U.S. to be Subject to UN “Climate Conciliation Commission” if Re-Joins Paris Climate Pact
By Chris Horner | Government Accountability and Oversight
Paris Climate ‘Accord’ FOIA Case: State Dept. Releases, Withholds Parts of Memo to Sec. John Kerry Requesting Authority to Sign Paris Agreement
It appears possible that, come January, the United States will rejoin the 2015 Paris climate agreement, committing to adopt the “Green New Deal” agenda (now rebranded for political purposes as “Net Zero”). This will not be accomplished by Senate ratification, but by the ‘pen and a phone’ approach first used by President Obama to claim U.S. “ratification” of what is on its face and by its history a treaty, requiring approval instead by a two-thirds Senate vote.
A document released last week by the State Department, in Freedom of Information Act litigation by the transparency group Energy Policy Advocates, includes a reminder of one consequence of this for America, should it occur: claiming to “re-join” the Paris climate treaty will immediately subject U.S. energy policy — and thereby economic and to some extent trade policy — to a UN “climate conciliation commission”.
Already, as the United Kingdom has shown, developed nations’ courts can be expected to cite the Paris climate treaty in blocking infrastructure development. The UK’s Court of Appeal ruled earlier this year that Heathrow Airport cannot be expanded because that would violate the UK’s ‘net zero’ commitment under Paris.
Then, Canada offered a reminder how progressive politicians will raise taxes in the name of complying with Paris: In Ottawa, “The parliamentary budget officer says the federal carbon tax would have to rise over the coming years if the country is to meet emission-reduction targets under the Paris climate accord.”
Now we are reminded that the U.S. can also expect a forum for antagonistic nations to bring their complaints about U.S. policy and claims of non-compliance with Paris’s required “Net Zero” agenda for resolution.
This might be one of the reasons that avoiding a Senate vote on Paris was a key objective of the Obama administration, which stated in August 2015 before there ever was even Paris text, that it would not be a “treaty”. This was the lesson learned from the U.S. Senate’s refusal to consider the 1997 Kyoto treaty: If the Senate votes on it, its details would be debated, and defeated.
That objective of an end-run around the U.S. Constitution’s process was shared by European nations: the French climate change ambassador to the U.N. and President of the Paris COP, Laurence Tubiana and Laurent Fabius, respectively, both openly admitted.
Yet, those same countries treated Paris as a treaty for their own ratification purposes. This cavalier approach to the Constitution in the Obama years makes it easy to forget the U.S. supposedly has the more stringent system for joining international entanglements.
Instead, the Obama team showed what one Senate Foreign Relations Committee lawyer decried as a “disturbing contempt for the Senate’s constitutional rights and responsibilities” by circumventing its constitutional treaty role on Paris. Unfortunately, the institution shrunk from a constitutional fight, and all parties spoke as if calling Paris an “accord” instead carried weight — though the the Kyoto Protocol was alternately called the “Kyoto Accord” and, yes, was still a treaty.
This brings us to the newly released (in part) memo — “Request for Authority to Sign and Join the Paris Agreement, Adopted under the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change” [UNFCCC] — reaffirming that Paris is the result of “a 2011 negotiating mandate (the “Durban Platform”)”. The Durban “mandate” was to “adopt…a protocol, another legal instrument or an agreed outcome with legal force at the twenty-first session of the Conference of the Parties and for it to come into effect and be implemented from 2020”.
That of course is Paris, the crushing provisions of which are found in Article 4, emission reduction promises. Art. 4.3 requires that the U.S. revisit and tighten its reduction promises every five years. That would cleverly make this the climate treaty…sorry, “accord”… to end all climate treaties. It commits the U.S. to ever greater “climate” policy restrictions, every five years, in perpetuity.
Pull this off and there will never be the threat again of facing the tyranny of the Constitution’s requirement of popular approval.
Political rhetoric aside, nothing in Paris’s terms says this provision is legally binding, but no that one over there isn’t. Instead, Paris was merely sold to and promoted by much of the press with the claim that Paris contains “a mix of legally binding and not legally binding provisions”.
As we have seen already in the UK/Heathrow Airport case, that did not last, as it was not intended to. Lawyers and courts have already begun to see to something of which Americans should be reminded, including that you can have promises of massive infrastructure spending, or you can have the Paris climate pact, but you can’t have them both.
And it won’t just be courts. Recall, first, that the Paris agreement as originally circulated contained a climate tribunal, or court. This was dropped after being noticed outside of polite circles. Nonetheless, the recently released if still heavily redacted memo reminds us that U.S. compliance with the legally binding here but maybe not over there Paris obligations is subject to the terms of that 1992 agreement, ratified by the U.S. Senate on the condition that it was and remained non-binding (again, stated nowhere in its terms).
UNFCCC declares, in Art. 14, “Settlement of Dispute”, that:
“5. … if after twelve months following notification by one Party to another that a dispute exists between them, the Parties concerned have not been able to settle their dispute through the means mentioned in paragraph 1 above, the dispute shall be submitted, at the request of any of the parties to the dispute, to conciliation.
6. A conciliation commission shall be created upon the request of one of the parties to the
dispute. The commission shall be composed of an equal number of members appointed by each party concerned and a chairman chosen jointly by the members appointed by each party. The commission shall render a recommendatory award, which the parties shall consider in good faith.”
This language governs U.S. compliance with the Paris climate “accord”. It is not open to dispute that any U.S. president who claims to “re-join” the Paris climate treaty will subject US energy policy — and thereby the U.S. economy — to a UN climate “conciliation commission”.
Paris requires, and mandates the U.S. revisit and tighten “Green New Deal”-style policies every five years. This is among the many reasons why the Paris climate agreement is a treaty, and also why it never would have been ratified. However, very soon, Americans may nonetheless be subject to its long-envisioned climate court.
Joe Biden is no empty sheet, may well return US to warmaking – former OSCE vice-president
RT | November 8, 2020
There’s a ‘good chance’ that the US will return to the policy of foreign wars under Joe Biden, which will make its reconciliation with the EU impossible, Willy Wimmer, former vice-president of the OSCE, warned.
The main reasons why the Americans voted for Donald Trump four years ago were their tiredness of constant wars waged by their country and collapsing economy and infrastructure in the US, Wimmer told RT.
Trump has kept his promise and didn’t start any new foreign conflict, but that may well change if a member of the Democratic Party is in the White House, former Vice President of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Parliamentary Assembly said.
“Joe Biden isn’t an empty white sheet – he represents the Democratic Party, who in the 1990s destroyed the Charter of the UN.”
