Month: May 2024

 

Photo courtesy of the FBI, from the 2011 National Gang Threat Assessment

 

“Mexican drug cartels continue to kill Americans at a rate higher than any terrorist group in history,” said Senator Tom Cotton in response to the fact that illicit drugs smuggled by Mexican cartels into the US killed more than 107,000 Americans last year. The two largest cartels, the Sinaloa Cartel and Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG), have become multibillion-dollar Transnational Organized Crime (TOC) groups. The Sinaloa Cartel, in particular, is operating in every US state and 47 countries around the world. Mexican cartels now operate on six continents and have completely dominated the cocaine and synthetic drug markets in Europe.

Republican lawmakers are pushing to have the cartels designated as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO), but there has been significant pushback because such a designation would complicate US relations with Mexico. Once designated, any person or entity aiding the cartels would be in violation of US law and subject to sanctions and arrest. The U.S. reserves the right to arrest individuals supporting terrorism in foreign countries. The USA PATRIOT Act, enacted after 9/11, provides broad powers to U.S. law enforcement to combat terrorism, including the ability to target financial networks supporting terrorist organizations. Additionally, executive orders, such as Executive Order 13224, enable the U.S. to block the assets of individuals and entities involved in terrorism and to prohibit transactions with them.

Corruption in Mexico is significantly facilitating the drug crisis in the US and supporting rising violence on both sides of the border. Mexican authorities, institutions, and individuals who are found to be on cartel payrolls would be targets for US authorities. Transparency International ranked Mexico 126th out of 180 countries in terms of corruption. Everyone from politicians and judges to the army and police are accepting money from the cartels, making them fair game for Treasury Department sanctions and possibly arrest and extradition to the United States.

In addition to wanting to designate cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO), Tom Cotton and other Republicans have introduced legislation to task the Department of Defense with countering the cartels. Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has vehemently opposed such action, calling it a violation of Mexican sovereignty. His response to the cartels, dubbed “Hugs not bullets,” involves offering scholarships and social programs to the poor. However, these measures have done nothing to reduce the killings and disappearances.

Congressman Morgan Luttrell (R-TX), a special forces veteran, said, “Our border is being exploited by cartels, as they run one of the most extensive human and drug trafficking operations in the world, leaving no corner of our country untouched by the danger of cartel activity.” The entire nation is being plagued by these groups, but border states like Texas are being hit hardest. And the situation is only getting worse.

“My expert opinion is that we’re going to see an increase in cartel violence within the United States in all of its forms,” said Charles Marino, a former advisor to the Department of Homeland Security and the CEO of Sentinel Security Solutions. Increasing cartel activity and drug deaths in the US underscore the need to stop the flow of drugs and transnational criminals into the country.

While the threat from cartels is growing, data shows that ICE is deporting fewer suspected gang members than in years past. In 2021, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas sent a memo to ICE urging them to focus on deporting individuals with serious criminal histories, stating that merely being in the country illegally should not be grounds for enforcement action against them.

El Salvador has managed to bring its criminal gangs to heel by suspending legal due process and arresting individuals with gang tattoos. These criminals are incarcerated in a specially designed super-max prison, where they will remain for the rest of their lives. According to President Bukele, the logic is that these are repeat offenders and career criminals incapable of rehabilitation. The only way to keep the public safe from them is to keep them locked away.

With cartels operating in all fifty states, designating them as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO) seems appropriate. This designation would put immediate pressure on the Mexican government to support US action against the cartels in Mexico. At the same time, the border must be secured, and drug traffickers and distributors in the United States must be jailed.

The post Transnational Terrorist Organizations: Mexican Cartels Operating in Every U.S. State appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

A transgender teen runner was booed as he crossed the finish line and won a spot in the girls’ Oregon State Championships.

Tenth-grade student “Aayden Gallagher” is a biological male competing against female athletes.

Biological male Aayden Gallagher won the women’s 200 meter dash at the Oregon State Championships – the crowd booed his efforts

On Saturday Aayden Gallagher, a biological male, won the women’s 200 meter dash at the Oregon track and field championships at the historic Hayward Field in Eugene, Oregon.

Aaden Gallagher is ‘unofficially’ ranked in the top 50 high school sprinters nationally.

According to Outsports:

Gallagher is a transgender girl in a state that affirms her right to compete on a girl’s team. Oregon requires no medical or hormonal transition for trans athletes to compete in any gendered category, and the state allows nonbinary athletes to simply choose their gender category in sports, regardless of any medical interventions.

When she raced to second place at 200 meters, and won the 400 meters at a meet in April, that fact didn’t sit well with a group of Republican legislators in her state.
They promptly called on the Oregon State Activities Association, the governing body for high school sports in the state, to change their policy

The OSAA’s executive director, Peter Weber, stood up and publicly defended the policy. He met their letter with one of his own.

