IT’S OK WHEN BILL DOES IT!
Paul Joseph Watson | February 19, 2021
US Supreme Court Backs Grand Theft Election 2020
By Stephen Lendman | February 23, 2021
On Monday, the US Supreme Court refused to hear legitimate challenges to the 2020 presidential election outcome.
In January ahead of Biden’s inauguration, the court denied requests by Trump and GOP supporters to hear and rule on lawsuits claiming brazen fraud in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Some lawsuits justifiably claimed unconstitutional changes to state election procedures.
In Pennsylvania, the state’s Supreme Court allowed election officials to count mail ballots that arrived up to three days after Election Day 2020.
The US Supreme Court voted 4-4 on whether to issue a stay of its ruling, short of a majority needed to block it.
In December 2020, GOP Senator Ted Cruz argued the following:
“The Pennsylvania Constitution requires in-person voting, except in narrow and defined circumstances,” adding:
“Late last year, the Pennsylvania Legislature passed a law that purported to allow universal mail-in voting, notwithstanding the Pennsylvania Constitution’s express prohibition.”
“This appeal argues that Pennsylvania cannot change the rules in the middle of the game.”
Justices Thomas, Alito and Gorsuch agreed, one vote shy of four votes needed to grant a writ of certiorari — an order by the Supreme Court for a lower court to send up the record of a case in question for review.
Reviewing cases doesn’t automatically mean they’ll be heard and ruled on.
Of around 7,000 cases it asks to review annually, the High Court accepts 100 – 150.
In dissenting from the majority on the Pennsylvania case, Justice Thomas said the following:
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s “decision to rewrite the rules seems to have affected too few ballots to change the outcome of any federal election.”
“But that may not be the case in the future. These cases provide us with an ideal opportunity to address just what authority non-legislative officials have to set election rules, and to do so well before the next election cycle. The refusal to do so is inexplicable.”
“One wonders what this Court waits for. We failed to settle this dispute before the election, and thus provide clear rules.”
“Now we again fail to provide clear rules for future elections.”
“The decision to leave election law hidden beneath a shroud of doubt is baffling.”
“By doing nothing, we invite further confusion and erosion of voter confidence.”
“Our fellow citizens deserve better and expect more of us.”
In his dissent, Alito (joined by Gorsuch) said the following:
“Now, the election is over, and there is no reason for refusing to decide the important question that these cases pose.”
“Some respondents contend that the completion of the 2020 election rendered these cases moot and that they do not fall within the mootness exception for cases that present questions that are ‘capable of repetition’ but would otherwise evade review.”
That argument fails (because the issue in the case) is surely capable of repetition in future elections.”
Long before election day 2020, US dark forces decided the outcome. Voters had no say.
Trump challenged the system so was denied a second term.
Orchestrated January 6 events on Capitol Hill settled things, an anti-Trump false flag.
Wrongfully blaming him for what happened smoothed the way for Biden/Harris to replace him — illegitimately by brazen election fraud in key swing states.
Things worked as planned. The Supreme Court’s refusal to hear legitimate challenges to the election outcome closed the books on the issue.
As long as Biden/Harris remain in office, they’ll serve illegitimately, not the other way around.
Election 2020 bears testimony to US fantasy democracy.
It’s by no means the only example.
US dirty politics and election rigging date from at least the early 19th century — at the federal, state and local levels.
Election 2020 perhaps was the most brazen example.
Trump won. Biden lost. DJT returned to private life. Selected, nor elected, Biden replaced him.
By refusing to rule on this core issue, the Supreme Court effectively OK’d election fraud over a free, fair and open system according to the rule of law.
No, NY Times, Climate Change Does Not Threaten Power Grids
By H. Sterling Burnett | ClimateRealism | February 19, 2021
The New York Times published a February 16 article claiming climate change is making America’s power grid more vulnerable due to an increase in extreme weather events. However, objective data from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) show the Times’ claim that extreme weather is becoming more common is false. The evidence indicates it is policies promoting wind and solar power to fight climate change, rather than climate change itself, that is putting the most pressure on power grids.
The Times story, “A Glimpse of America’s Future: Climate Change Means Trouble for Power Grids,” claims, “Systems are designed to handle spikes in demand, but the wild and unpredictable weather linked to global warming will very likely push grids beyond their limits.” The story continues saying “as climate change accelerates, many electric grids will face extreme weather events that go far beyond the historical conditions those systems were designed for, putting them at risk of catastrophic failure … it is clear that global warming poses a barrage of additional threats to power systems nationwide, including fiercer heat waves….”
This Times’ claims are convincingly refuted by objective climate data. Let’s examine them, one at a time.
The Times says climate change is making heatwaves worse, yet, as shown in Climate at a Glance: Heatwaves, data from NOAA demonstrates heatwaves have become far less frequent and severe in recent decades than they were in the early part of the 20th century (See the graph).
Indeed, temperature records show, the vast majority of each state’s all-time high temperatures were set during the first half of the 20th century – approximately 100 years of global warming ago. In fact, 40 states’ record-high temperatures were set before 1960, with 25 of the record highs being set or tied in the 1930s alone. That is three times more than have been set in the 33 years since 1988, when NASA’s James Hansen first pronounced humans were causing dangerous global warming. Only two states have set new record highs since 2000, fewer than the number of temperature records set in the 1890s alone, 130 years of global warming ago.
In addition, the most accurate nationwide temperature station network, implemented in 2005, shows no sustained increase in daily high temperatures in the United States since at least 2005.
