RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week
February 20 to February 26, 2022 Two United Nations-sponsored groups are reportedly helping immigrants in southern Mexico recover “repressed memories” of traumatic events so they can secure the asylum cards they need to travel north to the U.S. border. James Varney reports for RealClearInvestigations that many of these migrants were initially turned down for the cards. But, one group claims, about 90 percent of those who have undergone repressed memory counseling have had their applications approved: Both the Jesuit Society of Refugees and Fray Matias de Cordova are advertising “psychological” help in storefronts in the southern Mexican city of Tapachula. In a recorded interview with Todd Bensman, a security fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors greater restrictions on immigration, Enrique Vidal of Fray Matias said many of the migrants had initially been turned down for asylum cards because they had only claimed economic hardship. Vidal said that citing “different acts of violence, sexual abuses, detentions and or tortures” helps them secure the cards. Repressed memory counseling has been controversial at least since the 1990s when it was at the center of several high-profile criminal cases in which children “recalled” bizarre sexual and satanic rites. Vidal denied that his group was coaching asylum seekers. “If we have a high percentage of success,” he told Bensman, that’s because of “the truth about what the people are saying.” Biden, Trump and the Beltway The Neoliberal War on Dissent in the West Substack
The Rise of Clarence and Ginni Thomas New York Times Magazine
One Case Against Trump Cloudy as 2 Prosecutors Resign New York Times
Hunter Biden Ex Testifies to Wild Spending New York Post
How Democrats Gave Up on Rural America The Guardian Other Noteworthy Articles and Series At least 50 Afghans who may pose “significant security concerns” were allowed to enter the U.S. because the government failed to run their names through all available security databases. This article reports that the government appears to have lost track of most of them. The Defense Department’s inspector general said it looked at a sampling of 31 security risk evacuees identified as of Sept. 17 and found that only three could be located. This may be the tip of the iceberg. Tens of thousands more names remain to be checked, the inspector general said. “Not being able to locate Afghan evacuees with derogatory information quickly and accurately could pose a security risk to the United States,” the audit concluded. Earlier this month 1,633 homeless San Franciscans who been approved for housing remained on a waiting list while 888 units remained vacant. This article reports that at least 400 people have been waiting more than a year, far beyond the city’s professed goal of placing applicants into housing 30 to 45 days after they are approved. These persistent vacancy numbers stem largely from two new bureaucratic problems. First, the homelessness department created a policy that bumped hundreds of people who had previously been approved for housing to the bottom of a new list. In December 2020, the department rolled out a plan that reserved all available permanent supportive housing units for residents of shelter-in-place hotels, which had been opened during the pandemic to keep people who had been living on the streets safe from COVID-19. This led to a spike in vacancies as many hotel-dwellers opted to stay in place rather than accept a more permanent option. It also meant that everyone else – people on the streets, in shelters, in navigation centers and in city-sanctioned tent sites – was out of luck, simply based on where they slept at night. After Congress passed more than $4 billion in relief directed specifically to farmers of color last year, the would-be beneficiaries were told they wouldn’t be penalized for failing to pay pre-existing debts as the paperwork went through. But legal challenges from white farmers claiming reverse discrimination were filed in several states. Eventually a federal judge stopped USDA from implementing the program and allowed a class action lawsuit to proceed. … [Soon] farmers began receiving notices that USDA wanted to collect their debts. Some had liens put on their crops and initially weren’t paid so that the funds could be used to pay their loans. That may sound outrageous, but this is the government, so never mind. The USDA announced Feb. 1 that it was required by law to send the notices and “doesn’t intend to take any action that’s indicated,” Zach Ducheneaux, administrator of the Farm Service Agency, said in a video. At least 23 of America’s 25 most prestigious medical colleges and universities have some form of mandatory student training or coursework on ideas related to critical race theory. This article reports on a study by CriticalRace.org, which found that: Of the top 25 colleges