“Oregon law has long prohibited discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation,” the letter states. “In 2019, the Oregon Department of Education amended its rules that ‘sexual orientation’ was defined to include ‘gender identity.’ The Oregon legislature likewise amended the definition of ‘sexual orientation’ to include ‘gender identity.’”

In response, there is a call to put forth legislation that would ban transgender girls and strip any achievements they may have earned.

On Saturday Aayden Gallagher came from behind and defeated Aster Jones from Roosevelt to take the Women’s 6A 200 meter dash finals.

Aayden Gallagher placed second to Josie Donelson in the women’s 6A 400 meter dash where Josie ran a blistering time of 52.83 seconds!

The Oregon crowd showed their appreciation by booing loudly.

People are getting tired of this.

Via Riley Gaines.

Another proud moment for women’s sports!

Aayden Gallagher (male) just placed 1st in the Oregon state championship in the women’s 200m after placing 2nd in the 400m.

Just listen to the audible BOOS. People are over this…& it’s about time. pic.twitter.com/HfJqF4AkzO

— Riley Gaines (@Riley_Gaines_) May 18, 2024

The post MUST SEE: Stadium Boos Loudly After Biological Male Athlete Wins Women’s 200 Meter Dash at Oregon State Track and Field Championships (VIDEO) appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

Credit: Apple

Apple Inc. has once again sparked outrage with its latest iOS 17.5 update—this time by pushing LGBTQ-themed content onto its millions of users through a mandatory software update.

On Tuesday, the tech giant rolled out an update that introduced a new set of Pride Radiance wallpapers that many see as a coercive push of LGBTQ propaganda.

“This update introduces a new Pride Radiance wallpaper for the Lock Screen, Apple News enhancements, and other features, bug fixes, and security updates for your iPhone,” stated Apple’s update notes.

The move has been met with mixed reactions, with some users feeling that the inclusion of LGBTQ+ themed wallpapers is an unnecessary politicization of what should be a neutral tech update.

Twitter user Sid commented, “iOS 17.5 is out! Nothing new, just a new wallpaper pack for gay people which even they’ll refuse to use because of how bad it looks.”

iOS 17.5 is out!
Nothing new, just a new wallpaper pack for gay people which even they’ll refuse to use because of how bad it looks. pic.twitter.com/xYlBy3Qb0L

— sid (@immasiddtweets) May 13, 2024

Tech Radar reported:

Continuing a yearly tradition, Apple has revealed this year’s Pride Collection celebrating the LGBTQ+ community. The 2024 set consists of two new wallpapers for iPhones and iPads plus a new watch face and wristband for the Apple Watch.

Launching first on May 22 is the band which is called the Pride Edition Braided Solo Loop. Apple states the color scheme was inspired by multiple pride flags. The pink, light blue, and white threads are meant to “represent transgender and nonbinary” people, while “black and brown symbolize Black, Hispanic, and Latin communities” plus groups who have been hurt by HIV/AIDS. Laser-etched on the lug are the words “PRIDE 2024”.

Adding to the controversy, the update has reportedly caused unexpected technical issues for many users. Shockingly, some have reported that photos they had permanently deleted years ago have suddenly reappeared on their devices.

New York Post reported:

The latest Apple update iOS 17.5 — which the company recently urged users to instantly download — is causing years-long deleted photos to reappear on phones.

One person was shocked to see erased, nude photos they had taken with their partner three years ago suddenly pop up in their camera roll.

“I went to send a picture and saw that the latest pictures were [not safe for work] material we’d made years ago when we were living apart,” the shocked and “uncomfortable” user lamented on Reddit.

“But WTF. It was permanently deleted. Years ago but magically it’s back?? I checked my iPad and it also has pictures (some art work I did years ago). I feel so uncomfortable.”

The post Apple’s Latest iOS 17.5 Update Coerces Millions of Americans into Downloading LGBTQ Propaganda with Mandatory Phone Update appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

Guest post by Joe Hoft at JoeHoft.com – republished with permission

The difference between Big Tobacco and Big Pharma

This article is republished with permission from AbleChild

The psychiatric drug industry and big tobacco share striking similarities in their tactics, particularly when it comes to downplaying the risks associated with their products and targeting vulnerable populations like youth. The psychiatric community has gotten away with pretending it is based in science and medicine to sell its snake oil, while the tobacco industry wasn’t so lucky.

A key difference lies in the government’s stance – while tobacco companies face increasing regulations and warnings, the psychiatric drug industry enjoys substantial government support and promotion despite the existence of black box warnings on many of their medications. Both industries have a history of misleading marketing practices and minimizing potential harms.

Big tobacco companies notoriously concealed evidence linking smoking to lung cancer and other diseases for decades. Similarly, psychiatric drug manufacturers have been accused of selectively publishing favorable trial data and underreporting adverse effects.

