FBI accuses ‘conspiracy theorists’ of weaponizing Twitter Files
RT | December 22, 2022
Correspondence between the FBI and senior Twitter staff, revealing how the agency pressured the platform to suppress certain narratives, is not evidence of wrongdoing, the Bureau said in a statement on Wednesday, adding that “conspiracy theorists” are presenting their activities in a nefarious light.
The files turned over to journalists by Twitter CEO Elon Musk “show nothing more than examples of our tradition, longstanding and ongoing federal government and private sector engagements,” the FBI statement claims.
“It is unfortunate that conspiracy theorists and others are feeding the American public misinformation with the sole purpose of attempting to discredit the agency,” the statement concludes, reminding its critics that “the men and women of the FBI work every day to protect the American public.”
Messages appearing to show FBI agents pressuring Twitter staff to classify legitimate stories such as the Hunter Biden laptop revelations as foreign influence operations are, according to the Bureau merely examples of the FBI “provid[ing] critical information to the private sector in an effort to allow them to protect themselves and their customers.” Internal communications among platform employees suggest otherwise.
In communications published as part of the Twitter Files, staff repeatedly point out there is “no evidence” to substantiate FBI claims of foreign disinformation and express discomfort with the bureau’s meddling. Twitter’s former policy director observed a “sustained (if uncoordinated) effort by the IC [intelligence community]” to push Twitter to share more information against its own policies, while the FBI ultimately paid Twitter more than $3.5 million in taxpayer dollars to prioritize its censorship requests.
The White House has thus far refused to comment on the Twitter Files, referring reporters to the FBI, and the media establishment have largely ignored them. However, former Republican congressman Ron Paul argued they are proof the FBI colluded with Twitter to deprive Americans of their constitutional right to free speech.
A lawsuit filed earlier this year by the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana alleges that the FBI was not alone, and that officials from no fewer than 12 government agencies met weekly with representatives of Twitter, Facebook, and other Big Tech firms to decide which narratives and users to censor, with topics ranging from alleged election interference to Covid-19.
What Is Crimson Contagion?
By Jeffrey A. Tucker | Brownstone Institute | December 22, 2022
The lockdowns of March 2020 shocked the American people and most public health agencies, not to mention infectious disease doctors. The idea of school shutdowns, business closures, plus mandatory remote work and other restrictions have previously seemed inconceivable. It was especially remarkable to have such an “all-of-government” response to a virus that we already knew posed a threat mainly to the elderly and infirm.
Issues like public-health precedent, American legal tradition, and medical knowledge about dealing with respiratory viruses, not to mention natural immunity and collateral damage of lockdowns, were all thrown out the window.
Robert Kennedy, Jr.’s book The Real Anthony Fauci mentions a tabletop exercise called Crimson Contagion that ran from January through August, 2019. I had not previously heard of it and I found the mention remarkable, simply because it proves that not everyone was shocked by lockdowns. They were not part of official planning documents of either the CDC or WHO but they were clearly in the plans of someone.
I’ve only followed up on this report in light of growing focus on the person who coordinated Crimson Contagion: Robert Kadlec, who served in the Trump administration as Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services, Preparedness and Response. It was he who also ran the Covid response between HHS and the Department of Homeland Security.
Kadec’s lifetime government service (and, yes, he is said to be CIA) extends all the way back to the G.W. Bush administration when in 2007 he took the position of Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Biodefense Policy on the Homeland Security Council from 2007 to 2009. The very notion of lockdowns originated in that administration.
The 2019 tabletop exercise involved a huge number of public-sector agencies across all states plus many private-sector associations. It postulated a disease scenario in which a respiratory virus begins in China and spreads around the world by air travelers. It is first detected in Chicago. The World Health Organization declares a pandemic 47 days later. But then it was too late: 110 million Americans became sick, with 7.7 million hospitalized and 586,000 dead.
The conclusion of the exercise was that government was not well prepared for a pandemic and urged more planning and fast acting to implement what we now call lockdowns as we await a vaccine. Presumably, the vaccine then fixes everything.
The public knew nothing of this exercise until March 19, 2020, when the New York Times reported on it for the first time. This was one day following the detailed release of stay-at-home orders by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. The next day, National Public Radio also ran a report on Crimson Contagion.
The Times reported:
The Crimson Contagion planning exercise run last year by the Department of Health and Human Services involved officials from 12 states and at least a dozen federal agencies. They included the Pentagon, the Department of Veterans Affairs and the National Security Council. Groups like the American Red Cross and American Nurses Association were invited to join, as were health insurance companies and major hospitals like the Mayo Clinic.
