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Biden state media appointee advocated using propaganda against Americans and ‘rethinking’ First Amendment

By Ben Norton · The Grayzone · November 11, 2020

Richard Stengel, the top state media appointee for US President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team, has enthusiastically defended the use of propaganda against Americans.

“My old job at the State Department was what people used to joke as the chief propagandist,” Stengel said in 2018. “I’m not against propaganda. Every country does it, and they have to do it to their own population. And I don’t necessarily think it’s that awful.”

Richard “Rick” Stengel was the longest serving under-secretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs in US history.

At the State Department under President Barack Obama, Stengel boasted that he “started the only entity in government, non-classified entity, that combated Russian disinformation.” That institution was known as the Global Engagement Center, and it amounted to a massive vehicle for advancing US government propaganda around the world.

A committed crusader in what he openly describes as a global “information war,” Stengel has proudly proclaimed his dedication to the careful management of the public’s access to information.

Stengel outlined his worldview in a book he published this June, entitled “Information Wars: How We Lost the Global Battle Against Disinformation and What We Can Do About It.”

Stengel has proposed “rethinking” the First Amendment that guarantees the freedom of speech and press. In 2018, he stated, “Having once been almost a First Amendment absolutist, I have really moved my position on it, because I just think for practical reasons in society, we have to kind of rethink some of those things.”

The Biden transition team’s selection of a censorial infowarrior for its top state media position comes as a concerted suppression campaign takes hold on social media. The wave of online censorship has been overseen by US intelligence agencies, the State Department, and Silicon Valley corporations that maintain multibillion-dollar contracts with the US government.

As the state-backed censorship dragnet expands, independent media outlets increasingly find themselves in the crosshairs. In the past year, social media platforms have purged hundreds of accounts of foreign news publications, journalists, activists, and government officials from countries targeted by the United States for regime change.

Stengel’s appointment appears to be the clearest signal of a coming escalation by the Biden administration of the censorship and suppression of online media that is seen to threaten US imperatives abroad.

Richard Stengel MSNBC Russia propaganda censorship Biden

From Obama admin’s “chief propagandist” to Russiagate-peddling MSNBC pundit

Before being appointed as the US State Department’s “chief propagandist” in 2013, Richard Stengel was a managing editor of TIME Magazine.

In the Obama administration, Stengel not only created the Global Engagement Center propaganda vehicle; he also boasted that he “led the creation of English for All, a government-wide effort to promote the teaching of English around the world.”

After leaving the State Department in 2016, Stengel became a strategic advisor to Snap Inc., the company that runs the social media apps Snapchat and Bitmoji.

Stengel also found time for a fellowship at the Atlantic Council, a think tank closely linked to NATO and the Biden camp which has received funding from the US government, Britain, the European Union, and NATO itself, along with a host of Western weapons manufacturers, fossil fuel corporations, Gulf monarchies, and Big Tech juggernauts.

Stengel worked closely with the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, a dubious organization that has fueled efforts to censor independent media outlets in the name of fighting “disinformation.”

But Stengel is perhaps most well known as a regular political analyst on MSNBC in the Donald Trump era. On the network, he fueled Russiagate conspiracy theories, portraying the Republican president as a useful idiot of Russia and claiming Trump had a “one-sided bromance” with Vladimir Putin.

Stengel left MSNBC this November to join Biden’s presidential transition. The campaign announced that he was tapped to lead the Biden-Harris agency review team for the United States Agency for Global Media (USAGM).

USAGM is a state media propaganda organization that has its origins in a Cold War vehicle created by the CIA to spread disinformation against the Soviet Union and communist China. (The agency was previously called the Broadcasting Board of Governors, or BBG, until it rebranded in 2018.)

USAGM states on its website that its most important mission is to “Be consistent with the broad foreign policy objectives of the United States.”

An agency shakeup this year produced revelations that USAGM provided clandestine assistance to separatist activists during the protests that consumed Hong Kong in 2019. The program earmarked secure communications assistance for protesters and $2 million in “rapid response” payouts for anti-China activists.

Richard Stengel’s “obsessive” crusade against Russian “disinformation”

When Richard Stengel referred to himself as the State Department’s “chief propagandist,” advocated the use of propaganda against the American people, and proposed to “rethink” the First Amendment, he was participating in a May 3, 2018 panel discussion at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).

During the CFR event, titled “Political Disruptions: Combating Disinformation and Fake News,” Stengel hyped up the threat of supposed “Russian disinformation,” a vague term that is increasingly used as an empty signifier for any narrative that offends the sensibilities of Washington’s foreign policy establishment.

Stengel stated that he was “obsessed with” fighting “disinformation,” and made it clear he has a particular obsession with Moscow, accusing “the Russians” of engaging in “full spectrum” disinformation.

Joining him on stage was political scientist Kelly M. Greenhill, who mourned that alternative media platforms publish “things that seem like they could be true… that’s the sphere where it’s particularly difficult to debunk them… it’s this gray region, this gray zone, where it’s not traditional disinformation, but a combination of misinformation and play on rumors, conspiracy theories, sort of gray propaganda, that’s where I think the nub or the crux of the problem lies.”

Stengel approved, adding, “By the way those terms, the gray zone, are all from Russian active measures, that they’ve been doing for a million years.”

The panelists made no effort to hide their disdain for independent and foreign media outlets. Stengel stated clearly that a “news cartel” of mainstream corporate media outlets had long dominated US society, but he bemoaned that those “cartels don’t have hegemony like they used to.”

Stengel made it clear that his mission is to counter the alternative perspectives given a voice by foreign media platforms that challenge the US-dominated media landscape.

“The bad actors use journalistic objectivity against us. And the Russians in particular are smart about this,” Stengel grumbled.

He singled out Russia’s state-funded media network, RT, lamenting that “Vladimir Putin, when they launched Russia Today, said it was an antidote to the American English hegemony over the world media system. That’s how people saw it.”

Ben Decker, a research fellow at the Misinformation Project at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, lamented that “RT is invading every weekly finance media space.”

But Decker was cheered by the proliferation of US oligarchs committed to retaking control of the narrative. “In America and across the world,” he stated, “the donor community is very eager to address this problem, and very eager to work with communities of researchers, academics, journalists, etc. to target this problem.”

“I think that there is an appetite to solve this from the top down,” he continued, urging the many academics in the audience “to apply for grant money” in order to fight this Russian “disinformation.”

The CFR panel culminated with an African audience member rising from the crowd and confronting Stengel: “Because what is happening in America is what the United States flipped on the Global South and in the Third World, which we lived with, for many, many years, in terms of a master narrative that was and still is propaganda,” the man declared.

Rather than respond, Stengel rudely ignored the question and made his way hurriedly for the exit: “You know what, I hate last questions. Don’t you? I never, I usually just want to end something before the last question.”

The video of the revealing confrontation caused such a furor that CFR’s YouTube account disabled comments and made the video unlisted. It cannot be found in a search on Google or YouTube; it can only be found with the direct link.