Despite black box warnings – the FDA’s strongest safety alert – on many psychiatric medications, big pharma’s marketing often portrays an overly rosy picture. A prime example is antidepressants carrying a black box warning about increased suicidality risk in youth. Yet, these drugs continue to be heavily promoted, with limited emphasis on this severe side effect. Worse yet, antidepressants are not approved for under 18’s and still they are prescribed off-label to the age group in increasing numbers. Atypical antipsychotics like Seroquel and Zyprexa also bear a black box warning about increased mortality risk in elderly dementia patients, but their use in this vulnerable population remains widespread.

Moreover, both industries have targeted youth, securing future customers through early exposure and addiction. Big tobacco’s calculated efforts to market to adolescents are well-documented. Many of us remember getting boxes of candy cigarettes as children. The tips of the candy cigarettes were even painted red to simulate they were lit. Likewise, the psychiatric drug industry has been criticized for driving the dramatic rise in childhood psychiatric diagnoses and medication use, despite limited long-term safety data.

However, a crucial difference emerges in the government’s approach. Tobacco companies face intense scrutiny, with advertising restrictions, graphic health warnings on packaging, and mounting litigation. In contrast, the psychiatric drug industry enjoys considerable government financial support, 10.8 billion in the 2024 budget, and lack of stringent oversight.

Government agencies like the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) actively promote psychiatric medication use, often minimizing or omitting mention of black box warnings. School systems and foster care readily embrace psychotropic drugging of children, sometimes without proper consent. Meanwhile, pharmaceutical companies wield immense lobbying power, shaping mental health policies and curricula.

While the harms of smoking are widely accepted, psychiatric conditions remain poorly defined, lacking any scientific proof that they even exist as an abnormality in the brain, allowing the psychiatric drug industry to operate with less public scrutiny. Additionally, the medical establishment’s embrace of the chemical imbalance theory of mental illness has solidified psychotropic drugs as the dominant treatment paradigm, despite the theory finally being completely debunked in 2022 by Professor Joanna Moncrieff and Dr. Mark Horowitz.

Unlike big tobacco, which profits from maintaining addiction, the psychiatric drug industry can present itself as providing medical treatment for alleged disorders, shielding it from harsh criticism. This veneer of therapeutic intent, combined with deep institutional ties and lobbying clout, has allowed the industry to expand relatively unencumbered compared to its tobacco counterpart. In short, no one…no governing body has ever requested the psychiatric community prove even one diagnosis alleged by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) exists as an abnormality of the brain. To date, the science of psychiatric diagnosing consists entirely of lists of behaviors with the APA deciding what behaviors are abnormal.

In essence, while both industries prioritize profits over public health and target vulnerable groups like youth, the psychiatric drug industry has managed to embed itself within the medical-government establishment in a way big tobacco never could.

Black box warnings exist for many psychiatric medications, but unlike tobacco’s graphic packaging warnings, these are often overshadowed by aggressive marketing and institutional support for psychotropic treatment. .As public awareness grows regarding psychiatric medication risks, particularly for children and adolescents, increased scrutiny, and regulation akin to big tobacco may become necessary.

Perhaps prioritizing non-pharmacological interventions, informed consent, and restricting marketing could help realign the system toward a more balanced, ethical approach to mental health care.

Ultimately, both industries have engaged in unethical practices that undermine public well-being. However, the psychiatric drug industry’s ability to operate under the guise of medical treatment, coupled with powerful institutional backing, has allowed it to avoid the level of public condemnation and stringent regulation faced by big tobacco, despite carrying similarly severe black box warnings.

Please donate today and join our mission to get complete and factual risk information into the hands of every person before starting psychiatric drugs. Everyone deserves to make a truly informed choice about what goes into their body. Together, we can shed light on this important issue.

The post ABLECHILD: What’s the Difference Between Big Tobacco and Big Pharma? appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

Republican Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin vetoed 48 bills passed by the Democrat-controlled General Assembly on Friday.

Vetoed bills included SB238, which would have required health insurance companies to cover morning-after pills like Plan B and intrauterine contraceptive devices.

“During my State of the Commonwealth address in January, I made clear my intention to work in a bipartisan manner with the General Assembly to accomplish policies that move Virginia forward, and we have a lot to be proud of this session,” said Governor Youngkin in a press release.

Youngkin stated that he “must act on the language before me, and there are several bills which are not ready to become law.”

“This includes legislation related to contraception. Let me be crystal clear: I support access to contraception. However, we cannot trample on the religious freedoms of Virginians. And that is the issue the recommendations I sent back to the General Assembly addressed. I will continue to uphold the oath that I swore to support and defend the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Virginia,” Youngkin said.

Youngkin also vetoed SB 517, which sought to remove tax-exempt status from organizations dedicated to Confederate history. This would have included the Virginia Division of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, the General Organization of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, the Confederate Memorial Literary Society, and the Stonewall Jackson Memorial.

“The Commonwealth should pass necessary reforms regarding exemptions from local property and recordation taxes,” Youngkin wrote in a statement. “Narrowly targeting specific organizations to gain or lose such tax exemptions sets an inappropriate precedent. … Choosing winners and losers is imprudent and undermines the tax system’s fairness. ”

The post Virginia Gov. Youngkin Vetoes 48 Bills, Including One Requiring Insurance to Cover IUDs and Morning After Pills appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

Hamas reporter Motaz Azaiza in Gaza and with Rashida Tlaib, his American sponsor, in April.

