Tuesday • June 17 • 2025
Vol.XVII • No.XXV
Manchester, N.H.
Historically, Grand Juries, an institution inherited from England, were designed to act as buffers between over-zealous and/or overreaching prosecutors and anyone from the public who might be accused of a crime. In other words, it was originally designed to protect individuals. The members serving on a Grand Jury (the “Grand Jurors”) are lay people from the community.
A Grand Jury often meets for months at a time and usually considers multiple matters, while a trial jury, called a petit jury, only meets to hear a single case before it.
A petit jury is usually comprised of from 6 to 12 members, while a Grand Jury is usually comprised of from 16 to 23 members, depending on which federal or state law is applicable.
A Grand Jury will examine proposed criminal cases based upon presentations by the prosecutor and testimony of witnesses. In current practice, an accused who is the subject of a Grand Jury proceeding may not even know that he or she is the subject of the proceeding, and does not even have the right to appear and make his or her case for innocence before the Grand Jury votes on whether to issue an indictment (called a “true bill”) or refuses to issue an indictment (called a “no true bill”).
And anyone who does appear before a Grand Jury generally does not have the right to be accompanied before the Grand Jury by counsel- so one can often see the spectacle of a person testifying before a Grand Jury with their counsel outside in the hall and they must leave the Grand Jury room (where secrecy prevails) and step outside from time to time to consult with counsel.
An indictment only indicates that at least a majority of the members of the Grand Jury have determined, based upon the presentation by the prosecutor and the testimony of witnesses, that there appears to be sufficient evidence to bring criminal charges to trial, and that the prosecutor can proceed with a criminal case. It is definitely not a finding of guilt or innocence. Guilt or innocence is ultimately determined by a petit jury (or a judge if a jury trial has been waived by the defendant).
Not every criminal case is based upon an indictment from a Grand Jury. Some criminal cases may be brought by the issuance by the prosecutor of a charging document sometimes called an “information” or simply a criminal complaint.
Finally, many non-lawyers possibly have not heard what is common knowledge among lawyers: that a prosecutor directing the activities of a Grand Jury could indict a ham sandwich.
The post About Grand Jury Indictments appeared first on Granite Grok.
The Northwood Republican Town Committee endorses James Guzofski in the Rockingham 1 Northwood Nottingham Republican primary special election on Tuesday, August 1, 2023.
We want to thank Cheryl Dean for this Contribution – Please direct yours to Editor@GraniteGrok.com.
You can review our ‘Op-Ed Guidelines‘ on the FAQ Page.
The Northwood Republican Town Committee normally doesn’t endorse in primary elections; however, we feel strongly in our support for James and have chosen to endorse him wholeheartedly. We have supported him in the past few years in his runs and wins onto the Northwood Select Board and are thrilled at the job he is doing serving on that board as well as all the other ways he serves the Northwood community.
Our economy is in great decline. We have record inflation and rising energy costs which are financially crippling us all. Our schools are failing our children, while parental rights are eroding, and our individual freedoms and liberties are being chipped away at. It’s truly a time of uncertainty, and we need a NH State Representative who will listen to us and be our voice in the NH State House.
In addition to the great work James Guzofski does on the Northwood select board, James also serves on the Northwood Fire Department as Chaplin, where he sees firsthand the dedication and commitment of our first responders. James has also served in the Ministry for 34 years and knows the importance of listening to people. James is regularly found around Northwood seeking out feedback and concerns from community members so that he knows how to better serve our community.
James wholeheartedly believes in our freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and our Second Amendment rights which he will protect and defend. James is a tireless fighter for truth and freedom.
The past few years, we have seen the great job James has done serving on the Northwood Select Board and how he has made such a positive impact in our community. This is why the Northwood Republican Town Committee is officially endorsing James Guzofski; we know he is the candidate we want and need as our New Hampshire State Representative and that he will be the best choice to be our voice in the NH State House.
This is a crucial special election that could determine the control of the New Hampshire House of Representatives. We need everyone in Rockingham District 1 Northwood Nottingham to come out and vote for James Guzofski on August 1, 2023.
Cheryl Dean
Northwood Republican Town Chair
Reminder: Content about candidates or by candidates is not an endorsement by GraniteGrok.com or its authors.
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Democrats campaign on civility, holding political opponents to that standard but rarely any of their own and only under extreme circumstances. As in, when the “you took them out of context” BS won’t fly. So here’s one for the “adults” in the room who ran on unity blah blah blah.
A local school board president in California has been inundated with threats that left-wing activists will dismember her, kill her children, and slaughter her pets. Her crime? Saying that teachers should not keep parents in the dark if their children begin to “identify” as transgender. …
“The next morning, our district got a phone call” from an anonymous caller threatening “to kill me, and they said that they were going to dismember” school board president Sonja Shaw, the official revealed on “Washington Watch With Tony Perkins” on Monday. Police alerted Shaw to the threat shortly before a previous interview on the show last Friday.
… Shaw looked at her district email account, where she said she saw messages stating, “You’re going to die,” with a series of profane epithets. “Your children are going to die, and your animals are going to die.” For a “point of reference, they would name what kind of animals I had,” Shaw added.
“I also got notification that people who identify as being in the terrorist organization Antifa posted on their website, ‘We declare war on Sonja Shaw,’” Shaw told Perkins, adding that the group posted her address. “They said, ‘We know where you sleep,’” the same message an angry mob screamed outside the home of then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson in 2018. “They said things like, ‘Use all force possible to stop her.’”
There’s an awful lot in there for the Dems to denounce. We’ve got discrimination, hate crimes, criminal threatening, and doxxing – which should get at least a few of them uppity. Nothing gets NH Democrat women wound up like sharing their actual voting records … or being pro-choice, anti-grooming, pro-self-defense, pro-free speech, a tax cutter; the list is too long; I’ll stop there. My point is that his woman, in elected office, has been threatened with harm and death by reliably left-Wing pro-Democrat activists, as have her family,
And not a peep out of these pro-civility people before politics Democrats.
Shouldn’t there be lengthy debates on their social media or videos on Tik Tok or Instagram pleading with these activists to stop the H8?
No outrage.
Well, I suppose that once they’ve heard the story, they will be outraged … at Sonja Shaw. She is the head of a school board, elected by … parents and taxpayers, whose 4-1 majority was clear in its position. It happens to be a position they do not share; therefore, whatever passes for expression can’t possibly be called hate or incivility. Sharing her home address is not doxxing. It is necessary so the mobs threatening to dismember her can find her home and family.
But no worries. Come election or re-election time; they’ll be all about people over politics or civility or being the adults in the room.
It’s all complete bullsh!t, but it keeps working, so that thing about fooling some of the people some of the time might need an edit.
The post Will Even One NH Dem Denounce This? Activists Threaten to Dismember School Board Members appeared first on Granite Grok.
There’s a lot of censorship of information about the corruption of America’s political system. The point is our system of government has been corrupted. If this assertion is true, we need to do something about it and do it now.
We want to thank Marc Abear for this Contribution – Please direct yours to Editor@GraniteGrok.com.
You can review our ‘Op-Ed Guidelines‘ on the FAQ Page.
Last week Laura Demlo, FBI Section Chief of the Foreign Information Taskforce, testified before Congress. She said the FBI knew in 2019 the Hunter Biden laptop was real. Even though the FBI knew it was real, the FBI advised social media companies it might be Russian disinformation.
You should care about this because polling done after the election shows a significant number of voters, enough voters to have reversed the results of the presidential election, would have changed their vote if they knew this or if they believed it was true… which it was. That makes what the FBI did both consequential and premeditated election interference.
October 14, 2020, was less than a month before the general election day, but we did not have an election day; we had a voting season. So a lot of people voted without the opportunity to have the information from the New York Post story. Worse, there was no way to change their vote.
On that day the FBI held an emergency meeting with Twitter to discuss the Hunter Biden laptop. It was an emergency because the New York Post released the Hunter Biden Laptop story earlier in the day. The story was before the public though not yet widely disseminated and accepted.
The New York Post story asserted: The Post had verified the laptop. And its contents were real, which was blockbuster information in and of itself. The story went on to say the device held evidence of a host of crimes including then-candidate Biden taking money from the governments of China, Ukraine, and Romania.
With the Post having broken the story, how would the rest of the media respond? We now know the FBI held a series of meetings with media outlets. It was a coordinated political damage control effort.
In the Twitter meeting, a Twitter manager asked the FBI directly, “Is the laptop real?” The FBI agents in the meeting initially said yes. Later, as the meeting progressed, another FBI member said, “No, we’ll offer no comment.”