The video of the full discussion is embedded below:

November 13, 2020 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Fake News, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , | 1 Comment

Joe Biden’s Coronavirus Task Force Is a Rockefeller, Council on Foreign Relations, Gates Foundation Swamp

Coronavirus Task Force

By Derrick Broze | The Last American Vagabond | November 10, 2020

As the media-ordained President-Elect Joe Biden announces his Coronavirus Task Force it is becoming increasingly clear that a Biden/Harris administration will maintain many of the relationships established under the Trump administration.

On Monday, Joe Biden announced the creation of a COVID-19 Transition Advisory Board and a Coronavirus Task Force that will assume control of the fight against COVID-19 on January 20, 2021, should he eventually be sworn in as the 46th president of the United States. Biden stated that Transition Advisory Board would help his presidential transition team establish rapid testing and a “core of contact tracers to track and curb this disease.”

Biden also issued a call for the American people to begin wearing masks “for the next few months” until a vaccine is available. Biden said the CDC has called a mask the “most potent weapon against the virus.” The former Vice President also repeated his warning that the U.S. was facing a “dark winter”, a phrase that has been repeated with increasing frequency over the two weeks.

Biden announced that his Coronavirus Task Force would be chaired by former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, former Food and Drug Administration commissioner David Kessler and Yale University’s Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith. The three chairs would oversee ten other health professionals and experts in their field.

In previous investigations we have revealed the ties between the Trump admin’s Operation Warp Speed and Big Pharma, DARPA, and the Gates Foundation. These ties made it clear that the Trump admin was very much in partnership with the likes of Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation – institutions which maintain an exorbitant amount of influence and control on global health policy. An examination of the Biden Coronavirus Task Force reveals that these same institutions will continue to hold sway over the direction of the fight against COVID-19.

Connections to the Gates Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Council on Foreign Relations, and the CIA

Before we proceed, if you find yourself wondering, “what’s wrong with being connected to the Gates Foundation or Bill Gates?”, I recommend reading my 3-part investigation into Bill Gates. The simple fact is that Gates and his foundation have been able to gain influence and control of global health policies by funding and partnering with nearly every global organization involved in health in one fashion or another. This was apparent under Donald Trump’s Operation Warp Speed and it is apparent with Biden’s Task Force.

For starters, at least six members of the 13 member Task Force have worked directly with Gates or the Gates Foundation, while at least 3 others have tangential connections to Gates. Several members also have connections to the Rockefeller Foundation, which is also infamous for shaping international health policy.

Let’s begin with the tangential connections. These might not be evidence of a strong relationship with the Gates Foundation or other organizations, but they do show the consistent presence of these institutions. We will progress through each task force member and show an increasing amount of worrisome relationships.

Dr. Julie Morita is the Executive vice president of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation who helped lead Chicago’s Department of Public Health for nearly 20 years. She has participated in events with the Gates Foundation.

Dr. Celine Gounder is a clinical assistant professor at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine. While she was on faculty at Johns Hopkins, she was the Director of Delivery at Gates Foundation-funded Consortium to Respond Effectively to the AIDS/TB Epidemic. Gounder is currently a CNN Medical Analyst, and has appeared as an expert guest on CNN, MSNBC, Al Jazeera America, CBS, and the BBC.

Ms. Loyce Pace is the Executive director and president of the Global Health Council, who previously served in leadership positions at the American Cancer Society. GHC is supported by the Gates Foundation and gives out the Gates Award, named after Bill Gates. As recently as September 2020, the Gates Foundation gifted $25,000 to the GHC.

Dr. Eric Goosby is an infectious disease expert and professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine. During the Clinton administration Goosby was the founding director of the largest federally funded HIV/AIDS program. Goosby was also part of a 25-member commission convened by the Rockefeller Foundation and Boston University which focused on “how global decision-makers can better use burgeoning data on the wide range of factors influencing people’s health.”

In 2012, he participated in a panel with Bill Gates as part of the International AIDS Conference.

Michael Osterholm is the Director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, and former science envoy for health security for the State Department. He also has connections to the Rockefeller Foundation. Osterholm was involved with the creation of the Rockefeller Foundation’s COVID-19 Testing Action Plan, along with Dr. Zeke Emanuel (see below).

In an op-ed in the New York Times, Osterholm described the Rockefeller plan:

“Finally, the Rockefeller report calls on states to hire at least 100,000 people to perform the work of testing and contact tracing. This, too, most likely requires federal funding — and has the virtue of doubling as a jobs program during this period of extremely high unemployment.”

Dr. Atul Gawande is Professor of surgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and at Harvard Medical School. Gawande served as a senior adviser in the Department of Health and Human Services in the Clinton administration. Dr. Gawande appears to maintain a close friendship with Bill Gates, as evidenced by an an interview on CNBC where the two men were interviewed about their participation in a panel at the World Economic Forum in Davos. The WEF is behind the push for a Great Reset. Gawande also moderated an event at the United Nations featuring Bill Gates and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Dr. Luciana Borio has served in senior leadership positions at the FDA, including Acting Chief Scientist. Some reports have claimed she “predicted” a pandemic was coming and the U.S. government was unprepared. In 2018, Borio told a symposium that “the threat of pandemic flu is our number-one health security concern.”

Borio is also the Vice president of technical staff at In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s venture capital firm, and was formerly a biodefense specialist on the National Security Council. The NSC is well-known as a haven for intelligence agents and government spokesman who advise the president. The NSC was also involved in the creation of the Presidential “Disposition Matrix”, otherwise known as the Presidential Kill List.

In August, Borio joined the Council on Foreign Relations think tank as a fellow. Borio was listed as a “stakeholder who participated in the R&D consultations” as part of The Neglected Dimension of Global Security: A Framework to Counter Infectious Disease Crises, a 2016 “consensus study report” funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Wellcome Trust, among others. Each of these organizations have been extensively involved in the fight against COVID-19.

Borio was involved in another book examining global health threats which was also funded by the Rockefeller Foundation and Gates Foundation. Frankly, the constant presence of these two organizations is a clear example of how extensively the foundations influence and shape global health policies.

We should note that Dr. David Kessler, Dr. Robert Rodriguez, and Dr. Eric Goosby, all have ties to the University of California, San Francisco. I have previously reported on UCSF’s role in the COVID-19 response, including working with Google on contact tracing apps and partnering with the Gates Foundation.

Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel is an oncologist and chair of the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the University of Pennsylvania. He is also the chair of the Department of Bioethics at The Clinical Center of the National Institutes of Health. Emanuel has long been the subject of controversy as Republicans have sought to connect him to the promotion of the so-called “death panels”, medical boards which ration healthcare and in some cases, decide who receives life-saving care.

While most of these claims seem overblown – Emanuel has opposed legalizing euthanasia – he also wrote an essay called “Why I Hope To Die When I’m 75.” In the essay he argues that life after 75 is not worth living and that U.S. health care should not prioritize treatment for those over 75. “Once I have lived to 75, my approach to my health care will completely change. I won’t actively end my life. But I won’t try to prolong it, either,” Emanuel wrote.

