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Washington, Pro-Democracy? Depends on the Country

By Ted Snider | The Libertarian Institute | February 19, 2024

Pakistan just held an election; Venezuela is about to. Both incumbent governments have banned the leading opposition figure from competing. The United States sanctioned one and was silent on the other. What was the difference? Not international law or responsible leadership, both of which require a consistent application of laws and a consistent response. The important difference was that the United States supported the incumbent coup government in one case and opposed the incumbent coup survivor in the other.

On January 30, the United States reversed the small and rare diplomatic progress it had made with Venezuela by revoking the sanction relief on gold mining and by promising to revoke the sanction relief on Venezuela’s oil and gas sector at the first opportunity. The State Department cited “Actions by Nicolas Maduro and his representatives in Venezuela, including the arrest of members of the democratic opposition and the barring of candidates from competing in this year’s presidential election” as the reason.

Of central concern to the United States was its choice of an opposition leader to run against Nicolás Maduro, Maria Corina Machado, who recently appeared before a roundtable organized by the U.S. House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs subcommittee. On January 26, Venezuela’s highest court upheld the decision to bar Machado from running for president in the upcoming election.

But Machado was banned for reasons that might be considered reasonable in some democracies. She has a long history of being involved in coups against the democratically elected government of Venezuela. During the failed 2002 coup against Hugo Chavez, Machado was a signatory to the Carmona Decree, which suspended democracy, revoked the constitution, and installed a coup president.

As if participation in a coup is not enough to be barred from running for president, Machado was stripped of her position in the National Assembly in 2014 for acting, according to Miguel Tinker Salas, Professor of Latin American History at Pomona College and one of the world’s leading experts on Venezuelan history and politics, as “a delegate of the Panamanian government” who “sought to testify before the Organization of American States.” She sought to testify against her own country.

That same year, Miguel Tinker Salas says, “hoping to precipitate a crisis,” Machado helped organize La Salida, The Exit, to push President Maduro out of power. She “sought to mobilize forces and take to the streets.”

The next year, in 2015, Venezuelan officials produced evidence in support of their claim of a U.S.-backed coup attempt. According to the officials, the day before the planned coup, Machado joined two other opposition leaders in signing a National Transition Agreement. They say weapons were found in the office of the opposition party.

Machado has endorsed economic sanctions on Venezuela and foreign military intervention to remove the government of Venezuela.

Despite this record, the United States reimposed sanctions for barring Machado. The European Parliament went even further, denying that the Venezuelan court has legal grounds and insisting that Machado “remains eligible to run for the elections.” It says “Unless María Corina Machado is allowed to participate in the elections… elections and election results will not be recognised.” The European Parliament then urged EU member states “to tighten existing sanctions” and to add new sanctions on judges of Venezuela’s Supreme Court.

In Pakistan, the story is very different. Former Prime Minister Imran Khan has been jailed and banned from running in the presidential election. His party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), has been demolished by the Pakistani military, who arrested its senior members.

But the American response to the barring—and even jailing—of, perhaps, the most popular candidate has been very different from their reaction to the barring of Machado in Venezuela. The State Department says that the arrest of Khan “is an internal matter for Pakistan” and that, “The United States is prepared to work with the next Pakistani government, regardless of political party…”

The difference may reflect American position on coups in these countries. Whereas, the United States has supported multiple failed coup attempts to remove the current government in Venezuela and, so, opposes that government; it supported what seems to have been the coup that replaced Khan with the current government.

In April 2022, Khan was removed from office in a non-confidence vote. Khan has claimed that the non-confidence vote was a U.S.-backed coup in democratic disguise. He may not be wrong. A leaked Pakistani cable reveals a meeting between Asad Majeed Khan, then-Pakistani ambassador to the United States, and two State Department officials, one of whom was Donald Lu, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs

Lu begins the meeting by expressing that the United States and Europe “are quite concerned about why Pakistan is taking such an aggressively neutral position” on the war in Ukraine. He pins responsibility for Pakistan’s neutral defiance of the U.S. on Khan, saying, “it seems quite clear that this is the Prime Minister’s policy.” Lu informs the Pakistani ambassador that the trigger for the American concern was “the Prime Minister’s visit to Moscow.” On the day Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine, Khan was in Moscow, meeting with Putin. He defied the United States by refusing to cancel the meeting.

Lu then advises Pakistan’s ambassador, “I think if the no-confidence vote against the Prime Minister succeeds, all will be forgiven in Washington because the Russia visit is being looked at as a decision by the Prime Minister. Otherwise, I think it will be tough going ahead… [H]onestly I think isolation of the Prime Minister will become very strong from Europe and the United States.”

As the polls closed in the Pakistani election, and the media began reporting stunning victories by independent candidates associated with Khan’s PTI party, the Election commission of Pakistan suddenly paused the announcement of results in remaining constituencies. By the time announcements restarted, PTI candidates who had been leading had suddenly lost.

The candidates associated with the PTI were running as independents because they were neither allowed to campaign under the PTI name nor even be identified by the PTI symbol on ballots, challenging voters’ ability to even identify PTI candidates. TV stations were banned from airing Khan’s speeches. Cell phone and internet services were cut, creating logistical confusion for voters. Voter suppression was widespread.

Despite all the obstacles, PTI candidates forced to run as independents won 102 seats. The second place party, the Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz Party of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, came in second with 73 seats. Despite winning the most seats, Khan’s party did not win a majority in the 265 seat National Assembly and will have trouble forming the government.

The U.S. State Department assessed that the election featured “undue restrictions on freedoms of expression… electoral violence… attacks on media workers, and access to the internet and telecommunications services, and… allegations of interference in the electoral process.” Despite that assessment, it declared that it “is prepared to work with the next Pakistani government, regardless of political party.”