Similarly, objective data destroy allegations that climate change is to blame for record cold that struck Texas, Oklahoma, and elsewhere this past week. NOAA data show the number days each year with below-freezing temperatures in Texas is neither unusually high nor unusually low so far this century. Similarly, NOAA data for neighboring Oklahoma show a decline in the frequency of very cold weather events in recent decades. The assertion that climate change makes extreme temperatures more frequent on both ends of the temperature spectrum is destroyed by science – on both ends of the temperature spectrum.
Data from NOAA and the IPCC make it equally clear other extreme weather events that might be thought to cause power failures, like cold spells, floods, hurricanes, or tornados, have not increased in number or in severity as the earth has modestly warmed. You can see the evidence for yourself via the links in this paragraph.
While weather extremes aren’t increasing, policies enacted with an intent to prevent climate change are making the grid less reliable and flexible in response to peaks in power demand. In particular, state mandates to incorporate ever-greater amounts of intermittent wind and solar power, and federal and state subsidies for the same purpose, have resulted in the premature retirements of tens of thousands of megawatts of baseload coal power plants over the past decade. These power plants have been replaced by wind and solar industrial facilities which cannot be relied upon to provide a consistent flow of power to the grid because they are dependent on weather conditions. Nor can they be relied upon to provide on-demand power or peaking power during emergencies.
Even if the Times was right that climate change is making extreme weather events more common and severe, relying on increasing amounts of intermittent power can only worsen the problems of grid reliability, both during normal operation and during extreme weather events. Wind turbines don’t work if the temperature is too cold or if winds die down. Solar panels don’t provide energy at night, on cloudy days, or if covered by ice, snow, dust, or dirt.
Texas’s recent power emergency came as thousands of megawatts of wind power went off-line when the weather turned unusually cold, even before any ice and snow hit. Meanwhile, California has experienced repeated rolling blackouts during the summer months. What these two states have in common is they have both come to rely on increasing amounts of intermittent electric generating sources to power their respective grids. The evidence shows replacing reliable sources of electric power, like coal, natural gas, and nuclear with ever more intermittent power makes power failures more likely, whatever the weather. That’s the fact the New York Times should report.
Trend in Global Fires
By Zoe Phin | February 17, 2021
Climate alarmists claim that an increase in man-made greenhouse gas emission will cause more fires. For example …
Human-induced climate change promotes the conditions on which wildfires depend, increasing their likelihood …
Funk … says there is very well documented scientific evidence that climate change has been increasing the length of the fire season, the size of the area burned each year and the number of wildfires.
— DW
The clearest connection between global warming and worsening wildfires occurs through increasing evapotranspiration and the vapor-pressure deficit. In simple terms, vegetation and soil dry out, creating more fuel for fires to expand further and faster.
… Global warming will keep worsening wildfires …
Sounds serious. Is it true?
We show that fire weather seasons have lengthened across 29.6 million km2 (25.3%) of the Earth’s vegetated surface, resulting in an 18.7% increase in global mean fire weather season length. We also show a doubling (108.1% increase) of global burnable area affected by long fire weather seasons and an increased global frequency of long fire weather seasons across 62.4 million km2 (53.4%) during the second half of the study period.
— Nature: Climate-induced variations in global wildfire danger from 1979 to 2013
This is just about the most scientific paper I could find on the issue. Why are they obsessed with the length of the fire season? Why can’t they just answer the simple question: Is there more or less fire?
NASA has collected daily data on Active Fires since 2000.
I downloaded and analyzed all of their Active Fires data. Here’s the result:
Active Fires, March 2000 [Source]
Now it all makes sense. Climate scammers need to cherrypick locations and seasons in order to distract from the empirical truth that global fires have been decreasing. Disgusting.
WSJ Magazine Promotes False Tuvalu Myth in Bill Gates Climate Change Article
By James Taylor | ClimateRealism | February 16, 2021
WSJ Magazine, a product of the Wall Street Journal, told an outlandish climate change falsehood about Tuvalu and sea-level rise yesterday in an article about Bill Gates. In the article, titled “Bill Gates Has a Master Plan for Battling Climate Change,” WSJ Magazine claims, “Residents of Tuvalu, an island nation in the South Pacific, are jockeying for space as their archipelago is swallowed by rising seas.” The truth is exactly the opposite.
For background, climate activists have made Tuvalu – a nation of coral reefs and small islands in the South Pacific – a poster child for climate change. Activists claim rising seas are swallowing the nation and its islands. However, as documented by Climate Realism here and here, the majority of Tuvalu’s islands are growing in size, not shrinking.
While seas are modestly rising, modestly rising seas bring new sediment and allow for new coral to grow. The result is net land growth for islands like those in Tuvalu.
For example, a recent peer-reviewed study found eight out of Tuvalu’s nine coral atolls have grown in size during recent decades, and 3/4ths of Tuvalu’s 101 reef islands have similarly grown in size. Also, Tuvalu is experiencing net immigration rather than net emigration. There are 20% more people living in Tuvalu now than 30 years ago. Tuvalu’s population has doubled since 1970. Far from “jockeying for position” on an island being swallowed, people are flocking to Tuvalu, instead.
Additional peer-reviewed studies (see here, here, and here) confirm the same processes are allowing – and will continue to allow – other Pacific islands to keep up with rising seas.
The lesson to be learned at WSJ Magazine’s expense is that just because “everybody knows” or “Al Gore says” that some asserted climate harm is happening, that does not make it so. Trust scientific data, not the propaganda of climate activists and their messengers.
