“Who controls the past controls the future,” writes George Orwell in 1984. “Who controls the present controls the past.” Were he with us today, Orwell would be getting tired of being right all the time, but he has just been proven right again: Thomas Jefferson’s famed mansion Monticello has been turned into a fount of woke propaganda that denigrates Jefferson and treats unsuspecting visitors to an over-the-top orgy of victimhood and white guilt regarding slavery. The Left hates America and wants very much for you to hate it, too.

Jeffrey Tucker of the libertarian Brownstone Institute said Saturday that “the whole thing has the feel of propaganda and manipulation. People on my tour seemed sad and demoralized.” That’s exactly the goal, Mr. Tucker: make Americans sad and demoralized and vulnerable to those who would have them believe that this nation has been evil from the beginning and is in drastic need of a thorough overhauling of its political system and society in general. Tucker added that when he was at Monticello, his guide was “surly and dismissive” of Jefferson’s remarkable achievements.

Monticello is no longer about Mr. Jefferson’s achievements. According to the New York Post, Monticello’s “new emphasis is the culmination of a 10-year effort to balance the historical record, officials of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, the nonprofit that owns the estate, have said.” “Balance the historical record”: that’s a calculated and clever way of saying “Do everything we can to denigrate Thomas Jefferson and make those who admire him enough to visit his home come out hating him.”

Accordingly, the Post reports, “visitors complain that employees go out of their way to belittle Jefferson and his life.” One visitor wrote on Facebook that “the tour guides play ‘besmirchment derby,’ never missing a chance to defame this brilliant, complex man.” Another wrote: “Always enjoyed visiting Monticello in the past. The workers are super friendly and helpful. Unfortunately on this guided tour, we were lectured more on slaves and Sally Hemmings than the man himself. Half of the comments on Jefferson were critical. I expected for, the price, to have enjoyed it more. Even my 11 yr old daughter noticed the bias. We all are aware of the tragedy of slavery during the early part of this country’s history. Please center your presentations on the man and his accomplishments rather than promoting guilt.” Not a chance.

A third visitor said: “Visited a few years ago and had a great experience and got to learn a lot about Thomas Jefferson. This time every video slandered his name and the entire focus was on his mistress. Very disappointing and shocking to see how they are trying to rewrite history to make it seem like the founding fathers were terrible immoral creatures that happened to start a country.” Ah yes, now you’re getting the idea.

At this point, Monticello might as well be renamed Guilt Plantation. The Post noted that even the ticket booth to the place gets into the act: it’s “decorated with a contemporary painting of Jefferson’s weeping slaves.” In Jefferson’s music room, “a grim modern painting of a faceless figure with a matte black head now looms over the room, positioned so that it directly confronts visitors as they enter the mansion.” This masterpiece, according to Monticello guide Susan Woodward, was “commissioned in honor of Juneteenth” and was intended to be “quite provocative.” A card next to this painting explains that its “hands and face of featureless tar” are meant to signify “the faceless lives of all who served in bondage, witnessing but never recognized.”

Meanwhile, “guides begin their outdoor tours of Monticello’s gardens and grounds by invoking the Native Americans who once lived on the land.” A placard asks: “Is ‘all men are created equal’ being lived up to in our country today? When will we know when it is?” In the gift shop, visitors can pick up books by race grievance propagandists Ibram X. Kendi and Ta-Nehisi Coates. The Farm Shop store offers five books about Jefferson’s slaves, as compared to only one about Jefferson himself.

Not surprisingly, “The Thomas Jefferson Foundation is run by a roster of big-money Dem donors and former Democratic officials.” Monticello’s descent “has largely been funded by left-leaning philanthropist David M. Rubenstein, who donated $20 million toward that effort in 2015. Rubenstein is “on the boards of the globalist World Economic Forum, China’s Tsinghua University, and the Council on Foreign Relations, among others.” Now it’s beginning to become clear why all this is happening.

The endgame is not just to make Americans despise Thomas Jefferson, but to make the average American ashamed of being American. That’s what this has been about from first to last. If the complexities of human experience have to be obliterated in the process, with cartoonish one-dimensional heroes and villains put in their place, so be it. We cannot celebrate Jefferson for all that he did to lay the groundwork for the freest society the world has ever seen. We cannot see him as a remarkable but flawed human being who was exemplary in some ways but not in others.