Yet again following a foreign policy guided by a rules-based order that only applies the law when it benefits the United States and its allies, instead of a foreign policy guided by international law that applies the same universal standard impartially, the U.S. has confirmed the worst suspicions of a global majority that is losing faith in American leadership. The U.S. sanctions Venezuela for banning a candidate from competing in elections but is willing to work with Pakistan who has done the same. “As consistency starts to be questioned,” S. Jaishankar, India’s Minister of External Affairs has said, “many more nations will start to do their own thinking and planning.”

February 19, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Progressive Hypocrite | , , | Leave a comment

‘This shouldn’t happen in a democracy’ – AfD politician withdraws from election race after threats to his family

By Denes Albert | Remix News | February 19, 2024

A successful entrepreneur who was running for the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in district elections says he is withdrawing his candidacy due to serious threats to his family.

The 40-year-old Matthias Beerbaum cited “threats against and danger to” his family, although he did not give specific details surrounding the potential threat. He said the decision was not easy for him, but he did not want to deal with endangering his family.

“This should not happen in a democracy,” he announced in a press release on Thursday evening last week.

The threats against his family come at a time when the media and the government have compared the AfD to the Nazi party and claimed the party is “anti-democratic.” Many within the left-liberal ruling coalition are now calling for a complete ban on the opposition party due to its popularity in the polls. At the same time, the country’s far-left interior minister, Nancy Faeser, has called to shut down bank accounts for those who donate to “extremist” right-wing parties and, in conjunction with the federal police and the Office of the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), plans to initiate a series of new laws to target the opposition.

The entrepreneur, who is well-known in his region, was running for the position of the Saale-Holzland district in Germany.

For years, Beerbaum has worked for the AfD on the committee for construction, economy and infrastructure, as well as on the budget and finance committee within the district council.

The AfD’s district association expressed understanding for Beerbaum’s resignation, acknowledging that the mood in both Germany and within the district “has become heated,” according to district spokesperson Denny Jankowski while speaking with German publication Junge Freiheit.

In addition to new pressure from Germany’s domestic law enforcement agencies, the media, and the ruling government, AfD campaign events also feature a massively increased police presence. In one event in Jena, 150 police officers were present, representing a dramatic increase from the past. Even local campaign stands set up by the AfD feature numerous police vehicles.

Despite the pressure, the AfD indicated they had not expected threats to be directed at Beerbaum’s family.

The AfD may try to put forward a new candidate, although it is unclear if this will happen in time for the May 26 elections.

“It’s up to the members to decide,” Jankowski said.

However, the party remains optimistic that it will be able to field a new candidate, especially as the AfD is performing exceedingly well in the region. Last month, in January, the AfD candidate won 47.5 percent of the vote in the first round in the neighboring Saale-Orla district, although he narrowly lost the second round 48 percent to 52 percent against a CDU candidate.

According to official government data, AfD members and politicians are attacked more than any other party in Germany.

Last year, party co-leader Alice Weidel reportedly featured a credible threat that led her and her family to head temporarily to a “safe house.” A number of AfD politicians have suffered from arson attacks outside their family homes, and others have been brutally assaulted.

February 19, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Subjugation - Torture | , , | Leave a comment

Mike Benz: “What I’m describing is military rule, It’s the inversion of democracy.”

Tucker Carlson interview with former State Dept. official Mike Benz

INTRODUCTION BY JOHN LEAKE | COURAGEOUS DISCOURSE | FEBRUARY 19, 2024

Tucker Carlson just interviewed former State Department official, Mike Benz, about how the National Security State—originally conceived to protect the American homeland from foreign adversaries—has increasingly directed its attention to controlling the American people. Its primary instrument is censorship.

This is the exact opposite of what our Founding Fathers conceived for the USA. As James Madison wrote in an August 4, 1822 letter:

A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.

Mike Benz has apparently spent years carefully studying the National Security State. His presentation of what is going on in the United States is extraordinarily erudite and organized, and it is corroborated by multiple reliable sources. As I have endeavored to point out on this Substack, the COVID-19 pandemic response is just one of many public policy programs that are being directed by the same unelected Deep State actors.

Benz highlights the relationship between the pandemic response and the key role of mail ballots in the 2020 presidential election. He also points out that the same censorship apparatus that controlled information about COVID-19 and COVID-19 vaccines also preemptively suppressed critics of how the 2020 election was handled.

His conclusion is that our National Security State does not acknowledge the validity of the will of the people. The unelected officials running our country do NOT respect popular government and the popular information that is the lifeblood of popular government.

I strongly recommend watching the entire interview.

February 19, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , , | Leave a comment

State Department Threatens Congress Over Censorship Programs

A year after its censorship programs were exposed, the GEC still insists the public has no right to know how it’s spending taxpayer money

By Matt Taibbi | Racket News | February 17, 2024

The State Department is so unhappy a newspaper published details about where it’s been spending your taxes, it’s threatened to only show a congressional committee its records in camera until it gets a “better understanding of how the Committee will utilize this sensitive information.” Essentially, Tony Blinken is threatening to take his transparency ball home unless details about what censorship programs he’s sponsoring stop appearing in papers like the Washington Examiner:

The State Department tells Congress, which controls its funding, that it will only disclose where it spent our money “in camera”

A year ago the Examiner published “Disinformation, Inc.”, a series by investigative reporter Gabe Kaminsky describing how the State Department was backing a UK-based agency that creates digital blacklists for disfavored media outlets. Your taxes helped fund the Global Disinformation Index, or GDI, which proudly touts among its services an Orwellian horror called the Dynamic Exclusion List, a digital time-out corner where at least 2,000 websites were put on blast as unsuitable for advertising, “thus disrupting the ad-funded disinformation business model.”