The German political veteran recalled the US-led NATO bombing of Yugoslavia under Democratic President, Bill Clinton, in 1999. He also pointed out that “in the presidency of [Barack] Obama, Biden was Vice President and he was in absolute accordance with Obama’s drone wars and the wars in the Middle East, therefore there’s a good chance that Joe Biden continues in the same way as the Democratic Party did it in the 1990s and under Obama” before 2016.
“And going back to before 2016 means going back to war” for the US, Wimmer argued.
Relations between Washington and Brussels have deteriorated under Trump over his demands for the EU nations to make larger financial contributions to NATO as well as political and economic pressure on the block to stop dealing with Russia and China.
Hopes that things would improve under Biden will be dashed, “as long as the US and NATO don’t return to the Charter of the UN,” the 77-year-old, who also served as State Secretary to Germany’s Defense Minister, said.
However, he pointed out that it remains a question if the current US economy, which was heavily hit by the coronavirus, would even allow Biden to return to the aggressive policy, which the Democrats used to pursue.
Unlike German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, who already congratulated Biden over beating incumbent Trump in the US presidential election, Wimmer believes that others “should be very-very careful with congratulations.”
The Democratic candidate declared himself the winner on Saturday after several major television networks projected that he was on a path to take more than 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency after four days of tense vote counts in several battleground states.
“It’s quite unusual… that the result of an election is announced by a news agency or a news channel. We’re used… in all our countries, which belong to the OSCE, that we have Election Committees, who announce results. And this hasn’t been done yet in the US,” he pointed out, describing the events surrounding the American election as “unbelievable.”
Why it is right to question the orthodox Covid-19 narrative
The authors of ‘Welcome to Covidworld’ defend their stance
By Matthew Ratcliffe and Ian James Kidd | The Critic | November 6, 2020
In a reply to our piece “Welcome to Covidworld”, Ben Bramble engages in precisely the sort of thinking that we raised concerns about. He suggests that we are mistaken in comparing harms done by lockdowns and other measures to harms caused by the virus. Instead, we ought to have weighed up the costs of lockdowns against what would have happened without them.
Bramble’s case hinges on a counterfactual claim: in the absence of lockdowns, the virus would have inflicted much more harm than it has done. The cost of not locking down would, he says, have been “mind-bogglingly great”.
What could be wrong with Bramble’s claim? First of all, his use of the term “lockdown” is insufficiently discerning. Lockdown is not a simple, straightforward policy measure that took the same form in every country. There are, for instance, important differences between early and late lockdowns. Australia and New Zealand both locked down early and suppressed the virus.
Setting aside the issue of whether or not the actions taken by these countries are morally justifiable, it remains to be seen whether or not this is a success story. If a highly effective vaccine is not forthcoming, both countries will face the painful options of cutting themselves off from the rest of the world indefinitely, having strict lockdowns whenever the virus reappears, or eventually succumbing to the virus, none of which amount to success.
However, the current UK situation is very different. Given where we are now, nobody is claiming that this second lockdown or any future UK lockdowns will be able to suppress the virus here. It is too well established for that. Rather, the stated aims have been to buy us some time until a vaccine arrives and, most recently, to ensure that the NHS is not overwhelmed. In evaluating the effectiveness and appropriateness of such policy measures, it will not do to make sweeping claims about the effectiveness of lockdowns in general. When considering interventions so extreme and destructive, we need to proceed more carefully.
Bramble simply accepts that lockdowns in general work. He does not specify exactly what it would be for a late lockdown to work, when the goal is no longer complete suppression. Presumably, the relevant criteria will include reducing hospitalizations and deaths due to Covid-19, during the lockdown and in the longer term as well. But where is the evidence that lockdowns generally have this effect? Bramble doesn’t provide any. Maybe he thinks it’s just obvious that they achieve this, but it really isn’t.
A strict lockdown in Peru is associated with one of the highest Covid-19 death tolls in the world (currently recorded as 1,047 people per 1 million of the population). Other countries that have resorted to exceptionally long and strict lockdowns, such as Argentina, have also fared badly. One could, of course, run Bramble’s counterfactual here: it would have been even worse for these countries had they not locked down. But where is the evidence for that? Indeed, what would even count as evidence?
It would be intellectually and morally unacceptable to make the pro-lockdown position unfalsifiable by always insisting on the following: (1) where cases drop after a lockdown was introduced, it must be the lockdown that achieved this; (2) where cases rise after a lockdown was introduced, it would certainly have been even worse without the lockdown; (3) if other countries, such as Sweden, adopt less extreme approaches than us and fare better or at least no worse, this must be due to other differences between the two countries – the Swedish strategy would never have worked here.
So, how do we go about evaluating the effectiveness of lockdowns? Where is the evidence that the virus ultimately causes far more deaths in the absence of extreme social restrictions? Where are those countries that followed a different course from countries like the UK (which locked down, but did not suppress the virus) and now have higher death tolls than us? By simply assuming that his counterfactual claim is true, Bramble illustrates our worry that lockdowns risk becoming an unfalsifiable article of faith. In fact, he even asserts that “the science on this is beyond question”. Is it really? If so, all the disease modelers who have made dire predictions concerning the current UK situation will be delighted to hear that their work will be forever immune from critique, even if it turns out that their models have little bearing on reality. And, in any case, none of them would endorse Bramble’s exaggerated claim that, without a lockdown, there would have been “many millions of deaths” in countries such as the UK.
In fact, much about the behaviour of this virus remains unclear, including how the infection rate is influenced by growing immunity within a population. There is no single, homogeneous entity called “the science”. Rather, there are many different and often conflicting perspectives, theories, and claims. Furthermore, this is a complicated, fast-changing situation that impacts on all aspects of human society. Relevant expertise thus encompasses a wide range of academic disciplines and areas of practice. Philosophers should not simply defer to “the experts”; they also have plenty of relevant expertise themselves.
What we do know is that lockdowns are immensely damaging in so many ways. This second UK lockdown will further disrupt the social and emotional development of our children, cause a substantial rise in severe mental health problems, force many elderly people to live out the final weeks and perhaps months of their lives in loneliness and misery, exacerbate and prolong the pain of bereavement by depriving people of interpersonal and social interactions that shape and regulate grief, destroy livelihoods and risk mass unemployment, increase regional social and economic inequalities, reduce the life-opportunities of young people while saddling them with an ever-growing mountain of debt to pay off, suspend much of what gives our lives meaning, deprive people of countless precious, irreplaceable life-moments, and cause deaths due to the numerous resulting impacts on people’s health.
However, the true extent of certain harms, such as the long-term effects of sustained lockdown measures on children’s development, may not become fully clear for some time.
