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    Marines Urged by Woke Study to Use Gender-Neutral Terms in Boot Camp

    By
    Paul Crespo
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    8

    ANALYSIS – In the most glaring example of wokeness in the military, which the Marine Commandant recently claimed wasn’t an issue in our beloved Corps, jarheads are being urged not to use sir or ma’am in Marine boot camp.

    According to the Marine Corps Times, this is seen as part of a sweeping effort to avoid ‘misgendering’ drill instructors. This is something all Marines know has been a huge and pressing issue at boot camp for decades, as we have so many non-binary and trans drill instructors.

    Please note my sarcasm.

    The recommendation is part of a massive, recently completed, 738-page academic report from the University of Pittsburgh, which was commissioned by the Corps in 2020.

    Instead of sir or ma’am the 22 University of Pittsburgh Academics that concocted the study – headed by biologists Bradley C. Nindl and Mita Lovalekar, recommend aspiring privates call their superiors by their last names. 

    The study notes that other military branches have made strides to “de-emphasize gender” by using other names instead. 

    The Marine Corps Times reports:

    Instead of saying ‘ma’am’ or ‘sir,’ recruits in these Services refer to their drill instructors using their ranks or roles followed by their last names. Gendered identifiers prime recruits to think about or visually search for a drill instructor’s gender first, before their rank or role.

    The far-left report is riddled with other woke ideas and includes a detailed study on improving gender integration at boot camp.

    One important figure who thankfully appeared hesitant about this gender-neutral proposal was Col. Howard Hall, chief of staff for Marine Corps Training and Education Command.

    Hall and others maintain that even if the Corps implements the change at its training facilities, recruits will then need to re-adapt to again addressing senior officers by ‘sir’ or ‘ma’am’ when they enter the fleet, as Marines in the real world would likely not enforce the rule.

     Hall told the Marine Corps Times, in slightly mangled terms, and some big words:

    Honestly, that’s not a quick fix. What are inculcating in our young recruits that will or will not be reinforced when they graduate and enter the fleet Marine force? So again, we want to avoid any quick-fix solutions that introduce perturbations down the line.

    And yes, while we all want to avoid ‘perturbations’ down the line, more importantly we want to avoid sheer idiocy right now.

    Maybe our Marine officers should learn to be blunter.

    This study also shows why the military needs to stop relying so much on outside consultants and academics, and their idiotic, ideologically-driven studies, to guide its policies.

    Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

    Amanda Head: Fox News Viewers Down, MSNBC Up!

    By
    Amanda Head
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    1

    Viewers are leaving Fox News in droves…

    Watch Amanda explain the situation below:

    Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

    Amanda Head: DeSantis Campaign Caught Using Fake Photos to Smear Trump

    By
    Amanda Head
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    7
    Ron DeSantis via Gage Skidmore Flickr

    This is a new low.

    Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has had enough of Trump’s insults and the gloves are coming off.

    watch Amanda explain the situation below:

    Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

    Jan. 6th Rioters Handed Down Longest Sentences Yet In This Week’s Hearings

    By
    Paul Crespo
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    5
    Ted Eytan from Washington, DC, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

    ANALYSIS – Two Proud Boys leaders have been sentenced to more than a decade each in jail after being convicted of the rarely used ‘seditious conspiracy’ charge for storming the Capitol.

    They tried to overturn President Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss, which they considered fraudulent.

    A federal judge sentenced former far-right Proud Boys leader Joseph Biggs to 17 years in prison and his co-defendant Zachary Rehl to 15 years. (RELATED: Proud Boys Member Who Led Capitol Break-In Sentenced To 10 Years)

    These sentences are much less than the three decades of jail time proposed by prosecutors but still very long prison terms for a few hours of rioting.

    And yes, I understand that the rioting was at the U.S. Capitol and that the certification of the Electoral College vote was in process. I also understand these two guys and the two others convicted on this same charge were intimately involved in organizing what became violent chaos that day.

    I was there, at the Capitol, as an observer with a TV camera crew. And I denounced the violence the next day. It was outrageous.