From that point forward, the official FBI response became either “No, we offer no comment.” or “The laptop could be Russian disinformation; we aren’t sure so we are not going to comment.” But the FBI did know for sure. They knew the device was Hunter Biden’s laptop. The FBI knew the contents had not been altered.
The position of no comment, or we’re not sure, was used as justification to ban all mention of the laptop and its being real. That’s what the media did. They suppressed the story and censored the information. They were complicit, whether knowingly or unknowingly, in the FBI’s election interference.
Then on October 19, 2020, Politico ran a letter signed by 51 former intelligence officials that said the Hunter Biden laptop had all the classic earmarks of a classic Russian information operation. One might ask how such a letter sprang forth.
Perhaps we should ask Anthony Blinken. Perhaps he could help us understand how this letter originated. Perhaps he could help us understand how it got circulated for signature and then got disseminated to the media.
It turns out that the letter, the Politico story was false. It was generated by the Biden campaign. Have we ever had any other Democrat Presidential Candidate who made claims of Russian disinformation? How many repetitions, over how much time does it take to see a pattern? The idea of Russian disinformation regarding the laptop became “settled” proof in the media.
The FBI plus the Intelligence community plus the media, the team moved the ball across the goal line. Joe Biden is president as a direct result. Maybe that’s not stealing an election. Maybe there’s another name for it. But it does not change who the occupant of the Oval Office is, does it?
There was a poll from Harvard Harris in late October 2020 that showed a majority of Americans believed the laptop was Russian disinformation. It wasn’t. This is an American example of the “The Big Lie.” The FBI knew the truth. The FBI said nothing.
A separate poll from Tip Insights showed 60% of Americans were not going to follow the story of the Hunter Biden laptop; logically, why would they? It was fake news. In the Tip Insight poll was another conclusion: If the voters had known the laptop was real, and the information on it was unaltered, a majority of people would have voted differently. But people did not know, and the rest… is history.
The facts now show the 2020 election was not free and fair. Say what you will about voting irregularities, but the voters were knowingly manipulated by a government agency with the help of the press. That happened. We had a Presidential candidate engaged in corruption with our enemy China.
There is a long history of bias in the media. The media is slanted to the Left. They spread false information and suppress facts when they don’t like where they think it might take us. We can understand that. We all have a right to listen to the sources we put our trust in.
But why did the FBI do this? What exactly are we paying the FBI to do? They are a law enforcement agency. They are supposed to be apolitical. That’s what we pay them to be. But today, that’s not true. So what should we do about that?
Do you remember back in 2019 when the Inspector General of the Department of Justice (IG) came in with a report on the FBI? Well, he told us as a result of his investigation FBI Director James Comey leaked classified information to the press.
Comey leaked to damage then-President Trump. Did Comey get indicted for leaking classified information? The IG found The FBI director broke the law because he wished to harm Trump; he did not like Trump for personal political reasons. That’s from the IG report.
The IG also said in the report findings, “Comey set a dangerous example for the over 35,000 FBI employees.” The danger is that those employees watched their director engage in personal partisan politics and get away with it.
This makes them think, if he can do it, why can’t I? Do we want our FBI employees spending their time picking political winners and losers? That’s not what we hired them for… not why we pay them. What’s the purpose of the Hatch Act?
The problem is: When we have the federal government and executive branch employees engaged in such political activity, our republic is over. At that point, we live in tyranny. The deep state has taken control.
We the people, no longer matter. So the IG was correct. This is important. And it isn’t about Republicans or Democrats. This is about our freedom, our lives and yes, even our ability to pursue happiness as we understand it.
Isn’t what we are seeing now exactly what the IG pointed out as dangerous? There are credible allegations of Joe Biden and his family engaging in corruption. How can we have confidence in Biden’s decision-making? Is he acting in your best interest or is he working as directed by foreign actors?
The FBI leaders and employees chose to bury the information along with their media partners. We, as voters, were not allowed to give our informed consent in the 2020 election with respect to the choice for President. That’s tyranny.
The FBI changed the result of the election and maybe the fate of the country. The FBI decided for you who would occupy the oval office. This story is important; it is ongoing. The same players are still in place, in the same offices, at the same agency today. If anything, their arrogance has grown, and the threat has expanded.
It is vital that we fix this problem. The weaponization of our federal bureaucracy against us is exactly what caused those extremist founders to separate their colonies from the King of England to form our nation. We have to agree on whether or not we can govern ourselves.
Do we want the responsibility that comes with citizenship? If not, get out of the shackles and try to find some that you find comfortable. Once you are in them, getting out requires all your blood, your treasure, and your sacred honor. So, which side are you on?
The post When Is an Election Not an Election? appeared first on Granite Grok.
It’s been said you can judge a society by how it treats its prisoners. Of late, the American prison system has become nearly as bipolar as its political system. Republican states remain relatively staunch in holding fast to existing criminal codes. States run by Democrats; they would like you to believe, are the most benevolent toward prisoners due to simply letting them out early or not even putting criminals in to begin with. Is this, in fact, beneficence?
Famously blue California recently released thousands of pedophiles less than one year after their lawful incarceration, with over 200 of them living around the state capitol. If this says anything about our country, it is that we have lost touch with what even prisoners consider the most offensive of human acts – the grooming and sexual exploitation of our most vulnerable citizens, children.
Sex trafficking of minors, a once nearly verboten topic of discussion in polite society, is now one of the most talked about. Thanks in part to whistle-blowers like Tara Rodas and movies like The Sound of Freedom, the American public is waking up to the stark reality all around us. Human trafficking is an estimated $150 billion a year industry. To put that in perspective, that is more than the GDP of Ukraine and twice that of Serbia. There are currently so many millions being trafficked it stands at more human slaves than at any other time in history, including when slavery was legal worldwide.
Tara Rodas recently shared her testimony with Judicial Watch, where she described first-hand experiences with children being trafficked thanks to current federal policies. After voicing her concerns to her supervisor, she was told, “We don’t get sued by traffickers. We only get sued if we keep children too long. Understood?” This sort of callous enforcing of policy begs the question – if America is opposed to exploiting children, why is that the policy?
Included in her testimony is this appalling statistic – since the Biden Administration took office, there have been nearly five million border crossings of which the locations of some 85,000 children are currently unknown to federal authorities. Never mind the many hundreds of “gotaways” who represent known criminals who have successfully crossed into the United States, also unaccounted.
These numbers give some idea of the scope of the problem, however, the child exploitation industry does not thrive thanks to brazen criminality. The lesser-known practice of grooming is becoming equally commonplace in our towns, schools, libraries, and media thanks to a concerted effort by many who have worked hard to blur the lines between acceptable and unacceptable interactions with children.
Thankfully a panel of 18 experts set out to develop a Scientific Grooming Model (SGM) intended to help adults, teens, and children to know the five stages of grooming and what to look for, specifically clusters of behaviors, frequent use of certain behaviors and the most severe which includes sexual content and education. Of note, groomers are not typically the unkempt men we see in police mug shots. They are “charming/nice/likable” often with “insider status/good reputation/pillars of the community.”
Understanding Stage One is to know how they Select Victims. Among the characteristics they look for are:
In Stage Two, they seek to gain access via such places as schools, youth groups, scouts, and sports. After which, they work on isolating the child or children.
Stage Three focuses on Trust Development. Aside from being charming and gaining power, trust, and access via seeking positions like teachers or scout leaders, we find they often:
It’s not difficult at this point to see how Gays Against Groomers became a group that focused primarily on the Transgender manipulation of kids in schools, and Drag Queen Story Hours as types of grooming. Given the model, Gays Against Groomers and Parents are not operating on opinion but science, as scientific models are reliable, repeatable, testable, and provable. To use the parlance of our times, “follow the science” if you want to stop the sexual grooming of America’s children.
Given the magnitude of the problem, what can you do? For starters, you should familiarize yourself with the model. Secondly, you should listen to the entire testimony from Mrs. Rodas, who asks everyone to contact their representatives and speak up about the wanton trafficking in our towns. Her warning is they will be coming to your town soon if they aren’t there already.
Finally, you can equip yourself with enough information and courage to share this info, namely the model, with your town boards (as I did here in Hartford last Tuesday [go to minute 6 of this link]), especially the school board. They should act to make sure these things are not taking place in our schools. If they don’t, then you need to talk to the voters of your town to vote them out.
There is virtually nothing as reprehensible as the sexual grooming and exploitation of children. This is something the prisoners living in America have made clear.
The post Raising Awareness About Grooming In the Upper Valley / Hartford appeared first on Granite Grok.
