A group of German Green politicians is calling for a radical change in what they call Germany’s “failed migration policy,” and municipalities agree, business daily Handelsblatt reports.
The chief executive of the Association of Towns and Municipalities, Gerd Landsberg, has welcomed the call by a group of Green politicians for a tougher asylum policy.
“We need a turnaround in migration policy, also to ensure social acceptance,” Landsberg told Handelsblatt.
“This includes more effective integration, clearer communication, also toward the arriving people, and active participation from the asylum seekers.”
Earlier, a group within the Green Party had called for a change of course in refugee policy in light of the completely overburdened municipalities. It calls itself “Vert Realos,” meaning “Real Greens.”
In a paper titled “Memorandum for a different migration policy in Germany,” the group warns of a shift to the right “should citizens continue to lose their sense of security and migrants not be perceived as a normality in the neighborhood.”
Germany alone, without European cooperation, cannot take in all the refugees, emphasize the signatories, including Rebecca Harms, the former Greens–European Free Alliance president in the European Parliament, and Tübingen’s mayor, Boris Palmer.
Landsberg, who is a member of the conservative CDU, stressed that it is of course necessary to help people who are being persecuted or who have come from war zones such as Ukraine, but this is also a European challenge, he said.
“It cannot be that Germany bears the main burden and the other EU states take in significantly fewer people,” said the head of the association of cities.
The principle in Europe, he said, must be: Help, distribute fairly, but also protect the external borders effectively.
“This is also indispensable for acceptance among our population.”
Criticism for a lack of “a clear integration concept”
The Green proposal is also being debated in the traffic light federal coalition.
The FDP was open to the demands, while the SPD reacted cautiously. The spokesman for migration and integration of the SPD parliamentary group, Lars Castellucci, spoke of an “internal party matter” of the Green Party.
“They should be happy to discuss it,” Castellucci told Handelsblatt. “If there are concerns in the coalition, it will be discussed openly.”
Crimea Bridge Repairs Completed Mere Months After Sabotage Blast
Russia has announced that the previously severely damaged Crimean Bridge has been fully rebuilt and repaired, after a significant chunk of it was destroyed in an October 8 sabotage explosion which killed four people.
“The Crimean Bridge is fully open for automobile traffic in all its lanes 39 days ahead of schedule,” Russian Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin announced Thursday. It appears an incredibly rapid fix, given the extent of damage, and the fact that the blast happened a mere less than 5 months ago.
“Already on December 5, two weeks ahead of schedule, we opened the right side of the bridge, which had been damaged the most,” Khusnullin added.
“Structural elements are currently being assembled and preparations are ongoing for their installation. The work is being carried out around the clock in two shifts, 305 people and 32 machinery units are involved,” the official explained.
Road traffic had resumed a hours after the October blast on the same day it occurred, but lanes were reduced and the parallel railway line was badly damaged. At least seven fuel tanks on the the railway section had been ignited, and an entire lane and large section of the roadway had been collapsed. The rapid repair appears confined to the automobile roadway part and not the rail line section.
Moscow had immediately blamed Ukrainian intelligence or its allies for the attack, to which President Zelensky responded that he “did not order” the attack. Russia further said it was based on “terrorist tactics” and had killed and wounded civilian bystanders.
Regional media circulated fresh footage of the entirety of the Crimean Bridge back in use…
Crimea Bridge fully reopens a day before the first anniversary of Russia-Ukraine conflict pic.twitter.com/lwB0J6o9Yg
On Telegram, Khusnullin said the reopening was a “big gift for Defender of the Fatherland Day,” the public holiday honoring the armed forces being celebrated in Russia on Thursday.
Khusnullin added that since the October explosion repair work had been “carried out round-the-clock”… The Russian government had ordered the bridge to be repaired by July 2023.
Repairs on the railway part of the bridge — also called the Kerch bridge — are ongoing, Khusnullin said.
The damage had been significant, as photos revealed:
Inaugurated by Putin in 2018 at a cost of $3.7 billion, the bridge has since been used as a key resupply route to Russian forces fighting in Ukraine. The attack had been the biggest escalation in the war up to that point, and was accompanied by strikes and bombings in the Crimean peninsula itself.
The war in Ukraine could last another year, UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace has said.
Yesterday marked the first anniversary of the war, which began when Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion on Feb. 24, 2022.
Asked whether the public will still see Ukraine and Russia at war in another 12 months, Wallace told LBC radio: “I think we will. I think Russia has shown a complete disregard, not only for the lives of the people of Ukraine, but for its own soldiers.”
Ukrainian soldiers patrol in Bakhmut, eastern Ukraine, on Feb. 14, 2023. (John Moore/Getty Images)
During the past 12 months, more than 188,000 Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded in the conflict, Wallace said.
The defence chief said he doesn’t think Putin will voluntarily put an end to the war.
“When someone has crossed the line and thinks it is OK to do that to your own people, running effectively a meat grinder for an army, I think he is not going to stop.”
Military Aid
Britain has been one of the staunchest supporters of Ukraine’s resistance.
Last year the UK provided £2.3 billion ($2.8 billion) in military aid to Ukraine—the largest package of support of any European nation and second only to the United States. The government has also pledged £1.5 billion in economic and humanitarian support.
Defence Secretary Ben Wallace meets Ukrainian soldiers during a visit to Bovington Camp in Dorset, England, on Feb. 22, 2023. (Ben Birchall – Pool/Getty Images)
On Wednesday, Wallace met with Ukrainian troops being trained on the Challengers at the Bovington Camp in Dorset.
He told LBC that he is “open to more British tanks” being sent—on top of those already pledged.
Fighter Jets
The defence secretary also suggested that Ukraine is likely to receive fighter jets from NATO member countries. However, he suggested that NATO’s eastern European member states such as Poland—which have Soviet-era planes that the Ukrainian air force is used to—are more likely to supply the jets than Britain.
Sunak’s government has so far not committed to providing Ukraine with British jets, arguing that it takes too long for pilots to train on the Royal Air Force’s F-35 and Typhoon jets.
A Royal Air Force Typhoon jet flies over the Mihail Kogalniceanu Air Base near Constanta, Romania, on April 8, 2022. (Daniel Mihailescu /AFP via Getty Images)
But the prime minister is under increasing pressure from members of Parliament, including his immediate predecessors Liz Truss and Boris Johnson, to send fighter jets to Ukraine.
During Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s visit to London earlier this month, Sunak announced plans to train Ukrainian pilots to fly NATO-standard advanced fighter jets, and Downing Street said Defence Secretary Ben Wallace is “actively looking at whether we send jets.”
Last week, however, Wallace claimed it could be years before the UK gives any planes to Ukraine, suggesting Zelenskyy may even have to wait until the war with Russia is over.
During a debate on Ukraine in the House of Commons earlier this week, both Truss and Johnson piled pressure on Sunak, urging the UK government to further step up its already substantial support for the war-torn country.
Johnson said: “The Ukrainians are fighting not just for their freedom, but for the cause of freedom around the world. We should give them what they need, not next month, not next year, but now.”
Echoing Johnson’s sentiment, Truss said she “can’t wait to see fighter jets” being delivered to Ukraine.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak meet outside Number 10 Downing Street in London on Feb. 8, 2023. (Henry Nicholls/Reuters)
Record Arms Orders
Amid the “elevated threat environment” caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, British defence giant BAE Systems has received record orders in the past year.
BAE, the UK’s biggest defence firm, reported its highest ever order intake of £37.1 billion ($44.5 billion) for 2022, which saw its order backlog jump to £58.9 billion.
The company said in a statement: “While it is tragic that it took a war in Europe to raise the awareness of the importance of defence around the globe, BAE Systems is well positioned to help national governments keep their citizens safe and secure in an elevated threat environment.”
The group—which builds ships, submarines, and fighter jets—said it expects sales to increase by a further 3—5 percent in 2023, while underlying earnings are forecast to increase by 4–6 percent.
Charles Woodburn, chief executive of BAE, said: “We’ve delivered another year of strong results across the group.
“Our record orders and financial performance give us confidence in delivering long-term growth and to continue investing in new technologies, facilities, and thousands of highly skilled jobs, whilst increasing shareholder returns.”
It should be clear to anyone paying attention during this current stage of instability in our modern era that something is very wrong in terms of American society. I’m not talking about ongoing issues of political corruption and economic mismanagement, I’m talking about something much more dangerous. I’m talking about the systematic derailment of our culture, heritage, principals, history and moral compass. I’m talking about the vicious devouring of the very sinews that hold our civilization together.
There is a cancer eating away at America, a concerted and organized effort to destabilize. For anyone who is familiar with the Conjuring movies, it’s a bit like a demonic invasion. As Ed Warren cautions, the three stages of attack are infestation, oppression and finally, possession. The little demon we are dealing with, though, comes with Antifa patches, rainbow flags and special pronouns.
This week I came across a statement by Georgia representative Marjorie Taylor Greene in which she called for a “national divorce”, a separation of conservative red states and far left blue states, a parting of ways due to our obvious irreconcilable differences. Leftists within the corporate media, of course, flipped out, accusing Greene of inciting treason and the destruction of the US.
While I don’t generally put much stock in the comments of politicians I think it’s important to address this particular sentiment because it echos the arguments made by the Liberty Movement and the alternative media for many years. It’s just surprising to hear a prominent public figure say what we have been saying for so long.
The frantic upheaval expressed by the political left in reaction to Greene is something I have written about in the past. In my article ‘Separation Or Purge? Sharing A Society With The Political Left Is Impossible’ published in February last year, I noted that leftists take a communistic approach to civil disagreement. They see the populace as chattel to be managed in the name of the greater good of the collective, not as individuals with the right to disassociate. From my article:
“Why not carry this process forward to its natural conclusion? Red states break from blue states and red counties break from blue state control and we live our lives the way we see fit. Let the leftists continue with their draconian economic and political models and see how well that goes for them. I guarantee they will be in financial ruins within a decade (the list of most indebted places in the country is dominated by blue states) and they will be begging to return to a union with red states (except for the zealots, which would lose influence as they continue to fail).
But this will not happen peacefully because, again, leftists cannot tolerate free activity. Their OCD will not allow them to be content with living in a collectivist state of their own; ALL states must be collectivist before they are satisfied. People are property to them; property of the collective, and people who are property cannot be allowed to make decisions without oversight.”
Globalism and progressive authoritarianism has been inching forward for a long time in the US, but only in the past ten years has the agenda become more obvious to the general public. During the covid lockdowns and mandates, people finally witnessed the true intentions of the political left, which widely supported draconian restrictions and called for brutal punishments for people that refused to comply. A large number of Democrats even supported Chinese-style covid laws including taking people’s children away and implementing forced internment.
This is the true face of the political left. Yes, there are moderates and issue focused progressives, but these people tend to keep their mouths shut and go along to get along when it comes to the woke extremists. The moderates are useless and rarely call out the gatekeepers on their own side.
To understand how we got to this place in our society and why leftist politics are poisonous to freedom loving people, you have to understand the concept of “deconstruction”.
It was globalist foundations (the super rich .001%) from the 1960s onward that funded and created the social justice left. This agenda has been going on for decades and is openly admitted in Alison R. Bernstein’s book ‘Funding The Future: Philanthropy’s Influence On America’s Higher Education’. Bernstein was the vice president of Education at the Ford Foundation and the former Associate Dean of Faculty at Princeton.
The woke ideology is an artificial edifice of astroturf activism. Their manifestos of “critical theory” are conjured using Marxist and communist methodologies and then adapted for American audiences, luring in useful idiots as they go.
The real power grab occurred in the late 1980s into the 1990s when deconstruction as a weapon for political and social upheaval was widely introduced into leftist circles. Before then “deconstruction”, derived from the work of the philosopher Jacques Derrida, was often thought of as a mind game; a way to question long held standards that acted as a basis for critical thinking or philosophy. In the 1990s it became something else.
Derrida’s ideas were to question binary notions in philosophy, but globalists and leftists expanded it as a concept for questioning EVERYTHING. Not just questioning, but engaging in active hostilities against the foundations of civilization. Leftists see “structuralism” (order) as a target, and they hate anyone seeking to order society around rules, definitions and principles that rely on discrimination of certain behaviors.
For leftists, all traditional rules and protections must be sabotaged and all aberrant behaviors must eventually become accepted as normal. They believe that in this way society can be homogenized into a Utopian world of perfect equity. Discrimination of anything (except traditional principles) is considered by them to be taboo. Because if people are allowed to discriminate then that allows them to separate, and if people are allowed to separate, then collectivism of thought can never be achieved. The hive mind requires total conformity.