Dr. “Zeke” Emanuel also sits on the Health Care Advisory Board of the Peterseon Center alongside Bill Gates. Gates also called Emanuel the “godfather of Obamacare” and recommended his book as summer reading. The two men appear to have a working relationship that goes back at least a decade. They have even appeared together on MSNBC. Emanuel has also worked with the Gates founded and funded GAVI Global Vaccine Alliance.

In April, Emanuel told MSNBC that COVID-19 would be around for at least 18 months and that the American public would “not be able to return to normalcy until a vaccine or effective medications.” He acknowledged that the American economy would be hit hard and people would have trouble finding work, but claimed “we have no choice” because without social distancing and masks “deaths could skyrocket into the hundreds of thousands, if not a million.” Additionally, in an op-ed piece to the NY Times he asked, “Why isn’t it mandatory to wear masks in public?”

Coincidentally, Dr. Emanuel is also the brother of former Mayor of Chicago and former Chief of State during the Obama administration. Among other things, Rahm Emanuel is infamous for a 2008 interview where he stated, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste, and what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before.” 

Rahm Emanuel brought his famous quote back in March while speaking about COVID-19. “Never allow a crisis to go to waste,” Emanuel said on ABC This Week. “Start planning for the future. This has to be the last pandemic that creates an economic depression. We’re going to have more pandemics, but this has to be the last economic depression.”

Dr. Rick Bright was recently celebrated as a whistleblower who attempted to hold the Trump administration accountable during the COVID-19 battle. Bright is an immunologist and virologist who was removed as head of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) for criticizing Trump’s handling of COVID-19.

While speaking in front of Congress, Bright stated, “without clear planning and implementation of the steps that I and other experts have outlined, 2020 will be darkest winter in modern history,” a phrase which Joe Biden repeating during the Presidential debates and again on Monday.

The appointment of Bright to the Coronavirus task force and Joe Biden’s growing use of the term “Dark Winter” could be a sign of potential chaos resulting from the final election outcome, and/or reports of an increase in COVID-19 cases and subsequent lockdowns around the world.

The presence of counter-terrorism experts, a Council on Foreign Relations fellow, an In-Q-Tel executive, connections to the Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation are all signs that Joe Biden’s Coronavirus Task Force will carry on the trends started under the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed.

November 13, 2020 Posted by | Aletho News | , | 1 Comment

Less Than Half Of Americans Likely To Comply With New COVID Lockdown: Gallup

By Tyler Durden – Zero Hedge – 11/12/2020

Earlier we featured the worrisome prospect of a second national coronavirus lockdown under a future Biden administration, considering the latest scientist to join Joe Biden’s “special coronavirus transition advisory team” is calling for just that.

Dr. Michael Osterholm, who serves as director of the Center of Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, now one of Biden’s coronavirus task force doctors told Yahoo News the following on Wednesday: “We could pay for a package right now to cover all of the lost wages for individual workers… if we did that, then we could lockdown for 4 to 6 weeks.”

But we know that’s unlikely to go well based on the latest polling data, as it appears the majority of Americans would not conform to such new stay-at-home orders and travel restrictions:

Americans are less likely to comply with another coronavirus lockdown than they were in the spring, with fewer than half saying in a new poll that they’re very likely to stay home this time around, according to a new Gallup Poll released as record numbers of cases skyrocket nationwide.

Here’s the data, according to Gallup, based on the poll taken between Oct.19 and Nov.1:

  • 49% say they’re “very likely” to stay home for a month if mandated, down from 67% who said they would in the spring.
  • 18% said they were “somewhat likely” to comply.
  • One-third said they would be “unlikely” to comply with new lockdown orders.
  • This despite 61% saying they believe the situation is getting worse.
  • The number of respondents who said they’d be unlikely to comply is double the rate seen from polls in the spring.

However, it appears more Americans are intentional about social distancing measures, including wearing masks, compared to in the spring.

As Newsmax summarizes of the numbers: “Meanwhile, the number of people who are wearing masks has gone up sharply.” 

The report states “Only about half of Americans reported in April that they were wearing masks, just after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggested wearing them. Now, 88% reported they wear masks, after the number went up to 92% in July.”

November 13, 2020 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , , | Leave a comment

Neocons Poised to Join Potential New US Regime

By Philip Giraldi | Strategic Culture Foundation | November 12, 2020

Donald Trump was much troubled during his 2016 and 2020 campaigns by so-called conservatives who rallied behind the #NeverTrump banner, presumably in opposition to his stated intention to end or at least diminish America’s role in wars in the Middle East and Asia. Those individuals are generally described as neoconservatives but the label is itself somewhat misleading and they might more properly be described as liberal warmongers as they are closer to the Democrats than the Republicans on most social issues and are now warming up even more as the new Joe Biden Administration prepares to take office.

To be sure, some neocons stuck with the Republicans, to include the highly controversial Elliott Abrams, who initially opposed Trump but is now the point man for dealing with both Venezuela and Iran. Abrams’ conversion reportedly took place when he realized that the new president genuinely embraced unrelenting hostility towards Iran as exemplified by the ending of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and the assassination of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad. John Bolton was also a neocon in the White House fold, though he is now a frenemy having been fired by the president and written a book.

Even though the NeverTrumper neocons did not succeed in blocking Donald Trump in 2016, they have been maintaining relevancy by slowly drifting back towards the Democratic Party, which is where they originated back in the 1970s in the office of the Senator from Boeing Henry “Scoop” Jackson. A number of them started their political careers there, to include leading neocon Richard Perle.

It would not be overstating the case to suggest that the neoconservative movement has now been born again, though the enemy is now the unreliable Trumpean-dominated Republican Party rather than Saddam Hussein or Ayatollah Khomeini. The transition has also been aided by a more aggressive shift among the Democrats themselves, with Russiagate and other “foreign interference” being blamed for the party’s failure in 2016. Given that mutual intense hostility to Trump, the doors to previously shunned liberal media outlets have now opened wide to the stream of foreign policy “experts” who want to “restore a sense of the heroic” to U.S. national security policy. Eliot A. Cohen and David Frum are favored contributors to the Atlantic while Bret Stephens and Bari Weiss were together at the New York Times prior to Weiss’s recent resignation. Jennifer Rubin, who wrote in 2016 that “It is time for some moral straight talk: Trump is evil incarnate,” is a frequent columnist for The Washington Post while both she and William Kristol appear regularly on MSNBC.

The unifying principle that ties many of the mostly Jewish neocons together is, of course, unconditional defense of Israel and everything it does, which leads them to support a policy of American global military dominance which they presume will inter alia serve as a security umbrella for the Jewish state. In the post-9/11 world, the neocon media’s leading publication The Weekly Standard virtually invented the concept of “Islamofascism” to justify endless war in the Middle East, a development that has killed millions of Muslims, destroyed at least three nations, and cost the U.S. taxpayer more than $5 trillion. The Israel connection has also resulted in neocon support for an aggressive policy against Russia due to its involvement in Syria and has led to repeated calls for the U.S. to attack Iran and destroy Hezbollah in Lebanon. In Eastern Europe, neocon ideologues have aggressively sought “democracy promotion,” which, not coincidentally, has also been a major Democratic Party foreign policy objective.

