Our lords and masters have squeezed every ounce of tyranny they can out of the COVID-19 pandemic and now they’re exploiting it further to squeeze the remaining ‘malcontents’ in our society — mostly white, Midwestern, conservative, Trump supporters — into line by disrupting our livelihoods.
Food suppliers are now warning anew that they are having a harder time keeping store shelves stocked amid supply chain and worker shortages that were created and exacerbated by the globalists in our government who are making one big push to enact their liberty-stealing counter-revolution before Donald Trump manages to win the presidency again in 2024.
Some of the largest U.S. food distributors are reporting difficulties in fulfilling orders as a lack of workers weighs on the supply chain.
Sysco Corp., North America’s largest wholesale food distributor, is turning away customers in some areas where demand is exceeding capacity. The company also said prices for key goods such as chicken, pork and paper products for takeout packaging are climbing amid tight supplies. In particular, production has slowed for high-demand, labor-intensive cuts like bacon, ribs, wings and tenders, Sysco said.
“There are certain areas across the country that are more challenged by the labor shortage and our volume of orders is regularly exceeding our capacity,” said Sysco Chief Executive Officer Kevin Hourican in a client letter earlier this month. “This has, unfortunately, led to service disruptions for some of our customers.”
According to an analysis by DecaData, a firm that tracks transactions between manufacturers and shoppers, retailer demand is pushing up against manufacturers’ ability to get enough product out the door as they begin stockpiling for the approaching holiday season.
The data show that in July, the number of times that suppliers capped or limited customer orders was twice the number of times in January.
Another large food distributor, United Natural Foods Inc., is also having difficulty getting product to stores on time. The company is blaming labor shortages as well as delays in receiving some imported products like coconut water, cheese, spices, and other goods as the reason for the delays.
“We anticipate additional supplier challenges in the short term with gradual improvement through the fall and winter,” a United Natural Foods representative told Bloomberg. The company’s top priority is to support customers “by working diligently to recover and bring their shelves back to normal inventory levels as quickly as possible.”
There is also a shortage of workers, due in no small part to the fact that the government is continuing to pay people to stay home, basically. Outsized unemployment benefits stemming from ‘COVID relief’ bills is the culprit, which was intentional by majority Democrats who constantly try to find ways to hook more and more Americans on the government teat.
Some distributors like Sysco are working aggressively to hire both truck drivers and warehouse staff, offering referral and sign-on bonuses as well as additional money to retain current employees.
The whole food sector is experiencing “massive labor shortages,” according to Benjamin Walker, Senior Vice President of Sales, Marketing and Merchandising at Baldor Specialty Foods, which is based in New York. “Service levels are the lowest I’ve seen in my 16-year career, and it doesn’t seem like it’s going away anytime soon.”
He went on to tell Bloomberg finding truck drivers is “next to impossible,” he said, while noting the double whammy of freight costs, which he says are rising daily.
This is going to get worse before it gets better, by the way, and there are a lot of experts who are saying so. As such, if you’ve got the means and there is supply in your area, better stock up now on food and other necessities.
After more than a year of committing scientific fraud to push false “positives” via PCR testing, the CDC has announced it is withdrawing the RT-PCR Diagnostic Panel on December 31st of this year:
After December 31, 2021, CDC will withdraw the request to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) of the CDC 2019-Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) Real-Time RT-PCR Diagnostic Panel, the assay first introduced in February 2020 for detection of SARS-CoV-2 only. CDC is providing this advance notice for clinical laboratories to have adequate time to select and implement one of the many FDA-authorized alternatives.
The use of PCR tests for covid illness diagnosis is a global scientific fraud, since no PCR instrument can produce quantitative results that might indicate a specific viral load. Yet this CDC-approved testing protocol was relied on to fabricate the “casedemic” illusion which pretended that hundreds of millions of people around the world were infected with covid.
The entire thing was an elaborate quack science hoax, and anyone familiar with PCR technology (see below) has known this from the very start.
The PCR testing approved by the CDC to diagnose covid was fraudulent from the very first day
PCR instruments are not quantitative instruments. They cannot tell you how much of something is present in a given sample. Every lab scientist familiar with PCR instruments knows this. Yet they continue to go along with the global fraud of diagnosing “positive” cases via PCR testing.
The entire covid “plandemic” has been based on fraudulent PCR testing, and now the CDC is announcing it is pulling the most frequently used test, perhaps in an effort to replace the test with yet another fraudulent protocol that can be controlled by health authorities to worsen the “pandemic” on demand (or, perhaps, claim covid has been eliminated and declare victory).
From the very start, the entire pandemic has been nothing but a globally coordinated PCR testing fraud. As Thermo-Fischer sales representatives told me in face-to-face meetings, PCR instruments cannot determine quantitative results. They do not use quantitative instrument calibration curves or quantitative external covid standards. This means PCR instruments have no legitimate role in diagnosing any person with illness or covid infections. The mere presence of a single viral fragment, multiplied trillions of times through PCR cycling, does not indicate anything of scientific or diagnostic value.
A Portuguese appeals court has ruled that PCR tests are unreliable and that it is unlawful to quarantine people based solely on a PCR test.
The court stated, the test’s reliability depends on the number of cycles used and the viral load present. Citing Jaafar et al. 2020, the court concludes that:
“if someone is tested by PCR as positive when a threshold of 35 cycles or higher is used (as is the rule in most laboratories in Europe and the US), the probability that said person is infected is less than 3%, and the probability that said result is a false positive is 97%.”
Similarly, the Austrian court has ruled that PCR tests are not suitable for COVID-19 diagnosis and that lockdowns has no legal or scientific basis.
The court pointed out that “a PCR test is not suitable for diagnosis and therefore does not in itself say anything about the disease or infection of a person”.
PCR analysts and lab science technicians are complicit in the global covid testing fraud
The entire covid pandemic is a farce, and it was all based on fraudulent PCR testing. Amazingly, even the PCR technicians and analysts all know this. They are taking part in a global scheme to destroy human lives and crush global economies, and they are fully aware that the limitations of their own instruments mean diagnoses of “positive” covid status based on PCR are meaningless.
I run multiple mass spec instruments in my private lab, including QQQ and ICP-MS instruments. I am the co-developer of two quantitative methods that were painstakingly developed for quantitating glyphosate molecules in food, and for cannabinoid concentrations in hemp extracts. I am intimately familiar with instrument calibration, external standards, curve fit equations and quantitative analysis. PCR instruments are not capable of any of this. They are useless for diagnosing infectious disease, as they cannot produce viral load concentration results from a given sample.
If you want to know how much of something is present in a given sample, you have to use far more complex instruments such as mass spec triple quad instruments (which is what I use to test foods for glyphosate contamination, among other things).
As Zero Hedge reports, even Dr. Fauci admits PCR testing is essentially a fraud when it comes to diagnosing covid illness:
Dr. Fauci, mid-November, 2020: “What is now sort of evolving into a bit of a standard… if you get a cycle threshold of 35 or more … the chances of it being replication-confident are minuscule… It’s very frustrating for the patients as well as for the physicians, somebody comes in, and they repeat their PCR, and it’s like [a] 37 cycle threshold, but you almost never can culture virus from a 37 threshold cycle. …So, I think if somebody does come in with 37, 38, even 36, you got to say, you know, it’s just dead nucleotides, period.”
Just as doctors, nurses and pharmacists are taking part in the global criminal covid con, PCR lab technicians and owners are gleefully participating in the same fraud, likely because they are earning huge profits from running fraudulent PCR tests that would never pass the scrutiny of any legitimate scientific test for accuracy or precision.
In fact, PCR tests are neither accurate nor precise. The concept of “precision” — which is of utmost importance in quantitative lab analysis involving pesticides, heavy metals, and so on — does not exist in PCR equipment. There is no such thing as precision when you’re multiplying genetic material in the sample itself. This process, by definition, destroys any meaningful knowledge of the mass or concentration in the original sample.
If the same approach were used in breathalyzer tests for possible drunk drivers, every living person would be arrested for a DUI, since there is at least one molecule of alcohol circulating in the blood of everyone.
The CDC is withdrawing this PCR method most likely because they know the test cannot withstand reasonable scientific scrutiny. They’re trying to cover their tracks and memory hole the fraudulent test that was used to drive the fake covid plandemic in the first place. But we already know the CDC is a criminal front for the vaccine industry, and that the CDC has no scientific credibility or authority whatsoever when it comes to legitimate infectious disease testing.
The CDC, just like the PCR test, is a complete fraud.
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) is once again attempting to eliminate your freedom to access dietary supplements, this time by slipping his own hidden bill into the upcoming appropriations bill, which is expected to be voted on at some point next week.
In an emergency announcement, Dave Hodges of The Common Sense Showwarned his listeners that the Codex Alimentarius scheme – it never went away, by the way – is being quietly slipped in while the government and mainstream media try to scare Americans about the latest Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) “variants.”
“Durbin wants to take away your right” to purchase dietary supplements, Hodges warns.
“Durbin’s bill that will be hidden within another bill, which should be totally illegal, is going to take supplements and not keep you from getting them,” but require that you get them through a doctor with a prescription, which will make them cost at least five times more – and the profits go to Big Pharma.
“This is the German model, and it’s in Durbin’s bill,” Hodges says. “I’m so sick of government thinking they can control every action. This is Marxism.”
Tell your Congress critter to vote NO on Durbin’s supplement prohibition bill
For a country that boasts being the “land of the free,” we sure do have to contend with more than our fair share of nanny state prohibitions on using nature. For decades, that prohibition centered mostly around healing herbs like cannabis sativa and psilocybin mushrooms. Now, Congress wants to make all of nature available only through prescription from a Western medicine doctor.
“We go to war to control our population. We go to war on freedom. We go to war on liberty. We go to war on individual choice. We go to war on people being successful. We tax them into oblivion,” Hodges laments. “That’s Dick Durbin. And Dick Durbin now wants to take away your options.”
“You’re in real danger of losing your access to supplements at the current price and availability that you have, and I thought you had a right to know.”
The Alliance for Natural Health – USA (ANH-USA) put up its own action alert complete with a submission portal for sending your comments of opposition to Congress.
If it slips through, Durbin’s bill will give enormous power to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to eliminate access to dietary supplements, which the agency has been trying to do for years.
“Senator Durbin’s goal is to create a mandatory product listing with the FDA, which seems innocuous but is far from it,” warns ANH-USA.
“The problem is that FDA is separately completing a process to eliminate every supplement from the market that doesn’t meet ‘new supplement’ notification requirements, which are akin to new drug requirements, and the FDA needs Sen. Durbin’s list to locate and pull and estimated 41,700 supplements from the market.”
In other words, Durbin’s bill is a bait-and-switch that at a glance might seem useful, but upon closer look is a Trojan Horse that serves the interests of Big Pharma.
“Drugs can afford these types of requirements because they are patentable in a way natural food supplements are not, which means that supplements do not have the ability to recoup the costs of complying with additional regulations,” ANH-USA further explains.
“This will either force companies to go out of business or it will make supplements so expensive that they are priced out of the market.”
Be sure to sign the petition calling for Durbin’s bill to be shot down and removed from the upcoming appropriations bill.
While they scare you with “variants,” Congress wants to make dietary supplements prescription only – TAKE ACTION NOW https://t.co/zvoLaU4Fyx
— The Tatty Journal (@TheTattyJournal) July 31, 2021
The French are gathering in the streets, chanting “liberte!” and the British are marching, demanding the arrest of UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson! European governments are rolling out vaccine passports as quickly as possible, forcing people to comply with endless medical experiments, bodily requirements, digital surveillance and tracking, and a two-tiered society that discriminates and segregates the unvaccinated.
The British government is rolling out vaccine passports for clubs, pubs and restaurants now, while demanding vaccine requirements for all workers across all industries. Great Britain’s Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) wants vaccine requirements for everyday workplaces, requiring office workers to use the NHS app to verify their compliance with the new world vaccine order. In order to have a job, the British will have to return to the office showing proof they have been “fully vaccinated.” The app will also be used to enforce all future booster shots required by the Big Pharma-Big Tech-Big Government dictatorship.
Great Britain mocks the principles of liberty and rolls out vaccine passports on “Freedom Day”
So far, the British government has coerced up to 10.4 million people to sign up for the NHS COVID pass, by threatening to take away basic freedoms if Great Britons do not comply. Ever since the vaccine verification requirements were added to the app on May 17, an influx of six million new users appeared in the NHS database. Introducing a medical apartheid to Europe, Great Britain’s Department for Health and Social Care states, “The app’s COVID-19 vaccine status service allows users easily to show their proof of vaccine, which will help people to travel abroad, start returning to workplaces and attend large-scale events as we cautiously proceed with the roadmap.” Many people would like to believe that the lockdowns are ending, but restrictions are not being lifted. The worst is yet to come. The controls are only becoming more strict, more discriminatory and more Orwellian with each passing month.
According to the DHSC documents, the vaccine passport system will be used as “a means of entry” anywhere where people are “likely to be in close proximity to others outside their household.” This means the vaccine passport will be incorporated into every aspect of society, a permanent fixture of enslavement and discrimination. The guidance threatens all industries to adopt these “sufficient measures” or else the government will “consider mandating the NHS COVID Pass in certain venues at a later date.”
The people are rising up across the UK, as resistance becomes necessary
Disgraced Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, announced July 19 as “Freedom Day” as he announced vaccine requirements throughout society. Thousands of Great Britons have gathered on Parliament Square to protest the new restrictions and upcoming segregation. “Can I clear it up for anyone wondering why thousands have gathered at parliament square freedom protest?” one freedom fighter commented. “Freedom is having the right to choose to wear masks or not without the constant threats of new winter lockdowns and vaccine passports. Today is not true freedom.”
Throughout the covid-19 scandal, governments have used the threat of infection to control entire populations, first telling people to stay locked down in their house. When that wasn’t enough, the police began visiting people any time of the day to make sure people were complying with stay-at-home orders. Government “contact tracers” were deployed to lock people down further and deprive them of their liberty. Basic medical rights and civil liberties were vanquished as forceful mandates were applied.
Today, the population is awarded their freedoms back when they comply with the government’s inoculation requirements. Now people will have to carry “papers” and show digital proof of vaccination if they want to get together with people and engage in activities outside their homes. But it doesn’t even end there. People who don’t comply with this medical apartheid are being threatened to live on the streets, with no job prospects, no career to advance. As the UK perverts the people’s freedom and destroys countless lives, there is nothing left to lose. Resistance is a necessary duty. Every individual must be treated equally under the law.
Hospitality chiefs said they do not have the technology to scan COVID vaccine passports and do not know how to check QR codes produced by the National Health Service (NHS) app as proof of double vaccination, immunity or a recent negative COVID test.
The COVID Pass is available through the same general NHS app as the travel certificate. It incorporates test results and naturally acquired immunity from COVID infection in the last six months.
The government has not set out exactly which venues will be encouraged to use the COVID Pass, stating only that it will work with venues that operate “large, crowded settings where people are likely to be in close proximity to others outside their household.” This could refer to pubs, restaurants nightclubs and venues of large events. (Related: England now ready to adopt vaccine passports for mass events.)
Business owners said the vaccine passports could be easily faked because they had not been supplied with the technology to check proof of identity.
A government spokesman said an app to allow businesses to scan QR codes would be released on July 17, just two days before the new guidance takes effect. But industry sources pointed out that many restaurants and pubs do not have QR readers and questioned whether staff would need to use their personal phones.
“It’s just another reason why this scheme is totally unworkable,” said Kate Nicholls, chief executive of UKHospitality.
“Without being able to scan the QR code, it makes it very difficult to prove this person’s actual COVID status. It won’t work on the door and I don’t know a single one of my members who will be ready to do this on Monday.”
Similar measure in France met with protests
In France, President Emmanuel Macron’s plan to require a COVID-19 vaccine certificate or negative PCR test to gain entry to bars, restaurants and cinemas beginning next month was met with dozens of protests. France’s new COVID laws will also make vaccination compulsory for healthcare workers beginning September 15.
The French authorities put the total number of protesters at 19,000. Some 2,250 people protested in Paris while other demonstrations took place in Lyon, Toulouse, Annecy, Bordeaux, Montpellier, Nantes and elsewhere.
In Lyon, police fired tear gas grenades to try and contain a large demonstration in the city center. At least 1,400 mostly young people had gathered to protests against Macron’s announcement, police estimated. Protesters allegedly threw projectiles at the police before the authorities responded with tear gas.
In Toulouse, a small rally was held by several “Yellow Vests” groups on Wednesday morning, while a small group of people in Annecy forced their way into the local council offices without causing any damage. Between 150 and 200 people remained in the courtyard of the building for over an hour, the Haute-Savoie prefecture said. Hundreds of people also gathered in Montpellier, Marseille, Perpignan and Rouen to protest against the restrictions.
Authorities from the Vladimir region ruled that QR codes were needed to visit restaurants, gyms, beauty parlors, hairdressers, cinemas and to stay in hotels.
The restrictions were criticized by local business operators who said in a statement the measures had been adopted in the middle of the tourist season and threatened the closure of thousands of firms in the service industries. “We have almost zero revenues. We don’t know what we can say tomorrow to staff the landlords, and suppliers,” said Dmitry Bolshakov, owner of the cafe chain Vladim Group.
Three days after the measures came into effect the authorities met business owners and agreed to ease some of the measures.
“It’s worse than a lockdown,” said Marina Zemskova, president of the association of hotels and restaurants in the Vladimir region. “Because if there was one, we would have a complete closure and could count on some kind of government support measures.”
Moscow had also required residents to present a QR code demonstrating they have been vaccinated against COVID-19 or have immunity in order to sit inside cafes, restaurants and bars since June 28.
But Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin recently announced on television that starting July 19 the Russian capital is “canceling mandatory QR codes in catering.”
In recent weeks we have been inundated with an idiotic narrative that “struggling” women are being kept out of the labor force due to lack of childcare. This narrative, which has appeared in tabloids such as Business Insider (“The April jobs report shows women are still struggling“) has been sparked by similarly idiotic statement by some of the most clueless Fed members, such as Neel Kashkari, whose quote here may explain where the confusion comes from:
KASHKARI: CHILDCARE ISSUES STILL KEY TO RESTORING ECONOMY
All of this, of course, is just to perpetuate the lie that there are other major factors at work besides the generous unemployment benefits that are keeping most Americans out of the labor force (spoiler alert: there aren’t – as long as Americans can collect hundreds of dollars every month for doing nothing, they will do just that and will not work).
To be sure, there was one – just one – data point that gave some validity to this claim, and it had to do with the composition of the April jobs report, which saw all the (modest) job gains go to men while women actually lost jobs.
There is just one problem with every such narrative that uses only one data point as justification: the next data point could easily crush it.
And that’s precisely what happened today, because buried inside the jobs report was the breakdown in job gains between men and women and… well, instead of talking about it, here it is for May: it’s self explanatory.
As the chart above shows, while women did indeed lose 8K jobs in April, they more than made up for its in April when they gained 398K jobs. At the same time Men gained 336K jobs in April and just 45K in May: tough to get the “childcare crisis” narrative in here. In other words, in the past two months, women have gained 390K jobs, while men have gained 381K. Oops.
And just to complete the picture – something the Biden admin propaganda refuses to do – here are the job gains by men and women over the past 12 months.
Some more cumulative job gains by sex, first since the start of the year:
men: +581K
women: +1,207K
And here is the data since the start of the pandemic.
The numbers:
Women have lost 3.3 million jobs since February 2020
Men have lost 3.8 million jobs since February 2020
With that we can officially discard the “women can’t work due to XXX” narrative, while leaves us with just the right answer: massive welfare handouts from Uncle Biden which has broken the job market, putting countless small businesses at risk and sparking the next crisis which will take place roughly around the time emergency benefits stop in September. Because if socialism has taught us one thing, it is that when you cut people off from free money, the result is usually very unpleasant.
What’s left are the ‘fatal synergies’ of soaring debt and leverage, diminishing returns on stimulus, the substitution of credit for savings and the coming deflationary tsunami that pops all the speculative bubbles.
Imagine a once modest but sturdy home built near a cliff to maximize the vistas. Over the decades, the foundation slowly degraded and the house moved imperceptibly closer to the unstable edge of the cliff. Those who observed the slippage and the potential for eventual disaster were either derided as alarmists or ignored.
Given the enviable location and views, the home rose in value and a series of increasingly gaudy additions were added, completely obscuring the once-modest exterior with cheap imitations of long-lasting, time-tested materials (plastic trim and brittle fake-marble veneers). The foundations of these ostentatious additions were slapdash, shallow and poorly made, as the goal was not durability but appearance.
The low-quality additions accelerated the slide to the unstable cliff edge, and in 2019 the viewing deck broke away and crashed into the canyon below. The repairs were hasty and the residents were assured all was well–in fact, better than ever.
In 2020, the weak foundation of the gaudiest, lowest-quality addition crumbled. The response of the owners was to fill the widening crack in the decaying structure and spray on a new coat of paint. There–good as new, the residents were told.
But this was not true. The house is now teetering on the precariously unstable cliff edge. Ironically, the vast majority of the residents have moved to the game room, which is now cantilevered over thin air. The slightest movement will tip the entire decayed structure over the cliff.
That decayed, precariously unstable structure is the U.S. economy, and Covid was the catalyst that nudged the economy right to the edge. Gordon Long and I discuss the causes and consequences in our new video program, Covid Has Triggered The Next Great Financial Crisis (34:46).
Chief among the many causes is a very basic one that’s easy to understand: America has consumed more than it has produced for decades, and filled the gap with imports purchased with borrowed money and currency created out of thin air.
As Gordon and I explain, this is a very well-worn path to instability and collapse:governments (which now include nominally independent central banks) have always responded to declines in productivity and affordable energy/materials, the expansion of a parasitic elite and excessive spending with the same bag of financial tricks:
1. They borrow more money, eventually borrowing more to pay interest on existing debts, greasing the slide to default and insolvency.
2. They defraud the users of their currency by devaluing the currency. In the old days, this was accomplished by substituting base metals for silver or gold in the minting of coinage. Eventually the coins contained only a trace of silver. Users soon caught on and the result was the coinage lost purchasing power, a.k.a. inflation destroyed the value of the officially issued money.
In today’s fiat currency regime, central banks create trillions of new units of “money” with a few keystrokes, effectively diluting the value of all existing currency.
3. Desperate for revenues, governments raise taxes, which despite all claims to the contrary by political leaders, fall most heavily on the productive middle class. Since the parasitic elite will never accept any consequential reduction of their wealth or power, the higher taxes and economic stagnation that result from these three policies crush the middle class, which was the engine of productivity and demand that enabled the parasitic elite to live large.
These are key dynamics in what Gordon calls the killing of the golden goose, theproductive synergies that generate widespread prosperity and opportunity.
What’s left are the fatal synergies of soaring debt and leverage, diminishing returns on stimulus, the substitution of credit for savings and the coming deflationary tsunami (53 min) that pops all the speculative bubbles, setting up the destabilization and cliff-dive of the entire decayed, flimsy structure–The Next Great Financial Crisis that cannot be papered over with more central bank legerdemain.
Britain’s corporate media are suddenly awash with stories wondering whether, or to what extent, the UK’s prime minister is dishonest. Predictably in the midst of this, the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg is still doing her determined best to act as media bodyguard to Boris Johnson.
In a lengthy article on the BBC’s website over the weekend, she presents a series of soothing alternatives to avoid conceding the self-evident: that Johnson is a serial liar. According to Kuenssberg, or at least those she chooses to quote (those, let us remember, who give her unfettered “access” to the corridors of power), he is a well-intentioned, unpredictable, sometimes hapless, “untamed political animal”. A rough diamond.
In Kuenssberg’s telling, Johnson’s increasingly obvious flaws are actually his strengths:
“Yet what’s suggested time and again is that the prime minister’s attitude to the truth and facts is not based on what is real and what is not, but is driven by what he wants to achieve in that moment – what he desires, rather than what he believes. And there is no question, that approach, coupled with an intense force of personality can be enormously effective.
“In his political career, Boris Johnson has time and again overturned the odds, and that’s a huge part of the reason why.”
The way Kuenssberg tells it, Johnson sounds exactly like someone you would want in your corner in a time of crisis. Not the narcissist creator of those crises, but the Nietzschean “Superman” who can solve them for you through sheer force of will and personality.
Lies piling up
Slightly less enamoured with Johnson than the BBC has been the liberal Guardian, Britain’s supposedly chief “opposition” newspaper to the ruling Conservative government. But the Guardian has been surprisingly late to this party too. Typical of its newly aggressive approach to Johnson was a piece published on Saturday by its columnist Jonathan Freedland, titled “Scandal upon scandal: the charge sheet that should have felled Johnson years ago”.
As this article rightly documents, Johnson is an inveterate dissembler, and one whose lies have been visibly piling up since he entered 10 Downing Street. His propensity to lie is not new. It was well-know to anyone who worked with him in his earlier career in journalism or when he was an aspiring politician. It is not the “scandals” that are new, it’s the media’s interest in documenting them that is.
And when the liar-in-chef is also the prime minister, those lies invariably end up masking high-level corruption, the kind of corruption that has the capacity to destroy lives – many lives.
So why are Johnson’s well-known deceptions only becoming a “mainstream” issue now – and why, in particular, is a liberal outlet like the Guardian picking up the baton on this matter so late in the day? As Freedland rightly observes, these scandals have been around for many years, so why wasn’t the Guardian on Johnson’s case from the outset, setting the agenda?
Or put another way, why has the drive to expose Johnson been led not by liberal journalists like Freedland but chiefly by a disillusioned old-school conservative worried about the damage Johnson is doing to his political tradition? Freedland is riding on the coat-tails of former Telegraph journalist Peter Oborne, who wrote a recent book on Johnson’s fabrications, The Assault on Truth. Further, Johnson’s deceptions have gone viral not because of the efforts of the Guardian but because of a video compilation on social media of some of Johnson’s biggest whoppers by lawyer and independent journalist Peter Stefanovic.
This shocking compilation of Boris Johnson misleading Parliament is now on 6.2 million views yet UK media continues to turn a blind eye
Part of the answer, of course, is that until recently the Guardian, along with the rest of the corporate media, had a much more pressing task than holding Britain’s prime minister to account for lies – and the corruption they obscure – that have drained the Treasury of the nation’s wealth, redirecting it towards a bunch of Tory donors, and subsequently contributed to at least a proportion of Covid-19 deaths.
The Guardian was preoccupied with making sure that Johnson was not replaced by an opposition leader who spoke, for the first time in more than a generation, about the need for wealth redistribution and a fairer society.
On the political scales weighing what was most beneficial for the country, it was far more important to the Guardian to keep then-Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and his democratic socialist agenda out of Downing Street than make sure Britain was run in accordance with the rule of law, let alone according to the principles of fairness and decency.
The Guardian's relentless attacks on Corbyn continue. We've compiled a list of over a 100 Guardian articles attacking Corbyn (a small sample). Take a look! (And if you haven't already, it really is time to #DumpTheGuardian.) https://t.co/zQDRqe1iyP
Now with Corbyn long gone, the political conditions to take on Johnson are more favourable. Covid-19 cases in the UK have plummeted, freeing up a little space on front pages for other matters. And Corbyn’s successor, Keir Starmer, has used the past year to prove over and over again to the media that he has been scrupulous about purging socialism from the Labour party.
We are back to the familiar and reassuring days of having two main parties that will not threaten the establishment. One, the Labour party, will leave the establishment’s power and wealth untouched, but do so in a way that makes Britain once again look like a properly run country, conferring greater legitimacy on UK Plc. The other, the Conservative party, will do even better by the establishment, further enriching it with an unapologetic crony capitalism, even if that risks over the longer term provoking a popular backlash that may prove harder to defuse than the Corbyn one did.Reopening Auschwitz – The Conspiracy to Stop Corbyn
For the time being at least, the elite prospers either way. The bottom line, for the establishment, is that the political system is once again rigged in its favour, whoever wins the next election. The establishment can risk making Johnson vulnerable only because the establishment interests he represents are no longer vulnerable.
Blame the voters
But for liberal media like the Guardian, the campaign to hold Johnson to account is potentially treacherous. Once the prime minister’s serial lying is exposed and the people informed of what is going on, according to traditional liberal thinking, his popularity should wane. Once the people understand he is a conman, they will want to be rid of him. That should be all the more inevitable, if, as the Guardian contends, Starmer is an obviously safer and more honest pair of hands.
But the problem for the Guardian is that Johnson’s polling figures are remarkably buoyant, despite the growing media criticism of him. He continues to outpoll Starmer. His Midas touch needs explaining. And the Guardian is growing ever more explicit about where the fault is to be found. With us.
Or as Freedland observes:
“Maybe the real scandal lies with us, the electorate, still seduced by a tousled-hair rebel shtick and faux bonhomie that should have palled years ago… For allowing this shameless man to keep riding high, some of the shame is on us.”
Freedland is far from alone in peddling this line. Kuenssberg, in her BBC piece, offers a variant:
“An insider told me: ‘He frequently leaves people with the belief that he has told them one thing, but he has given himself room for manoeuvre,’ believing that, ‘the fewer cast iron positions you hold the better, because you can always change political direction.’
“The verbal flourishes and rhetorical tricks are part of the reason why he has prospered. ‘A lot of his magic has been those off-the-cuff comments, that’s why a lot of the public like him,’ says an ally.”
In other words, we see what we want to see. Johnson is the vessel into which we pour our hopes and dreams, while he has the tough challenge of making our melange of hopes and dreams a tangible, workable reality.
Liberal journalists have been on this “blame the voters” path for a while. When it was Corbyn and his “dangerous” socialism being pitted against the Tories’ crony capitalism, the Guardian enthusiastically joined the smear campaign against Labour. That included evidence-free claims of an “institutional antisemitism” crisis under Corbyn’s leadership.
And yet despite the media’s best endeavours, Corbyn appalled journalists like Freedland at the 2017 general election by winning Labour’s biggest rise in vote share since 1945. Corbyn denied the Conservatives a majority and was a few thousand votes from winning outright – something Starmer can only dream of at the moment, despite Johnson’s exposure as an inveterate liar and conman. And Corbyn achieved this while the Labour party machine, and the entire corporate media, were vehemently against him.
Dangerous populism
It was in the wake of Corbyn’s unexpected success at the polls in 2017 that the Guardian unleashed its “New Populism” series, seeking to warn of a supposedly dangerous new political phenomenon that lumped the then-Labour leader in with rightwing populists such as Donald Trump, Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro and Hungary’s Viktor Orban. They were all part of a new wave of authoritarian, cult-like leaders who barely concealed their sinister, racist agendas, gulled supporters with promises divorced from reality, and most likely had secret ties to Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
In short, the Guardian’s thesis was that “the people” kept voting for these leaders because they were stupid and easily duped by a smooth-tongued charlatan.
