Robert Wenzel - 1957 to 2021

We are deeply saddened to announce the passing of Robert Wenzel. Robert passed away peacefully in his sleep on May 25th, 2021 in San Francisco, CA. He was 63.

Robert was buried in a private ceremony for family and close friends at Tulocay Cemetery in Napa, CA on June 4th, 2021.

In keeping with Robert's wishes, we plan on keeping both EconomicPolicyJournal.com and TargetLiberty.com live on the web as archives of Robert's work.

We'd like to thank all of the readers of both EconomicPolicyJournal.com and TargetLiberty.com for their support of Robert's work over the years.

We'd further like to thank all of those individuals who have created touching tributes to Robert in recent days.

He loved sharing and debating his ideas and opinions with you and know he would want you to carry the torch of liberty forward into the future.

--The Family of Robert Wenzel

State Department Memo Authorizes and Encourages the Hanging of BLM Flag at All US Diplomatic and Consular Posts

Jack Posobiec at Human Events has published a leaked U.S. State Department memo which encourages all U.S. Diplomatic and Consular posts to display shows of support for Black Lives Matter on Tuesday, May 25, the one-year anniversary of George Floyd’s death, and beyond.

From the memo  (my highlight):

May 25 marks the one-year commemoration of George Floyd’s murder. For 9 minutes and 29 seconds, the world saw firsthand how police officers brutally took the life of an unarmed Black man in the United States. These viral images ignited national and global Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests and demonstrations. This tragedy joined a long line of Black men and women who have suffered at the hands of police brutality. These national and global protests sparked a movement to confront systems perpetuating deep-seated inequities rooted in colonialism and the oppression of racial, tribal, ethnic, and other minority communities. Mr. Floyd’s murder prompted an international outcry to seek racial justice and equity by dismantling systemic racism and eradicating police brutality affecting communities of color, most acutely, people of African descent... 

Guidance on Black Lives Matter Banner Displays 

 (U) Any BLM-related displays within the interior of the mission, or exterior displays other than the display of a BLM flag on the flagpole (e.g., a banner over the door, BLM spotlights, projections, etc.) are at the Chief of Mission’s discretion. 

 (U) As outlined below, Chiefs of Mission may decide to hang BLM flags, as appropriate and depending on local context. This cable constitutes a blanket written authorization for calendar year 2021 from the Under Secretary for Management (M) to display the BLM flag on the external-facing flagpole to any Chiefs of Mission who determine such a display is appropriate in light of local conditions. This is an authorization, not a requirement. 

 (U) U.S. law at 4 U.S.C. section 7(f) provides that “[w]hen flags of States, cities, or localities, or pennants of societies are flown on the same halyard with the flag of the United States, the latter should always be at the peak. When the flags are flown from adjacent staffs, the flag of the United States should be hoisted first and lowered last. No such flag or pennant may be placed above the flag of the United States or to the right of the U.S. flag.” The Black Lives Matter flag, and/or any other types of affinity flags, should be treated as pennants of societies in accordance with this provision, and accordingly, when displayed alongside the U.S. flag either indoors or outdoors, should always be placed in a subordinate position. Regarding the external, public-facing flagpole of all U.S. missions, the written approval of the Secretary, through the Under Secretary for Management (M), is necessary to display any flag other than the U.S. flag, a Foreign Service flag, or a POW/MIA flag. As noted above, this cable constitutes blanket written authorization to display the BLM flag on the external-facing flagpole during calendar year 2021. ..

 Posts are strongly encouraged to make full use of Department and Interagency tools and resources to promote policy objectives to advance racial equity and support for underserved communities throughout the year, including with a particular focus on May 25 and during June to commemorate Juneteenth and lesser-known racially motivated attacks such as the Tulsa Race Massacre – the 100th anniversary of which will take place May 31 – June 1, 2021...

The Department stands ready to assist Posts in their efforts to develop and implement equity-related programming, outreach, and events.  Posts are requested to use the Diversity and Inclusion (KDNI) tag when reporting these activities via front-channel as appropriate. 

It should also be noted that the memo highlights the Black Lives Matter Global Network, which was founded by three Marxists. From the memo:

BLM is thus an umbrella term for a constellation of ideas, objectives, and groups. There is no ‘leader’ of the BLM movement. Rather, there are numerous organizations that use BLM terminology to varying degrees, including some whose names include the phrase ‘Black Lives Matter.’ Of these, the most prominent is the Black Lives Matter Global Network s running.

Who the hell is running  Joe Biden? 