The neocons are involved in a number of foundations, the most prominent of which is the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), that are funded by Jewish billionaires. FDD is headed by Canadian Mark Dubowitz and it is reported that the group takes direction coming from officials in the Israeli Embassy in Washington. Other major neocon incubators are the American Enterprise Institute, which currently is the home of Paul Wolfowitz, and the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at John Hopkins University. The neocon opposition has been sniping against Trump over the past four years but has been biding its time and building new alliances, waiting for what it has perceived to be an inevitable regime change in Washington.

That change has now occurred and the surge of neocons to take up senior positions in the defense, intelligence and foreign policy agencies will soon take place. In my notes on the neocon revival, I have dubbed the brave new world that the neocons hope to create in Washington as the “Kaganate of Nulandia” after two of the more prominent neocon aspirants, Robert Kagan and Victoria Nuland.

Robert was one of the first neocons to get on the NeverTrump band wagon back in 2016 when he endorsed Hillary Clinton for president and spoke at a Washington fundraiser for her, complaining about the “isolationist” tendency in the Republican Party exemplified by Trump. His wife Victoria Nuland is perhaps better known. She was the driving force behind efforts to destabilize the Ukrainian government of President Viktor Yanukovych. Yanukovych, an admittedly corrupt autocrat, nevertheless became Prime Minister after a free election. Nuland, who was the Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs at the State Department, provided open support to the Maidan Square demonstrators opposed to Yanukovych’s government, to include media friendly appearances passing out cookies on the square to encourage the protesters.

A Dick Cheney and Hillary Clinton protégé, Nuland openly sought regime change for Ukraine by brazenly supporting government opponents in spite of the fact that Washington and Kiev had ostensibly friendly relations. Her efforts were backed by a $5 billion budget, but she is perhaps most famous for her foul language when referring to the potential European role in managing the unrest that she and the National Endowment for Democracy had helped create. The replacement of the government in Kiev was only the prelude to a sharp break and escalating conflict with Moscow over Russia’s attempts to protect its own interests in Ukraine, most particularly in Crimea.

And, to be sure, beyond regime change in places like Ukraine, President Barack Obama was no slouch when it came to starting actual shooting wars in places like Libya and Syria while also killing people, including American citizens, using drones. Biden appears poised to inherit many former Obama White House senior officials, who would consider the eager-to-please neoconservatives a comfortable fit as fellow foot soldiers in the new administration. Foreign policy hawks expected to have senior positions in the Biden Administration include Antony Blinken, Nicholas Burns, Susan Rice, Valerie Jarrett, Samantha Power and, most important of all the hawkish Michele Flournoy, who has been cited as a possible secretary of defense. And don’t count Hillary Clinton out. Biden is reportedly getting his briefings on the Middle East from Dan Shapiro, former U.S. Ambassador to Israel, who now lives in the Jewish state and is reportedly working for an Israeli government supported think tank, the Institute for National Security Studies.

Nowhere in Biden’s possible foreign policy circle does one find anyone who is resistant to the idea of worldwide interventionism in support of claimed humanitarian objectives, even if it would lead to a new cold war with major competitor powers like Russia and China. In fact, Biden himself appears to embrace an extremely bellicose view on a proper relationship with both Moscow and Beijing “claiming that he is defending democracy against its enemies.” His language is unrelenting, so much so that it is Donald Trump who could plausibly be described as the peace candidate in the recently completed election, having said at the Republican National Convention in August “Joe Biden spent his entire career outsourcing their dreams and the dreams of American workers, offshoring their jobs, opening their borders and sending their sons and daughters to fight in endless foreign wars, wars that never ended.”

November 12, 2020 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , | 4 Comments

THE DEADLY IMPACT OF LOCKDOWN

The Highwire with Del Bigtree | November 12, 2020

The True Impact of Covid Lockdown; Pfizer Declares Victory?; Return of #Vaxhole of the Week!; ICAN introduces The High Road Project

November 12, 2020 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | | 2 Comments

Israeli occupation forces steal herd of camels in Bethlehem

Palestine Information Center | November 12, 2020

BETHLEHEM – Israeli occupation forces (IOF) on Wednesday confiscated a herd of camels, belonging to Palestinian citizens, from the eastern slopes of Bethlehem province.

Chief of al-Rashayida village Fawwaz al-Rashayida reported that the IOF chased a number of camels in the area and seized nine of them belonging to two local residents called Salama Yunus and Mohamed Mustafa.

Rashayida also said that the IOF held the camels in al-Jiftlik village in Jericho province and justified the confiscation measure by claiming the animals were grazing in an area classified by Israel as a nature reserve.

He added that the IOF also demanded the owners of the camels to pay financial penalties if they wanted to get back their animals.

November 12, 2020 Posted by | Environmentalism, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , | 4 Comments

New IAEA Report Proof of Iran’s Continued Cooperation: Envoy

Al-Manar | November 12, 2020

Iran says the International Atomic Energy Agency’s latest report proves the country’s continued cooperation with the UN’s nuclear watchdog and the suspension of commitments under a 2015 deal.

Kazem Gharibabadi, Iran’s permanent representative to Vienna-based international organizations, told reporters on Wednesday that the new report shows the IAEA’s continued verification of the country’s nuclear program.

According to the report, he said, in addition to heavy water production and storage, Iran has exported more than 2.2 tons of its heavy water and also utilized 1.3 tons in line with its research and development activities.

He said the report states that Iran has continued its uranium enrichment activities in Natanz and Fordow sites, using new machines, and enriching uranium up to 4.5% purity, which is beyond the 3.67% limit set in the nuclear agreement, which is officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

In addition, he added, the report mentions Iran’s recent decision to relocate its R&D centrifuges underground in Natanz and states that the country has declared it will consider safeguard requirements.

According to Gharibabadi, “the IAEA report has announced the amount of Iran’s uranium reserves is about 2,442.9 kg as of November 2, which is equal to about 3,600 kg of low-enriched uranium.”

He also pointed to the report’s reference to the results of the IAEA’s inspection of one of the country’s sites in 2018, and said that despite the differences in Iran’s technical views with the IAEA, interactions in that area are still ongoing between the two sides with the aim of resolving the issue.

Separately, Iran’s Ambassador to the United Nations Majid Takht-Ravanchi told a meeting of the UN General Assembly that Tehran believes the IAEA must fulfil its verification duty in a way that it does not overshadow the member states’ inalienable right to reinforce their peaceful use of nuclear energy.

Even the non-proliferation concerns should not limit the member states’ rights, he said, adding that the international community must reject any attempt to restrict peaceful use of nuclear energy.

He said over the past year, 22 percent of all the IAEA’s inspections have been carried out in Iran, and the watchdog’s activities have not stopped in the Islamic Republic even at the peak of the coronavirus outbreak.

Iran signed the JCPOA with six world states — namely the US, Germany, France, Britain, Russia and China — in 2015.