    I believe any violent rioter who attacked police or media, or anyone else, on Jan. 6 should be put in jail – as should all the BLM rioters who earlier caused $2 billion in damages throughout the country and injured 2,000 cops months earlier.

    But a decade or two behind bars for ‘conspiracy’?

    Biggs and Rehl are the first Proud Boys convicted of the Civil War-era seditious conspiracy charge to be sentenced for their roles in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack.

    The sentences kicked off a series of hearings scheduled for this week and next, where punishment will be meted out against the former chairman of the Proud Boys, Enrique Tarrio (who was not in D.C. on Jan. 6 but was unbelievably arrested earlier for burning a BLM banner!), and two other members of the group.

    All were convicted of seditious conspiracy and other crimes at a landmark conspiracy trial this spring. But was what they did really as bad as the Biden Justice Department tries to portray?

    As The Guardian noted:

    Seditious conspiracy is a broad statute that concerns attempts to overthrow the government, levy war against it or prevent, hinder or delay the execution of any law. It also can be applied in cases where suspects seize any government property and carries up to 20 years in prison if convicted.

    Partly because seditious conspiracy allegations carry so much political weight, prosecutors have generally been hesitant to bring such charges in the past. “Seditious conspiracy charges are rarely used in American jurisprudence,” said Jeffrey Ian Ross, a criminologist and expert on political crime at the University of Baltimore. Prosecutors can be wary of issuing such charges, even in cases that may fall under its broad statute, he added.

    In the only similar case in the 20th century, federal prosecutors secured a seditious conspiracy conviction against Puerto Rican nationalists who stormed the Capitol building in 1954.

    These four armed Puerto Rican independence militants entered the House floor and fired dozens of bullets around the chamber, wounding five legislators.

    The four shooters and co-conspirators were convicted of seditious conspiracy and spent over two decades in jail until Jimmy Carter commuted their sentence in 1979.

    In that case, however, the perpetrators had firearms and used them to try to kill Congressmen. That’s a pretty big difference.

    The last successfully prosecuted seditious conspiracy was in the mid-1990s, when authorities charged Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman and nine Islamist co-conspirators for plotting to bomb the United Nations, the FBI building, and several other landmarks around New York City.

    Again, this was very serious and involved planning mass murder and terrorism.

    There is little or no evidence that any Jan. 6 rioters planned any offensive violence.

    To date, of those charged in relation to Jan. 6, former Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes holds the record with an 18-year sentence, after he was convicted of seditious conspiracy earlier this year.

    The Guardian reported in 2022 that:

    Even Rhodes, who is not believed to have actually stormed the building, is alleged to have plotted to bring weapons to the area and coordinate militia movements.

    In the weeks before the insurrection, Rhodes allegedly purchased tens of thousands of dollars worth of weapons and began communicating to other Oath Keepers in an encrypted group chat. “We aren’t getting through this without a civil war,” he messaged days after the presidential election. One Oath Keeper admitted as part of a plea deal last year that he brought an M4 rifle to a Comfort Inn hotel near the Capitol, while Rhodes and others allegedly discussed “quick reaction force” teams that could move into Washington DC with firearms. Once inside the Capitol, prosecutors state in their indictment that one group of Oath Keepers moved in a military “stack” formation and went in search of the speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi.

    And at first glance, this does seem serious.

    But Rhodes claims that despite earlier texts about possible ‘civil war,’ Oath Keepers who entered the Capitol went “totally off mission” and that he was only there to prevent his militia members from getting into trouble.

    He has also stated that the armed ‘reaction force’ in Virginia was there to respond if armed leftist antifa thugs attacked pro-Trump protestors.

    In the largest manhunt in FBI history, more than 1,100 people have been arrested on charges related to the Capitol assault. Of those, 597 defendants have had their cases adjudicated and received sentences. About 366 of them have been given jail time.

    The vast majority of these Jan. 6 defendants, though, accepted plea deals for minor, nonviolent offenses such as trespassing or obstructing an official function. Many of them still got jail sentences totally out of proportion to their alleged crimes.

