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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.

June 21, 2023 Posted by | Progressive Hypocrite | , , | Leave a comment

Protecting the Secrets of the Dark Side

By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | June 21, 2023

Given that the United States is a national-security state, it stands to reason that most, if not all, of its secrets relate to its dark-side activities, including the planning and carrying out of state-sponsored assassinations of political leaders. Woe to the person who discloses any of these dark-side activities, for he or she will be branded a spy, a traitor, and a hater of America and will be treated accordingly.

Let’s imagine a reasonable hypothetical. Let’s suppose that the CIA plots the assassination of Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel, on the ground that he is a communist and, therefore, a grave threat to U.S. “national security.” The plan, which is termed Operation Liberty, calls for an ambush involving a team of expert marksmen who intend to shoot Díaz-Canel from high-story buildings as he is riding in a parade in downtown Havana. The plot entails framing a fierce anti-communist, pro-U.S. fanatic for the crime, who will himself be quickly killed after the president’s assassination. All the planning and training has been completed. The date of the assassination is set for January 1, 2024, the anniversary date of the Cuban revolution.

Let’s now assume that a CIA official happens to get wind of Operation Liberty. Troubled by a crisis of conscience, the official decides to secretly warn Díaz-Canel and the Cuban regime of the CIA’s assassination plot. On January 1, Díaz-Canel fails to take the fateful ride. Instead, Cuban officials bust up the assassination plot and arrest all the people who are involved in it. The suspects are put on trial, convicted, and sentenced to serve long jail sentences.

After a fierce investigation, CIA officials discover the identity of the CIA official who disclosed Operation Liberty to the Cubans. It is not difficult to imagine what comes next. The official is charged with violations of the old 1917 Espionage Act and with betraying the CIA by disclosing its national-security state secrets to an official enemy of the United States.

When the official is brought to trial, the prosecutor will condemn him or her as an evil traitor, a spy, a betrayer of American secrets, and an America-hater. The federal judge in the case will not permit the official to explain his or her reasons for what he or she did. Such reasons will be considered to be irrelevant. All that matters will be the fact that the official endangered “national security” by revealing national-security-state dark-side secrets to the enemy.

The official will be easily convicted. At sentencing, the federal judge will brand the official as a traitorous disgrace to the United States, one who betrayed his oath to preserve the dark-side secrets of the national-security establishment. The judge will then follow the CIA’s recommendation by meting out the highest possible jail sentence to the malefactor. The official will be sent to a maximum-security federal prison.

While this scenario is entirely hypothetical, there is no doubt whatsoever that this is precisely what would unfold if this were to actually happen. And yet, it provides a perfect demonstration of how the conversion of the federal government to a national-security state has warped and perverted the morals and values of the American people.

The CIA’s plot to assassinate Díaz-Canel is murder, pure and simple. The fact that it is a governmental entity that is plotting to commit the murder does not remove it from the category of murder. Neither does calling the murder a “state-sponsored assassination.”

What about that CIA official who has moral objections to murder, including murders committed by the national-security establishment? Tough luck. Those moral objections are irrelevant in a national-security state. The only thing that matters is what the national-security establishment thinks. If the CIA determines that someone is a threat to “national security,” that is the end of the story. The CIA is the decider, not the person who has moral qualms against state-sponsored assassinations. The latter must keep his mouth shut and simply let the assassination happen.

Thus, under our form of government, the person who saves the life of a person by disclosing to him a secret CIA plot to assassinate him is considered to be a bad person — a traitor — a betrayer of America’s secrets — a person who hates his or her country. The good people — the patriots — are considered to be those who plot the murder of those people who are deemed to be threats to “national security.”

In other words, in the Bizarro World of a national-security state, state-sponsored murderers are good patriots who we are expected to honor, glorify, and praise. Those who oppose or foil the assassination plots of the national-security state are considered to be evil traitors who we are expected to hate, vilify, and condemn.

June 21, 2023 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

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.

June 21, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , | Leave a comment

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.”

June 21, 2023 Posted by | Aletho News | , | Leave a comment

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.

June 21, 2023 Posted by | Progressive Hypocrite | , | Leave a comment

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.

June 21, 2023 Posted by | Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite | , , | Leave a comment

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.

Subs

June 21, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

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.”

June 21, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science, Video | , , | Leave a comment

Peter Hotez’s War Against Science

Compassionate approaches for dealing with those who promote falsehoods and silence the truth

A Midwestern Doctor | June 18, 2023

Peter Hotez is well-known for receiving millions for vaccine development and being a militant defender of the narrative who maliciously attacks anyone who challenges him but refuses to ever debate anyone who disagrees with him.