This narrative was aggressively promoted by the Guardian, even though Corbyn had nothing in common with the rightwing authoritarians with whom he was forced to share star billing. He had spent his long political career on the backbenches, cultivating a self-effacing politics of communal solidarity and “standing up for the little guy” rather than pursuing power. And far from being a nationalist or nativist, Corbyn had dedicated decades to internationalism and fighting racism – though admittedly, in challenging the anti-Palestinian racism of Israel and its Zionist supporters he had left himself prey to disingenuous claims of antisemitism.
But after several years of emotional and ideological investment in “the people are dumb” approach, the Guardian seems in no hurry to drop it – until, or unless, the people can be persuaded to vote for an eminently safe, status-quo candidate like Starmer. The paper’s target has simply switched from Corbyn to the more plausible figure of Boris Johnson.
The Guardian dares not contemplate any alternative explanation for why voters continue to prefer the narcissist, corrupt, lying Johnson over Labour’s “Clean Up Westminster” Keir Starmer. But its reluctance to consider other explanations does not mean they cannot be found.
The problem is not that most voters have failed to understand that Johnson is corrupt, though given the corrupt nature of the British corporate media – the Guardian very much included – they are hardly well positioned to appreciate the extent of Johnson’s corruption.
It is not even that they know that he is corrupt but do not care.
Rather, the real problem is that significant sections of the electorate have rightly come to the realisation that the wider political system within which Johnson operates is corrupt too. So corrupt, in fact, that it may be impossible to fix. Johnson is simply more open, and honest, about how he exploits the corrupt system.
Over the past two decades, there have been several way-stations exposing the extent of the corruption of the UK’s political system, whichever party was in power.
Labour under Tony Blair overrode popular dissent, expressed in the largest marches ever seen in the UK, and lied his way to a war on Iraq in 2003 that led to the killing and ethnic cleansing of millions of Iraqis. UK soldiers were dragged into a war that, it quickly became clear, was really about securing western control over the Middle East’s oil. And the invasion and occupation of Iraq spawned a new nihilistic Islamic cult that rampaged across the region and whose embers have yet to be snuffed out.
Five years later, Gordon Brown oversaw the near-implosion of the British economy after Labour had spent more than a decade intensifying the financial deregulation begun under Margaret Thatcher. That process had turned the financial sector into the true power behind No 10. Both Brown and his Tory successor, David Cameron, not only refused to hold to account any of the white-collar criminals responsible for the collapse of the financial system, but instead rewarded them with massive bailouts. Ordinary people, meanwhile, were forced to tighten their belts through years of austerity to pay off the debts.
And in the background throughout this period, a global and local environmental catastrophe has been gradually unfolding that the political system has shown no capacity to address because it has been captured by corporations who benefit most from continuing the environmental degradation. The system has instead dissembled on the threats we face to justify inaction.
No price to pay
The truly astonishing thing is that those who lied us into the Iraq war, destabilising the Middle East and provoking an exodus from the region that has fuelled a surge in xenophobic politics across Europe; those who broke the financial system through their greed and incompetence and lied their way out of the consequences, forcing the rest of us to foot the bill; and those who lied about the ecological catastrophes unfolding over the past half century so that they could go on lining their own pockets; none of them paid any price at all for their mendacity, for their deceptions, for their corruption. Not only that, but they have grown richer, more powerful, more respected because of the lies.
One only needs to look at the fate of that unapologetic pair of war criminals, Tony Blair and George W Bush. The former has amassed wealth like a black hole sucks in light, and preposterously is still regularly called on by the media to pontificate on ethical issues in British politics. And the latter has been rehabilitated as a once-wayward, now beloved, irreverent uncle to the nation, one whose humanity has supposedly been underscored simply by making sure he was filmed “sneaking” a sweet to his presidential successor’s wife.
Perhaps not so surprisingly, a remedy to Britain’s self-evidently flawed political system was thrown up – in the form of Corbyn. He was a throwback, the very antithesis of the modern politicians who had brought us to the brink of ruin on multiple fronts. He was not venal, nor a narcissist. His concern was improving the lives of ordinary people, not the bank balances of corporate donors. He was against colonial-style wars to grab other countries’ resources. The things that made him a laughing stock with the political elite – his cheap clothes, his simple life, his allotment – made him appealing to large sections of the electorate.
For many, Corbyn was the last gasp for a system they had given up on. He might prove their growing cynicism about politics wrong. His success might demonstrate that the system could be fixed, and that all was not lost.
Except that is not how it played out. The entire political and media class – even the military – turned on Corbyn. They played the man, not the ball – and when it came to the man, any and all character assassination was justified. He had been a Soviet agent. He was a threat to Britain’s security. His IQ was too low to be prime minister. He was a secret antisemite.
Lying, cheating and stealing
In the United States, then-Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer warned Donald Trump back in 2017 that the US intelligence services would “have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you” should the president try to go up against them. Maybe Trump hoped that his secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, would offer some protection. Pompeo, a former head of the CIA, understood the dishonest ways of the intelligence services only too well. He explained his agency’s modus operandi to a group of students in Texas in an unusually frank manner in late 2019: “I was the CIA director. We lied, we cheated, we stole. That’s, it was like, we had entire training courses!”
With the campaign to destroy Corbyn, many saw how the British system was just as skilled and experienced as the US one in its capacity to lie, cheat and steal. Corbyn’s treatment offered an undeniable confirmation of what they already suspected.
Over the past two decades, in an era when social media has emerged as an alternative information universe challenging that of the traditional corporate media, all these episodes – Iraq, the financial crash, ecological catastrophe, Corbyn’s political assassination – have had deeply damaging political ramifications. Because once people sensed that the system was corrupt, they became cynical. And once they were cynical, once they believed the system was rigged whoever won, they began voting cynically too.
This should be the main context for understanding Johnson’s continuing success and his invulnerability to criticism. In a rigged system, voters prefer an honestly dishonest politician – one who revels in the cynicism of the system and is open about exploiting it – over one who pretends he is playing fair, one who feigns a belief in the system’s ultimate decency, one who lies by claiming he can pursue the common good.
If the system is rigged, who is really more mendacious: Johnson, who plays dirty in a dirty system, or Starmer, who pretends he can clean up the Westminster cesspit when all he will really do is push the ordure out of view.
Johnson is transparently looking out for his mates and donors. Starmer is looking out for a rotten system, one that he intends to makeover so its corruption is less visible, less open to scrutiny.
Liberals are mystified by this reading of politics. They, after all, are emotionally invested in a supposedly meritocratic system from which they personally benefited for so long. They would rather believe the lie that a good political system is being corrupted by rotten politicians and a stupid electorate than the reality that a corrupt political system is being exploited by those best placed to navigate its corrupt ways.
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Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His books include “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jonathan-cook.net.
When it overtook its social media rival, MySpace, even then few could have predicted that Facebook would grow into the big tech behemoth that it is today.
Moreover, who would have thought that a geeky billionaire named Mark Zuckerberg would become powerful enough to literally decide the outcome of presidential elections?
And yet, that’s what he did last fall.
Zuckerberg donated more than $400 million in “election grants” to counties mostly in key battleground states where D.C. establishment lawyers, PACs, lobbyists and operatives from both sides of the aisle stole Donald Trump’s shoo-in reelection.
Trump was sure to have some difficulties, we believed, because Democratic mayors and governors helped destroy his massively successful economy and blamed a Chinese-borne virus on him. But given the massive outpouring of support everywhere the former president went — and places he didn’t go that still saw massive Trump vehicle and boat parades — his reelection looked certain.
Biden, by comparison, along with his VP pick Kamala Harris, couldn’t draw flies to a BS contest. Virtually no one came out to see them at the limited rallies they did. Harris was so unimpressive to Democratic voters she was one of the first to drop out of the crowded Democratic presidential field. And Biden stayed in his basement for much of the campaign, limiting his exposure to gaffes, forgetful moments and times when he clearly couldn’t think straight or enunciate clearly.
So Zuckerberg stepped up and helped fund the effort to take away Trump’s sure-fire reelection victory by pouring hundreds of millions into the effort, and nowhere was his election interference more prevalent than in the battleground state of Pennsylvania.
Grant monies awarded to help fund the 2020 election in at least 21 different Pennsylvania counties were heavily skewed toward counties with high Democratic registration and recent voting turnout, an analysis from Broad + Liberty shows.
Pennsylvania Republicans are currently considering legislation that would change the rules for private grants such as these in future elections, requiring them to go directly to the Pa. Department of State to be distributed evenly. Similar bills have been passed in Georgia and Arizona and are being considered in other states.
The money was funneled through the nonprofit Center for Tech and Civic Life, which was founded in 2015. The org drew a lot of attention in the lead-up to the 2020 election when Zuckerberg and his wife Pricilla Chan gave it $250 million. A month later, the power tech couple added another $100 million; about $22 million of that money found its way to 21 Pennsylvania counties.
Republicans in the state smelled a rat right off the bat. They saw what was happening: The Zuckerberg-funded nonprofit was purchasing election infrastructure that would be used to drive Democratic voter turnout in a state nearly all political observers agreed would be vital to put in the Electoral College “win” column.
State GOP Rep. Jim Struzzi, who is a sponsor of the new legislation, noted that the actions undertaken by the CTCL are likely a violation of the 14th Amendment’s equal protections clause because “all eligible voters must be given equal access to their right to vote.” He said giving some counties grants while denying it to others is inherently unfair.
Democrats and at least one state judge disagreed, pointing to a CTCL grant to some counties that went for Trump by a 2-to-1 margin. But that is window dressing to make the grants look ‘bipartisan’ when far more money went to Democrat-heavy jurisdictions.
“We must put a stop to private money election grants to cities and counties,” said state Republican Rep. Eric Nelson. “Big tech significantly outspent government in selective areas resulting in a dangerous precedent for all future elections. I fought this before the election and will continue to battle tactics that result in the unequal treatment of voters.”
How about adding this: Zuckerberg should be arrested for election meddling.
The U.K.’s customs and immigration agency said efforts to digitally link vaccination records and travel passportsare currently underway. The endeavor aims to avoid long lines at access points when the U.K. reopens its borders, claim government workers. Thus, legislators and travel industry bigwigs have called to expedite the integration of vaccine records into travel documents in anticipation of returning travelers.
A Daily Mail report said the U.K. Border Force is working to enable electronic passport gates to automatically verify travel documents. It added that the plan will now permit automatic gates to check if someone has been vaccinated against the Wuhan coronavirus before they are allowed entry. Border Force hopes to have the system in place by mid-summer – but members of parliament (MPs) and travel industry figures want the changes sooner. They warned that travelers could spend up to 10 hours lining up for manual document checks if the plan is delayed.
Another report by The Times said documents such as passenger locator forms and negative COVID-19 test results can be digitally linked to travel passports. Once a traveler passes through the e-gate, the passport is automatically scanned and its details logged into the system. The appropriate quarantine rules can then be enforced on the newly-arrived traveler.
Electronic gates for passports have been closed since February of this year after the British government implemented more stringent verification measures. However, the lockdown exit roadmap drafted by Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the earliest date that non-essential international travel can resume is on May 17. Given this date, reopening the electronic passport gates in airports will help avoid the anticipated long lines.
The U.K. is readying itself to embrace vaccine passports
Government ministers have expressed confidence that electronic gates could be reopened by August. However, there are calls from MPs and the travel industry to move the reopening before the May 17 date pegged by Johnson.
Oxford West and Abingdon MP Layla Moran said that ministers need to take “urgent action” to ensure airports do not become the country’s “Achilles’s heel.” She suggested implementing measures to reduce overcrowding, improve social distancing and isolate passengers coming from high-risk countries. (Related: CBS declares vaccine passports as must-haves for 2021 summer travelers.)
Travel consultancy firm The PC Agency CEO Paul Charles emphasized the need to reopen e-gates at the soonest. He told the Times: “We’re forecasting [that] 100,000 [travelers] per day will enter the U.K. initially for May 17, so e-gates will have to reopen to cope with their demand.” Charles warned that keeping the e-gates closed will lead to lines “much longer than six hours” – up to “10 hours” even.
British ministers have nevertheless embraced vaccine passports as part of the new normal – whether for traveling to other places or simply visiting nearby establishments. Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs Dominic Raab insinuated in February that U.K. residents may have to present a coronavirus vaccine passport before they can enter a pub or restaurant.
Speaking to radio station LBC, the state secretary remarked that vaccine passports “[haven’t] been ruled out” and are just one of many proposals “under consideration” by Downing Street. However, these passports have to be first made “workable.” Raab also touched on whether an electronic form of the vaccine passport would come to fruition. “When we’re in that different world, … then all kinds of apps and … possibilities [for vaccine passports] will be open to us.”
But vaccine passports have dangers of their own – especially when it comes to privacy
However, vaccine passports also come with significant privacy risks. During a parliament session, British lawmakers questioned Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham about the general public’s use of these passports. She replied that such an endeavor would face scrutiny over its necessity and its sharing of health data.
“We’re talking about personal health information, which is a special category of data that requires controls,” Denham told parliament members. However, she continued that she is of the opinion that some of the issues surrounding vaccine passports “are beyond data protection.”
The information commissioner for the U.K. warned that such passports would give rise to a “two-tier” system. People who have been vaccinated against COVID-19 may have more liberties than those who cannot get the vaccines under this system. Denham remarked: “They touch on human rights, … on whether or not we’re going to create a two-tier society based on whether you have a [COVID-19 vaccine] in the arm.” (Related: Florida governor bans vaccine passports, as they create TWO CLASSES of citizens.)
Former UK Home Secretary Amber Rudd once said about Boris Johnson: “he’s the life and soul of the party, but he’s not the man you want driving you home at the end of the evening.”
Yet here we are, almost two years into his leadership, and the British media are still acting with shock and surprise over Boris’s antics. The British are a funny bunch. In all honesty, it seems people are more upset over his negative comments over the John Lewis furniture in No.10 Downing Street than they were when Johnson lied to the Queen in September 2019 to prorogue parliament. There certainly seems to have been more media coverage of it.
In fact, after criticising the decor he and his fiancee Carrie Symonds were left with after the departure of former Prime Minister Theresa May, a “John Lewis nightmare” as it’s been reported, Johnson took pains to dismiss reports that he had anything against the department store in question: “If there’s one thing I object in this whole farrago of nonsense … I love John Lewis!” he insisted. If only he had expressed similar regret over illegally proroguing parliament to try to stymie debate of the Brexit bill. But not Boris.
You do get the feeling though that the establishment have had enough of Boris. It’s as if they’ve decided his time has come. At one time he seemed like the only man who could ‘Get Brexit Done’ and indeed, he did successfully strike a deal with the EU and take Britain out of the trading bloc. But the media campaign against him of late has been overwhelming and packed full of sleaze and corruption scandals.
Firstly last month he was questioned by the media over whether he acted with ‘honesty and integrity’ during his relationship with US businesswoman Jennifer Arcuri, after she gave an interview to The Mirror with all the gory details of Johnson’s four year extra-marital affair.. Under his watch as Mayor of London, Arcuri was given £126,000 of public money in the form of grants for her company and event sponsorship. In addition she was given access to three foreign trade trips led by Mr Johnson. Seemingly Johnson had not committed any criminal wrongdoing, but should have declared a conflict of interest.
Then came Johnson’s controversial former advisor Dominic Cummings, clearly still bitter about his departure from Downing Street, who has spilled the beans on a number of the Prime Minister’s less tasteful comments. Cummings had clearly stored them up, waiting for the right opportunity to ‘pounce’. And this was it. The first claim is that Johnson said he would “rather see bodies piled high in their thousands” than order another Covid lockdown last autumn. This statement could be easily dismissed as fiction if it weren’t for the fact that two witnesses have come forward to say they would testify that the PM did indeed say that.
Aside from Johnson’s apparent lack of empathy, there are also leaked text messages which appear to demonstrate abuse of power as he promises billionaire businessman James Dyson he will personally ‘fix’ a tax issue so his employees could return to the UK. To be honest this will not come as a surprise to many, as cronyism appears to be rife in Johnson’s cabinet. (Earlier this year it was ruled that Health Secretary Matt Hancock had acted ‘unlawfully’ by not publishing the details of billion-pound PPE contracts, including one given to a friend and neighbour.) Labour and the SNP have called for a full independent public inquiry into why Tory donors and friends have been handed lucrative contracts, special access, tax breaks and peerages by Johnson’s government.
As author Paul Mason wrote in the New Statesman recently, the Conservative government is getting away with corruption ‘on an epic scale”. He said: “In short, we are adrift in a sea of corruption, past and present. If you’ve been anywhere near power, you know how this works. None of it is done in secret. It’s done with the connivance and the blind eye of everyone who sees it happen. Nobody asks awkward questions such as, why is this guy even in the room? Nobody who wants a promotion or an invite to the summer party, that is.”
Paul Mason also added the rather concerning, but valid observation that nobody seems to care. Indeed one does wonder what it would take in the UK for people to protest at such government impropriety. For all our boasting about democracy, it seems when it comes down to it, we’d rather accept the status quo than ruffle any feathers. In England people voted for Boris Johnson, after all, fully aware of his character. As Gina Miller wrote earlier this year in The Guardian: “It is not the British way to make a fuss, and no doubt there are those who think even now that the government taking it upon itself to break the law in “very specific and limited ways” isn’t something to be too concerned about.”
Therefore it is likely that Boris Johnson will survive this latest fiasco. After all, he has endured so many scandals throughout his colourful career to date, and come off relatively unscathed. Some would even say it makes him more human. And of course, the main thing is that he really does love John Lewis.
On Saturday the 24th April one million people descended onto London to protest against the mandated lockdown, which has seen countless deaths, job losses and self destructive behaviour sky rocket. That’s even before we get into deaths which are claimed to be because of Coronavirus.
How is it though… one million people can trot on down to London, and not burn a single thing down, shoot one person and literally just end up dancing and hugging each other all day?
What is it America? Or you one spanner short of a tool box? Have you not passed the next level yet? It’s okay to be pissed off, and hate the shit society implements on us mere subjects of existence, but at the end of the day, we are still very much all in this together. Anyway, here you go America, this is how you act when wanting to make a difference in the world… just a heads up like…
With the CIA branding itself as a woke Western intelligence agency, it was only a matter of time before the UK’s MI6 tried to one-up their US counterpart; potentially spying on the world’s biggest polluters. In something that sounds like it should belong on The Onion or Babylon Bee, the head of the UK’s Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) – commonly known as MI6 – suggested that they should engage in so-called “Green Spying” on nations which make climate change pledges in order to make sure they’re keeping them.
In comments to Times Radio, MI6 head Richard Moore – known as “C” – claimed that man-made climate change is “foremost international foreign policy item for this country and for the planet,” adding: “Our job is to shine a light in places where people might not want it shone and so clearly we are going to support what is the foremost international foreign policy agenda item for this country and for the planet, which is around the climate emergency, and of course we have a role in that space.”
No doubt actual terrorists and enemy operatives will feel relieved that countless valuable resources will be poured into this supposed top agenda of ensuring industrialized countries will “keep climate change promises”. We can imagine they’re having a good laugh in the halls of Beijing’s intelligence bureaus…
To some degree the Brits appear to be following the lead of the United States. The Biden administration was the first to elevate climate change to the level of a “national security” matter after he made John Kerry his ‘Climate Envoy’ – with a seat on the National Security Council. Last week, Biden announced at a climate summit that the United States would cut emissions in half by 2030 after having rejoined the Paris Climate agreement shortly after taking office.
Perhaps it’s only a matter of time before the CIA or NSA launches their own “green spying” operations – if they haven’t already.
After twenty years, the United States government – and the forces of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) – will depart from Afghanistan. They said that they came to do two things: to destroy al-Qaeda, which had launched an attack on the United States on 11 September 2001, and to destroy the Taliban, which had given al-Qaeda a base. After great loss of life and the further destruction of Afghan society, the US departs – as it did from Vietnam in 1975 – in defeat: al-Qaeda [covertly supported by the US] has regrouped in different parts of the world, and the Taliban is set to return to the capital, Kabul.
The speaker of Afghanistan’s parliament, Mir Rahman Rahmani,warns that the country is poised to enter a new period of civil war, a repeat of the terrible civil war that ran from 1992 to 2001. The United Nations calculates that in the first quarter of 2021, civilian casualties rose by 29% compared to last year, while the number of women casualties increased by 37%. It is unclear if there will be further talks between the Taliban, the Afghan government of President Ashraf Ghani, the Turks, the Qataris, the United States, and the United Nations. Afghanistan sits on the brink of further violence, whose impact can so aptly be described by the words of the poet Zarlasht Hafeez:
The sorrow and grief, these black evenings, Eyes full of tears and times full of sadness, These burnt hearts, the killing of youths, These unfulfilled expectations and unmet hopes of brides
‘Saving’ Afghan women, advancing the cause of human rights: these words have lost meaning after two decades. As Eduardo Galeano put it, ‘Every time the US “saves” a country, it converts it either into a madhouse or a cemetery’.
Alicia Leal (Cuba), Un soldado de América, 1997.
The US government calculates that this war, which would enter its twentieth year, is the longest US war in the modern period (the US engagement in Vietnam lasted for fourteen years, from 1961 to 1975).
But this war in Afghanistan is not the longest war prosecuted by the United States government. There are two US wars that continue: a war against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea or DPRK (since August 1950) and against Cuba (since September 1959).
Neither of these conflicts have ended, with the US continuing to execute hybrid wars against both the DPRK and Cuba. A hybrid war does not necessarily require the full arsenal of a military to come into force; it is a war fought through the control of information and financial flows as well as the use of economic sanctions and illicit means such as sabotage. There is no question that the longest and unfinished US wars have been against Korea and Cuba.
Sixty years ago, on 17 April 1961, the CIA’s Brigade 2506 landed at Cuba’s Playa Girón (‘Bay of Pigs’). The Cuban people resisted this invasion as they would six decades of hybrid war against their sovereign revolutionary processes. Cuba has never threatened the United States; it never has violated the UN Charter of 1945. The United States, on the other hand, has routinely threatened the Cuban people. In October 1962, when the Soviets sent a missile cover to protect Cuba, General Maxwell Taylor, the head of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, planned for a full-scale invasion. In this now-declassified memorandum, Taylor pointed out that such a military venture might result in 18,500 casualties on the US side because of the determination of the Cubans to protect their land and their political project. The plot was to reinstate the old Cuban oligarchy that had sought refuge in Miami and turn Cuba back into a gangster’s paradise.
After the Cuban government sent troops to assist the national liberation project in Angola in November 1975, US Secretary of State Henry Kissingertold his team on 24 March 1976, ‘if we decide to use military power, it must succeed. There should be no halfway measures – we would get no award for using military power in moderation. If we decide on a blockade, it must be ruthless, rapid, and efficient’. The US planned to mine Havana’s harbour and bomb Cuba’s cities. ‘I think we are going to have to smash Castro’, Kissinger told US President Gerald Ford. Ford replied, ‘I agree’. Such is the attitude of the US government, from 1961 to the present.Human Rights Rhetoric at the UN Is Not Enough to Combat the US Blockade on Cuba
Carlos Garaicoa (Cuba), Puzzle la Malenka, 2009.
Before he left office in January 2021, US President Donald Trumpplaced Cuba on the US government’s ‘state sponsors of terrorism’ list. Seventy-five US lawmakers asked his successor, President Joe Biden, to reverse this decision. On 16 April, Biden’s press secretary Jen Psakitold the briefing room that ‘A Cuba policy shift or additional steps is currently not among the President’s top foreign policy priorities’. Biden, in other words, has decided to passively continue Trump’s policy, dictated to him by the likes of Republican Senators Marco Rubio and Rick Scott from Florida and Senator Ted Cruz from Texas (as well as Democratic Senator Robert Menendez from New Jersey). Biden has opted to persist in this cruel six-decade long policy to suffocate the Cuban people.
Just after the 1959 Cuban Revolution, the US government made it clear that it would not tolerate a sovereign Cuba only 145 kilometres from Florida’s coast. Cuba’s commitment to people over profit is a standing rebuke of the hypocrisies of the United States rulers. This has been clarified once more during this pandemic, during which the infection and death rates per million are strikingly higher in the US than in Cuba (recent figures indicate the US has recorded 1,724 deaths per million, whereas Cuba stands at 47 deaths per million). While the US locked itself into vaccine nationalism, Cuba’s Henry Reeve Brigade of doctors continued with their work amongst the world’s poorest people (for this, of course, they deserve the Nobel Prize for Peace).
Unable to successfully invade Cuba, the US has persisted with a tight blockade of the island. After the fall of the USSR, which had provided Cuba with ways to circumvent the blockade, the US attempted to tighten its grip on the island. US lawmakers then attacked Cuba’s economy through the Cuban Democracy Act (1992) and the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act (1996) – both laws with names that demean the words in them. From 1992 onwards, the UN General Assembly has voted overwhelmingly for the United States to end this blockade. A group of UN Human Rights Council Special Rapporteurs wrote a statement calling on the US to withdraw these measures, which have only made Cuba’s attempt to fight the pandemic harder.
The Cuban government reported that between April 2019 and March 2020, Cuba lost $5 billion in potential trade due to the blockade; over the past almost six decades, it has lost the equivalent of $144 billion. Now the US government has deepened the sanctions against shipping companies that bring oil to the island. The head of US Southern Command, Admiral Craig Faller, described Cuba’s medical internationalism as a ‘regional corrosive influence’. There is cruelty in Washington.
Far from the bitterness of the US government, the Cuban communists held their eighth Party Congress, where the discussion was on how to improve the state enterprises and how to innovate to meet the aspirations of the Cuban people. Deputy Prime Minister Inés María Chapman said that the party members must be active in their communities to build and defend socialism. Rafael Santiesteban Pozo, president of the National Association of Small Farmers, said that working people must produce more with what resources are available. Minister of Economy and Planning Alejandro Gil pointed to the need for greater efficiency in the state enterprise system, the expansion of self-employment, and the expansion of cooperatives.
These are serious people who recognise the problems but are not overwhelmed by them; they are part of a project that has fought to defend its sovereignty against enormous odds since 1959. Defeat is not in their vocabulary. Their agenda is hopeful, unlike the bilious agenda that comes from the US government and the Miami-based Cuban oligarchy.
At this Congress, Raúl Castro stepped down from his post. Castro, one of the original Cuban revolutionaries, had been imprisoned for his role in the Moncada uprising of 1953. Upon his release, he went to Mexico with his brother Fidel and then returned on the Granma to lead the rebellion against the US-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista. After the victory of the Revolution, Castro served in the government and as a leader in the Communist Party, guiding it alongside Fidel and others through the difficult Special Period (1991-2000) and then continuing to lead it after Fidel’s death in 2016. His quiet role in defending and elaborating the Cuban Revolution has been immense.
José Rodríguez Fuster (Cuba), Granma, 2013.
After the Playa Girón attack by the CIA, the Spanish poet Jaime Gil de Biedma wrote a poem about Cuba called ‘During the Invasion’ (collected in Moralidades, 1966). The Venezuelan poet Diego Sequera translated this poem for us as we celebrate the 60th anniversary of the defeat of the US on those beaches:
The morning newspaper is open on the tablecloth. The sun glows in the glasses. Lunch at the small restaurant, a working day.
Most of us remain silent. Someone speaks with an elusive voice; these are conversations with special sorrow about the things that always happen and that never end, or that end in disgrace.
I think that at this time of day, the sun rises in Ciénaga; nothing is yet decided, combat doesn’t stop, and I look in the news for some hope that doesn’t come from Miami.
Oh, Cuba in the distant dawn of the tropics, when the sun is simmering, and the air is clear: may your land sow tanks and your broken sky be grey from the wings of airplanes.
With you are the people of sugar cane, the man of the streetcar, those from the restaurants, the thousands of us that today search in the world for a bit of hope that doesn’t come from Miami.
On 13 April 2021, the government of the Federal Republic of Germany amended or tightened the Infection Protection Act (§ 28b IfSG). It is the draft of a Fourth Law for the Protection of the Population in the Event of an Epidemic Situation of National Significance.
In reality, this so-called “Federal Emergency Brake” slows down the legally guaranteed basic rights of citizens.
The renowned legal scholar Volker Boehme-Neßler adds: The planned coercive measures such as de curfews are “unconstitutional, dictatorial and against human nature” (2).
The German Bundestag will decide next week on this legislative path to open dictatorship.
Rudolf Hänsel, April 17, 2021
The German national anthem, as a state symbol, was protected from denigration in a special way. But for months it has been dragged deeper and deeper into the mud by a corrupt clique of politicians on behalf of a billionaire and power “elite” and is now only valid for them, no longer for the common people.
A minority of people, who exploit, enslave, sow discord, injustice and lack of freedom, has taken over the scepter worldwide. And whoever believes that he can speak and negotiate with this other side, these ruling beneficiaries, who have the whole thing in their hands, is mistaken.
No! They are so sick that no negotiation is possible with them. It was still like that in the story: When the working people went on strike for their right to freedom, justice, security, peace and a life worthy of a human being and took to the streets for their children, the governments first used the police and then the military – and finally let them shoot.
The text of the German national anthem is the third verse of the poem “Das Lied der Deutschen” and was written by August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben in 1841 on Helgoland and set to music by Joseph Haydn:
“Unity and Justice and Freedom / for the German Fatherland!
Let us all strive for this / Brotherly with Heart and Hand!
Unity and Justice and Freedom / are the Promise of Happiness:
Flourish in this Blessing’s Glory, / Florish, German Fatherland!”
What has remained of all this in Germany?
The passing of the new so-called infection protection law last week is only one example of many for the omnipotence fantasies of politicians and the increasing compulsion, the permanent rule changes and threats, the sickening isolation detention of adults and their children, the restricted freedom of movement, the psychological programming and finally the systematic destruction of the human psyche (David Icke). The formerly “silent” dictatorship of democracy was secretly transformed into an open dictatorship.
Mahatma Gandhi, the Indian lawyer, moral teacher and pacifist, showed the world in the last century what strength a person with an unbending will can develop and what he can achieve through it. His motto was:
“Strength does not come from physical abilities. It comes from an unbending will.”
The Indian independence movement, of which he was the intellectual and political leader, took up his idea of non-violent action and “Civil Disobedience” and in August 1947 reached the end of British colonial rule over India. Why should we not develop this unbending will?
