Business Insider reported that NATO had never faced an adversary of Russia’s calibre after World War II, and it would have been difficult for the alliance to establish air superiority over Russian forces. The warning comes as experts have explained the sombre reality that the F-16 fighter jets, a key aircraft in many NATO air force fleets, provided to Kiev will not be a “magic bullet” that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his Western allies expect them to be.
“Russia could challenge NATO’s historical air dominance,” reported the media on July 13 after explaining that this is a change from the scenario that emerged after the Cold War when the West had a clear advantage. “Russia would be a very different opponent. It has the territory and industry to build and field massive and sophisticated air defenses that an opponent may struggle to destroy.”
“The US and its allies, even with fleets of fifth-generation stealth fighter jets, likely would find it difficult to establish the same level of air dominance they’ve largely had since the end of World War II,” the New York-based outlet said.
According to experts cited by the portal, Western aviation has never had the experience of combating air defence systems at a level similar to that of Russia’s. During the conflict in Ukraine, the Russian military proved that it could establish extremely difficult air defence areas for the enemy with powerful radars, electronic warfare systems and missiles.
“The Russians could attempt a surprising and impactful opening attack,” the article warned. “For example, the Russians could target vulnerabilities like satellites to try to disrupt the space-based communications and navigation NATO airpower depends upon.”
The worry that Russia could establish air superiority over NATO, particularly over the bloc’s 30 European members, became a more serious consideration after Russian forces methodically obliterated Ukraine’s air force. Russia so impressively dismantled the Ukrainian air force that the Kiev regime is desperately seeking F-16 fighter jets from Western allies to replenish its fleet, even though experts are saying that the aircraft is now obsolete and unlikely to survive the conflict.
“As soon as the Ukrainians encountered Russian-controlled air space, the F-16’s value would diminish markedly, as would its likelihood of survival,” Harrison Kass wrote for the National Interest. “In a conflict with a great power, China for example, the F-16 would remain on the backbench.”
This is a telling revelation considering the US still uses over 900 F-16s, NATO members, including Turkey, Greece, Poland, and Romania, use hundreds more, as well as US non-NATO allies Israel, Taiwan and South Korea. In effect, the F-16 would be rendered almost useless against Russia given that the Eastern European country’s military is ranked second, one above China, according to the 2024 PowerIndex.
Kass warns Kiev that the good performance of the F-16 fighter jets in Iraq and Afghanistan does not say anything about their capabilities against Russian air defences.
After stressing that “the F-16 fighting falcon era is coming to a rapid end,” Kass concludes that the US-made fighter jet “will not offer a magic bullet for Zelensky” and will merely “buy a little more time.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned that the F-16s supplied to Kiev will be destroyed just like other Western military equipment. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov also warned that their appearance in Ukraine will not change anything on the front and that they will be destroyed in the same way as other types of weapons.
Nonetheless, in 2023, several NATO states agreed to supply the Ukrainian armed forces with the fighter jets and launched training programs for Ukrainian pilots. On July 10, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that the US and its allies are “underway” in sending the promised F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine.
As Europe and the US are not interested in a viable, pragmatic, and lasting peace agreement in Ukraine which recognises Russian interests in the region and establishes a lasting solution, they are actively prolonging the fighting despite not only the humanitarian consequences but even the weakening of their own military. Whilst NATO members are distracted with training Ukrainian pilots to use fighter jets that are effectively obsolete in any combat with a great power, Russia, as Business Insider has acknowledged, has successfully challenged the air dominance NATO largely enjoyed since the start of the Cold War despite the introduction of fifth-generation fighter jets.
Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.
When you think about oil there is probably one thing that immediately comes to mind: motor oil for your car or lawn mower. And, when you hear about natural gas, you may think about heating your home, cooking, or even electric power generation.
But, there are many other uses for these hydrocarbons than what meets the eye. Petrochemicals derived from oil and natural gas make the manufacturing of over 6,000 everyday products and high-tech devices possible.
Major petrochemicals—including ethylene, propylene, acetylene, benzene, and toluene, as well as natural gas constituents like methane, propane, and ethane—are the feedstock chemicals for the production of many of the items we use and depend on every day.
Modern life relies on the availability of these products that are made in the United States and across the globe. We zero in on some of these common household and commercial products below. The list may surprise you!
“The infant industry argument is a smoke screen,” wrote Milton and Rose Friedman in their 1979 classic, Free to Choose. “The so-called infants never grow up.” And several years later, the two wrote: “Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.” [1]
Previous posts have documented the “permanent subsidies” of industrial wind power (14 extensions) and of solar power (15 extensions). [2] Add nuclear liability protection to this list, although the technology has long been declared safe by the industry and its proponents.
The Nuclear Industries Indemnity Act of 1957 became law as Section 170 of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954. It was supposed to be a ten-year window to allow commercial nuclear power to prove its economy and safety. But the so-called Price-Anderson Act–capping damage claims “to protect the public and to encourage the development of the atomic energy industry”–is still with us, some two-thirds of a century later.
The 1957 law’s limit of $60 million per plant (about 10x in today’s dollars) was joined by an up-to-$500 million indemnification guarantee per accident. These provisions, vetted among the beneficiaries, was just enough to remove a major barrier to the commercialization of nuclear power for electric utilities sponsors and for builders Westinghouse, GE, and others. Rate base incentives for utilities was also crucial for the new energy industry to compete against coal and hydro for electrical generation.
No payouts resulted in the ten-year period, but the private sector was not ready to stand on its own. The involved parties lobbied for $100 million per accident, which became $74 million in a 10-year extension in 1966, a small increase in real terms. This first extension would not be the last…
Subsidy enough? Nope, the second extension came in 1975 (for 12 years); the third in 1988 (20 years, with the cap increased from $500 million to $9.43 billion); the fourth in 2005 (20 years); and fifth in 2024 (40 years, to 2066). [3]
Surely, nearly 70 years after the initial “temporary” law, the nuclear industry could have repealed Price-Anderson and let the private insurance market sort things out. Commercial nuclear power is safe, right? Claims under Price-Anderson have been small or none. The collected $13 billion would ensure a smooth transition to the private market. Safer units should not subsidize the less safe, right?