This became a big problem because prior to COVID-19 the media paraded him around to advocate for mass censorship of anyone who questioned vaccines. His publicity campaign then paved the way for the mass censorship we saw over the last few years (which likely cost millions of lives during the pandemic since everyone who questioned the dysfunctional pandemic response online was silenced).

After the initial objective was achieved, Peter Hotez pivoted to calling for the government to target and silence anyone who questioned the vaccine narrative. He justified these fascist demands with his lies that anyone who questioned the vaccines were mass murders and engaged in a war against science.

Recently, Hotez (who always hurls inflammatory allegations) picked a fight with Joe Rogan and the unprecedented public response exposed Hotez’s grift to the entire world. Many in turn assumed Hotez’s refusal to debate vaccine misinformation (in return for a massive donation being given to a charity of Hotez’s choice) meant all of Hotez’s claims about helping the poor were nothing more than a grift.

Because of the damage Hotez has done to the world, I’ve dug into his background and discovered many concerning things about his character, how he sees himself and his past conduct. One of the most concerning things is that he was one of the mad virologists who was complicit in the GoF research on the SARS coronavirus which led to the lab leak that gave us COVID-19. Even more unbelievable, at the same time he did this, he had a massive grant from the NIH to develop a SARS vaccine for a SARS lab leak, a vaccine he has since developed and brought to market.

This is all hard to believe, so I did my best to both cover just who Hotez is in detail here and provide helpful perspectives on how to we can compassionately but effectively deal with difficult people like Hotez.

Read it here.

June 20, 2023 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | | Leave a comment

Declassified files expose British role in NATO’s Gladio terror armies

By Kit KLARENBERG | THE GRAYZONE | JUNE 19, 2023

Newly declassified British Foreign Office files have added disturbing details to the history of Operation Gladio. The covert operation was uncovered in 1990, when the public learned that the CIA, MI6 and NATO trained and directed an underground army of fascist paramilitary units across Europe, deploying its assets to undermine political opponents, including through false flag terror attacks.

Among them was a young Silvio Berlusconi, the media oligarch who served as Italian Prime Minister in four separate governments between 1994 and 2011. Listed as a member of the P2, the secret Cold War-era cabal of political elites devoted to Gladio’s aims, Berlusconi undoubtedly took some weighty secrets to the grave when he died this June 12th.

It is almost impossible to believe that inconvenient truths were not weeded from Britain’s documentary record on Operation Gladio prior to declassification. Nonetheless, the recently released material is highly illuminating. Covering a fraught twelve month period after the first public disclosure of Gladio’s existence, the papers illustrate how London’s foreign intelligence apparatus kept a keen eye on the continent as events unfolded.

The papers not only shed fresh light on the conspiracy, they underline Gladio’s relevance as British intelligence joins its America counterparts in contemporary plots involving secret partisan forces from Syria to Ukraine.

Various passages dotted across the tranche strongly suggest the British knew much more than they publicly admitted about egregious criminal deeds, including the attempted overthrow of an allied Italian government and the kidnap and murder of its leader.

A ‘clandestine resistance network’ goes to work

Gladio consisted of a constellation of “stay behind” anti-communist partisan armies whose ostensible mission was to fend off the Red Army in the event of Soviet invasion. In reality, these forces committed countless violent and criminal acts as part of a “strategy of tension” designed to discredit the left and justify a security state clampdown.

As Vincenzo Vinciguerra, a Gladio operative jailed for life in 1984 for a car bombing in Italy that killed three police officers and injured two, explained:

“You were supposed to attack civilians, women, children, innocent people from outside the political arena. The reason was simple, force the public to turn to the state and ask for greater security… People would willingly trade their freedom for the security of being able to walk the streets, go on trains or enter a bank. This was the political logic behind the bombings. They remain unpunished because the state cannot condemn itself.”

The scandal triggered in Western capitals by the exposure of Gladio dominated mainstream headlines for months. The European parliament responded by passing a resolution condemning the existence of a “clandestine parallel intelligence and armed operations organization [which] escaped all democratic controls, may have interfered illegally in the internal political affairs of member states [and] have at their disposal independent arsenals and military resources… thereby jeopardizing the democratic structures of the countries in which they are operating.”