“When I think of Germany at night, / Then I am deprived of sleep,
I can no longer close my eyes, / And my hot tears flow.”
Hollywood film director Aaron Sorkin has smeared Trump supporters, tens of millions of Americans as racists and bigots.
Now he is attacking Americans who tolerate Trump supporters, saying that they are akin to apologists for racists.
Aaron Sorkin made the bizarre contrast during a podcast interview with Michael Moore. At one point in the episode, the conversation turned to Sorkin’s recent Broadway play To Kill a Mockingbird, adapted from Harper Lee’s classic novel. In the interview, Sorkin claimed Atticus Finch repeatedly makes excuses for his racist neighbors.
“Atticus is an apologist for racists,” he said. “His whole thing about you have to walk a mile in someone’s else’s shoes. You really have to get inside someone’s skin and crawl around before you can really understand them. That was a way of excusing Bob Ewell… he excuses his neighbor Mrs. Henry Dubose… He excuses the whole South.”
Sorkin then compared Atticus Finch to Americans who tolerate Trump supporters.
“All you had to do, Mike, was look around. We were all saying the same thing about the tens of millions of people supporting Donald Trump. I don’t get it. Yeah, we’ve always disagreed, all of us here in America. But we all have eyes and ears, right? We’re looking at the same person. What are you talking about?”
Michael Moore then repeated Sorkin’s point of view, saying Americans shouldn’t reach across the aisle to their political adversaries.
“No actually, I don’t need to understand why they’re racists. They’re racists.”
Aaron Sorkin was promoting his recent Netflix movie The Trial of the Chicago 7, which is nominated for six Academy Awards, including best picture and original screenplay.
Back in 2016, Sorkin described Trump’s presidential victory as a win for the Ku Klux Klan, white nationalists, sexists, racists, and “buffoons.”
“Angry young white men who think rap music and Cinco de Mayo are a threat to their way of life (or are the reason for their way of life) have been given cause to celebrate,” he wrote in a letter to his daughter published in Vanity Fair.
Vaccine passports could be about to become a reality as trials get underway to allow mass events to take place again and as countries begin to lift coronavirus lockdowns, biometric identification is coming in to help verify those who have already had the infection, carried out a recent test or had a vaccine.
Any “Covid passport” scheme to prove people in England are safe to attend mass-audience events would be “time-limited”, the government has said, and the Sports Minister Nigel Huddleston said the trials would be a “learning experience” and that no decisions have yet been made about processes or vaccine certification. Meanwhile in Scotland, Sturgeon says vaccine passports could be trialled soon.
Biometric IDs can be ‘gamechanger’ in coronavirus antibody tests, vaccineAs countries begin to lift coronavirus lockdowns, biometric identification can help verify those who have already had the infection, and ensure that the vulnerable get the vaccine when it is launched, health and technology experts said.
It states that the “new biometric ID systems can keep a record of such people and those getting the vaccine”, said Larry Dohrs, Southeast Asia head at iRespond, a Seattle-based non-profit that launched its technology last year for this purpose. “We can biometrically identify the individual and tie them to the test results, as well as to a high security documents. The person then has ‘non-refutable’ proof that they have immunity due to antibodies in their system,” he said.
Governments around the world are now saying that Biometric IDs could be ‘gamechanger’ for tests, vaccines, and it’s the only way for us to come out of lockdowns. These digital identity systems have already been used in many countries before, linking biometric data such as fingerprints and iris scans to a unique digital codes, allowing for remote identification. See India Aaadhar and China.
It’s interesting because iRespond’s partners include the usual suspects, Microsoft, ID2020 and the John Hopkins University School for Public Health. iRespond worked with the ID2020 Alliance which is a public-private partnership committed to improving lives through digital identity. In September 2015, the United Nations adopted the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, which stressed its commitment to “provide legal identity for all, including birth registration” by 2030.
The mission of the ID2020 alliance is “Accelerating technology to ensure that everyone in need has access to a unique digital identity as part of their basic human right.” And they plan to provide a digital ID for everyone on an international scale.
According to their site, “A unique convergence of trends provides an unprecedented opportunity to make a coordinated, concerted push to provide digital ID to everyone,” During the 2019 summit, ID2020 announced its latest program “Recognizing the opportunity for immunization to serve as a platform for digital identity, this program leverages existing vaccination and birth registration operations to offer new-born’s a persistent and portable biometrically-linked digital identity.”
When you read further, these ‘trends’ include rising global connectivity, emerging technologies such as blockchain and biometrics and a global call for a “New model of ID.”
iRespond also worked with ID2020 on a decentralised digital identity project for refugees in Thailand and they also carried out a similar project for vaccinating against HPV in Sierra Leone again linking to digital ID’s. iRespond’s technology connected four major hospitals, enabling them to share anonymous vaccination data across a centralised digital health network.
Now, firms such as iRespond and Simprints, a UK-based non-profit that develops biometric IDs for health and humanitarian use are adapting their technology for the next steps. Many biometric systems are based on fingerprints, which can be a transmission risk for the coronavirus, so Simprints is developing a “touchless” technology that scans the face or the palm, said chief executive Toby Norman.
It noted specifically that “the pilot will offer blockchain-based digital identification, linked to individual users through iris recognition, for refugees accessing the IRC’s services in the Mae La Camp in Thailand.” Having a “digital identity” would allow refugees “to access improved, consistent healthcare within the camp” with plans for the same system to eventually “electronically document both educational attainment and professional skills to aid with employment opportunities.”
It was revealed to be just the first step in an effort that aims to equip the projects entire refugee population with secure and portable “digital wallets” that will hold not just their medical records but also their educational and vocational credentials, camp work histories and myriad other records,” ostensibly including financial activity.
This is particularly likely given that iRespond also partnered with Mastercard, another ID2020 partner that is closely allied with the company, Trust Stamp, a biometric identity platform that also doubles as a vaccine record and payment system. Everest who works with ID2020 and defines itself as a “decentralized platform incorporating a massively scalable payment solution, Everchain, with a multi-currency wallet, EverWallet, and a native biometric identity system, EverID. Everest delivers a complete solution for a ‘new economy.’”
Were these pilot project pre cursers to the digital identity systems now rolling out across the world, the same companies involved in the pilots are the same ones now being used to roll out Vaccine Passports.
Indeed, the plan could very well be to link our biometric data with face recognition cameras and Digital ID which will contain an abundance of data, right now our health and vaccine data, but that platform could be easily extended to include payments at any point depending on future events.
We already know the Covid-19 vaccine passport app could require people to give their location data to a central database meaning people could be tracked in real time.
"Someone on the door has to be sure the person in front of them owns the credential."
iProov founder and chief executive, Andrew Bud tells Sky News how a vaccine passport smartphone app may work.
Vaccine Passports could setup the backbone for an oppressive digital ID and tracking system which may lead to a health apartheid that would be incompatible with a free and democratic country. This may normalise identity checks, health inspections and increase state control snooping over citizens.
Vaccine Passports could also constitute one of the most fundamental alterations between the individual’s relationship with the state in our modern period. If followed to the natural conclusion, they would be far more radical and far-reaching than Tony Blair’s plans for ID cards. The scheme if not decentralised could potentially hand government and private companies our intimate medical information and threaten to make that intrusion a precondition of participation in civic life.
They are inducting us into a system, a Verifiable Credentials (VCs), non-standard decentralized identifiers (DIDs) and #Blockchain system.
This is to create for us a digital identity and to prepare us, not only for the next pandemic, but maybe for payments, the possibilities are endless and once we are in this system, it’ll be almost impossible to get out.
Observers are in a passionate debate over what’s really driving the latest Donbass destabilization, with the most prominent hypotheses being either domestic Ukrainian politics or the US’ regional geostrategic ambitions, but the argument can also compellingly be made that the concept of so-called “vaccine nationalism” is playing a largely under-discussed role in events.
The Two Main Hypotheses
Donbass is on the brink of major destabilization once again, yet observers are in disagreement over what’s really driving the latest events. Some believe that domestic Ukrainian politics are to blame and that Kiev’s ruling party aims to provoke a regional crisis in order to distract from its plummeting popularity. Evidence in support of this hypothesis includes the government’s recent witchhunt against opposition figures and its draconian banning of many Russian-language media outlets in the country. President Zelensky also promulgated a decree late last month which practically declares war on Russia and explicitly threatens Crimea. The other theory about the US’ regional geostrategic ambitions is backed up by the its ominous statement of support for Ukraine as well as Washington’s preexisting motives for destabilizing Moscow’s western periphery, which prompted Russia to promise its own ominously support for its passport holders in the country. Both theories have a lot of truth to them, but they’re missing a crucial component which could complete the strategic picture.
“Vaccine Diplomacy”
That’s the concept of so-called “vaccine nationalism”, which refers to countries’ efforts to promote their COVID-19 vaccines abroad while also sometimes simultaneously thwarting their competitors’ selfsame attempts. In the current context, Russia’s “vaccine diplomacy” of exporting Sputnik V across the world to save lives, restore the economy, and also for the supplementary purpose of expanding its multipolar influence is on the brink of a globally game-changing success after Politico reported over the weekend that “More EU Countries Eye Separate Deals With Russia For Sputnik Vaccine”. This was preceded just a few days prior by a related report about how “Macron And Merkel Discuss Vaccine Cooperation With Russia”. The unmistakable trend is that Europe is quickly learning that it needs Russia more than the reverse despite American pressure to convince them to the contrary, which explains why CNN is freaking out so much that it recently published a scaremongering piece about how “Europe Is Torn Over Whether To Take Putin’s Help On Vaccines”.
The Donbass Dilemma
It’s against this strategic context that the latest destabilization in Donbass is unfolding. Each side blames one another for provoking it, but an objective assessment of the situation very strongly suggests that neither Russia nor the Russian-friendly rebels of Eastern Ukraine are responsible. After all, they’ve been trying to peacefully implement the Minsk Accords for the past few years, but it’s US-backed Kiev which has obstinately refused to make any tangible progress in this direction, both for domestic nationalist reasons and those related to American regional geostrategic ambitions as was earlier argued. Ukraine is also being crushed by the COVID-19 pandemic but isn’t being provided any real help from its American “ally”, which is why some in the country have looked eastward to Russia for much-needed relief. This inspired me to write about how “Sputnik V Is The Antidote To, Not Russia’s Weapon Of, Hybrid War In Ukraine” at the beginning of the year even though it’s extremely unlikely nowadays that Kiev will agree to cooperate with Moscow in this respect.
The US’ Strategic Failures
Not only has the US failed in its grand strategic goal of “isolating” Russia over the past seven years as seen by Moscow’s successful “balancing” act all across Eurasia that was commenced in response, but it’s also proven itself unable to convince Berlin to sabotage Nord Stream II by incorporating it into the ongoing German Hybrid War on Russia. The Central European country, to its credit, continues to pragmatically engage with Russia on several issues of significance, including Nord Stream II and most recently exploring the possibility of purchasing Sputnik V, though its silence in the face of the latest Donbass destabilization worryingly risks being interpreted as a carthe blanche by Kiev. Nevertheless, the silver lining is that Germany hasn’t condemned Russia for the recent escalations there like others have, and this observation greatly concerns the US. Considering the speed with which Russia’s “vaccine diplomacy” is attracting new partners Europe, it can’t be ruled out that the US wants to provoke a crisis in Eastern Ukraine so as to make Russian-EU Sputnik V cooperation politically impossible.
Towards A Russian-EU Rapprochement?
This shouldn’t sound all that surprising to the reader if they take the time to reflect on the insight that was just shared. “Vaccine diplomacy” is the quickest way to enter into strategic partnerships with other states or comprehensively reinforce those that already exist. Russia’s European interests in this respect rest with its desire to gently influence those countries to reduce and then ultimately lift the US-led sanctions regime that was imposed after Crimea’s reunification in 2014. Moscow would also like the European countries to show more consideration for its legitimate security interests by not rolling out the red carpet for NATO’s US-led unprecedented expansion along Russia’s western periphery. These two US-led developments in recent years – sanctions and military expansion – caused a crisis in Russian-EU relations, one for which Brussels bears partial responsibility because it willingly went along with it in response to Washington’s pressure. It didn’t have to do that, and its obsequiousness to American strategic demands made everything much worse.
Russia’s Soft Power Plans
Perhaps the most immediate strategic importance of Russia’s “vaccine diplomacy” is that it could win countless hearts and minds in Europe and therefore create a favorable grassroots social environment for facilitating those governments’ eventual lifting of their anti-Russian sanctions and their gradual rolling back of NATO’s US-led military expansion in the region. After all, it might soon be the case that Sputnik V is responsible for saving an untold number of lives in the continent in parallel with facilitating the bloc’s economic reopening, both of which would greatly improve the lives of the EU’s hundreds of millions of citizens. It might be very difficult for those governments to justify their decision to continue “punishing” Russia through economic and military means after Moscow saved them from the worst of WorldWarC‘s ravages, which scares the US to no end since it rightly assumes that this might lead to the irreversible decline of its hegemonic influence there. It thus logically follows that the US has an urgent interest in provoking a crisis to make this scenario politically impossible.
Concluding Thoughts
Putting everything together, it can compellingly be argued that while domestic Ukrainian politics and the US’ regional geostrategic ambitions play very important roles in driving the recent destabilization in Donbass, any discussion of these developments is incomplete without incorporating the influence of “vaccine nationalism”. The US will do whatever it can to prevent Russian-EU Sputnik V cooperation since it fears that this would greatly reduce its hegemonic influence over the continent. Provoking a crisis in Ukraine, which was already boiling for a long time already even before last year’s COVID-19 outbreak, could help advance this agenda by making it politically impossible for the EU to purchase Russia’s vaccines. It would be very challenging for any country to go forward with such plans in the face of unprecedented American pressure to “reconsider” following what they’d be told was so-called “Russian aggression in Ukraine” even though Moscow wouldn’t be responsible for sparking any potential conflict. That could in turn prolong America’s fading hegemony over the EU.
“Our private sector must stop taking cues from the Outrage-Industrial Complex,” McConnell added. “Americans do not need or want big business to amplify disinformation or react to every manufactured controversy with frantic left-wing signaling.”
It turns out McConnell is right and in fact, a new AP-NORC poll released Friday shows an overwhelming amount of American support requiring identification to vote.
Voter identification requirements are supported by 72% of the public. That popularity is largely driven by support from Republicans, 91% of whom support a requirement that all voters provide photo identification in order to cast their ballot.
However, as the poll shows, 56% of Democrats also support requiring photo ID to vote.
One must provide a valid photo I.D. and be vetted by the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) – and possibly be subject to a several-day waiting period – to purchase a firearm.
One must present a current, valid photo I.D. to cash a check, or buy a loaf of bread, a six-pack of beer, or pack of smokes at a grocery store.
“I really wish this country would come into the middle,” Trump lawyer Michael van der Veen remarked on Fox News last month. “It’s so polarized on the Left and on the Right.”
Van der Veen is not alone in this desire, expressed shortly after Trump’s second impeachment acquittal. Many commentators have noted that the country is “polarized” between left and right. This divide, it is further assumed or asserted, is not a good thing. It must be overcome by coming to “the middle.”
“Middle” has a comforting feeling to it, cognate with “reasonable” and “agreeable.” But is it possible? Surely if there’s a left and right, a middle must be possible.
But while these terms are used casually as if everyone knows what they mean, their origin suggests something that may map onto their current usage. As political terms, left and right are a recent vintage. During the early years of the French Revolution, those favoring retaining the King sat on the right side of the Assembly in Paris, while those favoring his elimination sat on the left. A reading of this split would lead one to believe that “right” must indicate support for governmental power, while “left” stands for freedom from the same. This is how many dictionaries summarize left and right: “liberal and compassionate” on the one side, and “authoritarian” or even “dictatorial” on the other.
As with many terms, a lack of context distorts the true meaning. The assemblymen who sat on the right did indeed favor retaining the king, but for a reason that constitutes the opposite of “governmental power.” King Louis XVI was known in France at that time as “The Restorer of Liberty.” After the tyrannical reign of Louis “I am the State” XIV and the wishy-washy rule of Louis XV, Louis XVI extended freedoms to French entrepreneurs to an extent never before known. His predecessor had asked French businessmen what the state could do for them, and they had famously answered, “Laissez-nous faire”—“let us make our own way”—and this, of course, is the origin of “Laissez-faire,” the byword of free-market economics. But it was Louis XVI, not Louis XV, who acted on it, withdrawing regulations and lowering taxes so as to encourage the flourishing of businesses. That is why those sitting on the right wanted the king to remain connected to his head, so that he might continue to ensure the liberties of the French middle class. Freedom from government control was the desire of the right-sitters.
What did the left-sitters want? Equality.
For leftists then as for leftists now, there is no true freedom when people are divided by class and condition. Freedom as independence from state control is for them superficial freedom, freedom in name only. Until people are made equal—as the Terror made them equal under the blade of the guillotine, destroying wealthy businessmen, ordinary shop owners, landlords, servants, and priests—there can be no freedom, because the critical point is that equality is fundamental to true freedom. Neither “liberality,” nor “compassion,” nor any other shortcut definition of the left will do, because this is the common denominator: For the left, there can be no real freedom without equality as a starting place, while for the right, freedom is the starting place, the fundamental social condition required for a just world. Equality enters into it, but only in the sense that in a truly just society, every individual is free in a degree equal to all others; if one person has the right to pursue happiness, all people do.
By now it should be clear that a “middle ground” between left and right can no more be found than can a middle shape between a square and a circle. How could there be compromise between a view that sees freedom as the one essential ingredient of a just society, and the view that freedom is meaningless without the prior elimination of all inequalities? There simply cannot be.
What people mean when they call for a middle ground is not really a halfway place between two incompatible modes of thought, but a peaceful reasoning between advocates of the two antagonistic positions. Those on the right can and must most urgently wish for such a thing. But if recent events are any indication, the left realized long ago that peaceful reasoning is unnecessary, since it can win political power without engaging the other side.
The Director of National Intelligence published a report on Tuesday claiming that the American Intelligence Community has “high confidence” in its provocative assessment that President Putin “was aware of and probably directed Russia’s influence operations” aimed at meddling in the US’ 2020 elections, including by relying on a proxy network of supposedly foreign intelligence-linked US contacts who “denigrat[ed] President Biden and the Democratic Party” in parallel with supporting former President Trump’s suspicions of mail-in ballots and social media censorship among other topics, which in essence amounts to US spies unprecedentedly attempting to intimidate dissident Americans.
The Dystopian American Hellhole
Biden’s America is descending into the dystopian hellhole that the author accurately predicted it would become last November, but at a much faster pace than even he thought was possible as evidenced by the conclusions reached in the Director of National Intelligence’s latest report about alleged Russian meddling in the US’ 2020 elections. The 15-page document provocatively assesses with “high confidence” that President Putin “was aware of and probably directed Russia’s influence operations” aimed at shaping the outcome of America’s democratic process, including by relying on a proxy network of supposedly foreign intelligence-linked US contacts who “denigrat[ed] President Biden and the Democratic Party” in parallel with supporting former President Trump’s suspicions of mail-in ballots and social media censorship among other topics. This shockingly amounts to US spies unprecedentedly attempting to intimidate dissident Americans.
In The Words Of America’s Own Spies
So as not to be accused of sharing so-called “fake news”, what follows are pertinent excerpts from the report:
“We have high confidence in our assessment; Russian state and proxy actors who all serve the Kremlin’s interests worked to affect US public perceptions in a consistent manner…We assess that President Putin and other senior Russian officials were aware of and probably directed Russia’s influence operations against the 2020 US Presidential election…The primary effort the IC uncovered revolved around a narrative-that Russian actors began spreading as early as 2014-alleging corrupt ties between President Biden, his family, and other US officials and Ukraine. Russian intelligence services relied on Ukraine-linked proxies and these proxies’ networks-including their US contacts-to spread this narrative to give Moscow plausible deniability of their involvement.
…
Throughout the election, Russia’s online influence actors sought to amplify mistrust in the electoral process by denigrating mail-in ballots, highlighting alleged irregularities, and accusing the Democratic Party of voter fraud…Russian state media, trolls, and online proxies, including those directed by Russian intelligence, published disparaging content about President Biden, his family, and the Democratic Party, and heavily amplified related content circulating in US media, including stories centered on his son. These influence actors frequently sought out US contributors to increase their reach into US audiences. In addition to election-related content, these online influence actors also promoted conspiratorial narratives about the COVID-19 pandemic, made allegations of social media censorship, and highlighted US divisions surrounding protests about racial justice.
Russian online influence actors generally promoted former President Trump and his commentary, including repeating his political messaging on the election results; the presidential campaign; debates; the impeachment inquiry; and, as the election neared, US domestic crises…Moscow’s range of influence actors uniformly worked to denigrate President Biden after his entrance into the race. Throughout the primaries and general election campaign, Russian influence agents repeatedly spread unsubstantiated or misleading claims about President Biden and his family’s alleged wrongdoing related to Ukraine…Even after the election, Russian online influence actors continued to promote narratives questioning the election results and disparaging President Biden and the Democratic Party.”
21st-Century McCarthyism
As can be clearly concluded from the above excerpts, America’s own spies openly accused dissident Americans of being Russian intelligence assets – if not outright agents – actively participating in a foreign influence operation aimed at meddling in their country’s elections. This determination was reached solely as a result of their public criticisms of Biden, the Democrat Party, mail-in ballots, the politicization of the COVID-19 pandemic (described by the author as WorldWarC), objectively existing social media censorship policies (including the undeniable example of former President Trump’s deplatforming), Antifa and “Black Lives Matter’s” HybridWarofTerroronAmerica, and the self-professed regime change “conspiracy” by a “well-connected cabal of powerful people” that Time Magazine proudly bragged about the Democrats successfully executing against Trump.
In other words, dissident Americans’ peaceful and responsible exercise of their constitutionally enshrined freedom of speech – including by repeating what their own president at the time was saying – is being held against them as supposed proof that they were secretly meddling in their elections on behalf of Russia. This can only be described as 21st-century McCarthyism since the spy faction of America’s permanent military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies (“deep state”) is once again actively denigrating the country’s dissidents and therefore quite literally meddling in their own country’s democratic process despite ironically accusing Moscow of doing the exact same thing. Not only is this meant to intimidate all those who dare to publicly voice their opposition to the ruling Democrat Party and its proxies (including the RINOs), but it’s also intended to revive the debunked conspiracy theory that Trump was actually a “Russian agent/asset”.
Concluding Thoughts
America is in for dark days ahead as Biden’s dystopian hellhole becomes a reality even quicker than some of the most critical voices such as the author himself could have predicted. The US’ spy agencies are sending the clearest signal yet that they’ll politically repress all those who dare to publicly oppose the ruling Democrat Party and its proxies. This could predictably take the form of first harassing them with their taxes and then perhaps calling them into local FBI field offices to be interrogated, after which they might even have false espionage or other related charges filed against them in order to send a chilling message to all others. This unprecedented attack against American dissidents is arguably much worse than anything that the country ever experienced during the era of traditional McCarthyism, and it won’t improve anytime soon since the Democrats are solidly in control of the “deep state” and eager to snuff out all dissent whenever and wherever it arises.
The reason for this is that the US refuses to learn from its mistakes contrary to its post-Trump rhetoric, which has resulted in scant progress being made in Yemen, Afghanistan, Syria, and Libya.
The Biden Administration isn’t serious about bringing peace to the four countries in the so-called “Greater Middle East” whose suffering the US is responsible for. Whether it’s his over-hyped policy pivot in Yemen, the stalled peace processes in Afghanistan and Syria, or the seemingly forgotten war in Libya, the new American leader appears to be all talk and no real action, at least for the time being. The reason for this is that the US refuses to learn from its mistakes contrary to its post-Trump rhetoric, which has resulted in scant progress being made on any of those four fronts. What follows is a brief review of the current situation in each of those countries, after which some policy suggestions will be shared for jump-starting those peace processes.
Yemen
Biden’s decision to suspend all US military support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen was a positive move, but his subsequent ceasefire proposal failed to live up to expectations. It doesn’t fully lift the blockade that’s responsible for what the United Nations previously described as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. This suggests that his administration is playing a Machiavellian game with the Ansarullah (“Houthi”) rebels whereby the threat of famine is being weaponized as a means of politically pressuring them into unilateral concessions. Instead of being treated as an equally legitimate party to the peace process like the Biden Administration officially regards them as after lifting their prior terrorist designation, they’re treated as a junior one.
Afghanistan
US Special Envoy Zalmay Khalilzad appeared to follow in the diplomatic footsteps of his Russian counterpart, Zamir Kabulov, by recently suggesting the creation of an interim government that includes the Taliban. Despite being officially designated as a terrorist organization, world powers have pragmatically engaged with the group over the years in an effort to support the country’s fledgling peace process. No political solution is possible without the Taliban’s participation. The problem, however, is that the Biden Administration is under internal pressure not to complete former President Trump’s previously promised military withdrawal by this May, which risks undermining last year’s peace accord with the Taliban and thus prolonging the war.
Syria
Out of the four examined conflicts, the US is the least serious about bringing peace to Syria, which it no longer even tries to hide. It bombed the country last month on the pretext of targeting allegedly Iranian-affiliated militias that it blamed for attacking American forces in Iraq. The US also continues to tighten its brutal sanctions regime against Syria with the intent of forcing its democratically elected and legitimate leadership into submission. There are also credible reports from official Syrian, Russian, and Iranian sources that the US’ illegal occupation forces support terrorists. The US hasn’t learned anything despite the disastrous war that it’s waged there through hybrid means over the past decade. Its present policy is therefore doomed to fail.
Libya
Most of the world seems to have forgotten about this conflict, but a ceasefire was surprisingly agreed to late last year between its main warring sides: the UN-recognized government in Tripoli and the rebellious Tobruk-based administration in the east most prominently represented by General Khalifa Haftar of the Libyan National Army. This in turn led to the creation of an interim government that’ll preside over the country until elections this December. All of this sounds good on paper, but the problem is that Libya has already been down a similar path before but with no success. That’s because its internal divisions are exacerbated through the involvement of foreign forces, but such external actors aren’t negotiating between themselves to pursuit of peace.
Policy Suggestions
In the order that they were mentioned, here’s what the Biden Administration must do in order to jump-start the peace processes in Yemen, Afghanistan, Syria, and Libya:
* Demand the full and immediate lifting of the Saudi-led blockade on Yemen without any preconditions in order to satisfy the Yemeni people’s humanitarian needs and influence the Ansarullah to agree to a ceasefire;
* Respect last year’s peace agreement by withdrawing all US forces from Afghanistan by this May in parallel with accelerating the creation of an interim government with the Taliban to facilitate a forthcoming ceasefire;
* Respect the outcome of this spring’s presidential elections that will likely lead to President Assad’s re-election and use that as the long-overdue pretext for entering into talks with Damascus without preconditions;
* and convene international talks between the US, France, Russia, Turkey, Egypt, and the UAE with the intent of coordinating each major external party’s post-war vision ahead of meaningful intra-Libyan peace talks.
The office of Republican Senator Tom Cotton published a comprehensive containment strategy against China last month that cunningly proposes a series of complementary coalitions aimed towards this end, including in the technological and institutional spheres, which essentially amounts to the creation of a modern-day Iron Curtain if successfully implemented.
Biden’s “Deep State” Balancing Act
President Biden’s strategy towards China increasingly appears to be predicated on expanding his predecessor’s containment policy, albeit in a more multilateral fashion than former President Trump’s mostly unilateral one. This is evidenced by his keynote speech at the State Department last month which led to my conclusion that “Alliances, Democracy, And Values Will Disguise American Aggression”. This was entirely foreseeable too since I earlier predicted that “An ‘Alliance Of Democracies’ Might Be America’s Next Grand Strategic Move”. The behind-the-scenes decision-making basis for this is that Biden must “balance” between competing “deep state” factions in his country’s permanent military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies that are split between those who embrace Trump’s “America First” international outlook and the liberal-globalists who are more closely connected to former President Obama. I elaborated on the dynamic between them and their possible compromise with respect to more cleverly “containing” China in exchange for cautiously re-engaging with Iran in my related analysis late last year about “Deep State Wars: Trump vs. Biden on China & Iran”.
“Targeted Decoupling And The Long Economic War”
Republican Senator Tom Cotton, a notorious anti-China hawk, published a comprehensive containment strategy against China last month that was written by members of his office. It cunningly proposes a series of complementary coalitions aimed towards this end, including in the technological and institutional spheres, which essentially amounts to the creation of a modern-day Iron Curtain if successfully implemented. This might possibly happen considering that it largely aligns with the Biden Administration’s multilateral plans in this respect. The 84-page document is titled “Beat China: Targeted Decoupling And The Long Economic War”, and a summary of it can be read at Breitbart here. To be sure, it’s not all bad, since many of his proposals about diversifying the US’ economic partners and reshoring its businesses are sound in principle, as are his suggestions for stockpiling rare earth minerals, semiconductor chips, and other materials of national security importance. So too are his ideas about modernizing regulations and the tax code, investing more in research and development, and improving the federal government’s efficiency. They all make logical sense.
Cotton’s Anti-Chinese Containment Coalition
The problem, however, is that he also basically wants to wage a global HybridWar on China. His rationale is that this is the only possible recourse for America after its prior policy of attempting to influence domestic political changes there through decades of economic engagement failed to achieve any tangible dividends. In his own words, “this generational effort at engagement was an experiment to see whether greater economic integration would generate political change in China”, which he rightly argues has been unsuccessful. Instead of abandoning that consistently failed policy of meddling in China’s internal affairs, he wants to double down on it but in a craftier way through the establishment of semiconductor, 5G, and data-sharing blocs as crucial pillars of the larger “American-led, China-excluded trading order with trusted nations in the Indo-Pacific” that he proposes. In parallel with that, he advises that “The United States should launch a similar effort with respect to the United Kingdom and the European Union, America’s top export market.” The grand strategic outcome is therefore the creation of a massive anti-Chinese containment coalition along the Eurasian Rimland.
Color Revolution Catalysts
This isn’t just for prestige’s sake, but is predicated on his expectation that “Chinese citizens willing to accept an increasingly heavy-handed authoritarian state in exchange for a higher standard of living may think twice if growth slows or stagnates. As a result, the CCP fears that declines in exports, growth, and employment could pose political liabilities.” In other words, the interconnected semiconductor, 5G, and data-sharing blocs that he wants to create within his envisioned anti-Chinese Eurasian Rimland containment coalition are supposed to eventually harm China’s economic growth when paired with a more aggression sanctions and tariff policy, which he hopes will in turn create fertile ground for a series of Color Revolutionsthere that could ultimately make the infamous Tiananmen Square Color Revolution attempt look like child’s play in hindsight. The proposed containment coalition would also prospectively expand worldwide all across the Global South according to his vision of the US “leveraging development finance and foreign aid”. Ironically, this is exactly what the US accuses China of doing against its own interests, so it’s curious that Cotton is embracing this same strategy.