Gaza reporter Motaz Azaiza is a reporter from Gaza who documented life in Gaza following the Palestinian raid on southern Egypt in October 2023 and the murder of 1,200 Jews, including young adults at a concert targeted by the barbarians.

It was the largest slaughter of Jews in one day since the horrors of the Holocaust during World War II.

In January, Motaz fled into Egypt was was quickly given a pass to the United States.

And in April Motaz Azaiza was celebrated by TIME Magazine as one of the most influential people in 2024.

TIME Magazine: For 108 days, Motaz Azaiza acted as the world’s eyes and ears in his native Gaza. Armed with a camera and a flak jacket marked “PRESS,” the 25-year-old Palestinian photographer spent nearly four months documenting life under Israeli bombardment: families displaced from homes, women mourning loved ones, a man trapped beneath the rubble. His images offered a glimpse into Gaza that few in the international press—which has been all but barred from accessing the Strip—could rival. He did so at great risk: At least 95 journalists have been killed in Gaza since Oct. 7, in what has been the deadliest period for the press since the Committee to Protect Journalists began tracking fatalities in 1992. Dozens more have been injured or arrested. Since evacuating Gaza in January, Azaiza’s role has shifted to raising awareness of the crisis—and to calling for international intervention.

Rashida Tlaib also awarded Motaz with a Congressional Record for his coverage of the Palestinian people.

Time was not alone in their appreciation for Azaiza’s propaganda.
CNN celebrated Motaz Azaiza back in March before the Anti-Israel protests at the US campuses.

For 108 days, Palestinian photographer Motaz Azaiza risked his life in Gaza to tell the story of the war to millions of followers on Instagram, as friends and family members were killed around him. But he has now left his native Gaza, feeling dismayed.

“Nothing changed. You didn’t change anything,” he told CNN’s Becky Anderson in an interview, addressing the international community, which he says has been unmoved by the images of death and carnage brought about by Israel’s war on the besieged territory.

He has been hailed by many around the world as the eyes and ears of Gaza for capturing a raw, unfiltered glimpse into the horrors of the war. That attention was unintended and unexpected. Azaiza was an aspiring travel photographer. His first Instagram post in May 2014 was a simple photo of natural wonder; vibrant petals of fuchsia and crimson, exploding out from an orange center. Known by some as a Treasure Flower, botanists identify the plant by its correct genus, Gazania. From the very beginning, it seemed as though he wanted to share his vision of a beautiful world.

“I want to capture the beauty of Gaza, not the war on Gaza. But I don’t have the option,” he said. “When something happens… I have to take pictures, I have to document, but when I come to post them, I feel ‘oh, you’re destroying the beauty.’”

Before October 7, Azaiza had about 25,000 Instagram followers, according to the social media analytics firm Social Blade. His dedicated audience has now grown to more than 19 million, and some of his clips have been viewed more than 70 million times. Clips where, unlike traditional media organizations, the horrors of war are laid graphically bare.

But now there is evidence that Motaz Azaiza was documenting the atrocities of the Hamas terrorists during the October 7th massacres of Jews.

Azaiza posted on Twitter X video and images of the kidnapping of Israelis into Gaza and video showing Hamas terrorists inside Israel with a triumphant caption reading in Arabic, “The Gazans entered the settlements!!!!!!!! With jeeps we see in the streets of Gaza.”

Shortly after the beginning of the Israeli War against Hamas, Motaz escaped to Egypt to evade arrest by Israeli forces. Motaz was then issued a special US visa and flown to the United States.

Even before Motaz was exfiltrated out of Gaza (when no one else could escape), he had electricity to charge his expensive equipment and latest model iPhone, access to vehicles with fuels, complete freedom of movement, food, escort, etc. That’s while everyone else was supposedly starving in Gaza.

In many subsequent images, he wears expensive new clothes/is well-dressed, relaxed, and is globe-trotting (Qatar, Turkey, Switzerland, the US, and the UK) to share his story.

On October 7, he posted a story about Blinken donating 75 million to UNRWA right after UNRWA allegations of collaborating with Hamas were uncovered. It is curious that he ended up in Qatar after the Egyptians exfiltrated him and has access to unlimited money to travel around the world. This makes investigators suspect he has ties to Hamas.

In April 2024, just a few short months after moving to the US, Motaz was seen at Columbia University assisting the protest movement against Israel.

His X page had entries erased before April 4.

His Instagram page does not include the entries from October 7 or his cheering the slaughter of Jews.

This information was provided by XRVision – Click on image to enlarge

Via XRVision

The post The State Dept, CIA, FBI Are Colluding and Shielding Palestinian Reporter Who Cheered Oct. 7 Massacre – He Was Then Brought to US and Participated in Riots at Columbia University – And Now He Is Honored as Time 100 Most Influential People appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

General Michael Flynn’s movie is making waves across the nation.