Climate Realism hopes to address other aspects of WSJ Magazine’s Bill Gates article in the days to come, although there are so many daily media climate falsehoods to debunk….
North Dakota House Votes To Make Mask Mandates Illegal
By Steve Watson | Summit News | February 23, 2021
The House of Representatives in North Dakota has voted to make mandates on wearing face masks illegal.
The bill was sponsored by Rep. Jeff Hoverson who labelled the mask mandate instituted by the State governor last year as “diabolical silliness,” adding that “Our state is not a prison camp.”
The legislation outlines that “A state or local elected official, the state, or a political subdivision of the state may not mandate an individual in this state use a face mask, face shield, or other face covering.”
It also “prohibits making use of a face mask, shield, or covering a condition for entry, education, employment, or services.”
The bill also notes that “If a state or local elected official, the state, or a political subdivision of the state recommends an individual in this state use a face mask, shield, or covering, the official or entity shall provide notice the recommendation is not mandatory.”
Hoverson said that the mask mandates are being enforced by “unelected, wealthy bureaucrats who are robbing our freedoms and perpetuating lies.”
The bill was approved 50-44 and will now advance to the state Senate.
Several states, including Iowa, Montana, and Mississippi have begun lifting mask mandates, despite Joe Biden’s attempts to instigate a nation-wide mask mandate, which he recently said could extend ‘through the next year’.
Dr Anthony Fauci also said Sunday he sees it as entirely possible that everyone will have to keep wearing face coverings throughout the entirety of 2021 and into 2022, prompting backlash.
Signs of life: Are the masses awakening from COVID psychosis?
By Jordan Schachtel | February 23, 2021
Over the course of the past year, a coalition including the corporate media, international “health” institutions, a maniacal mega billionaire, Big Pharma oligarchs, and power drunk governments consumed massive amounts of power left and right, with little to no observed resistance in sight.
With COVID mania in full swing, they moved the goalposts as they pleased. Free of any science, data, or logical reasoning, the ruling class had the terrified masses completely under their thumb. Under the spell of a mass social psychosis, we willingly surrendered our liberties and even happily enforced draconian edicts on our own peers, despite the global trampling of our basic rights.
The ruling class moved seamlessly from “15 days to stop the spread” to “30 days to stop the spread” to “Zero COVID.”
From “everyone needs to wear a mask” to “everyone needs to wear two masks” to “maybe we should wear three masks.”
From “lockdown to preserve healthcare capacity” to “lockdown to slow/stop the spread” to “lockdown until we have a vaccine.”
All of these aforementioned restrictions and guidelines were abided by without resistance. Across the globe, citizens remained firmly trapped in perhaps the most self-destructive mass social psychosis in human history, convinced that a respiratory virus (that causes a disease with a 99.8% recovery rate) was responsible for their economic and societal devastation. The authoritarians did as they wished, without a hint of pushback.
However, it seems we have finally reached one particular narrative that has been met with firm resistance.
Once you’ve gotten any COVID-19 vaccine, you still need to wear a mask, get tested, and watch your distance. Isolate if you have tested positive/have symptoms, and quarantine if you are a close contact or have traveled to another state or country. Visit c19vaccineri.org.
People are rightfully outraged by another ongoing narrative shift attempt led by the likes of Dr. Anthony Fauci, Bill Gates, countless government health bureaucracies, and other leaders of the corona hysteria movement. We’re now being told that the vaccine is not in fact a ticket to normalcy. Instead, we’ve been told that even with the vaccine, people still need to wear a mask, social distance, and act as if fellow human beings are nothing more than mere vectors of disease.
They initially told us lockdowns would solve our COVID problem. They then told us masks would end the pandemic. Soon after, the “experts” went all in on the vaccine narrative. It seems that the new narrative is one of “forever COVID,” or a permanent safety regime that stresses prioritizing avoidance of a virus over anything else in life. Fauci and the gang is now demoting the vaccine’s status as no longer a way out, but just another tool to help you mitigate the threat posed by the “deadly virus.”
WATCH: We spoke with @BillGates about the looming climate crisis and why research he funds suggests we may need a third vaccine dose to fight against new coronavirus variants More tonight on the @CBSEveningNews, watch at 6:30 p.m. ET 
And many finally seem to be pushing back against the ruling class plan for a permanent COVID state.
Excellent column by @karol deploring the rise of “forever pandemic” thinking, in which our lives will continue to be smothered in the name of overhyped public health threats. 
Will the vaccine rug pull attempt awaken the masses to the reality that they’ve been conned for an entire year? That is too soon to tell, but we are finally seeing signs of widespread pushback against the latest demands from the ruling class. Many of us wished this hopeful revival of rational thought had occurred a full year ago, but it’s more important right now to build a coalition around restoring our rights and quashing the power grab, even if that coalition includes the same individuals and groups that were once on the side of the totalitarians.
The Vaccine (Dis)Information War
By CJ Hopkins | Consent Factory Inc. | February 23, 2021
So, good news, folks! It appears that GloboCap’s Genetic Modification Division has come up with a miracle vaccine for Covid! It’s an absolutely safe, non-experimental, messenger-RNA vaccine that teaches your cells to produce a protein that triggers an immune response, just like your body’s immune-system response, only better, because it’s made by corporations!
OK, technically, it hasn’t been approved for use — that process normally takes several years — so I guess it’s slightly “experimental,” but the US Food and Drug Administration and the European Medicines Agency have issued “Emergency Use Authorizations,” and it has been “tested extensively for safety and effectiveness,” according to Facebook’s anonymous “fact checkers,” so there’s absolutely nothing to worry about.