What’s more, the reason why the Left hates him with such burning intensity is not that he was a slave owner. Leftists love Fidel Castro, who enslaved an entire nation. They love all manner of authoritarians, totalitarians, and mass murderers. They’ve never minded the eggs that have to be broken to make their socialist omelets.

No, the real reason why the Left hates Thomas Jefferson is for all the things for which he should rightly be celebrated: Because he fought against tyranny. Because he helped create a free republic. Because he placed statements in those founding documents that would ultimately lead multitudes of the citizens of the new nation to believe that slavery was wrong and immoral and give their lives to bring about its abolition.

Jefferson is just the sort of man whom the fascist thugs of Antifa, busy smearing ACAB on the sides of buildings and hurling obscenities at police in pursuit of their vision of socialist utopia, and their moneyed backers would despise and fear. They want a docile American populace, frightened into submission to their authoritarian vision. The example of Thomas Jefferson could inspire Americans instead to pledge their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to preserve our hard-won freedoms. Can’t have that. Jefferson’s name must be made anathema to Americans.

UPS Issues New Rules for Shipping Firearm Parts – Serial Numbers Now Required

July 12, 2022 John

UPS Cancelling Gun Dealers’ Accounts, Destroying Packages in Transit

BY LEE WILLIAMS

SEE: https://www.ammoland.com/2022/07/ups-issues-new-rules-for-shipping-firearm-parts-serial-numbers-now-required/;

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:

U.S.A. –-(AmmoLand.com)- United Parcel Service has issued new rules for shipping firearms and firearm parts, but the announcement comes a week after UPS canceled the accounts of gun retailers who may have violated the rules that weren’t yet made public or even in effect.

In a story published July 1, we revealed that UPS was terminating the accounts of gun dealers and that any packages currently in the UPS system could be “seized and destroyed.”

In a letter sent to one Florida gun dealer, Ghost Firearms, UPS said they were terminating the account because they “may be violating” laws concerning homemade firearm parts.

“We write to inform you that UPS has learned that your company may be violating applicable laws concerning the shipment of “ghost guns” to unauthorized locations,” the letter states. “In light of our concern, UPS has determined that it will cancel your account, effective immediately.”

In a follow-up story published July 5, we revealed that five Democratic Senators recently sent ominous letters to UPS and 27 other carriers, blaming them for escalating violent crime rates.

“We are concerned that lax shipping security measures are contributing to the epidemic of gun violence in this country by allowing criminals to use stolen firearms to commit crimes,” the letters each state.

They were signed by Senators Edward Markey (D-Mass.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Cory A. Booker (D-N.J.), Christopher S. Murphy (D-Conn.), and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.).

In their letters, the Senators peppered the shippers with 20 questions and document requests. They were sent May 19 to UPS, FedEx, the U.S. Postal Service, and trucking and rail carriers located in the United States and Canada.

UPS media relations personnel did not respond to calls or emails seeking comment for either story.

Now, UPS has quietly updated its rules for shipping firearms on its website.

Now, they require a serial number on any frame or receiver, as required by a federal rule that hasn’t yet taken effect.

Any item that meets the definition of a firearm (including firearm mufflers or silencers) or a “frame” or “receiver” under federal law (including any partially complete, disassembled, or nonfunctional frame or receiver as defined by 27 CFR § 478.12) must be identified and bear a serial number in satisfaction of the requirements for identifying such items under federal law, including 27 CFR § 478.92 and/or 27 CFR § 479.102, regardless of whether any such items are otherwise exempt from or not subject to identification requirements under applicable law. This prohibition applies even before the effective date of 27 CFR § 478.12.

UPS’ previous rules contained no serial number requirements.

Takeaways

Over the past two weeks, UPS’ messaging has been a hot mess.

They threatened dealers’ livelihoods. They seized and destroyed property – all with no advance notice – and when they were caught and their actions became public, they failed to address their mistakes.

In other words, they punished gun dealers for violating secret UPS rules that weren’t even public – all because they got a scary letter from five anti-gun politicians.

