RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week
August 7 to August 13, 2022
Featured Investigation:
Why Greens Can't Keep Angry Farmers
Down on the Farm,
in the Netherlands or Globally
In RealClearInvestigations, environmental journalist Michael Shellenberger reports from the Netherlands on onerous measures that livestock-restricting, anti-fertilizer “organics advocates” are imposing worldwide on farmers, even environmentally enlightened ones, and the ensuing street protests.
They're potential political powder kegs in a food crisis stretching from Europe to the Americas to Asia, Shellenberger reports:
- Netherlands: Farmers reduced nitrogen pollution by nearly 70 percent through a voluntary system, but the government says that’s not enough: It wants a further 50% cut in pollution by 2030 – despite its own estimates that 11,200 farms would be put out of business.
- Elsewhere in Europe: The restive Dutch are inspiring protests by other farmers in Germany, Poland, and Italy.
- Canada: The government wants a 30 percent reduction in nitrogen pollution by 2030 – imperiling spring wheat yields that are up over 40%. It’s pushing for this even though emissions from farming pale compared to those from energy.
- Sri Lanka: A 2021 fertilizer ban led to a massive reduction in yields, sparking starvation and an economic crisis that brought down the government in July.
- Rudy Rabbinge, pioneer of the 1960s global Green Revolution: “Organics advocates are against science-based agriculture. … They say with low productivity you can feed the world, which of course is impossible.”
Featured Investigation:
How the FBI Undercounts
Armed Citizen Responders to Mass Killers,
and Media Play Along
In RealClearInvestigations, John R. Lott Jr. presents evidence suggesting the FBI undercounts by an order of more than three the number of times armed citizens have thwarted mass gun killers.
And, the nationally recognized gun-crime researcher adds, media use the FBI-approved statistics to warn misleadingly that armed citizens almost never stop such attackers.
Details:
- Lott reports that out of 281 active shooter incidents counted by his research outfit, 41 were stopped by an armed citizen, while the FBI counts only 11 armed citizens thwarting 252 active shooter incidents in the same period.
- Lott’s outfit identified an additional 25 incidents simply overlooked by the FBI (sidebar).
- The FBI also declined to list some cases stopped by armed citizens because the attackers were later apprehended by police.
- Lott writes that such omissions and discrepancies are not surprising given the limits of data collection – from local news reports -- and the judgment calls involved in categorizing such incidents.
- Still, some see a pattern of distortion in the FBI numbers because the errors almost exclusively go one way, minimizing the life-saving actions of armed citizens.
- Media coverage of the armed 22-year-old who recently stopped an Indiana mall rampage drew from FBI-approved statistics to assert that armed citizens almost never stop such attackers.
Biden, Trump and the Beltway
Many unanswered questions remain after the FBI’s unprecedented raid of President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate this week -- “a major escalation in the various investigations into the final stages of his presidency,” as the New York Times put it.
The former president, who was in New York at the time, broke the news of the extraordinary search of his Palm Beach property via his Truth Social platform, exclaiming in a post that “They even broke into my safe!”
The New York Post on additional details of the operation Monday:
'FBI agents scoured Melania Trump’s wardrobe and spent several hours combing through Donald Trump’s private office … rifling through drawers …
The raid by over 30 plain clothes agents from the Southern District of Florida and the FBI’s Washington Field Office extended through the Trump family’s entire 3,000-square-foot private quarters, as well as to a separate office and safe, and a locked basement storage room in which 15 cardboard boxes of material from the White House were stored.
Feds arrived at 9 a.m. and didn’t leave until 6:30 p.m.
'
What was the FBI pursuing? Several publications reported that the Justice Department was investigating whether the president violated the Presidential Records Act by mishandling White House records – specifically classified documents – in bringing over a dozen boxes of materials to Mar-a-Lago upon exiting the White House.
In an exclusive, Newsweek reported that an FBI informant had identified classified documents in the president’s custody, as well as their location. Subsequent reporting from the Washington Post indicated that “classified documents relating to nuclear weapons were among the items FBI agents sought” in the FBI’s search.
Federal authorities had previously sought documents in the president’s possession at Mar-a-Lago, with Trump’s representatives agreeing to turn over 15 boxes of records to the National Archives and Records Administration, as it announced in a February 2022 statement.
Despite reports indicating the FBI’s Mar-a-Lago search was unrelated to the Justice Department’s January 6 probe, some experts were unconvinced. Former federal prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy contended in the New York Post that:
'The Justice Department obviously used the potential classified information as a pretext to obtain a warrant so it could search for what it is really looking for: evidence that would tie Trump to a Capitol riot offense – either a violent crime, such as seditious conspiracy to forcibly attack a government installation (which is highly unlikely), or a non-violent crime, such as conspiracy to obstruct the January 6 joint session of Congress to count electoral votes, or conspiracy to defraud the government.