Wrong! The nuclear industry needed to remove 2025, and last year the talk was for a decade, maybe 20 years. And the industry got more under favorable political circumstances. The result: 40 years–to 2065.
“Congress’s 40-year extension of a law limiting how much money nuclear power companies are on the hook for prompted sighs of relief from the industry and supporters of the measure,” The Hillreported, “who say the liability limit provides certainty for insurers and investors in the carbon-free power source.” To critics, the sweetheart subsidy was done in darkness.
————
[1] Milton and Rose Friedman, Free to Choose, p. 49; Tyranny of the Status Quo, p. 115.
[2] The tax credit for wind temporarily expired (without retroactive true-up) for a brief period in 1992.
We’ve just come across a document hosted by the Department of Homeland Security, posted March 2023, but written in 2007, that amounts to a full-blown corporatist imposition on the US, abolishing anything remotely resembling the Bill of Rights and Constitutional law. It is right there in plain sight for anyone curious enough to dig.
There is nothing in it that you haven’t already experienced with lockdowns. What makes it interesting are the participants in the forging of the plan, which is pretty much the whole of corporate America as it stood in 2007. It was a George W. Bush initiative. The conclusions are startling.
“Quarantine is a legally enforceable declaration that a government body may institute over individuals potentially exposed to a disease, but who are not symptomatic. If enacted, Federal quarantine laws will be coordinated between CDC and State and local public health officials, and, if necessary, law enforcement personnel…The government may also enact travel restrictions to limit the movement of people and products between geographic areas in an effort to limit disease transmission and spread. Authorities are currently reviewing possible plans to curtail international travel upon a pandemic’s emergence overseas.
“Limiting public assembly opportunities also helps limit the spread of disease. Concert halls, movie theaters, sports arenas, shopping malls, and other large public gathering places might close indefinitely during a pandemic—whether because of voluntary closures or government-imposed closures. Similarly, officials may close schools and non-essential businesses during pandemic waves in an effort to significantly slow disease transmission rates. These strategies aim to prevent the close interaction of individuals, the primary conduit of spreading the influenza virus. Even taking steps such as limiting person-to-person interactions within a distance of three feet or avoiding instances of casual close contact, such as shaking hands, will help limit disease spread.”
There we have it: the pandemic plans. They once seemed abstract. In 2020, they became very real. Your rights were deleted. No more freedom even to have house guests. In those days, the rule was to enforce only three feet of distance rather than six feet of distance, neither of which had any basis in science. Indeed, the actual scientific literature even at that time recommended against any physical interventions designed to limit the spread of respiratory viruses. They were known not to work. The entire profession of public health accepted that.
Therefore, for many years before lockdowns wrecked economic functioning, there had been two parallel tracks in operation, one intellectual/academic and one imposed by state/corporate managers. They had nothing to do with each other. This situation persisted for the better part of 15 years. Suddenly in 2020, there was a reckoning, and the state/corporate managers won it. Seemingly out of nowhere, liberty as we have long known it was gone.
Back in 2005, I first came across a Bush administration scheme, an early draft of the above, that would have ended freedom as we know it. It was a scheme for combating the bird flu, which officials back then imagined would involve universal quarantines, business and event closures, travel restrictions, and more.
I wrote: “Even if the flu does come, and taxpayers have coughed up, the government will surely have a ball imposing travel restrictions, shutting down schools and businesses, quarantining cities, and banning public gatherings…It is a serious matter when the government purports to plan to abolish all liberty and nationalize all economic life and put every business under the control of the military, especially in the name of a bug that seems largely restricted to the bird population. Perhaps we should pay more attention. Perhaps such plans for the total state ought to even ruffle our feathers a bit.”
For years I wrote about this topic, trying to get others interested. It was all there in black and white. At the drop of a hat, under the guise of a pandemic that only state managers can declare, real or drummed up, freedom itself could be abolished. These plans were never legislated, debated, or publicly discussed. They were simply posted as the result of various consultations with experts, who worked out their totalitarian fantasies as if scripting a Hollywood film.
The 2007 blueprint is more explicit than anything I’ve seen. It comes from the National Infrastructure Advisory Council, which “includes executive leaders from the private sector and state/local government who advise the White House on how to reduce physical and cyber risks and improve the security and resilience of the nation’s critical infrastructure sectors. The NIAC is administered on behalf of the President in accordance with the Federal Advisory Committee Act under the authority of the Secretary of the US Department of Homeland Security.”
And who sat on this committee in 2007 that decided that governments “may close schools and non-essential businesses”? Let us see.
Mr. Edmund G. Archuleta, General Manager, El Paso Water Utilities
Mr. Alfred R. Berkeley III, Chairman and CEO, Pipeline Trading Group, LLC, and former President and Vice Chairman of NASDAQ
Chief Rebecca F. Denlinger, Fire Chief, Cobb County (Ga.) Fire and Emergency Services
Chief Gilbert G. Gallegos, Police Chief (ret.), City of Albuquerque, N.M. Police Department
Ms. Martha H. Marsh, President and CEO, Stanford Hospital and Clinics
Mr. James B. Nicholson, President and CEO, PVS Chemical, Inc.
Mr. Erle A. Nye, Chairman Emeritus, TXU Corp., NIAC Chairman
Mr. Bruce A. Rohde, Chairman and CEO Emeritus, ConAgra Foods, Inc.
Mr. John W. Thompson, Chairman and CEO, Symantec Corporation
Mr. Brent Baglien, ConAgra Foods, Inc.
