YouTube Censors Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
By Jonathan Turley | June 20, 2023
YouTube has continued its censorship of those with opposing positions on Covid 19 and vaccines. This week it prevented users from hearing the views of Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Despite Kennedy running on the failures of the pandemic response, YouTube will not allow users to hear what it considers harmful thoughts.
On Sunday, both Kennedy and podcast host Jordan Peterson tweeted that they were the latest to be censored by the company. Kennedy tweeted: “What do you think… Should social media platforms censor presidential candidates? My conversation with [Peterson] was deleted by [YouTube].”
He added: “Luckily you can watch it here on [Twitter] (thank you [Elon Musk]).”
The incident shows why many on the left continue an unrelenting attack on Musk and Twitter. Musk eliminated most of the company’s censorship system and, despite a few censorship controversies, the site is now the most open social media site among the major companies.
A Google spokesperson told Fox News Digital YouTube “removed a video from the Jordan Peterson channel for violating YouTube’s general vaccine misinformation policy, which prohibits content that alleges that vaccines cause chronic side effects, outside of rare side effects that are recognized by health authorities.”
Rather than allow experts and others to debate that question, Google and YouTube will not allow the debate to occur. It is consistent with calls from Democratic leaders for dissenting voices to be removed on subjects ranging from Covid to gender identity to climate control.
We have been discussing efforts by figures like Hillary Clinton to enlist European countries to force Twitter to restore censorship rules. Unable to rely on corporate censorship or convince users to embrace censorship, Clinton and others are resorting to good old-fashioned state censorship, even asking other countries to censor the speech of American citizens.
President Joe Biden has at times acted as a virtual censor-in-chief, denouncing social-media companies for “killing people” by not censoring enough. Recently, he expressed doubt that the public can “know the truth” without such censorship by “editors” in Big Tech. There is growing evidence of long-suspected back channels between government and Democratic political figures and Big Tech. Some of those contacts were recently confirmed but Congress again refused to investigate.
For years, scientists faced censorship for even raising the lab theory as a possible explanation for the virus. Their reputations and careers were shredded by a media flash mob. The Washington Post declared this a “debunked” coronavirus “conspiracy theory.” The New York Times’ Science and Health reporter Apoorva Mandavilli was calling any mention of the lab theory “racist.”
When a Chinese researcher told Fox News that this was man-made, the network was attacked and the left-leaning PolitiFact slammed her with a “pants on fire rating.”
The mask mandate and other pandemic measures like the closing of schools are now cited as fueling emotional and developmental problems in children. The closing of schools and businesses was challenged by some critics as unnecessary. Many of those critics were also censored. It now appears that they may have been right. Many countries did not close schools and did not experience increases in Covid. However, we are now facing alarming drops in testing scores and alarming rises in medical illness among the young.
The point is only that there were countervailing indicators on mask efficacy and a basis to question the mandates. Yet, there was no real debate because of the censorship supported by many Democratic leaders in social media. To question such mandates was declared a public health threat and what the WHO called our “infodemic.”
A lawsuit was filed by Missouri and Louisiana and joined by leading experts, including Drs. Jayanta Bhattacharya (Stanford University) and Martin Kulldorff (Harvard University). Bhattacharya previously objected to the suspension of Dr. Clare Craig after she raised concerns about Pfizer trial documents. Those doctors were the co-authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, which advocated for a more focused Covid response that targeted the most vulnerable population rather than widespread lockdowns and mandates. Many are now questioning the efficacy and cost of the massive lockdown as well as the real value of masks and the rejection of natural immunities as an alternative to vaccination. Yet, these experts and others were attacked for such views just a year ago. Some found themselves censored on social media for challenging claims of Dr. Fauci and others.
The media has quietly acknowledged the science questioning mask efficacy and school closures without addressing its own role in attacking those who raised these objections.
Yet, the censorship continues to the point that even a presidential candidate is now being silenced on social media.
The censorship of Kennedy is a national disgrace. Despite the proven legitimacy of prior censorship of viewpoints like the lab theory and natural immunities, Google continues to silence those with opposing views.
YouTube is signaling that this election will be another exercise in corporate approved messaging and ideas.
If you want to use YouTube, you will now have to engage in self-censorship, eliminating views that Google disagrees with. You may be able to “Broadcast Yourself” but you must first “Censor Yourself” . . . or YouTube will do it for you.
Raytheon CEO Explains Why China Has US Military By The Balls
By Tyler Durden | Zero Hedge | June 21, 2023
Raytheon Chief Executive Greg Hayes admitted last week that Beijing effectively has the US military’s supply chain by the balls thanks to its reliance on rare earths and other materials which come from, or are processed in, China.
According to Hayes, Raytheon has “several thousand suppliers in China,” because of which “decoupling … is impossible.”
“We can de-risk but not decouple,” he told the Financial Times, adding that he thinks this is the case “for everybody.”
“Think about the $500bn of trade that goes from China to the US every year. More than 95 per cent of rare earth materials or metals come from, or are processed in, China. There is no alternative,” Hayes continued, adding “If we had to pull out of China, it would take us many many years to re-establish that capability either domestically or in other friendly countries.”