'
After President Trump revealed news of the raid, and amid rampant speculation about its purpose, and growing outrage among Americans, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced that the Department of Justice had filed a motion to unseal the warrant authorizing the search – the decision to seek Garland disclosed he had personally approved – subject to the president’s sign-off.
Other Biden, Trump and the Beltway
VP Biden Met Hunter-Tied China Energy Execs in West Wing Daily Mail
Other Noteworthy Articles and Series
Green Rare-Earths Push
Destroys Myanmar Forest
Associated Press
The birds no longer sing, and the herbs no longer grow. The fish no longer swim in rivers that have turned a murky brown. The animals do not roam, and the cows are sometimes found dead.
People in a northern Myanmar forest have lost a way of life that goes back generations, this article reports. And the cause appears to be the green agenda:
'This forest is the source of several key metallic elements known as rare earths, often called the vitamins of the modern world. Rare earths now reach into the lives of almost everyone on the planet, turning up in everything from hard drives and cellphones to elevators and trains. They are especially vital to the fast-growing field of green energy, feeding wind turbines and electric car engines. And they end up in the supply chains of some of the most prominent companies in the world, including General Motors, Volkswagen, Mercedes, Tesla and Apple.
But an AP investigation has found that their universal use hides a dirty open secret in the industry: Their cost is environmental destruction, the theft of land from villagers and the funneling of money to brutal militias, including at least one linked to Myanmar’s secretive military government. As demand soars for rare earths along with green energy, the abuses are likely to grow.
'
In a related article, CNN reports that as Greenland melts at an unprecedented rate, it is creating an opportunity for investors and mining companies searching for minerals critical to powering the green energy transition.
Also on the environmental beat this week:
- A report that three American oil scions – Aileen Getty, granddaughter of Getty Oil’s founder, and Rebecca Rockefeller Lambert and Peter Gill Case, members of the Rockefeller clan – have been bankrolling mobs of eco-zealots who have terrorized the world by slashing tires, blocking traffic and attacking firms.
- A report that in Texas, one Environmental Protection Agency department is conducting helicopter flyovers over the Permian Basin to identify “super-emitters” of methane gas among oil and gas operations, in a move seen by critics as unfairly target the energy industry.
The Activist Network Infusing
Gender Ideology Into K-12
City Journal
Many parents have watched in confusion as their children repeat the movement’s slogans and adopt synthetic sexual identities such as “non-binary,” “pansexual,” and “genderqueer.” The next question for many families is: Where does this surge in left-wing sexual ideology come from? One answer, this article reports: from a network of professional activists, who have smuggled university-style gender theory into more than 4,000 schools under the cover of “gender and sexuality” clubs, or GSAs.
'The main national organization behind this campaign, the GSA Network, is a professionally staffed nonprofit with a multimillion-dollar annual budget. GSA Network serves as an umbrella organization for more than 4,000 “gender and sexuality alliances” across 40 states. Once called the Gay-Straight Alliance Network, the group rebranded in 2016, reflecting a new focus on “the limits of a binary gender system.” The individual chapters, which operate in elementary, middle, and high schools, often use the language of “LGBTQ inclusion” and “anti-bullying” in their public relations, but behind the scenes, the central organization is driven by pure left-wing radicalism that extends far beyond sexuality.
'
According to the article, “the GSA Network and its affiliates rely on cult-like programming techniques” to indoctrinate children in radical race and gender ideology.
In a separate article, Heather Mac Donald reports:
'The post–George Floyd racial reckoning has hit the field of medicine like an earthquake. Medical education, medical research, and standards of competence have been upended by two related hypotheses: that systemic racism is responsible both for racial disparities in the demographics of the medical profession and for racial disparities in health outcomes. Questioning those hypotheses is professionally suicidal. Vast sums of public and private research funding are being redirected from basic science to political projects aimed at dismantling white supremacy. The result will be declining quality of medical care and a curtailment of scientific progress.
'
Finally, a report on a notable instance of wokism in the military: Joint Base Langley-Eustis’s hosting of a drag show during its first-ever “kid-friendly” “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Summer Festival.”
Coronavirus Investigations
2 Years In, Science Still Shows Masks Useless City Journal
Wuhan Probe Critic Helped Fund Wuhan Gain-of-Function Study Right to Know
Parents Demand Colleges Refund COVID Lockdown Fees Wall Street Journal