The purpose of deconstruction is to pick away at fundamental systems and definitions and attempt to show them to be inherently flawed, problematic or absurd. Usually this method relies on abstraction, appeal to emotion and subjective experience rather than true analysis. In fact, critical analysis is considered the enemy of social justice because it places facts and evidence above subjective experience and mere feelings.
Emotional and self absorbed people are easy to control. Critical people that value reason are harder to control. For leftists to prevail they must destroy critical thought and encourage reactionary emotion as the norm in society. And, if that doesn’t work, radical leftists argue that burning primary systems to the ground by force is preferred. The end game for them is not necessarily to be right, the end game is to win.
The deconstruction mindset views nothing as sacred and this includes moral compass. While arguing from a position of moral superiority, the political left will often rationalize highly immoral practices. For example, this is why we now see aggressive attempts by leftists to normalize the indoctrination of very young children into trans activism. This is why we are seeing hundreds of gender affirmation clinics with procedures for children springing up all over the country. This is why we are seeing numerous sexualized drag shows for kids, and why highly sexualized reading materials are being planted in school libraries.
This is why some leftists in the media are promoting pedophiles as a victim status group rather than aberrant criminals that need to be weeded out of society. Innocent children are fair game for them because the ends justify the means. Brainwashing and denigrating the next generation is the fastest path to their Utopia.
This is the inevitable progression of the deconstruction ideology. Morality is a “binary” based on what is right and what is wrong. It is the most vital binary for human survival and without it our species would self destruct, but this seems to be exactly what leftists and the globalist puppeteers behind them want. They see traditional morality as a restrictive and oppressive dynamic, another binary that must be eliminated. Thus, they propose moral relativism instead; the idea that conscience is merely a product of social conditioning and that right and wrong, truth and lies, good and evil are based on personal preferences.
It is, ironically, the recipe for ultimate evil. It is the philosophy of pure chaos. When individual conscience becomes the enemy of society because it is considered an “act of discrimination”, then only evil can prevail.
The concept of national separation when taken in context of the bigger ideological picture makes perfect sense. Leftists obsess over power, they obsess over collective acceptance even if obtained by force, they obsess over those that disagree with them. People who respect the foundations of individual liberty and the wisdom of reason cannot co-exist with the political left. Eventually, the leftists will try to destroy them, or they will have to secede. It’s inevitable.
I have called for separation and relocation many times over the years as the only PEACEFUL means of dealing with the problem of complete moral and political division. It’s the only way the conservatives and freedom minded people can exit our association with leftists without bloodshed. That said, I fully realize that leftists/globalists will never allow this to happen. If people are allowed to leave, then the leftists lose. The only way they can win is to eliminate (deconstruct) every alternative social structure. They will froth and rage over separation and call for war.
In fact, one of the first things they accused Marjorie Taylor Greene of doing was inciting civil war. She never argued in favor of this, THEY insinuated it, as if to say “Try to walk away from us, and we’ll kill you.”
At this stage I’m ready to say let them try and lets get this over with. There can be no diplomacy or reconciliation with groups that value leftist cultism and deconstruction ideology – The deepest intent of deconstruction is to poison the cultural well. The dream of leftists is to blow up the world because they see the our current civilization as oppressive to their narcissism. At the same time, globalists exploit that narcissism and use leftists as a battering ram to wreak havoc. Through chaos, they hope to erect a new world order in which all values, all principles and all morals are dead and psychopathy becomes “normal”.
One cannot reason with a monster, one can only erase that monster from existence.
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As Statista’s Katharina Buchholz notes, the Russian state-controlled media environment explains why approval rating for Putin or the Ukraine war can stay so high despite the country now being extremely marginalized in the international community and enduring the hardships of sanctions and war mobilization. Despite the surveys carried out by an independent researcher, many Russians may still feel pressured to give a favorable opinion because of the system they live in. The Levada Center has in a release pointed out that, while surveys only show the behavior people are willing to display publicly, survey-taking behavior has not changed since the invasion. Some observers believe war approval to actually be lower.
As part of the same survey, Russians were asked what feelings the news of the mobilization caused in them. Fear was the most common answer given throughout all age demographics.
The second most common answer varied by age group, however.
Those above the age of 40 were also likely to feel pride for Russia, while those younger named shock as the second most common feeling in relation to the mobilization, followed by anger.
House Oversight Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) sent a letter on Thursday to the U.S. State Department demanding records and a briefing by the agency regarding its alleged funding of a “disinformation tracking group” that is blacklisting conservative-leaning news outlets.
The letter (pdf) cites as evidence the Washington Examiner’s series of investigative reports uncovering the State Department’s alleged partnership with activist organizations, specifically one “foreign organization,” to “suppress lawful speech and defund disfavored news outlets under the guise of combatting disinformation.”
“The Committee is disturbed by recent reporting that taxpayer money ended up in the hands of a foreign organization running an advertising blacklist of organizations accused of hosting disinformation on their websites, including several conservative-leaning news organizations,” Comer wrote.
The letter goes on to detail the Washington Examiner’s findings.
According to the outlet, major ad companies look to “nonpartisan” groups that claim to detect and fight “disinformation” online to help determine which news outlets and websites they should avoid.
Some of these “disinformation monitors,” the Washington Examiner went on to explain, “are compiling secret blacklists and feeding them to ad companies, with the aim of defunding and shutting down disfavored speech.”
One such group is British Global Disinformation Institute (GDI), which has compiled a “dynamic exclusion list” of 2,000 websites and rates those outlets based on their “alleged disinformation ‘risk’ factor,” according to the Washington Examiner.
GDI’s website further explains its purpose. Calling itself an “independent, non-profit, open source, intelligence hub,” GDI “tracks disinformation and extremism across platforms online” to “serve a broad array of governments, NGOs [non-governmental organizations], online platforms, and media.”
In his letter, Comer cites a $330,000 figure that, according to the Washington Examiner, GDI received from State Department funds.
“The federal government should not be censoring free speech nor policing what news outlets Americans choose to consume,” Comer wrote in the letter.
“And taxpayer funds should never be given to third parties with the intent that they be used to censor lawful speech or abridge the freedom of the press,” he continued.
While calling for the State Department to schedule a staff-level briefing “no later than March 2,” Comer went on to list the types of documents and communications that he demands the Department deliver to the committee by March 9 “to enable oversight of the Department’s administration of funds flowing to organizations working to censor lawful speech and suppress press freedoms.”