Economic Warfare
According to him, “Mobilizing these powerful institutions can support a U.S. strategy for targeted decoupling by incentivizing foreign countries to resist Chinese entreaties, such as participation in the Belt and Road Initiative, and supporting American companies in strategic sectors.” These efforts will be made all the more effective if US spy agencies follow his advice to expand operations against the People’s Republic. His report importantly suggests that “the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) should expand its collection efforts relating to China’s economy, including IP theft, the corporate and capital structures of Chinese firms, the shareholders of China’s strategic companies, and technological developments within Chinese companies.” Although he claims that this proposal is being made defensively in order to identify possible targets to sanction in response to alleged intellectual property theft, the insight obtained through these operations could very easily be abused for offensive purposes to undercut China’s economic competitiveness and meddle in its many Belt & Road Initiative (BRI) partnerships.
Institutional Intrigue
The aggressive activities of this global anti-Chinese containment coalition are intended to be upheld by the international institutions that Cotton says that the US should either reclaim or replace if the former isn’t possible. According to his proposal, “America must fight to reverse China’s gains in these institutions and build new, separate organizations of willing and like-minded partners when these organizations cannot be reclaimed. With these organizations out of Beijing’s hands, the United States can ensure that international rules and standards are written to support emerging technologies where America is naturally suited to prevail.” Once again, this is the exact same form of Hybrid Warfare that the US accuses China of waging, making one wonder whether it was ever really guilty as charged or if the US invented those accusations in order to justify itself doing the same thing later. Altogether, Cotton’s grand strategy is one where the US leads a Eurasian Rimland coalition that brings together several China-excluding technology blocs, expands through the strategic leveraging of development finance and foreign aid, and is “legitimized” through reclaimed or replaced international institutions.
Concluding Thoughts
Skeptics might immediately dismiss Cotton’s global anti-Chinese containment proposal as politically unrealistic to implement under Biden’s Democrat presidency, but such a stance ignores the fact that the incumbent president convincingly intends to build upon his predecessor’s policy in this respect, albeit in a much more multilateral manner. This insight very strongly suggests that Cotton’s proposal might actually be well received by the Biden Administration since its multilateral vision of a series of complementary coalitions closely aligns with the ruling party’s stated policy of relying more on international alliances to advance American interests abroad. For this reason, it would be a major mistake for observers to dismiss Cotton’s suggestions out of hand since there’s a real chance that at least some of them might be implemented by the US across the next four years. Everything is already moving in that direction without any credible evidence that this trajectory will seriously change in the future. With this in mind, China would do well to consider the most effective strategies for responding to this scenario, ideally in a multilateral manner after closely consulting with its partners.
Time magazine admitted in a report last week that a self-described “conspiracy” run by a “well-connected cabal of powerful people” “got states to change voting systems and laws” and “successfully pressured social media companies” among other achievements aimed at “democratically” toppling Trump, the revelation of which represents an attempt by the Democrats to flex their newfound post-election narrative power over their opponents as well as possibly provoke the most unstable at-risk ones among them to overreact in a violent way that could then be exploited for justifying the next phase of their “conspiracy”.
The Cat’s Out Of The Bag
The Democrats and their supporters previously defamed everyone speculating about secretly concerted efforts against former President Trump in the run-up to and after last year’s elections as “conspiracy theorists”, and such individuals even risked being deplatformed from social media for exercising their constitutionally enshrined freedom of speech depending on how they articulated their personal views in this respect. They were told that publicly expressing such an interpretation of events is equivalent to spreading “disinformation” and attempting to “delegitimize” the “democratic” outcome of the US’ electoral process. That makes it all the more surprising then that Time magazine admitted in a report last week that a self-described “conspiracy” run by a “well-connected cabal of powerful people” “got states to change voting systems and laws” and “successfully pressured social media companies” among other achievements aimed at “democratically” toppling Trump. In other words, “conspiracy theory” became “conspiracy fact”.
Politically Inconvenient Questions
This naturally begs the question of why that pro-Democrat media outlet would so proudly brag about “The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election”, as its piece is titled. Time can’t be “discredited” by the Democrats otherwise they’d inflict the same such damage against the dozens of individuals named in their report who voluntarily cooperated with journalist Molly Ball in order to show, as one of them phrased it, that “the system didn’t work magically” and that “democracy isn’t self-executing”. Whether they intended to or not, they confirmed this hitherto so-called “conspiracy theory” as a “conspiracy fact”, thereby vindicating every Trump supporter who earlier expressed such sentiments. Not only that, but they also tacitly acknowledged that those who were deplatformed were victims of the same self-described “conspiracy” run by a “well-connected cabal of powerful people”. It’s seemingly inexplicable why they’d do this, but deeply reflecting on the deliberate decision to reveal all of this provides some plausible explanations.
The Democrats’ Post-Election Narrative Power Flex
The first is that, since “Every Democrat Is A Wannabe Dictator”, the party wanted to flex its newfound post-election narrative power to humiliate its opponents. The message being sent is simple enough, and it’s that they’re able to not only get away with literal “conspiracies” such as this one, but are powerful enough to weaponize the institutions under their control (Big Tech, government, mass media, etc.) in order to politically suppress those who dare to call them out on it. As predicted in the author’s analysis late last year about how “Biden’s America Would Be A Dystopian Hellhole”, the Democrats want to rapidly impose a de facto one-party dictatorship onto the rest of the country in collaboration with their “Republican In Name Only” (RINO) allies. They’re drunk enough on power after having successfully pulled off what RT’s Nebojsa Malic rightly described as a Color Revolution and thus winning what the author of the present piece earlier called the Hybrid War of Terror on America that they’re excited to move full speed ahead towards this goal without any hesitation.
Maximum Demoralization Motives
The Trump-inspired “Make America Great Again” movement is mired in a political war with the RINOs while simultaneously struggling to purge itself of subversive QAnon elements. This makes it weaker than it ever was at any moment since its inception and thus unable to adequately organize any meaningful political resistance to this scheme. There’s never been a better moment for the Democrats to strike in dealing what they hope will be the death blow to their most important opponents’ morale, especially since their revelation was disclosed at the time that swamp-captured Trump decided to ally with the GOP Establishment in the likely misplaced hope that the party can regain control of Congress during the 2022 midterm elections. The intense frustration that some of the Democrats’ opponents might understandably feel about all of these overwhelming developments happening at once might even incite some of the most unstable and at-risk ones such as the QAnon cultists to overreact in a violent way that could then be exploited for justifying the next phase of this “conspiracy”.
Dictatorship Through “Democratic” Motions
After all, there’s little doubt among the Democrats’ opponents that the party is now going all out in its attempt to impose a de facto one-party dictatorship onto the rest of the country, especially after Time proudly bragged about how they pulled off the first phase of their self-described “conspiracy” to “democratically” topple Trump due to the “secret” efforts of a “well-connected cabal of powerful people”. Even though they’ve made it clear that they’ll weaponize their control over institutions to politically suppress others through defamatory attacks, deplatforming, and perhaps worse on the basis of indisputable narrative double standards, they still want to complete their full seize of power by going through superficially “democratic” motions. It would therefore greatly advance their grand strategic goal if an unstable, at-risk, and uncontrollably distressed Trump supporter was triggered by this revelation to plot or even God forbid carry out a domestic terrorist attack. In fact, that doesn’t even have to happen in reality since the context is already set to invent that allegation if needed.
Confusion Reigns
One of the implied supplementary objectives of admitting to the “conspiracy” against Trump by a “well-connected cabal of powerful people” is to make it impossible for anyone to really know what to believe anymore. For this reason, any reports about domestic terrorist attacks or plans by Trump supporters in response to Time’s surprising disclosure can’t be taken at face value since there will always be the lingering but nevertheless plausible doubt that such allegations are also part of the larger “conspiracy” that was recently confirmed. As such, it wouldn’t be surprising if many people suspected that such an attack was a false flag or that those implicated in planning something of the sort were entrapped by the secret police (FBI), if the latter even happened at all that is. The intent in so directly addressing this isn’t to automatically extend credibility to those interpretations, but just to draw attention to how likely they are to emerge in the aftermath of Time’s scandalous report.
“American Solidarity” Is The Only Realistic Solution
The domestic political impact would nevertheless be the same whether they really happened as might be reported or not since those incidents would certainly be exploited to advance the Democrats’ grand strategic goal of imposing a de facto one-party state onto the rest of the country. Admittedly, there doesn’t seem to be anything that dissidents can do to stop this, except perhaps immediately organizing an “American Solidarity” movement modeled off of its historic Polish counterpart, even if it too might take years to have any noticeable effect, if any at all considering the drastically different domestic political conditions in which it would peacefully operate. Not only would any attempt to organize violent resistance be illegal and arguably immoral, but it would simply facilitate the Democrats’ plans by providing real evidence of what they’d describe as a domestic terrorist plot for justifying the accelerated implementation of the next phase of their “conspiracy”. For these reasons, “American Solidarity” is the only realistic (albeit possibly long-term) solution to this predicament.
Concluding Thoughts
The Democrats made a deliberate decision to have one of their most prominent mouthpieces so proudly brag about the self-described “conspiracy” that a “well-connected cabal of powerful people” pulled off against Trump. This was done to humiliate and demoralize their political opponents, as well as likely provoke the most unstable and at-risk ones such as the most radical QAnon cultists into overreacting by committing acts of violence that could then be exploited as the justification for next phase of their “conspiracy”. The messages being sent are several: the Democrats have successfully captured control of all institutions and are now weaponizing them to politically suppress their opponents on the basis of double standards; this revelation was widely known long ago by all sides but only publicly acknowledged by the culprits at this point due to its strategic timing; and nobody can ever take the Democrats’ and their proxies’ (including institutions’) statements at face value any more. In truth, while one Hybrid War on America just ended, another has only begun.
Twitter caused a stir by complying with the Indian government’s request to temporarily “withhold” access to dozens of accounts for users within the country in response to claims that they were “inciting violence” during the ongoing farmers’ protests, which prompts some very important ethical questions that have a few disturbing implications for the freedoms of speech and assembly in Western-style democracies across the world.
Everyone across the world is talking about social media censorship after former US President Trump was deplatformed last month by the world’s largest companies in this sphere following the storming of his country’s Capitol on 6 January, but another recent incident is similarly alarming but hasn’t received the amount of global attention that it deserves. Twitter caused a stir by complying with the Indian government’s request to temporarily “withhold” access to dozens of accounts for users within the country in response to claims that they were “inciting violence” during the ongoing farmers’ protests. To its credit, Reuters reported on this controversial decision when it happened, and the BBC just followed up to inform its readers that access has been restored to many of the affected accounts. Nevertheless, the ethical questions related to this course of events and the disturbing implications that they pose for the freedoms of speech and assembly in Western-style democracies haven’t been adequately addressed.
Strictly speaking, “India’s information technology laws empower the government to seek to block online content deemed as inciting disruption to public order”, according to Reuters. In this sense, Twitter was just abiding by the legal request of one of the many countries in which it operates. Be that as it may, there are concerns that the affected accounts weren’t objectively “inciting disruption to public order” simply for posting with the hashtag #modiplanningfarmersgenocide. The politics of genocide are very emotive and the issue is oftentimes exploited for ulterior motives. Even so, it’s questionable whether provocative claims such as that one amount to “Genocide incitement (which) is a public offence and a great threat to public order”, according to one of the unnamed Indian officials that spoke to Reuters. Rather, as some observers suspect, India might have exploited its pertinent legislation in order to suppress the largest and most sustained anti-government protests in recent memory.
It’s up to the reader themselves to investigate this issue more thoroughly in order to draw their own conclusions about that particular example, but the takeaway is that governments across the world could at least in theory take advantage of the law in order to censor their political opponents. At the same time, however, there are plenty of examples that one can think of where it would be necessary for governments to request the immediate “withholding” of access to certain accounts that are genuinely “inciting disruption to public order”, such as during the midst of an ongoing Color Revolution attempt. It’s unclear, though, whether Twitter would dutifully comply in those scenarios since the company is regarded as having a very strict liberal-globalist worldview which is thought to generally align with the goals of Color Revolution participants in Belarus, Venezuela, and elsewhere. One can easily imagine the company denying such requests for political reasons, unlike in India where it fears being shut out of its enormous market if it goes against the government.
These points raise two serioius questions. The first is whether Twitter will follow an apolitical approach of complying with all governments’ relevant requests without discrimination, even if there are grounds like in the Indian case to legitimately wonder whether the law is being exploited for domestic partisan purposes. The second question is whether exceptions will be made on a case-by-case basis due to ideological and/or economic considerations, the first of which is relevant to the Belarusian and Venezuelan scenarios as mentioned and the latter in regards to retaining access to India’s enormous market. The answers to these questions will directly affect the lives of countless people living in Western-style democracies, especially those in the US and Western Europe. As it stands, it’s unclear whether Twitter would temporarily withhold access to accounts within America and France for instance if Washington and Paris claim that some participants in certain rallies (e.g. anti-Biden and Yellow Vests, respectively) are “inciting disruption to public order”.
Of course, it would help those governments’ cases if they could at least point to some law or another that’s officially on the books in order to “justify” what could in reality just be their exploitation of the legal process for the purpose of censoring their political opponents, but even if they can’t, Twitter has both ideological and economic reasons to comply with their requests. It’s for this reason why lawmakers in those countries and others should raise this scenario within their legislatures in order to hold decision makers to account in the event that they attempt to exploit the law to that end. Every Western-style democracy must have a serious discussion about the ethical questions and implications posed by the Indian precedent. Failure to do so will actually put their citizens’ freedoms of speech and assembly at risk of being undermined through potential collusion between corrupt government officials and Big Tech. It also risks empowering Big Tech into thinking that it can carry out its own widespread censorship sprees for ideological reasons with impunity.
To be clear, Twitter itself is a complex entity. It can be used as a tool for good in the hands of responsible decision makers who understand the need to temporarily “withhold” access to accounts that are genuinely “inciting disruption to public order”. Peaceful members of the population also use its free services to organize protests in accordance with the law. On the other hand, Twitter can also be exploited as a weapon by corrupt bureaucrats to censor their political opponents on false “security” pretexts. The company can also “go rogue” and impose its own censorship scheme on targeted populations using the same pretext (albeit arguing that the affected accounts’ posts “violated its terms of service” instead of “the law”) in order to meddle in the domestic political affairs of sovereign states. With these risks in mind, countries should urgently initiate conversations between the state and civil society over the contentious issue of Big Tech’s growing role over nearly every facet of people’s lives, and credible steps should be undertaken to preemptively thwart these dark scenarios.
During a Democratic debate in 2020, the candidates were asked if their health care plans would cover “undocumented immigrants.” Each raised his or her hand, including front-runner Joe Biden. From that stage, the message went forth: If the Democrats win this election, then it is amnesty for all and open borders in America. The message was reinforced by repeated Democratic praise for sanctuary cities, by calls to “abolish ICE,” and end deportations, by pledges to stop work on Donald Trump’s wall, if not to tear it down.
Message sent to Mexico, Central America and the Third World: If the Democrats win and you make it across the border into the United States, under President Joe Biden, you will not be sent back. After only a brief hassle, the economic opportunities and social welfare benefits of the richest country on earth will be open to you and yours. Hence, when Biden won, a new and potentially historic surge to the Southern border began, and the number of illegal arrivals and crossings are in the growing thousands every day.
According to a White House domestic policy council document, the number of children who, without a parent or guardian, will arrive at the border in 2021 will be about 117,000—50 percent higher than the record number of children who arrived in the 2019 humanitarian crisis. In February, some 100,000 immigrants were apprehended by the Border Patrol for illegal border crossing. “I actually think that’s an undercount,” says Victor Manjarrez Jr., ex-Border Patrol agent who teaches at Texas University.
The pre-Trump policy of “catch-and-release” has been reinstated. Children and families who cross illegally from Mexico cannot now be held for more than 72 hours. They are being released into the U.S. to await a court date—potentially years off—to hear their claim to a right to be here. Most never show up.
“We are weeks, maybe even days, away from a crisis on the southern border,” says Rep. Henry Cuellar, a Democrat whose Texas district abuts Mexico. “Our country is currently unprepared to handle a surge in migrants in the middle of the pandemic.”
Congressional Democrats, following Biden’s lead, have proposed a new citizenship act. “Dreamers,” brought here by their parents as children, would be put on a three-year fast-track to U.S. citizenship. The 11 million to 22 million illegal migrants already in the country—the exact number is unknown—would be put on an eight-year track to citizenship. The Democratic Party is signing on to the largest mass amnesty for illegal immigrants in history—which would produce millions of new voters for the party.
Among the recent border-crossers, who are transported by bus to detention centers, where they remain for 72 hours and then are released to travel where they wish, many are carrying the coronavirus. Thus, what’s shaping up on the border is not only a national security crisis but a national survival crisis. For it is impossible to see, given the Biden administration policies adopted, how the invasion of America can be halted. And if 2 million or 3 million migrants reach the U.S. border and cross over each year, and we do not send them back, what stops the invasion and remaking America?
What would blanket amnesty and a renewed invasion portend?
In a decade, Texas, the Southwest, and much of the South would take on the political aspect of California where the GOP has become a permanent minority party. As many illegal migrants do not read, write, or speak English, and do not bring a unique set of skills, their immense and growing presence can only deepen our national disunity. Almost all of these folks are poor or working-class people who would have to rely on government subsidies for their health care, food support, housing, and the schooling of their children. With the unemployment rate rising again in the black community, which has sustained the heaviest collective hit from the pandemic and economic collapse, the migrants would be competing with them for jobs. And as the illegal migrants are disproportionately young and male, they would add to the surging crime rates in America’s major cities.
America is headed, seemingly inexorably, to a future where a majority in this country traces its ancestry to Asia, Africa, and Latin America, a future where this already fractionated nation is even more multiracial, multiethnic, multilingual, and multicultural than today.
With racial conflict as sharp as it has been in decades, with our political parties at swords point, with the culture war raging unabated, as mobs tears down statues and monuments to America’s founders, exactly what national problem will be solved by an unstopping and unrelenting wave of migrants illegally crossing the border into our country year after year?
One of President Biden’s first executive actions was to declare January 27 “Climate Day.” This ad hoc holiday provided an opportunity for his administration to celebrate the latest rationale for economic central planning.
The day’s festivities began with three executive orders on climate change, science, and technology.
In his remarks, Biden bundled his environmental agenda with a jobs program, along with a broader policy to address social inequality and environmental injustice. Among the ambitious goals of Biden’s $2 trillion Green New Deal are 1 million new high-paying union jobs in the automobile industry, half a million electric car charging stations, and a 100 percent carbon pollution–free electric sector by 2035.
The goal of transitioning the electrical grid to zero carbon emissions in the next fifteen years stands out as a singularly misguided effort. Even granting the nonobvious assumption that we must immediately transition away from fossil fuels, overhauling the American energy infrastructure is a vast and complex calculation problem. To be truly sustainable, individuals and firms would need to act on local knowledge, assessing where and what kinds of renewables might meet their energy needs.
The concept of “net energy” illustrates why replacing fossil fuels with large-scale renewable energy is often counterproductive. In Carbon Shift, a 2009 book discussing peak oil and climate change, David Hughes summarizes it like this:
A two-megawatt windmill contains 260 tonnes of steel requiring 170 tonnes of coking coal and 300 tonnes of iron ore, all mined, transported and produced by hydrocarbons. The question is: how long must a windmill generate energy before it creates more energy than it took to build it? At a good wind site, the energy payback day could be in three years or less; in a poor location, energy payback may be never. That is, a windmill could spin until it falls apart and never generate as much energy as was invested in building it.
This life-cycle accounting of “energy return on energy invested” (EROEI) succinctly describes multiple stages of intermediate capital within a hydrocarbon-based structure of production. Hughes also hints at the basic questions facing all entrepreneurs—namely, where they should place their investments and how they should configure heterogeneous capital to recoup up-front costs plus some profit or “windfall.”
Wind turbines and solar panels do enjoy a wide market in off-grid applications, such as remote farm properties and on oceangoing sailboats, where the abundance of wind and scarcity of petroleum products makes the investment a no-brainer. In sunny parts of the country, solar has reached “grid parity.” States like Texas, however, have failed to heed considerations of both net energy and supply and demand in installing massive wind farms at great taxpayer expense where fossil fuels would be far cheaper and more reliable. Lacking price signals, the central planner is blind to the economic consequences of his grand designs.
The president revealed his ignorance of the technological and economic problem at hand when he stated matter of factly, “We know what to do, we’ve just got to do it.” On the contrary, we have no idea how to create a nonpolluting electrical grid without emitting much more carbon in the process than we otherwise would have.
If the government invests trillions of dollars in energy-intensive capital investments—whether wind farms, solar charging stations, or transformer stations—it will have two primary effects.
First, it will frontload carbon emissions into the construction phase. This may offer the illusion of reducing pollution when in fact it merely shuffles emissions to a prior stage of production. California’s high-speed rail, for example, will take an estimated seventy-one years to offset its own construction emissions through the cars it will hypothetically replace (assuming it is ever completed). Furthermore, electric charging stations are typically powered by coal or natural gas—not solar panels.
Second, and relatedly, a Green New Deal funded by debt will distort the capital structure, skewing investment toward long-term fixed capital assets at the expense of the intermediate capital maintenance of the overall structure of production. Theoretically we could burn more coal, petroleum, and natural gas today to build a zero-pollution electrical infrastructure for tomorrow. But when it comes time to service offshore wind turbines, will the helicopters and boats used for maintenance be powered by electricity as well? And what kind of energy will power the factories that manufacture the solar panels and wind turbines? Claiming that they will run on renewables is eerily similar to the circular reasoning and magical thinking used by proponents of modern monetary theory to promote the illusion of spending without taxation.
The Green New Deal is, if anything, a formula for a new dark age. Texas’s recent power outages show the difficulty of the task facing grid managers. There, an attempt to prematurely transition to unreliable wind energy exacerbated the strain on the grid when turbines froze at the crucial moment when they were most needed. The grid managers failed to keep a maintain a sufficient buffer, even without the additional mandate of ensuring the creation of new green jobs and mitigating the discriminatory effects of climate change. It is ironic that a state and nation so rich in natural energy resources would be leading the charge to cancel fossil fuels in favor of technology that has never been proven effective, or even environmentally friendly, at a large scale.
The stock of fossil fuels is large but not infinite. Geological surveys indicate that there is plentiful energy in the ground to advance civilization and develop new sources of abundant and nonpolluting energy. However, we must be careful not to squander our petroleum patrimony on unused charging stations, unreliable wind farms, and half-finished trains to nowhere.
The claim is often made that President George W. Bush’s war on terror, which produced legislation that was employed to attack Iraq in 2003, eventually morphed into the worst foreign policy mistake in U.S. history when that conflict destabilized the entire region and led to an American multifront military engagement that now appears permanent. Few of those in the policymaking business appreciated that by turning “terrorism” into an especially invidious form of evil allowing governments to arrest or even assassinate without due process and bomb civilians if they fit a profile, Pandora’s box was being opened to expand that authority to commit other heinous abuses of authority.
Jim Bovard has described how post 9/11 there were hundreds of arrests for no good reason, in some cases only because someone had a name or countenance that appeared to be “Arabic.” Congressman Ron Paul and a handful of others observed at the time that the legislation would inevitably be used against domestic enemies of the state as well as against foreign or foreign-linked groups, meaning that the real damage done by the Patriot Act, the Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF) and the Military Commissions Act would be felt somewhere down the road, possibly at a point where the original objective of the legislation would be more or less forgotten.
Now that we have an identified “domestic terror” problem one should expect at a minimum a massive increase in surveillance of innocent citizens couple with arbitrary arrests and incarcerations. Indeed, the process is already well underway with FBI Director Christopher Wrayannouncing that there are several thousand terror “cases” under development. There will also be increasing calls to take away guns and to control what is allowed to appear on the internet. Soon Americans will have nothing to measure their remaining liberties by and will be less free to exercise rights including free speech, possibly dramatically so.
So now we have reached a point where we have a government that is committed to further reducing one’s rights in order to “keep us safe” from a domestic threat and congress critters are openly speaking of bringing in “war on terror” type expedients to make sure that they have the tools available to do just that. The Joe Biden White House has made clear that it has embraced fighting domestic terrorists as a top priority. Last week, the Administration sought authorization from the Pentagon to keep thousands of national guard troops in the District of Columbia for 60 days more, presumably to protect the government buildings and staff. The pretext for the continued presence was a vaguely described plot constituting a “potential threat” to overrun the Capitol building on March 4th, a day when it was apparently anticipated that Donald Trump would miraculously be returned to office. The House of Representatives even canceled a session over concerns that they were about to be invaded by a hostile “militia.” Just how “real” the threat was has not been made clear beyond suggestions of “chatter” over the internet, nor has there been any explanation of why the 2,200 strong Capitol Police force is unable to deal with the problem.
Be that as it may, the Biden Administration thinks it knows exactly who the enemy is. The government already has a working definition of a domestic terrorist, i.e. “If you advocate violence as a tool to further political ends, and take concrete steps to do that, you’re a terrorist.” But if you thought that included groups like Antifa and Black Lives Matter (BLM) you would be wrong. For the Biden Administration it is the stereotyped right-wing extremist, who, among other attributes, is represented by the media and government as coming from the class that Hillary Clinton once described as “deplorables.”
The accepted definition of the enemy defies logic as the rioting, arson, and killing that has taken place over the past year has generally been inspired by Antifa and BLM, resulting in major damage and destruction in various cities and states. But the mobs who wrecked and looted have been mostly set free by the courts in the Democratic Party dominated cities. In Portland Oregon 90% of the rioters were not prosecuted, presumably because the local judicial system believed that their “cause was just.” Against that is the trauma of the January 6th incident at the Capitol, much smaller in scope and damages but obviously terrifying to the media and Congress. Also what did occur bore a more comfortable theme for the Democrats which they have been beating to death ever since – “insurrection caused by right wing extremists who were overwhelmingly white and support Donald Trump.” That’s apparently all one needs to initiate a campaign to get rid of such dissidents.
For some suggestions about the direction the Biden Administration will be going in to eliminate domestic terrorism, one only has to review the comments of Attorney General nominee Merrick Garland at his Senate confirmation hearing on February 22nd, where he declared that going after domestic terrorists would be a top administration priority. When asked if he regards the numerous attempts by Antifa and BLM rioters to destroy federal courthouses in Portland and Seattle as acts of domestic extremism or terrorism, he hedged on the issue and replied:
“So an attack on a courthouse while in operation, trying to prevent judges from actually deciding cases, that plainly is, uhm, domestic extremism, uhm, domestic terrorism. An attack simply on a government property at night…or any other kind of circumstances, is a clear crime and a serious one and should be punished. I don’t mean…I don’t know enough about the facts of the example you’re talking about, but that’s where I draw the line. One is…both are criminal, but one is a core attack on our democratic institutions.”
According to the man who almost became a Supreme Court Justice and now appears to be on his way to becoming Attorney General if you attack and seek to destroy a government building when there is no one in it is a different level of criminality than seeking to disrupt what is going on inside during business hours. It clearly is a fine line, or at least Garland sees it that way, but in either case you are making the building non-functional in terms of its intended use. Indeed, groups like BLM have regularly condemned the criminal justice system and if you burn the building down it will be unusable for a long, long time. So clearly what makes something “terrorism” as opposed to only “criminality” is the expectation based on the events of 1/6 that it will be right-wing whites who will be doing the disruption. They are the terrorists.
So, it seems pretty clear that the Biden Administration is now preparing to go after the people that it objects to and will create new laws as necessary to do so. Garland will certainly have a hand in that development. And if anyone is thinking of leaving all of this behind by fleeing to another country where there is an actual rule of law, it would be best to consider the matter again. On February 22nd, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterreswarned that white supremacy right-wing nationalist movements have become a “transnational threat” that has exploited the fear of the coronavirus pandemic to gain support. He said that “White supremacy and neo-Nazi movements are more than domestic terror threats. They are becoming a transnational threat. Today, these extremist movements represent the number one internal security threat in several countries. Far too often, these hate groups are cheered on by people in positions of responsibility in ways that were considered unimaginable not long ago. We need global coordinated action to defeat this grave and growing danger.”
It means you can run but you can’t hide. It looks like there will be a worldwide coalition to extirpate the evils that come automatically with whiteness and, as BLM is now de facto a major constituency of the U.S. Democratic Party, you know that Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi will be leading the charge.
Washington’s new Middle East policies looks like sandcastle. Targeting MBS means putting region at peril. The new media frenzy about a possible full-out confrontation between the US Biden Administration and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is a sign that Western political leaders are out of touch with reality.
Last week’s revelations published in a declassified report by U.S. security services on the role of MBS in the Khashoggi murder show not only the lack of proof available, but could also lead to a full divorce between Saudi Arabia and the U.S. A growing amount of Western media publications argue that the Saudi Crown Prince should not only be sanctioned, but that Washington also should reconsider its former in-depth cooperation with the Kingdom.
Several U.S. experts have been quoted in international media calling for a clear change in US strategy towards the Kingdom, including a possible removal of MBS as Crown Prince via support of former Saudi Crown Prince Bin Nayef or other Saudi royals. In a clear break with US power politics we’ve seen during the last decades, where the removal of third party power brokers was blocked, a new era seems to be looming on the horizon.
At the same time, Biden finds himself on a slippery slope regarding the ongoing confrontation with Iran, by putting additional sanctions on Iran but at the same time removing one of the region’s main Iranian backed armed groups, Yemen’s Houthi rebels, from the U.S. terrorism list. The results this policy change have already become very clear. A new aggressive drone and ballistic missile campaign has been started by the Houthis to hit Saudi strategic airports and oil infrastructure targets on the Red Sea and East Coast. The high-profile attack on Aramco oil infrastructure this week shows that the Kingdom is still under threat. Some even state that the attacks on the Eastern Province, Saudi’s main oil and gas production region, could not have been done without the full military and logistical support of Iran.