The Gateway Pundit had the opportunity to attend an exclusive screening of the FLYNN – Deliver the Truth, Whatever the Cost. We interviewed General Flynn at The America First Warehouse in Hauppauge, New York, one of the stops in his nationwide tour promoting the film. *See our review below.

Watch our interview here with General Flynn:

You can watch the movie today and support General Flynn’s inspiring message to America. It is available for purchase and rent on major streaming platforms including Amazon, Google Play, iTunes, and YouTube. It is $5.99 to rent and $19.99 to purchase.

Watch FLYNN – Deliver the Truth, Whatever the Cost.

General Flynn’s 48-day nationwide tour across the United States has significantly raised awareness about the federal government’s corruption and its unjust application of the law. This grassroots campaign has been enthusiastically supported by Americans nationwide who oppose the entrenched Uniparty politics and the deep-seated corruption within the federal bureaucracy and corporate media.

General Flynn’s tour bus, stopped on Long Island at The America First Warehouse.

This film has dominated the Amazon best-seller list for weeks, outperforming major films like Dune and Oppenheimer, and has trended on X multiple times since its early April premiere. Flynn has been promoting the film on prominent shows with hosts such as Steve Bannon, Charlie Kirk, Brandon Tatum and Chris Cuomo.

Expect a beautifully made sentimental and hard-hitting biographical documentary showcasing the heroic general’s military career, his devoted family ties, and the relentless political witch hunt he faced at the hands of the corrupt Department of Justice.

WATCH GENERAL FLYNN’S MOVIE NOW!

General Flynn in FLYNN – Deliver the Truth, Whatever the Cost.

The documentary features commentary by General Flynn, his wife and siblings, and stars like Tucker Carlson, Devin Nunes, Investigative Journalist Tracy Beanz and Green Beret Ivan Raiklin.

Tucker Carlson appears and narrates in FLYNN – Deliver the Truth, Whatever the Cost.

“I think that General Flynn’s story is an inspiring story because he wasn’t broken,” said Tucker Carlson. “He would say readily he wasn’t broken because of the love of his family. Because of his faith. General Flynn found himself in a circumstance he did not anticipate at all. I know he never expected to find himself persecuted by his own government the he served for the course of his entire life. We can all wind up in a situation like that and all we can hope for is the strength to continue to tell the truth in the face of adversity…and to be surrounded by people we love who support us and come out on the other end whole. And he has achieved all of that. And so I see his story as a great victory- actually as a triumph. He is still whole. He is wounded by what happened to him- his family is wounded by what happened to him- but he is not broken. He still has dignity and he still has an unwavering commitment to tell the truth. If you come out of a situation like the one that he lived through with that intact, then you have won.”

General Flynn served as President Trump’s National Security Advisor before he was attacked by the Deep State.

WATCH GENERAL FLYNN’S MOVIE NOW!

There was a particularly poignant scene where General Flynn and his family spoke about the kindness the American people showed their family by generously donating to his legal fund so Flynn could defend himself against the weight of the weaponized federal government. The scene was narrated by his family over footage of General Flynn struggling under dark ocean waters and then finally coming up, breathing air and swimming to shore.

General Michael Flynn is a lifelong surfer.

Said General Flynn during the scene:

“There was a moment when I just felt like I was deep down under water and I felt like I was drowning. The American people started to come into my life and there was a moment where I just felt like air was being breathed into my lungs. Over time, instead of being pounded down below the surface of the ocean, I started to come up. It was like I am now above the surface and I am starting to swim to shore. I had the shore a long distance off- but I can see the shoreline. It is out there and I started to swim.”

WATCH GENERAL FLYNN’S MOVIE NOW!

The film candidly addresses General Flynn’s son Michael Flynn Jr.’s depression and thoughts of suicide after he too was raided and heavily targeted by the Feds in their sick attempt to pressure his father to take a plea deal. The father and son were only permitted to speak to each other through their attorneys. General Flynn eventually took a plea deal to save his son from the wrath of the Department of Justice.

The Dishonorable Judge Emmet Sullivan, appointed by Bill Clinton, politically persecuted General Michael Flynn.

“I went into a very deep depression going into 2018,” confessed Michael Flynn Junior. “I mean a suicidal depression. I don’t say that lightly because that is not a topic that is easy to discuss. The only thing that kept me alive was my son and thank God I had him in my life.”

WATCH GENERAL FLYNN’S MOVIE NOW!

This reporter loved the last line of the film, delivered by General Flynn.

“Is there any regret that I have in life? For what I experienced I should sit here and say I have a lot of them- I have a lot of regrets. But when I look back at my life and I understand the lives that were lost (gets emotional)…I mean I am sitting here with you…I’m here and I can tell my story.”

Sometimes redemption can be as simple as telling your story.

If General Flynn can find redemption after tremendous adversity, so can you.