However, Washington’s unilateral withdrawal in May 2018 and subsequent re-imposition of sanctions against Tehran left the future of the historic agreement in limbo.

Iran remained fully compliant with the JCPOA for an entire year, waiting for the co-signatories to fulfill their end of the bargain by offsetting the impacts of American bans on the Iranian economy.

But as the European parties failed to do so, the Islamic Republic moved in May 2019 to suspend its JCPOA commitments under Articles 26 and 36 of the deal covering Tehran’s legal rights.

Iran took five steps in scaling back its obligations, among them abandoning operational limitations on its nuclear industry, including with regard to the capacity and level of uranium enrichment.

All those measures were adopted after informing the IAEA beforehand, with the agency’s inspectors present on the ground in Iran.

November 12, 2020 Posted by | Aletho News | , , | 1 Comment

President Trump, Release the JFK Files

By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | November 12, 2020

With President Trump’s critics decrying his lack of respect for America’s democratic system by his refusal to concede to Joe Biden, now would be a good time to remind such critics of one dark-side aspect of America’s much-vaunted democratic system—the national-security’s state’s violent regime-change operation in Dallas on November 22, 1963.

Oh, yes, I know the standard response of the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA and its ardent supporters in the Washington, D.C., establishment and the mainstream press. They immediately cry “Conspiracy theory!” whenever anyone points to that particular regime-change operation.

Mind you, they don’t cry “Conspiracy theory!” when one brings up other anti-democratic regime-change operations on both sides of the Kennedy one — Iran 1953, Guatemala 1954, Congo 1961, and Chile 1973. It’s only with the Kennedy regime-change operation that they cry “Conspiracy theory!”

From the beginning, the official story has been that a lone-nut communist ex-U.S. Marine, with no apparent motive, assassinated the president. Nothing to see here, folks, time to move on — U.S, officials said. Just a plain old ordinary murder case.

Really? Then why was the entire episode shrouded in national-security secrecy from the very moment that Kennedy was declared dead at Parkland Hospital? If it was just a matter of a random lone-nut, communist ex-U.S.Marine killing a president, what the heck does “national security” have to do with it? Why all the secrecy?

Indeed, why the need for a Secret Service team to force its way out of Parkland Hospital with the president’s body to prevent an autopsy from being conducted by Dallas County medical examiner? That Secret Service team, which said it was operating under orders, knew that Texas law required the autopsy to be conducted by the medical examiner.

Why deliver the president’s body into the hands of the military for the autopsy? The mainstream press has always held that that was normal. Really? I thought this was a democratic government, not a military one.

What about those enlisted men who came forward in the late 1970s telling how they had sneaked the president’s body into the Bethesda morgue at 6:35 p.m., almost an hour and a half before the official entry time of 8 p.m.? Why had they all been sworn to secrecy just after the conclusion of the autopsy?

What about Marine Sergeant Roger Boyajian, who was discovered by the Assassination Records Review Board in the 1990s? Why did the military keep him secret for 30 years? He told the ARRB that he was in charge of the team that carried in the president’s body at 6:35 p.m. in a cheap, military-style shipping casket rather than the expensive, ornate casket into which it had been placed in Dallas. He even handed the ARRB a copy of his official report to the military that he wrote at the time of the event. That military had never disclosed that report to the Warren Commission, the House Select Committee on Assassinations, the ARRB, or anyone else. They kept it secret the whole time. Why?

What about Saundra Spencer, the Navy petty officer in charge of the White House lab at the Naval Photographic Center in Washington. She told the ARRB in the 1990s that she had developed the autopsy photographs of President Kennedy’s body. She also had been sworn to secrecy. Given that she was participating in a top-secret, classified operation, she had kept her secret for some 30 years. She told the ARRB in the 1990s that the official photographs of the Kennedy autopsy are not the ones she photographed, which suggested two separate sets of autopsy photographs, one genuine and one deceptive.

What about Col. Pierre Finck’s testimony in the Clay Shaw trial in New Orleans in the late 1970s? He was one of the three autopsy physicians? He said that Admiral James Humes, who was another of the autopsy physicians, telephoned him at 8 p.m. on the night of the assassination to seek his help with the autopsy. He said that Humes told him that they already had x-rays of the president’s head. But 8 p.m. was also the official introduction of the president’s body into the Bethesda morgue. How could they already have x-rays of the president’s head, unless what those enlisted men said about the early secret introduction of the body into the morgue at 6:35 p.m.?

Finck also testified that the reason he didn’t “dissect” the president’s neck wound was that someone in authority ordered him not to. Who was that person? Finck said he couldn’t remember his identity. To this day, we don’t know who that person was, but clearly there was a powerful, darker, deep-state force in charge of autopsy operations at the Bethesda morgue that evening.

The time has come for America to accept its national-security state regime-change legacy, including anti-anti-democratic regime changes, not only in overseas countries like Iran, Guatemala, Congo, Cuba, Chile, Iraq, and Afghanistan, but also right here in the United States.

It’s time to release all of the official assassination records of the CIA, the FBI, the Pentagon, and all other federal agencies. The national-security rationale for continued secrecy is ludicrous and baseless. The only reason for continued secrecy is that the national-security establishment knows that the records will fill in more pieces to its November 22, 1963, regime-change operation.

In the 1990s, the JFK Records Collection Act gave federal agencies another 25 years to release their assassination-related records, based on the ridiculous claim of “national security.” That period of time expired early in Trump’s administration. After promising to release the files, Trump surrendered to the CIA’s demands for more secrecy, extending the time for secrecy until October 2021.

But we all know what’s going to happen in 2021. The CIA is going to tell President (sic) Biden that national security requires more years of secrecy and Biden is going to defer to the CIA.

Time’s up. Amidst all the hoopla over whether Trump is behaving disrespectfully of America’s democratic system, how about ordering the release of the estimated 15,000 records of the CIA and the federal agencies that are still being kept secret from the American people? After all, it’s pretty hard to reconcile regime-change and cover up with America’s much-vaunted democratic system, isn’t it?

President Trump — Do the right thing. Order the National Archives to release those long-secret assassination records to the American people now. Who cares if the CIA, the Pentagon, and other federal agencies get upset?

November 12, 2020 Posted by | Deception, Timeless or most popular | , , | 2 Comments

Democrats are giving McCarthyism a major comeback by blacklisting Trump supporters, and we should all be worried

By Zachary Leeman | RT | November 12, 2020

Blacklisting anyone perceived as supportive of President Donald Trump has become a shockingly mainstream idea for liberals, who are proving day after day that they embrace the very authoritarian beliefs they claim to be against.

It may be difficult to believe, but McCarthyism seems to be making a comeback.

The late Wisconsin senator’s public hearings in the ‘50s where he investigated individuals for any and all connections to communism (which ultimately led to many losing their livelihoods) represent a dark time for the US, but Democrats appear to be taking notes on this unfortunate chapter in history for future use.

The warm embrace of a likely Biden presidency has not softened the left’s hatred for Trump supporters in any way, but rather only emboldened them to promote more and more extreme ideas.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) recently promoted “archiving” Trump “sycophants” so they cannot “downplay or deny their complicity in the future.”