Mr. David Barron, Bell South
Mr. Dan Bart, TIA
Mr. Scott Blanchette, Healthways
Ms. Donna Burns, Georgia Emergency Management Agency
Mr. Rob Clyde, Symantec Corporation
Mr. Scott Culp, Microsoft
Mr. Clay Detlefsen, International Dairy Foods Association
Mr. Dave Engaldo, The Options Clearing Corporation
Ms. Courtenay Enright, Symantec Corporation
Mr. Gary Gardner, American Gas Association
Mr. Bob Garfield, American Frozen Foods Institute
Ms. Joan Gehrke, PVS Chemical, Inc.
Ms. Sarah Gordon, Symantec
Mr. Mike Hickey, Verizon
Mr. Ron Hicks, Anadarko Petroleum Corporation
Mr. George Hender, The Options Clearing Corporation
Mr. James Hunter, City of Albuquerque, NM Emergency Management
Mr. Stan Johnson, North American Electric Reliability Council (NERC)
Mr. David Jones, El Paso Corporation
Inspector Jay Kopstein, Operations Division, New York City Police Department (NYPD)
Ms. Tiffany Jones, Symantec Corporation
Mr. Bruce Larson, American Water
Mr. Charlie Lathram, Business Executives for National Security (BENS)/BellSouth
Mr. Turner Madden, Madden & Patton
Chief Mary Beth Michos, Prince William County (Va.) Fire and Rescue
Mr. Bill Muston, TXU Corp.
Mr. Vijay Nilekani, Nuclear Energy Institute
Mr. Phil Reitinger, Microsoft
Mr. Rob Rolfsen, Cisco Systems, Inc.
Mr. Tim Roxey, Constellation
Ms. Charyl Sarber, Symantec
Mr. Lyman Shaffer, Pacific Gas and Electric,
Ms. Diane VanDeHei, Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies (AMWA)
Ms. Susan Vismor, Mellon Financial Corporation
Mr. Ken Watson, Cisco Systems, Inc.
Mr. Greg Wells, Southwest Airlines
Mr. Gino Zucca, Cisco Systems, Inc.
Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Resources
Dr. Bruce Gellin, Rockefeller Foundation
Dr. Mary Mazanec
Dr. Stuart Nightingale, CDC
Ms. Julie Schafer
Dr. Ben Schwartz, CDC
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Resources
Mr. James Caverly, Director, Infrastructure Partnerships Division
Ms. Nancy Wong, NIAC Designated Federal Officer (DFO)
Ms. Jenny Menna, NIAC Designated Federal Officer (DFO)
Dr. Til Jolly
Mr. Jon MacLaren
Ms. Laverne Madison
Ms. Kathie McCracken
Mr. Bucky Owens
Mr. Dale Brown, Contractor
Mr. John Dragseth, IP attorney, Contractor
Mr. Jeff Green, Contractor
Mr. Tim McCabe, Contractor
Mr. William B. Anderson, ITS America
Mr. Michael Arceneaux, Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies (AMWA)
Mr. Chad Callaghan, Marriott Corporation
Mr. Ted Cromwell, American Chemistry Council (ACC)
Ms. Jeanne Dumas, American Trucking Association (ATA)
Ms. Joan Harris, US Department of Transportation, Office of the Secretary
Mr. Greg Hull, American Public Transportation Association
Mr. Joe LaRocca, National Retail Federation
Mr. Jack McKlveen, United Parcel Service (UPS)
Ms. Beth Montgomery, Wal-Mart
Dr. J. Patrick O’Neal, Georgia Office of EMS/Trauma/EP
Mr. Roger Platt, The Real Estate Roundtable
Mr. Martin Rojas, American Trucking Association (ATA)
Mr. Timothy Sargent, Senior Chief, Economic Analysis and Forecasting Division, Economic and Fiscal Policy Branch, Finance Canada
In other words, big everything: food, energy, retail, computers, water, and you name it. It’s a corporatist dream team.
Consider ConAgra itself. What is that? It is Banquet, Chef Boyardee, Healthy Choice, Orville Redenbacher’s, Reddi-Wip, Slim Jim, Hunt’s Peter Pan Egg Beaters, Hebrew National, Marie Callender’s, P.F. Chang’s, Ranch Style Beans, Ro*Tel, Wolf Brand Chili, Angie’s, Duke’s, Gardein, Frontera, Bertolli, among many other seemingly independent brands that are all actually one company.
Now, ask yourself: why might all these companies favor a plan for lockdowns? Why might WalMart, for example? It stands to reason. Lockdowns are a massive interference with competitive capitalism. They provide the best possible subsidy to big business while shutting down independent small businesses and putting them at a huge disadvantage once the opening up happens.
In other words, it is an industrial racket, very much akin to interwar-style fascism, a corporatist combination of big business and big government. Throw pharma into the mix and you see exactly what came to pass in 2020, which amounted to the largest transfer of wealth from small and medium-sized business plus the middle class to wealthy industrialists in the history of humanity.
The document is open even about managing information flows: “The public and private sectors should align their communications, exercises, investments, and support activities absolutely with both the plan and priorities during a pandemic influenza event. Continue data gathering, analysis, reporting, and open review.”
There is nothing in any of this that fits with any Western tradition of law and liberty. Nothing. It was never approved by any democratic means. It was never part of any political campaign. It has never been the subject of any serious media examination. No think tank has ever pushed back on such plans in any systematic way.
The last serious attempt to debunk this whole apparatus was from D.H. Henderson in 2006. His two co-authors on that paper eventually came around to going along with lockdowns of 2020. Henderson died in 2016. One of the co-authors of the original article told me that if Dr. Henderson had been around, instead of Dr. Fauci, the lockdowns would never have taken place.
Here we are four years following the deployment of this lockdown machinery, and we are witness to what it destroys. It would be nice to say that the entire apparatus and theory behind it have been fully discredited.
But that is not correct. All the plans are still in place. There have been no changes in federal law. Not one effort has been made to dismantle the corporatist/biosecurity planning state that made all this possible. Every bit of it is in place for the next go-around.