As a private business, UPS is free to enact whatever shipping rules they want, but we are free to choose a carrier that’s not so schizophrenic.

This story is presented by the Second Amendment Foundation’s Investigative Journalism Project and wouldn’t be possible without you. Please click here to make a tax-deductible donation to support more pro-gun stories like this.

About Lee Williams

Lee Williams, who is also known as “The Gun Writer,” is the chief editor of the Second Amendment Foundation’s Investigative Journalism Project. Until recently, he was also an editor for a daily newspaper in Florida. Before becoming an editor, Lee was an investigative reporter at newspapers in three states and a U.S. Territory. Before becoming a journalist, he worked as a police officer. Before becoming a cop, Lee served in the Army. He’s earned more than a dozen national journalism awards as a reporter, and three medals of valor as a cop. Lee is an avid tactical shooter.

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SEE OUR PREVIOUS POST: https://ratherexposethem.org/2022/07/07/ups-cancelling-gun-dealers-accounts-destroying-packages-in-transit/

President Biden Sells U.S. Reserve Oil to Chinese Firm Connected to Son

July 12, 2022 John

BY STEVE BYAS

SEE: https://thenewamerican.com/president-biden-sells-u-s-reserve-oil-to-chinese-firm-connected-to-son/;

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:

Included in the American oil being shipped out of the country during a time of extremely high gasoline prices is nearly one million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to a Chinese firm — owned by that country’s communist government — in which Hunter Biden’s equity company held a $1.7 billion stake. The 950,000 barrels sold to Unipec, the trading arm of Sinopec, make up part of the five million barrels of oil exported after President Joe Biden released oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

The Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) was created during the administration of Richard Nixon for use in times of national emergency. At the time, the United States was heavily dependent upon foreign oil, and it was argued that the SPR could help if those foreign sources were cut off in time of war or other national emergency. Congress authorized the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in the Energy Policy and Conservation Act to help prevent a repetition of the economic dislocation caused by the 1973-1974 Arab oil embargo. Biden, however, has decided to release some of the oil just to bring down the price of gasoline at the pump, as those high prices are hurting him politically. (Of course, this release has little impact on pump prices, but Biden is no doubt hoping that consumers will think he is doing something to help them.)

He has even taken to denouncing local retailers for not lowering their gasoline prices at the pump.

China is not the only destination for U.S. oil, as the Biden administration is releasing about a million barrels of oil per day from the SPR, which now has the least oil in reserve since 1986. The Department of Energy released a statement defending the releases, saying, “The SPR remains a critical energy security tool to address global crude oil supply disruptions.”

Before Biden took office, the United States had become independent of foreign sources of oil, the price of gasoline at the pump was around $2 per gallon, and the SPR was well-supplied. Now, however, under Biden’s policies designed to cut back on oil production, supposedly to combat “climate change,” oil prices have soared to over $100 a barrel, and gasoline prices at the pump have increased dramatically, to over $5 a gallon — and in some places in the United States, to over $6 a gallon.

The mainstream media, however, have chosen not to give much coverage to this aspect of the oil price story, particularly the sale of American oil to a firm wholly owned by the Chinese Communist Party. They continue to generally ignore stories related to Biden’s son, Hunter, and the connections Joe Biden has had with his son’s business dealings.

One can only imagine the media frenzy that would have ensued if one of President Donald Trump’s sons had had such dealings, i.e., if President Trump had told a foreign country that they were being cut off from a billion-dollar loan guarantee unless they fired their state prosecutor — a state prosecutor who was investigating a firm in which Trump’s son was involved as a director.

But American oil is not just being sent out of the country to China.

The inventory of U.S. crude is now at its lowest level in nearly 20 years. Despite Biden’s demagoguery against oil companies, and even local businesses selling gasoline, oil refineries are running near capacity.

It needs to be emphasized that this is a result of the deliberate policy choices of the Biden administration. They contend that oil and gas are making a major contribution to global warming, and have proudly said that they want to reduce the consumer use of oil and gas. Heavy regulations of the oil industry are intended to reduce the supply of oil. Basic economics teaches that if one decreases the supply of a product when there is no decrease in demand, the price will rise. Yet Biden, in demagogic fashion, blames oil companies and local retailers for the high prices that his policies have contributed to greatly.

