon Johnson and the city council for approving a $70 million proposal to bolster the city’s sanctuary city resources, and some think the outrage could favor Republicans in November.

Fox News political analyst Gianno Caldwell, who grew up in the Windy City, argued that residents will be voting for President Trump in droves during “The Faulkner Focus,” stemming from their anger over the city prioritizing migrants over their citizens.

“They are doing the right thing by saying we’re coming directly for your seats, including you, Mayor Brandon Johnson,” Caldwell told host Harris Faulkner on Tuesday. “[Johnson’s] message to Chicagoans has been quite clear. Get on the back of the bus. Now that’s everybody, but especially those Black voters who are the reason he’s mayor today. Get on the back of the bus.”

“These voters in Chicago… I speak to a lot of them pretty regularly. Pretty weekly. They’re serious about voting for Trump. They’re serious about handing the election in Illinois to Donald Trump, as you only need 20% of Cook County, which is within Chicago,” he continued.

Watch the video below:

Can you even imagine the faces of people on CNN and MSNBC on election night if Chicago goes red?

The post FOX News Analyst From Chicago Says Fed-up City Residents Are Serious About Voting for Trump in November (VIDEO) appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

The White House Correspondents’ Dinner or ‘Nerd Prom’ is happening this weekend on Saturday night. This is the night where a bunch of DC and NYC journalists get together with Democrats and make fun of Republicans for a few hours.

According to new reports, the anti-Israel mob is also planning to attend the event, which could be very interesting.

Most of the journalists who will be attending are ideologically aligned with the protesters, so there shouldn’t be any problems, right?

The Washington Examiner reports:

Pro-Palestinian protests aim to ‘shut down’ Biden, journalist ‘Nerd Prom’

Pro-Palestinian groups and journalists are readying a rally to shut down the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner Saturday at the Washington Hilton over the Biden administration’s handling of the Gaza-Hamas crisis.

“Shut down the White House Correspondents’ Dinner,” one group, the Party for Socialism and Liberation, said in an online message. They are calling for protesters to gather down the street from the hotel two hours before the glitzy dinner begins.

Another group, the Committee to Protect Journalists, is urging a boycott by White House reporters who suspend their arms-length relationship with Biden aides for a night of elbow rubbing at the so-called “nerd prom.”

“The White House Correspondents’ Dinner is an embodiment of media manipulation, trading journalistic ethics for access. For journalists to fraternize at an event with President Biden and Vice President Harris would be to normalize, sanitize, and whitewash the administration’s role in genocide,” said the committee.

Check out the poster below:

Pro-Palestinian protests aim to ‘shut down’ Biden, journalist ‘Nerd Prom’

‘The White House Correspondents’ Dinner is an embodiment of media manipulation, trading journalistic ethics for access.’https://t.co/7V2y9Bgmmh via @dcexaminer pic.twitter.com/u1ZkCysgcp

— Paul Bedard (@SecretsBedard) April 24, 2024

Code Pink is pushing this because of course they are.

SATURDAY

Join us to SHUT DOWN the White House Correspondents’ Dinner and honor Palestinian journalists!

5PM
1865 Kalorama Rd NWhttps://t.co/TicR9ltcfC pic.twitter.com/vRZmTjBpdQ

— CODEPINK (@codepink) April 24, 2024

Most journalists don’t seem to have a problem with these protesters taking over college campuses, so they should have no problem with the same thing happening at their event.

The post REPORT: Anti-Israel Protesters Planning to ‘Shut Down’ the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.