The Wall Street Journal rightfully laments the injustice and pain that the Putin regime has inflicted on Evan Gershkovich and his family, most recently in Gerard Baker’s article, Evan Gershkovich is Stronger Than Putin.

Mr. Baker need not have looked to a distant land to find not one but far more than a thousand examples of innocent people being detained “without evidence, due process or the rights of the accused.” And these innocent people have not been imprisoned for one year as has Mr. Gershkovich, but for three years.

The innocence of more than 1,200 detainees overlooked by Mr. Baker is as self-evident as is the innocence of Mr. Gershkovich. Nearly all of the January 6 arrestees merely followed the directives of Capitol police. And they did so as docilely as their conservative poll-watching brethren vacated election halls in contested states such as Georgia and Pennsylvania when strong-armed a few months earlier. For that, the J6ers have been dragooned through all seven circles of Dante’s hell. One older gentleman was arrested when he found himself searching for the restroom in the Capitol building. A total of one thousand years of prison time has been meted out to J6ers.

The ordeal of the J6ers began when the Department of Justice adopted Lavrentiy Beria’s Law: Show me the man, and I will show you the crime. Rather than arresting those who may have committed a crime, Biden’s FBI obtained “geo-fence” warrants. These warrants compelled Google, AT&T, Verizon and other cell service providers to identify everyone near the Capitol on January 6 via cell phone tracking.

Mr. Baker legitimately writes that… ”a kangaroo court keeps dutifully prolonging his [Evan’s] detention without trial.” Such is the case of the J6ers who are held in horrid conditions for years before trial and without bail. Even Elizabeth Warren decried the prolonged detention of the J6ers, way back in April of 2021, when she said, “Solitary confinement is a form of punishment that is cruel and psychologically damaging. And we’re talking about people who haven’t been convicted of anything yet.” Some of Biden’s political prisoners have been placed in solitary confinement for more than 100 days before they were charged with a crime.

The Administration’s political prisoners are denied any semblance of justice. DC is the most Democrat-voting, government apparatchiky district in the nation. Their judges almost unwaveringly grant prosecutors’ invariable motions to forbid defendants from mentioning their First Amendment rights. Many judges punish J6 defendants with “obstruction of justice” enhancements if they dare to testify in their own defense.

The administration’s political prisoners are subjected to one-sided trials based solely on government produced evidence. Defendants can only dream about speedy trials and often have their attorney-client privileges violated.

Journalist Steve Baker documented that prosecutors and government witnesses committed blatant perjury in at least one trial. But rather than investigate such perjury, Biden’s Department of Justice charged Steve Baker, with crimes. After three years of litigation, the conviction rate for J6ers is 100% before juries; and more than 99.5% before judges. These conviction rates are not seen anywhere in the world, save North Korea and during the reign of Saddam Hussein.

And how do the J6 sentences compare with those of others who have been accused of rioting? The average prison sentences for J6ers are by far the longest in American history associated with rioting or demonstrating. For instance, Stewart Rhodes is serving an 18-year prison sentence for seditious conspiracy despite never going in the Capitol and urging followers not to go inside. In contrast, the longest term served by Black Panthers who chased out the California legislature from the State Capitol with assault weapons in 1967 was one year in jail.

How does treatment in prison for Biden’s political prisoners compare to those of Putin’s political prisoners? Very few people can answer this question with authority. However, by appearances, Mr. Gershkovich has been treated humanely. The more than 1,200 prisoners that Mr. Baker could have cited have been treated so grotesquely inhumanely that some have committed suicide and 34 others petitioned to be relocated to the holding facilities at Guantanamo, where treatment would be more humane. Some of Biden’s political prisoners have lost hair and eyesight due to malnourishment. Deprived of visitors and religious services, they rot in cells with mice and cockroaches.

Similar to self-confession sessions run by Pol Pot and Josef Stalin, perhaps the only proven avenue for leniency for Biden’s political prisoners is for them to recant their political convictions. Stating that they believed the 2020 presidential election was fair and swearing to refrain from watching Fox News has helped a handful of arrestees.

Mr. Gerard Baker concludes his article by stating, “The oppression of an innocent man by an all-powerful state isn’t a testament to the strength of the state. It is a testament to the corrupt and terminal weakness of its values, to the fragility of its system.” The application of logic to Mr. Baker’s argument is that the Biden regime is no less morally rotten than Putin’s Russia.