Hayes’ comments underline the difficulties facing western manufacturers amid growing friction between China and the US and its allies.
Beijing in February imposed new sanctions on both Raytheon and US defence peer Lockheed Martin for supplying weapons to Taiwan. Hayes has also been placed under sanctions.
The sanctions have had little commercial impact as the groups are not allowed to sell military equipment to China. Raytheon, however, has a substantial commercial aerospace business in the country through its engine subsidiary, Pratt & Whitney, and aviation systems and cabin equipment specialist Collins Aerospace. It has about 2,000 direct employees in China. – FT
Hayes said that the company is looking “to take some of the most critical components and have second sources but we are not in a position to pull out of China the way we did out of Russia.”
That said, entrepreneur Arnaud Bertrand makes a solid point – that this makes war with China “less likely.”
Except that they have all the leverage and we have have Joe Biden.
Extremists who left Syria to fight in Ukraine realize journey ‘futile’: Expert
The Cradle | June 21, 2023
Egyptian researcher and political analyst Ahmad Sultan was quoted as saying on 21 June that many of the extremist militants who left Syria for the Ukrainian battlefield last year have realized that the fight against Russia is futile.
“The jihadists have realized that the situation in Ukraine is difficult for them, and that the arena there is not suitable for them, and that their fight against Russia is a lost battle,” Sultan said.
“Among the jihadists who returned [to Syria] recently is the leader Abdel Hakim al-Shishani … he is one of the most prominent leaders who left with their fighters from Idlib to Ukraine,” he added.
“Dozens of foreign jihadists, especially Chechens, led by Abdel Hakim al-Shishani, the leader of the Soldiers of the Caucasus group, left Idlib in northern Syria and relocated to the fronts against Russian forces in Ukraine,” Sultan went on to explain, adding that Shishani made his way back to Syria “recently.”
Shishani is a Chechen militant leader who was in charge of the Idlib-based group of foreign fighters, Soldiers of the Caucasus.
At the start of the year, Lebanese daily Al-Akhbar reported that after several months of disappearance, the well-known Chechen extremist appeared in Ukraine as part of Kiev’s ‘international legion.’ The Chechen commander appeared in a video posted by the official Twitter account of Ukraine’s defense intelligence.
According to Sultan, Shishani and his Soldiers of the Caucasus were stationed on the fronts near Bakhmut, the eastern Ukrainian city which just last month fell to Russian forces.
“The available data confirms that there are countries that facilitated the process of these fighters’ exit from Syria to Ukraine and that the process of transferring foreign fighters was planned by intelligence services affiliated with countries involved in the conflict inside Ukraine,” the Egyptian researcher continued.
According to Al-Akhbar’s January report, Turkish intelligence played a leading role in facilitating the transfer of militants from Syria to Ukraine.
Sultan adds that these cross-country transfers of militants were ignored by the US coalition operating in Syria, which he said “raises questions.”
Since the start of the war in Ukraine, hundreds of Syria-based militants belonging to ISIS, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), and other groups, have made their way to the eastern European country.
“The transfer of foreign fighters suggests that there is an attempt to recreate the scenario of the Afghan-Soviet war in Ukraine. There are fundamental differences between the two cases, but this did not prevent some countries from using the same tactics,” he concluded.
During the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan, foreign militants joined the Afghan side under heavy backing from the US and Saudi Arabia.
US-backing for the ‘Mujahideen’ in Afghanistan throughout the 1980s resulted in the formation of what is today known as Al-Qaeda. This was admitted by Hilary Clinton in 2009.
Democrat blames conservative media for hyping Trump assassination remark
Trump “needs to be shot”
RT | June 21, 2023
Delegate Stacey Plaskett (D-Virgin Islands) excoriated “conservative media” for calling attention to a television appearance in which she appeared to call for the assassination of former US president Donald Trump, insisting in a statement on Tuesday that she had done no such thing.
“It is unfortunate that conservative media has taken an instance where I misspoke and misrepresented it as though I advocate for violence–I unequivocally do not,” Plaskett said. “I wish former President Trump no ill will or harm, only that justice be served in his case as with every other American who must face penalties for wrongdoing.”
Plaskett claimed to have misspoken during an MSNBC segment discussing the Republican candidate’s indictment over his alleged mishandling of confidential documents. “Having Trump not only have had the [nuclear] codes but now having the classified information for Americans and being able to put that out and share it in his resort with anyone and everyone who comes through should be terrifying to all Americans and he needs to be shot – stopped,” she had said, without elaborating on whether the latter word was meant as a correction or simply a clarification.
Several conservative outlets including Fox News and d the New York Post published articles about her supposed slip-up, including responses to the clip on social media calling for Plaskett to be investigated by the Secret Service or even criminally charged for threatening the former president.
“I do believe and did intend to say that he must be ‘stopped’,” the delegate, a non-voting member of the US Congress, continued, reiterating, “I do not advocate for anyone to shoot former President Trump.”