The culprit was the Global Engagement Center, a little-known State Department entity created in Barack Obama’s last year in office and a surprise focus of Twitter Files reporting. The GEC grew out of a counter-terrorism agency called the CSCC and has a mission to “counter” any messaging, foreign or domestic as it turns out, that they see as “undermining or influencing the policies, security, or stability of the United States.” The GEC-funded GDI rated ten conservative sites as most “risky” and put the Examiner on its “exclusion” list, while its ten sites rated at the “lowest level of disinformation” included Buzzfeed, which famously published the Steele Dossier knowing it contained errors and is now out of business.

In an effort to find out what other ventures GEC was funding — an absurd 36 of 39 2018 contractors were redacted even in an Inspector General’s report — the House Small Business Committee wrote the State Department last June asking for basic information about where the public’s money was being spent. State and GEC stalled until December 3 of last year, when it finally produced a partial list of recipients. Although House Republicans asked for an “unredacted list of all GEC grant recipients and associated award numbers” from 2019 through the current year, the list the Committee received was missing “dozens” of contractors, including some listed on USASpending.com.

The Examiner and Kaminsky subsequently wrote an article slamming GEC for sending “incomplete” records of the censorship investigation, in the process including links to a “snippet” of the GEC’s contractors:

In response to the outrage of this disclosure, the State Department sent its letter threatening in camera sessions until it gets a better “understanding” of how the Committee will use its “sensitive” information. That’s Beltway-ese for “We wouldn’t mind knowing the Examiner’s sources.”

About that: the State letter wrote that the Examiner’s records were “reportedly obtained from the Committee,” and included a footnote and a link to a Kaminsky story, implying that the Examiner reported that it got the records from the Committee. But the paper said nothing about the source of the documents, which as anyone who’s ever covered these types of stories knows, could have come from any number of places. It’s a small but revealing detail about current petulance levels at State.

“Anti-disinformation” work is not exactly hypersonic missile construction. There’s no legitimate reason for it to be kept from the public, especially since it’s increasingly clear its programs target American media companies and American media consumers, seemingly in violation of the State Department’s mission. The requested information is also not classified, making the delays and tantrums more ridiculous.

There are simply too many agencies that have adopted the attitude that the entire federal government is one giant intelligence service, entitled to secret budgeting and an oversight-free existence. They need pushback on this score and have at last started to get it. Thanks in significant part to the Examiner as well as lawsuits by The Federalist, Daily Wire, and Consortium News, the latest National Defense Authorization Act included for the first time a provision banning the Pentagon from using “any advertiser for recruitment that uses biased censorship entities like NewsGuard and GDI,” as a congressional spokesperson put it in December. We’ll see how it pans out, but congress withholding money for domestic spy programs is at least a possible solution, now in play.

Perhaps it’s time for the State Department to receive a similar wake-up call. If GEC wants to put conditions on disclosure, can we put conditions on paying taxes?

February 18, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | | Leave a comment

France: ANY Criticism Of The mRNA DEATHVAX™ Platform Punishable Up To 3 Years Imprisonment And 45,000 Euros

2nd Smartest Guy in the World | February 15, 2024

The WEF-captured government of France has pushed through a draconian new law entitled Article 4. This Orwellian and unconstitutional color of law power grab is a purposely poor attempt at obscuring the irrefutable slow kill bioweapon death and destruction data.

What makes Article 4 particularly incendiary is that the majority of the French population has been outright refusing all “vaccinations.” Throttling their free speech as it pertains to gene modifying poisons will only increase the already heightened tensions between the criminal Macron administration and the awakening French populace, by design.

Between WEF puppet Trudeau in Canada and WEF puppet Macron in France, there is now a race to create the most totalitarian technocommunist nation in the West, with France now taking a slight lead; to wit:

These policies and “laws” are nothing more than an extension of the ongoing democide, and the associated iatrocide.

Meanwhile, back in the USSA, the Center for Disease Crimes (CDC) is still at it with their “Trust the Science” mendacity and murder:

Readers of this Substack fully appreciate the myocarditis and turbo cancer epidemics currently underway — not to mention soaring excess non-PSYOP-19 mortality — since the rollout of the “vaccines:”

Removing all BigPharma legal liabilities and prosecuting the various “health” agencies like the FDA, CDC, NIH, et al. has never been more urgent.

France’s Article 4 is just a hint at what is to come, especially if the WHO’s Pandemic Treaty scam ever passes in the various nations that they are attempting to further hijack.

They want you dead.

Do NOT comply.

February 16, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , | Leave a comment

The Great Reset Didn’t Work: The Case of EVs

By Jeffrey A. Tucker | Brownstone Institute | February 15, 2024

We are living through one of history’s longest and most excruciating versions of “We told you so.” When in March 2020, the world’s government decided to “shut down” the world’s economies and throttle any and all social activity, and deny kids schooling plus cancel worship services and holidays, there was no end to the warnings of the terrible collateral damage, even if most of them were censored.

Every bit of the warnings proved true. You see it in every story in the news. It’s behind every headline. It’s in countless family tragedies. It’s in the loss of trust. It’s in the upheaval in industry and demographics. The fingerprints of lockdowns are deeply embedded in every aspect of our lives, in ways obvious and not so much.

Actually, the results have been even worse than critics predicted, simply because the chaos lasted such a long time. There are seemingly endless iterations of this theme. Learning losses, infrastructure breakages, rampant criminality, vast debt, inflation, lost work ethic, a growing commercial real estate bust, real income losses, political extremism, labor shortages, substance addiction, and more much besides, all trace to the fateful decision.

The headlines on seemingly unrelated matters go back to the same, in circuitous ways. A good example is the news of the electric vehicle bust. The confusion, disorientation, malinvestment, overproduction, and retrenchment – along with the crazed ambition to force convert a country and world away from oil and gas toward wind and solar – all trace to those fateful days.