In the heart of Texas, where the sun’s rays shine strongly, is a man whose loyalty to Collin County residents and conservative values is unwavering – Wayne Richard. He intends to challenge the incumbent state Representative Matt Shaheen in the upcoming GOP primary, fuelled by Shaheen’s vote to impeach Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton – an utter act of betrayal of all we Texans stand for.
Attorney General Ken Paxton’s figure in Texas politics shines brightly as a beacon of service and honor. His solid commitment to the state and its people has left an indelible mark, earning him the respect and admiration of countless Texans—those who dare to go against such an esteemed figure risk the unyielding judgment of the electorate.
Wayne Richard is deeply connected to our community. As a successful Plano businessman, he understands the struggles hardworking Texans face. But what truly sets him apart is his unwavering dedication to the principles that have defined the great state of Texas for generations – conservatism at its core. And more than anything, Wayne Richard recognizes the significance of Paxton’s legacy and stands firmly aligned with those who champion his cause, vowing to defend General Paxton.
With a heart full of love for his constituents and Texas, Wayne aspires to represent the 66th district in the Texas House of Representatives, putting America First, just like former President Trump. Wayne’s commitment to conservative values has made him a prominent figure in Collin County, where Republicans rally behind him to challenge Shaheen in the GOP primary.
So why is Wayne taking this step now? He believes Shaheen’s vote to impeach Attorney General Ken Paxton betrayed our conservative principles. Ken Paxton has been a staunch defender of traditional values and a steadfast advocate for Texas. For Wayne Richard and countless others in Collin County, Shaheen’s vote goes against everything they hold dear.
In the eyes of many conservatives, Paxton’s impeachment was seen as a betrayal of the State’s core values. It has shaken the unity and trust that Shaheen had established with his constituents. They put their trust in him to be their voice in the political arena, fight for their principles, and uphold their great state’s integrity. But his vote left them feeling let down.
Wayne Richard is a fervent supporter of Paxton and his conservative agenda. His potential campaign isn’t just about Shaheen’s vote; it’s about ensuring that the GOP remains faithful to its conservative doctrines, undeterred by outside pressures.
Wayne Richard stands firm for what is right, so he’s considering running in the GOP primary. He understands the importance of having a genuine conservative leader who will never waver in defending Texan values. While Wayne’s campaign will address Shaheen’s impeachment vote, his platform will encompass many other traditional issues. From securing our borders to protecting religious liberties and safeguarding our Second Amendment rights, Wayne aims to rally the Republican base behind a vision that echoes the principles resonating with many Texans during Trump’s time in office.
As fervent supporters of Wayne Richard, we are filled with hope and excitement for the journey ahead. His potential challenge represents a call to arms for all conservatives in Collin County. Together, we can send a powerful message – that we stand united in our firm support to keep Collin County conservative again.
As mentioned, the implications of this challenge reach far beyond the primary. Wayne Richard’s leadership can showcase Collin County’s unyielding commitment to conservatism and set the course for the future of the Republican Party in our state.
Wayne Richard does so with utmost care and consideration as he studies the merits of a potential campaign. He understands the weight of this decision, and his utmost desire is to serve the people of Collin County with honor and integrity.
So, my fellow conservatives, let’s rally together and stand firmly behind Wayne Richard as he embarks on his new endeavor. Together, we will shape the future of our district, our state, and our great nation. Wayne’s journey has just begun, and we must proudly stand by his side every step of the way. As Texas Republicans, we eagerly await the outcome, supporting Wayne as he leads the charge to reshape the GOP in the image of Trump’s conservatism.
The post A Champion For Conservatism Takes a Stand for Collin County appeared first on Granite Grok.
One man stands above the crowd in an administration where incompetence and corruption are the criteria. Merrick Garland holds a position that we expect to be beyond reproach. As our Attorney General, Garland is the head of the Department of Justice and chief law enforcement officer of the Federal Government. The Attorney General represents the United States in legal matters and gives advice and opinions to the President and the heads of the executive departments of the Government when requested. The job description requires someone with a spotless reputation and the ability to interpret the law without regard for party affiliation. We do not have such a man with Merrick Garland. He has proven in two-plus years to be a tool of the Biden Administration.
The DOJ teamed with Randi Weingarten and the Teacher’s Union to target parents who dared to rise and speak up against their local school boards. It did not matter whether the issue was mask mandates, school reopening post-COVID, Critical Race Theory, Transgender issues, or the exclusion of parents from decisions about their children, anyone who dared to speak was labeled a Domestic Terrorist. These people who were only looking out for the best interest of their children were now potential targets of the FBI.
Garland used his power to slow walk anything to do with Hunter Biden in an effort to push investigations past the statute of limitations. He helped to disavow the Hunter Laptop so that it was not acknowledged before the 2020 election when it would have done irreparable harm to Biden and given a second term to Donald Trump. It appeared that the game plan worked until the plea bargain Hunter thought he would sign and start fresh blew up in a Delaware courtroom. Hunter and his legal team got greedy and sought immunity from future charges that may materialize for the First Son. Hunter is used to having his way with women until he stood before Maryellen Noreika, who tore him down to size.
As slow as Garland was with Hunter, he was lightning fast with Donald Trump. There have been three indictments to this point against the GOP front-runner for President. Each of these indictments would put Trump in prison for life, showing the overreach of the Justice Department to eliminate the threat of Donald Trump on the 2024 ballot. There is no hiding what Biden and Garland are doing with Trump, and the timing of these indictments has been to mask any negative instance that Biden may be experiencing. This corroboration between Biden and Garland may be the only transparent thing in the Biden White House.
As bad as Garland has been as Attorney General, it is comforting to realize that we dodged a bullet when Garland was nominated for the Supreme Court, and Mitch McConnell held up his approval process. We could have had this petty corrupt man in the Supreme Court for life. Garland and Mayorkas are in the sights of Republicans for impeachment inquiries and a possible impeachment trial in the Senate. Schumer will never allow the Senate to vote to impeach, but the procedure will showcase to the country the many sins of Merrick Garland.
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The way that democracies around the planet have been structured in the past centuries has allowed greater access to power, decentralization of authority, and an advancement of the human civilization. However, by and large, today’s systems, and in particular the American system, struggle based on one simple flaw— lack of highly experienced, intelligent brain trust.
Noam Chomsky, the esteemed Philadelphian intellectual, posited that the way US society, and many nations’ societies, work today is through the establishment of a class society, with an elite, governing a generally misled, misinformed, underinformed majority populace— a power elite and a proletariat. The power elite has served in much the same function as for all of human history under various names, including czar, duke, mandarin, praetor, and magistrate. The clear stratification of sociopolitical structures has created countless cults and elite cliques obsessed with guarding the reigns of power.
The tendency for power stratification was certainly true through antiquity, the agricultural and industrial revolutions, and into the 20th century. With the advent of information technology like the Internet and social media, there is great capacity and a pressing need for radical change. Similarly, great advances in health care and quality of life have ensured that humans live longer lives, with average lifespans having increased to over 70 in most societies on the planet, many over 90. The pyramidal stratification of power is no longer conducive to stable, prosperous societies. Regardless of whether a society is authoritarian or liberal, totalitarian or democratic, powerholders must vary to a greater degree.
The modern sociopolitical structure in the United States involves a group of people who have attained the highest rungs of the power ladder and then stayed there. Career politicians in Washington often are incentivized to sit in their positions for decades. This has created a structure known in the USA as the Deep State, the Uniparty, or the Establishment. Federal officials have no risk of being replaced in the typical election cycle. They are bureaucrats, infesting the organizations and industries in which they specialize with a corrosive influence that tends towards partisanship, graft, nepotism, and corporatism— especially with federal investigative bodies that do not pay close attention to monitoring and policing good governance within federal institutions.
This pyramidal structure, the old system, is envisioned by the Great Pyramid, often depicted in conspiratorial or symbolic ways, presenting the image of society with the ruling classes at the top in ever-narrowing levels. This is, naturally, an authoritarian and non-democratic model, tending towards exclusionary, stagnant, corrosive sociopolitical power structures. There are few leaders, and hence, few with leadership experience. The number of people who pass through the eye of leadership and give up the reigns of power is few. There is an incentive for individuals to cling to power in this system because the only other rungs are below the powerholders’ position.
Times have changed. Rather than a society of few leaders, we should strive to have one with many holding leadership experience— a magisterial emerati. Emeritus designates someone holding an honored position, such as a professor emeritus in academia. In this sense, a better way to depict the sociopolitical structure is by the illustration of an hourglass. The population is split into three general categories— those without leadership experience in the bottom conicular, those currently holding the reigns of power at the chokepoint of the hourglass, and the magisterial emerati in the top inverted conicular.