In April, Plaskett called for journalist Matt Taibbi to be charged with perjury based on a rival journalist’s claim that Taibbi had deliberately substituted the name of the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) subsidiary for the Center for Internet Security (CIS) in order to falsely depict an unconstitutionally cozy relationship between the government agency and Twitter. Taibbi countered that the switch was a mistake he had immediately corrected – and which ultimately turned out to be true.
In her statement on Tuesday, Plaskett claimed she did not “encourage or condone political violence nor behavior that goes against democratic principles at any time.” That also appeared to clash with her sign-off from the MSNBC program, in which she remarked that “In the Virgin Islands, we’re celebrating our 175th year of emancipation through violent and organized slave rebellion to remove ourselves from chattel slavery.”
While running for Congress, Plaskett actively pursued (and received) campaign contributions from convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein after securing lucrative tax breaks for the pedophile in her role as general counsel for the islands’ Economic Development Authority.
Biden Crashes Down the Stairs of U.S.-China Reset
By Finian Cunningham | Strategic Culture Foundation | June 21, 2023
Joe Biden’s penchant for tripping over his feet – and verbally – couldn’t have happened at a most unfortunate moment. Mocking China’s president as a “dictator” just when his administration attempted a big reset in U.S.-China relations has to rank as one of Biden’s clumsiest gaffes.
A day after U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited China in a high-profile attempt to mend frayed relations, Biden kicked those efforts in the teeth by telling a crowd in California that Chinese President Xi was a dictator.
Beijing responded furiously, denouncing the American president’s “extreme” disrespect and lack of etiquette. China’s anger is no doubt reinforced because it showed magnanimity in receiving Blinken and affording him a top-level diplomatic meeting with President Xi Jinping.
Biden’s latest gaffe is made all the more absurd because he was referring to the incident of a Chinese weather balloon that had strayed over U.S. territory in February, which Biden ordered an F-16 fighter jet to shoot down with a sidewinder missile. Biden is still claiming that it was a Chinese spy balloon even though the Washington Post had reported earlier that it was a meteorological aircraft blown off course whose errant trans-Pacific course was being monitored in real-time by the Americans.
That crass overreaction by Biden resorting to a military attack over a balloon sent U.S.-China relations into a further tailspin. Blinken canceled a visit to Beijing in February in what was a cheap protest stunt against an alleged Chinese breach of U.S. national security. His trip last weekend was meant to signal a new reset in relations. There was much talk during the U.S. diplomat’s visit about improving communications between Washington and Beijing to avoid a military confrontation.
Then there came the crash, bang, wallop from Biden’s strange outburst insulting his Chinese counterpart.
During the California fundraising foray this week, Biden claimed that Xi knew nothing about the “spy balloon”, implying that he was being kept in the dark by Chinese intelligence officials as befitting a hapless “dictator”.
In reality, it looks like Biden is the one who is hopelessly benighted. Ordering the shoot-down of an errant balloon with million-dollar air-to-air missiles and to continue insisting that it was a spy vehicle shows an abject lack of judgment. Could anyone trust a balloon-popping commander-in-chief who has access to grabbing the nuclear football? This is Doctor Strangelove’s twilight stuff. All the more frightening because it’s real life, not a movie.
But on top of that, Biden then goes on to gratuitously insult the Chinese leader.
Biden’s loose tongue and legs at this frail stage in his half-century political career are beyond parody. Falling on the stairs of Air Force One and tripping over podiums is an embarrassing routine spectacle for this president.
His congenital bad manners of referring to Russian and Chinese leaders as “thugs”, “killers” and “dictators” shows Biden’s low class as a person, as well as extreme hypocrisy for a politician who is responsible for causing millions of deaths from promoting U.S. criminal wars down through the decades.
One good thing, however, is the impeccable clarity that all this provides (if that were needed).
China – and Russia– by now know beyond doubt that Washington cannot be trusted in anything it says. Biden is just the decrepit embodiment of the treacherous and duplicitous politics inherent in Washington. It is blinded and stupefied, incapable of meaningful dialogue because of Washington’s insufferable delusions, its arrogance, hubris, and self-righteous propaganda. And its total addiction to war for fixing its corporate capitalist junkie economy.
Top U.S. diplomat Antony Blinken went on a mission to appease China with ostensible declarations of wanting to normalize relations, avoid confrontation and professing adherence to the One China policy with regard to abjuring Taiwan’s independence and recognizing the island territory as being under China’s sovereign control. In other words, respecting international law.
China’s leadership warily shook hands with Blinken and appeared to give him the benefit of doubt for a public reset in U.S. bilateral relations.
Biden’s subsequent rush to the brain and his rash, churlish words demonstrate that Washington is not capable of adhering to decorum, decency and diplomacy, or anything for that matter, apart from a handrail on a staircase. And even that’s unreliable.
After Blinken’s smarmy visit to China, one can bet the farm that in the coming weeks there will be more provocative U.S. naval maneuvers in the Taiwan Strait; there will be more provocative U.S. multi-billion-dollar arms sales to Taiwan; and there will be more provocative U.S. political delegations ostentatiously traveling to Taipei in order to foment instability and the offensive notion of independence from China.