GDI’s Naughty and Nice Lists of US News Media Organizations
In Dec. 2022, GDI published a study, called “Disinformation Risk Assessment: The Online News Market in the United States,” of 69 U.S. news websites that the organization analyzed between June and October 2022, placing each of them into one of five categories of disinformation risk—minimum, low, medium, high, or maximum.
GDI defines disinformation as “adversarial narratives, which are intentionally misleading; financially or ideologically motivated; and/or aimed at fostering long-term social, political, or economic conflict; and which create a risk of harm by undermining trust in science or targeting at-risk individuals or institutions.”
According to its criteria, GDI found that the ten most disinformation risky websites were all conservative-leaning, including Newsmax (maximum), The Federalist (maximum), The American Spectator (maximum), the New York Post (high), Reason Magazine (high), RealClearPolitics (high), The Daily Wire (high), The Blaze (high), One America News Network (high), and The American Conservative (high).
In contrast, the ten least risky sites earning the “minimum-risk” or “low-risk” designation were NPR (minimum), AP News (minimum), The New York Times (minimum), ProPublica (minimum), Insider (low), USA Today (low), The Washington Post (low), BuzzFeedNews.com (low), The Wall Street Journal (low), and The Huffington Post (low).
As the UN commemorated World Day of Social Justice on February 20, we’re taking a look at one of the key challenges the world is facing in the coming decades: the gradual and largely irreversible shift towards an older population.
According to the United Nations Population Division, the number of persons aged 65 and older is expected to double over the next three decades, reaching 1.6 billion in 2050.
While Japan is famous for its old population and was already topping the list in 2022, other Asian economies are in the middle of a significant shift, as life expectation has rapidly improved over the last decades and continues to do so. By 2050, roughly 40 percent of the populations of Hong Kong, South Korea and Japan are expected to be 65 and older, which makes a huge difference to levels currently observed in highly developed regions, where the share of older people is in the low 20s.
“Population ageing is a defining global trend of our time,” the UN Department for Economic and Social Affairs writes in its World Social Report 2023, calling it a “major success story” that brings both challenges and opportunities. One of the main challenges for countries with ageing populations is to ensure that the economy can support the consumption needs of a growing number of older people, be it by raising the legal retirement age, removing barriers to voluntary labor force participation of older people or by ensuring equitable access to education, health care and working opportunities throughout the lifespan, which can help to boost economic security at older ages.
Especially countries in the early stages of the demographic shift have the opportunity to plan ahead and implement the right measures ahead of time, to effectively manage the challenges that come with an ageing population.
There is no subject of greater importance—and controversy—today in America than that of education. And nowhere is the clash between civilizational order and post-modern anarchy on greater display than with New College of Florida, a tiny liberal-arts college in Sarasota. The New York Times recently described the reaction of “students, parents, and faculty members” to Governor Ron DeSantis’s reforms of the college in a curious way: “a political assault on their academic freedom.”
As a tax-payer funded, public institution of higher learning, New College is—or at least ought to be—accountable to Florida’s citizens and elected officials. But, then again, the left is increasingly uncomfortable with representative government. It considers democratic institutions to be “messy.” Better to be ruled top down by “experts,” it claims.
At the same time, many conservatives rightly lament the role that universal public education has played in secularizing and liberalizing American society. But we cannot possibly hope to restore excellence to American education by exclusively relying upon private and voluntary associations, as they only impact a small minority of students.
Florida is leading the way. In the course of four years, the state has invested billions to raise teacher pay (with starting salaries over 15 percent of the national average), abolished sales tax on back-to-school shopping necessities, established a teacher’s bill of rights to hold public-sector unions accountable, and passed a parent’s bill of rights, which, among other things, forbids the teaching of sexual orientation and gender identity to students in kindergarten through third grade. Florida has further provided new educational pathways for high school students in vocational technology programs, dual-enrollment programs, and apprenticeships. It has also explored the prohibition of DEI programs at state universities and replaced leadership at colleges like the University of Florida and New College.
While each state will have its own unique set of needs and priorities, the transformation of Florida’s education system shows that it’s possible to raise standards, support students and parents, boost teacher compensation, fight radical ideologies, and win the broad support of the public. The ambition is not to create a single mode of education that applies to everyone—that would inevitably reduce educational standards to the lowest common denominator—but to use the power of politics and persuasion to apply top-flight learning to a variety of educational models, which respectively acknowledge the diversity of interests and capabilities of students.
For liberal-arts colleges, first and foremost, the classics must be put back in their rightful place in the core curriculum. Students have to be given the opportunity to step outside the confines of the 21st century. This type of education allows the world to be seen more fully, and, to be sure, more honestly.
For research universities, federal funding for student loans must be eliminated, administrative staff must be reduced, and DEI initiatives must be replaced entirely with a new system based solely on academic merit. Universities should also be held liable in bankruptcy court for former students who default on student loan debt, and standards of excellence should be set for measuring advances and innovations in science and technology.
At the high school level, the majority of graduates should no longer pursue a college degree. A college education is not the measure of all things. It’s unjust to force young Americans with a variety of backgrounds and interests into a one-size-fits-all program—rooted in post-WWII nostalgia—that burdens them with debt and poorly equips them for professional, familial, and civic life. Vocational training and apprenticeships should be encouraged and companies should be incentivized to hire and train high school graduates directly until a paradigm shift becomes manifest throughout workplace culture. Fixing higher education in America requires a whole-of-society approach.
At the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, we’re meeting this challenge head-on next week in the Free State of Florida where we are partnering with the Claremont Institute and the Heritage Foundation to host our first ever national faculty conference, the American Politics and Government Summit, which will convene professors and teachers from across the nation to explore the question of “Justice and the American Regime.” It will serve as an alternative to the American Political Science Association by providing scholars with a forum to civilly debate controversial topics and pursue truth. Moreover, they will be able to do this without fear of being canceled by the mob and needing to conform every thought and word to progressive dogmas.
Our effort as an educational and ideas organization is one small step towards reopening the American mind, and, I hope, returning sanity to an institution that has been held captive by narrow and self-destructive tendencies for far too long. But if we are to be successful at scale, we need to do more than host conferences and build associations. We need major, structural change in our public system of higher education. That will only come, at least in the next two years, from our elected officials at the state and local levels. The remarkable victories of both Governor DeSantis in Florida and Governor Glenn Youngkin in Virginia prove that addressing excellence in education is a winning formula.