Through this way of approaching sociopolitical structure, consider the prevailing Great Pyramid system in context. The power holders in are at the chokepoint between the top and bottom, between those with leadership experience and those with none. Between the informed and sophisticated and the clueless masses. In the current paradigm, too many people get stuck at the chokepoint and seek to stay there. It is alluring to be in power— there are many seemingly great benefits of being in the limelight and having perceived control. But we should not, as societies, be encouraging, incentivizing, and allowing people to sit in these power positions for so long. It is dangerous, especially when there is not a strong ethical system and limited to no ethical oversight.
Any society is more strongly served by a larger group with leadership experience, a larger body if magisterial emerati. That top conicular of people who have held positions of power, have sat in that power chokepoint and then risen further, must be filled with equal or greater strength than the lower group of the non-experienced. When there are more magisterial emerati, the current powerholders receive better advice and feedback from the entire population. There is less pressure on them to make trivial decisions, and they are freed to consider more important issues. They are able to make better decisions when the entire society is more experienced in terms of leadership and how to use and acquire power. The brain trust of the society is larger and stronger, with increased dynamism. The society is better able to withstand external pressures and can react and respond with greater alacrity and awareness.
To achieve this large experienced group if the magisterial emerati, the sociocultural aim must incentivize sharing, compassion, cooperation, and collaboration. There must be a sense of altruism and willingness to help others. Individuals must know that once they have relinquished seats of power, they will still be able to maintain and increase their quality of life. In this way, once positions of power are achieved for an individual, they must want to allow others to gain that similar experience. In this way, the individual powerholder must become aware that there is honor in stepping aside to allow others to learn how to hold the reigns of power, so that they can be better citizens.
In a republic, which is the form of government in the majority of countries on the planet today, the more informed and intelligent a citizenry, the stronger the republic. This model of practicing powersharing is a great way to ensure more resilient, antifragile countries.
The post Considering Structures of Power: The Magisterial Emerati appeared first on Granite Grok.
Chinese influence operations in American Education have focused primarily on Colleges and Universities. For example, after years of warnings, UNH ended its Confucius Institute in 2021 (UNH is still getting CCP grant money through 2024). But China has also invested millions in public schools.
Parents Defending Education has released a lengthy article with links and details tying hundreds of schools to Chinese money through Confucius Institutes and Confucius Classrooms.
In March, Parents Defending Education uncovered that a nonprofit linked to Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology had received more than $1 million in financial aid from Chinese government-affiliated entities over the course of a decade.1
Further research reveals the People’s Republic of China fostered relationships with American K-12 schools through grants, sister school partnerships, and other programming since at least 2009. Parents Defending Education tracked affiliations in 143 schools across 34 states and Washington, D.C.—and at least seven are still active. Financial exchanges between K-12 schools and the Chinese government range from a few thousand dollars to, in Thomas Jefferson High School’s case, more than a million dollars. Disturbingly, the Chinese government’s ties appear to target school districts near 20 American military bases. …
The Chinese government’s effort to forge ties with American schools through its Ministry of Education is one facet of the Chinese Communist Party’s broader soft-power strategy to influence policy in nations throughout the world. Expanding Confucius Classrooms in the United States has been a top priority for the Chinese government, the United States Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations found.3
The State Department designated Confucius Institutes a “foreign mission” of the Chinese Communist Party in 2020.4 As noted in the State Department’s report, these programs are funded in part by the Chinese government under guidance from the Chinese Communist Party’s United Front Work Department, “the Chinese Communist Party’s overseas propaganda and influence operation.”
One of the operations assisting in this influence is the Asia Society which “tailor(s) Chinese culture and language immersion programs to U.S. school districts. They also collaborated on funding Confucius programs in universities and K-12 schools.” Asia Society gets lots of money from Asia, but also has support from “Open Society, the Carnegie Foundation, Ford Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation,” as well as” the Confucius Classroom Network with funding support from the Chinese International Education Foundation, an organization created by Hanban.”
2021 seems to be when these influence-peddling operations began to get noticed and cut, which suggests to me either victory on the part of China or they’ve found another avenue for influence. Before that happened, Keene High School accepted 10,000.00 dollars from the Asia Society, which advances the CCP goals as noted above.
Chinese Language Learning. Useful when the conquerors get here. Locals can identify the dissidents. I’m kidding, sort of. It was one grant and only one public school that the researchers identified in N.H. But China doesn’t give money away without an agenda. They invest in their geo-political and economic priorities.
Maybe we need a few classes on that, hmm?
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Karine Jean-Pierre is the worst press secretary ever to step behind the podium in the Brady Press Briefing Room. She insults the legacy of outstanding secretaries like Tony Snow, Dana Perino, James Brady, and even Jen Psaki. If not written in her binder, she is lost to find a coherent answer, and with the many scandals surrounding the Biden Administration, KJP has become creative in her non-answers. The Biden Justice Department has helped Karine considerably by prolonging investigations. As long as an inquiry is ongoing, she can refuse to answer any questions about it. How convenient, and to think Joe still contends he has no influence on the independent Justice Department….what a crock! This entire Presidency will go down in history as a crock of lies and deception.
KJP has had to field many questions about Hunter Biden and his almost daily escapades. On Wednesday, she addressed Hunter in her preface in an attempt to avoid any direct questions. You must listen to Karine carefully, as her words always have hidden meanings. An example is her line that Joe and Hunter never discussed Hunter’s business dealings is now Joe and Hunter have never been in business together. Subtle, but it makes all of her previous statements untrue. Wednesday, the First Son may have derailed the Biden White House and any chance at a reelection run. Karine would not touch Hunter’s activities in a Delaware courtroom, so her excuse this time was that Hunter was a private citizen and not a topic for the Briefing room. Hunter Biden is many things, but being a private citizen is not one of them.
Let’s look at a few examples of why Hunter is not a private citizen:
So Karine, do not insult the American people unless you need more proof. Hunter is as much a part of the Administration as you are, and you both give the President a difficult road to a re-election bid.
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The Los Angeles Times published an op/ed Friday in which it perhaps unintentionally poses the central proposition of the mythical energy transition: “whether our expectations should evolve in the name of preventing climate catastrophe.”
The op/ed is appropriately titled, “Would an Occasional Blackout Help Solve Climate Change?” It is a headline that tacitly admits a truth about the transition that boosters of renewable energy have been careful not to publicize: That the notion that generation sources with extremely low energy density like wind and solar cannot hope to be viable alternatives to generation with extremely high energy density like natural gas, nuclear and coal. It is a notion that defies the laws of thermodynamics and physics, and those are laws, not suggestions that can be discarded as a matter of convenience or, as in this case, in pursuit of a hyper-political agenda.
This kind of propaganda is designed to condition readers to accept the lowering of their own living conditions in the name of saving the climate, or, as this writer poses is, “preventing climate catastrophe.” It is the kind of propaganda Americans and citizens around the world have been bombarded with as we have experienced the current hot summer. (RELATED: DAVID BLACKMON: A Backlash Against Net-Zero Policies Is Finally Beginning To Take Shape)
It is probably no accident that this piece in the Los Angeles Times comes just a few days after the New York Times published a piece by economist Paul Krugman titled, “Why We Should Politicize the Weather.” The theme of the propaganda is clear: Most of the legacy media has been following Krugman’s advice throughout this summer at the behest of boosters of climate alarmism.
Propaganda in the name of hyping a “climate catastrophe” (it was a mere “emergency” just a few years ago, mere climate “change” a few years before that) is widespread, indeed ubiquitous.
Meteorologists in Europe, Canada and other countries are now being encouraged to report land temperatures rather than the ambient air temperatures on which they’ve always based their reporting because the land measurements are usually several degrees warmer than the air we breathe. Many weather reporters in the EU countries have begun reporting temperatures in degrees F rather than degrees C because the Fahrenheit scale produces larger, more frightening numbers.
All in the name of hyping climate change. All in the name of politicizing weather and conditioning citizens to accept a downgraded quality of life. The bonus is that you get to feel good about yourself while you’re sweating and fanning yourself in your dark living room with the stench of rotting meat in your dead refrigerator because you are suffering all of this in the name of “doing something” about climate change.
It is a proposition about which the climate alarm movement has remained relatively quiet before this year. But the messaging began to shift in January as it becomes increasingly obvious that, even with all the billions in subsidies enacted by western governments, rising demand for energy is still outstripping the ability of renewables to displace fossil fuels and nuclear. Even as these governments in Europe, Canada and the U.S. force citizens to accept the steady deterioration of their grid reliability and quality of life, saddling future generations with mountains of debt in the process, governments in China, India and most other developing nations pursue national energy abundance and security.