Others have similarly warned that policy makers are paying insufficient attention to these growing costs. For instance, an open letter by psychologists, which appeared on 1 November, spells out the widespread and damaging psychological effects of continuing restrictions, including the harms done to children. Similarly, an article published in the British Medical Journal on 2 November raises the concern that the “collateral damage” caused by public health interventions has “yet to be considered systematically”. Others have drawn attention to the global costs of national lockdowns. For instance, the charity Oxfam has stated that, by the end of this year, over 12,000 people could be starving to death every day due the global impact of national-level responses to Covid-19.
Bramble observes that the orthodox view has in fact been subjected to critical scrutiny. But the problem is that – in the UK, at least – alternative perspectives have had little influence on the processes of recommending, making, and implementing policy decisions. And we worry that this may be partly because of blinkered and inflexible attitudes that are widely held. People are often very quick to dismiss or express moral disapproval of dissenting voices. However, those who confidently endorse lockdowns with an air of moral authority also need to acknowledge the full extent of the harms these measures have caused, are causing, and are likely to cause. Furthermore, explicit and sufficiently specific criteria should be supplied for determining the effectiveness of any proposed lockdown, accompanied by convincing evidence to show that it is very likely to achieve its intended effects.
Instead of pursuing such a path, Bramble speculates that our own concerns originate in cognitive impairments caused by our distressing experiences of lockdown. This is the kind of response that motivated our earlier account of “Covidworld”, a simplified, virus-centric reality where various norms of reason, scientific enquiry, and moral conduct have ceased to apply.
Copyright © Locomotive 6960 Limited 2020
Trump attorneys will expose Biden’s ‘abject fraud,’ says lawyer on president’s team
RT | November 8, 2020
Trump lawyer Sidney Powell said that computer “glitches” were used by Democrats to flip votes from Donald Trump to Joe Biden, and that she will “fight tooth and nail in federal court to expose this abject fraud.”
As President Donald Trump’s legal case challenging the results of Tuesday’s election builds steam, former federal prosecutor Sydney Powell – who is helping Trump’s legal team – told Fox News that she has seen evidence of massive fraud.
“To manufacture votes for Joe Biden, they have done it in every way imaginable,” Powell told Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo on Sunday. “From having dead people vote in massive numbers to absolutely fraudulently creating ballots that exist only voting for Biden.”
“We have identified at least 450,000 ballots in the key states that miraculously only have a mark for Joe Biden on them and no other candidate,” she continued, before alleging that vote-counting software and hardware manufactured by Dominion Voting Systems was used to “flip” votes from Trump to Biden.
Dominion’s equipment was used in 28 states, including Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, Georgia and Arizona, where the Trump campaign has alleged fraud took place.
Powell claimed that computer “glitches” in Dominion’s software were used to tilt the vote against Michigan Senate hopeful John James and Georgia Rep. Doug Collins. “There were many people affected by this,” she said. “We have got to fight tooth and nail in federal court to expose this abject fraud and the conspiracy behind it.”
Recounts and audits, she concluded, are needed in “frankly most of the country.”
Biden claimed victory on Saturday, after Associated Press called the state of Pennsylvania, and with it the presidency, in his favor. Trump has declared Biden’s win fraudulent, though mainstream media and Democrat officials have stated that there is no evidence of foul play.
Trump’s legal team is determined to prove them wrong, though, and the president’ lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, told Bartiromo on Sunday that the first lawsuit – which alleges widespread fraud in Pennsylvania, will be filed on Monday. As many as five legal cases may be brought before the end of the week, Giuliani added, telling Bartiromo that he has gathered enough evidence to overturn Biden’s razor-thin wins in both Pennsylvania and Michigan.
Seemingly unperturbed by the looming legal challenges, Biden has pressed ahead with his transition into office. The former vice president opened a “Biden-Harris Presidential Transition Team” Twitter account on Sunday, promising to “rise stronger than we were before.”
Congratulations President Kamala
By Taxi | Plato’s Guns | Movember 8, 2020
The kindest thing we can say about Joe Biden is that he is a proven scatterbrain whose physical and cognitive daily life depends on his wife’s vigilant handling of his word and foot. She is forever present wherever he is: whispering to him his forgotten word, and showing him where podium and exit door is. Simply, she is his guide-dog and theatrical standby coaching him from the wings. And for all we know, Biden may also already be incontinent and needing adult diapers under his pajamas and Mrs. Biden here plays the role of personal diaper-changer too.
This is the pre-election status of our new president, Joe Biden.
But what of post-election? How will our handicapped and dependent president manage complex state affairs and even more complex foreign policies for the next four years? He is already 77 years of age and clearly his cognitive abilities will continue to naturally diminish with age, with no prospect whatsoever of their return to robust elasticity.
Begs the question here therefore: why on earth did the Democratic party choose him as leader of party and presidential candidate when they know better than you and I of Biden’s dwindling mental stature? Surely an unspoken yet blatant ruse is at hand here? Yes? No? Yes, indeed there is and let’s here code-name it ‘Operation Kamala’. The Democratic party leadership that is desperately needing to win the White House and remain there for eight years have resorted to employing unconventional methodology to insert their real preferred candidate: an unpopular candidate by presidential standards; a selected candidate and not an elected one.
The real candidate that’s preferred by the Jewy Deep State and by Jewish Power is Kamala Harris, Joe Biden’s pick of Vice President, and not Joe Biden himself. The Democratic party will soon enough be performing their ‘great switcheroo’, to be executed soon as it becomes impossible to cover up Biden’s mental failings. What these Democratic Party honchos and desperate strategists have done in essence is cynically exploit our constitution and election rules by playing a Two-card Monte trick against the American voter. Now you see the democratically elected Biden card, and NOW you see the selected VP Kamala Harris’ card. Every guess made at this sly game makes every single American voter a loser.
Kamala Harris: a slime-ball lawyer who reached the high office of District Attorney of uber liberal San Francisco is of mixed-race: of Asian-Indian and African-American extraction. She is a combination of Israel-firster Modi and Israel-firster Sammy Davis Jr – yet the mainstream media consistently refers to her as a “Black-American”, and clearly this is because ‘Asian-Indian’ does not sell well at the voting booth. Here we have the same intentional racial inaccuracy as with how mulatto president Obama was sold to the voter. And like presidents Obama and Trump before her, Kamala is both besotted and beholden to Jewish power. The Jewish Lobby promoted her selection as president-to-be despite her being the first Democrat to drop out of the presidential race, nay the first Democrat to be elbowed out of the race by Tulsi Gabbard. Being childless at 56 years of age and married to a divorced Jewish man, she refers to herself as a “proud and loving stepmother” to his two Jewish children. Kamala thus evidently has a personal and careeristic investment in serving Israel above all else. In this sense, we can say that Kamala actually married Israel and guaranteed thus her rise to political rank in the US, despite her low popularity even among Democrats. How else to explain the biggest loser in the primaries eventually becoming actual president of the United States of America? This here is the “unconventional” ruse devised by the criminal Democratic strategists. This here is the crime scene where American democracy was stabbed in the heart and in the eyeball. This here may very well be the race-war trigger planned for America by Jewish power when America finds itself, overnight, ruled by a selected (not elected) female president of color.