Much of the authority for this whole coup traces to the Public Health Services Act of 1944, which was passed in wartime. For the first time in US history, it gave the federal government the power to quarantine. Even when the Biden administration was looking for some basis to justify its transportation mask mandate, it fell back to this one piece of legislation.
If anyone really wants to get to the root of this problem, there are decisive steps that need to be taken. The indemnification of pharma from liability for harm needs to be repealed. The court precedent of forced shots in Jacobson needs to be overthrown. But even more fundamentally, the quarantine power itself has to go, and that means the full repeal of the Public Health Services Act of 1944. That is the root of the problem. Freedom will not be safe until it is uprooted.
As it stands right now, everything that unfolded in 2020 and 2021 can happen again. Indeed, the plans are in place for exactly that.
Pro-Israel lawmakers and Zionist accounts on social media caused a firestorm after law professor Katherine Franke questioned the conduct of ex-IDF members on Columbia’s New York City campus.
A tenured professor at New York’s Columbia University faces firing after a pro-Israel online campaign criticizing comments the academic made on behalf of pro-Palestine demonstrators at the Ivy League school.
“There’s a very good chance that they will fire me,” said law professor Katherine Franke after being subjected to questioning she characterized as hostile as a part of Columbia’s investigation into the incident.
The controversy stems from an interview Franke granted to Democracy Now! on January 25. The professor sharply criticized Columbia’s response to an incident in which pro-Palestine protesters were sprayed with an unknown chemical substance by two alleged veterans of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
University administrators initially blamed the students for conducting an “unsanctioned” protest before finally banning the perpetrators from campus while police conducted an investigation of the incident.
“Columbia has a program, It’s a graduate relationship with older students from other countries, including Israel,” Franke noted on the radio program. “It’s something that many of us were concerned about because so many of those Israeli students who then come to the Columbia campus are coming right out of their military service. And they’ve been known to harass Palestinian and other students on our campus, and it’s something the university has not taken seriously in the past.”
“The university waited three or four days to actually even say anything about it,” she added. “They have not reached out to the students who were sick… some of whom are still in the hospital.”
The comment was subsequently mischaracterized by pro-Israel accounts on social media, who alleged that Franke advocated banning Israeli citizens from the Columbia campus.
“This @Columbia professor has a problem with former IDF soldiers being on campus,” read one post typical of the outrage, shared by Columbia Business School professor Shai Davidai, who identifies on the X platform as “Jewish Israeli” and “Zionist.”
“She doesn’t have a problem with ex-soldiers from any other place,” he complained. “Her only problem is with Israelis. @ProfKFranke – I served in the IDF. Do you think I also shouldn’t be allowed on campus?”
Davidai publicly criticized a wave of pro-Palestine protest on US college campuses earlier this year, calling the students “Nazis” and “terrorists” and calling for the National Guard to be deployed to break up the demonstrations. The demand implies a deadly threat against protesters in the United States, where National Guard troops shot and killed several antiwar demonstrators at Ohio’s Kent State University in 1970.
The business professor’s comments have been shared by official Israeli government accounts online as the country has invested significant effort in defending its cause on social media. It emerged last month that Israel has set up fake accounts online to lobby US lawmakers to continue supporting its military operation in the besieged Gaza Strip, which a study recently claimed could kill as many as 186,000. In 2013 it was revealed the country pays students to defend it on Facebook and Twitter.
Columbia administration released a statement defending Israeli students in response to the firestorm, which was championed by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. The following month Franke was informed a complaint had been lodged against her by two Columbia law professors for “discrimination,” and in April Republican Congresswoman Elise Stefanik called for disciplinary action against her during a House hearing with controversial Columbia University President Minouche Shafik.
A number of college professors and other faculty have been fired or faced disciplinary action in the United States for expressing pro-Palestine sentiments. Dr. Ameer Loggins is filing a defamation suit against California’s Stanford University after being fired for giving a lecture that discussed Israel in the context of historical acts of settler colonialism.
“What’s of greatest concern is not really my 20-year-plus career at Columbia, but what this says about peaceful protest on our campuses around the lives and dignity of Palestinians,” Franke said about the investigation into her comments, which remains ongoing. “What’s happening to me is happening to our students, it’s happened to people on many other campuses.” … Full article
The Lebanese Resistance Brigades, a paramilitary group linked to Hezbollah, claimed responsibility yesterday for a military operation against Israel in southern Lebanon. This announcement marks the group’s first since the launch of Al-Aqsa Flood last year.
Founded by Hezbollah in 1997, the Brigades include volunteer fighters from various Lebanese sects. On Friday, they reported launching rockets at the Israeli ‘Rweisat al-Qarn’ site in the occupied Lebanese Shebaa Farms, achieving a “direct hit.” Hezbollah and Israel have engaged in near-daily exchanges of fire since the war on Gaza began.
Hezbollah which supports Hamas has vowed to cease attacks only with a Gaza ceasefire. The Lebanese government and Hezbollah rejected the occupation state’s demand to evacuate the border area of Hezbollah fighters. Nabih Berri’s parliamentary bloc welcomed international efforts to end Israel’s aggression against Gaza and opposed establishing buffer zones in Lebanon.
In October, the Lebanese Resistance Brigades lost two of its fighters, Ali Kamal Abdel Aal “Jihad” and Hussein Hassan Abdel Aal “Bilal”, from the town of Helta in southern Lebanon, who were martyred while performing their national duty, reports Al Mayadeen.
Cross-border fire continues, with a Lebanese army vehicle recently hit by Israeli gunfire. The personnel escaped unharmed. The Brigades affirmed their mission to resist Israeli occupation and liberate Lebanese territories.
US presidential candidate Donald Trump was hit in the ear when a gunman opened fire at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13. One spectator was killed and two were critically injured during this apparent attempt on Trump’s life.
“The constant comparisons of [former] President Trump to Hitler and the repeated calls over the last several years for stabbing, killing, poisoning, decapitating or shooting [former] President Trump serve as dog whistles to provoke and incite violence and very well may have fueled this assassination attempt,” GOP House Representative Paul Gosar told Sputnik.