• David Wanetick is the CEO of Davos in the Desert.

OPINION:

Canceling conservative lawyers undermines elemental fairness

John C Eastman, a former Supreme Court clerk and law school dean, has been recommended for disbarment in California over what the author considers a politically motivated scheme to discredit conservative lawyers.

America witnessed the woke’s most recent lawfare attack on Republicans a few days ago. California State Bar Court Judge Yvette Roland formally recommended that attorney John Eastman lose his law license. His license has already been placed on involuntary active status. What was this constitutional scholar’s crime? Interpreting the constitution.

The 2020 elections experienced a bewildering array of election irregularities. These concerns caused state legislators from four of the seven contested states to send letters to Vice President Mike Pence asking him to return their electors back to the states for reconsideration. John Eastman advised Mike Pence that as president of the Senate, he had the constitutional authority to allow the four states to reconsider their electoral slates. In fact, many Democrat opinions from the early 2000s supported Dr. Eastman’s position.

Mike Pence trampled on the four states’ requests while rushing to certify Biden as president. Then, Pence lied about what he did when he insinuated that Dr. Eastman counseled Pence to swap out electors and award the election to Donald Trump. In fact, Dr. Eastman advised the Vice President against awarding electors to Donald Trump. Realizing that the Constitution reserves the power to select electors with the states, Dr. Eastman just wanted Pence to honor the states’ requests for reconsideration of their electors.

For his plea to ensure the will of the electorate was represented by the states’ electors, Judge Roland echoed Pence’s lie and scolded Dr. Eastman by stating, “Eastman’s wrongdoing constitutes exceptionally serious ethical violations warranting severe professional discipline.”

Dr. Eastman’s ordeal is just one example of how the Left is aggressively seeking to systematically strip Republicans of legal counsel. The threat of not being able to find counsel to represent them when subjected to lawfare results in the paralysis of Republican candidates. Thus, woke politicians, judges, liberal media networks, and lawyers are undermining democracy by removing Republican candidates from the landscape.

Conservative lawyers face fines and disbarment

Lawyers brave enough to defend Republican plaintiffs face sanctions (heavy financial fines), reputational damage and disbarment. Judges are targets of intimidation by woke rioters. To wit, the US Marshals Service data reveals that serious threats against federal judges, which trigger investigations, rose to 457 in fiscal year 2023 from 224 in fiscal 2021. Further:

For more than 120 days during the summer of 2020, ANTIFA and other woke warriors targeted the federal courthouse in Portland, Oregon, triggering the arrest of more than 900 progressive activists.

Nine lawyers, some of which may have had connections with Donald Trump, were ordered to pay Detroit and Michigan a total of $175,000 in sanctions for challenging the 2020 election results.

The Arizona Supreme Court imposed sanctions on lawyers representing Republican Kari Lake for challenging defeat in the governor’s race. Separately, Republican leaders in Arizona, including the state’s GOP chair Kristina Karamo, and their attorneys were ordered to pay nearly $60,000 in sanctions over an election lawsuit.

Left-wing ideologue David Brock launched a “dark money” effort called 65 Project to disbar, publicly shame, and impoverish more than 100 lawyers who participated in filing post-election legal challenges to the 2020 presidential election results. Brock told Axios that he intends to “not only bring the grievances in the bar complaints, but shame them and make them toxic in their communities and in their firms.” He said, “I think the littler fish are probably more vulnerable to what we’re doing … You’re threatening their livelihood. And, you know, they’ve got reputations in their local communities.”

The 65 Project sought to disbar sitting United States Senator Ted Cruz for his views on the 2020 elections.

Rudy Giuliani’s law license was suspended in New York and Washington DC. These suspensions were issued without hearings, based largely on First Amendment-protected statements he made outside of any court of law. Also, a U.S. Bankruptcy judge declared that Mr. Giuliani’s bankruptcy would not relieve him of paying an egregious $148 million verdict against him for defamation.

One of President Trump’s lawyers during his impeachment trials, Michael van der Veen, had his house attacked and received multiple death threats. Another one of Trump’s lawyers had to take his family into hiding because his home was vandalized. The windows were broken and he says that he received close to 100 death threats.

I think we can all agree that a one-sided justice system that has been weaponized against conservatives is not something our founding fathers would support.

I urge Arizonans to listen to Dr. Eastman discuss the politically motivated legal and judicial attacks against him on April 17 in Ahwatukee when he keynotes Davos in the Desert’s Lawfare event.