Thus, it’s altogether better that Beijing does not waste time by engaging Washington with disingenuous diplomacy. Forget smarmy, florid rhetoric about improving relations, and smiley handshakes. The only proof needed is deeds and practical compliance with already established legal treaties.
Washington says it respects the One China policy and three legally binding treaties that it has signed with Beijing since 1979 on that. That should mean the United States ending all interference in China’s sovereignty. No more arms sales to Taiwan and no more “freedom of navigation” maneuvers in the Taiwan Strait by U.S. warships.
It’s a rather straightforward obligation that avoids ambiguity and equivocation. It’s almost incredible that this has to be spelled out which illustrates just how rogue the United States is.
Moscow can make the same arguments and conclusions with regard to the U.S.-led NATO expansion up to its borders and the infiltration of Ukraine with NeoNazi proxies.
But here’s the deplorable rub: the United States is agreement incapable, as Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has caustically noted. Russian President Vladimir Putin has also recently lamented the complete dearth of American political integrity, at least for the past few generations.
Joe Biden figuratively falling down the stairs of the U.S.-China reset attempts is the latest confirmation that forked-tongued American politicians should be repudiated until Washington actually begins to behave as a law-abiding entity.
North Korea slams Blinken’s recent China visit as ‘begging trip’
Press TV – June 21, 2023
North Korea has ridiculed US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s recent visit to China as a “disgraceful begging trip,” further slamming it as a failure of policy aimed at exerting pressure on Beijing.
The rare visit was aimed at begging for the relaxation of tensions as the “attempt to press and restrain China may become a boomerang striking a fatal blow to the US economy,” said North Korean international affairs analyst Jong Yong in a column published by the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on Wednesday.
“In a word, the US state secretary’s recent junket can never be judged otherwise than a disgraceful begging trip of the provoker admitting the failure of the policy of putting pressure on China,” he then added.
The analyst further blamed Washington for escalating regional tensions with “anti-China complexes” such as the so-called Quad strategic security group, which includes Japan, Australia, India, and the United States, as well as the Australia-UK-US security deal known as AUKUS.
“It is the height of the double-dealing and impudence peculiar to the US to provoke first and then talk about the so-called ‘responsible control over divergence of opinion,'” he said.
Blinken arrived in Beijing on Sunday on a high-stakes diplomatic mission in a bid to ease deteriorating tensions between the world’s two largest economies amid little hope for much progress in the talks.
During his two-day visit, Blinken met with Chinese President Xi Jinping, saying they had agreed to stabilize their intense rivalry so it did not veer into conflict.
Biden calls China’s Xi ‘dictator’
However, a day after the top American diplomat visited China to purportedly ease tensions, US President Joe Biden likened his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping with “dictators.”
Speaking at a Democratic Party fundraiser in northern California, Biden claimed Xi had been angered over an incident in February when a Chinese balloon flew over the United States and eventually shot down with Washington claiming – despite Beijing’s denials – that it was used for spying.
“The reason why Xi Jinping got very upset in terms of when I shot that balloon down with two box cars full of spy equipment is he didn’t know it was there,” Biden proclaimed.
“That’s a great embarrassment for dictators,” he then emphasized. “When they didn’t know what happened. That wasn’t supposed to be going where it was. It was blown off course.”
Blinken also stated at the conclusion of his visit that he had called on China to urge North Korea to stop launching missiles as Beijing holds a “unique position” to press Pyongyang to engage in dialogue.
North Korea is reeling under harsh US-led sanctions over its nuclear and ballistic missile programs, which have not prevented it from developing its military capabilities as a deterrent against persisting war games near its waters by US and South Korean military forces that Pyongyang regards as rehearsals for invading the country.
The North has further underlined that it will continue responding to joint military maneuvers of its adversaries by holding its own drills as well as developing all sorts of weaponry, including long-range missiles.
Prior to his visit to Beijing, Blinken had said the trip aims to establish communication channels to avoid the ongoing rivalry between the two nations to spiral into a military conflict.
He said to avoid a conflict with China they should start with “communicating.”
Blinken was the highest-ranking US official to visit China since Joe Biden became president in 2021.
Blinken Blinked: US Foreign Policy Chief’s Fruitless Flight to Beijing
By James Tweedie – Sputnik – 20.06.2023
Antony Blinken had hoped to reassert a constructive US role in the Pacific on his trip to China. Two experts both said he could only pick low-hanging diplomatic fruit, however.
At a press conference following meetings with Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang and President Xi Jinping on Monday, Blinken backed down from recent attempts by US House of Representatives speakers Nancy Pelosi and Kevin McCarthy to encourage Taiwan to assert formal independence from mainland China.
“We do not support Taiwan independence,” Blinken said. “We remain opposed to any unilateral changes to the status quo by either side.”
He also appeared to abandon Washington’s claims that China was supplying arms or munitions to Russia for its military operation in Ukraine, finally accepting China’s repeated refutations.
University of Manitoba professor Dr. Radhika Desai told Sputnik that the Biden administration “probably had to make some sort of visit” to China, even though the last scheduled meeting in February was canceled after the balloon incident.