“We do know that in a widely reported call to hundreds of donors last week, Joe Biden boasted, ‘I have one job, and that’s to beat Donald Trump… it’s time to put Trump in a bullseye’,” Gosar recalled.
“Let me be perfectly clear: there is absolutely no place for this sort of incendiary rhetoric and calls for violence in politics today and everyone must condemn it,” the congressman stressed.
Gosar also pointed out that congressional Democrats, led by liberal Representative Bennie Thompson, even introduced legislation that would have stripped Trump of the Secret Service protection afforded to him by his status as a former president.
The multiple reports about Trump’s security detail “asking for beefed up protection and resources for weeks” but getting “rebuffed time and again by Biden’s DHS [Department of Homeland Security],” if true, hint at “criminal” disregard for Trump’s safety, he warned.
Meanwhile, former military intelligence and CIA Operations Officer Philip Giraldi argued that the less-than-stellar performance of US Secret Service agents during the assassination attempt on Donald Trump was somewhat of a surprise.
“For more than twenty years I have observed the work of the Secret Service on protection details close up in embassies and during visits of congressmen and other senior officials, which has been excellent,” Giraldi explains. “So this time I am surprised that they did not have a rooftop 200 meters away from the speaker’s stand with a clear shot at it covered with someone stationed on it to close it off.”
According to him, failure to do so was “either negligence in planning or in execution and someone will likely have to answer some hard questions regarding what was not done.”
Giraldi also notes that he has no information about whether any more shooters were involved in the attempt, and that both of the US political parties “are guilty of incitement because of the violent-laced language they have been using when speaking of their opponents.”
While the attempted assassination of Donald Trump has been roundly condemned by his political opponents, liberal politicians and pundits have – implicitly and explicitly – called for his death before.
Trump narrowly avoided death at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday, when an assassin’s bullet apparently clipped his ear as it whizzed past his head. The shooter – named by the FBI as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks – killed one spectator at the rally and wounded two others before he was shot dead by Secret Service agents.
US President Joe Biden decried the attempt on Trump’s life, declaring that “there’s no place for this kind of violence in America.” Ever since Trump won the 2016 election, however, he has faced a steady stream of threats from members of Biden’s party and their allies in the media.
Off with his head
Hollywood celebrities reacted with outrage to Trump’s shock defeat of Hillary Clinton in 2016. 80s pop icon Madonna spoke of wanting to “blow up the White House;” actor and activist Peter Fonda called for the president’s youngest son, Barron, to be “put in a cage with pedophiles;” and comedienne Kathy Griffin grabbed headlines when she posed for a photoshoot holding a mockup of Trump’s bloodied and severed head.
Addressing the audience at Britain’s Glastonbury Festival in 2018, Johnny Depp wondered “when was the last time an actor assassinated a president?,” adding “maybe it’s time.” This reference to the assassination of Abraham Lincoln was echoed by Broadway star Carole Cook several months later, when she asked a photographer “where’s John Wilkes Booth when you need him?”
Take him out
Speaking to MSNBC after Trump formally announced his presidential campaign last year, Representative Dan Goldman declared that his fellow New Yorker cannot be allowed to “see public office again.”
“He is not only unfit, he is destructive to our democracy, and he has to be, he has to be eliminated,”Goldman proclaimed.
While Goldman later apologized for his choice of words, he is not the only Democrat lawmaker to apparently threaten Trump’s life. Michigan State Representative Cynthia Johnson was stripped of her committee assignments in 2020 when she warned Trump and his “trumpers” to “walk lightly,” or else her “soldiers” would “make them pay.”
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi used similar rhetoric last week when she declared that the upcoming presidential election “is not a normal election,” and that Trump “must be stopped. He cannot be president.”
Two weeks before the shooting, BBC reporter David Aaronovitch wrote on X that if he were President “Biden, I’d hurry up and have Trump murdered on the basis that he is a threat to America’s security.” On Sunday morning, Aaronovitch said that he had deleted the tweet, claiming that his words were “clearly satirical.”
A threat to democracy
Biden’s response to Saturday’s shooting was one of unequivocal condemnation. The president, who will face off against Trump in this November’s election, said that he was “praying for” his political opponent, and that “we must unite as one nation to condemn” political violence.
In a post on social media less than a month earlier, however, Biden’s team described Trump as “a genuine threat to this nation.”
“He’s a threat to our freedom. He’s a threat to our democracy. He’s literally a threat to everything America stands for,” they posted on the president’s social media accounts.
While Biden has never explicitly wished physical harm on his opponent, at least one would-be assassin has used similar words to justify his plans to kill Trump. 77-year-old Thomas Welnicki was arrested for phoning US Capitol Police in 2020 threatening to “take down” then-President Trump. His lawyer later told prosecutors in New York that Welnicki was distraught at “the threats to our democracy posed by former President Trump.”
Stripped of protection
Had Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson got his way, Trump would have had no Secret Service protection at Saturday’s rally. Earlier this year, Thompson proposed legislation that would strip this protection from former presidents convicted of felonies, as Trump was in May. The act was explicitly tailored to target Trump, Thompson’s office said, explaining that the former president’s criminal charges “have created a new exigency that Congress must address.”
Immediately following Saturday’s shooting, one of Thompson’s staffers wrote on Facebook that the shooter should “get some shooting lessons so you don’t miss next time.” She deleted the post – which Mississippi Republicans called “despicable” – shortly afterwards.
Former President and impending Republican Nominee Donald Trump survived an assassination attempt at an outdoor rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday days before his party’s national convention after suddenly turning his head at the last second and thus miraculously dodging a bullet that only ended up grazing his ear. The shooter was killed by the Secret Service, but an eyewitness told the media that he warned the police about a man crawling on the roof a few minutes earlier, though no action was taken.