One quick question for AOC: in what scenario besides a McCarthy-style hearing would someone need to “deny” their relationship to the Trump administration?

The congresswoman should be happy because Democrats have been promoting the Trump Accountability Project, which promises to hold anyone who worked for or with the Trump administration accountable for “what they did.”

“The world should never forget those who, when faced with a decision, chose to put their money, their time, and their reputations behind separating children from their families, encouraging racism and anti-Semitism, and negligently causing the unnecessary loss of life and economic devastation from our country’s failed response to the COVID-19 pandemic,” the group’s site reads.

Their list of who they want to keep from getting future jobs is pretty extensive as it includes anyone who donated to the president’s campaigns, worked with his campaigns or for any groups “affiliated” with them, as well as anyone who was part of his staff.

The group has even been promoted by Democrat operatives, including former Pete Buttigieg aide Emily Abrams and former Barack Obama campaign staffer Michael Simon.

Public figures like ‘The View’ co-host Sunny Hostin and CNN’s Jake Tapper have also been accused of promoting blackballing pro-Trumpers.

“I don’t think we should look the other way,” Hostin recently said of Trump “associates.”“I think we need to remember because if you don’t remember things then past becomes prologue. I do think people need to be held accountable for their actions and um I don’t think it’s reminiscent of McCarthyism at all.”

Tapper meanwhile warned Trump supporters backing accusations of voter fraud from the president about what future employers would think of their “character.” To be fair, when confronted with the Trump Accountability Project, blacklisting seemed to become too real for the anchor and he did a complete about-face on the issue.

The idea of blacklisting someone through public shaming or (gulp) Senate hearings may sound ludicrous, but there is sadly precedent for it in this country. McCarthy capitalized on the red scare in the ‘50s and played into people’s fears and ignorance by making communists and anyone associated with communists sound like deranged spies looking to infiltrate industries and government agencies to destroy American values.

Compare that extremism to how many on the left speak of anyone they deem a Trump supporter today. They constantly slam the opposition as white supremacists, misogynists, fascists, etc. Even someone like rapper Ice Cube simply admitting to working with the administration on legislation to help black communities was enough to get him called a racist and labeled a Trump supporter.

McCarthy is sadly not the only precedent here. We only need to look to Hollywood to see how organized and powerful liberals can blacklist conservatives.

Ironically an industry many theorize is very left-leaning due to McCarthy keeping Hollywood titans out of work once they were labeled communists, Hollywood has long been accused of blackballing anyone they deem right-leaning.

Many of Hollywood’s most outspoken conservatives like James Woods and Robert Davi have detailed in the past how their politics have kept them out of certain jobs. The president himself accused the industry of blacklisting conservatives after ‘Will & Grace’ stars Debra Messing and Eric McCormack demanded knowing who was attending a Hollywood fundraiser for the president.

While accusations of Hollywood blacklisting does not amount to actual full-blown McCarthyism, the strategy of shaming and punishing conservatives and non-liberals has evolved. Instead of being behind the scenes and only kept in discussion through accusations, it is now an idea being embraced and promoted by actual politicians and media talking heads.

Right or left, every American should resist and fear a world where one side controls the other through wild accusations, public shaming, and blacklisting. Joseph McCarthy is dead. Let McCarthyism die with him.

Zachary Leeman is the author of the novel Nigh and journalist who covers art and culture. He has previously written for outlets such as Breitbart, LifeZette, and BizPac Review among others. Follow him on Twitter @WritingLeeman

November 12, 2020 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Progressive Hypocrite | | 2 Comments

Biden, the Media and CIA Labeled the Hunter Biden Emails “Russian Disinformation.” There is Still No Evidence.

By Glenn Greenwald | November 12, 2020

Congressman Adam Schiff, the Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and, not coincidentally, the single most shameless pathological liar in the U.S. Congress by a good margin, appeared on CNN with Wolf Blitzer on October 16 to discuss The New York Post story about Hunter Biden’s emails. The CNN host asked him a rhetorical question embedded with baseless assumptions: “does it surprise you at all that this information Rudy Giuliani is peddling very well could be connected to some sort of Russian government disinformation campaign?”

Schiff stated definitively that it is: “we know that this whole smear on Joe Biden comes from the Kremlin,” adding: “clearly, the origins of this whole smear are from the Kremlin, and the President is only too happy to have Kremlin help in amplifying it.” Referencing Trump’s promotion of The New York Post reporting while at his White House desk, Schiff said: “there it is in the Oval Office: another wonderful propaganda coup for Vladimir Putin, seeing the President of the United States holding up a newspaper promoting Kremlin propaganda.”

Schiff, as he usually does when he moves his mouth, was lying: exploiting CNN’s notorious willingness to allow Democratic officials to spread disinformation over its airwaves without the slightest challenge. Schiff claimed certainty about something for which there was and still is no evidence: that the Russians played a role in the procurement and publication of the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop.

As he also usually does when he publicly lies, Schiff was merely echoing the propaganda of current and former operatives of the CIA and other arms of the intelligence community who abuse their power to interfere in U.S. domestic politics: the very factions over which the Intelligence Committee which Schiff runs is supposed to exercise oversight supervision, not serve as their parrot. During the same week as Schiff’s CNN appearance, as Politico reported, “more than 50 former senior intelligence officials 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.’”

 

In that letter from intelligence operatives about The New York Post story — signed by Obama’s former CIA chief John Brennan now of MSNBC (repeatedly caught lying), Obama’s former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper now of CNN (who got caught lying to the Senate about NSA domestic spying), Bush’s former NSA and CIA chief Micheal Hayden now of CNN (who served during 9/11 and the Iraq War), and dozens of other similar professional disinformation agents — the intelligence operatives announced “our view that the Russians are involved in the Hunter Biden email issue,” adding “that our experience makes us deeply suspicious that the Russian government played a significant role in this case.”

With these ex-CIA officials and their servant Adam Schiff disseminating this narrative into U.S. public, both the Biden campaign and their captive media outlets began asserting this rank speculation as truth. They did so despite the fact that even the intelligence officials were cautious enough to acknowledge: “We want to emphasize that … we do not have evidence of Russian involvement” — a rather crucial fact that numerous outlets omitted when laundering this CIA propaganda and which the Biden campaign and Adam Schiff completely ignored when treating the claims as proven truth.

Letter from 50 former intelligence officials about The New York Post reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop, Oct. 19, 2020

The Biden campaign immediately embraced this evidence-free claim about Russia from Schiff and the intelligence community to justify its refusal to answer questions about the revelations from this reporting. “I think we need to be very, very clear that what he’s doing here is amplifying Russian misinformation,” said Biden Deputy Campaign Manager Kate Bedingfield when asked about the possibility that Trump would cite the Hunter emails at the last presidential debate. Biden’s senior advisor Symone Sanders similarly warned on MSNBC: “if the president decides to amplify these latest smears against the vice president and his only living son, that is Russian disinformation.”