I can see an ocean of Whitey froth and bullets when this happens.
And until the day Kamala takes the White House with the help of Jewish sleight of hand, we have Biden.
Biden the committed Zionist. Biden the old man with a penchant for inappropriate touchy-feelys of little girls. Biden, the supporter of color revolutions and wars for the Jews. Biden who doesn’t know where the exit door is. Biden who is bad at math but good at pocketing monies from corrupt deals. Biden the poster-boy and linchpin of the biggest Jewish subterfuge operation against the American voter and their beloved constitution.
What’s left to say except: good luck, Americans. You’re certainly fucked for the next 4-8 years. You’re fucked perhaps even for eternity.
Russiagate disciple Michael McFaul upset that Putin hasn’t congratulated Biden for presumed election win
RT | November 8, 2020
Former US envoy to Russia Michael McFaul is unhappy that Moscow hasn’t declared Joe Biden the election winner without official results, apparently tossing aside years of hysteria about Kremlin “meddling” in US internal affairs.
McFaul, who became one of the most outspoken proponents of the debunked theory that Moscow “colluded” with the Trump campaign in 2016, expressed his disappointment on Twitter that Russian President Vladimir Putin has yet to offer his congratulations to the Democratic nominee, who declared himself president-elect on Saturday.
“Has Putin joined the chorus of world leaders in congratulating Biden yet? I haven’t see (sic) the statement. Do post if its (sic) out,” he wrote.
Over the past four years, McFaul has rarely passed up an opportunity to suggest that Moscow is somehow exerting shadowy influence over Washington. Now he is apparently disappointed that the Kremlin hasn’t chosen sides in a contested election. Several states are still counting votes, and recounts and lawsuits brought by the Trump campaign could make declaring a clear victor in the contest premature.
Biden claimed victory after media outlets projected that he would win Pennsylvania, overcoming Donald Trump’s previous considerable lead in the state. The Republican president has refused to concede.
Earlier in the day, Fijian Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama became the first world leader to offer his congratulations to the former vice president, expressing hope that Biden would help the world navigate a “climate emergency.”
By Saturday evening, governments from around the world issued statements recognizing Biden as the president-elect. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he was “looking forward” to working with Biden, while UK leader Boris Johnson said he was eager to begin cooperation with the Democrat’s new administration, a sentiment that was echoed by many European heads-of-state. All members of the Group of 7 (G7) economic organization have issued congratulatory messages to Biden.
Although it’s true that Putin has yet to recognize Biden’s projected win, he’s not alone. Chinese President Xi Jinping has said nothing on the subject, along with Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
In fact, some world leaders have even hinted that they don’t recognize Biden’s victory. Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Jansa on Wednesday declared Trump the victor, and then issued a follow-up statement insisting that the election should not be called until the courts rule on the matter. He wasn’t the only world leader to express unwillingness to recognize a winner in the contest. Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Saturday that he wanted to wait for legal challenges to finish before assuming a clear victor.
Similarly, Polish President Andrzej Duda congratulated Biden for running a “successful presidential campaign,” adding that his nation was waiting to see who would be declared the official president-elect by the Electoral College.
Disbelief in human rationality; The Trump Factor
By Ghassan Kadi for the Saker Blog | November 8, 2020
Disbelief is probably the best word to describe today’s world. Disbelief that in the short span of my own lifetime thus far, I have lived to witness black whitewashed to become white, and when it doesn’t turn white, brains are brainwashed to see it white.
I am in disbelief that the political Left that I have grown to choose to either like or dislike is now owned and controlled by Western billionaires and oligarchs who have turned developing countries into slave labour camps.
I am in disbelief that the former promise of liberalism has been turned by the new-Left to become a mass movement that is devoid of free-thinking, one that literally coerces one to unconditionally accept it and follow its agenda without any questions or else face persecution, humiliation and slander.
Love or hate Castro and Guevara, I am in total disbelief that their political heirs, as it were, are Greta Thunberg, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, the main benefactor of whom is George Soros; just to name a few.
I am in disbelief that decent people have condoned violent protests and looting and considered them as rightful civil rights activities.
I am in total disbelief that rudeness, thought-policing, political correctness, hypocrisy and double standards have become the new norms.
And now that Biden has illegally declared himself a winner, I am in disbelief that many of his supporters do not seem to care as to whether he has indeed committed electoral fraud or not despite allegations that indicate that ballots might have been fiddled with and which at least warrants an investigation. They seem happy to get rid of Trump even if this meant that fraud was actually committed.
I am in disbelief that world leaders are breaking the standards of political protocol and congratulating Biden before he is formally declared a winner.
I am in disbelief that social media giants like Facebook and Twitter are allowed to censor personal opinion and make their own rules on what constitutes freedom of expression and what doesn’t. Even more, I am in disbelief that those giants are free to decide to ban publishing reports about allegations of corruption in the Biden family camp because they have not been legally and formally substantiated, but at the same time promote and publish unsubstantiated accusations about Trump and his supporters.
I am in disbelief that it became illegal to prescribe and sell hydroxychloroquine even though there are indications [completed trials] that it can treat COVID-19.
I am in disbelief that intelligent, well-meaning people, including many personal friends have believed the myriad of unsubstantiated stories that have been fabricated about Trump ever since he was elected. I am in disbelief that they believed in the Russiagate fiasco and that upon reflection did not feel any remorse when they were proved to be a lie. I am in disbelief that those who fabricated the story were not prosecuted.
I am in disbelief that the BLM movement appears to blame Trump for centuries of racial injustice in America. I am in disbelief that those same people do not look at Obama’s track record on race issues.
I am in disbelief that many mature and intelligent men and women believe that Greta is an expert on climate all the while ignoring what many eminent scientists are saying to the contrary. I am in disbelief that Trump is blamed for that so-called ‘Climate Change’ and that Biden truly believes that he is able to reach zero CO2 emission.
When I was growing up, reform and justice meant iconic issues such as freedom of worship, free speech, free education and medication. I am in disbelief to see that the new definition has morphed into the ‘rights’ of late term abortion and school children having gender change surgeries.
I am in disbelief that the same West that once mocked the use of the term ‘democratic’ in the rhetoric of the USSR and the names of entities like the German Democratic Republic finds itself at ease kicking democracy in the guts and have the so-called American Democratic Party ruled by a new ‘species’ of dictators and thugs.