This dynamic explains why, when U.S. Climate Czar John Kerry’s recent mission to China to try to kickstart moribund bilateral climate negotiations predictably ended in failure. China is going to do what is good for China, regardless of the propaganda of the climate alarm movement that Kerry amplifies at every opportunity.
Americans and Europeans and Canadians see this all happening and increasingly wonder why they must continue downgrading their standards of living when rising emissions from China alone far outstrip any reductions achieved by the west? This is a question to which the climate alarm movement has no good answer, other than to continue ramping up the fear tactics and propaganda.
That is why this previously quiet part of the energy transition agenda has been rising to the top of the alarmist message platform in 2023. No one should think the rhetoric will do anything other than keep ratcheting up from here.
David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline, and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.
| DCNS
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How many times do you hear a Democrat happily say “Sure, we can deep-six that tax. And do you want to kill another one?”. PERHAPS if they are looking to horse trade for something more valuable but only “if”.
So is San Francisco’s Democrat Mayor London Breed starting to see the wisdom of letting people keep their own money?
San Francisco Mayor: We Should ‘Get Rid of Most Taxes’ to Attract Businesses
During a portion of an interview with CNBC’s Deirdre Bosa aired on Wednesday’s broadcast of “The Exchange,” San Francisco Mayor London Breed stated that if she could, she “would get rid of most taxes on the books” tomorrow in order to help attract business to the city. She argued that the tax system needs a complete overhaul so that it works for the city and businesses.
“Well, first of all, I would — if I could do it tomorrow morning, I would get rid of most taxes on the books. I want to also be clear that businesses need to pay their fair share. But not at the expense of losing business as a whole. So, I would completely reform the tax system to make it more fair, to make it more equitable, and to make it work for both the city and those businesses. I would also make sure that the streets and the city is clean and it’s safe, because we need to make sure that, as people come here on public transportation, as they move around the city using different modes of transportation, that they’re getting to work safe and they want to be here.”
“Not at the expense of losing business as a whole…and it’s safe”.
Well, she’s bitten off a lot, hasn’t she? San Fran used to be a destination city for high tech and tourism. Now, it’s a haven for crime, homeless, mentally ill, and crime gangs. Oh, and feces. LOTS of feces on SF streets and sidewalks. Oh, and carjacks and break ins. Defunding the police and having Soros lawyers (e.g., save the criminals and criminalize the victims) hasn’t helped, either.
Small list but big effort on execution.
The taxes – I didn’t expect to hear that from a Big City Democrat: get rid of them. Democrat history (and no small of Elitist Republicans to boot) is that they all see citizens and companies merely as ATMs ready for the plucking. Why?
Putting Government first. It’s clear that with the results of the last few years on full display, the normal Narrative failed. Democrat policies failed. She’s now having to pick up the pieces (and feces). And lessen the filching – a realization that the Democrats (San Fran has been a Democrat bastion for a long, long time) have taken its residents for granted and NOT seeing things from their viewpoint. Only from a Progressive Government’s top-down approach.
Seriously – how often do you hear a Democrat taking ownership of Democrat policies and the negative results from them? Methinks rarely.
Let’s see if the other SF Dems will allow it to happen. After all, it really is about lessening the power of Government – now think about that admission!
(H/T: Breitbart)
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Have you been following the story of the cancellation of Nigel Farage by Coutts? Coutts is an exclusive private bank owned by National Westminster Bank (NatWest). Farage was a driving force behind Brexit. He’s the British equivalent of Donald Trump. Britain’s version of the deep state has never forgiven him.
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Coutts dumped Farage as a client, canceling his accounts.
But wait, it gets better. Coutts then lied about the incident. NatWest claimed the Farage cancellation was because he didn’t have enough money to qualify for their services. That was false. But wait, there’s more…
There have been articles about the financial attack in the British press. The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) is now following along.
The WSJ is reporting Coutts ditched Farage because of his pro-Brexit and anti-woke views. It goes on to relate a story about a charity dinner where Alison Rose, chief executive of NatWest, sat next to the BBC’s business editor. Ms. Rose told him Mr. Farage was axed because he wasn’t a profitable customer. The journalist wrote that story citing a “trusted and senior source.”
Mr. Farage, for his part, acquired and shared from a 40-page Coutts document including a list of his political views the bank felt created “significant reputational risks of being associated with him.” The document describes Farage’s views as “xenophobic and racist,” saying he was “considered by many to be a disingenuous grifter…”
The story mushroomed, causing Ms. Rose to resign from NatWest. The BBC has apologized for its incorrect report.
Again from the WSJ, An email laying out the decision… included in the document published by Farage—pointed to “controversial public statements which were felt to conflict with the bank’s purpose.” The bank sensed the danger from axing [Farage]… it could face negative coverage if Farage decided to “go public…”
What should be readily apparent from this incident is the risk of banks cutting off customers for having the wrong political views. Make no mistake; this happened in the UK, but it can just as easily happen here.
A problem with acting on “reputational risk” is it is a one-way street. Let’s do the same exercise with Jeremy Corbyn, the former Labor leader, as the object. Mr. Corbyn is a notorious socialist and anti-Semite. Have you ever heard of a company declining to do business with him because of damage to the company’s reputation?
Look, with Brexit, the issue enraging Leftists is Mr. Farage represented the majority of U.K. voters. These Leftist banking executives are enforcing the will of the minority.
Most recently, Mr. Farage has gone on the offense. He is demanding the entire NatWest board of directors resign while pledging to help others similarly injured by leftist prejudice in banking.
What’s your position on cancel culture? Are you a win at all costs, there’s nothing too bad that can happen to the opposition kind of person. What qualifies as sufficient reason to bar someone from the banking system? Remember, we are really close to Central Bank Digital Currency and cancellation with the click of a mouse.
..
The post The Left Has Plans for You appeared first on Granite Grok.
Most people today have little to no familiarity with any of the principles that influenced the founders. Below, you’ll find six important resources hand-picked by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. You can also find links to each in this podcast episode – “The Founders’ Education.”
The government-run school system teaches virtually nothing about the principles of liberty – and natural rights. It teaches little to nothing about the founding principles underlying the Constitution.
This ignorance is a big part of why things have gone so far off the rails – and it shouldn’t be surprising, either. Jefferson put it this way:
“If a nation expects to be ignorant & free, in a state of civilisation, it expects what never was & never will be.”
Understanding the Constitution requires much more than discussing what it takes to be eligible for president or reading charts with titles like “How a Bill Becomes a Law.” It requires that people know the foundations upon which the document was constructed – which benefited from ideas extending more than a thousand years.
Thankfully, we have some help from the founders themselves.
In 1783, a committee to the Confederation Congress put together a list of over 300 books considered crucial to the founding generation. The authors of the list included James Madison of Virginia, Thomas Mifflin of Pennsylvania, and Hugh Williamson of North Carolina. Plus, Thomas Jefferson also had a similar list at that time (the “1783 catalogue”) – and he was rooming at Madison’s boarding house, where they most certainly conversed on the subject of a reference library for Congress.
Years later, Madison and Jefferson worked together on another essential reading list as members of the University of Virginia Board of Visitors.
Here, Madison and Jefferson – along with George Loyall, John H. Cocke, and Joseph C. Cabell – gave us six essential resources to understand “the general principles of liberty and the rights of man in nature and in society.”
Here they are – starting with two foundational books:
You may be familiar with it under the name Two Treatises
Many of Locke’s ideas found their way into the Declaration of Independence, including the notion that governments derive their just power from the consent of the governed.
“The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges every one: and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions.”
Podcast – Illegitimate Government: John Locke on Tyranny
Sidney is a guy that almost no one knows about today, but they should. This was on pretty much everyone’s list of essential books at the time of the founding – including Madison’s 1783 list, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams – and more.
Thomas Jefferson called it “the best elementary book of the principles of government, as founded in natural right, which has ever been published in any language.”
It’s hard for us to imagine a better endorsement.
Podcast – Jefferson’s Favorite Book on Government?
The board also recommended four sources for understanding “the distinctive principles of the government of our own state, and of that of the U.S.”
First of these is the Declaration “as the fundamental act of union of these states.”
Podcast – Declaration of Independence: Usurpation is Treason
Next are the Federalist Papers, calling them “an authority to which appeal is habitually made by all.” They said these essays are “rarely declined or denied by any as evidence of the general opinion of those who framed, and of those who accepted the Constitution of the U.S. on questions as to its genuine meaning.”