Still, the military capabilities of Houthi rebels and Iran are at present the least of the kingdom’s concerns. The direct diplomatic fall-out of the publication of an intelligence report by the Biden Administration in which the Saudi Crown Prince, who is expected to become Saudi King in the next few years, is being implicated as potential instigator and backer of the Khashoggi murder, is unprecedented. To have U.S. citizens and politicians call for new inquiries about the role of MBS and his security apparatus in the murder at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul is one thing, but having official documents, declassified by the Biden Administration, directly accusing MBS is calling for potential rifts that could have a fall-out for the whole region.
The attack on Ras Tanura, which is Saudi Arabia’s main crude oil and petchem products export facility had an impact on the market. Crude oil prices spiked, but the effect was only marginal. Even that the current attack has not received the same attention as the Abqaiq attack in 2019, which had a much larger impact on Saudi oil production, the significance seems to be underestimated. A potential destruction of critical facilities in Ras Tanura would have been a shock to the market, even in the light of still high storage volumes worldwide. No oil flows however seem to have been constrained, so futures relaxed again. Still, the market should keep a wary eye on the area, as possible new attacks or even combined attacks on Abqaiq-Ras Tanura by the Houthis and/or Iran could be an option currently being discussed by Tehran hard-liners.
Until now, the impact has been only superficial, but taking into account the growing capabilities of Houthi drone and missile arsenals, or the vast, almost Russian style, capabilities on the other side of the Gulf, other options are clearly on the table.
What should markets get worried is the fact that in the eyes of Iran, Biden and Europeans have almost given green light to hardliners in Tehran to show their muscles. The ongoing Houthi operations are a clear sign that Biden’s current soft-power or even appeasement approach is already backfiring.
Washington’s diffuse approach to Iranian sanctions and the JCPOA is another bone of contention. In the first months of his Presidency, Biden has not shown any clear strategy, leaving too much room for interpretation. Whatever people think about former US president Trump’s policies, his Iran policies were clear. It seems that Iran has almost fallen off the Resolute Desk in the White House, no open and clear way-forward is being introduced. The only clear path currently painted is that Riyadh and Washington are on a collision course. The Biden Administration seems to hold the view that the US is still the sole power broker in the region, so soft power or pressure put on Arab regimes will reap the rewards sought for. This is a clear misconception, partly based on still existing Obama Era assessments, which are no longer valid.
Maybe to the surprise of Washington-based analysts, MBS is not sitting still. The Saudi Crown Prince, is making a lot of headlines with his aggressive economic diversification plans and dreams, and has shown that his international position has not yet diminished. The last days, a flurry of diplomatic and high-level meetings have been held in Riyadh, where Russian Minister Lavrov, Jordan’s King Abdallah, Malaysian Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin and others have been holding meetings to discuss economic and geopolitical issues. Saudi Arabia’s top diplomat Prince Faisal also has been hosted by Qatar’s ruler Emir Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al-Thani on Monday in Doha, showing renewed interest in expanding cooperation.
At the same time, Saudi ministers have been flying to Saudi major clients, such as China. Russia is currently using the cooling Saudi-US relations as a possible wedge. Moscow and Riyadh already are cooperating fully in energy and logistics, as statements today reaffirmed. Both stated that the OPEC+ cooperation is still very strong and will continue. Moscow is very pleased with the Biden Administration’s lack of strategy for the Arab region.
Putin and his emissary Lavrov hope to be able to capitalize on Biden’s ongoing mistakes, not only in Riyadh, but also Abu Dhabi, Bahrain and Egypt. A critical outcome of US pressure on MBS would also be growing fears in Cairo, Abu Dhabi and other places. A possible realignment of these leading Arab countries, leaving the Atlantic sphere of influence while joining the growing Moscow-Beijing axis is not the outcome that Washington or Brussels would like to see.
Pragmatism is needed and neo-realism also. As Machiavelli and Von Clausewitz clearly stated “to rule or influence a region, one should regard possible strong relationships with the Prince”. If removing the Prince results in a new Prince, instability is the outcome. Stability is needed, Biden’s Gulf strategies are counterproductive, to say the least. By indicating or affronting a “King-to-Be”, enemies are being made. Washington’s culture of backstabbing and rumor carousels are maybe effective in the West, in the Arab world “a man’s word is forever, friendship also”….but this is the same for making enemies.
Months before the Oklahoma City bombing took place, Biden introduced another bill called the Omnibus Counterterrorism Act of 1995. It previewed the 2001 Patriot Act by allowing secret evidence to be used in prosecutions, expanding the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and wiretap laws, creating a new federal crime of “terrorism” that could be invoked based on political beliefs, permitting the U.S. military to be used in civilian law enforcement, and allowing permanent detention of non-U.S. citizens without judicial review.* The Center for National Security Studies said the bill would erode “constitutional and statutory due process protections” and would “authorize the Justice Department to pick and choose crimes to investigate and prosecute based on political beliefs and associations.”
Biden himself draws parallels between his 1995 bill and its 2001 cousin. “I drafted a terrorism bill after the Oklahoma City bombing. And the bill John Ashcroft sent up was my bill,” he said when the Patriot Act was being debated, according to the New Republic, which described him as “the Democratic Party’s de facto spokesman on the war against terrorism.”
Biden’s proposal probably helped to lay the groundwork for the Bush administration’s Patriot Act.
The Center for National Securities reported in 1995:
On February 10, 1995, a counterterrorism bill drafted by the Clinton Administration was introduced in the Senate as S. 390 and in the House of Representatives as H.R. 896.
The Clinton bill is a mixture of: provisions eroding constitutional and statutory due process protections, selective federalization — on political grounds — of state crimes (minus state due process rules), discredited ideas from the Reagan and Bush Administrations, and the extension of some of the worst elements of crime bills of the recent past.
The legislation would:
1. authorize the Justice Department to pick and choose crimes to investigate and prosecute based on political beliefs and associations;
2. repeal the ancient provision barring the U.S. military from civilian law enforcement;
3. expand a pre-trial detention scheme that puts the burden of proof on the accused;
4. loosen the carefully-crafted rules governing federal wiretaps, in violation of the Fourth Amendment;
5. establish special courts that would use secret evidence to order the deportation of persons convicted of no crimes, in violation of basic principles of due process;
6. permit permanent detention by the Attorney General of aliens convicted of no crimes, with no judicial review;
7. give the President unreviewable power to criminalize fund-raising for lawful activities associated with unpopular causes;
8. renege on the Administration’s approval in the last Congress of a provision to insure that the FBI would not investigate based on First Amendment activities; and
9. resurrect the discredited ideological visa denial provisions of the McCarran Walter Act to bar foreign speakers.
* Note: The CNET article contains a typographical error, using the word “detection” instead of “detention” in the sentence: “allowing permanent detection of non-U.S. citizens without judicial review”. Not only does this make no sense, but a review of the bill confirms that it provided for permanent detention.
The promulgation of the US’ so-called “Khashoggi ban” in response to its intelligence agencies determining that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) was behind that dissident journalist’s brutal killing shows that the Biden Administration is playing hard ball with the Kingdom’s future ruler, though there’s only so far that it’ll go in this respect since it’s still important for America to still retain some degree of regional strategic “balance” despite its newfound willingness to renegotiate the Iranian nuclear deal.
US-Saudi relations are drastically changing under the Biden Administration as evidenced by its promulgation of the so-called “Khashoggi ban” in response to American intelligence agencies determining that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) was behind that dissident journalist’s brutal killing. This shows that the Biden Administration is playing hardball with the Kingdom’s future ruler, though there’s only so far that it’ll go in this respect. As it stands, the pro-Democrat members of the permanent military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies (“deep state”) that pull the President’s strings intend to diversify their country’s hitherto regional strategic dependence on Saudi Arabia in line with former President Obama’s vision by improving relations with Iran. Nevertheless, there’s only so far that they’ll go in this respect since it’s still important for them to retain some degree of “balance” so as not to push the Kingdom further into Russia and China’s arms.
On the one hand, the US wants to make it clear that the days of Saudi Arabia calling the shots are over. Washington will no longer allow its regional strategy to be led by Riyadh. This also explains Biden’s pragmatic recalibration of his country’s policy towards Yemen, which was also influenced by the desire to send a goodwill signal to Iran about Washington’s willingness to re-enter into negotiations on the nuclear deal. That arguably went against Saudi regional strategic interests, yet the Kingdom was powerless to stop its patron from implementing this policy reversal, at least for the time being. In parallel with this, American intelligence decided to punish some Saudis for Khashoggi’s murder, which was also intended to further erode the Kingdom’s already damaged reputation, and MBS’ personally. The tangential objective is to put pressure on MBS to comply with the US’ new regional policy instead of opposing it lest he risk the ever-present threat of a palace coup.
On the other hand, however, American strategists are aware that these moves will only encourage the Kingdom to intensify its growing relations with Russia and China. It already cooperates real closely with Moscow on energy issues (OPEC+) and Beijing on military (drones) and investment (Vision 2030) matters. Saudi Arabia also agreed to an arms deal with Russia a few years back during King Salman’s historic visit to Moscow which eventually saw the Eurasian Great Power delivering state-of-the-art rocket launchers to the Kingdom that presumably saw action during the ongoing War on Yemen. The US fears these two Great Power’s multipolar coordination in courting the Kingdom to their side in the New Cold War, especially as it relates to the possibility of Riyadh supporting Beijing’s plans for the “petroyuan”, so it knows that it’ll either have to hold back on playing hardball with MBS or move forward with replacinghim in the worst-case scenario.
This “deep state”/geostrategic dynamic explains why American intelligence agencies publicly blamed MBS for Khashoggi’s killing yet Biden backed off from personally punishing him for this. It’s a “good cop/bad cop” type of play, but one which is being made in order to put Saudi Arabia back in place after it ran the former Trump Administration’s regional policy in partnership with its unofficial “Israeli” ally. Those two players stand in the way of the Biden (Obama 2.0) Administration’s risky gambit to restore “balance” to their country’s regional strategy by reaching out to Iran through “nuclear diplomacy” and other means, though all the while retaining pressure on the Islamic Republic as well as can be seen by Biden’s Syria strike last week. If clumsily executed, however, then the US might ultimately end up provoking a so-called “polar reorientation” whereby Saudi Arabia and “Israel” “jump ship” by siding with Russia and China in response to any meaningful US-Iranian rapprochement.
Any doubts as to whether Joe Biden will continue Donald Trump’s opposition to Nord Stream 2 should now be laid to rest. With 18 companies quitting the gas pipeline project this week following threats of US sanctions, there has never been so much pressure on Angela Merkel to ditch the scheme, which would see Russian gas transported to Germany direct.
Merkel has done well to stand her ground to date. For even her European partners aren’t backing her. The Director General of the European Commission’s energy department, Ditte Juul Jorgensensaidon Tuesday that ‘For the European Union as a whole, Nord Stream does not contribute to security of supply’, emphasising that it was a decision for the German state, not the EU as to whether the project should be completed. Given the fact that European demand for Russian gas has increased, not decreased of late, however, one might think that it is in the EU’s interest to support Nord Stream 2.
Not if the US has anything to do with it. Citing concern at Russia’s increased influence over Europe if the pipeline goes ahead, Joe Biden has proclaimed Nord Stream 2 a ‘bad deal’ for Europe, which America will continue to oppose. The US claims that Russia would have more leverage over the EU politically as a result. What it really means, though, is that the US would have less leverage over Europe, and a reduced demand for its fracked gas. EU countries imported as much as 36% of American natural gas in 2019 – an increase of around 5 billion cubic metres from the previous year – a considerable amount given Russia is just on its doorstep, and also bearing in mind the EU’s environmental pledges (fracking produces heavy amounts of methane gas, responsible for global warming).
Source: InfoBrics
Nevertheless, the US is careful to package this as an energy security issue and persuade us that its real concern is the ‘Russian threat’ that comes with the gas pipeline. At the moment the US has some influence over Russian exports to Europe through Ukraine, which as Ukrainian politician Victor Medvedchuk recently emphasised, is merely a ‘colony’ now of the US. If Ukraine, the middleman, was cut out of the process, America simply wouldn’t have the same leverage over European energy supplies.
Moreover, it is clearly part of the US’ geopolitical strategy to prevent Nord Stream 2 construction. In fact, it has been stated so explicitly in a document published by the US government-affiliated think-tank RAND in 2019, entitled ‘Extending Russia: Competing from Advantageous Ground’. This is a revealing paper, as it demonstrates the extent to which the US is stuck in a 19th century-style ‘great power game’ with Russia. In the 354-page policy document, Russia’s natural gas resources are mentioned in the very first paragraph. Confronting Russia in the energy sector is seen as a priority ‘in a campaign designed to unbalance the adversary’ as it puts it:
‘…the United States can adopt policies that expand world supply and thus depress global prices, thereby limiting Russian revenue. Imposing tougher sanctions is also likely to degrade the Russian economy, and could do so to a greater extent and more quickly than maintaining low oil prices, provided the sanctions are comprehensive and multilateral.’
Hardly surprising, therefore, that ‘stopping Nord Stream 2’ is listed as the first of ‘A variety of options exist for diversifying European gas supplies and extending Russia economically’. Interestingly, in the report, Nord Stream 2 features heavily in terms of, not so much aiding Ukraine as we keep hearing about in the western media, but instead in relation to undermining Russia. Furthermore, the question of Ukraine losing out on money from transit fees, paid by Russia, which amount to around $3 billion a year, is repeatedly mentioned in the document, which emphasises the extent to which this is an economic issue for the US:
“In terms of extending Russia economically, the main benefit of creating supply alternatives to Russian gas is that it would lower Russian export revenues. The federal Russian budget is already stressed, leading to planned cuts in defense spending, and lowering gas revenues would stress the budget further.”
The RAND report looks at other ways of undermining Russia in the energy sector, describing the possibility of engineering its own pipeline project involving southern European countries and of course, mentions the development of US fracking schemes across Europe.
Aside from US policy in general towards Russia, Joe Biden has his own personal ties to Ukraine which will influence his attitude towards Nord Stream 2. One of the largest companies involved in gas exploration and production across Ukraine is Burisma, a company closely tied to Biden, as his son used to be on the board of directors. Indeed it was widely reported that when the company was involved in a corruption scandal back in 2016, Biden, then US Vice President, incredibly threatened to withhold $1 billion of US aid from Ukraine if it didn’t fire the prosecutor investigating the case.
Joe Biden’s son may no longer be involved in Burisma, but the US President still has considerable influence in Ukraine. Indeed, when Biden’s position as Vice President came to an end, it was speculated that Ukraine wouldn’t manage without him: ‘Ukraine’s government has relied heavily on its direct channel to the U.S. vice president, and Biden’s departure will leave a gaping hole’ said Foreign Policy, adding that ‘No one in the U.S. government has wielded more influence over Ukraine than Vice President Joe Biden’.
Taking both US policy on the whole towards Russia, and Joe Biden’s commitments to Ukraine, it’s therefore likely that we will see this Biden administration only ramp up pressure in the final stages of the Nord Stream 2 project. However unlikely it may seem that the US could stop the pipeline at such a late stage in the game, stranger things have happened. As usual, the US will continue to use both economic pressure in the form of sanctions, and diplomatic pressure to push Germany into a corner. So far, Merkel has been tenacious, but only time will tell if her personal determination is enough to stand up to the might of Uncle Sam.
Former Vice President Joe Biden this week [early January 2020] continued to maintain the fiction that he stood against the war in Iraq “the very moment” it began in 2003. The claim has been easilytakenapart by fact checkers — Biden publicly supported the war before, during, and after the invasion — but a 1998 Senate hearing sheds additional light on his determination to confront Iraq over weapons of mass destruction.
In 1998, U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter resigned in protest and accused the international community of not giving him and his colleagues the support they needed to carry out their job in Iraq, which had agreed in 1991 to destroy its chemical weapons stockpile. He was called to testify before the Senate in September 1998, where Biden, who was then the highest-ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations committee, grilled him. In the course of the questions, Biden made revealing remarks about where he stood on regime change in Iraq.
Biden thanked Ritter for forcing senators to “come to our milk,” by which he meant forcing them to make a decision on what to do about Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and his alleged weapons of mass destruction program.
Biden told Ritter that no matter how thorough the inspections, the only way to eliminate the threat was to remove Saddam Hussein.
“The primary policy is to keep sanctions in place to deny Saddam the billions of dollars that would allow him to really crank up his program, which neither you nor I believe he’s ever going to abandon as long as he’s in place,” Biden said, characterizing former President Bill Clinton’s administration’s policy. “You and I believe, and many of us believe here, as long as Saddam is at the helm, there is no reasonable prospect you or any other inspector is ever going to be able to guarantee that we have rooted out, root and branch, the entirety of Saddam’s program relative to weapons of mass destruction. You and I both know, and all of us here really know, and it’s a thing we have to face, that the only way, the only way we’re going to get rid of Saddam Hussein is we’re going to end up having to start it alone — start it alone — and it’s going to require guys like you in uniform to be back on foot in the desert taking this son of a — taking Saddam down,” Biden said. “You know it and I know it.”
Hussein, it turned out, did not have an active WMD program.
During questioning, Biden mocked Ritter as “ol’ Scotty boy” and suggested that his demands — that the international community compel Iraq to cooperate with inspectors — if met, would give Ritter the unilateral authority to start a war in Iraq. Biden argued that such decisions belonged to higher-level officials. “I respectfully suggest they have a responsibility slightly above your pay grade, to decide whether or not to take the nation to war,” Biden said. “That’s a real tough decision. That’s why they get paid the big bucks. That’s why they get the limos and you don’t. I mean this sincerely, I’m not trying to be flip.”
He ended by redeploying his unusual idiom in thanking Ritter.
“The reason why I’m glad you did what you did: We should come to our milk. We should make a decision,” Biden said.
Biden’s earlier suggestion that “taking Saddam down” was the only way to guarantee an end to the WMD program left little doubt where Biden would later come down on the issue.
Biden’s grilling of Ritter is important because it gives context to claims Biden later made: First, that when he voted in favor of the invasion of Iraq as a senator, he did not mean to vote for war, but hoped the resolution would empower inspectors to get back into Iraq and monitor the program. And second, that he never believed Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
On the first claim, Biden told NPR last year that former President George W. Bush “looked me in the eye in the Oval Office. He said he needed the vote to be able to get inspectors into Iraq to determine whether or not Saddam Hussein was engaged in dealing with a nuclear program. … He got them in and before you know it, we had ‘shock and awe.’”
But according to Biden’s own statements in 1998, he believed that Hussein could never be trusted to eliminate his program, no matter how many inspectors were admitted.
In October 2004, by which time it had become clear there were no WMDs, Biden told an audience at the Council on Foreign Relations, “I never believed they had weapons of mass destruction.”
In fact, as Biden had said in 1998, he believed not only that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, but no amount of inspections or diplomacy could guarantee their removal. That, he told Ritter, could only be done by “guys like you in uniform to be back on foot in the desert taking this son of a — taking Saddam down.”
Biden’s thought process puts critical hearings he held in 2002 as chair of the Foreign Relations Committee in sharper context. That summer, as the world was focused on the war in Afghanistan, from where the attacks of September 11, 2001, had been launched, Biden sought to begin “a national dialogue” on Iraq. During a series of high-profile hearings, he feigned neutrality, but his earlier questioning of Ritter leaves no doubt where he stood: Iraq had WMDs, and the only way to disarm Iraq with confidence was to depose Saddam Hussein. Biden, given his chairmanship, was a leading voice on foreign policy within the party. He had voted against the first Gulf War, waged by Bush’s father, and wasn’t considered a knee-jerk hawk. His support for the 2003 war made Democratic opposition ultimately untenable — even as Ritter, in the run up to it, loudly made the case against war, arguing that the WMD claims were overhyped.
Biden had reason to disbelieve the WMD claims. In a classified hearing on September 24, 2002, at the urging of a staff member, Biden asked then-CIA Director George Tenet what evidence of WMDs the U.S. had “technically collected.”
“None, Senator,” Tenet said, according to an account in the book “Hubris,” by Michael Isikoff and David Corn. Biden, wondering if there was some highly classified evidence, asked Tenet, “George, do you want me to clear the staff out of the room?” Tenet told him no. “There’s no reason to, Senator.”
“‘None, Senator’ — that answer will ring in my ears as long as I live,” the staffer later told the authors. Later in that same hearing, Biden heard from two government witnesses who rejected the “aluminum tubes” claim that had been circulating, and would later become a centerpiece of Secretary of State Colin Powell’s presentation to the United Nations.
Biden, to be sure, was not a full-throated advocate for the war on Bush’s terms, and throughout the fall, worked with Republican Sens. Richard Lugar and Chuck Hagel to try to build support for a narrower authorization, that would only allow Bush to attack Iraq for the purpose of dismantling a WMD program. But the effort was undercut by House Democratic leaders, and particularly Rep. Dick Gephardt, D-Mo., who pushed ahead with Bush’s broader resolution. “I was angry,” Biden later said, according to “Hubris.” “I was frustrated. But I never second-guess another man’s political judgment.”
Biden was also aware of the difficulty of invading and occupying Iraq, unlike some of his Republican colleagues. In February 1998, the News Journal of Wilmington reported that Biden saw invasion as unlikely.
Though some Republicans have urged the military to remove Saddam from power entirely, Biden said there was little will for that in Congress. Such a move would require a bloody ground war, the use of 300,000 to 500,000 ground troops, and some kind of continuing presence in Iraq while a new government is installed, he said.
Yet during the summer 2002 hearings, Biden claimed that “one thing is clear, these weapons must be dislodged from Saddam Hussein, or Saddam Hussein must be dislodged from power.” Given that he was already on record believing that the weapons could never effectively be dislodged from Saddam Hussein, that left only one option: war. Biden voted for the Iraq war resolution on October 11, 2002, three weeks after hearing from Tenet in the classified session.
There are ongoing US-NATO military threats against a large number of countries including, Russia, China, Venezuela, Iran, North Korea. Is a US-NATO sponsored war contemplated for the Ides of March 2021?
A year ago in March 2020 under the Trump presidency, US-NATO deployed 37,000 troops to the Russian border in the context of their war games entitled “Defender Europe 2020”.
Since his inauguration, President Joe Biden has committed himself to extending the militarization of Eastern Europe, the Balkans, the Black Sea Basin, the broader Middle East as well as the South and East China Sea.
Let’s not forget that Joe Biden was a firm supporter of the Invasion of Iraq on the grounds that Saddam Hussein “had weapons of mass destruction”. “The American People were deceived into this war”, said Senator Dick Durbin. Do not let yourself be deceived again by Joe Biden.
In the Middle East, Joe Biden is committed to extending US hegemony with the direct participation of Israel in US Central Command (USCENTCOM).
Currently the US military is involved in Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Yemen. The illegal war of aggression against Syria is ongoing marked by direct US-Israeli bombing raids.
The next US military target is Iran.
Biden’s “Confront China Agenda”
Biden’s China Agenda has gone far beyond that of his predecessor:
“We’ll confront China’s economic abuses; counter its aggressive, coercive action; to push back on China’s attack on human rights, intellectual property, and global governance”
America is back. America is back. Diplomacy is back at the center of our foreign policy.
As I said in my inaugural address, we will repair our alliances and engage with the world once again, not to meet yesterday’s challenges, but today’s and tomorrow’s. American leadership must meet this new moment of advancing authoritarianism, including the growing ambitions of China to rival the United States and the determination of Russia to damage and disrupt our democracy. (Emphasis added)
Building up US military presence in the East and South China seas (ECS and SCS) will be extended to new heights.
The Corona “Blame Game” against China
Yet there is another strategic element which is building up and which might be used as “hybrid weapon” by the Biden-Harris administration against the Chinese leadership.
Who was behind the Economic and Social Crisis spearheaded by the March 11, 2020 lockdown which precipitated the destabilization of the global economy?
Is the Biden administration intent upon launching a Corona blame Game against China seeking billions of dollars of “compensation” from China for the alleged destructive impacts of “V the Virus”.
Already in March 2020, following the lockdown, the US foreign policy establishment was calling for “Yes, Blame China for the Virus”.
If China had a different government, the world could have been spared this terrible pandemic… [W]e have to hold accountable the politicians responsible for making it worse, chief among them Chinese President Xi Jinping. He did not create the novel coronavirus, but his government’s missteps are directly responsible for its global transmission and uncontrolled spread.” (Foreign Policy, March report)
What will Happen in the Course of the 2021 Ides of March?
Is Biden committed to waging so-called “forever wars” under a humanitarian label?
As we recall The Project for the New American Century (formulated by the Neocons in the late 1990s, adopted by the GWB administration) had defined “America’s long war”
We will “fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theater wars”.
During the so-called Post World war II Era: US led wars have largely been “consecutive”: Vietnam, Afghanistan, Yugoslavia, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen … (all of which were launched during the month of March).
Preemptive nuclear war was first put forward by the Bush administration as a “first strike” means of self defense. And then under Obama, a one 1.2 trillion dollar nuclear weapons program was launched with a means to defending the homeland…
We are at a dangerous crossroads.
The truth is a powerful and peaceful weapon.
No laughing matter. What can we expect during the 2021 “Ides of March”?
Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, February 2021
***
Is it a mere coincidence?
In recent history, from the Vietnam war to the present, the month of March has been chosen by the Pentagon and NATO military planners as the “best month” to go to war.
With the exception of the War on Afghanistan (October 2001) and the 1990-91 Gulf War, all major US-NATO and allied led military operations over a period of more than half a century –since the invasion of Vietnam by US ground forces on March 8, 1965– have been initiated in the month of March.
The Ides of March (Idus Martiae) is a day in the Roman calendar which broadly corresponds to March 15. The Ides of March is also known as the date on which Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44 BC.
Lest we forget, the month of March (in the Roman Calendar) is dedicated to Mars (Martius), the Roman God of War.
For the Romans, the month of March (Martius) marked “the time to start new military campaigns.”
As in the heyday of the Roman Empire, the US Department of Defense has a mandate to plan and implement a precise “timeline” of military operations.
Does the month of March –identified by the Romans as a “good time” to initiate new military undertakings–, have a bearing on contemporary military doctrine?
Throughout history, seasons including the transition from Winter to Spring have played a strategic role in the timing of military operations.
Do Pentagon military planners favor the month of March?
Do they also –in some mysterious fashion– “idolize” Mars, the Roman God of War?
March 23 (which coincides with the beginning of Spring) was the day “Romans celebrated the start of the military campaign and war fighting season.”
“Homage was paid to Mars the god of war with festivals and feasting. … For the Romans March 23 was a huge celebration known as Tubilustrium”.
Under these festivities which celebrated the Roman god of war, a large part of the month of March “was dedicated to military celebration and preparedness.”
Timeline of March US Military Interventions (1965- 2020)
Recent history confirms that with the exception of Afghanistan (October 2001) and the 1990-91 Gulf War, all major US-NATO led military operations over a period of more than half a century –since the invasion of Vietnam by US ground forces on March 8, 1965– have been initiated in the month of March.
The Vietnam War
The US Congress adopted the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which authorized President Lyndon Johnson to dispatch ground forces to Vietnam on March 8, 1965.
On 8 March 1965, 3,500 U.S. Marines were dispatched to South Vietnam marking the beginning of “America’s ground war”.
NATO’s War on Yugoslavia
NATO’s war on Yugoslavia was launched on March 24, 1999.
The NATO bombing of Yugoslavia code-named by the US Operation “Noble Anvil”. started on March 24, 1999 and lasted until June 10, 1999.
The Iraq War
The War on Iraq was launched on March 20, 2003. (Baghdad time)
The US-NATO led invasion of Iraq started on 20 March 2003 on the pretext that Iraq possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD).
(The 1991 Gulf War on Iraq began on 17th January. However, after the 28th February ceasefire was agreed and signed – following the Basra Road massacre of withdrawing soldiers and fleeing civilians on 26th/27th February – the US 24th Mechanised Infantry Division slaughtered thousands on 2nd March.”)
The Covert War on Syria
The US-NATO Covert War on Syria was initiated on March 15, 2011 with the incursion of Al Qaeda affiliated mercenaries and death squads in the southern city of Daraa on the border with Jordan.
The terrorists were involved in acts of arson as well as the killings of civilians. This incursion of terrorists was from the very outset supported covertly by the US, NATO and its Persian Gulf allies: Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
NATO’s “Humanitarian” R2P War on Libya
NATO commenced its bombing of Libya on March 19, 2011. The United Nations Security Council passed an initial resolution on 26 February 2011 (UNSC Resolution 1970), (adopted unanimously).
A subsequent United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973 was adopted on 17 March 2011. It authorized the establishment of “a no-fly zone” over Libya, and the use “all necessary measures” “to protect the lives of civilians”.
Libya was bombed relentlessly by NATO warplanes starting on March 19, 2011 for a period of approximately seven months.
Yemen
On 25 March 2015, an international coalition led by Saudi Arabia and supported by the US launched air strikes against the Huthi armed group in Yemen.
Coincidence;
The Ides of March, March 15 44 BC, was also the day Emperor Julius Caesar was stabbed to death by the Roman Senate.
Time and again, both right wings of the US war party unjustifiably justify endless preemptive wars by manufacturing nonexistent threats to US national security.
The Biden regime’s so-called Interim National Security Strategic Guidance (INSSG) maintains the myth of barbarians at the gates.
It falsely claims that US and other democracies — in name only — are threatened, referring to the increasingly totalitarian West and apartheid Israel.
Remarks ghost-written for Biden drip with references to democratic values, fundamental freedoms, prosperity for all, peace and dignity — notions abhorred by US-led Western countries and Israel.
“(B)uild back better” is all about handing the nation’s wealth to privileged interests at the expense of exploiting most others.
It’s about spending unlimited trillions of dollars for militarism and warmaking.
It’s about handing trillions more to Wall Street and other corporate favorites.
It’s about going all-out to prevent peace and stability from ending forever wars.
It’s about subjugating world community nation-states and ordinary people at home and abroad.
It’s about enforcing new world order harshness by police state control.
It’s polar opposite virtually everything just societies hold dear.
There’s nothing remotely benign about hardline US domestic and geopolitical policies.
Media supported mass deception pretends otherwise.
INSSG pretends that the Biden regime like its predecessors aims “to keep Americans safe, prosperous, and free (sic).”
Totalitarian rule — enforced with police state harshness — pursues polar opposite aims.
“Anti-democratic forces” are headquartered in Washington with branch offices in Western European capitals and Tel Aviv.
Enemies mentioned are invented, not real, notably China and Russia, nations prioritizing peace, stability, cooperative relations with other nations, and adherence to international law — notions long ago abandoned by the US-dominated West.
Iran and North Korea are longstanding invented US enemies, nations at war with no others, threatening no one.