The war game-like exercise was overseen by Robert P. Kadlec, a former Air Force physician who has spent decades focused on biodefense issues. After stints on the Bush administration’s Homeland Security Council and the staff of the Senate Intelligence Committee, he was appointed assistant secretary of Health and Human Services for Preparedness and Response.
Also participating were former Trump administration officials Rex Tillerson (Secretary of State, 2017-2018) and John F. Kelly, who was White House chief of staff from 2017 to 2019. The NYT even ran a picture of the two of them at the event.
Here are some direct quotes from the October 2019 report of Crimson Contagion:
The exercise revealed several workforce protection challenges under conditions where medical countermeasures, such as the pandemic vaccine, antiviral medications, and personal protective equipment, are limited. To protect the public prior to vaccine distribution, public health officials issued guidance on the implementation of nonpharmaceutical interventions intended to slow the spread of the virus.
In keeping with non-pharmaceutical intervention recommendations, employers – including government entities – sought to practice social distancing by having a significant portion of their employees work remotely. Employers encountered cascading impacts associated with making, communicating, and implementing such work-distancing decisions.
At multiple levels of government, officials wrestled with identifying employees who are essential and those who are nonessential in the context of an incident forecasted to span many months. In addition, officials faced challenges in determining which employees could perform their duties remotely and hierarchical organizations, such as state and federal departments and agencies, were uncertain as to the process for determining and implementing remote-workforce decisions.
Also:
During the exercise, CDC recommended that states delay school openings for six weeks, a follow-up to the initial (pre-exercise) recommendation that states delay the opening of schools for two weeks if the disease is present in the area. Many local jurisdictions and school districts have the authority to decide to close schools (or keep schools open). This distributed approach to school closure decisions caused confusion centered on discrepancies between schools that remained open and those that closed. In addition, while school delays and dismissals may be necessary over the course of the pandemic response, state participants identified any continued school delays and dismissals as having serious cascading impacts that require a concerted public messaging campaign and government coordination. Multiple states realized that dismissing schools is much more complex than they previously appreciated.
The participating private sector organizations and businesses:
- Aetna
- Allegheny Health Network
- Amador Health Center
- American Hospital Association
- American Red Cross
- Association of Public Health Laboratories
- Association of State and Territorial Health Officials Carestream Health
- Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists
- Ephraim McDowell/James B. Haggin Hospital
- Giant Eagle Pharmacy
- Grand Strand Health/HCA
- Health Information Sharing and Analysis Center Healthcare and Public Health Sector Coordinating Council Healthcare Ready
- International Safety Equipment Association
- Juvare
- Kidney Community Emergency Response Program
- Mayo Clinic
- Moldex-Metric Inc.
- National Alliance of State Pharmacy Associations National Association of County and City Health Officials
- National Community Pharmacists Association
- National Indian Health Board
- North Shore University Health System Patients’ Hospital
- RBC Limited
- San Mateo County Health – EMS Agency Seqirus Inc., USA
- Spectrum Health
- TriStar Skyline Medical Center
- University of Minnesota
This exercise took place entirely out of the public eye but had strangely prescient foretelling of events only 5 months later. Kadlec, who had organized the entire tabletop exercise, was also later the author of the U.S. Senate Committee on Health Education, Labor and Pensions report: An Analysis of the Origins of the COVID-19 Pandemic, which came out earlier this year.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., reports: “second only to his longtime crony and comrade in arms Anthony Fauci, Robert Kadlec played a historic leadership role in fomenting the contagious logic that infectious disease posed a national security threat requiring a militarized response.”
He is the signer of the report to HHS, in a letter dated December 9, 2019:
By the time of this letter, US intelligence already knew of the Wuhan virus. Four months later, US lockdowns began, starting with the March 8th cancellation of South-by-Southwest by the Austin, Texas mayor, and extending to the March 12th imposition of travel restrictions, the March 13 takeover by FEMA, and the March 16th press conference by Trump, Fauci, and Deborah Birx, which announced nationwide lockdowns.
The same day, Politico ran an article about another pandemic exercise from 2017 in which some incoming Trump officials participated, including Kelly and Tillerson. The article claims that such exercises are required by law. By the time of Covid lockdowns, they had both been pushed out, only to reemerge as key participants in Crimson Contagion along with most national-security and health-related agencies of the federal government.
The lockdowns – to which Trump agreed only reluctantly and were extended far past the point in which he believed they would control the virus – were the most ruinous of the administration. Trump’s pollsters for 2020 all agreed that these lockdowns created the conditions that drove him from office.
What does it all mean? Perhaps it is all just a series of coincidental data points, that what is called the worst pandemic in 100 years came only a few months after an elaborate multi-agency trial run of the same in which former high officials of the Trump administration participated. And perhaps the best person to run the Covid response also happened to be the very person who organized and managed the trial run in the previous season.