Because in the end GOD WINS.

General Michael Flynn and Gateway Pundit reporter Cara Castronuova.

Please follow Cara on Twitter.

Cara is an Investigative Journalist, 2-Time Boxing Champion and Television Personality. She is the co-founder of Citizens Against Political Persecution. You can follow her on Twitter HERE or Instagram HERE @CaraCastronuova. She is currently banned on Fakebook & suing them for colluding with the Biden Regime to violate her First Amendment Rights. You can contact Cara at www.caracastronuova.com if you have any tips.

“I Can Do All Things Through Christ Who Strengthens Me.” Phil 4:13.

The post Watch General Flynn’s Epic New Movie “FLYNN- DELIVER THE TRUTH WHATEVER THE COST” Today! – And See TGP’s Cara Castronuova’s Video Interview with General Flynn! appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

Because I live near what is allegedly the 14th largest city in the nation (Columbus, Ohio), I am relatively unfamiliar with the concept of the “dead mall.” 

As a quick Internet search reveals, the term refers to shopping centers whose evaporating tenants and dwindling shoppers render them gloomily apocalyptic. Certainly I have seen malls in my area close, deteriorate, or face the wrecking ball, but most of the shopping around here seems fairly vibrant—that is, until this past January.

During that fateful month, the Brooks Brothers store in a nearby shopping center closed its doors. It was the only Brooks Brothers store in central Ohio (other than a factory-outlet store), and it was the chief reason why I continued to venture to the shopping center that, until recently, housed it. With the store now shuttered, I have come to more fully grasp the implications of the “dead mall” phenomenon.

I do not mean to overstate the sartorial excellence of Brooks Brothers. As the kids say, let me be clear: Brooks Brothers is not, and probably never has been, on par with the finest Ivy League-style shops in America, including J. Press, O’Connell’s in Buffalo, New York, and Ben Silver in Charleston, South Carolina. I order from all of those stores, but I would be lying if I didn’t say that the foundation of my wardrobe—button-down shirts, blazers, sport coats, and sweaters—came from anywhere but Brooks Brothers.

Part of this was a matter of ease: Brooks Brothers has (or had) stores in most major metropolitan areas in the United States. As it happened, I spent much of my youth in a suburb of New Orleans, which was home to a truly exceptional Brooks Brothers store in the Shops at Canal Place, a mall that was, when I last visited it 26 years ago, very much not dead: Its Brooks Brothers store, which had its own outside entrance, took up three floors. In my quarter-century-old recollection, the first floor was the men’s department, the second, the ladies’ department, and the third, the suiting department. The store was not only huge but beautifully appointed: the mahogany tables, the stacks of sweaters, the shelves of shirts. It was a study in woolen splendor. 

When I was 15, my family moved back to Ohio, where I immediately began frequenting the much smaller but still respectable Brooks Brothers at a now-demolished Downtown shopping center. (An ominous sign that went unheeded by me at the time.) When that mall ceased to exist, another Brooks Brothers store—the one that just closed—popped up in its place. Back then, one counted on certain fundamentals: life, liberty, the pursuit of cashmere socks.

Although my own tastes eventually expanded to include the more authentically “Ivy” offerings of J. Press and similar stores, I depended on the presence of Brooks Brothers. After all, one could not easily order blazers or trousers over the phone, and this Brooks Brothers still employed an on-site tailor. Two Christmases ago, in a fit of overspending, I purchased from this store both a camel hair sport coat and a camel hair polo coat—much like the one worn by Jimmy Stewart in the movie Bell Book and Candle. (Google it.) Neither item could have been ordered from afar; both required the in-person ritual of the tailor marking the garments with that triangle of chalk.

I was perfectly aware that Brooks Brothers was capable of letting me down. Over a lifetime of purchasing from the brand, I had seen their offerings decline in craftsmanship and in their adherence to the principles of preppiness, and I had certainly noted the superior quality of their competitors. Even so, I cannot deny how pleasurable it was to stroll through the store every few months. The staff seemed to change as often as the seasons (another ominous sign), but just when you had given up on them, someone competent and knowledgeable stepped in. Plus, their tailor was there most days, including just before Christmas. 

Last week, I went back to the site of my former Brooks Brothers—what is now, to me, a dead mall. Walking past California Pizza Kitchen, Phyllis Ann’s Signature Ice Creamery, an FYE, a Saks Fifth Avenue that opens at noon and closes at 6 p.m., the place seemed suddenly ghostly. The former Brooks Brothers space sat dark and unused; at the bottom of one of the display windows was a cardboard sign that read “Space Available.”

True, J. Press, O’Connell’s, Ben Silver, et cetera, remain a phone call away, but my life as an in-person shopper has become a little bleaker. As I have learned, dead malls bespeak a gradual deadening of the vast, forgotten country that exists between the coasts. 

The post Mall by Mall, America’s Interior Is Wasting Away appeared first on The American Conservative.