 -RW

Suspicious Package Sent to Rand Paul's Home

The FBI and Capitol Hill police are investigating a suspicious package containing white powder that was delivered to the home of  Rand Paul, the most libertarian member of the Senate, earlier today, reports Politico.

A large envelope arrived at the senator’s home in Kentucky and is currently being examined for harmful substances, Sergio Gor said. The sender is unknown.

This is a developing story. Return to this post for updates

UPDATE 1

Via Fox News:

On the outside of the envelope was a picture of a bruised and bandaged Paul with a gun to his head and a threat printed beneath it: "I’ll finish what your neighbor started you motherf------"

UPDATE 2

The photo:

 -RW

Kary Mullis on Anthony Fauci

 Victor Ward sends this along:

 

 And Victor also sends this along and writes: 

 I’m not sure how this 2018 journal article isn’t a smoking gun: New Coronavirus Emerges From Bats in China, Devastates Young Swine

 -RW

Whitewashed History Exposed

 A Twitter thread by James Lindsay:

Critical Race Theory pushers always talking about how we teach "whitewashed" history but never mention how that's super complicated and that way more importantly we really, really, really teach communist-washed history. I never learned about communism in my education at all.

---

Did you learn about Trofim Lysenko in school? Nope. You didn't. I didn't either. His "Soviet biology" probably killed more people than any other stupid idea in history, though. Tens of millions in the USSR, tens of millions more in China (which should have known better).

---- 

Did you learn about the Holodomor in school? Or how the New York Times covered it up? And got a Pulitzer for it? Probably not. Millions of dead Ukrainians under Stalin's brutality. Probably never heard of it, though.

----

Did you learn about Mao's crusade to abolish the Four Olds in the Cultural Revolution in school? Probably not. Destroyed the cultures of China, killed millions, ruined the country for his own power. Probably never heard of it.

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Did you learn about Soviet Vanguardism (Leninism) in school? I bet you didn't. I bet you didn't even learn what the gulags were, though you heard lots about concentration camps under other regimes. Communist-washed history.

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Did you learn who the kulaks were? I bet you didn't. I bet no one ever told you that they were high-competence farmers and others who Lenin and Stalin believed could possibly amass a peasant revolt and thus imprisoned or mass-murdered to retain their power.

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Did you learn about Cultural Marxism (Gramscism) or the tactic of entryism in school, whereby apparatchiks enter into some institution and slowly turn it communist from within? I bet you didn't. I bet you didn't hear about any of it in school at all.

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Did you hear about Pol Pot's "Year Zero" campaign in school or the absolute brutality that proceeded in the Killing Fields and throughout Cambodia under his tyrannical rule? Probably not.

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Did you hear even once about the Fabian Society and socialist gradualism? The Frankfurt School? Critical Theory and how it meant to take Marx's ideas and move them into the realms of sociology and psychology so as to demoralize a citizenry and open doors to communism?

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Let's not fall into "whataboutism," though. Did we learn "whitewashed" history? I don't know, some. I'm in my 40s, and we certainly spent a lot of time on slavery, Civil Rights, and the role black Americans played in abolition, Rev and Civil Wars, etc.

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Most definitely, people a bit older than I am would have learned rather whitewashed history, but CRT tends to live in this space where it believes what was going on in the 1950s is still how things are today. My US and Tennessee state history were fairly nuanced.

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Today, though, it's a completely different story. Talk to your kids if they were in high school in the past five years, especially in a big liberal city like Portland. To call what they learned "whitewashed" is asinine. Even my own kids learned much richer stuff than we did.

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Of course, it's a complicated point because a lot of black American history was struck from American history by progressive edict back in the day (Wilson and FDR both, apparently), probably because the Democratic Party before the Civil Rights Movement was openly very racist.

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We had special units dedicated to the various contributions of different racial groups in all of the major wars of American history, though, and I recall spending a lot of time discussing around the film Glory to this effect re: the Civil War.

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Being from East Tennessee, we have a lot of pride in the area having been part of the Underground Railroad and learned a lot about that. It's also Cherokee country, so we learned a lot about the Trail of Tears and Jackson's ignominy. In the 1980s.

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So, I don't really buy the Critical Race Theory lie that we "teach whitewashed history," at least not as they try to sell it, and compared to the communist-washing of history that progressives have foisted upon our education, it's nothing. Nothing at all.

 -RW

BLM Activist Shot in Head

Sasha Johnson

London-based Black Lives Matter activist Sasha Johnson was shot in London early on Sunday.