Parents, of all political stripes, want the best education possible for their children. They want them to grow up to be upstanding citizens, good fathers and mothers, successful in their careers, and respectful and kind to their neighbors. They want them to love America, not blindly, but out of a sense of gratitude and a desire to make this country a better place for all.
While Proposing Peace In Ukraine, China Issues Scathing Tome Over “The Perils Of US Hegemony”
A massive, 4000-word scathing critique of American foreign policy was circulated by Chinese embassies hosted in Western countries this week, including to American officials and media. It included a lengthy laundry list of US crimes abroad and imperialist tactics.
The long essay was first published in state-run Xinhua News agency, and is entitled“U.S. Hegemony and Its Perils”. It heavily focuses on Washington’s recent wars in the Middle East, which have killed many tens of thousands of people, as well as bullying sanctions on countries like Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, and Russia which have had a strangling effect on entire populations.
For a sampling of the kind rhetoric contained in the essay, which at this point has semi-official status as a Chinese government document (again, given it’s being circulated by the Chinese embassy in D.C., among others), one section begins: “So far, the United States had or has imposed economic sanctions on nearly 40 countries across the world, including Cuba, China, Russia, the DPRK, Iran and Venezuela, affecting nearly half of the world’s population.”
It repeatedly calls out American hypocrisy and says the US has departed from the very principles it has long espoused and claimed to represent:
“The United States of America” has turned itself into “the United States of Sanctions.” And “long-arm jurisdiction” has been reduced to nothing but a tool for the United States to use its means of state power to suppress economic competitors and interfere in normal international business. This is a serious departure from the principles of liberal market economy that the United States has long boasted.
This also comes the very week that China unveiled a peace plan intended to wind down the Russia-Ukraine war. To be expected, the plan was met with an icy reception in Europe and the US.
Below is the Chinese government document in its entirety, which was sent out to Western government officials and media late this week.
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US Hegemony and Its Perils
Contents
Introduction
I. Political Hegemony—Throwing Its Weight Around
II. Military Hegemony—Wanton Use of Force
III. Economic Hegemony—Looting and Exploitation
IV. Technological Hegemony—Monopoly and Suppression
V. Cultural Hegemony—Spreading False Narratives
Conclusion
Introduction
Since becoming the world’s most powerful country after the two world wars and the Cold War, the United States has acted more boldly to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries, pursue, maintain and abuse hegemony, advance subversion and infiltration, and willfully wage wars, bringing harm to the international community.
The United States has developed a hegemonic playbook to stage “color revolutions,” instigate regional disputes, and even directly launch wars under the guise of promoting democracy, freedom and human rights. Clinging to the Cold War mentality, the United States has ramped up bloc politics and stoked conflict and confrontation. It has overstretched the concept of national security, abused export controls and forced unilateral sanctions upon others. It has taken a selective approach to international law and rules, utilizing or discarding them as it sees fit, and has sought to impose rules that serve its own interests in the name of upholding a “rules-based international order.”
This report, by presenting the relevant facts, seeks to expose the U.S. abuse of hegemony in the political, military, economic, financial, technological and cultural fields, and to draw greater international attention to the perils of the U.S. practices to world peace and stability and the well-being of all peoples.
I. Political Hegemony — Throwing Its Weight Around
The United States has long been attempting to mold other countries and the world order with its own values and political system in the name of promoting democracy and human rights.
◆ Instances of U.S. interference in other countries’ internal affairs abound. In the name of “promoting democracy,” the United States practiced a “Neo-Monroe Doctrine” in Latin America, instigated “color revolutions” in Eurasia, and orchestrated the “Arab Spring” in West Asia and North Africa, bringing chaos and disaster to many countries.
In 1823, the United States announced the Monroe Doctrine. While touting an “America for the Americans,” what it truly wanted was an “America for the United States.”
Since then, the policies of successive U.S. governments toward Latin America and the Caribbean Region have been riddled with political interference, military intervention and regime subversion. From its 61-year hostility toward and blockade of Cuba to its overthrow of the Allende government of Chile, U.S. policy on this region has been built on one maxim-those who submit will prosper; those who resist shall perish.
The year 2003 marked the beginning of a succession of “color revolutions” — the “Rose Revolution” in Georgia, the “Orange Revolution” in Ukraine and the “Tulip Revolution” in Kyrgyzstan. The U.S. Department of State openly admitted playing a “central role” in these “regime changes.” The United States also interfered in the internal affairs of the Philippines, ousting President Ferdinand Marcos Sr. in 1986 and President Joseph Estrada in 2001 through the so-called “People Power Revolutions.”
In January 2023, former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo released his new book Never Give an Inch: Fighting for the America I Love. He revealed in it that the United States had plotted to intervene in Venezuela. The plan was to force the Maduro government to reach an agreement with the opposition, deprive Venezuela of its ability to sell oil and gold for foreign exchange, exert high pressure on its economy, and influence the 2018 presidential election.
◆ The U.S. exercises double standards on international rules. Placing its self-interest first, the United States has walked away from international treaties and organizations, and put its domestic law above international law. In April 2017, the Trump administration announced that it would cut off all U.S. funding to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) with the excuse that the organization “supports, or participates in the management of a programme of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization.” The United States quit UNESCO twice in 1984 and 2017. In 2017, it announced leaving the Paris Agreement on climate change. In 2018, it announced its exit from the UN Human Rights Council, citing the organization’s “bias” against Israel and failure to protect human rights effectively. In 2019, the United States announced its withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty to seek unfettered development of advanced weapons. In 2020, it announced pulling out of the Treaty on Open Skies.
The United States has also been a stumbling block to biological arms control by opposing negotiations on a verification protocol for the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) and impeding international verification of countries’ activities relating to biological weapons. As the only country in possession of a chemical weapons stockpile, the United States has repeatedly delayed the destruction of chemical weapons and remained reluctant in fulfilling its obligations. It has become the biggest obstacle to realizing “a world free of chemical weapons.”
◆ The United States is piecing together small blocs through its alliance system. It has been forcing an “Indo-Pacific Strategy” onto the Asia-Pacific region, assembling exclusive clubs like the Five Eyes, the Quad and AUKUS, and forcing regional countries to take sides. Such practices are essentially meant to create division in the region, stoke confrontation and undermine peace.