The French Resistance looms large in our collective memory of the Second World War. The chain-smoking, beret-clad partisan is a stock character in countless movies and TV shows; more soberly, the genuine heroics of the maquis have been chronicled in thousands of books, articles, and documentaries. Such has been the prominence of these portrayals that one could be forgiven for supposing that a large proportion of Frenchmen—perhaps even a majority—spent the war fighting their Nazi occupiers.

Yet historians estimate that, at most, 2 percent of the population was involved with the Resistance. From the fall of France in 1940 until her liberation by the Allies in 1944, collaboration—whether with the German military administration in the north or the puppet Vichy regime in the south—was a vastly more common response. There were understandable reasons for this: Active resistance carried with it the risk of torture and death, and even passive forms of noncompliance could lead to serious social and material consequences. Moreover, France was still reeling from the totality of its “strange defeat,” which seemed to have as much to do with the internal weakness of the Third Republic as the power of the German war machine. 

Under such circumstances, many people chose to go along to get along. Some held high positions with the occupation authorities, informed on friends and neighbors, and even donned Nazi uniforms to fight on the Eastern Front. Others merely continued in their careers as postal workers or government clerks, sold goods to German soldiers, or enrolled their children in “patriotic” youth groups. (Whether or not such actions should be described as collaboration is perhaps an open question; certainly there was a spectrum).

When the tide eventually turned, and Allied tanks drove the Axis first from French soil and then into historical oblivion, there was left the tricky question of how to deal with this sordid aspect of the country’s wartime experience. The first months after liberation had seen Resistance partisans effect a kind of impromptu reckoning in hundreds of towns and cities across the country, and the chief collaborators—Philippe Pétain, Pierre Laval, etc.—had been duly tried and punished. 

That done, there was little appetite for more thoroughgoing purges. After all, many of the civil servants who had worked for Vichy were now needed to staff the bureaucracy of the new Fourth Republic, and the nation—embarking on the period of economic recovery that would become known as les trente glorieuses—preferred to lean into its future rather than dwell on painful episodes from its past. When the topic was broached, the usual reaction was a kind of fatalism, in which collaboration (at least of the rank-and-file variety) was understood as a passive response to overwhelming outside forces. There were even some who saw Vichy as a lesser evil, a distasteful but in some sense defensible way of precluding outright Nazi rule over the whole country (this, not incidentally, was the argument deployed by Pétain and Laval at their trials).

But with the sociopolitical ferment of the ’60s and ’70s came a new willingness to challenge this convenient postwar orthodoxy. Two works exercised a particularly strong influence: Marcel Ophüls’s 1969 documentary The Sorrow and the Pity, which undermined France’s image of itself as a “nation of resisters” by vividly showing the extent of collaboration in a single, fairly typical city; and Robert Paxton’s 1972 book Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order, 1940–44, a meticulous and brilliant history of the Vichy years that centered French agency rather than Nazi coercion. (“Collaboration,” the book’s thesis ran, “was not a German demand to which some Frenchmen acceded…. Collaboration was a French proposal.”)

It was against this backdrop that, 50 years ago, Lacombe, Lucien made its theatrical debut. Masterfully directed by Louis Malle (perhaps best known in the U.S. for making My Dinner with Andre) and scored by the great jazz musician Django Reinhardt, the movie follows the short career of Lucien Lacombe, a wayward teenager who becomes a combination errand boy/hit man for the Vichy secret police.

We first meet our protagonist in June 1944, when he is living on his family’s farm in southwestern France. Despite the loveliness of his surroundings—Malle shot on location in Figeac, a medieval Occitan village—home life is no idyll for Lucien. His father went missing in the war, and his mother’s new beau has moved in and wants to clean house. The teen’s first thought is to join the Resistance, but he is turned down by the local commander. “You’re too young,” he is told, “and we have enough like you.” Milling around town dejectedly, Lucien stumbles into the headquarters of the Carlingue—French auxiliaries to the Gestapo—who find his naïveté charming and his indiscriminate appetite for excitement useful.

Unsurprisingly, this office doesn’t exactly pull in the best and the brightest. Its members include a dissolute and disinherited aristocrat, an over-the-hill bicycle racer, and a police inspector drummed out of the prewar force. They do the job more for its perks—power, the odd bit of cash, opportunities to inflict pain—than from any kind of ideological commitment. Indeed, the group’s only zealous fascist is seen as something of an oddball by his confreres, who crack dirty jokes about Pétain and use his portrait for target practice. 

Lucien himself takes to this new line of work without any misgivings; the bullying and violence interest him as much as the champagne and fancy clothes. This, in fact, is one of the remarkable things about this movie—Malle’s protagonist is utterly incapable of any kind of ethical or ideological engagement. He’s neither innately evil nor especially brutish, although he does have a thing about shooting animals (especially rabbits). Rather, he is deeply, profoundly stupid. He puts one in mind of DiCaprio’s character in Killers of the Flower Moon, albeit less voluble and more believably characterized. Even his romantic attachment to a Jewish girl—the daughter of a tailor who is being extorted by one of Lucien’s colleagues—fails to provoke any kind of self-reflection until it’s far too late. And his stupidity doesn’t only impose moral costs. The very night he joins the Carlingue, the radio is broadcasting a report on the Allied landings in Normandy; as it turns out, June 1944 was a less than propitious moment to throw one’s lot in with the Axis.