Nations reinvented as barbarians at the US gates wage peace, not war, cooperation with other states, not confrontation — in sharp contrast to how the US and its imperial partners operate, an unprecedented threat to humanity’s survival.
Names and faces change in Washington over time. Farcical elections assure continuity.
Imperial rage for dominance through the barrel of a gun remains hard-wired policy.
So does police state harshness to prevent governance of, by, and for everyone equitably from ever breaking out.
Before taking office, Biden assured US privileged interests that nothing will change on his watch.
Governance serving them exclusively at the expense of most others will continue like always before.
Endless wars and occupations will continue.
Public wealth will shift entirely to powerful interests, ordinary Americans impoverished, resistance crushed when surfacing.
The state of the nation and other Western societies will become more unsafe and unfit to live in than already.
The type world US ruling authorities have in mind for ordinary people everywhere is too unacceptable to tolerate.
Invented threats — including barbarians at the gates — aim to cow ordinary people into submission.
They’re manipulated to believe everything is all right so they’ll learn to love their Big Brother oppressor.
Mass resistance is essential to challenge the worst of all possible worlds US dark forces want imposed on humanity.
Even as President Joe Biden challenges Americans to a “100 day masking challenge” and other mask-related restrictions on federal land, some of the biggest states in the US (including ultra-liberal California and swing-state Michigan, among others) are going their own way, resisting calls from the Biden administration to go heavy with masks and lockdowns, which have – as we’ve noted, seemingly made no difference and lack scientific basis.
Perhaps it has something to do with the WHO’s admission that PCR overamplification may have led to the “Case-Demic” that “conspiracy theorists have long warned about.
But whatever the case may be, recently, liberal governors like New York’s Andrew Cuomo appeared to recognize that the economy needs to reopen, and quickly. Even Cuomo acknowledges that the holiday spike is fading.
Notably, the spike in cases from the pre-holiday period is already beginning to subside. This, coupled with all of those warnings about a post-holiday case surge, had led to suspicions that the American public has been gaslighted – or at least intentionally misled, by federal authorities intent on doing whatever they can to tarnish President Trump’s legacy.
Meanwhile, and possibly related, vaccination rates worldwide aren’t off to a great start – while reports of healthcare professionals and others who refuse to take it have been rolling in.
Yet, despite liberal leaders’ sudden post-inauguration interest in reopening, they seem to be ignoring the new boogeyman – the new “mutated” strains from the UK and South Africa, which have caused a good deal of panic among public health officials (whether warranted or not).
And since the US has administered fewer than 25MM vaccines, more of these COVID “variants” are setting off alarms – causing vaccine maker Moderna announcing the development of a ‘booster’ shot to protect against both mutants.
Teachers’ unions, meanwhile, are increasingly opposed to lawmakers pushing to return to in-person instruction within 100 days.
According to Northwestern University epidemiologist Sadiya Khan, who spoke with Bloomberg, “We’re just asking to go backwards by easing restrictions without focusing on achieving herd immunity with vaccination.” The doctor is an epidemiologist at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago.”It’s very fragile,” she said referring to the COVID economy.
Perhaps things would be less ‘fragile’ if Democratic leaders’ sudden push to reopen didn’t have the most suspicious timing in the known universe, and California (and other states) were more transparent about whose ‘science’ they’re following.
Video has surfaced of former Vice President Joe Biden jokingly calling US military members “stupid bastards” and a “dull bunch” apparently in indignation for not receiving applause during a 2016 trip to the United Arab Emirates. Biden said we don’t need to trust anonymous sources in the Atlantic to believe these labels to believe them.
“Notwithstanding what you may hear about me, I have incredibly good judgment,” Biden said. “One, I married Jill and two, I appointed Johnson to the academy.”
When nobody reacts, Biden added “I just want you to know that, so clap for that you stupid bastards.” Biden then proceeded by saying, “Man, you all are a dull bunch. It must be slow here, man.”
Biden, who was in his final year in office, traveled to the Middle East in March 2016 as part of an effort to shore up the Obama administration’s position in the region. During the trip Biden delivered an address to members of the 380th Air Expeditionary Wing stationed at the Al-Dhafra Air Base near Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates.
As part of the visit, Biden was introduced by 1st Lt. Karen Johnson of the 380th’s Expeditionary Aircraft Maintenance Squadron. Given that Lt. Johnson was a native of Delaware and had secured her appointment to the U.S. Air Force Academy through Biden’s former Senate office, the vice president tried to use that history as a means to break the ice with the more than 1,000 service members present.
While it might be anticipated that President Trump will level Biden in the debates, he might not get the opportunity if Biden takes himself out first.
Wow. Democrat Presidential candidate Joe Biden called our troops "stupid bastards" in 2016. How did this video stay hidden for so long? There’s only one stupid bastard in this clip and it’s definitely not any of our troops… pic.twitter.com/YZ99utMx30
We have entered a new era of demonology. The hunt is on for heretics and witches who might be held responsible for our current predicament, for the plague of Covid. As in pre-modern times, sinful speakers and thinkers, those who dare to bristle against the political or scientific consensus, are being demonised and publicly shamed as assistants of the plague, as Covid’s willing helpers. They have ‘blood on their hands’, the lockdown fanatics cry, blissfully unaware of how similar they sound to those who in earlier times of disease would drag eccentrics to the stocks in the warped belief that those eccentrics either brought the plague or at least aided its spread.
It is hard to think of any other political constituency in recent times who have been as thoroughly demonised as lockdown sceptics. Climate-change sceptics are up there, of course. Deniers of the cult of genderfluidity have had a severe hammering, too. But that all pales, if not into insignificance then at least into the background, in comparison with the war of barbs and defamation against anyone who questions whether lockdown is the right response to Covid-19.
These people are branded ‘Covid deniers’. They are ‘dangerous’. Their words kill. They have blood on their hands. They have a ‘hell of a lot to answer for’, says chief demonologist Neil O’Brien, Tory MP for Harborough, inflaming the idea that these people and their sinful speech benefit the plague and directly help to cause injury and death.
So successful has been the campaign of demonisation against lockdown sceptics that even that title – lockdown sceptic – has been sullied beyond recognition. It is now taken to include not only thoughtful people who question the policy of complete shutdowns, but also those who doubt the existence of Covid-19 and anti-vaxxers who think the Covid jab will come with a microchip so that Bill Gates can monitor our every move for the rest of time.
This lumping together of everyone from Oxford scientists Sunetra Gupta and Carl Heneghan to the anonymous bloke on Twitter who swears blind he knows five people who have been made gravely ill by the vaccine confirms that the aim here is to vilify scepticism across the board. Raise so much as a peep of criticism of the current Covid strategy and you’re as bad as the morons who say Covid isn’t real.
The demonisation of lockdown sceptics intensifies daily. They are branded ‘agents of disinformation’ (the Observer) who are ‘dangerous’ (the New Statesman). They are killing people, we are told. The reason Covid-19 is spreading again, and killing large numbers, is ‘because this metropolitan clique of elites put forth falsehoods and misinterpretations’, says one columnist (my italics).
This is, to be frank, unhinged. It is unreasonable in the extreme to blame the spread of Covid on sceptics who have very little influence in public discussion. Virtually the entire political establishment, the vast bulk of the media and every online ‘influencer’ favours lockdown. The message we receive constantly – on TV, online, in the press – is to stay home, be good, don’t kill people. It is a fantasy to believe that the voices of isolated and demonised sceptics are cutting through this conformist fog and inspiring people to recklessly spread the plague.
But then, that’s the point – we are now in the realm of fantasy, or at least of pre-modern fear and panic, not the realm of reason. The shaming of lockdown sceptics as friends of the plague eerily echoes past outbursts of hysteria during times of transmissible illness. Witchcraft panics exploded during times of plague. As one historical study of witch-hunts in the 1500s and 1600s says, it was often ‘the profound dislocation and mortality produced by the plague’ which created the social conditions for witch-hunting. Plague provided ‘the essential background for the growth [of witch-hunts]’ (1).
The terror and confusions unleashed by plagues led to a climate of finger-pointing, a demented search for those whose warped beliefs and actions might be held responsible for the plague’s spread. Where today’s sinful speakers are judged to be ‘agents of disinformation’, witches and demonic individuals in earlier eras of plague were denounced as ‘agents of the kingdom of evil’. As one historian says: ‘The sheer, massive terror induced by the plague grounded the notion that absolutely anyone… could be an agent of the kingdom of evil.
Indeed, witch-hunts often ran side by side with ‘plague-spreader panics’. These panics, especially prevalent in urban areas, were fuelled by a conviction that certain people, usually those possessed of incorrect, non-Christian beliefs, were assisting the plague. Either through the use of plague-diseased ointments or treatments that didn’t work (disinformation?), these evil forces were said to be the footsoldiers of sickness: ‘Their prosecution resembled that of witches, for a visitation of the plague could trigger a plague-spreader panic, in which a large number of engraisseurs [plague-spreaders] were accused and tried.’ (3)
Heresy itself came to be viewed as a kind of plague. The 1645 pamphlet Heresiography branded heresy an ‘infectious and contagious malady’. Heresy was seen as a worse problem than disease itself. ‘The plague of Heresie is greater’, Heresiographydeclared, ‘and you are now in more danger than when you buried five thousand a week’. This chillingly prefigured Britain in early 2021: over 5,000 died from Covid last week and yet the most intense focus among the media and political elites has been on lockdown sceptics and their ‘dangerous’ words. The plague of heresy is greater….
The impulse back then was to try to offset the terror of the plague with ritualistic denunciations and in some cases executions of plague-assisters. A similar impulse has gripped the UK today. The seemingly out-of-control nature of Covid-19, the patent failure of three lockdowns to ‘flatten the curve’, has generated instability and even flashes of hysteria in the mainstream. They need someone or something to blame. They need demons. They need engraisseurs. The witch-hunt, once again, becomes a displacing function of the fearful, morally disarrayed governors of society.
One commentator – Paul Mason at the New Statesman – has taken the heresy hysteria to its logical conclusion. He has fantasised about which circles of hell lockdown sceptics will be placed in. ‘[T]he final circle has to be reserved for prominent lockdown sceptics… celebrity right-wing opinion-formers with no scientific credentials… It is thanks to them, and their media backers, that the Tory handling of the pandemic has lurched from incompetence and hubris to catastrophic mismanagement.’ In short, their heresy kills, and they must be silenced. Pure medievalism. Stalinism meets Dante.
This demonisation of sceptics must stop. The majority of us who question the policy of lockdown accept that Covid is real and dangerous. spiked has described the Covid pandemic as a very significant health challenge from the very beginning. We also accept that restrictions on everyday life will be necessary. What we question is the policy of blanket lockdowns, the use of the politics of terror to scare the population into complying, and the war on dissent. It is perfectly legitimate – essential, in fact – to question these things.
You want to talk about sin? Okay. It is a far greater sin to crush dissenting opinion than it is to say things about Covid-19 that later prove to be wrong. The destruction of free discussion harms society far more than incorrect opinion or predictions do, because it limits the space for critical interrogation of public policy and for entertaining the possibility that what we are doing is wrong. That is what spiked wants: the entertainment of possibilities, the cherishing of open and rigorous inquiry, and the flourishing of heresy. Time will tell if lockdown was wrong, but we know right now that the campaign of demonology is wrong.
Brendan O’Neill is editor of spiked and host of the spikedpodcast, The Brendan O’Neill Show. Subscribe to the podcast here. And find Brendan on Instagram: @burntoakboy
President Trump was crucified by the mainstream media a few weeks back after hosting an improvised press conference and saying there was “blame on both sides” for the violence in Charlottesville that resulted in the death of a counterprotester. The comments resulted in most of Trump’s advisory councils being disbanded, as CEO’s around the country pounced on the opportunity to distance themselves from the administration, and heightened calls from CNN for impeachment proceedings.
The problem is that while Trump’s delivery probably could have been a bit more artful, the underlying message seems to be proving more accurate with each passing day and each new outbreak of Antifa violence.
As Politico points out today, previously unreported FBI and Department of Homeland Security studies found that “anarchist extremist” group like Antifa have been the “primary instigators of violence at public rallies” going back to at least April 2016 when the reports were first published.
Federal authorities have been warning state and local officials since early 2016 that leftist extremists known as “antifa” had become increasingly confrontational and dangerous, so much so that the Department of Homeland Security formally classified their activities as “domestic terrorist violence,” according to interviews and confidential law enforcement documents obtained by POLITICO.
Since well before the Aug. 12 rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, turned deadly, DHS has been issuing warnings about the growing likelihood of lethal violence between the left-wing anarchists and right-wing white supremacist and nationalist groups.
Previously unreported documents disclose that by April 2016, authorities believed that “anarchist extremists” were the primary instigators of violence at public rallies against a range of targets. They were blamed by authorities for attacks on the police, government and political institutions, along with symbols of “the capitalist system,” racism, social injustice and fascism, according to a confidential 2016 joint intelligence assessment by DHS and the FBI.
Not surprisingly, law enforcement officials noted that the rise in Antifa violence overlapped perfectly with Trump’s campaign as they made appearances at rally after rally to incite chaos…all the while making it seem as if violent, racist Trump supporters were to blame.
“It was in that period [as the Trump campaign emerged] that we really became aware of them,” said one senior law enforcement official tracking domestic extremists in a state that has become a front line in clashes between the groups. “These antifa guys were showing up with weapons, shields and bike helmets and just beating the shit out of people. … They’re using Molotov cocktails, they’re starting fires, they’re throwing bombs and smashing windows.”
Almost immediately, the right-wing targets of the antifa attacks began fighting back, bringing more and larger weapons and launching unprovoked attacks of their own, the documents and interviews show. And the extremists on both sides have been using the confrontations, especially since Charlottesville, to recruit unprecedented numbers of new members, raise money and threaten more confrontations, they say.
“Everybody is wondering, ‘What are we gonna do? How are we gonna deal with this?’” said the senior state law enforcement official. “Every time they have one of these protests where both sides are bringing guns, there are sphincters tightening in my world. Emotions get high, and fingers get twitchy on the trigger.”
As you’ll likely recall, one such event came in June 2016 when Antifa showed up at a rally in Sacramento and began violently attacking protestors with canes and knives. Of course, with the whole thing caught on video, it’s pretty clear who the instigators of violence were (see our post here).
Some of the DHS and FBI intelligence reports began flagging the antifa protesters before the election. In one from last September, portions of which were read to POLITICO, DHS studied “recent violent clashes … at lawfully organized white supremacist” events including a June 2016 rally at the California Capitol in Sacramento organized by the Traditionalist Workers Party and its affiliate, the Golden State Skinheads.
According to police, counter-protesters linked to antifa and affiliated groups like By Any Means Necessary attacked, causing a riot after which at least 10 people were hospitalized, some with stab wounds.
At the Sacramento rally, antifa protesters came looking for violence, and “engaged in several activities indicating proficiency in pre-operational planning, to include organizing carpools to travel from different locations, raising bail money in preparation for arrests, counter-surveilling law enforcement using three-man scout teams, using handheld radios for communication, and coordinating the event via social media,”the DHS report said.
Insane video. Crowd sees any signs of "Nazis" and they run&attack. A lot of people bleeding/getting maced. @ABC10pic.twitter.com/PoFhILfZ95
— Frances Wang (#FrannyInMiami) (@FrancesWangTV) June 26, 2016
— Frances Wang (#FrannyInMiami) (@FrancesWangTV) June 26, 2016
Of course, it’s not just California. As the FBI and DHS note, the Antifa group operates much like terrorist cells with disconnected groups all over the country.Even before Charlottesville, dozens and, in some cases, hundreds of people on both sides showed up at events in Texas, California, Oregon and elsewhere, carrying weapons and looking for a fight. In the Texas capital of Austin, armed antifa protesters attacked Trump supporters and white groups at several recent rallies, and then swarmed police in a successful effort to stop them from making arrests.
California has become another battleground, with violent confrontations in Berkeley, Sacramento and Orange County leading to numerous injuries. And antifa counter-protesters initiated attacks in two previous clashes in Charlottesville, according to the law enforcement reports and interviews.
More recently, the antifa groups, which some describe as the Anti-Fascist Action Network, have evolved out of the leftist anti-government groups like “Black bloc,” protesters clad in black and wearing masks that caused violence at events like the 1999 Seattle World Trade Organization protests. They claim to have no leader and no hierarchy, but authorities following them believe they are organized via decentralized networks of cells that coordinate with each other. Often, they spend weeks planning for violence at upcoming events, according to the April 2016 DHS and FBI report entitled “Baseline Comparison of US and Foreign Anarchist Extremist Movements.”
Dozens of armed anti-fascist groups have emerged, including Redneck Revolt and the Red Guards, according to the reports and interviews. One report from New Jersey authorities said self-described antifa groups have been established in cities including New York, Philadelphia, Chicago and San Francisco.
Meanwhile, even by the spring of 2016, the FBI had already grown concerned enough about Antifa that they began investigating overseas trips by activists out of concerns that they were coordinating with European anarchists to stage large bombings in the U.S.
By the spring of 2016, the anarchist groups had become so aggressive, including making armed attacks on individuals and small groups of perceived enemies, that federal officials launched a global investigation with the help of the U.S. intelligence community, according to the DHS and FBI assessment.
The purpose of the investigation, according to the April 2016 assessment: To determine whether the U.S.-based anarchists might start committing terrorist bombings like their counterparts in “foreign anarchist extremist movements” in Greece, Italy and Mexico, possibly at the Republican and Democratic conventions that summer.
Some of the antifa activists have gone overseas to train and fight with fellow anarchist organizations, including two Turkey-based groups fighting the Islamic State, according to interviews and internet postings.
Alas, we suspect you’ll hear precisely nothing about any of this on CNN.
Dutch-Jewish historian Jacques Presser remarked as early as 1947: “Fascism, should it ever return, will undoubtedly present itself in the guise of anti-fascism.” Having watched the surreal inauguration, the Green Zone in Baghdad popped up. The occupation in Washington was called Red Zone.
Almost 30.000 troops occupied the city, protecting the ruling class from their own people. The “most popular President,” who can’t simulate mental acuity, was inaugurated behind a huge electric fence without any real people present, except some hundred handpicked members of the political class.
This flagged event has been reinterpreted by one of the propagandists from CNN, Don Lemon; he twisted the truth like CNN always does, saying,
“The reason President-elect Biden has to do this is that he’s just so incredibly popular. He has so many rabid fans that they might try to rush the stage as they’re overcome with enthusiasm and love for Biden, who is by far the most beloved candidate who has ever run for President.”
Kim Jong-un would love having such a guy in his propaganda crew.
Much lesser troops are still occupying Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria! The “crowd” was “represented” by 200.000 mini US flags along the Mall. Biden phraseology sounded like Obama’s only amateurishly and less eloquently. Obama finally got his third term.
Most of the so-called new people served under Obama. Susan Rice, who controls Biden’s domestic policy, will execute Obama’s divisive and identity policy, which contributed partly to the US’s dire situation.
Source: Ludwig Watzal
The Harris/Biden administration will wage a domestic war against 75 million “political-incorrect people” (Trump voters), together with the CIA, FBI, the big tech, the billionaire class, Wall Street, and the propaganda mainstream media as moral enforcers.
Biden used divisive language disguised in “unity” rhetoric such as “White Supremacists,” “Terrorists,” “Nationalists,” et cetera, who violated our “values.” Did he mean the “values” of the 1 percent and their political puppets?
The new regime uses the outburst of People Power on Capitol Hill, where many bozos broke some windows, as a pretext for a purge and a crackdown of 75 million Trump voters. Inciters from Black Lives Matter, such as John Early Sullivan and other agents provocateurs, whooped the protesters. It didn’t look like a “coup,” which the Obama administration organized in Ukraine or other places worldwide.
According to Democrats and their media instigators, Trump incited an “insurrection,” calling on people to make the protest “peacefully” and “patriotically” heard! Not a single word in his common rhetoric was inflammatory.
The Democratic Party political establishment in Washington even wants to “impeach” Trump, though he is now a private citizen. That quite a few Republicans rise to the bait demonstrates their needlessness.
Democrats and Republicans are afraid of Trump that they will bend the law to make “impeachment” happen. The new inquisition plans big. All Trump voters have to undergo reeducation training to be deprogrammed and brainwashed with their political-correct ideology.
The Obama 3.0 administration will topsy-turvy the US with their racist and discriminatory identity policy. Now women have to compete with male freaks who pretend they feel female! This insanity is a spit into the face of all women.
Besides this lunacy, Tribalism will return to America. In the future, everything will depend on who you look (black, brown, yellow, or colored, what sexual orientation one prefers, whether one feels discriminated, which bathroom one wants to use, and the rest of the ridiculous traits that are on display by the Harris/Biden people. The US looks like a nuthouse filled with ideological fanatics for an outsider.
The protest of people power on 6 January will serve as a pretext to establish a fascist system, which has been long in the pipeline. It started in summer 2020, when media oligarchs, a bunch of billionaires, and political operatives from the Democratic Party simulated war games against Trump’s “misbehavior.” Mainstream media was complicit and pushed these ideas.
The Harris/Biden administration, together with Pelosi’s and Schumer’s control
Congress will ram a new “Patriot Act” down the lawmakers’ throat. This “law” will allow the US government to fight “domestic terrorism,” whatever that means. Harris/Biden can now switch between the so-called “Global War on Terror” and “domestic terrorism.” The left big tech and opinion oligopolies replaced class struggle and replaced “anti-fascist” technocratic terrorism. “Antifascism” justifies everything after all!
In fact, the people Biden/Harris hired are the old Obama administration with some new faces, such as the black Secretary of Defense.
They are obsessed with Russia, but not so much with China.
Isn’t the Biden family deeply involved in financial favors from Chinese intelligence? Instead of impeaching the private citizen Donald Trump, Congress should think about impeaching Joe Biden.
There won’t be any “normal,” neither for the American people nor for the peoples around the world. Plans for a “Great Reset” and total control by Big Tech, which plays the role of a “Global Pravda,” are in the pipeline.
Perhaps this American-style Fascism will be more palatable than older versions. But Fascism will remain Fascism, even when it appears as the shining city on the Hill.
US President Joseph Biden, a relic from Washington’s old political establishment will continue the same imperialist policies in Latin America as did his predecessors including that of Donald Trump. There is a clear indication that Washington’s hostilities towards Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro will continue under a Biden administration.
The day before Biden’s inauguration, Reuters’ had published a report on what we can expect from the new administration when it comes to Venezuela, ‘Biden will recognize Guaido as Venezuela’s leader, top diplomat says.’ which means that Washington will continue to support the opposition leader, Juan Guaido as Venezuela’s “legitimate” president. According to the report, Anthony Blinken said “U.S. President-elect Joe Biden’s administration will continue to recognize Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido as the South American country’s president.” Not only Washington would recognize a political figure who was selected by Washington, it would continue to use targeted sanctions on the Latin American country coinciding with humanitarian aid:
Blinken told members of the U.S. Senate that Biden would seek to “more effectively target” sanctions on the country, which aim to oust President Nicolas Maduro – who retains control of the country. Blinken said the new administration would look at more humanitarian assistance to the country
US hostilities towards Venezuela did not start with Trump, there were tensions between Washington and Caracas with the Obama and Bush regimes. An article from the Associated Press (AP) in 2015 ‘Venezuela’s President Accuses Vice President Biden of Plotting to Overthrow Him’ said that Washington had imposed “new visa restrictions on Venezuelan officials and their families.”
The former White House Communications Director under Obama, Jen Psaki who is now on Biden’s team as the White House Press Secretary said that “the U.S. was showing clearly that human rights violators and their families “are not welcome in the United States.”
Washington’s actions earned condemnation from Maduro who said that “he would write a letter to Obama over what he called an attempt to violate Venezuela’s national sovereignty” and that Washington’s long-time policies which are basically strong-arm tactics used on Venezuela and its close allies in the region will lead to failure “U.S. policy toward Venezuela has been kidnapped by “irresponsible, imperial forces that are putting the United States on a dead-end.” Maduro’s response towards Washington’s sanctions at the time was on a televised national address which he criticized Obama’s Vice-President, Joe Biden:
In a televised address over the weekend, Maduro claimed that Biden sought to foment the overthrow of his socialist government during a Caribbean energy summit Biden hosted last month in Washington. According to Maduro, Biden told Caribbean heads of state that the Venezuelan government’s days were numbered and it was time they abandon their support. “What Vice President Joseph Biden did is unspeakable,” Maduro said
And of course, Washington dismissed Maduro’s claims as “ludicrous.” With Joe Biden in charge, expect more of the same bi-partisanship actions including more sanctions, regime change operations and even the possibility of an assassination attempt on Maduro’s life. With a number of war hawks appointed under this new administration including humanitarian interventionist, Samantha Power who will lead the United States Agency for InternationalDevelopment (USAID) tweeted “What’s happening in Venezuela is flying under the radar in the US, but it is incredibly serious” shows what direction Washington will move towards. “In the past week, the opposition banned from competing in April presidential elections, UNICEF warns of child malnutrition crisis, IMF predicts 13,000% inflation in 2018” meaning that Power will push for a humanitarian intervention in some form or another.Power has supported military interventions in Syria and was a cheerleader for the war in Afghanistan and Libya. There will be bi-partisan support from both the democrats and republicans for regime change in Venezuela. But a war against Venezuela under Biden is also quite possible since they have the world’s largest oil reserves on the planet. Tensions between Washington and Caracas will only escalate in the upcoming months.
Nicaragua will be also on Washington’s radar as they are scheduled to have Presidential elections in November. Expect some sort of election interference to oust long-time enemy of Washington, Nicaraguan President, Daniel Ortega. In a September 5th tweet, Biden said
“Nicaraguan asylum seekers fleeing oppression deserve to have their cases heard. Instead, they’re being deported back into the tyrannical grip of Daniel Ortega without a chance to pursue their claims. President Trump’s cruelty truly knows no bounds.”
Venezuela and Nicaragua will experience hostilities from the Biden team, a continuation of policies from previous US regimes is assured.
Obama’s 2009 Coup in Honduras is a Warning to Anti-Imperialists in Latin America
Joe Biden’s history with Latin America as vice-President to Obama should be considered a warning sign of things to come. As soon as Obama was selected for office, they went to work on their backyard with a shovel in hand and set their sights on the small nation of Honduras. Before, the US approved the coup against its Democratic leader, Manuel Zelaya because he wanted to rewrite the constitution. Zelaya administered an opinion poll for a referendum so that a constitutional assembly can legally reform the constitution that would allow Honduran citizens to have a legitimate voice in the political process. Honduran officials, members of the Supreme Court and even members of his own party who are under Washington’s control declared Zelaya’s plans as unconstitutional. Officials from the Obama regime including Hillary Clinton who was the Secretary of State at the time, all agreed Zelaya had to be removed from power.
Zelaya was also too friendly with Washington’s enemies in the region including Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua and Venezuela. Zelaya had also helped people in need as he raised the hourly minimum-wage, funded scholarships for students, authorized the distribution of milk and basic food necessities for children and even helped distribute energy-saving light bulbs among others for the Honduran people. Washington also considered Zelaya a threat to its interests concerning the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) and its US troops stationed at the Palmerola military base if Zelaya decided to cancel the CAFTA deal or stop US troops from entering Honduras. For decades, Washington has trained soldiers and officers in the Honduran military through the former U.S. Army School of the Americas (SOA) which is now called the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC).
On June 28th, 2009, with permission from the Supreme Court of Honduras issued an order for the military to arrest and detain President Zelaya who was taken to the Hernan Acosta Mejia Air Base located in Tegucigalpa, Honduras and was exiled to Costa Rica. The aftermath of the coup resulted in Honduras becoming one of the most dangerous countries on the planet with one of the highest murder-rates in Central America. Roberto Micheletti became the interim-president following the coup. Under his leadership, the Honduras government became a repressive force that lead to an increase of Hondurans deciding to immigrate to the US. Human rights groups and activists lives were threatened. In 2016, one of the death threats became a reality for a well-known Indigenous rights and environmental activist by the name of Bertha Caceres who was assassinated in her home.
Caceres was known for preventing one of the world’s largest corporations that builds dams from completing the Agua Zarca Dam at the Río Gualcarque. Life in Honduras became worst after Washington’s intervention to oust a democratically elected leader who wanted to make things a little better for his people which constitutes a criminal act under Washington’s political establishment.
What Does An Imperialist Power Under Joseph Biden Mean for Latin America?
The gloves will come off. Joe Biden wants to get the job done for the Military-Industrial Complex. The Biden regime will be more aggressive and dangerous to left-wing Latin American leaders who have disobeyed Washington’s political establishment. That’s why they are all on the hit-list to be removed from power so that Washington’s preferred candidates can regain control to benefit their corporate and military interests that has plunged Latin America into a cycle of civil wars, debt and poverty since the end of the Spanish-American war. Biden and the Democrats will try to prove to the Republicans who can be more “tough” on Latin American leaders and others around the world who defy Washington’s policies. Biden’s presidency might prove that his administration will be more hawkish than the Republicans on Venezuela and the rest of Latin America’s anti-imperialist governments.
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Timothy Alexander Guzman writes on his blog site, Silent Crow News, where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
Despite Trump agreeing to leave the White House next Wednesday after losing the election under contentious circumstances, the Democrats and their “Republican In Name Only” (RINO) allies pushed Trump’s historic second impeachment through the House on allegations that he “incited insurrection” in order to delegitimize his legacy, intimidate his supporters, and establish the “legal” precedent for de facto criminalizing the “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) movement that he inspired as a “domestic terrorist” organization in order to pave the way for one-party rule.
Impeachment 2.0
A lot of folks are confused about why there was such a rush to impeach Trump for the historic second time despite him agreeing to leave the White House next Wednesday after losing the election under contentious circumstances. The motivation clearly isn’t to remove him from office but to advance a more devious agenda being pushed by the Democrats and their “Republican In Name Only” (RINO) allies. These anti-Trump forces will stop at nothing in order to delegitimize his legacy and intimidate his supporters, as well as de facto criminalize the Trump-inspired “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) movement as a “domestic terrorist” organization in order to pave the way for one-party rule. These are the only explanations that make any sense for explaining their obsession with impeaching him before he leaves.
“The Great (Political) Reset”
Regarding the first motivation, the American Establishment wants to return to as much of the pre-Trump domestic political status quo as is realistically possible, to which end they plan to reverse practically all of his legacy after the Democrats seized control of both chambers of Congress and the Presidency. The RINOs will go along with this since their vested interests were always threatened by the self-professed “outsider” who they voted to impeach as revenge for his failed crusade to “drain the swamp”. The swiftness with which these policy reversals take place might surprise some Americans, but will be “justified” on the basis that everything that the supposed “Insurrectionist-in-Chief” has done is a “danger to the country” in hindsight. Trump’s supporters will understandably be enraged, but they won’t be able to do much of anything to stop this process.