◆ The U.S. arbitrarily passes judgment on democracy in other countries, and fabricates a false narrative of “democracy versus authoritarianism” to incite estrangement, division, rivalry and confrontation. In December 2021, the United States hosted the first “Summit for Democracy,” which drew criticism and opposition from many countries for making a mockery of the spirit of democracy and dividing the world. In March 2023, the United States will host another “Summit for Democracy,” which remains unwelcome and will again find no support.
II. Military Hegemony — Wanton Use of Force
The history of the United States is characterized by violence and expansion. Since it gained independence in 1776, the United States has constantly sought expansion by force: it slaughtered Indians, invaded Canada, waged a war against Mexico, instigated the American-Spanish War, and annexed Hawaii. After World War II, the wars either provoked or launched by the United States included the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, the Kosovo War, the War in Afghanistan, the Iraq War, the Libyan War and the Syrian War, abusing its military hegemony to pave the way for expansionist objectives. In recent years, the U.S. average annual military budget has exceeded 700 billion U.S. dollars, accounting for 40 percent of the world’s total, more than the 15 countries behind it combined. The United States has about 800 overseas military bases, with 173,000 troops deployed in 159 countries.
China MFA uses United States’ financial subjugation of Japan as an example of the perils of US economic hegemony pic.twitter.com/izR31FFi3p
According to the book America Invades: How We’ve Invaded or been Militarily Involved with almost Every Country on Earth, the United States has fought or been militarily involved with almost all the 190-odd countries recognized by the United Nations with only three exceptions. The three countries were “spared” because the United States did not find them on the map.
◆ As former U.S. President Jimmy Carter put it, the United States is undoubtedly the most warlike nation in the history of the world. According to a Tufts University report, “Introducing the Military Intervention Project: A new Dataset on U.S. Military Interventions, 1776-2019,” the United States undertook nearly 400 military interventions globally between those years, 34 percent of which were in Latin America and the Caribbean, 23 percent in East Asia and the Pacific, 14 percent in the Middle East and North Africa, and 13 percent in Europe. Currently, its military intervention in the Middle East and North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa is on the rise.
Alex Lo, a South China Morning Post columnist, pointed out that the United States has rarely distinguished between diplomacy and war since its founding. It overthrew democratically elected governments in many developing countries in the 20th century and immediately replaced them with pro-American puppet regimes. Today, in Ukraine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Pakistan and Yemen, the United States is repeating its old tactics of waging proxy, low-intensity, and drone wars.
◆ U.S. military hegemony has caused humanitarian tragedies. Since 2001, the wars and military operations launched by the United States in the name of fighting terrorism have claimed over 900,000 lives with some 335,000 of them civilians, injured millions and displaced tens of millions. The 2003 Iraq War resulted in some 200,000 to 250,000 civilian deaths, including over 16,000 directly killed by the U.S. military, and left more than a million homeless.
The United States has created 37 million refugees around the world. Since 2012, the number of Syrian refugees alone has increased tenfold. Between 2016 and 2019, 33,584 civilian deaths were documented in the Syrian fightings, including 3,833 killed by U.S.-led coalition bombings, half of them women and children. The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) reported on 9 November 2018 that the air strikes launched by U.S. forces on Raqqa alone killed 1,600 Syrian civilians.
The two-decades-long war in Afghanistan devastated the country. A total of 47,000 Afghan civilians and 66,000 to 69,000 Afghan soldiers and police officers unrelated to the September 11 attacks were killed in U.S. military operations, and more than 10 million people were displaced. The war in Afghanistan destroyed the foundation of economic development there and plunged the Afghan people into destitution. After the “Kabul debacle” in 2021, the United States announced that it would freeze some 9.5 billion dollars in assets belonging to the Afghan central bank, a move considered as “pure looting.”
In September 2022, Turkish Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu commented at a rally that the United States has waged a proxy war in Syria, turned Afghanistan into an opium field and heroin factory, thrown Pakistan into turmoil, and left Libya in incessant civil unrest. The United States does whatever it takes to rob and enslave the people of any country with underground resources.
The United States has also adopted appalling methods in war. During the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, the Kosovo War, the War in Afghanistan and the Iraq War, the United States used massive quantities of chemical and biological weapons as well as cluster bombs, fuel-air bombs, graphite bombs and depleted uranium bombs, causing enormous damage on civilian facilities, countless civilian casualties and lasting environmental pollution.
III. Economic Hegemony — Looting and Exploitation
After World War II, the United States led efforts to set up the Bretton Woods System, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, which, together with the Marshall Plan, formed the international monetary system centered around the U.S. dollar. In addition, the United States has also established institutional hegemony in the international economic and financial sector by manipulating the weighted voting systems, rules and arrangements of international organizations including “approval by 85 percent majority,” and its domestic trade laws and regulations. By taking advantage of the dollar’s status as the major international reserve currency, the United States is basically collecting “seigniorage” from around the world; and using its control over international organizations, it coerces other countries into serving America’s political and economic strategy.
◆ The United States exploits the world’s wealth with the help of “seigniorage.” It costs only about 17 cents to produce a 100 dollar bill, but other countries had to pony up 100 dollar of actual goods in order to obtain one. It was pointed out more than half a century ago, that the United States enjoyed exorbitant privilege and deficit without tears created by its dollar, and used the worthless paper note to plunder the resources and factories of other nations.
◆ The hegemony of U.S. dollar is the main source of instability and uncertainty in the world economy. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States abused its global financial hegemony and injected trillions of dollars into the global market, leaving other countries, especially emerging economies, to pay the price. In 2022, the Fed ended its ultra-easy monetary policy and turned to aggressive interest rate hike, causing turmoil in the international financial market and substantial depreciation of other currencies such as the Euro, many of which dropped to a 20-year low. As a result, a large number of developing countries were challenged by high inflation, currency depreciation and capital outflows. This was exactly what Nixon’s secretary of the treasury John Connally once remarked, with self-satisfaction yet sharp precision, that “the dollar is our currency, but it is your problem.”
◆ With its control over international economic and financial organizations, the United States imposes additional conditions to their assistance to other countries. In order to reduce obstacles to U.S. capital inflow and speculation, the recipient countries are required to advance financial liberalization and open up financial markets so that their economic policies would fall in line with America’s strategy. According to the Review of International Political Economy, along with the 1,550 debt relief programs extended by the IMF to its 131 member countries from 1985 to 2014, as many as 55,465 additional political conditions had been attached.