and universities, 23 had some sort of mandatory training and 21 have offered materials by authors Robin DiAngelo and Ibram Kendi, whose books explicitly call for discrimination … Training is sometimes targeted, such as a new requirement for a major or department, and sometimes school-wide. The subjects of mandatory training and coursework are worded and phrased differently at individual schools, but use terms including "anti-racism," "cultural competency," "equity," "implicit bias," "DEI – diversity, equity and inclusion" and critical race theory, according to CriticalRace.org. The study found that 16 of the top 25 medical schools have declared that anti-racism, DEI, CRT, and/or other similar elements will be embedded into the general curriculum of the university. Among them is The University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine, where first-year students must take "Health Equity, Advocacy, and Anti-Racism." In a separate article on Legal Insurrection, Paul Rossi – who was fired by Manhattan’s tony Grace Church School last year following his critiques of wokeness – reports on and shares videos used by the National Association of Independent Schools to train teachers to promote leftwing ideology. Harvey Weinstein was not an outlier – his sexual abuse of woman was part of a long Hollywood tradition. This detailed article portrays the celebrated comic (and longtime telethon do-gooder) Jerry Lewis as an unquenchable predator who forced himself on innumerable actresses and tried to destroy the careers of those who resisted him. His gross mistreatment of innumerable young women – who included Karen Sharpe, Renée Taylor, Hope Holiday, Lanie Kazan – was not a secret. He was far from the only one. In the 1950s, the fan magazine Picturegoer published an exposé on casting couch practices. “This is the most depressing story we have ever written,” the reporters wrote. “For weeks, we have made our investigations…we have built up a dossier of information, which, we believe, is an ugly scar on the glamorous face of show business.” No one noticed the story. In 1953, Marilyn Monroe herself wrote an essay for Motion Picture and Television Magazine titled “The Wolves I Have Known,” in which she wrote frankly about Hollywood predators: “I met them all. Phoniness and failure were all over them. Some were vicious and crooked. But they were as near to the movies as you get. So you sat with them, listening to their lies and schemes. And you saw Hollywood with their eyes—an overcrowded brothel, a merry-go-round with beds for horses.” In one of the article’s more chilling passages, Anna Maria Alberghetti, a soprano prodigy turned Tony-winning actor, recalled that Lewis came on to her constantly while shooting 1960’s “Cinderfella.” “He tried very hard,” she says. “He came on to me constantly. I would say to him, ‘Jerry, I’m seeing someone…. You’ve got the wrong chick.’ ” Alberghetti emerged unscathed. She suspects it’s because by the time she met Lewis, she had already established herself as a star, having performed at Carnegie Hall and costarred with Bing Crosby. “If this had been my first break in the business, I probably wouldn’t have had a choice,” she says. “There it is.” Coronavirus Investigations Two full years into the pandemic, the CDC has published only a tiny fraction of the data it has collected. This article reports that much of the withheld information could help state and local health officials better target their efforts to bring the virus under control: Detailed, timely data on hospitalizations by age and race would help health officials identify and help the populations at highest risk. Information on hospitalizations and death by age and vaccination status would have helped inform whether healthy adults needed booster shots. And wastewater surveillance across the nation would spot outbreaks and emerging variants early. What’s the holdup? Kristen Nordlund, a spokeswoman for the C.D.C., said the agency has been slow to release the different streams of data “because basically, at the end of the day, it’s not yet ready for prime time.” She said the agency’s “priority when gathering any data is to ensure that it’s accurate and actionable.” Another reason is fear that the information might be misinterpreted, Ms. Nordlund said. … “The C.D.C. is a political organization as much as it is a public health organization,” said Samuel Scarpino, managing director of pathogen surveillance at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Pandemic Prevention Institute. “The steps that it takes to get something like this released are often well outside of the control of many of the scientists that work at the C.D.C.” Other Coronavirus Investigations NIH Continues to Mask Covid Research in Wuhan The Intercept
Agencies Quietly Study Post-Vax Neurological Issues Epoch News
Doctors Fear Covid Could Spark Cardiac Crisis Washington Post
Anti-Maskers' 'Paper Terrorism' vs. Schools NBC | 