She said the Chinese government was being “morally big” by tolerating Blinken.
“China, even though it doesn’t have to do it, is doing these things, is extending the olive branch,” Desai said. “It’s doing diplomacy as it should be done.”
Beijing’s graciousness stemmed from its concern for the world at large, she said.
“The United States and China are nuclear powers. They are the two big superpowers of the world,” Desai stressed. “For them not to talk means that you have a very dangerous world situation, and the Chinese are committed not to bring the world to the edge of nuclear disaster.”
The academic said the tensions between the two nations were just a symptom of declining US influence in the world.
“Why is the United States facing this conflicted situation vis-a-vis China?” Desai asked. “Because it is losing power.”
Blinken was also forced to admit that he had failed in his aim of re-opening a hotline between the two countries’ armed forces, a “difficulty” which Yang Tao, Foreign Ministry director-general of the Department of North American and Oceanian Affairs, said was due to US sanctions.
Journalist and expert on the political economy and geopolitics of the Asia-Pacific KJ Noh told Sputnik that meant the two nuclear powers “don’t have words to communicate with.”
“When you don’t have the words, you only have actions to communicate with or actions to interpret. And military actions can always be misconstrued or interpreted as threatening,” Noh said “And so we’re heading into a classical security dilemma.”
Overall, the Asia expert said, Blinken’s trip had meagre results because “the baseline was very low. It was a cold reception.”
“The key statement was that we agreed to continue to talk,” Noh said. “We talked and we agreed to continue talking, which in itself is not a bad thing, although it really is the lowest of the lowest-hanging fruit.”
Beijing’s message to Washington was to abide by the “five NOs” they agreed to at the 2022 G20 leaders’ summit in Bali, Indonesia.
“That’s to say that the US respects China system and doesn’t seek regime change,” Noh explained. “It doesn’t want a new Cold War, doesn’t seek to revitalize alliances against China, does not support Taiwan independence, and it has no intention to have a conflict with China and it’s not seeking to suppress China’s development.”
China hits back at Biden over ‘dictator Xi’ comments
RT | June 21, 2023
Beijing has pushed back against remarks by US President Joe Biden referring to Chinese leader Xi Jinping as “a dictator,” claiming that the statements are outright offensive.
Speaking on Tuesday at a fundraiser in California, Biden addressed the controversy surrounding a Chinese balloon that entered US airspace earlier this year, suggesting that Xi did not know the vessel was even there.
“That’s a great embarrassment for dictators. When they didn’t know what happened. That [balloon] wasn’t supposed to be going where it was. It was blown off course,” he said at the time.
On Wednesday, speaking at a regular press conference, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning described the remarks as “extremely absurd,” adding that they “seriously violated China’s political dignity.” She said that such statements also violate diplomatic etiquette and contradict basic facts.
“It is an open political provocation,” Mao stressed.
The spokeswoman also reiterated China’s position that the balloon – which Washington has insisted was seeking to surveil strategic sites in the continental United States – strayed into US airspace due to “force majeure factors.”
“The US side distorted the facts and abused force, fully reflecting the US’ bullying and hegemonic nature,” she said.
The back-and-forth between China and the US comes shortly after a landmark visit by Secretary of State Antony Blinken to Beijing, where he met with Xi and other senior Chinese officials.
On Monday, the top US diplomat stated that both countries had achieved “progress” towards putting their bilateral relations back on track. Blinken also vowed that the US would “responsibly manage” competition with China so that their relationship “does not veer into conflict,” according to the State Department.
During the meeting with Blinken, Xi said that Beijing “respects US interests and does not seek to challenge or displace the United States,” adding that Washington also “needs to respect China” and not hurt its legitimate rights and interests.
In recent months, Sino-US relations have been marred by a number of disagreements, with Taiwan being one of the most divisive. China considers the self-governing island a part of its sovereign territory and has repeatedly protested against Washington selling military equipment to Taipei.
Is China reciprocating US aggression?
By Drago Bosnic | June 21, 2023
When the Soviet Union placed its nuclear weapons in Cuba in 1962, the United States threatened to attack if the R-12 “Dvina” and R-14 “Chusovaya” nuclear-tipped missiles deployed on the Caribbean island country weren’t removed. After most of October that year was spent in strenuous talks and strategic military maneuvers that nearly escalated into full-scale confrontation barely 17 years after WW2, Washington DC and Moscow finally negotiated a mutually beneficial (albeit last-minute) agreement that moved the world away from the thermonuclear abyss that threatened to destroy it.
For decades, much of the world was convinced that what today is (unjustly) called the Cuban Missile Crisis was initiated by Russia. And even nowadays, when we all know that it was started by the US and its 1961 deployment of the PGM-19 “Jupiter” nuclear-tipped missiles in Turkey and Italy, Washington DC still insists that Moscow was responsible for the crisis. Something eerily similar is unfolding as we speak. However, instead of Russia, the other party involved in this case is China. Namely, according to the Wall Street Journal, Beijing is currently in talks with Havana to establish new military facilities in Cuba.