◆ The United States willfully suppresses its opponents with economic coercion. In the 1980s, to eliminate the economic threat posed by Japan, and to control and use the latter in service of America’s strategic goal of confronting the Soviet Union and dominating the world, the United States leveraged its hegemonic financial power against Japan, and concluded the Plaza Accord. As a result, Yen was pushed up, and Japan was pressed to open up its financial market and reform its financial system. The Plaza Accord dealt a heavy blow to the growth momentum of the Japanese economy, leaving Japan to what was later called “three lost decades.”
◆ America’s economic and financial hegemony has become a geopolitical weapon. Doubling down on unilateral sanctions and “long-arm jurisdiction,” the United States has enacted such domestic laws as the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act, and the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, and introduced a series of executive orders to sanction specific countries, organizations or individuals. Statistics show that U.S. sanctions against foreign entities increased by 933 percent from 2000 to 2021. The Trump administration alone has imposed more than 3,900 sanctions, which means three sanctions per day. So far, the United States had or has imposed economic sanctions on nearly 40 countries across the world, including Cuba, China, Russia, the DPRK, Iran and Venezuela, affecting nearly half of the world’s population. “The United States of America” has turned itself into “the United States of Sanctions.” And “long-arm jurisdiction” has been reduced to nothing but a tool for the United States to use its means of state power to suppress economic competitors and interfere in normal international business. This is a serious departure from the principles of liberal market economy that the United States has long boasted.
IV. Technological Hegemony — Monopoly and Suppression
The United States seeks to deter other countries’ scientific, technological and economic development by wielding monopoly power, suppression measures and technology restrictions in high-tech fields.
◆ The United States monopolizes intellectual property in the name of protection. Taking advantage of the weak position of other countries, especially developing ones, on intellectual property rights and the institutional vacancy in relevant fields, the United States reaps excessive profits through monopoly. In 1994, the United States pushed forward the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), forcing the Americanized process and standards in intellectual property protection in an attempt to solidify its monopoly on technology.
In the 1980s, to contain the development of Japan’s semiconductor industry, the United States launched the “301” investigation, built bargaining power in bilateral negotiations through multilateral agreements, threatened to label Japan as conducting unfair trade, and imposed retaliatory tariffs, forcing Japan to sign the U.S.-Japan Semiconductor Agreement. As a result, Japanese semiconductor enterprises were almost completely driven out of global competition, and their market share dropped from 50 percent to 10 percent. Meanwhile, with the support of the U.S. government, a large number of U.S. semiconductor enterprises took the opportunity and grabbed larger market share.
◆ The United States politicizes, weaponizes technological issues and uses them as ideological tools. Overstretching the concept of national security, the United States mobilized state power to suppress and sanction Chinese company Huawei, restricted the entry of Huawei products into the U.S. market, cut off its supply of chips and operating systems, and coerced other countries to ban Huawei from undertaking local 5G network construction. It even talked Canada into unwarrantedly detaining Huawei’s CFO Meng Wanzhou for nearly three years.
The United States has fabricated a slew of excuses to clamp down on China’s high-tech enterprises with global competitiveness, and has put more than 1,000 Chinese enterprises on sanction lists. In addition, the United States has also imposed controls on biotechnology, artificial intelligence and other high-end technologies, reinforced export restrictions, tightened investment screening, suppressed Chinese social media apps such as TikTok and WeChat, and lobbied the Netherlands and Japan to restrict exports of chips and related equipment or technology to China.
The United States has also practiced double standards in its policy on China-related technological professionals. To sideline and suppress Chinese researchers, since June 2018, visa validity has been shortened for Chinese students majoring in certain high-tech-related disciplines, repeated cases have occurred where Chinese scholars and students going to the United States for exchange programs and study were unjustifiably denied and harassed, and large-scale investigation on Chinese scholars working in the United States was carried out.
◆ The United States solidifies its technological monopoly in the name of protecting democracy. By building small blocs on technology such as the “chips alliance” and “clean network,” the United States has put “democracy” and “human rights” labels on high-technology, and turned technological issues into political and ideological issues, so as to fabricate excuses for its technological blockade against other countries. In May 2019, the United States enlisted 32 countries to the Prague 5G Security Conference in the Czech Republic and issued the Prague Proposal in an attempt to exclude China’s 5G products. In April 2020, then U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced the “5G clean path,” a plan designed to build technological alliance in the 5G field with partners bonded by their shared ideology on democracy and the need to protect “cyber security.” The measures, in essence, are the U.S. attempts to maintain its technological hegemony through technological alliances.
◆ The United States abuses its technological hegemony by carrying out cyber attacks and eavesdropping. The United States has long been notorious as an “empire of hackers,” blamed for its rampant acts of cyber theft around the world. It has all kinds of means to enforce pervasive cyber attacks and surveillance, including using analog base station signals to access mobile phones for data theft, manipulating mobile apps, infiltrating cloud servers, and stealing through undersea cables. The list goes on.
U.S. surveillance is indiscriminate. All can be targets of its surveillance, be they rivals or allies, even leaders of allied countries such as former German Chancellor Angela Merkel and several French Presidents. Cyber surveillance and attacks launched by the United States such as “Prism,” “Dirtbox,” “Irritant Horn” and “Telescreen Operation” are all proof that the United States is closely monitoring its allies and partners. Such eavesdropping on allies and partners has already caused worldwide outrage. Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, a website that has exposed U.S. surveillance programs, said that “do not expect a global surveillance superpower to act with honor or respect. There is only one rule: there are no rules.”
V. Cultural Hegemony — Spreading False Narratives
The global expansion of American culture is an important part of its external strategy. The United States has often used cultural tools to strengthen and maintain its hegemony in the world.
◆ The United States embeds American values in its products such as movies. American values and lifestyle are a tied product to its movies and TV shows, publications, media content, and programs by the government-funded non-profit cultural institutions. It thus shapes a cultural and public opinion space in which American culture reigns and maintains cultural hegemony. In his article The Americanization of the World, John Yemma, an American scholar, exposed the real weapons in U.S. cultural expansion: the Hollywood, the image design factories on Madison Avenue and the production lines of Mattel Company and Coca-Cola.