The next source recommended by the board is the Virginia Resolutions of 1798. Passed in opposition to the Alien and Sedition Acts, these resolutions penned by Madison and passed by the Virginia legislature lay out the constitutional justification for “interposition.”
Article – A Christmas Gift from James Madison: The Virginia Resolutions of 1798
The final essential source is George Washington’s farewell address, or his “Valedictory Address,” as they called it. In this address, Washington covered topics including foreign policy, factions, and the danger of debt.
Podcast – Warnings Ignored: George Washington’s Farewell Address
Education Takes Work
Unlearning the government-school propaganda we’re fed from cradle to grave isn’t easy. And, as Abigail Adams wrote, “Learning is not attained by chance, it must be sought for with ardour and attended to with diligence.”
But we have the tools. You can find a recent Path to Liberty podcast covering more of the “Founders’ Education” – plus links to all 6 of these recommended sources right here.
We hope this is a useful guide for you to continue your own education in support of the Constitution and liberty.
Michael Boldin | The Tenth Amendment Center
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The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) developed in the post-World War era in response to the growing militarization and solidification of the Soviet Union. That group of Central and Northern Asian countries centering around the Moscow power center believed that centralized, totalitarian administrations with heavy state control of economic and cultural life believed their style of feudal-style so-called communist governing systems to be the best. It was decidedly proven to be otherwise.
In this sense, NATO is a relic of a bygone era of a bipolar international order. Today’s planetary governing structure is much more dynamic, drawing its stability from a multipolarism built on the United Nations system. The recent war in Ukraine is evidence of the broken and anachronistic nature of the Atlantic alliance. Not that the EU and US do not share cultural values and strong political ties, but rather a unified vehicle for military relations must be intelligently purposed. Serving as an adversary to Russia is no longer appropriate.
In the latest conflict focused on Kyiv, Donbad, and Crimea, the specter of Russian aggression has been set against an equally aggressive expansionary policy by NATO. In many ways, the conflict was unnaturally constructed by a decade of politicking and subterfuge led by Washington. This sort of deviousness should not be supported by an institutionalized military organization. It is counterproductive to global development, peace, and the stability of our planetary civilization.
At NATO’s annual summit in Vilnius this past summer, Europeans were noted as downright melancholy. Why would they be happy about being forced to attend a conference where terms of power and relationships have largely been determined by people who do not identify as Europeans— namely Brits and Yanks? The United Kingdom has recently made a big stink about leaving the Brussels headquartered EU, while the United States is an ocean away in another hemisphere. While it is in these two nations’ power interests to foment a conflict on the border between Europe and Russia, it may not be in anyone’s interest to continuously kindle deadly conflicts between human nations.
This is where the 20th-century mentality must either evolve or be extinguished. Global peace is possible through a new avenue that was not a factor in previous eras— space exploration. A growing number of countries, including the UAE, Japan, China, India, and even North Korea, have developed space programs. There is a massive amount of untapped economic potential in the Sol star system, which is identifiable as the region between our star and the asteroid belts outside the orbit of Mars. That includes three entire planets and a belt of asteroids— small rocky bodies rich in mineral deposits. This is trillions upon trillions of dollars in resources waiting to be tapped.
NATO’s purpose as a conflict-creating organization should be transformed with this in mind. It should be turned towards planetary protection, away from a biased, Russophobic establishment. The Russophobes must be drawn out and converted or retired. There is already an excellent vehicle for planetary protection in the United Nations Peacekeeping system. This is another avenue for NATO engagement to be realized— its role as peacemakers and peacekeepers through the UN system. Many decry the nature of the UN, but its role as the premier forum for global governance in our present day and age is unquestionable and, to many around the world, highly respected. The UN’s main drawback is its lack of military power, so attaching NATO and then inviting similar military organizations from BRICS, the Group of 77, and ASEAN would help to nurture a sense of balance.
As we progress forward towards 2100, we must move away from purposefully created artificial conflicts and towards stronger planetary stability. NATO as a wing of the UN military structure would be most appropriate.
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The PR firm for mRNA Vaccines inc (most or all of the corporate media and most of at least one political party) continues to insist on efficacy and safety while badmouthing cheap well-tolerated treatments for the Wuhan Flu. Good for them, but time and science continue to prove otherwise.
Related: If NH Needs Proof The Vaccines Have Adverse Side Effects, Just Ask the CDC and FDA
“mRNA-1273 booster vaccination-associated elevation of markers of myocardial injury occurred in about one out of 35 persons (2.8%), a greater incidence than estimated in meta-analyses of hospitalized cases with myocarditis (estimated incidence 0.0035%) after the second vaccination,” the researchers wrote in the paper, published by the European Journal of Heart Failure.
In a generally healthy population, the level would be about 1 percent, the researchers said.
Myocardial injury is nothing to dismiss. While there’s no guarantee it will lead to heart failure, if you have this injury, it has the potential for lifelong complications that can significantly impact your quality of life.
“According to current knowledge, the cardiac muscle can’t regenerate, or only to a very limited degree at best. So it’s possible that repeated booster vaccinations every year could cause moderate damage to the heart muscle cells,” University Hospital Basel professor Christian Muller, a cardiologist and the lead researcher said in a statement.
Booster “boosters,” according to this research, are playing Russian roulette with your heart. It sounds like a song title or maybe the hook, and that’s an apt comparison. Myocarditis was written into the original lyrics of the dystopian list of side effects. No children’s rhymes about it yet, like ring around the rosies, a pocket full of posies, but I wonder what that would look like.
Line up for your vaccine; COVID’s “cure’s” a bad dream, jab me jab me, we all fall down.
Related: Post Vaxx – US Military Sees 151% Spike in Cases of Myocarditis
Distractions.
Let’s do some math. In the US, roughly 224 million people were “fully vaccinated.” One percent of that is 2.24 million. Some dropped dead in nursing homes, others after exerting themselves, without being informed of known risks before injection. This leaves at least two-plus million people in the US with potentially irreversible heart damage, some of whom may not yet know. Many got boosters and more than one, adding to the risk.
Two million could be the low end of the spectrum, given that the Swiss hospital reported this adverse event in 2.8% of recipients. There’s also another important detail from the linked study. The vaccine is bigoted – it seems to be able to tell the difference between men and women.
Twenty cases occurred in women (3.7% [95%CI, 2.3%–5.7%]), two in men (0.8% [95%CI, 0.1%–3.0%]).
ConclusionmRNA-1273 vaccine-associated myocardial injury was more common than previously thought, being mild and transient, and more frequent in women versus men. The possible protective role of IFN-λ1(IL-29) and GM-CSF warrant further studies.
It must be noted that there were no long-term complications observed and why.
The group experiencing the adverse effects was followed for only 30 days, and half still had unusually high levels of high-sensitivity cardiac troponin T, an indicator of subclinical heart damage, at follow-up.
The long-term implications of the study remain unclear as little research has tracked people over time with heart injury after messenger RNA vaccination, which is known to cause myocarditis and other forms of heart damage.
Not to worry. If you are a researcher, billions of potential candidates are available to explore the long-term impact of the ongoing mass experimental campaign doing business as the COVID vaccine. Good luck finding funding, but there is no shortage of suitable postulants.
HT | Epoch Times
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What’s in a name? A great deal. Democracy, fascism, and communism represent different systems of government. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are also titles for other religious systems.
Whereas democracy is defined as the rule of the people, by the people, for the people, Islam is defined as the rule of Allah, by Allah and his emissaries, for the pleasure of Allah. And when people, out of concern for political correctness or ignorance, describe Islam as a religion of peace, they are, at the very least, guilty of misrepresenting it.
The word “Islam” is derived from the Arabic “aslama,” or “Tasleem” which means ‘surrender.’ The word for peace is not “tasleem,” but it is “solh.” Hence, when radical Muslims behave violently barbarically, they only do so in obedience to the dictates of their creed. They are surrendering and sacrificing anything and everything in service to the will and pleasure of Allah, as they see it. In saying that Islam means peace, Islamic apologists are simply indulging in wordplay in order to put as positive a spin on things as they can. It is an attempt to argue that Islam promotes non-violence. In other words, they are lying.
Of course, not every Muslim surrenders entirely to the will of Allah. The great majority of Muslims are only partial Muslims. They may say their daily obligatory prayers, tithe some, and keep the fast occasionally. Yet, they may also have a few drinks now and then and do many things they are not supposed to do.