• David Wanetick is CEO of Davos in the Desert, an anti-globalist movement dedicated to providing forums whereby business leaders, thought leaders and government officials share their ideas for safeguarding freedom and liberty.

OPINION:

One in 4 Americans owe back taxes, and 56% of Americans surveyed would find an unexpected $1,000 expense ruinous. So why should American taxpayers be expected to fund the World Economic Forum, attended by many of the world’s wealthiest people who fly to the event on their private jets?

Fortunately, Rep. Scott Perry, Pennsylvania Republican, has introduced the Defund Davos Act. The measure would prohibit the U.S. government from funding the World Economic Forum. “The World Economic Forum is steeped in authoritarianism and Marxist ideology,” according to Australian Sen. Alex Antic.

The Defund Davos Act and the WHO Withdrawal Act, introduced by Rep. Andy Biggs, Arizona Republican, deserve support. The unnecessary financial burden that globalist organizations drain from American taxpayers is the least of the reasons that the United States should halt its support of — or even participation in — globalist cabals.

There are three main reasons why I strongly oppose globalist institutions. First, I am concerned that many globalists seek democide. Dennis Meadows, who has served on the faculty of MIT and Dartmouth College and was a keynote speaker at the launch of United Nations University, said that the global population should be reduced to 1 billion or 2 billion people. Mr. Meadows said he hopes that the reduction of some 6 people or 7 billion people will be accomplished in a humane manner. The Cambridge University economist Sir Partha Dasgupta thinks the optimal human population could be as small as 500 million.

While not all globalists are forthright about their attraction to a radical reduction in the world population, they make no bones about wanting to control every aspect of our lives on the pretext of protecting the world from the hoax of climate change. As with so many other cults, such as David Koresh of the Branch Davidians and Jim Jones of the Peoples Temple, today’s cult of globalism instructs us that the only way to avoid climate change-induced Armageddon is to submit to every one of their commandments.

Many of these commandments, such as waging war against farmers and cows, are self-destructive. Are we really to believe that depriving people of food will save humanity? Or should we heed Nobel Prize-winning scientist John Clauser’s admonition that human-induced climate change is a hoax promoted by globalists “to depopulate the planet.”

Fascistic globalists and their domestic disciples have anointed themselves as the populace’s micromanagers. They seem determined to turn the United States into a lockdown nation. They dictate what kind of low-quality and short-lived stoves, air conditioners, washing machines, hair dryers and lightbulbs we can buy. They already control the temperatures in some of our homes. If the “woke” mob has its way, we will soon be restricted from buying gasoline-powered vehicles.

The combination of heightened demands on the electrical grid and the reliance on alternative energy to power that grid will lead us to the dark ages in the form of frequent, if not extended, blackouts. If central bank digital currencies are enforced, we may be penalized for traveling beyond our postmodern ghettos, soon to be better known as 15-minute cities.

Henry David Thoreau warned us about surrendering our liberties to others when he prophetically said, “When others think for you, they will soon stop thinking about you.” Subrogating our decision-making to unaccountable autocrats will not end well. People are difficult to control. As Kim Jong Un, Mao and Stalin realized, smaller populations are easier to manage. Swiss elitists may have come to the same conclusion.

Leaders of globalist organizations are neither elected by nor accountable to U.S. citizens. There are no votes or referendums on the mandates for vaccine administration, vaccine passports, censorship, the banning of meat, or the energy policies the globalists are pushing on the world. The decision-making in some globalist institutions, such as the World Health Organization, is not democratic. There are no appeals processes with these organizations.

Worse yet, these organizations are wildly intertwined. The European Union defers to the WHO. In some cases, deference is given from the WHO to the G7, the G20 or the United Nations, which in turn relies on the WHO or the World Economic Forum for its expertise. Given how incestuous these globalist gangs are, we have no idea who is ramming through policies that will affect every facet of everyone’s lives.

If the globalists are left unchecked, humanity could face a plight similar to that of the Uyghurs in China, where 25% of these Turkic Muslim people are confined to reeducation camps. Most of the other Uyghurs live with surveillance cameras in their homes and are required to host government-appointed minders in their homes and beds. Failure to conform is not tolerated. Every infraction — such as abstaining from alcohol or refusing to eat pork — is reported. The Uyghurs face genocide at the hands of the Chinese Communist Party. Women are forced to submit to sterilization and IUD placement.