I am in disbelief that the new definition of being progressive does not include decency and respect and that parents no longer teach their children simple rules like giving up their bus seats to the elderly.
I am in disbelief that the impact of COVID-19 and alleged loss of life was blamed on Trump. I say ‘alleged’ loss of life not because I believe that the virus does not exist; it does, but because I have seen enough evidence to substantiate that the figures we have been presented with were highly exaggerated and that many people died of causes other than COVD-19 but were counted as COVID-19 victims; just to make Trump look bad. To this effect, if Trump does initiate a court challenge to the election results and loses, then all that Biden has to do is to start publishing the real figures of deaths caused by COVID-19, and that alone will make him look like a hero who managed to turn around the figures.
I must say that as a Syrian-Lebanese, Trump has been horrible for Syria. He did not manage to contain Erdogan. He sanctioned the theft of Syrian oil. He allowed for Syrian crops to be burnt. He intensified sanctions against Syria with his Caesar Act. For the above and other reasons, Syrians should be rejoicing to see him leave even though Biden and his team of Democrats have been beating the drums of war, but if they draw first blood, it will be a war they cannot win. In more ways than one, a military escalation in Syria now, one that does not expand to become an all-out war between America and Russia, may break the stalemate and create the foreground for moving forward in a new direction. In other words, as far as Syria is concerned, Biden can inadvertently be a better president than Trump. Time will tell.
I therefore have real, concrete and thought-out reasons to dislike Trump and even loath him. But I find myself in total disbelief when I ask many people the reason, the real reason, for which they hate Trump; they are unable to provide a single one. Some revert to his looks and/or his vocabulary, but come on, is this enough for them to hate him with the passion they do? I am in disbelief that they echo like parrots the words of the media, knowing from previous experiences that the only thing that the media is good at is lying. I am in disbelief that seemingly rational people are increasingly finding it easy and plausible for them to adopt very strong views, make loud and uncouth comments, without taking the effort of fact-finding.
I am in disbelief that the moment one speaks of fact-finding-based rationality, he/she is either ‘accused’ of being a Trumpie or a denialist. You are either 100% with them or against them. I am in disbelief that they do not see the grey lines in any given argument.
The perception of Trump by the world reminds me of that of President Assad in the Arab World a bit; not that a real comparison can be drawn between the two men. Many Arabs who hate Assad cannot provide one single legitimate reason for hating him, but when squeezed in a corner, they admit that they dislike him because he is an Alawite.
The planners of the anti-Trump campaign have worked very hard in order to demonize him and create a multi-faceted global anti-Trump hysteria. They planned to put together a coalition of haters of different persuasions united only by their hatred to Trump; again in a manner akin to how the ‘War on Syria’ started.
The public both within America and abroad has been bombarded with stories about Trump, portraying him as the public enemy number one at different levels and on many issues.
The Chinese have a great interest to see Trump go because Trump is a tough trade deal negotiator.
The EU nations, and NATO members to be specific, also have a great interest to see Trump go because he forced them to make larger contributions to the NATO budget.
And even though Trump canceled the Iran nuclear deal, endorsed Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and facilitated peace settlements with three Arab states, the Israelis have no qualms about seeing Trump go because they know for a fact that Biden will not waver in his support to Israel. To Israel and the Israel lobby, the identity of the resident of the White House is totally immaterial.
Erdogan will be happy to see Trump go because he knows that Biden will be a much softer putty to mould. Biden is more likely to give him a free hand dealing with the Kurds than Trump ever did.
The huge American industrialists and globalists will be happy to see Trump go because they do not wish to repatriate their factories and create American jobs. They do not want to pay higher salaries and higher taxes. They are totally indifferent as to how far and wide the rust belt expands; for as long as their companies are making profit having factories overseas.
Big Pharma is keen to see Trump go because it is tipped to make hundreds of billions of dollars selling vaccines.
Last but not least, the Deep State wishes for Trump to go. No prior American President has ever dared to even mention the term ‘Deep State’ let alone take charge against it. I find myself in a state of disbelief because the alleged foot soldiers who are meant to stand up against the ‘Deep State’, ie the Left, are the ones taking charge against Trump. Work this one out.
Even the old guards at the GOP, the Republican Party are against Trump; because they are part-and-parcel of the Deep State, they have their fingers in the pie, and Trump does not represent them. In reality, in both of his election and re-election bids, Trump ran more like an independent than a GOP candidate. History will possibly mark him as the American President who was closest to being an independent candidate.
With all of the above said, I can fully understand why some have good reasons to dislike Trump and even hate him, and as mentioned above, I can have my own reasons. I can equally understand why some can be shortsighted enough to wish to see him go without giving much thought to who is to replace him. But for anyone to believe that Joe Biden is the man to restore America’s position in the world and make the world a better place, then unsubstantiated wishful thinking is the most polite manner to describe such aspirations.
Notwithstanding all of the above, the world is undergoing an inevitable polar shift and this is now unstoppable. The West is losing its technical edge and financial prowess as both are moving East. And even if Trump wins his touted court battle and is declared a winner, changes the constitution and gets re-elected for ten more terms, he will not be able to reverse this torrent even if the Democrats worked wholeheartedly with him.
If Biden ends up in the White House, he may and probably will attempt to gain initial support by publishing real COVID-19 death related figures as mentioned above. But what will he be able to conjure up in order to be able to save face when it comes to public debt, unemployment and other huge problems that America and the rest of the world face?
The cracks within America are sadly widening and the underlying foundations are crumbling, and if Biden is foolish enough to take the war gamble as a way out of the financial dilemma that he will have to deal with if he becomes president and squanders a few more trillion on a new war somewhere in the world, he will hasten the financial collapse. If he warms up to China and escalates his anti-Russian rhetoric to the extent of creating war with Russia, then God help us all. I suppose Greta and her minions will blame Russia for the nuclear fallout, provided that any of them and us will still be around to talk about it.
Whether Trump stays or goes, he has definitely and inadvertently accelerated the events in the age of disbelief. The word disbelief was once associated with heresy, but now, at least in my dictionary, it refers to the disbelief in the current state of human rationality.
I can go on and on but enough is said. With all the above reasons to have disbelief, I wonder if there is still any benefit in writing articles like this one and trying to talk people into having some common sense.
The world is quickly and steadfastly approaching a rather frightening stage of mass hysteria of Biblical proportions. Rational people now feel that they are surrounded by lunatics, and yet some say we ‘ain’t seen nothing yet’.
May God have mercy on humanity, because humanity did not have mercy on itself.