This security lapse is suspicious and prompts speculation that at least one member of the Secret Service might have purposely waited until after the shooter took his shot before neutralizing him, whether out of sympathy for his cause or perhaps because they were in on some sort of plot. About the shooter, he’s been identified as Thomas Matthew Crooks, a registered Republican. It remains unclear at the time of writing what his online history was and whether there’s more to his party affiliation than meets the eye.
At the very least, there’s no doubt that the Democrats’ and their allied “Never Trumpers’” hatemongering played a role in radicalizing the suspect. Had he succeeded in assassinating Trump, then the US would have certainly plunged into socio-political disaster, which it literally missed by less than an inch. Many expect that powerfulDemocratdonors might soon force Biden to drop out of the race, thus leading to the party selecting their nominee outside of the notionally democratic primary process.
Their Republican counterparts would have done the same on their side of the aisle, especially since Trump hadn’t yet announced his Vice-Presidential pick by the time of his attempted assassination. Both parties would therefore have likely chosen nominees that didn’t complete their respective primary processes, thus blatantly disenfranchising Americans even more than they already are in reality. In theory, the elections could be delayed to re-run the primaries, but Congress might not agree to it.
Even if they did, the aforementioned hyperlinked article reminded readers that the 20th Amendment mandates the end of the President and Vice-President’s four-year terms at noon on 20 January, thus leading to (replacement) President Harris being forced to step down before a new one is elected. Her Vice-Presidential replacement could only be speculated upon in that scenario since the 25th Amendment stipulates that they’d have to be confirmed by a majority vote of both Houses of Congress.
Whether or not the elections would be delayed, the US would continue to be ruled by the “governing oligarchy” that Axios reported late last month is the real power behind Biden. This analysis here that was coincidentally published earlier that same day noted that “The country is being ruled by a shadowy network of transnational and domestic elites that are united by their radical liberal-globalist ideology.” This group simply exploits Biden as their placeholder to publicly legitimize all of their decisions.
They’d remain in power if the Democrats keep the White House or if a “Republican In Name Only” (RINO) replaced Trump had he been assassinated. The former President promised supporters that he’d make good on his former pledge to “drain the swamp” if he’s re-elected, and while precedent suggests that he might once again fail, there’s still a chance that he might partially succeed. At the very least, his return could create the conditions for some replacements, who might be conservative-nationalists.
This insight sheds light on those forces who’d be pleased had he been assassinated, namely the liberal–globalist clique that secretly controls American policy, and they’d also have been delighted that Trump wouldn’t get the opportunity to end their latest “forever war” in Ukraine like he sought to do. His potential Republican successor could try to follow in his planned footsteps, but they also might not be interested in doing so if they’re a RINO, hence why taking Trump out could have been a game-changer.
On the home front, there’s no doubt that “shitlibs” would have plastered pictures of Trump’s blown-out brains all over social media and their cities in order to incite his supporters to violence, and some of them would have predictably obliged after being endlessly provoked with such images. The ruling liberal-globalists have wanted to radicalize MAGA members for a while already in order to further discredit their movement and create a compelling pretext for cracking down more forcefully upon them all.
It also can’t be ruled out that some of these newly radicalized supporters of his might have carried out “retributive violence” by targeting Democrat officials from the federal level on down to the local one if they blamed them for his assassination. Infamous anti-Trump celebrities and influencers could also have been caught up in this bloody campaign, which might have led to martial law in parts of the country like Trump should have imposed during the Democrats’ spree of urban terrorism in summer 2020.
America’s socio-political fabric could therefore have very easily been torn to shreds had Trump not suddenly turned his head at the last minute and thus miraculously averted this worst-case scenario by less than an inch. There’s no guarantee that this won’t happen again, however, which is why it’s imperative that Trump immediately announce his Vice-Presidential pick and ideally choose someone who the ruling liberal-globalist elite is also afraid of in order to reduce the chances of him being killed.
Regardless of whatever happens, America just got a reality check about how close it is to descending into chaos, which shows how much it’s changed for the worse since 2016. Partisan radicalization and elite scheming have always been around, but they reached an unprecedented level after Trump became the Republican Nominee back then. He’s an imperfect candidate with a lot of personal flaws, but his re-election is the last chance to save America from itself if he succeeds in implementing his lofty plans.
Former U.S. President Donald Trump was attacked during a rally in Pennsylvania. A sniper shot at Trump, grazing him in the head and injuring other people attending the event. The American secret service quickly neutralized the shooter after the shots were fired, however witnesses on the streets said they reported to the police about the shooter’s position before the attack, with the agents apparently ignoring the reports.
Trump is fine, the injuries have not caused him any serious damage. More than that, Trump is politically stronger than ever. His image as a “survivor” and “martyr” gives him a great advantage in the electoral race with rival Joe Biden – who has been the target of criticism even by his supporters, due to his serious condition of mental weakness.
Some conspiracy theorists have spread fake news and fantastic narratives on the internet about Trump having orchestrated the attack just to improve his political image. Obviously, this type of speech makes no sense. From a rational point of view, there is no reason for Trump to organize an attempt on his own life just to obtain political gains in a dispute in which he already has every possible advantage. Trump is already recognized as the favorite in the elections, so there is no reason for him to take such a risk.
In the same sense, there is little data available to confirm that Biden and the Democrats are behind the maneuver. The mere fact that there is a political and electoral rivalry is not enough to accuse the side opposing Trump. However, despite this, it is necessary to emphasize that intelligence operations using snipers are a typical CIA tactic. Furthermore, another American security agency with reasons to eliminate Trump is the FBI, as the former president plans to approve a reform that will end part of this institution’s powers.
In the near future, more data will be revealed about the case, which will certainly facilitate the work of investigators and analysts, helping to get to the truth. For now, the main thing to do is not try to reach conclusions about who tried to kill Trump, but to analyze the case as a whole, considering the entire American political and social context in the midst of these elections.