    And these four got the worst of it.

    The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of Great America News Desk. It was first published in American Liberty News.

    Amanda Head: Celebrity Unwittingly Admits Hollywood Wokeism Is Racist

    By
    Amanda Head
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    0

    It was only a matter of time until things would come full circle… even in Hollywood.

    Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

    Tucker Carlson Jan 6 Exposé – Partly True and Also Kinda Dumb

    By
    Paul Crespo
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    20
    Photo via Gage Skidmore Flickr

    ANALYSIS – Tucker Carlson’s misguided attempt to use cherry-picked moments of the newly released video of Jan. 6 to argue that nothing bad happened at the Capitol that day, is horribly timed and very dumb. 

    As I wrote the day after I personally observed events at the Capitol that day, January 6 was neither a deadly coup, insurrection nor peaceful guided tours of the Capitol. 

    It was a mixture of some of those things, none of those things, and everything in between.

    And Tucker would have been far more effective, and credible had he used the video to show that the Left’s Jan. 6 narrative was incomplete, distorted, and totally one-sided, rather than trying to say it was totally false.

    Because the truth is that Jan 6 was like the story of the blind men and the elephant, each one grasping one part of the animal, like the leg, tail, or trunk, and describing the giant beast as something totally different.

    On Jan. 6 what began as a massive peaceful rally of tens of thousands of pro-Trump protesters, soon degraded when smaller elements (a few hundred) of the much larger peaceful crowd broke off and did conduct a violent attack on parts of the Capitol.

    Hundreds more just stupidly followed the initial ‘attack mob’ inside.

    In the first group, some had military training, used stack formations, and were very organized and intent on forcefully breaching the building. 

    While none were found with, or used firearms, during the riot, there was violence with sticks, flagpoles, and pepper spray.

    I called these violent rioters, thugs, and criminals.

    They were similar to the violent BLM rioters who had violently attacked police at the White House in the summer of 2020 or besieged the Portland Federal Courthouse for months.

    On Jan. 6 police officers were similarly attacked and beaten, and the Capitol was ultimately breached unlawfully.

    Inside, one non-violent protester, Ashley Babbitt, an Air Force security forces veteran, was shot by a Capitol Police Officer. Likely, unjustly. 

    She was the only person killed during the riot.

    All this occurred in the span of just a few hours.

    But the Capitol complex is massive, and what was happening violently on one end was not being replicated at other parts of the Capitol. 

    As much of the Tucker video showed truthfully, in many places and entrances, Capitol Police had allowed protesters inside, in some cases escorted them around. 

    In other cases, the police simply stood by as the ‘tourist’ protesters milled around and took selfies or acted stupidly.

    Still, ever since then, there has been a profound narrative battle pitting those fanatics on the right who said nothing at all happened and the fanatics on the left who claim Jan. 6 was worse than Pearl Harbor or 9/11, and an insurrection that risked the essence of American democracy. 

    Sadly, neither side is correct, but only the most extreme one-sided ‘insurrection’ narrative was put forward by the left and last Congress’ Democratic-run Jan. 6 committee, and repeated daily by the partisan, anti-Trump media.

    The insurrection narrative was pushed by cherry-picked videos and photos of the same short-lived Capitol violence from different views and angles, repeated in a nearly constant loop for the most distorted and dramatic effect possible.

    But now Tucker has done the same.

    As Politico reported:

    Capitol Police Chief Thomas Manger wrote in an internal message to officers that Carlson’s Monday night primetime program “conveniently cherry-picked from the calmer moments of our 41,000 hours of video” to incorrectly portray the violent assault as more akin to a peaceful protest. He added that Carlson’s “commentary fails to provide context about the chaos and violence that happened before or during these less tense moments.”

    And many Republican leaders agreed.

    The timing is also horrible.

    As Politico reported:

    “It’s definitely stupid to keep talking about this … So what is the purpose of continuing to bring it up unless you’re trying to feed Democrat narratives even further?” Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) said in an interview, noting the videos didn’t show “anything we don’t already know.”