Local retailers have a very slim profit margin from the sale of gasoline at the pump, and many convenience stores have gas pumps just to get customers into the stores to buy their other products. Biden knows all of this — unless he has forgotten it.

The solution is to return to the commonsense policies of the previous administration — policies that had made the United States energy independent.

Biden’s policies only make sense if the goal is to make America more dependent on foreign sources because he is not for American independence in oil or anything else.

Amazon, Bill Gates, China buying up land all over the US in run up to Great Reset agenda

July 12, 2022 John

CENSORED:

SEE: https://www.naturalnews.com/2022-07-08-amazon-bill-gates-china-buying-us-lands.html

Livestock producers now just DAYS away from running out of animal feed due to supply chain disruptions

July 12, 2022 John

Image: Livestock producers now just DAYS away from running out of animal feed due to supply chain disruptions

BY ETHAN HUFF

SEE: https://www.naturalnews.com/2022-07-08-livestock-producers-running-out-animal-feed-collapse.html;

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:

(Natural News) Food and other consumer goods are no longer making their way from point A to point B in the United States, which faces crippling supply chain bottlenecks that threaten to cause mass starvation.

The latest complaint comes from the livestock industry, which says it is just days away from an animal feed crisis if rail lines fail to get their act together, and quickly.

According to reports, many feed users in California and other southwestern states are having to pay $3 more than the CBOT (Chicago Board of Trade) price to secure grain shipments by truck as rail bottlenecks are not only not improving, but in some cases worsening.

AgWeb says that not only are feed users on the brink of running out of grain entirely but there are also widespread concerns that, come autumn during harvest time, the situation will be exponentially worse.

Members of the National Grain and Feed Association (NGFA) say that the issues they now face really started ramping up late last winter and early spring. This prompted the Surface Transportation Board (STB) to hold a hearing about the matter, but so far nothing has improved.

The hope was that once summer arrived, the situation would resolve itself at least somewhat. Instead, the problem has worsened, including labor issues that are getting worse, not better.

“What I’m hearing from our members is fewer equipment issues and that the equipment and engines seem to be not breaking down, but the train times – the amount of time it’s taking to get the trains – and the reliability of receiving them is still quite a problem in quite a few areas of the country,” said Mike Seyfert, President, and CEO of NGFA.

Even Foster Farms can’t get the grain it needs to feed its cattle, chickens, and turkeys

Just to be clear, these are not necessarily just small food providers who are unable to secure feed shipments due to being smaller players. Even large players like Foster Farms, the largest chicken producer in the western U.S., are having trouble.

According to reports, Foster Farms recently asked federal regulators to issue an emergency service calling on the Union Pacific (UP) railroad to prioritize corn shipments to feed its thousands of heads of dairy cattle and millions of chickens and turkeys.

“The point has been reached when millions of chickens will be killed and other livestock will suffer because of UP’s service failures,” the company wrote in its request to the STB this week.

The fact that Foster Farms had to ask for an emergency directive towards this end reveals the seriousness of the issue, according to Seyfert.

“At times in the past several months, we have heard from more than one member that has had severe difficulty getting feed, sometimes being within several hours of being short,” he is quoted as saying.

AgWeb says that the biggest problem in this whole scenario revolves around labor. There are simply not enough people willing or available to work – are Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) “vaccines” partially to blame for this, we wonder?

According to NGFA, railroads were already down about 25 percent in staffing prior to the plandemic, and now they are much worse in terms of maintaining a reliable and large enough workforce.

Also this week, 51 members of the U.S. House of Representatives signed a letter calling on the STB to deal with the systemic issues that continue to plague America’s failing railway systems. You can read that letter at AgWeb.com.

To keep up with the latest news about this subject, be sure to check out FoodCollapse.com.