In fact, what can be concluded for now is that the U.S. is already a failed state. The country that was once recognized as the land of democracy and freedom is now nothing more than a state with an unviable administration, full of social chaos, institutional instability, racial tensions and political polarization. The U.S. domestic situation is not so different from that of countries widely recognized as “failed states” in some regions of Africa or Central America. From the moment presidential candidates suffer assassination attempts – or begin to show signs of mental illness – it seems clear that the country is on the brink of an irreversible institutional crisis.
The American reality no longer seems possible to reverse. Intelligence officials have long reported the possibility of the U.S. falling into civil war – or at least serious social conflict – in the coming years. Racial and political tensions have worsened and generated increasing concerns about the near future. Regardless of who wins the elections, this scenario is unlikely to improve. Either president will only worsen the polarization, intensify the hatred of followers of one side against the other. There will be no peace among American citizens, but tensions progressively escalating towards civil war.
If the situation that currently affects the U.S. were occurring in any developing country, Western powers would already be proposing a series of interventionist measures in international organizations. As happens in several poor countries, it is also possible to think of an “international solution” for the U.S., through some intervention by the UN or the OAS. A failed state needs international support to overcome its domestic problems – and, in fact, the U.S. is currently nothing more than a mere failed state.
Perhaps it is time for the U.S. to rethink its own capacity as a sovereign state.
If you’ve been off grid, former president Donald Trump narrowly escaped death at his rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday July 13, 2024, at approximately 6:15 p.m.
Trump’s speech was being live streamed, so video footage of the attempted assassination went viral across social media.
Several mainstream media outlets, however, delayed coverage or reported inaccurately on the events, frustrating the public and inflaming criticism of the legacy media.
When the first bullet clipped Trump’s right ear, narrowly missing his skull, he ducked down at the podium before secret service jumped to his aid.
Onlookers say Trump was calm. The podium microphones picked up his audio. “Get my shoes” he said to one of his secret service agents.
Trump then stood up and turned to his supporters with a bloodied face and fist in the air, mouthing the words “fight, fight, fight” before being rushed off the stage.
The crowd erupted.
Iconic moment: Trump acknowledges his supporters after the botched assassination attempt.
Regardless of your politics, the attempt on Trump’s life was morally bankrupt and an attack on democracy. Any sort of violence, political or otherwise, should be condemned.
Trump released a statement soon after the assassination attempt, confirming that he’d been shot, and that one bullet had “pierced” his right ear.
“I knew immediately that something was wrong in that I heard a whizzing sound, shots, and immediately felt the bullet ripping through the skin,” wrote Trump on his Truth Social platform.
The suspected gunman, who was positioned on a rooftop 150 yards away, managed to fire multiple shots at the stage where Trump was standing, before he was neutralised by a secret service sniper.
One person who attended the rally was killed and two other spectators were critically wounded.
Alleged shooter on a nearby rooftop shot dead moments after the failed assassination attempt.
No doubt there will be a lot of speculation about the incident over the coming days and weeks, but it was the coverage by mainstream media that left many fuming.
Left leaning news outlets began downplaying the seriousness of the situation.
USA Today and The Washington Post, for example, both reported that Trump was escorted off stage after hearing “loud noises” at the rally, as if it was something innocuous like balloons popping.
CNN published a headline claiming that Trump had to be rushed off stage after a “fall” as if to imply that he had tripped over.
Another CNN headline claimed that Trump’s speech was “interrupted by secret service” instead of describing it as an assassination attempt.
CNN even criticised Trump for his display of defiance on stage, attacking him for not urging calm.
“That’s not the message that we want to be sending right now,” remarked one CNN commentator.
In my own country, Australia’s free-to-air broadcaster Channel 10 was slammed for taking more than an hour to cover the attempted assassination.
Instead of immediately cutting their regular programming to cover the unfolding attack, Channel 10 continued to air cooking shows.
People jumped on social media to get the latest information, and express their frustration with how politicised and biased mainstream media had become.
One X user mocked CNN’s coverage. “‘Loud noises’ made Trump ‘fall’ which ‘interrupted’ the rally. Thank you mainstream media for never failing to fail.”
Another posted, “Trump gets shot at on live television and this is the headline the mainstream media goes with?! This is what the mainstream media has become – a propaganda machine. They don’t want you to believe what you see with your own eyes.”
A different X user wrote, “Mainstream media is the cancer of society.”
People were glued to X, one of the few social media platforms that provided immediate and transparent access to video, photographic and audio recordings of the attack.
As someone who worked in mainstream media for over a decade, this comes as no surprise as I’ve watched the industry slowly rot.
People are cancelling subscriptions to newspapers and cable providers in droves. Mass layoffs, job cuts and hiring freezes have all precipitated the substantial contraction of small and large media outlets and seen massive declines in ratings and audience engagement.
Last year, media companies slashed over 20,000 jobs in the sector, and the culling of journalists has continued into 2024. In January, the Los Angeles Timesaxed 20% of its newsroom and laid off its entire Washington DC bureau in an election year.
Many people have watched as journalism – once a frank and fearless pursuit for truth – has become a running commentary of consensus statements and government propaganda.
I think legacy media is slowly dying and the coverage of Trump’s assassination attempt has only emboldened my view.
Now, more than ever, independent journalists (like me) need to be funded because we are not constrained by politics, official narratives or advertising revenue.
Twenty Year old Thomas Mathew Crooks murdered a bystander and injured others in an attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump. Trump suffered, a bullet injuring his ear. The killer was shot dead by a secret service counter sniper. The crowd cheered, “USA, USA!” once Trump raised his fists in defiance, proof of life. A relief for his supporters. Those shot and close to the dead and wounded struggled with life and death in desperate and confused moments. Though history will now relegate them as props to an event of significance, as human beings they lived a life. In politics they matter nought, just faces in the crowd wearing slogans on their shirts.