This non-experimental experimental vaccine is truly a historic development, because apart from saving the world from a virus that causes mild to moderate flu-like symptoms (or, more commonly, no symptoms whatsoever) in roughly 95% of those infected, and that over 99% of those infected survive, the possibilities for future applications of messenger-RNA technology, and the genetic modification of humans, generally, is virtually unlimited at this point.
Imagine all the diseases we can cure, and all the genetic “mistakes” we can fix, now that we can reprogram people’s genes to do whatever we want … cancer, heart disease, dementia, blindness, not to mention the common cold! We could even cure psychiatric disorders, like “antisocial personality disorder,” “oppositional defiant disorder,” and other “conduct disorders” and “personality disorders.” Who knows? In another hundred years, we will probably be able to genetically cleanse the human species of age-old scourges, like racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, transphobia, etcetera, by reprogramming everyone’s defective alleles, or implanting some kind of nanotechnological neurosynaptic chips into our brains. The only thing standing in our way is people’s totally irrational resistance to letting corporations redesign the human organism, which, clearly, was rather poorly designed, and thus is vulnerable to all these horrible diseases, and emotional and behavioral disorders.
But I’m getting a little ahead of myself. The important thing at the moment is to defeat this common-flu-like pestilence that has no significant effect on age-adjusted death rates, and the mortality profile of which is more or less identical to the normal mortality profile, but which has nonetheless left the global corporatocracy no choice but to “lock down” the entire planet, plunge millions into desperate poverty, order everyone to wear medical-looking masks, unleash armed goon squads to raid people’s homes, and otherwise transform society into a pathologized-totalitarian nightmare. And, of course, the only way to do that (i.e., save humanity from a flu-like bug) is to coercively vaccinate every single human being on the planet Earth!
OK, you’re probably thinking that doesn’t make much sense, this crusade to vaccinate the entire species against a relatively standard respiratory virus, but that’s just because you are still thinking critically. You really need to stop thinking like that. As The New York Times just pointed out, “critical thinking isn’t helping.” In fact, it might be symptomatic of one of those “disorders” I just mentioned above. Critical thinking leads to “vaccine hesitancy,” which is why corporations are working with governments to immediately censor any and all content that deviates from the official Covid-19 narrative and deplatform the authors of such content, or discredit them as “anti-vax disinformationists.”
For example, Children’s Health Defense, which has been reporting on so-called “adverse events” and deaths in connection with the Covid vaccines, despite the fact that, according to the authorities, “there are no safety problems with the vaccines” and “there is no link between Covid-19 vaccines and those who die after receiving them.” In fact, according to the “fact-checkers” at Reuters, these purported “reports of adverse events” “may contain information that is incomplete, inaccurate, coincidental, or unverifiable!”
Yes, you’re reading between the lines right. The corporate media can’t come right out and say it, but it appears the “anti-vax disinformationists” are fabricating “adverse events” out of whole cloth and hacking them into the VAERS database and other such systems around the world. Worse, they are somehow infiltrating these made-up stories into the mainstream media in order to lure people into “vaccine hesitancy” and stop us from vaccinating every man, woman, and child in the physical universe, repeatedly, on an ongoing basis, for as long as the “medical experts” deem necessary.
Here are just a few examples of their handiwork …
- In Norway, 23 elderly people died after receiving the Pfizer vaccine. However, according to Reuters’ “fact-checkers,” it turns out, old people just die sometimes, especially in nursing homes, from a variety of causes … unless they haven’t been vaccinated, in which case they definitely died of Covid, regardless of what they actually died of. For example, a 99-year-old man suffering from dementia and emphysema, who tested negative for the virus three times, was added to the “Covid deaths” figures because a nursing home doctor “assumed” it was Covid (which GloboCap has expressly instructed him to do).
- In Germany, 13 of 40 residents of one nursing home died after being vaccinated, but this was just a “tragic coincidence,” which had absolutely nothing to do with the vaccine.
- In Spain, in another “tragic coincidence,” 46 nursing home residents who received the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine died within the course of one month. A further 28 of the 94 residents and 12 staff members subsequently tested positive.
- In Florida, a healthy middle-aged doctor died from an unusual blood disorder two weeks after receiving the vaccine, but, according to the experts, the sudden onset of this rare immunological blood disorder (i.e., immune thrombocytopenia) “should not be interpreted as linked to the vaccine,” and was probably just a total coincidence.
- In California, a 60-year-old X-ray technologist received a second dose of the Pfizer vaccine. A few hours later he had trouble breathing. He was hospitalized and died four days later. His widow says she’s not ready at this point to link her husband’s death to the vaccine. “I’m not putting any blame on Pfizer,” she said, “or on any other pharmaceutical company.” So, probably just another coincidence.
- A 78-year-old woman in California died immediately after being vaccinated, but her death was not related to the vaccine, health officials assured the public. “(She) received an injection of the Covid-19 vaccine manufactured by Pfizer around noon. While seated in the observation area after the injection, [she] complained of feeling discomfort and while being evaluated by medical personnel she lost consciousness.” Despite the sudden death of his wife, her husband intends to receive a second dose.
- A former Detroit news anchor died just one day after receiving the vaccine, but it was probably just a coincidental stroke, which the “normal side effects of the vaccine may have masked.”