The 2020 election: fuckery is afoot
By Larry Correia | Monster Hunter Nation | November 5, 2020
I am more offended by how ham fisted, clumsy, and audacious the fraud to elect him is than the idea of Joe Biden being president. I think Joe Biden is a corrupt idiot, however, I think America would survive him like we’ve survived previous idiot administrations. However, what is potentially fatal for America is half the populace believing that their elections are hopelessly rigged and they’re eternally fucked. And now, however this shakes out in court, that’s exactly what half the country is going to think.
People are pissed off, and rightfully so.
Before I became a novelist I was an accountant. In auditing you look for red flags. That’s weird bits in the data that suggest something shifty is going on. You flag those weird things so you can delve into them further. One flag doesn’t necessarily mean there’s fraud. Weird things happen. A few flags mean stupidity or dishonesty. But a giant pile of red flags means that there’s bad shit going on and people should be in jail.
Except for in politics, where apparently all you have to do to dismiss a bunch of red flag is be a democrat and mumble something about “fascist voter suppression” then you can do all sorts of blatant crime and get off.
I’ve been trying to keep up with the firehose of information about what’s going on during this clusterfuck of an election. Last night I was on Facebook talking about the crazy high, 3rd world dictatorship level voter turnout levels in the deep blue areas of these swing states was very suspicious. Somebody gas lighted me about how “I’d have to do better than that”, so this was my quick reply, listing off the questionable bullshit I could think of off the top of my head:
The massive turn out alone is a red flag.
But as for doing better…
The late night spikes that were enough to close all the Trump leads are a red flag.
The statistically impossible breakdown of the ratios of these vote dumps is a red flag.
The ratios of these dumps being far better than the percentages in the bluest of blue cities, even though the historical data does not match, red flag.
The ratios of these vote dumps favoring Biden more in these few battlegrounds than the ratio for the rest of the country (even the bluest of the blue) red flag.
Biden outperforming Obama among these few urban vote dumps, even though Trump picked up points in every demographic group in the rest of the country, red flag.
The poll observers being removed. Red flag.
The counters cheering as GOP observers are removed, red flag.
The fact that the dem observers outnumber the GOP observers 3 to 1, red flag (and basis of the first lawsuit filed)
The electioneering at the polls (on video), red flag.
The willful violation of the court order requiring the separation of ballots by type, red flag.
USPS whistleblower reporting to the Inspector General that today they were ordered to backdate ballots to yesterday, red flag.
The video of 2 AM deliveries of what appear to be boxes of ballots with no chain of custody or other observers right before the late night miracle spikes, red flag.
Any of those things would be enough to trigger an audit in the normal world. This many flags and I’d be giggling in anticipation of catching some thieves.
And it isn’t that I have to do better. I’m just an gen pop observer who happens to be a retired auditor with a finely tuned bullshit detector. This is going to the courts.
##
So now I want to delve into some of these some more. The problem is that there’s a ton of info swirling around, some good, some crap. It doesn’t help that reporters are usually dishonest or not very bright and absolute trash at presenting data. Part of our problem is Big Tech is actively stomping on stories that make their guy look bad. (while compiling these I discovered that several of the links I’d looked at yesterday had been vanished by Facebook or Twitter)
For the last four years half the country was all “Trump is illegitimate! He’s not my president! He stole the election!” so on and so forth, and that was all based upon nebulous ideas about “Russian Interference”, The Russian Interference mostly boiled down to them buying ads on Facebook, or having fake bots trolling on Twitter last time. This time the actual giant megacorporations, Facebook, Twitter, and Google themselves have actively censored stories in order to protect their candidate. So you think after this pile of suspicious election clusterfucks that makes the game look totally rigged, the other half of the country is going to accept Joe Biden as legitimate? Oh hell no.
When you are auditing you see mistakes happen all the time. Humans make errors. Except in real life, mistakes usually go in different directions. When all the mistakes go in the same direction and benefit the same parties, they probably aren’t mistakes. They’re malfeasance.
Let’s go back a bit to before election day to see why people would be suspicious that the game has been rigged.
Most of the mainstream polls were utter garbage, off by what I believe to be the largest amounts ever in all of American history. Of course, this thing that surely demoralized the right and helped the left raise funds was just an innocent sampling error rather than a purposeful sampling bias… uh huh.
Then in the weeks leading up to the election, Big Tech and the media had a concentrated censorship effort to stop what was probably the juiciest October Surprise in modern history. But them silencing major newspapers and US Senators was just a mistake in their innocent efforts to “fact check”.
Then on election day, states like Florida that were obviously swinging hard for Trump with no possible mathematical way for Biden to come back, the news wouldn’t call for Trump. States where it was still clearly up in the air just based on even the most cursory of statistical analysis (Arizona) they called for Biden ASAP. But that was just innocent mistakes, and not an attempt to set the narrative of inevitable Biden victory by major media.
When Trump pulled ahead in the midwestern swing states by what were starting to appear to be insurmountable amounts, they suddenly threw the brakes on the counts. (my favorite part of this was when it looked like Trump was going to win, the Chinese Yaun crashed, which is pretty telling about just how shitty a candidate Joe Biden is) Okay, suddenly stopping all those counts seemed a little weird, but most of America went to bed thinking that this was a close race, with Trump in the lead in the EC.
Then we woke up in the morning, and everybody saw the 538 graphs showing a massive middle of the night spike for Joe Biden, with almost zilch in corresponding votes for Trump.
Now, one of those got walked back as “typo”. (again, funny how all these “mistakes” keep going in one direction) but the damage was already done, and all of a sudden most of America was paying a whole lot more attention to places like Wisconsin and Michigan than we usually do. That’s how flags work. And it turned out that single six figure typo was only one of many statistically improbable Biden vote dumps to come.
Now, all of my liberal acquaintances were quick to dismiss these, with some gas lighting about how it was just deep blue inner cities votes coming in, and of obviously they’re going to vote for Joe Biden… Except that is them deliberately missing the point. It isn’t that Biden won those, it is that he won them with statistically improbable amounts.
I don’t know what the current numbers are now, but as of yesterday morning the Wisconsin Midnight Mystery Dump was something like 98.4% for Joe Biden. That’s better than the bluest of blue cities manage. That’s better than Biden did in DC. I saw one 28k dump yesterday (I want to say it was 538 talking about PA) that was listed as ALL for Biden. That’s basically statistically impossible.
In a small populace, you can get 100% of the vote. However the larger the sample, the more likely there will be dissenting votes. Even in the bluest of blue areas or reddest of red areas, somebody is going to be a cranky dissident, or an old person is going to fill in the wrong circle. When you get into the hundreds or thousands yet maintain that kind of perfect ratio, basically impossible.
Plus we are supposed to believe that Joe Biden, the guy barely campaigned, who got like 12 sad looking people to his rallies, was more popular than Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama? This election was just that much more special? Uh huh… Except that these few battleground state blue cities vote ratios don’t match up with other blue cities around America, where it appears Trump’s support among every demographic group other than white males went UP.