As a result, Uyghur birthrates have plunged as much as 90% in rural Xinjiang.

• David Wanetick is CEO of Davos in the Desert, an anti-globalist movement dedicated to providing forums whereby business leaders, thought leaders and government officials share their ideas for safeguarding freedom and liberty.

The word “genocide” has been hurled around so much and so loosely in recent months that much of the public has built up an immunity to a term that should make the hair on the backs of our necks stand up. However, almost no one is talking about the most profound genocide that is currently taking place anywhere in the world. That is the systematic annihilation of the Uyghurs, the Turkic Muslim people residing in Xinjiang, China. 

Chandler residents will have an opportunity to listen to two leading Uyghurs discuss the Plight of the Uyghurs at a Davos in the Desert meeting in Chandler on February 12.

So why do I claim that Uyghurs are targeted for genocide at the hands of the Chinese government? 

Because Uyghur women from 18 years of age to those far past child-bearing age are subjected to forced sterilization and IUD placement. According to my discussions with Muetter Iliqud, a human rights lawyer and researcher at the Uyghur Transitional Justice Database, not even women in their mid-fifties who vowed never to become pregnant have been spared from being neutered. As a result, birth rates have plunged between 80% and 90% in some rural areas of Xinjiang. 

Since 2016, 900,000 Uyghur children have been separated from their parents and sent to orphanages where they are raised as Hun Chinese, according to Abdulkaim Idris, Executive Director of the Center for Uyghur Studies. Their immersion in Mandarin is so thorough that they forget their mother tongue.

Forced marriages are another means to de-Uyghurize Xinjiang.

As many as three million Uyghurs, or 25% of the population, are condemned to time in so-called “re-education camps”. In these detention facilities, women are routinely gang raped and men are savagely beaten. Tours in the “re-education centers” are usually for 60 days but easily last for a year for those who fail to demonstrate good behavior. Laboratories to facilitate involuntary organ transfer are located nearby. A further 13,000 Uyghurs have disappeared or been impressed into forced labor, where conditions are even worse. The release rate from these slave labor camps is only 4%.

The remaining 75% of the Uyghurs live in what can best be described as open-air prisons, where they are vulnerable to arrest for any reason at any time. Their every move is captured on surveillance cameras outside of their homes and inside their homes. As if this wasn’t enough, Mr. Idris notes that 1.1 million Hun Chinese have been sent to live with Uyghurs in their homes. Often, these uninvited male guests appear when the Uyghur husbands have been banished. They are not prohibited from sleeping in the same beds as the Uyghur women. These informants report to police when their Uyghur hosts abstain from eating pork or drinking alcohol, which are sufficient reasons to send them to detention facilities. 

Why is Chandler-based Davos in the Desert running an evening event highlighting the plight of the Uyghurs? First, Davos in the Desert does what it can to put a spotlight on some of the world’s most oppressed people. Our Gala featured Yeonmi Park, a notable North Korean defector. More recently we ran a program that brought attention to the terror that Hamas inflicts on the people of Gaza. 

Secondly, Davos in the Desert is an anti-globalist organization that is highly concerned about the globalists’ plans to micromanage our lives. Authorities in places like the United Nations, the World Economic Forum and the World Health Organization are scheming to dictate the foods we eat, the distances we can travel, the kinds of home appliances we can use and the vaccines that we are required to inject into our bloodstreams. They wish to track every movement we make through tools such as vaccine passports and digital currencies. 

Our Lockdown Nation conference, to be held a week before our Plight of the Uyghur event, will highlight that if we allow unelected and unaccountable authorities to make all of our decisions for us, we will soon end up like the Uyghurs.

David Wanetick is the CEO of Davos in the Desert

OPINION:

What Mark Twain said about learning German could now be applied to decoding “woke” messaging: “Such words should be held before mirrors so as to reverse their meanings.”

Inclusion means exclusion. Tolerance is an escape hatch for vigorous intolerance. Seeking truth is deemed propagating misinformation. Anti-racism is the new veil for racists to hide behind. Gender-affirming surgery means gender transformation. Science represents a unanimous and definitive conclusion: It is not something that should not be questioned.

Sometimes, propaganda is even more mendacious. This is true when it is used as a smoke screen to conceal the commission of the condemned act. For example, some Democrats claim that former President Donald Trump, the current Republican presidential front-runner, must be removed from ballots to preserve democracy, and that’s exactly what they recently did in Colorado.