Far worse were the numerous media outlets that spread this evidence-free claim of Kremlin involvement in lieu of reporting on the contents of the emails. Just watch how CBS Evening News with Norah O’Donnell purported to “report” on this story — an emphasis on the Russian origins of the materials, featuring a former “FBI operative” who admitted he had no evidence for the speculation CBS nonetheless aired, all with no mention of the serious questions raised by the revelations themselves:

As I noted when I announced my resignation from The Intercept, a major reason I harbored so much cynicism and scorn for their claim that my story on the Hunter Biden emails had failed to meet their high-minded, rigorous editorial and fact-checking scrutiny was because that same publication was just was one of the many anti-Trump news outlets which, in the name of manipulating the outcome of the election on behalf of the Democratic Party, had mindlessly laundered the CIA/Schiff narrative without the slightest adversarial skepticism or, worse, without a whiff of evidence.

Just one week before they refused to publish my own article, they published this remarkable disinformation, featuring an utterly reckless paragraph that was nothing more than stenographic servitude to the intelligence community and Adam Schiff. Just marvel at what was approved by the fastidious editorial and fact-checking machinery of that “adversarial” publication concerning claims by ex-CIA operatives:

Their latest falsehood once again involves Biden, Ukraine, and a laptop mysteriously discovered in a computer repair shop and passed to the New York Post, thanks to Trump crony Rudy Giuliani. The New York Post story was so rancid that at least one reporter refused to put his byline on it. The U.S. intelligence community had previously warned the White House that Giuliani has been the target of a Russian intelligence operation to disseminate disinformation about Biden, and the FBI has been investigating whether the strange story about the Biden laptop is part of a Russian disinformation campaign. This week, a group of former intelligence officials issued a letter saying that the Giuliani laptop story has the classic trademarks of Russian disinformation.

Numerous other media outlets disseminated the same CIA propaganda — including The Economist (“Marc Polymeropoulos, the CIA’s former acting chief of operations for the Europe and Eurasia Mission Centre…notes that ‘the use of actual material is a hallmark of Russian disinformation campaigns’”), and (needless to say) MSNBC’s Joy Reid (“Hunter Biden story an ‘obvious Russian plot’ McFaul believes”).

Now that this disinformation campaign has done its job — allowing Biden to get past the election without having to answer any real questions about those emails and his family’s work in Ukraine and China — the truth has emerged that there is [not], and never was, any evidence for the disinformation that these materials came from the Kremlin. Some media outlets, though not all, have at least had the integrity to admit this, now that it no longer matters.

“Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe said Monday that recently published emails purporting to document the business dealings of Hunter Biden are not connected to a Russian disinformation effort,” USA Today acknowledged. “Hunter Biden’s laptop is not part of some Russian disinformation campaign,” Ratcliffe added.

On October 20, the FBI sent a letter to Sen. Ron Johnson — in response to his request for any information showing Kremlin involvement in the New York Post story — in which they, too, made clear they were not aware of any such evidence:

The FBI is the primary investigative agency responsible for the integrity and security of the 2020 election, and as such, we are focused on an array of threats, including the threat of malign foreign influence operations. Regarding the subject of your letter, we have nothing to add at this time to the October 19th public statement by the Director of National Intelligence about the available actionable intelligence. If actionable intelligence is developed, the FBI in consultation with the Intelligence Community will evaluate the need to provide defensive briefings to you and the Committee pursuant to the established notification framework.

Numerous outlets which had originally noted suspicions of Kremlin involvement and and FBI investigation to determine possible Russian responsibility ultimately updated their stories or published new articles noting the FBI’s admission (though The Intercept never did: its story about Kremlin involvement stands).

In The Washington Post, Thomas Rid wrote this Hall of Fame sentence: ““We must treat the Hunter Biden leaks as if they were a foreign intelligence operation — even if they probably aren’t.” As The New York Times columnist Ross Douthat summarized: “At this point we can posit with some certainty that The Post’s story was not some sort of sweeping Russian disinformation plot but a more normal example of late-dropping opposition research, filtered through a partisan lens and a tabloid sensibility, weaving genuine facts into contestable conclusions.”

The pronouncements of DNI Ratcliffe and the FBI should no more be treated as gospel than the accusations of Kremlin involvement by Adam Schiff, John Brennan and their CIA friends. But that is exactly what the bulk of the U.S. media did with the obvious goal of shielding Joe Biden from questions about the revelations in the emails of his son: they deceived Americans into believing that the whole story was a Kremlin “disinformation” plot and therefore should be ignored.

Whatever else is true about this whole sordid affair, no evidence has emerged — none — that the Russians have played any role in any of this. It is of course possible that one day such evidence may be found of involvement by the Russians — or the Chinese, or the Iranians, or the Venezuelans, or the Saudis, or any other state or non-state actor your imagination might conjure. One cannot prove the negative that this did not happen.

But journalism, in its minimally healthy form, requires evidence before spreading inflammatory accusations about a nuclear-armed power and, even more so, speculation designed to discredit evidence of possible misconduct by the front-running candidate for the U.S. presidency. But here we have yet another case where purported news outlets — knowing that there is no price to pay professionally or reputationally for publishing evidence-free intelligence agency propaganda as long as it benefits the Party and advances the ideology which they all embrace — casually spread disinformation without the slightest evidentiary basis.

Yet again we find that the most prolific propagators of Fake News and disinformation are not the enemies of the mainstream U.S. media. It is the mainstream U.S. media itself that deceives, propagandizes and spreads disinformation on behalf of the coalition of the intelligence community and the Democratic Party far more than any other faction or entity.

Where is the evidence that Russia was involved in this New York Post story? And how can media outlets who endorsed and spread this and now refuse any self-critique expect anything but distrust and scorn from the public when they do this?

November 12, 2020 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | 2 Comments

Elections and Legitimacy

By James Bovard | American Institute for Economic Research | November 11, 2020

This year’s presidential election is the fourth since 2000 to be marred by either widespread allegations of voter fraud or of foreign interference. Politicians and pundits have long counted on elections to wave a magic wand of legitimacy over the reign of whoever is designated the winner. But Americans are increasingly wondering if the endlessly-trumped “consent of the governed” has become simply another sham to keep them paying and obeying.

Twenty years ago, America was in the throes of a fiercely disputed recount battle in Florida. Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Al Gore won the national popular vote but the Electoral College verdict was unclear. Florida’s 25 electoral votes would give either Gore or Republican candidate George W. Bush the 270 votes needed to win the presidency. Six million votes were cast in Florida, and Bush initially had a winning margin of 537 votes. But the count was a complete mess.

Some Florida counties had antiquated voting equipment while others had harebrained ballot designs that confounded voters, resulting in “dangling chads,” “butterfly” ballots, and other unclear preferences. After the Florida Supreme Court ordered a manual recount of disputed votes in all counties, the Bush campaign legal team quickly filed briefs with the Supreme Court seeking to stop the process.