Then people were quick to dismiss these statistically improbable spikes with “of course the mail in voting favors Biden, republicans vote in person.” Yes, but they don’t favor Biden with these kind of ratios anywhere else in America. The ratios are more like 60-40 or 70-30. But 97-3? Oh fuck no. So either Biden is a better campaigner to the inner cities (though he rarely left his basement) than the eloquent messianic figure of Barack Obama, or there’s something fishy going on here.
Now, as a suspicious auditor type who spent a lot of hours looking for fuckery in complex systems, my gut tells me fake ballots were getting dumped into the system to make up the difference. And oh look, here is a giant pile of red flags indicating that’s the case.
Yesterday there was a meme going around about how Wisconsin had something like 90% voter turnout, and how this was 20 points higher than usual, and how it would also be one of the highest voter turnouts in all of American history. If Wisconsin was at 90% that beats the highest national number in all of American history by EIGHT points. And that was 1876 (which was legendarily fraudulent by the way).
Except, this is the problem with using memes to make your argument, it was only partially accurate, and the previous Wisconsin numbers were cited one way, and the current year was calculated a different way. (don’t feel bad, I fell for that one too, and as an accountant, that’s SO ANNOYING). When most people think of voter turnout, they think what percent of registered voters vote. But because Wisconsin has same day voting (a gift for fraudsters) their prior year percentages were votes compared to eligible population (that’s so goofy). But it meant the meme was comparing apples to oranges. So the leftists immediately jumped on that error to dismiss the idea that there was anything weird about how many people turned out to vote this time.
HOWEVER, that’s useless obfuscation. Because if you calculate the number the same way that most Americans do, their turn out was still like 90%, which is a rate normally reserved for dictators (that combined with the vote ratios would have made Saddam Hussein blush). I had one liberal guy point out that notoriously corrupt Seattle also gets 90%… which doesn’t exactly help his case.
Because here’s the kicker, the high turn out is the average for the state, but when you drill down on the source of these statistically improbable blue vote dumps, they’ve got districts with TWO HUNDRED PERCENT TURN OUT. That’s over 200%. There’s 7 over 100%, and a ton of them in the 90s. https://mkecitywire.com/stories/564495243-analysis-seven-milwaukee-wards-report-more-2020-presidential-votes-than-registered-voters-biden-nets-146k-votes-in-city
Now the quick liberal dismiss explanation for this is that Wisconsin has same day registration (again, a fraudsters dream) and thousands of people ignored months of TV and social media beating them over the head to get registered to vote, and just decided to do it at the last minute because Biden is just that awesome/Trump is just that bad.
Except if you’re an auditor, when you see super suspicious spikes like that in certain places, the first thing we think is that’s the place where you’ve got somebody over the controls colluding. So that’s where you go to fabricate your bullshit.
200% turn out is fucking insane. Same day voting or not. That’s madness. When I was looking into this stuff I pulled a HuffPo article about the 2012 election and how it was controversial that some Madison ward had gotten 119% turnout.
Oh, but wait, there’s more.
A whistleblower has come forward from a Michigan post office saying that they were given ballots on November 4th, and ordered to post mark them to election day so they would still be valid.
That is so insanely illegal. When the reporter called the postal supervisor who gave the order and asked about it, he immediately hung up.
Now, on this one, liberals were quick to dismiss it because it was from Project Veritas. (who they hate, and say cherry picks their investigative reporting, yet they keep winning all the lawsuits against them) However, the very next video was the response from the US Postal Inspector General (or whatever his title is, I can’t remember) about how they are investigating, so this wasn’t just some crank going to a reporter, it’s been passed up the chain of command. It’s an actual whistle blower.
I had someone else try to dismiss this one as innocent, because the post office accepting these late ballots had no way of knowing who they voted for so it would balance out. That’s is so naïve its cute. Of course they knew who the ballots were for. They were probably dropped off by people they were colluding with. You don’t commit felonies for clueless strangers because you feel sorry they got their votes in late.
A quick note on collusion because I mentioned it a couple times now. Collusion is the key to successful fraud. Systems have controls and checks in places, so the best way to circumvent them is to team up with somebody over one of those controls and exploit the gap. That’s fraud 101. Which is why you go to the post office your buddy runs to drop off your illegal late emergency Save Biden ballots. Or you go to the ward your buddy the poll worker is running the log in book to same day register all your imaginary friends.
Speaking of the imaginary vote, this one is actually hilarious. Democrats are quick to say all votes must count, which apparently includes people who are 118 years old.
All those little fraud schemes come in from various directions, except the fraud numbers add up quick in a tight race. However, if you are behind by hundreds of thousands of votes in the middle of the night it requires some audacious level fuckery, which brings us to a red flag you can see from space. The 4 AM Biden Miracle. Here is an account from somebody at the counting center.
This is the third link I’ve had to pull for this one, because Facebook keeps killing the others. Listen to the whole thing. Because after the statistically impossible votes came in, they had to toss a bunch of the GOP judges out of the building because of Covid.
Remember what I said about collusion? If you’ve got the actual system with the controls on your side, you can basically do any outlandish bullshit you feel like, and the only way you are going to get stopped is by an outside power (hence the multitude of lawsuits we’re going to see over the next few days).
Another thing you learn to spot when people are fraudulently manipulating data, is the mission-oriented spikes. On this one I’ve seen a few links, but the data has been so in flux that I’ve not been able to confirm it, but supposedly a bunch of the sudden Biden spikes weren’t just statistically improbable, they also voted for president but not the down ballot races. Now, lots of people will vote for president but don’t care about down ballot. However, when you get a pile of those in a row, that suggests somebody in a hurry filling out the mission critical bubble and then moving down stack, assembly line style.
There was also video taken of one guy delivering these mystery ballots to the counting center in the middle of the night (unloading them from a white van into a little red wagon) the link I used yesterday had been deleted by YouTube but I found this new one (can’t stop the signal, Mal)
Gee whiz. I can’t imagine why mysterious boxes are being moved into this supposedly secure voting facility in the middle of the night with no observers or chain of custody.
And there’s more. They just keep coming. Yesterday morning I saw a small article about a republican official calling shenanigans on the voting in his small county, which went overwhelmingly Trump last time, and how it appeared the votes tallied weren’t even enough to account for his immediate family. Of course he got laughed at by caring liberals. Fast forward a few hours and it turns out that the voting program was faulty.
Worse, the same broken ass software was apparently used in 33 other counties. Hmmm… Again, with all these magical errors in these swing states all going in one side’s favor.