State-Sponsored Intimidation
That’s because many of them are intimidated after they saw how quickly their leader was accused of “insurrection” despite arguably never having done anything of the sort if one actually takes the time to read the speech that he gave at his Save America Rally and subsequent now-deleted tweets which are misleadingly being used as “evidence” to support this ridiculous claim. They, too, fear that they’ll be caught up in the “anti-insurrectionist” witch hunt if they dare to exercise their constitutionally enshrined freedoms of speech and peaceful assembly to protest the dark path that their country is nowadays treading. After all, if the House can impeach the President for purely political reasons on such a false pretext after he was already completely censored from social media, then there’s nothing stopping them from being victimized too.
De Facto “Domestic Terrorists”
Therein lies the crux of the issue since the worst-case scenario is that this development is exploited by the Democrats and their RINO allies as the “legal” precedent for de facto criminalizing MAGA as a “domestic terrorist” organization. President-Elect Biden himself declared that those who stormed the US Capitol were “domestic terrorists”, and Senator Richard Durbin and Representative Brad Schneider plan to reintroduce their 2019 “Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act” in the wake of what recently happened. Although that proposed piece of legislation doesn’t explicitly ban MAGA, the US’ official definition of “domestic terrorism” is broad enough that it could be abused to encompass all of the movement’s supporters after the events of 6 January and Trump’s subsequent impeachment for “inciting insurrection” if the Democrats and RINOS choose to do so.
“American Solidarity” Is The Answer
There’s no credible reason to dismiss that scenario either since America is hurtling towards de facto one-party rule in the aftermath of that attack, which arguably wasn’t anywhere near as violent or destructive as the last half-year of nationwide riots provoked by Antifa and “Black Lives Matter”(BLM) even though this recent incident was far more symbolic by virtue of the fact that it took place in the US Capitol. The author predicted the impending Democrat-RINO dictatorship and other disturbing outcomes in his piece from last year about how “Biden’s America Would Be A Dystopian Hellhole”, which should be read as a glimpse of what’s likely to come. Under these difficult conditions, he recently proposed the establishment of an “American Solidarity” movement modeled off of its Polish predecessor as the most peaceful, legal, and effective form of resistance.
Concluding Thoughts
The real reasons behind Trump’s second impeachment can be summed up by the meme that he retweeted over a year ago in December 2019 ahead of his first impeachment and which was selected as the cover photo of this article. The image conveyed the powerful message that “In reality they’re not after me. They’re after you. I’m just in the way”, which is exactly what’s happening nowadays even much more than before. Unlike back then, this time Trump’s supporters are directly threatened by this witch hunt since it’ll likely turn against them soon after their political hero leaves off in less than a week’s time. The Democrats and their RINO allies — who function as the public proxies of the anti-Trump faction of America’s permanent military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies (“deep state”) — will now punish MAGA to ensure that a “second Trump” never rises.
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This article was originally published on OneWorld.
Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
It did not take long for the Lie Machine, aka American media, to create the false news and fake narrative of the “storming of the US Capitol” on January 6 by a “white supremacist insurrection.”
Here is an example from Bloomberg Weekend Reading on January 23, 2021:
“The scenes from the first day of Joe Biden’s presidency unfolded against the backdrop of a devastated U.S. economy, continuing fallout from a white supremacist insurrection, and a coronavirus death toll surpassing 400,000.”[1]
The fake narrative is accepted everywhere. It is endemic in the world press. Even news sources such as RT and Sputnik which endeavor to give us real news instead of presstitute lies have repeated the insurrection story.
President Trump was impeached by the House on the sole basis of this fake news story, and now stands to be tried in the Senate on the same fake news charges.
On the basis of the same fake news story, two Florida banks in which Trump had multi-million dollar deposits closed Trump’s accounts.
Signature Bank in New York also closed Trump’s account.
As did Germany’s Deutsche Bank.
New York mayor Bill de Blasio, who permitted Antifa and BLM to loot and burn Manhattan, has terminated the city’s contracts with Trump businesses that run ice skating rinks and a carousel in Central Park and a golf course in the Bronx.
The PGA of America voted to take the PGA Championship away from Trump’s New Jersey Golf course.
Other sources report that conventions are avoiding his hotels and that creditors will not renew loans.
That fake news can have such real world consequences should scare every American to death.
Notice also how the fake news story worsens with each repeat. On January 6, the alleged insurrection was by “Trump supporters.” By January 23 Trump supporters had been morphed into “White supremacist insurrectionists.”
The entire world now believes in something that does not exist.
This is an example of what it means to live in The Matrix. Everyone lives in a false world created by lies repeated endlessly by pressitutes.
The ruling lies are lies that enable Establishment agendas by getting rid of non-establishment explanations and shutting down non-establishment leaders. Trump had to go because he was in the way of Establishment agendas. An example is being made of Trump as a lesson to others who value service to the people higher than service to the Establishment.
There is no doubt whatsoever that Trump won reelection. The accumulated evidence of electoral fraud is overwhelming. Yet the Lie Machine was able to prevent the evidence being presented and examined. All the presstitutes ever said was that “there is no evidence of fraud,” followed by “all who support examining the evidence are enemies of democracy.”
In other words, democracy is a stolen election. If you protest the theft, you are an enemy of democracy.
On December 29, 2020, almost two months after the November presidential election and after almost two months of demonization of Trump for saying the election was stolen, the Gallup Poll reported that its survey found that Donald Trump had displaced Obama as the man most admired by Americans. See this. Yet the most admired man lost the election.
The fact that a presidential election could be stolen in plain view, attested to by numerous experts and a thousand signed affidavits, could go unexamined by the media, state and federal attorneys general, courts, and Congress, shows the power of the Establishment and the impotence of the media which, far from free, is in total service to the Establishment. The public never heard about the evidence from TV, newspapers, or NPR.
Clearly, in America there is no such thing as democracy. An election was stolen and nothing was done about it. The Establishment was able to eliminate a president who did not serve its purposes and nothing was done about it.
The people learned that their vote means nothing and, therefore, there is no democracy. A government controlled by the Establishment is unaccountable to the people.
Perhaps there is a silver lining. It has been a long time since government policy served the public. The public accepted the situation, because most people believed it was in some way a democratic outcome. Now they know that “American democracy” was nothing but a mask for Establishment self-interests. Perhaps the stolen election will serve as a wake-up call to bring the population out of its insouciance. There are signs that the Establishment is concerned that it will, thus the new domestic terrorism bill which will be used to criminalize dissent as terrorism.
For those who are indoctrinated by media repetition that “there is no evidence of electoral fraud,” let’s assume this lie is correct. The fact remains that the system has failed the people. Whether the election was stolen or not, 74 million Americans according to the official vote count and 94 million Americans according to expert estimates of Trump’s true vote count believe that the election was stolen. Yet, the concerns of these millions of Americans were dismissed out of hand as fraudulent claims. The presstitutes claimed repeatedly that the only fraud was the claim of fraud.
The Democrats, the media, and the institutions put in place to ensure a free society failed totally in their responsibility to address the sincere concerns of half or more of the voting population. This in itself is a failure of democracy, a failure of the Establishment.
Those who expressed their concerns were not only dismissed but also demonized, threatened and punished as “enemies of democracy.”
The lesson cannot be more clear: An enemy of democracy is all who challenge the controlled explanation.
The US enters the year 2021 as a country that has moved from the list of democracies to the list of authoritarian governments and is rapidly becoming a totalitarian country in which freedom of speech, freedom of association, and due process are dead letter Constitutional protections. The Gestapo knock at the door, the NKVD knock at the door have come to America.
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Brian Wilson presents a video compilation of Joe Biden’s speeches where he discusses the New World Order and analyzes his 1992 opinion editorial in the Wall Street Journal entitled, “How I Learned to Love the New World Order.”
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“We put together, the most extensive and inclusive voter fraud organization in the history of American politics” Creepy Joe Biden
There Will Be 72,556 Extra Suicides This Year In The United States Because Of The Massive Unemployment As of May 3, 2020, the cold hard facts are there will be 72,556 extra suicides this year because of the massive unemployment caused by the unprecedented crisis. by Mark R. Elsis https://EarthNewspaper.com/ThereWillBe72556ExtraSuicidesThisYear
Joe Biden‘s inauguration as US president was unprecedented in modern times. The US capital resembled a war zone as 25,000 National Guardsmen plus thousands of police enforced severe restrictions over civilian movement on the streets. Roadblocks policed by soldiers and armoured cars were everywhere as the city was divided into red and green zones.
Such scenes are very familiar to Western viewers from cities such as war torn Baghdad. However, they are a shocking sight in the capital of the US Empire which is supposed to be a bastion of peace and stability, exemplifying American exceptionalism.
The corporate media in America is heralding the Biden presidency with a great deal of sycophantic fanfare. The 46th President of the United States will allegedly bring peace, stability and lay the ground for a return of prosperity; so that all can once again share in the American Dream.
Does this perspective for the Biden presidency have any prospect of being realised?
Domestic problems will take precedence
To assess the prospects for the Biden presidency we need to examine the domestic and geo-political challenges facing the new administration measured against the programme of the 46th President and the composition of his cabinet.
At the outset, it is fairly safe to say that the focus of the Biden presidency during its first year will be the compelling domestic issues that pose a threat to the stability of the American Empire in its heartland.
The influential journal Foreign Policy has commented that the US first has to deal with pressing problems at home before it can take ‘on challengers like China’.
It has also observed that America’s moral claims and exhortations against China and Russia will be undermined unless it deals with civil rights issues and abuses of human rights at home. The summer of 2020 witnessed mass civil rights protests against police brutality and institutional racism that involved millions of people on a scale not seen since the early 1960s.
In its recent analysis Foreign Policy noted that:
“The United States cannot point to foreign adversaries at the expense of recognizing the systemic failures and problems at home. America’s own house must be set in order first, through policies that centre upon promoting the resilience of its system and society.’’
On the foreign policy front Biden will want to rebuild multilateral alliances aimed at isolating Russia and China and maintaining the squeeze on ‘pariah’ nations such as Venezuela and Iran. These alliances were undermined to some degree by Trump’s belligerent isolationist approach.
Having said this, it is unlikely that Biden will make any significant changes in US foreign policy until he has stabilized the domestic situation. Then again the global economic/health crisis has created a situation where volatility will be ever present in international relations and the US may get embroiled in conflicts not of its making.
The Domestic Situation
After being sworn in as President Joe Biden faces an unenviable situation. American capitalism faces an unprecedented socio-economic, political and health crises which will require a huge amount of resources and considerable time to rectify.
It could be argued that the severity of the various crises afflicting American capitalism are such that Biden’s administration will struggle to do little more than apply a large sticking plaster to temporarily patch up its many problems.
Close scrutiny of Biden’s policies suggest that they will do little to address the many structural problems facing American capitalism.
These range from a highly fragmented for-profit health system that has presided over one of the highest Covid-19 death rates in the world to a decaying infrastructure that requires trillions of investment. Meanwhile, millions of workers jobs have disappeared as corporations offshore the work to factories in China which is linked to the massive trade deficits of the US that illustrate the continuing decline of American manufacturing.
Another problem for Biden is managing domestic expectations of his administration. His election has raised hopes amongst sections of the population that the simultaneous economic, political and health crises will be resolved over the next few years.
Wealth Transfer
The Coronavirus pandemic of 2020 has exposed the complete bankruptcy of corporate politicians and the medical/ scientific/ industrial establishment who have presided over massive suffering, death and economic devastation.
Since the outbreak of the pandemic we have witnessed yet another massive wealth transfer to the billionaire oligarchs who preside over American capitalism.
Billions of public money have poured into the coffers of private companies to provided PPE gear and vaccine/drug development.
Meanwhile, massive money printing by the US Federal Reserve, (its balance sheet has doubled during 2020 from $3.4 trillion to over $7.3 trillion) has fuelled a speculative frenzy in financial markets where the S&P 500, Dow Jones and others have reached all time highs when the real economy is in dire straits.
This has led to a gigantic wealth transfer. This is illustrated by the massive growth in the wealth of America’s 664 billionaires. Their collective wealth has grown by over $1 trillion during 2020.
Debt Mountain
Biden’s programme promises to massively swell the federal government’s astronomical budget deficit. By the end of fiscal year 2021 it will amount to $21.9 trillion which is equivalent to 104.4% of GDP. After all the Empire’s gigantic war machine has to be paid for. The Pentagon’s $750 billion dollar budget will not face any reduction quite the opposite.
The Congressional Budget Office projects that the federal government’s budget deficit will balloon to an astounding $33.5 trillion by 2030. Biden, oblivious to the US government’s fiscal bankruptcy, has no proposals to deal with this issue.
Meanwhile, there is nothing in Biden’s programme that will address the massive increase in wealth inequality which has been a persistent trend since the late 1970s. Workers, whose wages have been stagnating for the last 4 decades, have been forced to take on ever larger amounts of debt to maintain their living standards.
In Q2 of 2020 consumer debt stood at a higher level than at the peak of the 2008-9 financial crisis at$14.27 trillion. This figure has undoubtedly increased as the severity of the economic crisis has intensified since then.
This eye watering debt pile which will never be paid back breaks down as follows:
Auto loan debt stood at $1.34 trillion – Q2 of 2020,
Mortgage debt stood at $9.78 trillion – Q2 of 2020
Student loan debt stood at $1.54 trillion – Q2 of 2020
Credit card debt stood at $820 billion – Q2 of 2020
There is nothing in Biden’s programme that even hints at a debt jubilee to deal with this crushing debt burden on the working/middle classes.
Meanwhile, successive administrations of both Democrat and Republican have presided over an ever harsher environment for unions in which to operate leading to lower wages and worse conditions of service for millions.
$15 Minimum Wage
Biden’s promise of a $15 minimum wage is welcome to millions of workers. It follows pressure from a nationwide campaign on this issue. Since Seattle became the first major city in 2015 to approve the $15 minimum wage, thanks to a massive campaign led by unions and socialist councilwoman Kshama Sawant, seven other large states have approved this measure.
Biden is aware of how universally popular the $15 minimum wage is with both Republican and Democrat voters. In the November election Trump won the state of Florida yet at the same time voters approved the $15 minimum wage for the state.
The under paid and underemployed workers of America can take comfort from Biden’s appointment of Marty Walsh as Labour Secretary. Walsh is notorious for covering up police corruption and the systematic harassment of black Bostonians during his term of office when mayor of Boston.
Eat the rich: wealth inequality
Biden may well reverse some of the Trump tax cuts but will do nothing to prevent US corporations holding profits in offshore accounts. This money could of course be used to improve cash starved public services.
In 2015 an academic study estimated that US based multi-national corporations held over $2.1 trillion offshore to avoid taxes.
The FinCEN files revealed by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists in 2020 illustrate how New York banks have facilitated hundreds of billions of dollars worth of money laundering over many years.
Much lauded new anti-money laundering legislation leaves open a multitude of loopholes for Wall Street to continue with this criminal activity. Never mind the fact that financial regulators have failed to carry out any criminal prosecutions against any Wall Street bank since 2008. Instead they get fines, which are part of the cost of doing business, and deferred prosecution agreements.
Wall Street and the rest of corporate America can sleep safe in their beds at night knowing that the Biden administration will do nothing to seriously address complex financial crime.
Nor will it take any measures that fundamentally address the ever widening social-economic equality that threatens the stability of the Empire in its heartland.
Biden’s Backers
Back in June 2020 Biden told a gathering of rich donors that the super rich were not to blame for wealth inequality. Ignoring the incredible damaging crime spree that Wall Street has engaged upon since the 2008 financial crisis. This is well documented in the work of former financial regulator and criminologist William Black, as well as corporate crime journalist Matt Taibi.
Biden reassured his rich donors in comforting tones:
“I mean, we may not want to demonize anybody who has made money. The truth of the matter is, you all, you all know, you all know in your gut what has to be done. We can disagree in the margins but the truth of the matter is it’s all within our wheelhouse and nobody has to be punished. No one’s standard of living will change, nothing would fundamentally change. …I hope if I win this nomination, I won’t let you down. I promise you. … I need you very badly.”
His appointment of Janet Yellen as Treasury Secretary, a former Chair of the Federal Reserve, signals to the billionaire oligarchs that it is business as usual. Yellen is committed to maintaining the record low interest rates and monetary methadone (i.e. money printing/trillion dollar federal deficits) demanded by Wall Street.
Her record as Chair of the Federal Reserve shows that preserving the wealth of the 1% will be her top priority.
We shouldn’t forget that Yellen in June 2017 famously said that there will never another economic crisis in her lifetime. Yet here we are in the midst of the worst economic crisis since the 1930s.
As Fed Chair Janet Yellen also dismissed claims that financial markets were overvalued and in bubble territory. In the autumn of 2018 a 20% collapse of overvalued financial markets led to the Fed retreating hastily from reducing its $3.4 trillion balance sheet while it started cutting rates as demanded by Wall Street.
In the 2 years after leaving the Fed in 2018 Janet Yellen amassed $7 million in speaking fees from banks such as Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and Barclays, who committed criminal acts while she was at the Fed. Will this wild eyed radical take on the speculators of Wall Street or take action to reverse the massive and growing income inequality in America?
Action to address unemployment and hunger
Biden says dealing with unemployment will be a top priority yet his proposed measures fall far short of the alphabet agencies that Roosevelt created to give work to millions in the 1930s. They don’t seem to appreciate the magnitude of the problem facing American capitalism.
In the week that Biden took office new unemployment claims totalled 900,000 far higher than any week during the peak of the 2008-9 financial crisis.
During 2020 over 38 million Americans claimed some kind of unemployment benefit. As of 19 December over 17 million Americans were claiming either state or federal unemployment relief. That figure is expected to rise during the first quarter of 2021. Over 100,000 small businesses have permanently closed while big corporations ranging from Amazon to Apple have made record profits.
Will he force US based multinational corporations to bring the millions of outsourced jobs back home? That seems unlikely. Let’s face it Apple and other companies are making too much money out of the workers paid low wages at their Chinese factories.
Meanwhile, over 50 million Americans are food insecure, including 17 million children. They are reliant on food banks and the government’s food stamp programme.
The new stimulus bill expected to be passed soon by the Democrat controlled Congress includes a $13 billion provision for expanded food stamp benefits but is still seen by many as insufficient for dealing with a level of hunger not seen the Great Depression in the 1930s.
Healthcare under Biden
This situation described above is compounded by the fact that during a global pandemic over 29% of Americans lost their health care cover so far. This has created the situation where 50 million Americans don’t have any health insurance. Between 50 to 100 million are under insured.
This situation is accentuating the devastating health crisis in the United States which has the highest number of deaths from Covid-19 in the world.
Biden’s programme will not introduce Medicare-for-all as apparently that it is ‘too expensive’ in the richest country on the planet. Yet the Congressional Budget Office has estimated that Medicare For All could actually save the US up to $650 billionannually.
Nor will he eliminate the rapacious private health insurance industry. Instead, Biden is giving the private health insurance companies, who contributed handsomely to his election campaign, the opportunity to make even greater profits. The Daily Poster carried an article recently that notes that Biden’s health care plan will not expand government sponsored health coverage:
“Instead, it adopts proposals from health insurance lobbying groups’ recent letter to lawmakers demanding lucrative new subsidies for insurance companies, at a moment when those corporations have recorded record profits as millions lose coverage and many face claims denials.
Biden’s plan would shovel billions of dollars to private health insurers by providing subsidiesfor Americans to buy coverage through the Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplaces, which are far more expensive than government health care programs and have at times been plagued by high rates of claim denials.’’
Biden’s healthcare plans won’t give comprehensive protection to Americans in the middle of a deadly pandemic. The Daily Poster has pointed out that:
“Biden is now proposing some of the most costly and inefficient ways to expand health insurance coverage. The moves could still leave people exposed to substantial out-of-pocket costs — from deductibles, copays, and coinsurance — that act as barriers to care.’’
Many people cannot even afford to get medical treatment due to the outrageous medical bills generated by the private health industry.
According to Fair Health, “The total average charge per COVID-19 patient requiring an inpatient stay is estimated at $73,300 and the total average estimated in-network amount per commercially insured patient at $38,221.’’
Biden’s health measures are unlikely to deal with the massive problem of medical debts. A 2019 study‘Medical Bankruptcy: Still Common Despite the Affordable Care Act’ produced by the American Public Health Journal, noted that, ‘that despite the Affordable Care Act, middle-class Americans have been targeted with increasing co payments and deductibles’. This leads to half a million Americans each year declaringbankruptcy due to medical debts.
Back in 2019 the author of the above study, Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, who is a Lecturer in Medicine at Harvard stated;
“The ACA was a step forward, but 29 million remain uncovered, and the epidemic of under-insurance is out of control. We need to move ahead from the ACA to a single-payer, Medicare for All system that assures first-dollar coverage for everyone.’’
Biden’s pick for Health Secretary is former attorney general of California, Xavier Becerra. His tenure as Attorney General of the Golden State doesn’t inspire optimism that he will take on the private health industry and protect the millions without health cover or facing huge medical debts.
This individual faced numerous lawsuits during 2020 for gerrymandering the ballot. According to the LA Times back in August 2020: “Becerra is facing a slew of lawsuits this election season from groups that accuse his office of writing titles and 100-word summaries for ballot measures that aim to tip the scales in favor of his political allies’’ in the Democratic Party.
In 2019 Becerra threatened legal action against journalists who had obtained records of the criminal offences committed by thousands of police officers many of whom were still serving in California.
David Snyder, executive director of the First Amendment Coalition rejected Becerra’s demand that the journalist involved destroy the records, “It’s disheartening and ominous that the highest law enforcement officer in the state is threatening legal action over something the First Amendment makes clear can’t give rise to criminal action against a reporter”.
Prospects for the future
We should be under no illusions who really won the November presidential election. Corporate America won the November election hands down. The billionaire oligarch class that dominates American society has nothing to fear from a Biden administration. Wealth inequality and all of its attendant evils will continue to rise despite any tinkering reforms that are introduced.
However, the more far sighted oligarchs such as billionaire hedge fund manager Ray Dalio are quite rightly concerned by the destabilising effect of this wealth inequality on American capitalism. Will Biden heed Dalio’s call to reform capitalism to save it from revolution from below? It seems unlikely.
Then again Biden may be forced to take more radical measures than he originally planned if the economic situation doesn’t improve this year and/or he faces pressure from an angry populace.
Over 2,000 years ago the Greek philosopher and historian Plutarch warned prophetically, ‘An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics’.
Time will tell how this imbalance in American society plays out over the next few years. Biden and his fellow managers of the Empire ignore this at their peril.
–Disclaimer– These are the opinions and ramblings of a lunatic. They are for entertainment purposes only and are probably wrong. You listen at your own risk.
“How the Vatican created Islam”. Notice Satan’s play on words: Islam or is lamb. Why is this significant?
Jesus is the Lamb of God which takes away the sins of the world. John 1:29: The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.
The Vatican wrote the Qur’an in such a way as to seem to line up with Bible prophecy, to cause people to point to Islam and Muslims, instead of the Roman Catholics.
Jesus and Daniel prophesied that Rome (1st beast of Revelation 13) will rule the Satan’s soon-coming one world government. And Jesus foretold that the United States (2nd beast of Revelation 13) is “the image unto the beast” of Imperial Rome, and that the apostate (once) Protestant churches are “the image unto the beast” of Papal Rome. Daniel 2:7–9; 11–12; Matthew 24; Revelation 1–3; 6; 13; 16–19.
How the Vatican created Islam. The astonishing story from an ex-Jesuit priest, Alberto Rivera, which was told to him by Cardinal Bea while he was at the Vatican.
The great counterfeit religion is Roman Catholicism, called ‘Mystery, Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots and Abominations of the Earth’- Revelation 17:5. She was raised up to block the True gospel, slaughter the believers in Christ, establish religions, create wars and make the nations drunk with the wine of her fornication.
Four major FALSE religions have one thing in common – each has a holy place where they look for guidance. Roman Catholicism looks to the Vatican as the Holy City. The Jews look to the wailing wall in Jerusalem, Mormons look to Salt Lake City, and the Muslims look to Mecca as their Holy City. Each group believes that they receive certain types of blessings for the rest of their lives for visiting their holy place.
It is written in Psalm 119:130: The entrance of thy words giveth light; it giveth understanding unto the simple.
No where in the Word of God (King James bible) does it say that a person has to go to the Vatican, the Wailing Wall, Salt Lake City or Mecca to be saved. If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised Jesus from the dead, you will receive the gift of Salvation in Jesus Christ.
To believe on Jesus Christ as Saviour means to have faith that He died for you, paid the price for your sin, and is the only way to heaven.
“Dear Jesus, I know I am a sinner and that I deserve hell. I believe you paid the penalty for my sin, died on the cross, and rose from the dead three days later. I am placing my faith in you alone to forgive my sin and save me. Thank you for giving me eternal life in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Just as you were born physically to your parents, so you were born spiritually into the Family of God when you received Jesus! Please understand that we are not saved because we pray a prayer; but because we believe upon the Lord Jesus Christ. It is certainly appropriate to ask the Lord in prayer to forgive and save us; but it is our faith which prompts us to pray. You could just as easily believe in your heart upon the Lord to be saved, and not pray at all. Salvation is of the heart, as we read in Romans 10:10, “For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness…”
Romans 4:5: “But to him that worketh not, but believeth on Him (Jesus) that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.” What a wonderful truth! Our faith is COUNTED for righteousness! There is NO self-righteousness involved in salvation. It is the gift of God. You see, we have no righteousness of our own to offer God. No amount of good can undo the bad we’ve done. Jesus paid a debt that He did not owe, because we owed a debt that we could not pay. Salvation is receiving, not giving. We are sinners and Jesus is the Savior.
Trusting Jesus is meaningless without the cross. You must believe that Jesus died, was buried and rose again. 1st Corinthians 15:1-4 teaches that the gospel is the death, burial and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ.
God’s simple plan of salvation is: You are a sinner. Therefore, unless you believe on Jesus Who died in your place, you will spend eternity in Hell. If you believe on Him as your crucified, buried, and risen Savior, you receive forgiveness for all of your sins and His gift of eternal salvation by faith.
Study the King James Bible, pray, ask to be filled with the Holy Spirit, present your body as a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. Take the yoke of Jesus upon you. (Matthew 11:29-30)
Pick up a King James bible, begin to read Mathew, Mark, Luke & John and come to know Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior.
If you need a Bible you can download one (free of charge) at the site links below:
The assassination of Tehran’s top nuclear scientist is a ploy by Israel to compel the likely US president-elect to reject diplomacy and choose military action to deal with Iran’s nuclear ambition. Which option will he choose?
Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was the shadowy father of Iran’s nuclear program; his existence, let alone his work, was barely acknowledged by Iran. A brigadier general with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Command, Fakhrizadeh was involved in the academic aspects of Iranian national security, eventually heading up the Physics Research Center, where he masterminded the design and material acquisition in support of Iran’s uranium enrichment effort.
In April 2018, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu named Fakhrizadeh as the head of a covert military dimension to Iran’s nuclear program, something Iran has vociferously denied. On Friday, November 28, 2020, the 62-year-old scientist was assassinated just outside the Iranian capital of Tehran. While no one has taken credit for his murder, Iran has placed the blame for his death squarely on Israel.
At the time of his death, Fakhrizadeh was the head of the Research and Innovation Organization (RIO), part of the Iranian Defense Ministry. A June 2020 report on nonproliferation published by the US Department of State alleged that Fakhrizadeh used the RIO “to keep former weapons program scientists employed … on [nuclear] weaponization-relevant dual-use technical activities … to aid in any future nuclear weapons development work in the event that a decision were made to resume such work.”
This belief, when combined with Iran’s decision to cease abiding by the provisions of the landmark 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA, better known as the Iran nuclear agreement) regarding the stockpiling of low-enriched uranium and the use of advanced centrifuges to enrich uranium, had the de facto effect of signing Fakhrizadeh’s death warrant.
The JCPOA-imposed restrictions were designed with a one-year ‘breakout’ scenario in mind – in short, the time it would take Iran to produce enough highly enriched uranium to create a single nuclear device once the decision was made to cease adhering to restrictions on the numbers and types of centrifuges it could operate, the level of enrichment permitted, and the amount of low-enriched uranium allowed to be stockpiled.
In May 2019 – one year after President Donald Trump withdrew the US from the JCPOA – Iran began pulling back from its commitments under the agreement, citing its right to do so under Articles 26 and 36 of the deal, which allow a party to the agreement to cease its obligations if another party is found to be in noncompliance; Iran maintains that the failure of Europe to live up to its economic commitments under the JCPOA constituted demonstrable noncompliance. The end result is that today the ‘breakout’ period has shrunk to a few weeks.
For the Trump administration, Iran’s noncompliance with the JCPOA had placed it in a quandary; the policy of sanctions-based ‘maximum pressure’ which had been instituted since 2018 was clearly not working when it came to the goal of compelling Iran to return to the negotiation table and hammer out a new, more restrictive nuclear deal.
Having gone on record regarding its belief that Iran continued to maintain covert nuclear weapons ambitions, the Trump administration was confronted with the reality that it had, according to its own beliefs, empowered Iran to produce a nuclear weapon in a time frame that posed a direct threat to the US and its regional allies, in particular Israel and Saudi Arabia. This concern was behind recent press reports that President Trump was considering military options against Iran’s nuclear program.
For Israel, the issues are even more acute; whereas Iran’s potential acquisition of a nuclear weapons capability would pose a policy conundrum for the US, for Israel an Iranian nuclear weapon would represent an existential threat. For this reason, Israel has historically pulled few punches when it comes to confronting even the possibility of an Iranian nuclear weapons capability.
While much of the intelligence underpinning the US and Israeli assessments regarding the existence of a nuclear weapons program are derived from sources of questionable provenance and are not conclusive, Israel has taken an absolutist posture; it’s given credence to sources that otherwise might be consigned to the bottom drawer.
In its effort to win support for this position, Israel has exaggerated – even fabricated – intelligence on Iran, undermining its credibility to such an extent that, when Israel reported that its intelligence stole a nuclear archive from Iran in early 2018, the veracity of this claim was called into question after documents previously held to have been forged were claimed to be part of the document trove.