In a controversial decision, the Supreme Court, in a 5-to-4 ruling, stopped the recount because it could result in “a cloud upon what [George W. Bush] claims to be the legitimacy of his election,” Justice Antonin Scalia wrote. Justice John Paul Stevens dissented: “The Florida court’s ruling reflects the basic principle, inherent in our Constitution and our democracy, that every legal vote should be counted.” No such luck. Two days later, the same Supreme Court majority blocked any subsequent recounting because it was “not well calculated to sustain the confidence that all citizens must have in the outcome of elections.” Sustaining confidence” was more important than counting votes. Justice Stevens again dissented: “We have never before called into question the substantive standard by which a State determines that a vote has been legally cast.”

The 2000 election results seemed almost as shaky as the story of the Lady of the Lake giving the Excalibur sword to Arthur, thereby signifying his right to rule England. At a minimum, the outcome of the 2000 presidential election was decided by lawyers and political appointees (justices), not by voters. Former President Jimmy Carter observed in 2001, “As we have seen in Florida and some other states… the expected error rate in some jurisdictions is as high as 3 percent of the [vote] total.”

Four years later, George W. Bush narrowly won reelection after a campaign that was boosted by numerous false terror attack warnings that helped frighten voters into giving him another four years. Ohio was the key state determining the outcome that time, and its results appeared tainted by numerous decisions by Republican election officials who favored Bush. Democrats also charged that the electronic voting machines used in much of Ohio had been manipulated to produce misleading vote totals.

In January 2005, Democratic members of the House of Representatives launched a brief challenge to the legitimacy of the 2004 presidential election. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Cal.) complained that many states used more sophisticated technology for lottery tickets than for elections: “Incredibly even in those few jurisdictions that have moved to electronic voting… we do not require a verifiable paper trail to protect against vote tampering.”

Republican Congressmen went ballistic. Rep. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) accused the Democrats of seeking to “obstruct the will of the American people.” Rep. J.D. Hayworth (R-Ariz.) bewailed that the protest “serves to plant the insidious seeds of doubt in the electoral process.” Rep. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), the House Majority Whip, sought to put the entire government above questioning: “It is the greatest democracy in the history of the world and it is run by people who step forward and make a system work in ways that nobody would believe until they see it produce the result of what people want to have happen on Election Day.” Blunt’s “nobody would believe” phrase was more prescient than he intended.

For tens of millions of Americans and for convention halls full of editorial writers, the 2016 presidential election results were forever tainted by allegations that the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians to score an upset victory. Those allegations spurred a Special Counsel investigation that haunted most of Trump’s presidency and helped Democrats capture control of the House of Representatives in 2018. In 2019, Special Counsel Robert Mueller finally admitted that no case of collusion existed. But we have since learned that there was pervasive collusion between Obama administration officials and federal agencies to target Trump’s 2016 campaign. And, as George Washington University professor Jonathan Turley observed, the media ignored “one of the biggest stories in decades. The Obama administration targeted the campaign of the opposing party based on false evidence.”

Instead, the media cheered secretive federal agencies that had interfered in American politics. Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson captured the Beltway’s verdict: “God bless the Deep State!” The media’s veneration will make it easier for the FBI, CIA, and National Security Agency to meddle with if not fix future elections.

This year’s presidential election may be the most fraud-ridden event since 1876, when four states had disputed results and Congress gave the presidency to Republican Rutherford Hayes despite ample evidence of conniving. Earlier this year, some states mailed ballots to all the names on the voting lists, providing thousands of dead people the chance to vote from the grave. More than 92 million people voted by mail.

President Trump warned that the shift to mail-in voting could result in “the most corrupt vote in our nation’s history.” A 2012 New York Times analysis concluded that “fraud in voting by mail is… vastly more prevalent than the in-person voting fraud that has attracted far more attention.” But that blunt admission vanished into the Memory Hole as the media endlessly derided any apprehension of electoral foul play.

Shortly before Election Day, Democratic candidate Joe Biden boasted, “We have put together I think the most extensive and inclusive voter fraud organization in the history of American politics.” A Reuters “Fact Check” analysis revealed that Biden’s comment was a “slip of the tongue” and that he likely meant “voter protection.” Since Election Day, the same media outlets that insisted that there was no corruption in the Biden family now assure Americans there was no significant voter fraud.

The 2020 election controversies are being fought out by lawyers and judges. The media is hoping that hailing Joe Biden as the rightful ruler will speedily restore legitimacy to the political system. But 70 million Trump voters are unlikely to be swayed by the same media that endlessly belittled both the president and his supporters.

Perhaps the real problem with the current American political system is that elections are practically the last remaining source of apparent legitimacy. Presidents take an oath to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” But this has long been a nonbinding throwaway gesture – if not a laugh line for Washington insiders. Elections failed to prevent every recent American commander-in-chief from expanding and exploiting the dictatorial potential of the presidency. 

Should we expect anything different from Biden? When he was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, he co-authored numerous oppressive drug laws and forfeiture laws that helped obliterate much of the Bill of Rights. His political philosophy never went beyond his famous utterance: “Lock the S.O.B.s up!” He supported expanding federal power whenever there were votes or campaign contributions to be pocketed.

Biden has said he would dictate a national mask mandate and could impose a national lockdown if Covid infection rates rise. The same media outlets that served as Biden’s Basement Barricade during the campaign – helping him avoid challenges that might have raised questions about his positions and mental capacity – will cheer any restrictive Covid policy Biden imposes. In lieu of constitutionality, we’ll hear that it is the “will of the people” or some such pablum.

Nor will there likely be any way to constrain Biden if he follows the advice of his bellicose foreign policy advisors. Counterpunch editor Jeffrey St. Clair asked: “Which country will Biden bomb first in order to ‘restore America’s place in the world?’” The Biden campaign promised to “increase pressure” on Syrian president Bashar Assad – presumably by providing more arms and money to the terrorist groups that Obama began aiding almost a decade ago. Biden will sanctify his foreign bombing campaigns with the same lame legal tautology that the Obama administration used to justify killing Libyans in 2011. The Justice Department announced that Obama “had the constitutional authority” to attack Libya “because he could reasonably determine that such use of force was in the national interest.”

The more power presidents capture, the more facts they can suppress. The federal government is creating trillions of pages of new secrets every year, effectively making it impossible for average citizens to learn the truth about foreign policy until long after U.S. bombs have dropped. Biden is unlikely to end the pervasive secrecy that makes a mockery of self-government. 

In his victory speech last Saturday, Biden pledged to “restore the soul of America.” But Americans were not voting for a faith healer; they were selecting a chief executive for a federal government. Only 20 percent of Americans nowadays trust the government to “do the right thing” most of the time, according to a Pew Research Center survey. The election results will likely further erode federal legitimacy at a time when Uncle Sam has no trust to spare. How many more election debacles and brazen abuses of power does Washington believe the American people will tolerate?

James Bovard is the author of ten books, including Public Policy Hooligan, Attention Deficit Democracy, The Bush Betrayal, and Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty. He has written for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Playboy, Washington Post, New Republic, Reader’s Digest, and many other publications. He is a member of the USA Today Board of Contributors, a frequent contributor to The Hill, and a contributing editor for American Conservative.

November 12, 2020 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception | | Leave a comment

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