But Islam can be a “forgiving” religion, specifically for the male. If you neglect to say your prayers or don’t want to, you can hire someone, preferably an imam or a mullah, to pray on your behalf. Going to the Hajj is too onerous and takes you away from the pleasures and comforts of your life. You can deputize someone else to go in your stead. You have a few drinks of the forbidden brew, and it is time to say your prayer. Rinse your mouth and go ahead with praying. But, always remember the will of Allah and serve him. Do your duties to vanquish the unbelievers, promote the rule of the Shari’a, and make the earth Allah’s.
If only the masses of Muslims arise and carry out the orders of Allah, then we would have the promised paradise of Islam on earth as exemplified by such rules as that of the Taliban, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and of course, the Shiite nirvana of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
In these model Islamic societies, freedom of expression, worship, and assembly are taken away. Women are treated as chattel. Young girls are subjected to barbaric genital mutilation, making them sex slaves and birth channels without the ability to enjoy intercourse. Minors are executed, adulterers are stoned to death, thieves have amputated limbs and much more. Isn’t that everyone’s idea of paradise?
This misogynist religion of Allah is custom-made for the savage male. A faithful follower of Allah is allowed to have as many as four permanent wives – and replace any of them at any time he wants- and an unlimited number of one-night or one-hour-standers that he can afford to rent. But, woe unto a woman if she even has a single love affair with another man. Nothing less than death by stoning is her just punishment.
The partial Muslims are seemingly harmless, may appear normal, and are under the radar. What gets our attention is the die-hard, the real Muslims, who are a small minority. Yet this virulent combative minority is campaigning simultaneously on two major fronts. It works to herd the partial-Muslim majority into its fold and vanquish all other non-believers by any means.
It is prudent to remember that all critical events in the history of humanity have been instigated by either an individual or a small group. These individuals or groups have been the sheepdogs that have directed the movements and activities of the masses, the sheep.
This is precisely what the real Muslims, the Islamists, do today. It is suicidal to dismiss the Islamists as a bunch of zealots without consequences or as a fringe group that will burn itself out. Sadly enough, the bulk of the Muslims that pundits portray as “peaceful” is either irrelevant or often serve as an instrument in the hands of the Islamists. A couple of examples from recent history conclusively prove the point that it is the fanatical minorities that launch and implement campaigns that inflict immense suffering on the larger society.
In the 1930s, very few Germans were Nazis, but many basked in the resurgence of German pride, and many others were too busy with their own lives to care. Thus, Germany presented a wide-open, unchallenged opportunity for the Nazis to push forward their agenda and gather power to the point that it was too late for any other force to stem their tide.
And we all know what suffering this gang of radical supremacists inflicted on millions before their demise.
The Khomeinism of Iran was started by a band of Shiite fanatics who rode the tide of opposition to the rule of the Shah and promised the masses Islamic nirvana—no sooner had the Khomeinists ascended to power than they made the entire nation captive by murdering tens of thousands of the complacent and the late-to-awaken opposition, imprisoning and torturing untold thousands more, and creating a state of Islamic menace that threatens the entire free world.
The fact is that too many die-hard Islamists continue leaving the failed Islamic states and settling in the lands of the Kafir. These new arrivals bring with them the deeply engrained hatred of the infidels and believe that they are indeed the rightful owner of the entire earth. All other non-Muslims are mere squatters who must be subjugated or eliminated altogether.
In this relentless campaign, the Islamists have a vast cadre of “experts,” “talking heads,” and for-purchase politicians who keep endlessly broadcasting the false mantra that Islam is a religion of peace. This latter bunch is criminally complicit in making the populace complacent and furthering the work of the Islamists.
Islam may be a religion of peace. It is the kind of peace embedded in its very name: Surrender. The Islamist savages shouldn’t be cow-free people and should take into account their accomplices who are shamelessly deceiving the public regarding the true nature of Islam. And what should we do? We should articulate a fair and fearless critique of Islam. We must expose Islam as it is and then identify moderate voices calling for a complete reformation.
Islam demands the unconditional surrender of all that free people cherish and hold sacred. Islam is a pathological doctrine and a vestige of long-ago barbarism that must surrender to the wholesome principles of freedom and free people.
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I overheard a conversation between two high school English teachers concerning one of their students’ written journals on class discussions and reflection. The student had voiced in writing pro-Trump remarks decrying socialist and Marxist ideologies that he claimed were virulent in American political ideologies.
Especially among leftists and Democrats— the big-D signifying party members, as opposed to the small-d variant that promotes – at least on the surface – actual democracy. One of these teachers exclaimed that Marxism isn’t even a real thing. Well, this illustrates the total cluelessness of the common educator in the United States and, more broadly, in the global West.
Of course, Marxism is a very real thing.
Karl Marx was an economist and is often cited today as a revolutionary figure and father of communism. The leaders of our world, whether they acknowledge it publicly or not, are mostly all Marxists. Some may not even know it. How has this come to be, and what exactly is Marxism?
It is an ideology based on the writings of Marx and Engels and their ideological offspring, of which there are many hailing from all parts of the world— many in France, Russia, and, most prominently, China. In fact, it is possible to receive advanced academic degrees, including postgraduate degrees, in the field of Marxist Thought, which means, essentially, totalitarian one-party socialism. This is a nefarious form of government that totally centralizes power and authority in a defined group that inevitably becomes a higher, wealthier class and dominates national society intergenerationally.
Today at the planetary level, an international communist collective exists— these are people who are proponents of whatever keeps them in power, and they are happy to wield ideas alongside weapons with no holds barred. They infest a collective of organizations, including the Trilateral Commission, the WEF, WHO, UN, IMF, and a bevy of international organizations. Their champions are folks like Bill Gates, Klaus Schwab, and George Soros. They subvert anything to continue to enrich themselves and their network, with little or no concern for anyone else who does not sycophantly fall in line with their worldview and ideas.
Marxism itself, as a term, is evidence of its subversive nature. Marx, like John Meynard Keynes, was a political economist whose life’s work has been manipulated in a way so that his name has largely disassociated with the scope of his collected magnum opus. Marx wrote widely on the nature of many aspects of how markets, governments, and corporations interact. His treatise Das Kapital, a tome of ramblings about how money works in an economy, is a fascinating and titanic text on capitalism— the study and practice of building and deploying capital. Of course, he usually is not well known for this text. He is more broadly associated with his later piece, The Communist Manifesto, one of the most misunderstood and abused texts in recent human history.
The Communist Manifesto, which became nearly required reading for American high schoolers in the latter half of the twentieth century, is a text about a prediction common among European intellectuals, sociologists, and political economists concerning the forecast for class relations in national societies worldwide following the industrial revolution of the 19th century. That era saw the increasing dominance of corporatized manufacturing and the emergence of the factory as the main workplace. Marx et al. theorized correctly that the working class would revolt and overthrow the capitalists, establishing what they envisioned to be a communist state.
Of course, this was written at a time when the republic was not a widespread form of government. Most states were autocracies. The Westphalian model had not yet taken hold worldwide, and national borders were not set in the way they became following the 1945 armistice establishing a post-World War peace. Since then, most countries have adopted legislative or parliamentary-style governments modeled after the United States and United Kingdom’s examples. Democracy has flourished and is practiced in some form or another on every highly inhabited continent. The Communist Manifesto is not exactly relevant today.
Yet, communism remains popular, and many people support it. But what is it exactly?
Communism is based on the idea of the commune, best exemplified by a monastic community, such as that practiced by a Buddhist or Christian order. In such communities, there are social hierarchies that are totally separate from political and economic responsibilities, which are typically shared. Labor, productive tasks like gardening, farming, cooking, and cleaning, rotate ny an often ad hoc and continuously fluxed system. Who is in charge of cleaning one week might be in charge of office duties the next and tasked to maintain food supplies the following. The system balances naturally without highly formalized or institutionalized economic controls. It is an attractive model for the relatively easy and adaptable day-to-day lifestyle of the community’s members. The aim of communists is to apply this model to the national state level.
As it so happens, the application of small-scale monastic communism to the state is all but impossible. This is almost entirely due to the nature of sociopolitics in larger groups. Without a widely agreed upon and understood designed system, the law is that of the jungle. The strongest win and consolidates power, and only by power can they be replaced. Such is always the tendency of large civilizations, cory-states, and societies, and defining the nature of how power shifts from group to group and by what means is inherently difficult to theorize and understand fully. That is why communism as an ideology has been easily appropriated and weaponized against civil society in today’s age.
Today, Marxism is considered a revolutionary ideology. In practice, it has evolved from Marx’s theory of class struggle. Today, it is an ideology of political blocs. It requires its practitioners— who are typically highly educated, well-connected, well-networked, and well-financed— to create, amplify and take advantage of identity blocs within society. This is very remotely connected with economics, production, trade, and manufacturing. It has everything to do with how people identify and how those people are manipulated to give political support to political figures. This ideology seeks to create and force political change in order to lift the leaders of its movement into positions of power. It does not serve any other purpose. And that is the long-term problem.