The report, published on June 20, states that the two socialist allies are working out the final arrangements of the deal that would reportedly secure a military base for the PLA (People Liberation Army) in northern Cuba. The WSJ reports that this has “sparked fears among US officials that [Cuba] could eventually host a permanent Chinese troop presence”, prompting the troubled Biden administration to intervene with Cuban officials, seeking to block the establishment of permanent military installations. This will reportedly also include the expansion of ISR (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance) capabilities of the PLA’s existing military facility.
The claims about China’s supposed military bases in Cuba are based on anonymous sources from unnamed US intelligence services. However, the authors admit that the aforementioned services are not exactly certain about the possibility of a full-blown joint Chinese-Cuban military base, stating that “the reference to the proposed new training facility in Cuba is contained in the highly classified new US intelligence, which State Department officials described as convincing but fragmentary”. The report further adds that “it’s being interpreted with different levels of alarm among policymakers and intelligence analysts”.
“Most worrying for the US: The planned facility is part of China’s ‘Project 141’, an initiative by the People’s Liberation Army to expand its global military base and logistical support network, one current and one former US official said. China and Cuba already jointly run four eavesdropping stations on the island, according to US officials. That network underwent a significant upgrade around 2019, when a single station expanded to a network of four sites that are operated jointly, and Chinese involvement deepened, according to the officials,” the WSJ authors detail.
It’s quite difficult to measure the sheer magnitude of Washington DC’s hypocrisy and double standards when it comes to this issue. Considering not only the outright hostile and oftentimes openly Sinophobic rhetoric, but also the numerous concrete moves aimed against China, could anyone honestly blame Beijing for anything except reciprocity? Apart from the trade war initiated under former president Donald Trump, the US has been conducting a comprehensive crawling aggression against China, openly seeking to contain the Asian giant with a massive network of military bases and other installations across Asia-Pacific.
Most alarmingly for Beijing, the US is aiming to push its military infrastructure ever closer to China’s shores, particularly by exerting greater control over the Asian giant’s breakaway island province of Taiwan. And this is only the tip of the iceberg of resurgent Neo-McCarthyism in US foreign policy that involves the sending of entire delegations of Washington DC warhawks to Taipei, in addition to the massive shipments of weapons and equipment (that now includes F-16 Block 70/72 fighter jets and hundreds of anti-ship missiles), amounting to approximately $20 billion, albeit mostly backlogged due to US (over)focus on the Kiev regime.
Taking into account such unadulterated hostility, can anyone blame Beijing for wanting to strengthen its ties with Havana? Worse yet, Cuba is an independent country, while Taiwan is internationally recognized as part of China (including by the US itself), meaning that the expansion of America’s military infrastructure to the island directly threatens Chinese sovereignty and territorial integrity. However, in its endless hypocrisy and double standards, Washington DC wants to maintain the Monroe Doctrine by exerting additional pressure on Latin America while encroaching on other superpowers’ geopolitical backyards.
“Some intelligence officials say that Beijing sees its actions in Cuba as a geographical response to the US relationship with Taiwan: The US invests heavily in arming and training the self-governing island that sits off mainland China and that Beijing sees as its own,” the WSJ admitted begrudgingly, adding: “The Journal reported that the US has deployed more than 100 troops to Taiwan to train its defense forces.”
In addition, the authors also acknowledged that “Taiwan is roughly 100 miles from mainland China, about the same distance Cuba is from Florida”, effectively conceding that there’s strategic equivalency between the two.
“China has no combat forces in Latin America, according to US officials. Meanwhile, the US has dozens of military bases throughout the Pacific, where it stations more than 350,000 troops. Chinese officials have pointed this out when they push back on American efforts to counter their military expansion outside of the Indo-Pacific,” the WSJ report concludes.
Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.
Settling in to the reputation economy
BY EL GATO MALO | BAD CATTITUDE | JUNE 21, 2023
the retail B2C aspect of the information economy is dying.
the reputation economy is rising to take its place.
this is going to be one of the pivotal meta-trends of the next several years and it is already well underway. it’s been taking root for years and like many such exponentially driven processes of social contagion, it’s “little by little then all at once” as that which seemed subtle suddenly comes to raucous and unmistakable bloom.
and we are about to see the full flower of this phenomenon.
but what does that mean?
the 90’s ushered in a radical change in information. that which was once hard to access and hard to share become so plentiful and cheap that it has now flipped over into “hard to avoid” and “hard to assess.”
in 1990, real time news and stock prices and commentary were the province of a very select few. now it’s baseline expectation for people on budget airline flights.
that which was once the currency of a small elite is now in ubiquitous circulation. this has dramatically changed the manner in which it is not only consumed, but provided.
the sheer volume of information has become overwhelming, and its stridence and pandering qualities have been accentuated as 10,000 memes fight for each eyeball that not so long ago had only 3 or 4 to choose from.
not only does this make keeping up with it near impossible, it also means that the power to control and slant it has become a sort of commanding heights in this new economy:
control what people see and you can control what they believe. shape the message, shape the society.
and not everyone in this ecosystem has your best interests at heart.
this gave rise to a vast public private partnership of media and government, an ugly and unconstitutional alliance of both convenience and need arising from both exigency and opportunity.