- Also in Michigan, a 90-year-old man died the day after receiving the vaccine, but, again, this was just a tragic coincidence. As Dr. David Gorski explained, “the baseline death rate of 90-year-olds is high because they’re 90 years old,” which makes perfect sense … unless, of course, they died of Covid, in which case their age and underlying conditions make absolutely no difference whatsoever.
- In Kentucky, two nuns at a monastery died, and more than two dozen others tested positive, in a sudden “Covid-19 outbreak” that began two days after the nuns were vaccinated. The monastery had been completely closed to visitors and Covid-free up to that point, but the nuns were old and had “health issues,” and so on.
- In Virginia, a 58-year-old grandmother died within hours after receiving the vaccine, but, as Facebook’s “fact checkers” prominently pointed out, it had to be just another coincidence, because the “vaccines have been tested for safety extensively.”
And then there are all the people on Facebook sharing their stories of loved ones who have died shortly after receiving the Covid vaccine, who the Facebook “fact checkers” are doing their utmost to discredit with their official-looking “fact-check notices.” For example …
OK, I realize it’s uncomfortable to have to face things like that (i.e., global corporations like Facebook implying that these people are lying or are using the sudden deaths of their loved ones to discourage others from getting vaccinated), especially if you’re just trying to follow orders and parrot official propaganda … even the most fanatical Covidian Cultists probably still have a shred of human empathy buried deep in their cold little hearts. But there’s an information war on, folks! You’re either with the Corporatocracy or against it! This is no time to get squeamish, or, you know, publicly exhibit an ounce of compassion. What would your friends and colleagues think of you?!
No, report these anti-vaxxers to the authorities, shout them down on social media, switch off your critical-thinking faculties, and get in line to get your vaccination! The fate of the human species depends on it! And, if you’re lucky, maybe GloboCap will even give you one of these nifty numerical Covid-vaccine tattoos for free!
#
House Democrats, Targeting Right-Wing Cable Outlets, Are Assaulting Core Press Freedoms
By Glenn Greenwald | February 23, 2021
Not even two months into their reign as the majority party that controls the White House and both houses of Congress, key Democrats have made clear that one of their top priorities is censorship of divergent voices. On Saturday, I detailed how their escalating official campaign to coerce and threaten social media companies into more aggressively censoring views that they dislike — including by summoning social media CEOs to appear before them for the third time in less than five months — is implicating, if not already violating, core First Amendment rights of free speech.
Now they are going further — much further. The same Democratic House Committee that is demanding greater online censorship from social media companies now has its sights set on the removal of conservative cable outlets, including Fox News, from the airwaves.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee on Monday announced a February 24 hearing, convened by one of its sub-committees, entitled “Fanning the Flames: Disinformation and Extremism in the Media.” Claiming that “the spread of disinformation and extremism by traditional news media presents a tangible and destabilizing threat,” the Committee argues: “Some broadcasters’ and cable networks’ increasing reliance on conspiracy theories and misleading or patently false information raises questions about their devotion to journalistic integrity.”
Since when is it the role of the U.S. Government to arbitrate and enforce precepts of “journalistic integrity”? Unless you believe in the right of the government to regulate and control what the press says — a power which the First Amendment explicitly prohibits — how can anyone be comfortable with members of Congress arrogating unto themselves the power to dictate what media outlets are permitted to report and control how they discuss and analyze the news of the day?
But what House Democrats are doing here is far more insidious than what is revealed by that creepy official announcement. Two senior members of that Committee, Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Silicon-Valley) and Rep. Jerry McNerney (D-CA) also sent their own letters to seven of the nation’s largest cable providers — Comcast, AT&T, Spectrum, Dish, Verizon, Cox and Altice — as well as to digital distributors of cable news (Roku, Amazon, Apple, Google and Hulu) demanding to know, among other things, what those cable distributors did to prevent conservative “disinformation” prior to the election and after — disinformation, they said, that just so happened to be spread by the only conservative cable outlets: Fox, Newsmax and OANN.
In case there was any doubt about their true goal — coercing these cable providers to remove all cable networks that feature conservative voices, including Fox (just as their counterparts on that Committee want to ban right-wing voices from social media) — the House Democrats in their letter said explicitly what they are after: namely, removal of those conservative outlets by these cable providers:
Congresswoman Eshoo boasted on her official site about these efforts, lauding herself and McNerney for “urging 12 cable, satellite, and streaming TV companies to combat the spread of misinformation and requesting more information about their actions to address misinformation, disinformation, conspiracy theories, and lies spread through channels they host.”
For the last four years, we were inundated with media messaging that Trump posed an unprecedented threat to press freedoms. The Washington Post even flamboyantly adopted a new motto to implicitly ratify that accusation (while claiming it was not Trump-specific). Other than the indictment of Julian Assange — which most Washington Democrats cheered — what did the Trump administration do in the way of attacking press freedoms that remotely compares to Democrats abusing their majoritarian power to force the removal of conservative cable outlets from the airwaves, just days after doing the same with dissident voices online?
There is not a peep of protest from any liberal journalists. Do any of the people who spent four years pretending to care so deeply about the vital role of press freedom have anything to say about this full frontal attack by the majority party in Washington on news outlets opposed to their political agenda and ideology?