According to the Wall Street Journal, “As recently as a year ago, automakers were struggling to meet the hot demand for electric vehicles. In a span of months, though, the dynamic flipped, leaving them hitting the brakes on what for many had been an all-out push toward an electric transformation.”

Reading the story, it’s clear that the reporter is downplaying the sheer scale of the boom-bust.

That’s not to say that Tesla itself is going bust, only that it has a defined market segment. The technology of EVs simply cannot and will not become the major way Americans drive. It might have seemed otherwise for a moment in time but that was due to factors that traced exactly to pent up demand caused by lockdowns and huge errors in supply management due to bad signaling.

Looking back, the lockdowns hit in the spring of 2020 and supply chains were entirely frozen by force. This might have been a major problem for car manufacturers that had long relied on just-in-time inventory strategies. However, at the very time, the demand for travel collapsed. Commutes came to an end, and vacations too. At that same time, pre-arranged government subsidies and mandates for EVs flooded the industry, all of which were later ramped up by the Biden administration.

As demand picked up, retailers sold their old inventory of cars and looked to manufacturers for more but the chips needed to complete the cars were not available. Many cars were put on hold and lots emptied out. This continued through the following year as used car prices soared and stock was otherwise depleted.

By the time matters became desperate in the fall of 2021, manufacturers discerned a heightened demand for EVs and began to retool their factories for more. There was even a time when cars were being shipped without power steering, just to meet the demand.

It might have seemed for a time like the crazed period we just lived through was birthing a completely different way of life. A kind of irrationality, born of shock and awe, swept industry and culture. The EV was central to it.

This demand seemed to pan out in 2022 as Americans grabbed whatever cars were available, perhaps willing to give the new doohickies a shot. So on it went as more carmakers threw more resources at production, benefitting from massive subsidies and staying in compliance with new mandates for reducing their carbon footprint.

There was no particular reason to think anything would go wrong. But then the next year began to reveal uncomfortable truths. Cold weather dramatically cuts the range of the EVs. Charging stations are not as readily available on longer trips, charging takes longer than one expects, and having to plan such matters adds time. In addition, the repair bills can be extremely high if you can find someone to do it.

Tesla as a manufacturer had planned out all such contingencies but other carmakers less so. Very quickly the EVs gained a bad reputation on a number of different fronts.

“Last summer, dealers began warning of unsold electric vehicles clogging their lots. Ford, General Motors, Volkswagen and others shifted from frenetic spending on EVs to delaying or downsizing some projects,” writes the Journal. “Dealers who had been begging automakers to ship more EVs faster are now turning them down.”

In short, “the massive miscalculation has left the industry in a bind, facing a potential glut of EVs and half-empty factories while still having to meet stricter environmental regulations globally.”

Today, lots are selling the cars at a loss just to avoid the costs of keeping them around.

Truly, this has been one spectacular boom-bust in a single industry. There seems to be no real end to the bust either. These days it appears that everyone has given up on any chance of actually converting the mass of American cars to become EVs. All recent trends are headed in the other direction.

Meanwhile, the EV is deeply loved by many as 1) a second car, 2) for well-to-do suburban commuters, 3) who own homes, 4) can charge overnight, and 5) have a gas car as a backup for cold weather and out-of-town trips. That is to say, the market is becoming exactly what it should be – a street-worthy golf cart with very fancy features – and not some paradigmatic case for the “great reset.” That’s simply not happening, despite all the subsidies and tax breaks.

“A confluence of factors had led many auto executives to see the potential for a dramatic societal shift to electric cars,” writes the Journal, including “government regulations, corporate climate goals, the rise of Chinese EV makers, and Tesla’s stock valuation, which, at roughly $600 billion, still towers over the legacy car companies. But the push overlooked an important constituency: the consumer.”

Indeed, the American economy, much to the chagrin of many, still primarily relies on consumers to make choices in their best interest. When that doesn’t happen, no amount of subsidies can make up the difference.

This story is impossible to understand without reference to the crazed illusions caused by lockdowns. Those are what provided the respite of time to allow automakers to retool. Then they boosted demand artificially for transportation after a long period in which inventory had been depleted.

Then the whole ridiculous ethos of the “great reset” convinced idiotic corporate executives that nothing would ever be the same. Maybe we would get 15-minute cities powered by sunbeams and breezes after all, along with a social-credit system that would allow the authorities to decommission our ability to drive in an instant.

It turns out that the entire bit, including the fake prosperity of the lockdown economy, made possible by money printing and grotesque levels of government spending, was unsustainable. Even sophisticated car companies bought into the nonsense. Now they are paying a very heavy price. The new market depended on a panic of buying that turned out to be temporary.

In short, the illusions of these horrible policies have come crashing down. It was born of liberty-wrecking policies under the cover of virus control. Every special interest seized the day, including a new generation of industrialists seeking to displace the old ones by force.

More and more, it’s obvious what a disaster this was. And yet no one has apologized. Hardly anyone has admitted error. The big shots who wrecked the world are still in power.

The rest of us are left holding the bag, and paying very high repair bills for cars that are non-optimal for driving from one town to another and back again in the cold weather that was supposed to be gone by now had the “climate change” prophets been correct. They turn out to be as correct as those who promised us that we would no longer need “fossil fuels” and that the magic inoculation would protect everyone from a killer virus.

What astonishing illusions were born of this nutty and destructive period. At some point, not even corporate CEOs will be tricked by the experts.

Jeffrey Tucker is Founder, Author, and President at Brownstone Institute.