Then there’s SharpieGate, but I’ve heard so much conflicting stuff about that one, with sharpies actually working fine in the scantron machines, that I’m not putting much stock in that one yet. There’s a lawsuit already though, so it’ll be interesting to see what new information comes out.
Here’s another thing you learn about auditing. The more chaotic the system, the more chances for fraud. So when you come across a system that is extra chaotic on purpose, that tells you that the people running it want it that way for a reason.
And the flags just keep coming in. This is going to be way worse than Florida in 2000.
What happens now? Beats me. It goes to court, and then the real question becomes how much spine the republicans have to actually fight. In previous years I’d assume they’d be a bunch of spineless chickenshits and wimp out like usual, but I’m not so sure this time. I don’t know if or how any of these will pan out, and without access to the real data, all I can do is guess.
I can say without hesitation though, that fuckery is afoot, and if an actual real investigation happens they’ll be able to prove it. Only this is politics, so who knows. The only thing I do know for certain is that this election is so fucked up it is just going to make America’s two halves hate each other even more.
Australia’s War Crimes and Culture of impunity
By Ramona Wadi | Strategic Culture Foundation | November 8, 2020
There is yet no reckoning for Australia’s SAS war crimes in Afghanistan, although details of horrendous atrocities are coming to light. A 2016 report detailing the extent of torture and extrajudicial killings by the Australian SAS forces in Afghanistan have been described as “fuelled by blood lust”, and compared on a scale to the infamous torture and murder practices at Abu Ghraib in Iraq.
The 2016 report which has recently been seen by two leading Australian news outlets, was compiled by sociologist Dr Samantha Crompvoets. Testimonies of war crimes, accompanied by the normalisation of such action and recurring impunity, have been characterised by a reliability in narration among different participants, pointing towards routine practices that escalated over time.
Notably, the report points towards an adulation of violence. The Australian special forces working alongside British and US counterparts held up the latter as the pinnacle of violence to emulate. However, the torture and killing of Afghan civilians by the Australian SAS is held on a par in terms of desensitisation and normalisation. A report earlier in March this year, which is based upon the witnessing of an execution of an Afghan man, states, “The visual image to me was, the guy had his hands up and then it was almost like target practice for that soldier.”
Human rights organisations in Australia and Afghanistan have called upon the Australian government to release the inquiry report into war crimes committed by the SAS, which commenced in 2016, in a manner which would hold the country accountable to upholding International Humanitarian Law. The open letter makes an important point that resonates even in relation to other countries subject to foreign intervention and impunity for the perpetrators. It states, “The Afghan people have remained trapped in an unbroken cycle of a 40 year long conflict which is profoundly rooted in a culture of impunity, with many actors operating in total disregard of local and international laws and norms in the firm belief that nobody will ever hold them accountable.”
Under the guise of foreign intervention and the democracy narrative which is used to sell war to the public, impunity for human rights violations is being cultivated. The lack of accountability is related to several processes, including policy, leadership failure, and dysfunctional communication between divisions; the latter amounting to secrecy that develops further possibilities for impunity.
One story featured in Australian media in March this year detailed the killing of an Afghan man who posed no threat to soldiers, and whose corpse was chewed upon by an assault dog. In another case captured on camera, another Afghan man, again posing no danger, is shot three times at point blank range – for no other reason than abuse of power, as indicated by the perpetrator.
Democracy and war crimes go hand in hand when it comes to foreign intervention and the bloody trail they leave behind. In an investigation by the Australian Defence Forces (ADF), the soldier who killed the Afghan man in a field was exonerated and is still serving in the Australian special forces; the narrative being that the victim had been seen with a radio, despite evidence to the contrary.
Such coverups are a regular occurrence which serve to perpetrate additional human rights violations. It is possible that the Australian government, as indicated by Defence Minister Linda Reynolds, will agree to publish parts of the report for “transparency” this month. The so-called War on Terror has unleashed a brand of state terror on targeted countries which so far has been met with an ingrained reticence from leaders to investigate accusations of war crimes. Between the bureaucratic delays of the International Criminal Court, and opposition to the institution by world leaders intent on saving the culture of impunity, there is little chance of implementing justice unless the international justice system is pressured to work against the globalisation of war.
Lebanon’s Bassil says his refusal to break ties with Hezbollah led to ‘unjust & politicized’ US sanctions
RT | November 8, 2020
Prominent Lebanese Christian politician Gebran Bassil has condemned the personal sanctions the US Treasury imposed on him, calling them “unjust and politicized” retribution for his refusal to cut ties with the Hezbollah movement.
“These sanctions are an injustice, and I will fight them and sue for damages,” Bassil said in a televised speech on Sunday.
The politician rejected the US’ accusations of corruption, insisting the true reason for the sanctions was his political position. Shortly before the restrictions were rolled out, he was approached by US officials demanding assurances from him, including that he end ties with Iranian-backed Hezbollah, Bassil claimed.
The US considers Hezbollah a terrorist organization, while Iran itself has been subjected to numerous sanctions and ever-growing political pressure by Washington.
Bassil said he refused to do so, telling the US he wanted to be its “friend” but not an “agent,” and that harming Lebanon’s integrity was not an option.
“We do not stab any Lebanese in the back for foreign interests,” he stated. “We will not agree to isolating any Lebanese component, even if we pay a heavy price for that.”
The sanctions against the leader of the Free Patriotic Movement, the largest Christian party in Lebanon, were unveiled by the US Treasury on Friday.
The restrictions were imposed under the pretext of Lebanon’s rampant corruption, which Bassil had allegedly been “exemplifying.” The Treasury has also accused the politician – the son-in-law of Lebanon’s President Michel Aoun – of indulging in nepotism and placing friends in various important posts.
The Lebanese government has met the sanctions against Bassil with a certain skepticism. President Aoun instructed the Foreign Ministry to obtain any evidence the US has against the politician. When the evidence is produced, it will be forwarded to the Lebanese judiciary “to take the necessary measures,” the president said.
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Book Excerpt
World War Two Was Not a Just War
By David Swanson | September 20, 2016
Excerpted from the just released book War Is Never Just.
World War II is often called “the good war,” and has been since the U.S. war on Vietnam to which it was then contrasted. World War II so dominates U.S. and therefore Western entertainment and education, that “good” often comes to mean something more than “just.” The winner of the “Miss Italy” beauty pageant earlier this year got herself into a bit of a scandal by declaring that she would have liked to live through World War II. While she was mocked, she was clearly not alone. Many would like to be part of something widely depicted as noble, heroic, and exciting. Should they actually find a time machine, I recommend they read the statements of some actual WWII veterans and survivors before they head back to join the fun.[i] For purposes of this book, however, I am going to look only at the claim that WWII was morally just. … continue
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