The resolution called for independent judicial and parliamentary investigations into Gladio in every European state. But aside from inquiries in Belgium, Italy, and Switzerland, nothing of substance materialized. What’s more, investigators heavily redacted their findings while avoiding having them translated them into English. This may help explain why the historic scandal has been largely forgotten.

In this context, the newly declassified documents may be one of the most valuable primary sources to date offering new insights into the origins and internal workings of NATO’s secret terror militias in Italy.

Take for example an aide-mémoire (see it here) prepared by Francesco Fulci, Italy’s permanent representative to the UN, which was shared at a “super-restricted” November 6th 1990 meeting of the North Atlantic Council, NATO’s principal political decision-making body, then forwarded to senior British officials at home and abroad.

Based on a note provided by Rome’s then-premier Giulio Andreotti to “the Head of the Italian Parliamentary Commission investigating terrorist incidents,” the aide-mémoire begins by noting that following World War II, Western intelligence agencies devised “unconventional means of defence, by creating in their territories a hidden network of resistance aimed at operating, in case of enemy occupation, through information gathering, sabotage, propaganda and guerrilla warfare.”

According to the aide-mémoire, authorities in Rome began laying the foundations of such an organization in 1951. Four years later, Italian Military Intelligence (SIFAR) and “a corresponding allied service” – a reference to the CIA – then formally agreed on the organization and the activities of a “post-occupation clandestine network”:

“[Gladio] was; formed by agents active in the territory who, by virtue of their age, sex and activities, could reasonably avoid eventual deportation and-imprisonment by the foreign occupiers; easy to manage even from a command structure outside the occupied territory; at a top secret level and hence subdivided into ‘cells’ so as to minimize any possible damage caused by defections, accidents or network penetration.”

The “clandestine resistance network” was subdivided into separate branches, covering information operations, sabotage, propaganda, radio communications, cypher, reception and evacuation of people and equipment. Each of these structures was to operate autonomously, “with liaison and coordination ensured by an external base.”

SIFAR established a dedicated, secret section to recruit and train Gladio operatives. Meanwhile, it maintained five “ready deployment guerrilla units in areas of special interest” across Italy which awaited activation on a continuous basis.

“Operational materials”, including a wide variety of explosives, weapons – such as mortars, hand grenades, guns and knives – and ammunition were stashed in 139 secret underground caches across the country. In April 1972, “to improve security,” these arsenals were exhumed, and moved to offices of the Carabinieri, Rome’s military police, near the original sites.

Only 127 of the weapons storehouses were officially recovered. The aide-mémoir states that at least two “were very likely taken away by unknown persons” at the time they were buried, in October 1964. Who these operatives were and what they did with their stolen arms is left to the imagination.

British involvement in the coup effort

Fulci was eventually quizzed by attendees of the North Atlantic Council summit “as to whether Gladio had deviated from its proper objectives.” In other words, beyond operating strictly as a “stay behind” force, to be activated in the event of Soviet invasion. While “he could not add to what was in the aide-mémoire,” Fulci confirmed “weapons used in some terrorist incidents had come from stores established by Gladio.”

This may reflect the fact that political violence was one of Gladio’s “proper objectives.” A June 1959 SIFAR report unearthed by historian Daniele Ganser confirms guerrilla action against “domestic threats” was hardwired into the operation from its inception. In the Italian context, this entailed systematically terrorizing the left.

As the Italian Communist party surged in polls ahead of the country’s 1948 election, the CIA pumped money into the coffers of the Christian Democrats and an attendant anti-communist propaganda campaign. The cloak-and-dagger effort was so successful in preventing the outbreak of a left-wing government in Rome that Langley secretly intervened in every one of Rome’s elections for at least the next 24 years.

Yet the covert CIA operations were insufficient to prevent Italians from occasionally electing the wrong governments. The 1963 general election saw the Christian Democrats prevail again, this time under the leadership of left-leaning politician Aldo Moro, who sought to construct a coalition with the Socialists and Democratic Socialists. Over the next year, protracted disputes erupted between these parties over what form their administration would take.

In the meantime, SIFAR and CIA black ops specialists such as William Harvey, known as “America’s James Bond,” cooked up a plot to prevent that government from taking office. Known as “Piano Solo,” it dispatched Gladio operatives for a false flag assassination attempt on Moro that would deliberately fail.