February 16, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | , , | Leave a comment

Freedom Convoy leaders sue Trudeau regime for targeting protesters with Emergencies Act

By Anthony Murdoch | Life Site News | February 15, 2024

OTTAWA, Ontario — On the second anniversary of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government’s use of the Emergencies Act (EA) to quash the truckers’ Freedom Convoy in 2022, the heads of the protest, Tamara Lich and Chris Barber, and a host of others have filed a $2 million lawsuit against the Trudeau government.

The lawsuit, announced yesterday by Freedom Convoy lawyer Keith Wilson, includes Lich as well as other convoy leaders Chris Barber, Tom Marazzo, Danny Bulford, and a host of others.

“On the 2-year anniversary of the Federal Government illegally invoking war measures against its citizens and targeting key protestors in Ottawa by freezing their bank accounts, today Tamara Lich, Chris Barber, Tom Marazzo, Danny Bulford and other protestors who were targeted by @JustinTrudeau and @cafreeland have filed lawsuits against the Federal Government.”

Wilson said that Section 24 of Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms “gives Canadians the right to sue their government for damages when Charter rights are violated.”

“Doing so affirms the seriousness of respecting Charter rights and is intended to deter future governments from breaching Canadians’ fundamental rights.”

Wilson noted that the lawsuits seek $2 million in damages.

Lich, on X (formerly Twitter) noted about the lawsuit on Wednesday that “Accountability is a thing. It’s go time!”

“Happy Emergencies Act Day! I hope you all look back and fondly remember how your government shot you with rubber bullets and tear gas for your own good!” she also wrote.

Tom Marazzo, who was also involved with the Freedom Convoy and is a 25-year Canadian army veteran, said about it that it was “2 years ago today, instead of celebrating Valentine’s Day, the most corrupt government in Canadian history, launched an all out illegal assault on the Rights and Freedoms of every Canadian citizen in Canada, with the help of the NDP, Bloc, MSM and the Banks.”

Further details about the lawsuit will be forthcoming in the next few days.

The lawsuit comes just after a Canadian federal court last month ruled that the Trudeau government’s use of the Emergencies Act to quash the truckers’ Freedom Convoy in 2022 was unconstitutional. The court ruled that the use of the EA was a direct violation of the Charter and thus “not justified.”

The EA controversially allowed the government to freeze the bank accounts of protesters, conscript tow truck drivers, and arrest people for participating in assemblies the government deemed illegal.

An investigation into the use of the EA, as per Canadian law, was launched by Trudeau. However, it was headed by Liberal-friendly Judge Paul Rouleau, who led the Public Order Emergency Commission. This commission was to investigate the Liberal government’s unprecedented use of the EA against the anti-mandate Freedom Convoy protest. Unsurprisingly, the commission exonerated Trudeau’s use of the EA.

Freedom Convoy leaders Lich and Barber have been involved in a lengthy trial after being charged and taken to court by the federal government for leading the protests. The trial has not yet concluded and has been put on hold, with its resumption date uncertain. It is also not yet clear how the recent court ruling will affect the trial.

In early 2022, the Freedom Convoy saw thousands of Canadians from coast to coast come to Ottawa to demand an end to COVID mandates in all forms. Despite the peaceful nature of the protest, Trudeau’s government enacted the EA on February 14, 2022. Trudeau revoked the EA on February 23.

During the clear-out of protesters after the EA was put in place, one protester, an elderly lady, was trampled by a police horse, and one conservative female reporter was beaten by police and shot with a tear gas canister. Rebel News reporter Alexa Lavoi, while covering the Freedom Convoy, was shot point blank in her leg with a rubber pellet, which police were using against protesters.

On February 14, 2022, the day the EA was invoked, Canadian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Chrystia Freeland mandated certain bank accounts be frozen under the EA. In total, close to $8 million in funds from 267 people were locked. Additionally, 170 bitcoin wallets were frozen.

The freezing of bank accounts by Freeland without a court order was an unprecedented action in Canadian history and was only allowed through the Liberal government’s invocation of the never-before-used EA.

February 16, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , , | Leave a comment

Germany’s interior minister: ‘No one who donates to a right-wing extremist party should remain undetected’

German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser is demanding more power to target the bank accounts of Germans accused of funding “right-wing extremists.”
By John Cody | Remix News | February 15, 2024 

With one phrase, controversial German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser highlighted just how far the German government is willing to go to stamp out its main opposition with a new law.

“No one who donates to a right-wing extremist party should remain undetected,” warned the 53-year-old while announcing a new crackdown on bank accounts and funding for political groups, which notably is believed to include the opposition Alternative for Germany (AfD).

“Those who mock the state must deal with a strong state,” she added.

The SPD politician presented her new plan together with President of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) Thomas Haldenwang and Federal Criminal Police Office head Holger Münch. Under the title “Resolutely combating right-wing extremism,” Faeser presented 13 new measures, with a special focus on targeting those who fund her party’s political rivals.

“The BfV is communicating closely with the financial sector in order to sensitize it to the problems of financial flows and transactions in connection with right-wing extremism.”

She also said that right-wing extremist networks should be prosecuted in the same way as members of organized crime. To achieve her goals, she wants a new law passed and soon.

“The German Bundestag should pass the law quickly,” said Faeser. In addition, the law would “combat hate on the internet, (…) remove enemies of the constitution from public service (and) disarm right-wing extremists.”

Undoubtedly, the government made the announcement with an eye on the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which continues its surge in popular support despite a media and government campaign aimed at the party. In fact, the latest Insa poll shows the party back over 20 percent after briefly dropping below this mark earlier this month. The results are sure to have alarmed the government, as the relentless propaganda drive against the party has failed to have the desired effect.

In several German states, the domestic intelligence agency, the Office of the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), has already labeled the AfD a “definitive case of right-wing extremism,” which means the party is already subject to extreme surveillance. Now, the government may be able to leverage this designation to target those who donate to the party after revising the current law.