Evidently not. While many conservative outlets are covering this story, it is difficult to find any liberal outlets writing about it at all. An article from The New York Times was one exception, though it largely attempted to justify these censorship efforts, with paragraph after paragraph purporting to demonstrate the dangerous misinformation spread by these channels. The only nods to the dangers for press freedoms in the article came from statements by Fox News and a GOP member of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
Revealingly, these same two members of Congress who sent this threatening letter to cable providers said during the Trump years that freedom of the press must be safeguarded at all costs. “The First Amendment prohibits Congress from making laws that abridge the freedom of the press, and we cherish our country’s culture of free expression,” they intoned when writing to the FCC in 2019 to complain that Russian news outlets were concealing their affiliation with the Kremlin. “We’re not requesting any press censorship,” they assured the FCC under Trump. Yet they are clearly doing exactly that now.
In a statement he emailed to me and publicly posted, FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr denounced the Democrats’ actions as a “marked departure from First Amendment norms.” He said “it is a chilling transgression of the free speech rights that every media outlet in this country enjoys.” In response to my inquiries, Commissioner Carr added in a separate statement to me:
The greatest threat to free speech in America today is not any law passed by the government—the First Amendment stands as a strong bulwark against that form of censorship by state action. The threat comes in the form of legislating by letterhead. Politicians have realized that they can silence the speech of those with different political viewpoints by public bullying. The letter sent by two senior Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee to cable companies and other regulated entities, and the Committee’s own hearing this week on “disinformation in the media,” are the latest examples. They are singling out selected newsrooms for their coverage of political events and sending a clear message that these media outlets will pay a price if they do not align their viewpoints with Democrat orthodoxy. That is a chilling transgression of free speech and journalistic freedom. No government official has any business inquiring about the ‘moral principles’ that guide a private entity’s decision about what news to carry.
Carr’s GOP colleague on the FCC, Commissioner Nathan Simington, similarly accused House Democrats of seeking to “intimidate into silence those who would distribute on their platforms disfavored points of view.”
The way Democrats justify this to themselves is important to consider. They do not, of course, explicitly acknowledge that they are engaged in authoritarian assaults on free speech and a free press. Not even the most despotic tyrants like to think of themselves in that way. All tyrants concoct theories and excuses to justify their censorship as noble and necessary.
Indeed, the justifying script Democrats are using here is the one most commonly employed by autocrats around the world to silence their critics. Those they seek to silence are not merely expressing a different view, but are dangerous. They are not merely advocating alternative ideologies but are destabilizing society with lies, fake news, and speech that deliberately incites violence, subversion and domestic terrorism.
In her boastful posting, Rep. Eshoo says her efforts targeting these cable outlets are necessary because “misinformation on TV has led to our current polluted information environment that radicalizes individuals to commit seditious acts and rejects public health best practices, among other issues in our public discourse.” This is the rationale invoked by virtually every repressive state to imprison journalists and ban media outlets.
The Democrats sound a great deal like the Egyptian regime of Gen. Abdel el-Sisi. Just two weeks ago, Sisi’s regime finally released an Al Jazeera journalist who had been imprisoned for four years based on accusations that he had “spread false news” and was guilty of “incitement against state institutions and broadcasting false news with the aim of spreading chaos.” Sound familiar? It should, since that is precisely what House Democrats are saying to ennoble their multi-pronged assault on free expression.
International Federation of Journalists, Feb. 5, 2021
Accusing one’s domestic opponents of being subversives and domestic terrorists is by far the most common way that despots on every continent justify their censorship and silencing campaigns of oppositional media outlets. In 2014, the French journalist Valeria Costa-Kostritsky warned in the Index on Censorship that anti-terrorism laws and accusations of promoting subversion were becoming the primary means which authoritarian states from Turkey and Jordan to Russia and the UAE use to justify the silencing of journalists:
Anti-terror legislation seems to be the perfect tool for a state seeking to crack down on opposition. “It’s so elusive. You can [see] anything as terrorist propaganda. There needn’t be any evidence of violence, any praise of violence. Plus, if you blame someone for having a connection with the [Kurdistan Workers’ Party] the public buys that argument easily, especially in a country that is suffering from terrorism, as Turkey is,” said Sevgi Akarçeşme, former editor-in-chief of Turkey’s Today’s Zaman (the English-language edition of daily Zaman), who had her newspaper taken over by the government in March 2016.
A similar means used by repressive governments to silence disfavored media outlets is to claim they are promoting “extremism.” As Costa-Kostritsky detailed:
There’s another word one can use to browse through reports published on the [Mapping Media Freedom] map: “extremism”. Anti-extremism legislation is used to intimidate journalists in post-Soviet countries, particularly in Russia. On the map, of the 35 incidents flagged with “extremism”, 11 took place in Russia, and seven in Crimea, others include Belgium, Italy, Hungary, France and Spain. Five reports connecting the media to “extremism” took place during the first half of 2016. They include website closures and journalists being put on a list of extremists. In Russia, most cases using anti-extremism legislations against journalists happen via Roskomnadzor, the national media regulator.
When China arrests journalists it typically justifies its actions by accusing them of fomenting extremism that jeopardizes national security.
And accusing journalists of spreading “fake news” — always a dangerously vague term from its inception — is equally commonplace when government authorities want to silence media outlets. The Washington Post reported that “as 2019 draws to a close, there are 30 journalists in jail worldwide on charges of ‘false news’ — or, as it’s also called these days, ‘fake news.’” In sum:
It has now become commonplace to throw around fake-news accusations in the United States. But in other countries around the world — like Egypt, Turkey, Somalia and Cameroon — such charges can have very chilling and stifling impacts on the press, according to an annual report by the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists.
In Egypt — where General-turned-President Abdel Fatah al-Sissi has been overseeing a crackdown that human rights groups say is harsher than any before — there are 21 journalists in jail for allegedly publishing “false news,” according to the CPJ’s data. In practice, press freedom advocates say, these charges stem from a simple fact: The journalists published news that Sisi didn’t like.