According to the plan, the kidnapper was expected to claim they were ordered to kill Moro by communists, thereby justifying the violent seizure of multiple political party and newspaper headquarters, along with the imprisonment of troublesome leftists at the Gladio chapter’s secret headquarters in Sardinia. The plan was ultimately aborted, though it remained on the table throughout 1964.

Moro became Prime Minister without incident and governed until June 1968. Piano Solo fell under official investigation four years later, yet the results were not published until the public first learned of Gladio’s existence. Though the findings omitted any reference to Britain’s role in the planned coup, the newly released documents strongly suggest London’s involvement. (Read them here).

Italy’s then-President Francesco Cossiga requested the ministry hand over “details of UK stay behind measures in 1964,” according to a detailed February 1991 Foreign Office memo on recent developments in the scandal.

Cossiga apparently made this enquiry as a result of a judge “whose investigations into unsolved terrorist attacks first brought Operation Gladio to light,” and who took the “unprecedented step” of demanding the president testify about the conspiracy under oath. By this point, Cossiga had admitted learning of the “stay behind” force while serving as a junior Defense Minister in 1966.

His Foreign Office query strongly suggests British intelligence played a role in Piano Solo, and that the Italian President was well-aware of the plot.

Doomed Italian PM Aldo Moro’s photo while in captivity of the Red Brigades

“One or more of Moro’s kidnappers was secretly in touch with the security apparatus”

On March 16th 1978, a unit of the leftist militant Red Brigades kidnapped Moro. He was on his way to a high-level meeting where he planned to give his blessing there to a new coalition government that relied on communist support, when the kidnappers violently extracted him from his convoy. Five of Moro’s bodyguards were murdered in the process.

After almost two months in captivity, when it became clear the government would neither negotiate with the Red Brigades nor release any of its jailed members in return for Moro, the kidnappers executed the former Italian Prime Minister. His bullet-riddled corpse was left in a car trunk to rot, and for authorities to find.

Moro’s murder has inspired widespread and well-founded suspicions that Gladio operatives infiltrated the Red Brigades to push the group to commit excessively violent acts in order to foment popular demand for a right-wing law-and-order regime. More than perhaps any other incident, his killing fulfilled the objectives of the security state’s strategy of tension.

Whether or not Moro was a casualty of Gladio, a declassified November 5th 1990 Foreign Office memo authored by Britain’s then-ambassador to Rome, John Ashton, makes it clear that London knew much more about the case than has ever been disclosed publicly by any official source. (Read the full Ashton note here).

“There is circumstantial evidence one or more of Moro’s kidnappers was secretly in touch with the security apparatus at the time; and that the latter deliberately neglected to follow up leads which might have led to the kidnappers and saved Moro’s life,” Ashton declared.

What’s more, according to the British diplomat, the presidential crisis committee responsible for attempting to rescue Moro was part of the notorious P2 – the “subversive Masonic lodge” composed of political elites loyal to Gladio.

According to Ashton, P2 was just one of many “mysterious right wing forces” striving “by terrorism and street violence to provoke a repressive backlash against Italy’s democratic institutions” under the “strategy of tension.” And President Cossiga was completely unaware it had infiltrated his crisis committee.

In April 1981, magistrates in Milan raided the villa of Licio Gelli, an Italian financier and self-identified fascist who founded P2. There, they uncovered a list of 2,500 members which read like a “Who’s Who” of Italian politicians, bankers, spooks, financiers, industrialists, and senior law enforcement and military officials. Among the cabal’s most  prominent members was Silvio Berlusconi.

Future Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s P2 file

Moro’s “historic compromise,” under which the communists “made possible Andreotti’s government”, would be the party’s “final step before their own entry into government.” Ashton stated that this development “was anathema to P2,” which was “then in virtual control of [Italy’s] security apparatus,” and also to many non-P2 establishment politicians, and also to the US,” and sought to “eliminate once and for all any possibility that the Communist Party… might achieve national power.”

Ashton acknowledged “circumstantial evidence” of “US support for P2.” In reality, P2 founder Gelli was so well-connected to Washington’s national security and intelligence apparatus, the CIA’s Rome station had explicitly charged him with establishing an anti-communist parallel government in Rome.

Subsequent investigations showed how Henry Kissinger helped oversee the recruitment of 400 high-ranking Italian and NATO officers as P2 operatives in 1969. The US was so grateful for Gelli’s anti-communist purge that it made him a guest of honor at the inauguration ceremonies of US Presidents Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan.