It remains unclear how such targeting would work and what kind of penalties would be directed at someone who donates to a right-wing party or organization; however, Faeser said the BfV would handle the specifics of tracking and targeting donors.

As Remix News reported, the BfV has become the political arm of the left-liberal establishment, and rival parties to their power are being actively targeted by the powerful agency.

Currently, such monitoring is subject to stringent approvals and a high threshold. However, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, under the new law, would no longer have to prove incitement or violence, but only “risk potential,” which leaves far more room for interpretation.

February 15, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

Australia regime threatens X with “big trouble” if It doesn’t censor “misinformation”

By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | February 14, 2024

Australia’s authorities are once again putting pressure on social media, X this time, threatening that the company will face big fines and “big trouble” in general – unless “mis- and dis-” information is censored.

And, it is Australia’s new laws, when they come into force this year, that will represent the legal grounds for such actions.

The fines would run up to $3 million or 2 percent of annual turnover for “voluntary code of conduct” violations, and $7.8 million or 5 percent of annual turnover in case of lack of compliance with the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) “standards.”

This transpires from an article published by the Financial Review, citing Communications Minister Michelle Rowland, while the motive behind her last crusade is described as “a litany of issues” now allegedly plaguing X.

Rowland went all over the place to accuse X of “not doing enough” – from Taylor Swift deep fakes, to what’s likely a key point of contention – the platform’s decision to reinstate some 6,000 accounts of users previously banned by Twitter.

The thinking here seems to be that if the threat is made ahead of time, X will “align” better with Australia’s politics and agree to once again plunge itself into mass censorship.

The laws Rowland mentioned were drafted in 2023 with the aim of giving broader powers to the Australian Communications and Media Authority, specifically “to combat mis- and disinformation online,” the article said.

The upcoming legislation seeks to produce two effects – the tech industry subjecting itself to a formally voluntary code of conduct, and after this “carrot” comes the stick in the shape of the ACMA’s new powers, fines and punishment, if ACMA’s unhappy with how the code is adhered to.

Rowland added that X at this time “isn’t even covered by a voluntary industry code.” The reason is that X was removed from the code after it stopped the practice of flagging content running against (Twitter’s) “civic integrity policy.”

Elsewhere in Australia’s media scene, some are asking why the country’s government “hates Elon Musk.”

“It is about $300 million that Musk owes the Australian government so far,” wondered Sky News host James Macpherson. And by “owes” – he meant, the fines Australia has tried collecting from X even before the latest threats.

February 14, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

US spies behind ‘Russiagate’ conspiracy – report

US President Barack Obama and CIA Director John Brennan, December 14, 2012 in Washington, DC. ©  Pete Souza / The White House via Getty Images
RT | February 14, 2024

The US intelligence community inappropriately used foreign allies to target Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s campaign to set up the ‘Russiagate’ conspiracy ahead of the 2016 election, according to a trio of investigative journalists.

Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi and Alex Gutentag – of ‘Twitter Files’ fame – published the first part of an investigation on Tuesday, in which they claim the so-called ‘Five Eyes’ were operationalized against Trump staffers, citing anonymous sources close to the House Intelligence Committee.

According to their report, President Barack Obama’s CIA Director, John Brennan, had sent America’s partners – the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand – a list of 26 Trump associates to target with data collection, misinformation and manipulation.

The Russiagate conspiracy involved multiple failures across western media networks to critically assess US intelligence claims that Russia had interfered in the 2016 US presidential election. A 2018 Pulitzer prize was awarded to Washington Post and New York Times journalists for their reporting on what was later to exposed as a false story.

“They were making contacts and bumping Trump people going back to March 2016,” said a committee source. “They were sending people around the UK, Australia, Italy — the Mossad in Italy. MI6 was working at an intelligence school they had set up,” the journalists claim.

Officially, the FBI only started looking into the Trump campaign that summer, after an Australian diplomat reportedly overheard an aide mention Russia. If confirmed, these findings would demonstrate that the US intelligence community had worked for months before that to set up just such a pretext.

In a statement to the investigative journalists, the FBI said it had made “missteps” in the 2016 and 2017 investigation of the Trump campaign, but has since implemented reforms to prevent it from happening again.

“The allegations that GCHQ was asked to conduct ‘wiretapping’ against the then president-elect are nonsense,” a spokesman for the British surveillance agency said. “They are utterly ridiculous and should be ignored.” Shellenberger, Taibbi and Gutentag said they had never asked the GCHQ about “wiretapping.”

According to Shellenberger, there is a “10-inch binder” containing previously unknown documents about the intelligence community’s surveillance of the Trump campaign. The 45th US president had ordered these documents declassified, but they went missing instead. In a Fox News appearance on Tuesday evening, Shellenberger suggested the FBI’s August 2022 raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort may have been related to the missing binder.

After the US intelligence community created a pretext for investigating Trump for ‘ties to Russia,’ they spied on his campaign – and then his presidency – using a falsely obtained FISA warrant. The warrant was based on the ‘Steele dossier,’ a file compiled by a British spy in the pay of Hillary Clinton’s campaign, through several intermediaries. The FBI knew the dossier was false as early as January 2017, but continued using the FISA warrant for almost a year thereafter.

The FBI lawyer who altered evidence to obtain the warrant, Kevin Clinesmith, ended up sentenced to probation and his law license has since been restored.

February 14, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

CIA Had Foreign Allies Spy On Trump Team, Triggering Russia Collusion Hoax, Sources Say

By Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi, and Alex Gutentag | Public | February 13, 2024

Last year, John Durham, a special prosecutor for the Department of Justice (DOJ), concluded that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) should never have opened its investigation of alleged collusion by then-presidential candidate Donald J. Trump and Russia in late July of 2016.