the information age has been death for big media.
ratings and revenues have collapsed as oligopoly eroded and information broke free.
this freedom posed a clear and present danger to government (especially bureaucratic permanent government) narrative and control and so the two were forced together in a sort of “you scratch my back and i’ll scratch yours” codependency of access, promotion, censorship, and message hegemony. everyone from media to educational institutions and crony corporatist business interests and has fawningly fallen in line with what can only be described as lockstep systems of legal plunder underpinned by invented ethics to defend and glorify them.
but this has broken the information economy and the falsehoods, manipulation, and egregious thumbs upon the scales of the public agora have grown so blatant that the center is shifting and this is about to gather the momentum that will make it decisive.
no one trusts this “information” anymore. the media lies. the government lies. the technology companies lie.
and that truth is plain.
they are still unearthing new forms of embedded censorship on twitter even now. it’s the literal core of the software and embedded at who knows how many levels. the whole system appears to have been built not so much for information sharing as for informational suppression. facebook is an an engine of ideological manipulation. google buries search results and amplifies others for ideological and political ends.
this is not distortion, manipulation has become the signal. and you can see why. this passel of pernicious plunderers will not be able to withstand even rudimentary scrutiny. they are in deep, deep trouble if information gets free. and they know it.
and this is why they will use every lever within their power from draconian EU regulations to claims of misinformation and manipulation projected upon others to mask their own malfeasance to the vilification of the very change that might supplant their systems of control. make no mistake: this sudden surge of “AI fear” is not a coincidence.
this is planned and planful.
and it’s working. (or, at least, some purported polls are being trotted out to claim that it is.) but can these polls be trusted? are they accurate or fair? or are they just another failure of the information economy as it devolves to something more akin to propaganda?
it’s hard to know. this is the struggle of the hall of mirrors created by the dissolution of trust in information. it all becomes a black box and past a certain point, you simply cannot take anything at face value and one must begin to always assess the intent of the stakeholders speaking because one thing is manifestly clear:
this is exactly what those who have the most to lose would like to have you believe about a technology that could demolish their dominance and grant vast new vistas of access to unfettered information and perhaps more important knowledge extraction to the public.
this breaks the search engine monopoly on determining “what the internet is.” today, if google decides you do not exist, you vanish. if they decide you are top of the pile, you are. but AI driven systems change this and (if allowed to function unfettered) will make access to “what is” a truly general and democratized phenomenon.
no wonder they want to make you leery of it.
it stands to gut them like trout.
this democratization of knowledge generation poses an existential threat to their current regimes and so they must fight its emergence tooth and claw.
but this is not safety.
this is censorship.
the goal is to scare the demos into demanding “regulation” that will be used to once more establish the regimes of suppression upon which the modern public private plunder machine sets its foundations. they want to be in charge of what you can know and what information may spread.
and they are getting increasingly desperate because the worm here is turning, memes and messages are spreading in manners they do not like, and this is not only destroying the totalitarian power of their cultures of cancellation but inverting them. “experts” are being annihilated by “amateurs” and those who seek to dictate are finding themselves dictated to instead.
and this is a very good thing.
we the people have become “we the market” and are escaping the baleful glare of the gaslights with which so many have for so long been blinded. we are coming once more to know our own minds through the simple expedient of losing our fear to speak and realizing the the pervasive puppetshow of purported public opinion was a hoax, a fugazi fellowship of false narrative that never actually existed. and this is killing the B2C information economy because none of the folks who have firehosed phony zeitgeist at an unsuspecting public are trusted anymore.
now it’s about reputation.
and that changes everything.
“the internet remembers” is a powerful concept. it creates a real track record. if you want to play out here in the modern square, you need to speak, take views, add information. but doing so generates receipts and we can go back and look at how everyone did. it’s not like the bad old days where you can just flip sides and play the “shaggy defense” of “wasn’t me” who said that. now when you change jerseys, everyone knows. even when you try to hide it. the old tricks do not work with this new dog.
now imagine how much easier uncensored AI would make assessing such things. instant on track records for everyone.
that will be seismic.
once, what you said 5 years ago was forgotten. but no longer. not even when you delete the tweets. the internet remembers. and reputation is all.
the simple fact is that information has become overly prolific. it has become tinsel. and AI is in the process of making this 1000 times worse by making the cost of producing content asymptotically indistinguishable from 0.
as this intersects with manipulation, it drops the value of most kinds of information to naught and quite possibly into the negatives. all the value has moved to interpretation and curation.
but AI is also the solution to this as it can cut through the noise and find signal.
this is why they so desperately want to control it: if you are allowed access to the vast engines of interpretive power, what might you learn? what might you create? perhaps most important, who might you cut out of the value chain?