    “I don’t really have a problem with making it all public. But if your message is then to try and convince people that nothing bad happened, then it’s just gonna make us look silly.”

    So how should we view the events of the January 6 riot accurately and fairly?

    Probably the best description was provided by Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-N.D.) when he said he has “a hard time with all of it.”

    He added that Jan. 6 “was not a peaceful protest. It was not an insurrection. It was a riot that should have never happened. And a lot of people share the blame for that. The truth is always messier than any narrative.”

    Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

    Trump Plans to Dramatically Reverse Biden’s Open Border Lunacy

    By
    Paul Crespo
    -
    0
    Trump at the border wall via Wikimedia Commons

    ANALYSIS – While the left immediately claimed Donald Trump’s immigration plan for his potential second term is ‘draconian,’ and ‘extreme,’ it really isn’t. It’s essentially a needed dramatic reversal to Joe Biden’s extreme open border insanity.

    It’s being referred to as a ‘bolting the hatches’ and ‘bomb the cartels’ strategy. And I’m all for it. 

    Especially since what we have now is total third-world chaos and thoroughly unacceptable for America.

    The New York Post recently reported that Joe Biden has now literally opened the floodgates at the border by welding open 114 gates in Arizona’s border wall near Tucson. 

    The paper noted that in addition to endangered antelope being free to cross:

    …the move is also letting an average of 1,400 migrants from as far away as China casually walk into the country daily — with overwhelmed and outnumbered border agents practically helpless to stop them.

    “We thought the agents were going to tell us something,” one Ecuadorian migrant said. “But we just walked in.”

    The Post added: “Smugglers are capitalizing on the floodgate blunder, driving migrants by the busload to the border and dropping them off as if they were casual tourists.”

    And, unlike the mostly South American migrants who have been stopped crossing illegally into Texas, the immigrants coming to Arizona are from places as far as India, Egypt, and China.

    Rather than the disheveled and exhausted South American migrants at the end of a long and arduous trek across Mexico, the migrants at Tucson now look more like folks on vacation.

    The libertarian-leaning (generally not liberal) Reason outlet was also harshly critical of Trump’s new proposed immigration policies. But when I read their version of what they thought was horrible, I mostly applauded.

    Trump’s plan includes:

    Screening out Marxists as well as Communists – check.

    Screening out potential terrorists from extremist countries – check.

    Ending so-called birthright citizenship so that simply being born here from parents who entered illegally isn’t an option – check.

    Quickly deporting criminal migrants – check.

    Targeting Mexico’s deadly drug cartels as enemy combatants – check.

    Generally making it harder to enter the United States legally (if you are willing to cross Mexico on foot, you can do more paperwork) – check.

    I can easily stand behind every item noted above and below. 

    According to Reason:

    “Trump’s plan would involve waves of harsh new policies — and dust off old ones that rarely have been enforced, if ever,” writes Kight. One policy would “ramp up ideological screening” for would-be legal immigrants. U.S. immigration law already largely bars Communist Party–affiliated people from immigrating, but Trump would reportedly expand that to reject “Marxist” applicants. Another policy would expand the former president’s “Muslim ban” to “block more people from certain countries from entering the U.S.,” notes Axios. Trump’s platform would also include ending birthright citizenship and carrying out quick deportations of criminal migrants under “an obscure section of the 1798 Alien and Sedition Acts.”

    Other aspects of the plan would target drug cartels and smuggling. It would label cartels as “‘unlawful enemy combatants’ to allow the U.S. military to target them in Mexico,” Axios reports, the same designation the government has used “to justify long-term detentions of 9/11 suspects at Guantanamo Bay.” It would also authorize the Coast Guard and Navy to form a blockade in U.S. and Latin American waters to halt boats carrying drugs.

    Certain aspects of the plan, if implemented, would likely run into legal challenges. One such aspect is Trump’s reported intent to use the Alien Enemies Act, signed by President John Adams in 1798, “to quickly remove smugglers and migrant criminals…without having to go through legal steps in [Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s] deportation process.” Other policies would put hopeful migrants—and even travelers—through invasive and costly procedures to enter the U.S., such as social media searches and paying bonds to come here.