Now, multiple credible sources tell Public and Racket that the United States Intelligence Community (IC), including the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), illegally mobilized foreign intelligence agencies to target Trump advisors long before the summer of 2016.

The new information fills many gaps in our understanding of the Russia collusion hoax and is supported by testimony already in the public record.

Until now, the official story has been that the FBI’s investigation began after Australian intelligence officials told US officials that a Trump aide had boasted to an Australian diplomat that Russia had damning material about Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

In truth, the US IC asked the “Five Eyes” intelligence alliance to surveil Trump’s associates and share the intelligence they acquired with US agencies, say sources close to a House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HSPCI) investigation. The Five Eyes nations are the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

After Public and Racket had been told that President Barack Obama’s CIA Director, John Brennan, had identified 26 Trump associates for the Five Eyes to target, a source confirmed that the IC had “identified [them] as people to ‘bump,’ or make contact with or manipulate. They were targets of our own IC and law enforcement — targets for collection and misinformation.”

Unknown details about the FBI’s investigation of the Trump campaign and raw intelligence related to the IC’s surveillance of the Trump campaign are in a 10-inch binder that Trump ordered to be declassified at the very end of his term, sources told Public and Racket.

If the top-secret documents exist proving these charges, they are potentially proof that multiple US intelligence officials broke laws against spying and election interference.

“They were making contacts and bumping Trump people going back to March 2016,” a source close to the investigation said. “They were sending people around the UK, Australia, Italy — the Mossad in Italy. The MI6 was working at an intelligence school they had set up.”

The IC, a source said, considered the 26 Trump campaign people identified to “bump” or “reverse target,” or manipulate through confidential human sources (CHSs), to be easy marks because of their relative inexperience.

Doing so was illegal, both because US law prohibits such intelligence gathering unless authorized by a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant and because the weaponization of the IC for political purposes constitutes election interference.

…

Subscribers to Public substack can read the full report here…

February 14, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception | , , , | Leave a comment

New York’s Proposed Minor Consent Law ‘Dangerous’ and ‘Misleading,’ Critics Say

By Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D. | The Defender | February 12, 2024

New York state lawmakers are weighing legislation that would allow any child or teen under 18 to seek out and consent to medical treatment — including vaccines, dental procedures, hospitalization and even surgery — without parental consent, as long as the minor appears to have the mental capacity for making that decision.

Assembly Bill A6761, introduced by New York Assemblymember Karines Reyes (D-Bronx), also would allow Medicaid funds to pay for procedures and drugs administered to children.

Proponents of the legislation, such as the American Civil Liberties Union of New York, say the measure is about ensuring all youth have access to quality care.

But critics, including John Gilmore, founder and executive director of the nonprofit Autism Action Network, said the bill is dangerous.

“The bill’s biggest problem,” Gilmore told The Defender, “is that it allows any medical procedure to be done to children of any age without parental knowledge or consent. That’s the kicker.”

Gilmore said the bill has another problem, too: The “active summary” statement on the official New York Assembly website says it “allows homeless youth to give effective consent to certain medical, dental, health, and hospital services.”

But Gilmore said that statement is “deliberately misleading” because the bill’s text applies to more than just “homeless” youth seeking “certain” services.

The bill states:

“Any person, including a minor, who comprehends the need for, the nature of, and the reasonably foreseeable risks and benefits involved in any contemplated medical, dental, health, and/or hospital services, and any alternatives thereto, may give effective consent to such services for themself, and the consent of no other person shall be necessary.”

“Albany is lying” about the bill, according to Autism Action Network.

Michael Kane, a New York resident and founder of Teachers For Choice, agreed. “It’s a complete lie to say the bill applies only to homeless children or runaways — and it’s a dangerous one,” Kane told The Defender. “It’s imperative that legislators understand what the bill really does,” Kane said.

With New York lawmakers considering close to 10,000 bills, legislators may rely on a bill’s one-sentence summary — rather than reading its full text — for deciding how they vote, according to Gilmore.

The bill has a companion in the Senate (S8352), introduced Jan. 19 by state Sen. Rachel May (D-Syracuse). The bills share identical text.

Unclear how practitioners would assess minor’s ‘capacity to comprehend’

According to the latest version of the bill, a minor could consent to:

  • General medical, dental, health and hospital services.
  • Mental health outpatient services.
  • Substance abuse treatment.
  • Immunizations.
  • Family planning services.
  • Sexually transmitted disease (STD) diagnosis and treatment.

The bill states that a practitioner may administer a vaccine if “they have reason to believe that a person in parental relation to the child … objects to the immunization.”

It also states, “A child who may give effective consent [to various medical interventions] … may give such consent to their own immunization, and the consent of no other person shall be necessary.”

The bill allows minors under 16, in certain circumstances, to access psychotropic drugs or psychotherapy without parental consent.

Psychotropic drugs include a host of pharmaceutical products, including medications for depression, anxiety, sleep disorders, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.

Current New York law allows minors 16 or older residing in a hospital to agree to psychotropic medications without parental consent if any of the following conditions are met:

  • A parent or guardian “is not reasonably available” and the physician determines “the minor has the capacity”; or
  • requiring parental consent “would have a detrimental effect on the minor”; or
  • the parent has refused consent, providing that two physicians (including a psychiatric doctor who does not work for the facility) agree the medications are in the minor’s best interests.

A6761/S8352 would allow minors under 16 in these circumstances to do the same, as long as the youth “comprehends the need for, the nature of, and the reasonably foreseeable risks and benefits involved.”

The bill does not include detailed information on how medical practitioners would assess a minor’s capacity to comprehend the potential risks of a potential treatment.