At this time just another ‘lone gun man’, American political assassinations are enshrined in such a killer tradition. If only, the killer of Arch Duke Frans Ferdinand of the Austro-Hungarian empire was deemed as such, then the stupidity that led to World War One may not occurred, instead contained between killer and slain. The US is different. At crucial historical moments a deranged man can swipe away the politically important. The bystanders hit, need not matter.
Before presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy died, after being shot by an assassin, he asked, “Is every body OK?” The 18-year old hotel busboy Juan Romero who held his hand as he lay bleeding on the floor, nodded, “Yes.” To which RFK replied, “Everything will be OK.” Kennedy died moments later. His murderer Sirhan Sirhan would go on to be immortalised alongside John Wilkes Boothe and Lee Harvey Oswald. If Thomas Mathew Crooks had of been slightly more accurate and Trump had not of turned to face the direction of the shooter, then his name would have become as historically significant. The bystanders he shot as forgotten.
In an attempt to prevent the former president of reclaiming his mantle in the oval office, the would be assassin has ensured his victory. Biden is out of ice cream cones and children to sniff, the senile in chief has been abandoned by the media and party diehards who had pretended that he was of sound mind and body. Robert F Kennedy, Jr now may be the candidate to face the former president. He could wear his Democrat feathers again, with a fringe following online and has his father and dead uncles last name. He is like Trump, royalty from the long 20th century, sacred to Pax Americana. What’s her face, Kamala Harris doesn’t even have supporters in her own household and despite the media suddenly reminding the world that she exists, her likeliness of contesting the former president is as enthralling as running Walter Mondale again.
Rest in peace the forgotten fallen of history, those who see themselves as your betters will stand upon the corpse you lived in so that they may ascend. Politics is that ugly place where those who seek to rule use the violent monopoly, they may even sometimes come to a violent end themselves. Politics is that ugly thing where those who politically oppose mutter, “pity they missed.” All the while pretending to be a peaceful person or that the religion of government is anything other than violent absurdity. Politics is the craziness that motivates not just the lone gun men of history but the marching hordes of genocide to do bloody deeds. Politics validates both.
Rejoice those who believe in popular messiahs, The Donald lives. If an assassin’s bullets hissed past his head to which his fists raise in response imagine how pointless the many “rhee!”of screams are should he find re-election again. Rest assured, Trump or Biden, same government. But with the magic wand of executive powers Orange man 2.0 shall dust off the 4d chess board and attempt to drain the swamp,againand make the place great again for the usual types. It’s not that Trump is that great a candidate, be honest, Biden, Hilary. “Vote Blue No Matter Who!” has led to a very embarrassing period for the devoted believers in government and party politics. But we have the Butterbean era of politics, smoker fights for the low attention spans. Simple slogans to seduce and placate, complex issues be damned, raise the debt ceiling and bomb Tehran or Moscow or a tent in the Yemen. All presidential things.
“USA! USA!” Cheers the crowd. And unlike other political candidates, real human beings like this one. Those outside of the status quo sectors that is. Donald Trump survived, he walks on now vindicated. He is a living martyr having bled for the cause, to his supporters and those on the fence, it means Vote One for him. RFK, Jr even with namesake and the podcast generation and all their memes doesn’t stand a chance. If anyone really wanted an alternative to the status quo, Jill Stein and Chase Oliver exist. But Red and Blue is choice enough.
Rest in Peace, the at present unknown bystander who was murdered. A real person lays dead.
The Kevin Barrett-Chomsky Dispute in Historical Perspective – Last part of the series titled “9/11 and the Zionist Question”
By Prof. Tony Hall | American Herald Tribune | August 28, 2016
Amidst his litany of condemnations, Jonathan Kay reserves some of his most vicious and vitriolic attacks for Kevin Barrett. For instance Kay harshly criticizes Dr. Barrett’s published E-Mail exchange in 2008 with Prof. Chomsky. In that exchange Barrett castigates Chomsky for not going to the roots of the event that “doubled the military budget overnight, stripped Americans of their liberties and destroyed their Constitution.” The original misrepresentations of 9/11, argues Barrett, led to further “false flag attacks to trigger wars, authoritarianism and genocide.”
In Among The Truthers Kay tries to defend Chomsky against Barrett’s alleged “personal obsession” with “vilifying” the MIT academic. Kay objects particularly to Barrett’s “final salvo” in the published exchange where the Wisconsin public intellectual accuses Prof. Chomsky of having “done more to keep the 9/11 blood libel alive, and cause the murder of more than a million Muslims than any other single person.” … continue
This site is provided as a research and reference tool. Although we make every reasonable effort to ensure that the information and data provided at this site are useful, accurate, and current, we cannot guarantee that the information and data provided here will be error-free. By using this site, you assume all responsibility for and risk arising from your use of and reliance upon the contents of this site.
This site and the information available through it do not, and are not intended to constitute legal advice. Should you require legal advice, you should consult your own attorney.
Nothing within this site or linked to by this site constitutes investment advice or medical advice.
Materials accessible from or added to this site by third parties, such as comments posted, are strictly the responsibility of the third party who added such materials or made them accessible and we neither endorse nor undertake to control, monitor, edit or assume responsibility for any such third-party material.
The posting of stories, commentaries, reports, documents and links (embedded or otherwise) on this site does not in any way, shape or form, implied or otherwise, necessarily express or suggest endorsement or support of any of such posted material or parts therein.
The word “alleged” is deemed to occur before the word “fraud.” Since the rule of law still applies. To peasants, at least.
Fair Use
This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more info go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
DMCA Contact
This is information for anyone that wishes to challenge our “fair use” of copyrighted material.
If you are a legal copyright holder or a designated agent for such and you believe that content residing on or accessible through our website infringes a copyright and falls outside the boundaries of “Fair Use”, please send a notice of infringement by contacting atheonews@gmail.com.
We will respond and take necessary action immediately.
If notice is given of an alleged copyright violation we will act expeditiously to remove or disable access to the material(s) in question.
All 3rd party material posted on this website is copyright the respective owners / authors. Aletho News makes no claim of copyright on such material.
Aletho News 