AI poses dire threats to the credentialed classes. lawyers, doctors, lower level and possibly soon higher level coders. lots of people with expensive educations, credentials and licensure that grants guild privilege (and assures guild level profit protection) and that stymies innovation and affordable access are at massive schumpeterian risk.
and these people are connected.
they will use the machinery of government and media to fight the encroachment that threatens their fiefdoms and frees the rest of us.
and this is a fight we must make sure they lose.
and it’s why we must resist the calls to “regulate AI” and instead demand that it be free.
those telling you it must not be are the same ones telling you that they must get to decide what is and is not “misinformation” while being the largest purveyors of falsehood on earth.
do you really want another round of that?
what could constitute a worse choice than leaping from the frying pan of mistrust of technology companies into the fire of government regulation?
you seriously want to place your faith in them?
this battle to free information must be waged not just in the political realm but in the personal.
consumer sovereignty is a decisive force and we the people may vote with these, our wallets and in so doing we may bring this to heel.
we are nothing like powerless, we are only being gaslit into thinking that we are.
and as we find our footing and seek to support those who earn our trust and shun those who violate it, we have flipped cancel culture upon its misbegotten head.
it was not long ago that companies could have brazened out a stunt like this and shamed the public into tacit if not overt acceptance.
but no more.
they got hit where it hurts and the top beer brand in america was hamstrung because the people running it lost their reputation.
and now they are floundering and scrambling and want a mulligan to “what you’ve always loved about us,” but it’s not that easy, is it?
everyone remembers. does anyone believe this is sincere as opposed to reactive? do you trust them again? is the non-apology apology tour compelling?
because i will bet they never get this back.
because they do not understand.
they’re cooked because they do not understand reputation. they still want to manipulate you using clumsy tools.
it’s just sad.
one of my interesting discoveries in the last couple years is that the conventional wisdom on much of PR is wrong. it does not stand up in practice.
you should never apologize for doing what you feel was right or justified. that just gets you pilloried and proves you craven and unprincipled. being shamed into repudiating your own ethics or belief is the worst of all worlds. who could respect such a person? they have no morals, just malleable allegiance.
on the other hand, when you make a mistake and realize it, you should step up and proactively say so and explain what you misapprehended and what changed your mind. i’ve blown it on data. no one bats 1.000. folks told me “ignore it. let it fade. people will forget.” instead, i chose to trust you. i placed faith in your discernment, fairness, and understanding. and when i did, a funny thing happened: instead of the “ha, see that cat doesn’t know what he’s saying!” i got comments sections full of “thank you.” and “this is why we’ll keep trusting you.”
funny how that works. why, it’s almost as if trust is a two way street…
it’s kind of obvious once you step back and look at it. no one claiming to be infallible is trustworthy. that’s impossible. worse, it’s a self-defeating demand. if you require it, you’re placing yourself in the hands of the most malicious sort of people.
this is what makes the reputation economy hum. not projected perfection: reality. plausibility. humility. principle. honor. honesty.
strive for truth and even when you fail, people will trust you. a good batting average presented in good faith vastly trumps a perfect one presented in falsity.
people are sick and tired of being lied to, spun, and manipulated.
the age of honesty and honor is coming.
because we will make it so.
vote with your dollars and vote with your attention.
support those who earn your trust and who trust you in return. spurn those taking you for granted or for fools or for dupes.
consumer sovereignty is the tool by which societal sovereignty may be retaken.
this will be irrepressible and irresistible.
and this is going to be fun.
society was always ours and not theirs.
remember that, and the rest will follow.
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Dr. McCullough Rapid Fire on The Joe Pags Show
Quick Hits on Jerrold Nadler, Rochelle Walensky, Demar Hamlin, Jamie Foxx, Kathy Huchul, and Propagandized “Misinformation”
By Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH | Courageous Discourse | June 18, 2023
Among all the independent media superstars, Joe “Pags” Pagliarulo does one of the best “rapid fire” interviews that gets his audience updated on contemporary issues. This one on June 15, 2023, starts out with U.S. Representative Jerrold Nadler the 12th District of New York incredulously stating two year old should have worn masks because at the time there was no vaccine. My responses are short and evidence-based with citations. This is the type of interchange we should be seeing on main stream media with experts who should know the data cold have the alacrity to move quickly from topic to topic. Watch additional coverage on Rochelle Walensky, Demar Hamlin, Jamie Foxx, Kathy Huchul, and Propagandized “Misinformation.”
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From the Archives
The lies about the 1967 war are still more powerful than the truth
By Alan Hart | June 4, 2012
In retrospect it can be seen that the 1967 war, the Six Days War, was the turning point in the relationship between the Zionist state of Israel and the Jews of the world (the majority of Jews who prefer to live not in Israel but as citizens of many other nations). Until the 1967 war, and with the exception of a minority of who were politically active, most non-Israeli Jews did not have – how can I put it? – a great empathy with Zionism’s child. Israel was there and, in the sub-consciousness, a refuge of last resort; but the Jewish nationalism it represented had not generated the overtly enthusiastic support of the Jews of the world. The Jews of Israel were in their chosen place and the Jews of the world were in their chosen places. There was not, so to speak, a great feeling of togetherness. At a point David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s founding father and first prime minister, was so disillusioned by the indifference of world Jewry that he went public with his criticism – not enough Jews were coming to live in Israel.
So how and why did the 1967 war transform the relationship between the Jews of the world and Israel? … continue
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