There are various vehicles the United States uses to keep its cultural hegemony. American movies are the most used; they now occupy more than 70 percent of the world’s market share. The United States skilfully exploits its cultural diversity to appeal to various ethnicities. When Hollywood movies descend on the world, they scream the American values tied to them.
◆ American cultural hegemony not only shows itself in “direct intervention,” but also in “media infiltration” and as “a trumpet for the world.” U.S.-dominated Western media has a particularly important role in shaping global public opinion in favor of U.S. meddling in the internal affairs of other countries.
The U.S. government strictly censors all social media companies and demands their obedience. Twitter CEO Elon Musk admitted on 27 December 2022 that all social media platforms work with the U.S. government to censor content, reported Fox Business Network. Public opinion in the United States is subject to government intervention to restrict all unfavorable remarks. Google often makes pages disappear.
U.S. Department of Defense manipulates social media. In December 2022, The Intercept, an independent U.S. investigative website, revealed that in July 2017, U.S. Central Command official Nathaniel Kahler instructed Twitter’s public policy team to augment the presence of 52 Arabic-language accounts on a list he sent, six of which were to be given priority. One of the six was dedicated to justifying U.S. drone attacks in Yemen, such as by claiming that the attacks were precise and killed only terrorists, not civilians. Following Kahler’s directive, Twitter put those Arabic-language accounts on a “white list” to amplify certain messages.
◆The United States practices double standards on the freedom of the press. It brutally suppresses and silences media of other countries by various means. The United States and Europe bar mainstream Russian media such as Russia Today and the Sputnik from their countries. Platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube openly restrict official accounts of Russia. Netflix, Apple and Google have removed Russian channels and applications from their services and app stores. Unprecedented draconian censorship is imposed on Russia-related contents.
◆The United States abuses its cultural hegemony to instigate “peaceful evolution” in socialist countries. It sets up news media and cultural outfits targeting socialist countries. It pours staggering amounts of public funds into radio and TV networks to support their ideological infiltration, and these mouthpieces bombard socialist countries in dozens of languages with inflammatory propaganda day and night.
The United States uses misinformation as a spear to attack other countries, and has built an industrial chain around it: there are groups and individuals making up stories, and peddling them worldwide to mislead public opinion with the support of nearly limitless financial resources.
Conclusion
While a just cause wins its champion wide support, an unjust one condemns its pursuer to be an outcast. The hegemonic, domineering, and bullying practices of using strength to intimidate the weak, taking from others by force and subterfuge, and playing zero-sum games are exerting grave harm. The historical trends of peace, development, cooperation, and mutual benefit are unstoppable. The United States has been overriding truth with its power and trampling justice to serve self-interest. These unilateral, egoistic and regressive hegemonic practices have drawn growing, intense criticism and opposition from the international community.
Countries need to respect each other and treat each other as equals. Big countries should behave in a manner befitting their status and take the lead in pursuing a new model of state-to-state relations featuring dialogue and partnership, not confrontation or alliance. China opposes all forms of hegemonism and power politics, and rejects interference in other countries’ internal affairs. The United States must conduct serious soul-searching. It must critically examine what it has done, let go of its arrogance and prejudice, and quit its hegemonic, domineering and bullying practices.
The Smithsonian Institution has apologized for the conduct of its National Air and Space Museum employees who drove pro-life activists out of the museum during the March For Life Rally in Washington last month.
Tens of thousands of pro-life activists were in Washington on Jan. 20 to attend the annual rally in opposition to abortion. During the weekend event, some rallygoers chose to visit the Air and Space Museum but were kicked out over hats emblazoned with pro-life messages.
The incident during the pro-life rally prompted 40 Republican lawmakers to send a letter to Smithsonian Institution Director Lonnie G. Bunch III, demanding answers.
In their letter, the lawmakers raised allegations that museum employees repeatedly “accosted” pro-life students from a Catholic school in Greenville, South Carolina. The students had been wearing blue beanie hats embroidered with the words “Rosary PRO-LIFE.”
The museum employees allegedly mocked the students, “called them expletives, and made comments that the museum was a ‘neutral zone’ where they could not express such statements.”
As a taxpayer-funded entity, the Smithsonian Institution and its various museums and buildings are generally prohibited from interfering in the free speech activities of its visitors. The Smithsonian Institution does not allow people to hold demonstrations or display placards, signs, and banners in its buildings, but political messages on articles of clothing are not prohibited.
On Tuesday, Bunch responded to the lawmakers, giving his assurances that the incident was a mistake and the Smithsonian Institution is taking corrective actions.
“This was an aberration and not reflective of Smithsonian values and practice of welcoming all visitors regardless of viewpoint,” Bunch wrote. “Visitors are not to be denied access based on messages on their clothing, and an error was made in this regard on January 20, 2023.”
Smithsonian Retraining Employees
Bunch told the Republican lawmakers he had directed the Smithsonian museum to provide employees with refresher training regarding its policies for visitors arriving after demonstrations in the nation’s capital.
“Additionally, I have directed that security personnel be provided with refresher training before any scheduled demonstration to prevent this from happening again,” Bunch wrote.
Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), one of the lawmakers who joined the letter to Bunch, told Fox News, “The Smithsonian has publicly acknowledged its employees’ wrongdoing, instituted refresher training, and taken immediate corrective action to remedy the situation and claims it will not happen again,” but said, “Congress will need to continue proper oversight of the Smithsonian and ensure that all Americans are welcome at the Air and Space Museum.”
Facing Lawsuit
While Bunch said the Smithsonian Institution has taken actions to avoid making the same mistakes in the future, the institution is facing a lawsuit for the Jan. 20 incident at the Air and Space Museum.
The American Center for Law & Justice (ACLJ) filed a lawsuit against the museum earlier this month on behalf of parents and children impacted by the incident. The lawsuit names the museum, its leaders, and five unnamed John and Jane Doe police or security guards who took part in the Jan. 20 incident.
The ACLJ has also filed a lawsuit against the National Archives and four John and Jane Doe police or security guards who allegedly kicked another group of pro-life visitors out of the museum on the same day.
“What is so egregious about this particular targeting is that it was done by the very federal institution that is home to our Declaration of Independence, our Constitution, and the Bill of Rights—the exact documents that call on our government to protect the freedoms of speech and religion, not trample on them,” ACLJ said of its lawsuit against the National Archives.