It does, however, define “capacity” as follows:

“The minor’s ability to understand and appreciate the nature and consequences of the proposed treatment, including the benefits and risks of, and alternatives to, such proposed treatment, and to reach an informed decision.”

Children’s Health Defense General Counsel Kim Mack Rosenberg told The Defender that informed consent is a “serious” thing, but this legislation devotes “little attention to how to determine if a child can truly exercise informed consent, how to obtain that consent and why true informed consent is critically important.”

Who is a ‘minor’?

The bill does not provide a clear definition of “minor” that applies across all amended laws. However, some sections of the law define or describe the age thresholds related to minor consent:

  • In the amendments to the mental hygiene law section 9.13(a), anyone under 16 would still need parental/guardian consent to be admitted as a voluntary patient to a hospital.
  • In amendments to mental hygiene law 33.21(a)(1), a “minor” is defined as a person under 18, excluding some special cases like emancipated minors or minors who are parents.
  • In amendments to section 2305 of public health law, treatment for STDs without parental consent is allowed for those under 21.

However, earlier sections of the bill do not specify any age range for minors, suggesting even young minors could consent as long as they demonstrate appropriate “capacity.”

Even infants?

It appears the bill’s sponsors may believe that even an infant can give consent. That’s because section 18 of public health law omits previous language stating that children older than 12 can determine who gets access to their medical records.

This deletion suggests that a child of any age no longer “may” but “shall be notified of any request by a qualified person to review their patient information” and deny access to it if they so desire.

The bill states that an infant can choose to withhold information from its parents, without explaining how that would be possible:

In summary, there isn’t one definition of “minor” in the bill, but it seems for most purposes “minor” refers to anyone under age 18.

Minor consent bills bulldoze’ over decades of laws honoring parental rights

The U.S. has a strong legal history going back many decades that honors parental rights and recognizes that the state should step in only where parents are unfit to care for their children, Rosenberg said.

“Minor consent bills bulldoze over those longstanding decisions,” she said. “They try to exclude parents from medical decision-making and take over the parenting role.”

Rosenberg said she’s seen more bills like this recently being introduced in other states, such as Vermont. “We [CHD] successfully stopped one in the District of Columbia and are fighting laws and regulations elsewhere,” she said.

Kane called the bill “just horrendous” because it “completely eradicates parental control over what happens medically to our children.”

Meanwhile, a staff member for Reyes’ office who chose to remain anonymous told The Defender she disagreed, saying the bill was primarily about ensuring all kids have “access to care” and that it included “guardrails” to ensure that not all parental consent was stripped away in all situations.

For instance, the bill explains that a minor must “knowingly and voluntarily” seek care, the staff member said.

But Rosenberg said she’s concerned about the legal ramifications of the bill’s broad language — which appears to erase parental consent for “any contemplated medical, dental, health, and/or hospital services, and any alternatives thereto.”

Rosenberg told The Defender the bill was “rife with problems too numerous to address in brief remarks.”

The bill makes clear, she said, that minors can consent to vaccinations without their parents’ knowledge or consent — and that medical staff and insurance companies must hide that vaccination information from the parents unless the child permits them to share it.

Children “literally may inadvertently take their lives into their own hands” if they make serious healthcare decisions without parental involvement, Rosenberg said.

For example, children frequently don’t know their own health history — let alone their family health history — which may put them at an increased risk for an adverse reaction to a medication or treatment, she explained.

Rosenberg said:

“The legislators supporting these bills need to ask themselves what they would do if a child or grandchild of theirs consented to a surgical procedure of whatever kind requiring anesthesia and the child suffered death or irreversible harm if they had a reaction to the anesthesia.

“Is that a phone call they’d like to receive?”

‘Not a chance’ bill’s sponsors unaware of misleading statement

New York already has a law on the books about homeless youth giving consent for certain services.

Passed in 2022, A09604/S08937 allows “runaways and homeless youth under the age of 18 who are receiving approved crisis or support services to consent to medical, dental, health and hospital services.”

Gilmore, who has done legislative analysis in New York for 23 years, said, “Both Rachel May and Karines Reyes voted for the bill that was passed in 2022.”

So why would they talk about homeless youth in the summary of the new measure they introduced?

A staff member for Reyes’ office told The Defender a bill’s summary statement is written by lawyers — not by the legislator who introduces the bill.

It’s plausible the lawyers chose that language since the bill amends the same section of public health law (2504) that was amended earlier in the law about homeless youth and runaways, the staff member said. However, the staff member confirmed that the present bill does pertain to all minors.

The Defender also reached out to May’s Legislative Director Eric van der Vort, but he did not respond by our publication deadline.

Gilmore said he contacted legislators, too, but didn’t get a straight answer. When he asked van der Vort about the summary language, “he simply refused to address it in any way,” Gilmore said.

Reyes’ Chief of Staff Justin Westbrook-Lowery confirmed for Gilmore that the bill applies to all minors in New York but didn’t explain why the summary statement talked about homeless youth.

Amy Paulin (D-Scarsdale), who chairs the Assembly Committee on Health and co-sponsored the bill, “has a large staff and they’re very good at what they do,” Gilmore said. “There’s not a chance that they aren’t quite aware” that the bill’s summary statement doesn’t match what the bill would do.

Kane said he’s heard from New York legislators and staffers that they believe the bill affects only homeless children.

“There’s a lot of people in the Assembly starting to co-sponsor the bill, which is scary,” he said. “We don’t want this thing passed so that we end up litigating against it for the next five years.”

The Defender asked May’s media relations staff what May would like to tell parents concerned about being excluded from medical decision-making regarding their child’s health, but did not receive a response by our publication deadline.

Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D., is a reporter and researcher for The Defender based in Fairfield, Iowa.

This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.

February 13, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

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