The deepest clue to Lucien’s motivations comes when he is assigned to guard a captured Resistance partisan. The prisoner, whose interrogation has been mercifully interrupted, tries to talk Lucien into setting him free. Meeting silence, he finally appeals to his captor’s sense of patriotism. “So you’re with the Germans. A young Frenchman like you! Aren’t you ashamed?” This gets a response: Lucien tapes the prisoner’s mouth shut. “I don’t like people talking down to me,” he says.

Of course, Lucien is an extreme case. Much more typical is the experience of his mother’s boyfriend, Laborit. Before D-Day, he appears to be a solid supporter of Vichy, speaking contemptuously of the local Resistance partisans. But as the months pass, and a German defeat appears more and more likely, Laborit comes all the way around, denouncing as treason Lucien’s collaboration (in this regard, Laborit embodies the attitude of the attentiste, that recurring figure in French history—think Talleyrand—who can survive and thrive amidst endemic instability). 

However unrepresentative the specifics of Lucien’s trajectory, the motives that set him on that path—the desire for agency and belonging, the temptation to indulge one’s animal appetites—were and are universal. Or, as one French statesman (and Resistance veteran) put it after the war: “There are certain tendencies and habits which, when they are fired, fed, or stimulated, crop up like weeds… and so we must always be on the defense.” As ever more of the world falls under the shadow of war—and passion increasingly strains the bonds of affection here at home—it is precisely this insight that makes Lacombe, Lucien as essential today as it was five decades ago. 

The post Portrait of a Collaborator appeared first on The American Conservative.

A former Facebook and Nike “diversity manager” has been sentenced to prison after stealing $5 million earmarked for DEI initiatives.

Barbara Furlow-Smiles, 38, of Georgia, pleaded guilty to wire fraud in December for what the Justice Department called an “elaborate scheme involving fraudulent vendors, fictitious paperwork, and cash kickbacks.”

On Monday, Furlow-Smiles was sentenced to five years and three months in prison plus three years of supervised release. She has also been ordered to pay restitution of $4,981,783.58 to Facebook and $121,054.50 to Nike, for a total of $5,102,838.08.

“Furlow-Smiles shamelessly violated her position of trust as a DEI executive at Facebook to steal millions from the company utilizing a scheme involving fraudulent vendors, fake invoices, and cash kickbacks,” said U.S. Attorney Ryan K. Buchanan. “After being terminated from Facebook, she brazenly continued the fraud as a DEI leader at Nike, where she stole another six-figure sum from their diversity program. Her prison sentence reflects the consequences of her decision to orchestrate an intricate scheme to defraud two of her employers for personal profit.”

According to a press release from the Justice Department, “Furlow-Smiles served as Lead Strategist, Global Head of Employee Resource Groups and Diversity Engagement at Facebook, Inc., now known as Meta Platforms, Inc., doing business as Meta. From January 2017 to September 2021, she led Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs at Facebook and was responsible for developing and executing DEI initiatives, operations, and engagement programs. In her position, Furlow-Smiles had access to company credit cards. She also had the authority to submit purchase requisitions and approve invoices for authorized vendors of Facebook.”

“Furlow-Smiles used her position at Facebook to cheat and defraud the company. She caused Facebook to pay numerous individuals for goods and services that were never provided and then directed those individuals to kick back the fraudulent proceeds to her, often in cash. Her scheme operated in two ways,” the press release explained.

“First, Furlow-Smiles linked PayPal, Venmo, and Cash App accounts to her Facebook credit cards and used those accounts to pay friends, relatives, and other associates for goods and services that in truth were never provided to Facebook. To conceal the bogus charges, Furlow-Smiles submitted fraudulent expense reports, falsely claiming that her associates or their businesses had performed work on programs and events for Facebook, such as providing swag or marketing services, when in fact they had not done so.”

After receiving the money from Facebook, the individuals would return the majority of it to Furlow-Smiles.

“Second, Furlow-Smiles caused Facebook to onboard several vendors that were owned and operated by friends and associates who paid her kickbacks. Furlow-Smiles approved fraudulent invoices for these vendors. After Facebook paid the invoices, Furlow-Smiles directed the vendors to return a portion of the money they received to her.”

According to the DOJ, Furlow-Smiles stole over $4.9 million from Facebook and over $120,000 from Nike “based on fictitious charges and fraudulent invoices. She used the money to fund a luxury lifestyle in California, Georgia, and Oregon.”

The post Former Facebook and Nike Diversity Manager Sentenced to Prison After Stealing $5 Million Meant for DEI Initiatives appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.