In a passage that the Post would only publish about foreign countries but never about House Democrats, even though it now applies equally, they observed: “There is a serious global problem of disinformation spreading online and sowing distrust and sectarianism. The problem, say press advocates, is that the laws regulating fake news all too often are a means of stifling the media rather than fostering a more transparent environment online.”
This framework is hardly rare in the west either. When the Obama administration collaborated with the UK Government in 2013 to detain my husband David Miranda at Heathrow Airport in connection with the work he was doing in the Snowden reporting, they cited an anti-terrorism law to justify his detention, and repeatedly threatened to prosecute him for terrorism if he did not cooperate by providing all of his passwords to them. He ultimately prevailed in his lawsuit against the U.K. Government on the ground that it constitutes an illegal assault on press freedoms and human rights to abuse anti-terrorism frameworks to intimidate or silence journalists.
Justifying the silencing of journalists by accusing them of inciting domestic terrorism and extremism is now the most common means used globally for censorsing the press. The Committee to Protect Journalists in 2013 said they had “tracked a significant rise in journalist imprisonments.” The culprit, said the group, was “the expansion of anti-terrorism and national security laws worldwide” after the 9/11 attack, which had been repeatedly abused to criminalize media outlets. “The number of journalists jailed worldwide hit 232 in 2012, 132 of whom were held on anti-terror or other national security charges.” In sum: “CPJ’s analysis has found that governments have exploited these laws to silence critical journalists.”
Are there conspiracy theories and disinformation sometimes found on the conservative cable outlets which House Democrats want taken off the air? Of course there are: all media outlets disseminate conspiracy theories and fake news at times. MSNBC and CNN spent four years endorsing the most deranged conspiracy theory imaginable, one with very toxic roots in the Cold War: namely, the McCarthyite script that the Kremlin had taken over control of key U.S. institutions through sexual blackmail over the President, invasions into the nation’s heating system and electric grid, and criminal conspiracy between Moscow and the Trump campaign to hack into Democrats’ emails.
All of that was false, just as the one-month tale told over and over by the media about a pro-Trump mob murdering Brian Sicknick by bludgeoning him to death with a fire extinguisher was false — a story which remains unretracted or corrected by most who spread it.
Just imagine if, during the Trump years, the GOP Senate had abused its power to bully cable outlets into removing MSNBC from their platforms, or banning liberal journalists and activists from using social media platforms, on the grounds that they were spreading conspiracy theories and fake news. It is hard to overstate how extreme the rhetoric would have been that Trump and the Republicans were engaged in authoritarian measures to destroy free speech and a free press.
And I would have joined in those denunciations (as I did with the Assange prosecution): as much as I loathe so much of what those outlets do, it is not the role of the government to regulate let alone silence them. The corrective is for journalists to rebuild trust and faith with the public by exposing their misinformation and proving to the public that they will do accurate and reliable reporting regardless of which faction is aggrandized or angered.
But corporate media outlets and Democrats (excuse the redundancy) who spent the last four years posturing as virulent defenders of press freedoms never meant it. Like so much of what they claimed to believe, it was fraudulent. The proof is that they are now mute, if not supportive, as Democrats use their status as majority party to launch an assault against press freedoms far more egregious than anything Trump got close to doing.
What to Do About Israel?
Here are some suggestions
By Philip Giraldi | Unz Review | February 23, 2021
Critics of U.S. policy with and about Israel like myself have been relatively successful in describing the considerable downside in the bilateral status quo. We have demonstrated that the lopsided relationship supports absolutely no U.S. interest and that, on the contrary, considerable damage is done to the American people, to include involvement in armed conflict in the Middle East which serves no purpose beyond “protecting Israel.”
Israel benefits from billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars annually in a $3.8 billion lump sum for “military aid” plus hundreds of millions more in special procurements and projects that are together considered untouchable in Washington. Add to that the quasi legal “charitable” tax exempt contributions from wealthy American Jews and groups that fuel apartheid policies in Palestine and pay for the illegal settlements. Many of those same groups are themselves tax exempt and they exploit that status to actively lobby on behalf of the Jewish state, successfully shielding it from any consequences for its war crimes and human rights violations. They also avoid registration under the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938, even though many of them collude directly with the Israeli government through its embassy in Washington and are directed by the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu government. In fact, no Israel Lobby component among the six hundred or so Jewish groups that have been protecting Israel as part of their agenda has ever been required to register as a foreign agent.
Under President Donald Trump, one Jewish billionaire Sheldon Adelson contributed as much as $300 million to GOP coffers, money which had with it a quid pro quo, that Trump should do a series of favors for Israel, which he did. The Democrats have their own counterpart in Israeli film producer Haim Saban, who has said that he is a “one issue guy and his issue is Israel.” Neither major party can be counted upon to resist Israeli pressure on foreign policy or even on domestic issues that might limit the “aid” that the Jewish state receives.
The money coming from the Israel Lobby has corrupted American government all the way down to the local level and special preferences for Israeli businesses in states like Florida and Virginia have added even more to the cash flow that goes in only one direction. Ironically, Israel does not really need the money. It is a socialist state that has a European level standard of living, to include free health care and university education, benefits that Americans do not possess.