In a statement on its Facebook page, the Taking The Initiative Party said: 

It is with great sadness that we inform you that our own Sasha Johnson has sustained a gunshot wound to her head.

Sasha has always been actively fighting for black people and the injustices that surround the black community, as well as being both a member of BLM and a member of Taking the Initiative Party's executive leadership committee.

Detectives from London's Mts Specialist Crime Command (Trident) are "pursuing a number of priority lines of enquiry" but no arrests have been made yet.

Police arrived on the scene of the shooting around 3:00 AM (London Time).

 -RW

CDC Looking Into Heart Inflammation in Some Young Vaccine Recipients

Some teenagers and young adults who received COVID-19 vaccines experienced heart inflammation, a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advisory group said, recommending further study of the rare condition, reports Reuters. 

The CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices in a statement dated May 17 said it had looked into reports that a few young vaccine recipients, predominantly adolescents and young adults, and predominantly male, developed myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle.

The condition often goes away without complications and can be caused by a variety of viruses, the CDC group said.

Dr. Amesh Adalja, senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, said vaccines are known to cause myocarditis and would be important to monitor to see if it is causally related to the vaccine. It is important to look at the risk-benefit ratio, he added. "Vaccines are going to unequivocally be much more beneficial outweighing this very low, if conclusively established, risk."

So tell us Dr. Adalja, what exactly is the risk for a young person who becomes infected with COVID-19?

 -RW

This is What the PCR Test Can and Can't Do

This is damn fascinating and includes a great explanation of the PCR test (regardles of the true circumstances surrounding the death of Dr. Kary Mullis, which would be difficult to determine.)

 -RW

What Laissez Faire Means in San Francisco

 Thomas Fuller, the San Francisco bureau chief for The New York Times, reports:

Soon after moving to San Francisco in 2016, I walked into a Walgreens in North Beach to buy an electric toothbrush.

As I was paying for it, a man walked into the store, grabbed a handful of beef jerky and walked out. I looked over at an employee, who shrugged. Then I went to Safeway next door for some groceries and I saw a man stuffing three bottles of wine into a backpack and walking casually toward the exit. On his way out he bagged some snacks. I asked the Safeway clerk about the thefts.

“I’m new to San Francisco,” I said. “Is it optional to pay for things here?”

Five years later, the shoplifting epidemic in San Francisco has only worsened.

At a board of supervisors hearing last week, representatives from Walgreens said that thefts at its stores in San Francisco were four times the chain’s national average, and that it had closed 17 stores, largely because the scale of thefts had made business untenable.

Brendan Dugan, the director of the retail crime division at CVS Health, called San Francisco “one of the epicenters of organized retail crime” and said employees were instructed not to pursue suspected thieves because encounters had become too dangerous.

“We’ve had incidents where our security officers are assaulted on a pretty regular basis in San Francisco,” Dugan said.

The retail executives and police officers emphasized the role of organized crime in the thefts. And they told the supervisors that Proposition 47, the 2014 ballot measure that reclassified nonviolent thefts as misdemeanors if the stolen goods are worth less than $950, had emboldened thieves.

“The one trend we are seeing is more violence and escalating — and much more bold,” said Commander Raj Vaswani, the head of the investigations bureau at the San Francisco Police Department. “We see a lot of repeat offenders.”...

On Thursday I called Ahsha Safaí, the member of the board of supervisors who organized the hearing.

We talked about the thefts we had witnessed in the city and the sidewalk thieves’ markets where steaks, bicycles and other stolen goods are fenced. Safaí said he had recently stopped to inspect one of these markets at 24th and Mission.

“Half of Walgreens was on the sidewalk. I’m not kidding,” Safaí said. “I was blown away. I’ve never seen anything like it in this city.”

He talked about what he called a laissez-faire attitude in San Francisco.

“It has become part of the landscape,” he said of thefts. “People say, ‘Oh, well, that just happens.’”

Thieves “are obviously choosing locales based on what the consequences are,” Safaí said. “If there are no consequences for their actions, then you invite the behavior. Over and over.”

As far as I can tell, all the Walgreens in SF have private security and SFPD in the stores. As I have written before, if someone is caught shoplifting in a Walgreens, the SF copper just makes the shoplifter empty out of his pockets and bags what was lifted and sent on his way. There are no arrests. I see this roughly once a week when passing on the sidewalk by a Walgreens.

 -RW

Matt Gaetz's Ex-Girlfriend to Cooperate With Federal Authorities

The squeeze is on, central powers have the Trotskyite ax out for GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz and they are squeezing everyone around him. 