Ashton concluded his revealing note by noting the truth about Washington’s involvement in Rome’s bloodspattered “Years of Lead” would “probably never be known.” The full extent of Britain’s involvement in terrorist attacks, government overthrows, destabilization campaigns and other heinous skullduggery under the aegis of Operation Gladio, not merely in Italy but throughout Europe, will almost certainly remain a secret as well, and by design.

It was not until 1993 that the public learned how the US and British gifted munitions to Gladio operatives to foment bloody acts of terror across Italy. As Francesco Fulci told his NATO friends at the “super-restricted” meeting, Washington and London supplied the perpetrators of mass casualty attacks including the 1980 bombing of Bologna Centrale railway station, which killed 85 people and wounded over 200.

Those responsible for these hideous crimes have eluded justice in almost every case. Several of the Bologna massacre’s chief suspects, including committed fascist and confirmed MI6 asset Robert Fiore, escaped to London. Britain refused to extradite him and his co-conspirators despite their convictions in absentia for violent crimes.

The extensive experience British intelligence obtained in Operation Gladio raises questions about the lessons the MI6 has applied to current covert operations in theaters of conflict. As The Grayzone revealed in November 2022, British military and intelligence veterans have trained and sponsored a secret partisan terror army in eastern Ukraine to carry out acts of sabotage in Crimea and other majority-Russian areas. The plan called for the training of cells of ideologically dedicated Ukrainians to “shoot, move, communicate, survive.”

June 20, 2023 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Illegal Occupation, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Defining Dictator Down Won’t Make Us Free

By James Bovard | Brownstone Institute | June 20, 2023

For 27 seconds on Tuesday night, Fox News posted a chyiron beneath a video of President Biden: “Wannabe dictator speaks at the White House after having his political rival arrested.” That sparked a media uproar over what was portrayed as the biggest breach of decorum since the 1865 assassination of President Lincoln at Ford’s Theater.

The Washington Post howled that Fox News “shocks with ‘wannabe dictator’ graphic.” A Daily Beast columnist shrieked that the chyron “spreads dangerous lies.” Liberal zealots called for completely shutting down Fox News – as if the network had committed a sin that could never be expunged.

But rather than razing a network headquarters, Americans must recognize the disputed terminology that spurred this fracas.

Biden’s critics are using an archaic definition of dictatorship, one that focuses myopically on whether a president obeys the law and the Constitution. Under the new definition, “dictatorship” only refers to rulers who do bad things to good people. (Maybe the National Security Agency can automatically “correct” all dictionaries on the Internet.)

As Biden explained last year, Republicans are guilty of “semi-fascism.” So, nothing Biden does to his political opponents can be “dictatorial” because they deserve whatever the feds inflict.

It is true that Biden dictated that 84 million Americans working for large companies must get injected with the Covid vaccine. But that wasn’t dictatorial because, as Biden explained, vaccine skeptics were murderers who only wanted “the freedom to kill you” with Covid. (The Supreme Court nullified that dictate early last year.)

It is true that the Biden White House dictated that social media companies suppress billions of posts, including true information from critics of the administration’s Covid policies. But that didn’t count because, as top Biden advisor Andrew Slavitt declared, “People with murderously selfish ideas— driven by an unwillingness to sacrifice & wrapped in phony intellectualism— entered” the debate over Covid policies. (A federal appeals court is exposing the vast sweep of Biden’s Covid censorship.)

It is true that Biden issued a dictate extending the national moratorium on evictions of deadbeat renters. The Supreme Court torpedoed Biden’s policy. But he was blameless because the Court decision relied on an archaic standard: “Our system does not permit agencies to act unlawfully even in pursuit of desirable ends.”

It is true that Biden appointees dictated that two-year-old children in Head Start must wear masks all day. But that wasn’t dictatorial because children were permitted to briefly remove the masks when they ate meals. (A federal judge torpedoed that mandate in late 2022.)

It is true that Biden revived dictatorial policies that entitled federal bureaucrats to ban landowners from farming or building on any land with puddles, ditches, or other purported wet spots. But Biden had no choice but to take drastic action to rescue his environmentalist supporters from hopeless depressions. (The Supreme Court nullified Biden’s wetlands policies last month).

It is true that Biden dictated that taxpayers must shoulder the cost of $300+ billion in federal student loans that he canceled to buy political support. But that didn’t count because God wanted Democratic candidates to do well in last November’s midterm election. (The Supreme Court is expected to nullify Biden’s student loan forgiveness scheme in the coming weeks.)