Add to that Israel’s deplorable human rights record, which Washington is required to defend in international fora, as well as Israel’s record of persistent and highly damaging spying against the United States. It all means that little more need to be said, apart from restating the fact that it is a very bad deal for the American people. And it has also brought with it collateral damage to include attacks on fundamental rights like Freedom of Speech and Assembly. As the politicians in both major parties are bribed or otherwise coerced into continuing to behave the way that they do, count on things getting even worse, with criminalizing of any criticism of Israel as anti-Semitism currently making the rounds of pending legislation.
All of that said, when I and others lay out the laundry list of Israel’s crimes against America, some sympathizers inevitably respond: “Okay, so what are you going to do about it?” So now I am going to address some of the things that can be done by ordinary Americans and by groups that are correctly appalled by Washington’s wag the dog relationship with the Jewish state.
First of all, demand from our elected officials that American law be enforced on Israel. There are several areas where that is relevant. First, as mentioned above, is the failure of the Justice and Treasury Departments to enforce registration of pro-Israel lobbying groups. Registration would force groups like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) and the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA) to open their books regarding the money they receive and spend and could also require them to reveal details of their lobbying activity.
Another area where the law is not being enforced is regarding Israel’s nuclear arsenal, which was created by stealing both technology and enriched uranium from the U.S. The Symington Amendment on foreign relations forbids giving aid to any country that is either a nuclear proliferator or is in possession of undeclared nuclear weapons. Demand that it be enforced fully now and end all aid to Israel.
U.S. Israel-centric charities or foundations should also have their tax exemptions strictly enforced. Humanitarian aid is fine, but if they are funding the illegal West Bank settlements, which many of them are, they should have their exemptions revoked. And finally, Israelis caught spying or Americans who are assisting in the theft of U.S. classified or sensitive information should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, to include use of the Espionage Act. Currently, such individuals are almost always given a pass. If [proclaimed] President Joe Biden can continue the persecution of legitimate journalist Julian Assange under the Espionage Act, he can certainly do the same vis-à-vis Israel’s spies.
Second, call for the end of Citizens United, which enables the Zionist oligarchs to dictate U.S. policy in the Middle East through their PACs and direct political donations. Beyond that, make your voice heard more generally. Sure, calling or writing to a congressional office is most often a waste of time but Capitol Hill staffers have told me many times that if a congressman gets multiple complaints about a certain policy or issue, he or she will begin to pay attention. That is not to say that they will give a damn about their actual constituents versus the powerful Israel Lobby but the background noise might make them just a bit more sensitive on the issue.
Likewise, with the mainstream media and the entertainment industry, which are Jewish/Israel dominated. When one reads an article or watches a documentary that is heavily slanted towards the Jewish state, make an online comment or write a letter to the editor or producer saying that the bias is evident. As in the case with congress, if newspaper or television editors begin to see a lot of commentary hostile to their spin they just might begin to be more cautious for fear of losing readers, viewers or advertising dollars. And just a little bit of loosening of the Israeli grip in the media will mean that the public will begin to appreciate that the “news stories” that have been promoted for so many years are nothing but a tissue of lies.
Third, support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanction (BDS) movement as well as organizations that are actively critical of Israel. BDS is non-violent and increasingly effective, particularly on college campuses. Always remember that Israel and its friends do not have a grip on Congress, the White House and the media because they are wonderful warm people that others find to be sympathetic. It is difficult even to imagine a scintillating conversation with a malignant toad like former casino magnate Sheldon Adelson or with congressional slime balls like Senators Chuck Schumer and Ben Cardin.
Israel’s ability to corrupt and misdirect is all based on Jewish money, a well-established process whereby Zionist oligarchs buy their way to power and access. So to restore the relationship to something more like the normal interaction between countries the solution is to hit back where it really hurts – boycott Israel and Israeli products or services and do the same for the companies that are the sources of income for those American Jews who are the principal supporters of the Zionist project. If you want to visit Las Vegas, by all means go, but don’t patronize the casinos and hotels now owned by Sheldon Adelson’s Israeli wife Miriam, which include The Venetian and Sands Resort.
Democratic party major donor Haim Saban, meanwhile, is a producer of Hollywood children’s entertainment, including the lucrative Power Rangers. You can stop your children from watching his violent programming and tell the network’s advertisers why you are doing so. And then there are businessmen including Bernard Marcus, who is a co-founder of Home Depot and a major supporter of Israel, and Robert Kraft, owner of the New England Patriots. No one really has to spend $1000 to go to a football game, particularly if the owner is a good friend of Benjamin Netanyahu, and if you need something for your home or are seeking entertainment, choose to spend your dollars somewhere else. Readers can do the homework for the businesses and services that they normally patronize. If outspoken advocates for Israel own the company, take your dollars elsewhere.
Also put direct pressure on the mostly high-tech U.S. companies that invest in Israel, which are particularly vulnerable because they are thereby sending American jobs overseas, particularly as they country they are sending them to will steal the technology as likely as not. Make Israel’s cash-rich supporters pay a price for promotion of an apartheid/racist regime that is contemptuous of Americans even as it robs us blind, in the process doing terrible damage to the United States.
I am confident that readers will come up with other ideas regarding what might be done to counter Israel and all its works right here in the United States. If we lapse into apathy and think that nothing can be done to oppose the Israeli juggernaut, we will all lose. And, to be sure, the Israelis and their friends in America and Europe have one huge weakness. It is their hubris. They think that they are invulnerable because of their money and political power, but they fail to understand that in history the rich and powerful have inevitably gone too far and have finally received their comeuppance. Perhaps the “gone too far” moment has finally arrived.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is https://councilforthenationalinterest.org address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org
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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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