Federal authorities investigating the alleged shaky "sex trafficking" by Gaetz have secured the cooperation of the congressman's ex-girlfriend, reports CNN.

According to the television outlet, the woman, a former Capitol Hill staffer, is seen as a critical witness, as she has been linked to Gaetz as far back as the summer of 2017, a period of time that has emerged as a key window of scrutiny for investigators. She can also help investigators understand the relevance of hundreds of transactions they have obtained records of, including those involving alleged payments for sex, the sources said.

It should be noted that none of the allegations made against Gaetz would be violations of the non-aggression principle.

Politics can be a very vicious game.

 -RW

Tulsi Gabbard Calls On Chicago Mayor to Resign

Tulsi Gabbard

On the heels of Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot announcing that she will no longer grant interviews to white journalists, Tulsi Gabbard has issued a statement via Twitter calling on Lightfoot to resign.

Mayor Lightfoot's blatant anti-white racism is abhorrent. I call upon President Biden, Kamala Harris, and other leaders of our county—of all races—to join me in calling for Mayor Lightfoot's resignation. Our leaders must condemn all racism, including anti-white.

— Tulsi Gabbard 🌺 (@TulsiGabbard) May 21, 2021

 -RW

SHOW ME THE SCIENCE: Bill Maher on Covid

Bill Maher has been very good on the COVID-19 hysteria and he is excellent in this clip.

 

 -RW

(ht Charles Burris)

Biden Quoted Chinese Communist Mao to the U.S. Coast Guard

Mao

Maria Bartiromo explains:

   

 What I want to know is who are Joe Biden's speechwriters and who picked them?

 

 -RW

Oregon is Requiring Individuals to Show Proof of Vaccination in Order to Enter Businesses Without a Mask

This is horrific.

Oregon is requiring businesses, workplaces and houses of worship to verify the vaccination status of individuals before they enter buildings without a mask.

The Oregon Health Authority said in new guidance on Tuesday that effective immediately, businesses would be required to continue to enforce mask requirements unless they had established a policy to confirm proof of vaccination using a card or photo of one before individuals can enter the building without a mask, reports The New York Times.

The puttock governor of Oregon, Kate Brown, said that businesses would have “the option” of lifting mask requirements only if they instituted verification. “Some businesses may prefer to simply continue operating under the current guidance for now rather than worrying about vaccination status, and that’s fine,” she said.

Are the people of Oregon really going to go along with this?

What about the very aggressive Antifa in Portland?

And is this just "guidance" or an order?

 -RW

Palestinians Taunt Jews in New York City's Diamond District

It appears a few Palestinians have taken the clash between Israel and Palestine to the streets of New York City, specifically to the predominantly Jewish 47th Street diamond district in Manhattan.

An explosive device of some sort was thrown onto the street, a man ended up on the ground and presumably Palestinian youth taunted onlookers on the street.  

BREAKING in the #DiamondDistrict:

(I don’t know the source of the video) pic.twitter.com/hl4Kihgjop

— Yossi Gestetner (@YossiGestetner) May 20, 2021

Video: Moments earlier, a device went off in what is said to be in the #DiamondDistrict in NYC: pic.twitter.com/qefPUCzaWr

— Yossi Gestetner (@YossiGestetner) May 20, 2021

Video: As the smoke cleared in NYC. (Please beware of language) pic.twitter.com/oKdKTLfP5v

— Yossi Gestetner (@YossiGestetner) May 20, 2021

 -RW

Rand Paul Joins Resolution to Support Israel

 A departure from George Washington's advice not to interfere in foreign affairs?

Rand Paul has just announced he cosponsored S.Res. 226, a resolution condemning the attacks against Israel by Hamas terrorists, and reaffirming the United States’ commitment to "our ally Israel. "

“Every sovereign nation should be allowed to defend themselves. We know that Hamas is firing rockets into Israel, generally at civilians, and Israel should be able to defend its citizens,” said Rand. “Having visited Israel, I know they do live in fear, fear of daily attacks, and the decision for a cease-fire ultimately has to be made by Israel based on their security needs. This resolution reaffirms the United States’ support of our allied nation in their decision in rightfully responding to imminent threats by a terrorist group.” 

This legislation was introduced by Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) and is also cosponsored by 30 other Senators.

You can read S.Res. 226, here. 

 -RW

Free Market Economist Advising Caitlyn Jenner

 Details at EPJ.

 -RW