    Well, after four years of border violence and chaos, and an unprecedented wave of illegal immigrants being practically invited across an open border before being shuttled throughout the country and fed and housed at taxpayer expense, it is time for some cracking down.

    Bolt the hatches and bomb away.

    Is Vivek Ramaswamy The GOP’s New Trump ‘Lite’?

    By
    Paul Crespo
    -
    13
    Vivek Ramaswamy speaking with attendees at the 2022 AmericaFest at the Phoenix Convention Center in Phoenix, Arizona.

    ANALYSIS- Who is this skinny guy with the funny-sounding name? (That was his opening line at the debate). Vivek Ramaswamy wasn’t supposed to be at the center of the first Republican presidential candidate debate in Milwaukee.

    Ron DeSantis was supposed to be the viable GOP alternative to Donald Trump. A two-term governor of the third most populous state in the union, DeSantis, a Navy veteran who served in Iraq, is as conservative as they come.

    And he has a proven track record of fighting the left in Florida – and winning.

    But despite his solid bona fides and resume, DeSantis has a personality problem. He just doesn’t exude charm or confidence, and that’s hurting him – a lot.

    Meanwhile, Ramaswamy the 38-year-old Trump-defending, Cincinnati-born, biotech billionaire (worth at least $950 million), son of Pakistani immigrants, kind of stole the show at the debate.

    According to former FBI agent and body language expert, Joe Navarro: “[Ramaswamy] consistently looked the most comfortable on stage.”

    He was also the most openly and unabashedly pro-Trump. He was the first candidate to raise their hand when asked who would support the former President as the party nominee even if he is convicted on felony charges that he’s facing.

    He has also promised to pardon Trump if elected. But he went even farther than that.

    “President Trump, I believe, was the best president of the 21st century,” Ramaswamy said in a clip from the debate Trump posted on Truth Social.

    And Trump loved it.

    “This answer gave Vivek Ramaswamy a big WIN in the debate because of a thing called TRUTH. Thank you, Vivek!”

    The ever-smiling political newbie Ramaswamy, who seemed to be having a blast on stage, was also the target of many of his GOP rivals.

    As TIME reported:

    Maybe it was Ramaswamy’s consistent and confounding defense of All Things Trump. Maybe it was his smooth talk and culture-war acumen. Maybe it was just the fact that Ramaswamy frankly does not care how things were done before and might just have enough self-made money to go the distance.

    Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie snarled that he had “had enough already tonight of a guy who sounds like ChatGPT,” an A.I. battery. He then dismissed Ramaswamy as someone on the same level as a political figure universally loathed in the GOP. “The last person in one of these debates… who stood in the middle of the stage and said, ‘What is a skinny guy with an odd last name doing up here?’ was Barack Obama. And I am afraid we are dealing with the same type of amateur standing on the stage tonight,” Christie said.

    But the quick witted Ramaswamy’s riposte to Christie was a zinger: “Give me a hug like you did to Obama, and you’ll help elect me just like you did to Obama. Give me the damn hug, brother.”

    Ramaswamy was referring to the 2012 incident when Christie was accused of “hugging” Obama during his visit in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy which hit days before the 2012 presidential election.

    It’s a claim that Christie has been denying since then, saying: “I didn’t hug him.”

    Photos at the time seem to back up Christie, but the zinger still worked.

    Former U.S. Ambassador to the UN under Trump, and ex-South Carolina governor, Nikki Haley, who is of Indian descent, hit Ramaswamy too: “You have no foreign policy experience, and it shows.”

    I would agree with that assessment and believe he has made a few deeply flawed important national security statements – including on Ukraine and Israel.

    But he is super smart and can learn quickly.

    Then Vice President Mike Pence took a Christie-like jab at Ramaswamy, attacking the very same quality that originally helped raise Trump in the GOP base – that he is not a politician.

    “Now it’s not the time for on-the-job training,” retorted Pence. “We don’t need to bring in a rookie. We don’t need to bring in people with no experience.”