It is true that the Biden White House dictated that the FBI target and investigate parents who protested at school board meetings. But the feds were justified in classifying mothers and fathers as terrorist threats because they committed verbal micro-aggressions against liberal sacred cows including the teachers’ union.

It is true that Biden appointees are arbitrarily dictating sweeping prohibitions of firearms parts that could turn tens of millions of peaceful gun owners into federal felons. But that is not dictatorial because “C’mon, man!” Or maybe, “Why’d you ask such a dumb question?”

It is true that Biden dictated… actually, we probably have not heard or seen his most arbitrary or dangerous dictates. The Biden administration is stonewalling congressional investigations and dropping a cloak of secrecy around its most controversial policies. But this is not a dictatorial abuse because Biden needs a second term to “literally redeem the soul of America” (as he promised on Wednesday).

The hypersensitivity over tagging Uncle Joe with the D-word is ludicrous after activists spent four years howling that Donald Trump was literally Hitler, or maybe only Stalin. Many protestors who vehemently denounced Trump were not opposed to dictators per se; they simply wanted different dictates. Now that Biden is dictating at full speed, Biden’s allies seek to rewrite the English language. As usual, the Washington media devotes far more attention to political labels than to the realities of government power.

Perhaps Biden could satisfy his gender-fluid supporters by coming out publicly and personally identifying as “non-dictator.” But other Americans will continue wryly watching the political rascality, laughing at the media’s snit-fits, and awaiting the next judicial demolition of Biden’s decrees.

James Bovard, 2023 Brownstone Fellow, is author and lecturer whose commentary targets examples of waste, failures, corruption, cronyism and abuses of power in government.

June 20, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Progressive Hypocrite | , , | Leave a comment

“A Global Digital Compact” – UN promoting censorship, social credit & much more

By Kit Knightly | OffGuardian | June 20, 2023

Late last month the office of the United Nation’s Secretary General published a policy document on aims for the future of the internet.

A follow-up to the 2021 report “Our Common Agenda”, the new report’s title says it all really, “A Global Digital Compact”. That’s the goal, international legislation that would seek to control and enforce the use of digital technology.

The proposed clauses promote everything you’d expect them to promote.

Digital identities linked with financial access:

Digital IDs linked with bank or mobile money accounts can improve the delivery of social protection coverage and serve to better reach eligible beneficiaries. Digital technologies may help to reduce leakage, errors and costs in the design of social protection programmes

Environmental or climate change-based social credit systems:

Sensors and monitors connected to the Internet of things, cloud-based data platforms, blockchain-enabled tracking systems and digital product passports unlock new capabilities for the measurement and tracking of environmental and social impacts across value chains.”

Public-Private Partnership:

Partnerships between States, private sector and civil society leverage the capacity of digital tools to provide solutions for development across the Sustainable Development Goals. Examples include the Digital Public Infrastructure Alliance, the Coalition for Digital Environmental Sustainability and public-private partnerships for disaster response.”

Countering online “harm”:

Disinformation, hate speech and malicious and criminal activity in cyberspace raise the risks and costs for everyone online […] we must strengthen accountability for harmful and malicious acts online.

Those are the obvious ones, there’s also more sneaky, insidious language regarding “equity” and “access”. The report is concerned there are many people in the world (mostly the developing world) who don’t have regular access to the Internet.

This concern would be more honestly expressed in the language of control – people who don’t consume digital media can’t be hypnotised, people who don’t communicate online can’t be censored, and people who don’t rely on digital banking can’t be controlled.

To sum up, the Digital Global Compact is a piece of globalist legislation serving the final aim of globalist policy: Control of all aspects of life, achieved by inserting a digital filter between people and reality.

Banking, communication, media consumption, shopping. Every interaction you have will be through a digital membrane which can both monitor your exchanges with the world and – if deemed necessary – deny you access to that world.

An interesting final point to note is the words the report doesn’t use. “Globalist” and “globalism” do not appear once, “vaccine passports” or “vaccine certificates” are likewise not mentioned. Neither are “social credit” or “central-bank digital currency”. They are discussed, but not mentioned.

They seem to be avoiding buzzwords they know will trigger resistance or set off alarm bells. Would they have done that before the skeptics started winning the Covid conversation? I don’t think so.

You don’t have to take my word for any of this, of course, you can read the whole report yourself.

There’s nothing surprising in there at all, obviously. But it’s definitely a “quiet part out loud moment”, and a link to send to those people who still dismiss you as a conspiracy theorist.

June 20, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

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