Israel’s actions against Iran’s nuclear program have been anything but passive; in 2009-2010, Israel worked with US intelligence to launch a cyberattack using the Stuxnet virus to infect Iranian centrifuge operations at Natanz. This was followed by a program of targeted assassinations which killed four Iranian nuclear scientists between 2010-2012 (a fifth attack narrowly missed killing the head of the Iranian Atomic Energy Organization).
Israeli intelligence is also said to be behind a series of mysterious explosions at Iranian nuclear-related facilities earlier this year which caused significant damage and disruption to Iran’s centrifuge program. While Israel has not taken responsibility for the assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, his murder can logically be viewed as a continuation of Israel’s efforts to degrade Iran’s nuclear capabilities.
Joe Biden is no stranger to the active measures taken by Israel in this regard. As vice president, he sat in on critical meetings regarding the deployment of the Stuxnet virus. He was fully cognizant of the pressure being placed on President Obama regarding military action against Iran, and understood the role played by the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists in ratcheting this pressure up.
Jake Sullivan, who served as Biden’s national security advisor while he was vice president, played a critical role in the early negotiations with Iran that made the JCPOA possible. Biden knew full well that the JCPOA was a diplomatic off-ramp for a policy path that otherwise would have led to war. Biden is intimately familiar with the calculations behind the ‘breakout’ timelines, and the decision that was made to de-emphasize the concern over Iran’s alleged military interest in nuclear weapons.
The assassination of Fakhrizadeh is a calculated act on the part of Israel. His death has no real impact on Iran’s nuclear activities – a new generation of Iranian scientists has long since been educated, trained and employed in a program that is far more advanced and mature than the one Fakhrizadeh started more than 20 years ago. Psychologically, however, his murder – carried out in broad daylight in the heart of Iran – has dealt a psychological blow to Tehran’s leadership, once again proving that the long arm of Israeli intelligence can get to just about anyone.
But its most critical impact is the effect it will have on the national security team surrounding presumed President-elect Joe Biden. Biden and his team have been paying lip service to the notion of rejoining the JCPOA. However, the preconditions they have attached to such an action – Iran would have to return to full compliance first, and commit to immediate follow-on negotiations on a deal that would be more restrictive – were widely seen as a deal breaker. The fact is, many of Biden’s closest advisers – including Secretary of State-designee Antony Blinken and National Security Advisor-designee Jake Sullivan – have indicated that Biden may have no choice but to continue the Trump policy of sanctions-based ‘maximum pressure’.
For Israel, such a policy – while an improvement over rejoining the JCPOA – is not acceptable. From its perspective, ‘maximum pressure’ has not only failed to compel Iran to the negotiation table, but has also positioned Iran to be on the cusp of developing a nuclear weapons capability.
The assassination of Fakhrizadeh serves two main purposes. First, it hardens the resolve of Iran when it comes to any potential flexibility it might have been prepared to have with Biden regarding a resolution to the nuclear standoff, with Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei directing Iranian scientists “[t]o follow up Martyr Fakhrizadeh’s scientific and technical activities in all fields in which he was active.” The idea that Iran would seek to compromise with the US in the aftermath of Fakhrizadeh’s murder is, to put it bluntly, absurd.
But the most important purpose behind the killing of Fakhrizadeh is to create a fait accompli when it comes to policy options being considered by a future Biden administration. Rejoining the JCPOA is likely a non-starter – Iran will never agree to the many preconditions sought by Biden and his advisers.
Likewise, continuing Trump’s program of ‘maximum pressure’ is not a politically viable option, given the advanced state of the Iranian nuclear program and the impact this has on the all-important ‘breakout window’ that underpinned, from the US perspective, the legitimacy of the JCPOA. The same contingencies being confronted by the Trump administration regarding the possibility of US forces attacking Iran’s nuclear infrastructure will be confronted by President Biden on his first day in office. By killing Fakhrizadeh, Israel is doing its best to ensure that, for Biden, that military action is the only viable option available.
Scott Ritter is a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer and author of ‘SCORPION KING: America’s Suicidal Embrace of Nuclear Weapons from FDR to Trump.’ He served in the Soviet Union as an inspector implementing the INF Treaty, in General Schwarzkopf’s staff during the Gulf War, and from 1991-1998 as a UN weapons inspector. Follow him on Twitter @RealScottRitter.
New York Times admits schemes could lead to “a dystopic system that would limit the rights of people who have been careful to avoid infection and are unable or unwilling to be vaccinated”
Several more countries have indicated that they are to adopt vaccination passports, meaning anyone crossing their borders will need to be able to prove they have been inoculated against coronavirus.
It is being reported that the South African government is working on implementing an entire Covid-19 vaccine ‘ID system’, which will not only encompass the so called ‘passports’, but will also include “management and surveillance of the Covid-19 vaccine,” as well as “an integrated track-and-trace system,” and “a dashboard system… to capture the reasons given for vaccine refusal.”
The country’s COVID battle has come under scrutiny in recent weeks with a purported super ‘mutation’ of the virus being discovered there.
The South African Department of Health has announced that all citizens who are vaccinated will be placed on a national register and provided with a vaccination card.
Meanwhile, in Europe, another country has indicated it will adopt the vaccination passport scheme with Ukrainian health officials announcing that all vaccinated people will be entered into an electronic health care database.
“When mandatory vaccination passports are introduced at the international level, Ukrainian doctors will be able to promptly issue a certificate of vaccinations,” said chief sanitary doctor of Ukraine Viktor Liashko.
Another country said to be mulling the introduction of COVID passports is Russia. The New York Times reported that
“The Russian government is considering issuing coronavirus health certificates that could ease travel and commerce for people who have been vaccinated.”
The Times quoted the head of the Russian Parliament’s committee on public health, Dmitri Morozov, who said that a Covid passport was “very important and needed.”
“This is great, this is the new world,” Morozov reportedly stated.
The Times also noted that
“A regional governor in Russia, Radi Khabirov, proposed on Monday that Covid passport holders receive discounts at stores, as an incentive for people to obtain the certificate.”
The report also noted that
“President Vladimir V. Putin’s spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov,said on Tuesday that the government is considering issuing Covid passports.”
After the Times report was published, Russian state media denied that a COVID passport scheme to limit travel had been discussed by Peskov or the Kremlin.
“We are far from a unified point of view on this subject right now, there are no consistent approaches or a consensus on this subject,” Peskov said, but added that “this subject is circulating, it’s being worked out.”
Interestingly, while the likes of the New York Times has reported on other countries adopting the COVID passports, in its coverage of Russia potentially doing the same, it paints a much darker picture, stating that
“Opponents fear a dystopic system that would limit the rights of people who have been careful to avoid infection and are unable or unwilling to be vaccinated.”
“Russia has a grim history rooted in the Soviet era of controlling citizens’ movements, through a residency permit system that was never fully abolished,” the Times report continues.
So when Russia do it, it’s bad, but when other countries do it, it’s part of restoring ‘open society’. Hmmmm.
While scores of countries are now slowly moving toward the implementation of vaccination passports, airlines appear to have fully embraced the idea and essentially already have them in place.
Emirates airlines has announced that it will be trialling the IATA Travel Pass ‘digital passport’ which shows passengers’ proof of Covid-19 tests and other entry requirements when flying.
Adel Al Redha, Emirates’ Chief Operating Officer said that
“While international travel remains as safe as ever, there are new protocols and travel requirements with the current global pandemic.”
“We have worked with IATA on this innovative solution to simplify and digitally transmit the information that is required by countries and governments into our airline systems, in a secure and efficient manner,”Al Redha continued, adding “We are proud to be one of the first airlines in the world to pilot this initiative, which will provide an enhanced customer experience and conveniently facilitate our customers’ travel needs.”
As we reported last November, the IATA, the world’s largest air transport lobby group, expects its COVID travel pass app to be fully rolled out in the first months of 2021.
Other airlines, including United Airlines and Cathay Pacific have already trialled the IATA’s scheme.
“We support the implementation of a global program to require COVID-19 testing for travelers to the United States, and we want to do everything we can to make travel a seamless experience for customers,” Julie Rath, the vice president of customer experience at American Airlines, said in a statement.
Virgin Atlantic owner Richard Branson has also thrown his weight behind the vaccination passport idea, telling CNBC he hopes that soon
“there will be a proof-of-vaccination piece of paper that people can use to be able to get on a plane without having to be tested or without having to quarantine.”
“Vaccination is everything. Once vulnerable people, in particular, have been vaccinated, I think all kinds of businesses can start opening up again: restaurants, travel companies, cruise companies,” Branson declared.
“Being vaccinated should not exempt international travellers from complying with other travel risk reduction measures,” the WHO committee stressed during its meeting held on January 14.
Others have warned that the adoption of vaccination passports will inevitably lead to a two-tier society, and must be prevented.
“The immunity passport could become a ‘passport for privilege,’ accentuating the divide between those who already have a comfortable position in society and those on the margins,” warns Dr Israel Butler, Head of Advocacy, at the Civil Liberties Union for Europe, Liberties.
The Facts: It doesn’t seem likely that a COVID vaccine will be mandatory under the Trump administration, but Joe Biden recently shared that he believes it should be.
Reflect On: If the vaccine did become mandatory, would you take it? Will there be too much of a backlash if the vaccine is made mandatory, or mandatory to travel for example?
What Happened: US President Donald Trumptold Stuart Varney on Fox Business Network’s ‘Varney &Co’ that he doesn’t plan to make the coronavirus vaccine mandatory for American citizens, because “there are some people who feel strongly about the whole situation,’ alluding to the idea that people should still have freedom of choice when it comes to what they choose to do with their own body.
On the other hand, presidential candidate Joe Biden saidhe would urge all state representatives, governors, mayors and council members to make the vaccine mandatory, just like some have done with masks. He acknowledged that such a mandate would be difficult to enforce, but stated that “we should be thinking about making it mandatory.”
Trump has long been promoting alternative therapies for COVID, many have come under scrutiny by mainstream media. The scientific and medical community have both promoted these therapies as well as criticized them, the only difference seems to be that those who support them don’t seem to receive much media attention, while simultaneously become subjected to a censorship campaign by media and social media outlets.
Scientists who share opinions that contradict the World Health Organization (WHO) have also been heavily censored. Michael Levitt, a Biophysicist and a professor of structural biology at Stanford University is one of many who have criticized the WHO as well as Facebook for censoring different information and informed perspectives regarding the Coronavirus.
The Great Barrington Declaration is experiencing the same thing for questioning lockdown measures, it’s now been signed by nearly 40,000 doctors and scientists.
A paper recently published in Global Advances in Health and Medicine titled Ascorbate as Prophylaxis and Therapy for COVID-19—Update From Shanghai and U.S. Medical Institutions points out:
A recent consensus statement from a group of renowned infectious disease clinicians observed that vaccine programs have proven ill-suited to the fast-changing viruses underlying these illnesses, with efficacy ranging from 19% to 54% in the past few years.
The paper also promotes the use of alternate therapies like intravenous vitamin C and provides evidence showing its success in COVID patients. It’s one of multiple studies to do so, but vitamin C has been heavily ridiculed and censored by mainstream media and social media for being able to provide any help when it comes to healing from COVID, or to help prevent it.
We are being made to believe that a vaccine is the only answer. No other suggestions seem to be acceptable. Why?
Why This Is Important
Why is there an authoritarian ‘fact-checker’ patrolling the internet and censoring information? Sure, a lot of stories may be completely false and irresponsibly written, especially ones that don’t provide any sources for their claims, but a lot of legitimate information is also being censored. Should people not have the right to examine information and opinions that go against the grain and decide for themselves what is, and what isn’t? Are we not capable of this? Can the mainstream media make the minority feel like the majority and the majority feel like the minority?
I’ve emphasized in many of my articles how vaccine hesitancy continues to grow. That’s no big secret. This is occurring not only with much of the general population, but doctors and scientists as well.
Professor Heidi Larson, a Professor of Anthropology and the Risk and Decision Scientist Director at the Vaccine Confidence Project stated at a World Health Organization (WHO) conference that:
The other thing that’s a trend, and an issue, is not just confidence in providers but confidence of health care providers, we have a very wobbly health professional frontline that is starting to question vaccines and the safety of vaccines. That’s a huge problem, because to this day any study I’ve seen… still, the most trusted person on any study I’ve seen globally is the health care provider…
Many people are asking why doesn’t mainstream media or Bill Gates actually addresses the concerns that are being raised by scientists and doctors? Why is ridicule and terms like “conspiracy theory” always used instead?
What are the concerns? Vaccine injury is one of them. The National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act has paid more than $4 billion to families of vaccine injured children. A 2010 HHS pilot study by the Federal Agency for Health Care Research (AHCR) found that 1 in every 39 vaccines causes injury, a shocking comparison to the claims from the CDC of 1 in every million.
There are several concers.
If you’d like to access more of articles that are properly sourced regarding vaccine concerns, there is a link to a few at the bottom of this article I recently published.
Big Politics: Every single year big politics, in my opinion, continues to be exposed as a system that’s no longer capable of dealing with and appropriately handling big issues our planet faces today. I often ask myself, does voting simply uphold a system that’s no longer capable of creating any meaningful change? Big politics is filled with an enormous amount of corruption, and many would say that corporations now dictate policy, not government.
When it comes to health policy, there are many conflicts of interests to be concerned about, scientists from within federal health regulatory agencies have been bringing awareness to this fact for many years. For example, few years ago more than a dozen scientists from within the CDC put out public statement detailing the influence corporations have within the CDC, how corrupt things are, how it happens in all departments how many high ranking people within the CDC condone this behaviour. They were referred to as the Spider Papers.
Award winning medical investigator Jeanne Lenzer also made this quite clear in a 2015 paperpublished in the British Medical Journal.
The CDC’s image as an independent watchdog over the public health has given it enormous prestige, and its recommendations are occasionally enforced by law. Despite the agency’s disclaimer, the CDC does receive millions of dollars in industry gifts and funding, both directly and indirectly, and several recent CDC actions and recommendations have raised questions about the science it cites, the clinical guidelines it promotes, and the money it is taking.
This is a huge problem, and it’s one that seems to plague all industries, not just the medical industry.
The Takeaway
We are pitted against each other like never before these days, and it doesn’t seem that politics helps us find common ground. It’s about belittling and ridiculing every move an opponent makes, and does not in any way shape or for represent a system of people who are willing to pool their resources and work together for meaningful change. So why do we continue to be captured by it? Why do we even pay attention? How can we change things and take matters into our own hands? Why do we live the way we do?
Power has corrupted our political process, and decisions today are made for politicians, corporations and those who seem to control these entities in order to gain more power from and profit off of.
Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of today – Theodore Roosevelt
Honesty, morality, empathy, and an overall unawareness regarding the interconnectedness of life is severely lacking, and I do believe human beings are capable of creating a human experience where all life can thrive. We have the solutions, but many of them never see the light of day or receive any attention, so ask yourself, if we have the solutions, what’s preventing them from being implemented?
That mob that split off from the Donald Trump rally of Jan. 6 to invade the Capitol has proven a godsend to the left. The death of a Capitol cop has enabled the left—which spent the summer after George Floyd’s death trashing “racist cops” and shouting, “Defund the Police!”—to posture as fighting allies of the men in blue. Liberals who implored us to understand the grievances of the rioters, looters, and arsonists last summer have become sudden converts to the church of law and order. Elites who had condoned the smashing of statues and monuments to Columbus, Washington, Jefferson, and Jackson as a needed cleansing of our hateful history have declared themselves sickened that Trumpists would desecrate the temple of democracy.
Had it been antifa or BLM that carried out the invasion, not one statue would have been left standing in Statuary Hall, and we would have been instructed that it was slaves who had, after all, built the Capitol building. The media is airing endless footage of the mob marauding inside the Capitol. Purpose: to plant indelibly in the public mind the fiction that this was the deliberate work of Donald Trump and his people, and our elites are the real adversaries of violent protest. Indeed, to protect the nation from rightist uprisings in state capitals, this weekend saw the widespread deployment of the National Guard.
Sunday was to be the day the murderous violence of the right would manifest itself. What happened? As The Washington Post reported Monday:
Authorities in cities from coast to coast mobilized a military-style defense of state capitol complexes on Sunday, rolling out Humvees, concertina wire and thousands of National Guard troops clad in battlefield helmets to defend against a possible onslaught of rioters whipped up by the baseless claims of the American president.
The assault never came. Despite warnings from the FBI and boasts from armed, far-right extremist groups, security forces in every instance outnumbered scattered groups of demonstrators, and there were no reports of violence.
In anticipation of Wednesday’s inauguration, 25,000 National Guard have been deployed in and around D.C. to defend against right-wing mobs or would-be assassins. Three or four times as many troops are here in D.C. as there are U.S. troops in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria combined. Now, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. And better too much security than not enough. But even given the Jan. 6 outrage, to arm our capital city as though Stonewall Jackson’s Confederates were going to march up Manassas Road and capture Abe Lincoln after the Union defeat at Bull Run seems a bit excessive.
Yet, Wednesday is a historic day. Trump will be gone from the White House and national power and responsibility will pass to the Democratic Party. Democrats take over the House, Senate, and White House. Virtually all major media will be in their camp. They will be welcomed in a city that has never elected a Republican mayor and has no Republicans on the city council, a city that voted for Joe Biden 18-1 over Trump. The 30,000 registered Republicans in D.C. are outnumbered 12-1 by Democrats.
The government bureaucracies here are as deeply Democratic as the “deep state” that bedeviled Trump for four years. Biden’s Cabinet is the most racially and ethnically diverse ever; the majority of its members are women and people of color. Obama administration holdovers dominate the national security team.
Most of America’s major cities—New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Atlanta, D.C., Baltimore, Detroit, St. Louis—are run by liberal Democrats, and, coincidentally, all experienced surges in shootings and killings in 2020. While the figures on the criminal perpetrators are rarely reported, it appears that not a great many of the violent and lethal crimes were the work of rogue cops or white supremacists in MAGA hats.
Other problems Trump failed to solve—the pandemic now killing 3,000 to 4,000 Americans a day, the failure to get vaccines into the arms of millions of more Americans—are now Joe’s problems. Calling Trump names will no longer cut it.
Now, Democrats must decide whether to proceed with the impeachment trial of Trump for inciting a riot that began on the Capitol steps as he was speaking a mile away, a riot planned long before the rally on the Mall. Now, Democrats can choose whether they will forego extracting their pound of flesh as the first order of business in the Senate and let Nancy Pelosi sit a while on her impeachment resolution. Now, Democrats have it all. If they wish, they can abolish the filibuster, pack the Supreme Court, make D.C. and Puerto Rico states, forgive all student debt, and vote for slavery reparations.
One reads that a caravan of thousands is forming up in Honduras to pass through Guatemala in the hope of reaching and crossing the U.S. border when Biden becomes president. That, too, is Joe’s party’s problem now.
The Facts: Former Mayor of New York Rudy Giuliani has been outspoken about inappropriate pictures and messages of children that have supposedly been found on Hunter Biden’s laptop. These allegations are being deemed a “conspiracy theory” by mainstream media.
Reflect On: Why is there so much censorship of information without appropriate investigation? Should people not have the right to view information openly, freely and transparently?
What Happened: A few days ago, a top Republican senator mentioned the possibility that the Federal Bureau of Investigation investigated whether there was child pornography on a laptop and hard drive that supposedly belonged to Hunter Biden. He did so when Journalist Maria Bartiromo asked Sen. Ron Johnson, the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee about a Business Insider report that described faint handwriting on a subpoena served last year to a Delaware business that was given a water-damaged MacBook Pro to repair but was never retrieved along with a hard drive. The hardware purportedly contained data about foreign business dealings and other matters related to the son of former Vice President Joe Biden. You can watch a clip of that interview here.
On October 16th, American attorney, cybersecurity advisor and politician Rudy Giuliani, who also served as Mayer of New York City from 1994 to 2001 claimed on his Youtube Channel that he has come across evidence that this laptop and hard drive do belong to Hunter Biden, and that there’s a signature to prove it which he has in his possession. He also thoroughly explains the story about Hunter’s supposed laptop and how it came into the possession of the Delaware business. Furthermore, he claimed that there were photos of activity on the laptop that anyone “would have a hard time describing, and really should be left to more private discussion.”
Giuliani has since mentioned that Hunter Biden had numerous pictures of girls, who were just children, on the laptop as well as inappropriate messages, and that he has turned this evidence over the the Delaware State Police. He has expressed that the Chinese government may have access to this kind of thing in order to blackmail the Biden family into doing whatever they want.
Andrii Derkach, a politician the US Treasury believes to be a “Russian agent,” claimed on Friday that another device belonging to Hunter was given to Ukrainian police.
We saw this perspective with Jeffrey Epstein, where multiple sources, including a high ranking intelligence official, claimed that part of his job was to blackmail high level politicians and businessman by having compromising videos and pictures of them with children. Christopher Mason, a TV host and journalist/reporter who has known Ghislaine Maxwell for decades has gone on record and said he was told that Epstein rigged his multiple homes with cameras and kept tapes of everyone/everything. He says Maxwell has access to this footage. You can read more about that here.
Approximately one month ago Hunter Biden, the son of presidential candidate Joe Biden, apparently sent thousands of dollars to individuals allegedly involved in sex trafficking, according to a report recently released by Senate Republicans. According the report, Biden “has sent funds to non-resident alien women in the United States who are citizens of Russia and Ukraine and who have subsequently wired funds they have received from Hunter Biden to individuals located in Russia and Ukraine…The records also note that some of these transactions are linked to what “appears to be an Eastern European prostitution or human trafficking ring.”
Facebook Fact-Checker Politifact Weighs In: According to Politifact, a Facebook Fact Checker, “There is no evidence that a laptop previously belonging to Hunter Biden contains child pornography. The allegation originated on an anonymous internet forum that’s a known source of online disinformation.”
They mention that a rumour quickly emerged that “Hunter Biden has 25,000 pics of him torturing and raping children under age 10 in China on his laptop.”
These allegations seems to have stemmed from multiple tweets by radio host Wayne Root claimed ,without evidence, stating that he has that Hunter Biden’s laptop contains videos of him sexually abusing and torturing Chinese children.
CBS News interviewed the owner of the computer store, John Paul MacIsaac, and they state that he was “unable and unwilling to answer key questions about how the laptop supposedly arrived in his store, and eventually, how the data was shared with Giuliani. CBS News interviewed MacIsaac for almost two hours on Wednesday and throughout the interview he contradicted himself about his motivations, raising questions about the truthfulness of one of the central figures in the story.”
The New York Post also interviewed him, you can listen to that entire interview here.
Giuliani claimed “dangerous people” are involved in the Hunter Biden laptop scandal – leaving the Mackbook repairman who leaked it fearing for his life.
More than 50 former senior intelligence officials have signed on to a letter outlining their belief that the recent disclosure of emails allegedly belonging to Joe Biden’s son “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”
The letter, signed on Monday, centers around a batch of documents released by the New York Post last week that purport to tie the Democratic nominee to his son Hunter’s business dealings. Under the banner headline “Biden Secret E-mails,” the Post reported it was given a copy of Hunter Biden’s laptop hard drive by President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who said he got it from a Mac shop owner in Delaware who also alerted the FBI.
Biden has of course denied all allegations.
Regardless of What You Believe About This Story, Child Trafficking and Sexual Abuse in places of power exists, and persists.
There are a number of examples of child sexual abuse in places of power. The Jeffrey Epstein/Ghislaine Maxwell cases are a great example of that, both involved and implicated in trafficking children for sexual purposes, and possible blackmail purposes as well.
Not long ago, As The Hill reports, “The Pentagon’s Defense Criminal Investigative Service subsequently identified hundreds of DOD-affiliated individuals as suspects involved in accessing child pornography, several of whom used government devices to use and share the images.” You can read more about that here.
There are many credible examples from Royal Families, the Vatican, big finance, big politics, Hollywood and more. If you’d like to go a bit more in depth and see some of this evidence, you can refer to this article I published last year.
Our Interview With A Survivor of Child Sex Trafficking:
Anneke Lucas is an author, speaker, advocate for child sex trafficking victims, founder of the non-profit organization Liberation Prison Yoga, and creator of the Unconditional Model.
Her work is based off her 30-year journey to restore her mental and physical wellbeing after surviving some of the worst atrocities known to humankind before the age of 12. Sold as a young child into a murderous pedophile network by her family, she was rescued after nearly six years of abuse and torture.
We recently conducted an interview with her. Below is a clip from the four part series, as it was a very long and detailed interview. You can access the full interview and start your free trial HERE on CETV, a platform we created to help combat internet censorship and allow us to continue to do our work and get the word out about various issues and topics.
The Takeaway
Right now the citizenry is completely separated in their beliefs with regard to what’s happening, especially in big politics. Stories today are instantly jumped on and deemed false by ‘fact-checkers’ even when there is legitimate evidence behind the claims. Should people not have the right to examine information, opinions and evidence and decide for themselves what is and what isn’t? The amount of information censorship happening today is truly unprecedented.
This type of states is simply a reflection of an evolving human consciousness. We are becoming more aware, and we are questioning actions taken by governments that do not resonate. We are living in times where truth tellers, like Julian Assange and Edward Snowden, are exiled and thrown in jail for simply exposing unethical and immoral actions by powerful governments and corporations. What does it say about our world if we’ve come to the point where activists exposing harmful actions are completely silenced and ridiculed? What’s going on here? How did we get to this point and how do we change it? Why do we continue to rely and ask governments to make meaningful changes on our planet? Does voting simply hold up and perpetuate a system that’s no longer capable of helping the human race and our planet move forward in the direction it needs to take?
The Facts: Recent events such as the arrest of Jeffrey Epstein seem to be causing more victims of sex trafficking who had stayed silent for so long to come out and speak.
Reflect On: Can we create a safe and open space for alleged victims of sex trafficking to speak out with confidence, and trust that our growing discernment will ensure that the truth rises to the top?
Members of the Awakening Community often wonder, aside from our personal work being done to look inside and heal, forgive, and raise our vibration, if there is a need for external actions in the world that will help move us forward in our collective journey and foster a better and more harmonious world.
Might I suggest that at this precise moment in our history, it is incumbent upon us to come together as a community to provide a safe and sacred space to those who have been victimized by the massive, coordinated global pedophilia and trafficking rings whose full scope and influence on our world we are just starting to fathom. And that means listening to what they have to say, and aspiring to use their testimony to gain a better understanding of our world and what has been happening under the cover of darkness and privilege, difficult as this may be for many of us to accept.
Women and men who have for decades lived silently in fear of being further harmed or even killed if they spoke out, now see a ray of hope in the recent convictions of members of the NXIVM cult and the arrest of Jeffrey Epstein. There is now a sense that the fundamental complicity or at least the willful ignorance about these rings at the highest levels of global law enforcement is changing, and that many of the good people in these organizations are now being empowered to investigate and prosecute such crimes. It has previously been said to me that officers wishing to pursue leads into human trafficking crimes were often dissuaded from further action and told, ‘That’s not what the taxpayers are paying you to do.’
I know of victims who are not ready to come out in public, either because they are not far enough along in their healing journey, or they still cannot fully believe that government, law enforcement, and the judiciary are now on their side. When we consider how much we have uncovered about the far-reaching complicity of powerful institutions to silence victims and protect high-level perpetrators, there is justification for these feelings.
Discernment
For those who are coming out of hiding and providing testimony, heightening our powers of discernment is critical to the process. We will not be creating a safe space if we simply believe anything we hear from anybody, for there are sure to be attempts at disinformation and manipulation for ulterior motives. At the same time, we must withhold snap judgments, and temper the application of our pet conspiracy theories so that we can focus on allowing each person to feel and be heard.
Our discernment will require us to take each testimony word by word, case by case, and ask ourselves about the motivation behind it, if the facts line up and there is consistency, and whether or not there seems to be a hidden agenda. The testimony of Christine Blasey-Ford and her allegations of attempted rape against Brett Kavanaugh in his Supreme Court nomination hearings serve as an example in which red flags were lifting up at every turn, especially in the way mainstream media unequivocally pronounced her to be credible and honest every step of the way. Her testimony could clearly be seen as having a political agenda behind it.
The Testimony Of Jessica Collins
By and large, most cases will be more subtle. One person who has recently come out with a video claiming to be a victim of Jeffrey Epstein and [Prince] Andrew Windsor certainly seems worthy of our attention. Although she does not claim to be a victim of child trafficking (she was first abducted as a student at the Catholic University of America, after she went for what she thought was a legitimate job interview), the testimony of Jessica Collins is compelling. She put a link to the video below multiple times on Twitter on September 3rd:
A look into some earlier tweets and other information reveals that Jessica’s 18-year old daughter died of Opioids in 2017, which Jessica does not believe was a suicide. In a tweet on September 3rd, she discloses that only because she believes her daughter was murdered is she speaking out. And she herself does not believe that the Department of Justice and Law Enforcement are truly attempting to prosecute these crimes at this time:
I was raped by Washington DC politicians. They murdered my daughter. That is why I am speaking out. Joe Biden, John McCain and many others are involved. They allow me to speak for bc they know Americans will not believe me. https://t.co/zkklOkf41u
There is a lot to sift through in the testimony of Jessica Collins. I won’t go over it here but would refer you to this Before It’s News article to examine some of the more salacious claims. My purpose here is to pass on this video to our readers to share and evaluate for themselves, based on the following request made by Jessica in the video itself:
My name is Jessica Collins. I live in Virginia. Today is September 3rd, 2019. If anything happens to me it’s because this information is true and I have a lot more information about who I was trafficked to and the government people who are in the White House today.
If you could redistribute this video please save it and redistribute it. If anything happens to me at least I have this out. I have been threatened. My car was disabled by a government employee when the Jeffrey Epstein news broke.
I have been without a vehicle for 40 days. I don’t know what else to say.
Please save this video. Please redistribute. Please try and spread it. There is no way that this is going to get out there in the media. Must we the American people do the work?
The government is involved and I was trafficked for nearly 17 years. Please try to help by redistributing this, tweeting it, talking about it. I do everything that I can. Thank you for listening. Together we can get to the bottom of this and hold the criminals accountable.
Jessica Collins’ last tweet was on September 6th. There don’t seem to be any communications from her since then. Let us pray that she is safe and finds a way to tell her whole story.
The Takeaway
We have to allow everyone who comes forward as a victim of sex trafficking the chance to speak until they have been fully heard. We must have confidence that the truth will ultimately rise to the top and shine so brightly that attempts at dark deception and manipulation, clever as they may be, will no longer prevail.
THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED 19 SEPTEMBER, 2019