    AS TIME noted: “Attacks during debates are the norm but this was different. Ramaswamy’s competitors really don’t like him. Not even a little.”

    However, there is one important GOP rival who seems to like Ramaswamy – Donald Trump. And that could be all that matters.

    Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

    White House Pressuring Top News Execs to Bash Impeachment Inquiry

    By
    Paul Crespo
    -
    2
    White House Principal Deputy Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre holds a press briefing on Friday, July 30, 2021, in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Erin Scott)

    ANALYSIS – In yet another egregious case of “what if Trump had done this?” and “Biden doesn’t care,” the White House is blatantly pressuring major news media executives to toe the Democrat line on the Biden impeachment process. 

    Just as House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) said Tuesday that he’s directing House committees to open an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden over his family’s shady overseas business dealings, the White House sent a letter to major news outlets telling them how to cover it.

    Essentially insisting that they should bash it.

    CNN reported that Ian Sams, spokesperson for the ‘impeachment war room’ in the White House Counsel’s Office sent the offending letter to the heads  of news organizations such as The New York Times, Fox News, the Associated Press, CBS News and others.

    “It’s time for the media to ramp up its scrutiny of House Republicans for opening an impeachment inquiry based on lies,” Sams wrote.

    The letter, which said an impeachment inquiry with no supporting evidence should “set off alarm bells for news organizations,” is only the most recent example of how shameless Democrats are about abusing their power and manipulating the media.

    McCarthy on Tuesday said the House Oversight Committee’s investigation found a “culture of corruption” around the Biden family dating back years, especially to Joe Biden’s time as Vice President under Barack Obama.

    “These are allegations of abuse of power, obstruction and corruption, and they warrant further investigation by the House of Representatives,” McCarthy said. “That’s why today I am directing our House committee to open a formal impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden.”

    CNN, apparently already following the White House lead, ‘reported’ on the outrageous letter:

    In its letter Wednesday, the White House asked news organizations to be more clear-eyed in their coverage of the impeachment inquiry, and not to fall prey to the traps of false equivalency in reporting.

    “Covering impeachment as a process story – Republicans say X, but the White House says Y – is a disservice to the American public who relies on the independent press to hold those in power accountable,” Sams wrote.

    “And in the modern media environment, where every day liars and hucksters peddle disinformation and lies everywhere from Facebook to Fox, process stories that fail to unpack the illegitimacy of the claims on which House Republicans are basing all their actions only serve to generate confusion, put false premises in people’s feeds, and obscure the truth,” Sams added.

    McCarthy launched the impeachment inquiry Tuesday without a formal House vote in a bid to appease Republicans on his far-right, including those who have threatened to oust the California Republican from his speakership if he does not move swiftly enough on such an investigation.

    The discredited left-leaning cable network then repeated the false, boilerplate talking point that: “The Republican House-led investigations into Biden have yet to provide any direct evidence that the president financially benefited from Hunter Biden’s career overseas.”

    In doing so, it ignored the mountain of evidence pointing to the likelihood that Joe Biden did benefit financially, and avoided the fact that this is the reason an inquiry is needed to demand the documents that may prove it.

    As Newsmax properly reported:

    “This is not OK,” journalist Matthew Keys tweeted. “The White House should not be encouraging, influencing or interfering in the editorial strategies of America’s newsrooms, including CNN and the New York Times.”

    “Now, any time the media DOES try to hold Republican lawmakers to account, those lawmakers can simply counter by questioning whether it’s actual journalism or something encouraged by the Biden administration,” Keys wrote.

    “All this demonstrates is that the Biden administration has lost confidence in the news media – which I guess mirrors public sentiment over the last few years, too.”

    “The problem is they’re trying to influence coverage. The government should never do that. It is inappropriate,” Keys wrote.

    Of course it is inappropriate. Highly inappropriate. And if Trump’s team had done this during either of his TWO partisan impeachments, all hell would be breaking loose. But Team Biden just doesn’t care.

    Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

    Like BLM Riots in US, France’s Race Riots Do Major Damage

    By
    Paul Crespo
    -
    2
    A protester holds up a Black Lives Matter sign outside the Hennepin County Government Center.

    ANALYSIS – While the establishment media has tried to spin France’s recent wave of rioting as a response to unfair or racist French policing, like the Black Lives Matter (BLM) riots of 2020 in the United States, they really aren’t. 

    For both, that is only the pretext. But they are very similar in other ways.

    As I wrote before, both were about much more. In the case of BLM, it was part of a bigger far-left agenda. 

    In the case of France, it is an uprising of racial, cultural and religious resentment with Islamist overtones.

    Both also caused substantial physical damage ($1-2 billion) and injured many hundreds of police.

    The damages and injuries to police from the BLM riots across multiple cities in the U.S. were larger and spread over a few months. 

    In France, the first protests occurred in Nanterre, but then spread to other towns and cities, including Paris, Marseille, Lyon, Toulouse, Strasbourg and Lille.

    And in France, they only lasted about a week. France is also smaller in terms of population and its economy. So, overall, the impact was greater, and impossible to downplay as it was in the United States.

    The response to the rioting though has been very different in each country.

    The damage following a week of violence in France is expected to cost more than $1.1 billion, excluding damage to public buildings.

    French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire has promised support as thousands of insurance claims pour in. Insurers have received 5,900-plus claims worth some $305 million, according to the chair of the insurance industry lobby group ‘France Assureurs.’

    Rioters lit an estimated 23,000 fires and damaged 273 buildings belonging to the security forces, along with 168 schools and 105 mayor’s offices. In total, more than 1,100 buildings and 5,850 vehicles have been damaged or destroyed.

    More than 800 French law enforcement officers have been injured.

    According to Fortune, “The videos of the riots that circulated around the world hurt the image of France,” Geoffroy Roux de Bézieux, the outgoing head of the French employers’ lobby Medef, told Le Parisien newspaper.

    “It’s always difficult to say if the impact will be long lasting, but there will certainly be a drop in reservations this summer.”

    France’s Interior updated senators on the destruction carried out by primarily teenage mobs in ‘multi-ethnic’ areas of French cities. He said about 90 per cent of the 3,502 people arrested during the riots were French nationals.

    That doesn’t change the racial or demographic facts that most of the rioters were young Muslims of Arab and North African descent. They were born in France as part of the most recent immigration wave.

    The average age of the French rioters was 17.

    “What’s happening there is the consequence of a failure to integrate the country’s Muslim immigrant population,” Alan Mendoza, co-founder and executive director of the Henry Jackson Society, told Fox News Digital.

    President Macron sparked controversy on Wednesday by suggesting social media could be “cut off” if “things get out of control,” according to media reports.

    Macron singled out platforms like Snapchat, TikTok and encrypted messenger Telegram for their role in helping organize and spread images of the violence.

    Fox News reported:

    Macron has provided a mixed response to the crisis, initially describing the shooting as “inexplicable” and “unforgivable” but then decrying the protests and blaming everything from social media to video games for the increasing violence.

    Macron argued that social media platforms, including TikTok, Snapchat and others, helped fuel the riots, especially after the personal information of the officer who shot Nahel ended up circulating on the platforms. He said his government would work with social media sites to take down “the most sensitive content” and identify users who “call for disorder or exacerbate the violence.” Macron also denied there was systemic racism within the country’s law enforcement services.

    Meanwhile, as I wrote last August, in a few months in the United States, the BLM riots caused $2 billion in damages and injured 2,000 police officers nationwide. 19 people were killed during just 14 days of BLM rioting – none by police.

    The killing of police officers nationwide, though, surged 28% in 2020 during the BLM riots and protests.

    Unlike the muted judicial response to BLM rioters, France’s Justice Minister issued an order on Friday that demanded a “ strong, firm and systematic” judicial response.

    And unlike the United States, where President Donald Trump was attacked and vilified for trying to send federal officers to quell the violence – in France, Macron eventually deployed 45,000 officers and armored vehicles to control the riots.

    Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

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