End of the Week News.

 

Attorney General Merrick Garland had at times a contentious meeting with the House Judiciary Committee hearing. Garland responded to many of the GOP's false allegations. House Republicans clashed with the Attorney General Garland during the hearing. This represents a preview of the coming Republican impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden (in dealing with allegations relating to his son, Hunter Biden). Many Judiciary Committee Republicans accused Garland of doing the bidding of the Bidens by offering Hunter Biden a plea deal that fell apart during scrutiny from a judge. Garland forcibly and strongly denied the criticisms. Garland said that President Joe Biden didn't interfere in the investigation, and that Weiss was given all the resources he asked for in the probe. Garland didn't engage on specifics of the probe. GOP member Jim Jordan accused the Justice Department of not prosecuting Hunter Biden over tax years when Hunter was on the board of Ukrainian energy firm Burisma. Garland said that he didn't intervene in the Hunter Biden investigation. Garland told Congressional Republicans that he isn't the President's lawyer and he isn't Congress's prosecutor.

Donald Trump recently said that he is willing to see the government shutdown to derail the Jack Smith investigation of his actions. This shows how extreme the GOP leadership is. They are so extreme that they view any social safety net program as equivalent to a program from Karl Marx. They are so extreme that many of them want books about Rosa Parks to be banned in public schools. Some of them are so extreme that they support union busting and a hatred of economic justice. Rupert Murdoch has step down as the chair of FOX News. Murdoch leaves a legacy of controversy as we know that FOX's earlier proclamation of being "Fair and Balanced" being a lie. FOX News has not only supported Trump a lot. They have promoted some of the most extreme neo-conservatives and far right extremists in American history from Bill O'Reilly to Sean Hannity.

Poland said that it will stop arming Ukraine. Poland is one of Ukraine’s closest allies. This comes as Ukraine is engaging in a counteroffensive against Russia. Poland’s decision came, because of tensions over a temporary ban on Ukrainian grain imports to many European Union countries. There is a tight general election in Poland too. Poland wants to arm Poland which has been said by Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki. Poland was the first NATO nation to send fighter jets to Ukraine, months ahead of American agreeing to do it after a completion of training by Ukrainian forces. Now, Poland will only carry out supplies of ammunition and weapons to Kyiv that were agreed before Warsaw made its decision to stop shipments according to Polish government spokesman Pitor Muller.

We have to be careful about censorship. The reason is that some people are exploiting the need to confront disinformation as an excuse to promote massive censorship on the Internet. I have been a victim of censorship before in YouTube where my words were unjustly censored (when my words had no profanity and no derogatory language). So, this censorship agenda is very real. Some people talk about social media. Social media isn’t perfect and has tons of problems, but the answer isn’t authoritarian censorship. The answer is reasonable regulations that respect human dignity and free speech at the same time. The irony is that many people who want censorship to lecture us on China and Russia being authoritarian nations (which is true), but some of them want to copy the same censorship on the Internet that China has done for decades now. Many progressive platforms have been censored like By Any Means Necessary. Regulation should involve guarantee access to people do not ban. We should not use social media to dehumanize and disrespect people, but social media shouldn’t be used as a scapegoat for all of society’s problems.

Regardless of what evil people may want to do, they can never erase our history as black people. Many people demonize CRT but don't know what it means. CRT is a political view taught in many colleges about how racism in the law has harmed many people in society. Many evil people in AMerica murdered, enslaved, raped, lynched, brutalized, and dehumanized black people plus used laws to keep people oppressed. That reality is real. Racism is real today. One example is how Jann Wenner (who is the founder of Rolling Stone and co-founder of the Rock and Roll Hall Fame) said that he only interviewed white men for his book "The Masters" because he promoted the lie that black artists are not as "intellectually articulate" as "philosophers of rock." He is wrong, because even Mick Jagger admitted that the inventors of rock and roll and innovators of it were black people like Little Richard, Fats Domino, Big Mama Thorton, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, etc. who made a foundation for rock to exist now. Recently, Jann Wenner was removed from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Board. The contributions of black people in music, STEM, spirituality, education, etc. are very powerful indeed.