Marxist communism has no real solutions to most issues that plague societies, particularly to building and nurturing prosperity for the citizens of a society. It is thus easy for Marxist leaders to find themselves in positions of power and bring total catastrophe to their country. They typically are so selfishly pursuing their own personal power and that of their network that they hold a conflictive stance towards their own countrymen and countrywomen. Look no further than the modern US Democrat Party, who decry and demean their Republican opponents in every way conceivable in order to maintain their power, yet they do not seem able to address or even comprehend the scale of inadequacy and degradation of the economic landscape in their own country.
In the years since Biden and the US Democrats took power, homelessness and crime have skyrocketed, illegal immigration is unchecked at record levels, the US manufacturing base has been crippled, and US industry is sinking quickly with little hope of innovation. Like typical socialists, they propose all sorts of solutions. But since they only know how to manipulate people in order to solidify their own personal power, they have no grasp of how to build a prosperous society. They only know how to destroy a society in order to empower themselves.
This is the essential understanding conveyed by Frederick Hayek in his Road to Serfdom, which posits that socialist leaders inevitably slip towards authoritarian and totalitarian political and economic systems until they collapse or are replaced.
Socialists, of whom Marxist communists are a unique breed, attempt chiefly to redistribute societal wealth from the economically successful— that is, the capitalists who have served the market most appropriately— to everyone else, especially and foremost themselves and their connections. Anyone who does not politically support the socialists is sh!t out of luck.
A country can best, most peacefully, be saved from such a fate if it has institutionalized a republic as its form of government. Only then can the country have a chance to peacefully transition to a different government, ideally one with a more capitalist understanding of the world, that can bring the country back toward prosperity.
The post What Exactly is Marxism? appeared first on Granite Grok.
To all those who are sending in memes, thank you! Keep them coming please, as it helps me gather weaponry to fight the Left. Please do share this post, and if you share an individual meme, consider mentioning you saw it on the Grok!
Speaking of, from this week, Monday Memes and Meme Overflow.
*** Warning, a few possibly off-color ones, in case tender eyes are about ***
I’ll be disappointed if I find out I’m not on one. Or more. More broadly, though, do not think you can “grey man” your way through this. Time to pick sides, and start planning. And while I certainly would weep at this being necessary, I do like the idea:
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Deep Fakes are About to Change Everything
I’ve been talking about this for some time. As technology improved, with pictures, then videos, we went from pure word-of-mouth to things that could travel. Then, be broadcast. Because we understood, at least in principle, that these were images of real things, we trusted – even back when we had some glimmer of understanding that things could be “spun”.
Deep Fakes are a game-changer. We can no longer believe our own eyes unless we’re actually there, or hear it from someone whom we truly trust who was there.
And… what if holograms, etc., become good enough that we can’t tell them from faked things?
All of a sudden our “circle of trusted information” – which has grown over decades and centuries – is about to collapse to almost nothing.
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They really do think this way. It reminds me of “Who will you believe, me or your lying eyes”?
Now, read the excerpt from the lib – short snip here:
The Democrats should pursue policies that crush rural voters and make rural life as miserable as possible. Things like refusing federal flood insurance to rural areas, leaving rural roads wanting for federal dollars, not using federal money to build bridges or expand electric or sewer, ending federal ethanol subsidies and other farm subsidies, etc. – all of that can make rural life even less attractive than it already is and force that population of irredeemables into the cities where they can be reeducated and turned into citizens with something to contribute. With Trump, they let the mask drop and all of the country can now see: there is no reason for the United States to ever spend another dime on rural America, and the sooner rural America is just a memory, the better.
So small towns will come back. But the rural areas that are Trump country are going to face long term consequences for that and they should.
So, where on this 1-10 step are we? I’d make a claim for at least STAGE FOUR. And I can make a good case for being close to STAGE SIX too.
Do not forget this warning either:
They also believed that their immediate responsibility would be to protect against what they called the counter revolution and they felt that this counter revolution could best be guarded against by creating and establishing reeducation centers in the Southwest where would take all the people who needed to be reeducated into the new way of thinking and teach them how things were going to be.
I asked, well, what is going to happen to those people that we can’t reeducate that are diehard capitalists and the reply was that they’d have to be eliminated. And when I pursued this further they estimated that they would have to eliminate 25 million people in these reeducation centers. And when I say eliminate I mean kill – 25 million people.
I want you to imagine sitting in a room with 25 people most of which have graduate degrees from Columbia and other well known educational centers and hear them figuring out the logistics for the elimination of 25 million people and they were dead serious.”
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PSA – PSA – PSA – PSA – PSA
When we arrived in Dubai for an overnight layover we went through customs and immigration. What was surprising was the facial scan – which, being a foreign country, I had precious little ability to refuse. (If it had been me alone, I’d have camped out in the airport for the overnight rather than have it done.) Anyway, I’m guessing this was an iris scan. Apparently I’m squinty-eyed and they had to scan me multiple times, sans glasses.
This is coming here. And it will be, of course, sold as conveeeeenient. And for security, of course.
CEO of Company that Wants to Scan Your Irises: ‘World ID’ Is Coming ‘Whether You Like It or Not’ (breitbart.com)
Already being trialed, not just at airports:
https://granitegrok.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/iris-readers.mp4
Eurostar officially launches SmartCheck biometric gates | Biometric Update
Dubai had these too for check-in. But since we had kids, we did it the old-fashioned way.
But here’s the kicker. In Boston there was a huge line to get through immigration control, but despite many of the lanes being CLOSED it moved quickly. That’s because there was no actual questioning or even looking at passports. Everyone just got scanned… scanned, and through. No customs forms or examinations either (I thought that was odd; normally they hand those out on the plane prior to landing), though I did notice one woman having her luggage getting a good going-through. My guess is that she was someone through the non-US citizen line, judging by her appearance from a glance.
So this begs the question: how did my scan get connected with my ID? The only place I was scanned in a way that could be connected to me was Dubai. Was that data shared with the US? Logically, it had to have been – for the only way that my citizenship data could have been connected to my scan was if the UAE had passed that info onward.
I’m on the grid. Dammit.
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The more I learn about vaccines and how they’re approved, the more firm I am in my decisions to become anti-vax. Totally anti-vax.
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Aaron Russo – Womens Lib created to tax women and break up families
Do I want women “barefoot and pregnant”, amd actual captives in their homes? No. But any thought I’d had of being anything supportive of feminism has died, totally.
Fortunately, my wife comes from a very family-oriented culture and for – I’d guess – the first 8-9 years, while she did work, one of us was always there. Her family, alas, cannot support us with help, being overseas. Both my parents are gone. My older surviving sister lives far away, most of my family lives far away… and virtually all are libs if not outright Leftists.
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Per the request of Bryan W. here are two more recipes from My Tree in Israel:
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Pick of the Post:
And that’s what we’re up against. People who simply WILL NOT BELIEVE that government would do that. No matter how often they have done that. We have:
A Crisis of Trust – Urban Scoop
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Palate Cleansers:
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The post Friday Meme Overflow-Overflow appeared first on Granite Grok.
Portsmouth is celebrating its 400th anniversary (1623-2023), and part of that was a tall-ships flotilla scheduled for Thursday, July 27th. But the mere threat of thunderstorms canceled it, as it turns out, for no good reason. I was there, on the water, and I saw the tall ships and the weather.
The storm clouds looked impressive, some “cool-looking” lightning off in the distance, but the seas were never rough, and it rained for all of ten minutes on the river. By the time 6 pm rolled around when the event was to start, there were even calmer waters, no rain, bleeding into a beautiful sunset (pics of that below as well).
In other words, there was no good reason to move the flotilla to the 29th.
Captain Jack Kimball invited me, my wife, and a few others, and we were on the water when the cancelation (delay) was announced. It was okay. We had a great day and took pictures.
There were to be four of five tall ships. We saw five, and I got decent pictures of a few; only one under sail, sadly, but all very cool.
And some different views…
And… the sunset. Lots of those – all taken from the Riverhouse Restaurant ‘Dock’ in Portsmouth.
Forgot this… (video of the wake … boat wake).
Note: The original version referenced Thursday, July 28th. It should be on the 27th. This was corrected after publication.
The post Portsmouth Tall Ships Flotilla Got Canceled/Re-Scheduled But Not for Me … And I Took Pics appeared first on Granite Grok.