Sources for this article include:

AgWeb.com

NaturalNews.com

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Policies: A Danger to Jews and All Americans

July 12, 2022 John

And the threat extends to schoolchildren

BY ADAM MILSTEIN

SEE: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/07/diversity-equity-and-inclusion-dei-policies-danger-adam-milstein/;

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:

This article was originally published in the Jerusalem Post.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) offices, officers, policies, and programming are being increasingly embraced in American institutions, from government to the corporate workplace. This is particularly true in education, from leading American universities to elite prep schools. In fact, one sampling of leading American universities found DEI staff making up an average of 3.4 positions for every 100 tenured or tenure-track faculty members and outnumbering by a factor of at least four the staff dedicated to helping students with disabilities.

The ostensible goals of DEI are positive: to promote the representation, participation, and fair treatment of historically marginalized groups. In practice, though, DEI, which is closely linked to critical race theory (CRT), has been deployed to advance a radical agenda that undermines fundamental American values by promoting equality of outcome over equality of opportunity, collective identity (race, gender, etc.) over individual character, censorship of opposing viewpoints over freedom of speech, and a victim culture that crudely bifurcates society into oppressors and oppressed.

Along with embracing other favored radical causes, DEI is also being weaponized against Jewish students, maliciously portraying them and the Jewish State as wanton oppressors. Thus, with the expanding number and power of amply funded and staffed DEI offices that, rather than thwarting the rise of anti-Israel sentiment and restraining hostility toward Jews, actually contributing to it, American universities are becoming hotbeds of antisemitism.

The rise of antisemitism on college campuses is continuing and has already been well documented. A 2021 survey by Hillel and the ADL found that one in three Jewish college students personally experienced antisemitic hate in the previous academic year. Jewish students regularly have to contend with the demonization of Israel and its supporters, obscene Holocaust comparisons and minimization, negative stereotyping, and other common antisemitic tropes.

According to a December 2021 Heritage Foundation report, “Inclusion Delusion: The Antisemitism of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Staff at Universities,” which analyzed the Twitter feeds of hundreds of DEI university personnel, there is a disproportionate hostility toward Israel among university DEI staff. Malicious charges they have levied against Israel on Twitter include describing the Jewish State as an “apartheid” or “colonial” state and accusing Israel of engaging in “genocide” or “ethnic cleansing.”

Instead of creating a welcome and inclusive environment for Jewish students, who overwhelmingly feel a strong connection to Israel, DEI officials are engaged in anti-Israel demonization that promotes antisemitism and legitimizes Jew-hatred on campus.

In one particularly egregious illustration of this phenomenon, Yasmeen Mashayekh, a University of Southern California (USC) student senator for diversity, equity, and inclusion, tweeted in May 2021 that she wanted to “kill every motherf***ing Zionist.” Despite this and other hateful messages in which she expressed support for terrorism and the murder of Israelis, she has not been disciplined by USC and was able to retain her student senator DEI position.

The harm that DEI programming and personnel cause Jewish students isn’t limited to higher education. It even extends to schoolchildren. A Jewish parent, Jerome Eisenberg, is suing the prestigious private K-12 Brentwood School in Los Angeles for engaging in a DEI-driven “scheme to transform the school under a racially divisive, antisemitic ideology that seeks to indoctrinate children to reject Western values.”

In recent years, the curriculum at Brentwood has taken a radical, racially divisive turn after it was handed over to its “Office of Equity and Inclusion,” whose “staffing had increased ten-fold in a short period of time.” According to Eisenberg, “the school held racially segregated meetings and encouraged students to treat Jewish people as ‘oppressors’ and discriminated against a Jewish group of parents.” When he expressed his concerns about antisemitic discrimination, the school threatened to expel his 8th-grade daughter immediately and ultimately effectively did so when they denied her from returning the following school year.

It is deeply troubling that DEI personnel and programming, which is ostensibly committed to combatting bias and hate, is actively contributing to antisemitism in the American education system. As I have repeatedly warned, though, antisemitism is not just a Jewish problem – it is an American problem. DEI policies may disproportionately target and harm Jewish students, but the DEI agenda ultimately seeks to undermine and replace fundamental American values and replace it with its own radical vision. As we’ve seen before, what starts with elites quickly spreads to society as a whole. We must combat these ethically corrupted DEI efforts before they do more harm to Jewish students and ultimately all Americans.

Adam Milstein is an Israeli-American “Active Philanthropist.” He can be reached at adam@milsteinff.org, on Twitter , and on Facebook .