{"id":1768184,"date":"2022-12-08T17:05:05","date_gmt":"2022-12-08T22:05:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1768184"},"modified":"2022-12-08T17:05:09","modified_gmt":"2022-12-08T22:05:09","slug":"a-shameful-prisoner-swap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/a-shameful-prisoner-swap\/","title":{"rendered":"A Shameful Prisoner Swap"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">8<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fa-shameful-prisoner-swap%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1768184&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>Not three years ago, Brittney Griner <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/sports\/2020\/07\/28\/brittney-griner-brianna-turner-call-wnba-stop-playing-national-anthem-this-season\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">refused to take the floor<\/a> when the WNBA played the national anthem before tipoff. &#8220;I think we should take that much of a stand,&#8221; she said at the time, arguing that &#8220;basketball doesn&#8217;t mean anything in a world where we can&#8217;t just live. We can&#8217;t wake up and do whatever we want to do.&#8221; Such is the plight, she said, of being black in America.<\/p>\n<p>Yet it was in part Griner&#8217;s race, as well as her sexual orientation\u2014she is a lesbian\u2014that made her detention by Russia in February a high-profile news story and turned her case into a cause c\u00e9l\u00e8bre for activists and journalists, but we repeat ourselves.<\/p>\n<p>It is also why the Biden administration on Thursday struck an ill-advised deal to trade Griner&#8217;s freedom for that of Viktor Bout, an arms dealer and weapons smuggler who was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.justice.gov\/opa\/pr\/international-arms-dealer-viktor-bout-convicted-new-york-terrorism-crimes\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">convicted in 2011<\/a> of conspiring to murder American citizens. Not included in the deal was Russia&#8217;s release of Paul Whelan, a white, cisgender, heterosexual former Marine arrested in late 2018 on trumped-up charges. For all of Griner&#8217;s complaints about being black in this country, she&#8217;s gotten far better treatment than her white counterpart.<\/p>\n<p>Whelan told CNN in a phone interview Thursday from a remote Russian penal colony that &#8220;I am greatly disappointed that more has not been done to secure my release, especially as the four-year anniversary of my arrest is coming up. I was arrested for a crime that never occurred.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Then there are the merits of the deal itself. Griner will be greeted as a hero when she touches down in the United States, but the Russian who will walk free is a dangerous thug who has earned his nickname: &#8220;The Merchant of Death.&#8221; His release will do grievous harm to American national security\u2014he was convicted for attempting to sell weapons to Colombian terrorists who would have used them to target American troops\u2014and <em>Politico<\/em>\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2022\/12\/08\/pentagon-arms-trafficking-griner-bout-00073034?nname=playbook-pm&#038;nid=0000015a-dd3e-d536-a37b-dd7fd8af0000&#038;nrid=00000155-7eab-d46e-abfd-7efb4c8e0000&#038;nlid=964328\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">reports<\/a> that Pentagon officials are already raising the specter that his release will fuel &#8220;conflicts across the world.&#8221; Griner is no hero.<\/p>\n<p>So how did this happen? The Russians concluded correctly that the Biden administration&#8217;s foreign policy is best understood through the lens of &#8220;antiracism.&#8221; The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ibramxkendi.com\/how-to-be-an-antiracist\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">concept<\/a>, popularized by Ibram X. Kendi, justifies new discrimination to account for historic discrimination. The decision to exchange a lesbian millionaire of color for a notorious arms trafficker at the expense of a Caucasian cisgendered<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Not three years ago, Brittney Griner refused to take the floor when the WNBA played the national anthem before tipoff. &#8220;I think we should take that much of a stand,&#8221; she said at the time, arguing that &#8220;basketball doesn&#8217;t mean anything in a world where we can&#8217;t just live. We can&#8217;t wake up and do whatever we want to do.&#8221; Such is the plight, she said, of being black in America.<br \/>\nThe post A Shameful Prisoner Swap appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":208,"featured_media":1768187,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[544],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1768184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-free-beacon"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1768184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/208"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1768184"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1768184\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1768187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1768184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1768184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1768184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}