Many people will surely say there is nothing to see here. There is so much not to see these days.
Hungary wants European Parliament dissolved
RT | December 22, 2022
The recent corruption scandal in the European Parliament (EP) is a sign that the EU institution should be abolished in its current form, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Wednesday. He added that the EP already had an abysmal reputation.
Orban’s remarks came after Eva Kaili, a Greek politician who served as one of the European Parliament’s vice presidents, was arrested and charged this month with corruption for receiving bribes from Qatar.
“The Hungarians would like for the European Parliament to be dissolved in its current form,” he said at a press conference in Budapest.
Orban argued that the scandal “draws attention to the fact that national parliaments have a stronger control system in place,” adding that legislators from the parliaments of member states should be delegated to the European Parliament, as opposed to being elected separately.
“And they obviously know our political position: the swamp must be drained,” the prime minister said.
Budapest has repeatedly clashed with the European Parliament and other EU institutions over a number of issues, including migration and LGBTQ rights. Brussels, in turn, accused Orban’s conservative government of eroding the rule of law at home.
Hungary, whose economy heavily depends on Russian energy imports, has also criticized the EU sanctions imposed on Moscow in response to the military operation in Ukraine, which was launched in late February. Unlike many of the bloc’s member states, Orban has refused to send weapons to Kiev.
“If it were up to us, there would not be a sanctions policy,” Orban said on Wednesday. “It is not in our interest to permanently divide the European and Russian economies into two, so we are trying to save what can be saved from our economic cooperation with the Russians.”
Court Says No, Biden Cannot Enforce Vaccine Mandates For Federal Contractors
By Steve Watson | Summit News | December 21, 2022
A 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Monday that The Biden Administration cannot enforce a COVID vaccine mandate on federal contractors.
“The President’s use of procurement regulations to reach through an employing contractor to force obligations on individual employees is truly unprecedented,” the ruling noted, adding “As such, Executive Order 14042 is unlawful, and the Plaintiff States have consequently demonstrated a strong likelihood of success on the merits.”
Referring to Biden’s Executive Order, the ruling also stated that “Congress has not spoken clearly to authorize such a dramatic shift in the exercise of the President’s power under the Procurement Act.”
The vaccine mandate would affect up to 20 percent of people employed in the U.S., Reuters has noted.
Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry, one of the plaintiffs in the case issued a statement asserting that “Today is a victory for freedom,” and vowing “We will continue to stand up against the Biden Administration’s abuses of power that threaten us now and in the future.”
The Ruling comes a week after The Senate passed the National Defense Authorization Act, which lifted the COVID vaccine mandate for active duty military personnel.
Republicans in the Senate, led by Rand Paul, had threatened to block the legislation unless the mandate was scrapped.
While the mandate will be sidelined, some 8,000 troops who were given the boot for refusing to go along with it have not been reinstated.
GOP Senators Ron Johnson and Ted Cruz argued tnhatthe discharged troops should be reinstated with back pay, reasoning that the mandate was “illegal”.
However, Democrats stated that reinstating those service members would send the message that it’s acceptable to disobey orders.
“What we’re telling soldiers is, if you disagree, don’t follow the order and then just lobby Congress and they’ll come along and they’ll restore your rank, they’ll restore your benefits, they’ll restore everything, so orders are just sort of suggestions,” Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Jack Reed, D-R.I., said on the Senate floor. “They’re not.”
Some of the service members are taking the fight to the courts.
Deutsche Bank: “A Certain Degree of Eco-Dictatorship Will Be Necessary”
BY TOBY YOUNG | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | DECEMBER 20, 2022
Izabella Kaminska, formerly the Editor of the FT’s Alphaville and now the Editor of the Blind Spot, has flagged up an alarming passage in a document published in January 2021 by Deutsche Bank Research entitled ‘What we must do to Rebuild’. Eric Heyman has written the section about the tough choices the EU must face it if’s to meet its goal of achieving ‘climate neutrality’ by 2050 – Net Zero, in other words – and says the following:
The impact of the current climate policy on people’s everyday lives is still quite abstract and acceptable for many households. Climate policy comes in the form of higher taxes and fees on energy, which make heating and mobility more expensive. Some countries have set minimum energy efficiency standards for buildings or similar rules in other areas. However, climate policy does not determine our lives. We take key consumption decisions, for example whether we travel at all, how much we travel and which means of transport we use, whether we live in a large house or a small apartment and how we heat our homes, how many electronic devices we have and how intensely we use them or how much meat and exotic fruit we eat. These decisions tend to be made on the basis of our income, not on climate considerations.
If we really want to achieve climate neutrality, we need to change our behaviour in all these areas of life. This is simply because there are
no adequate cost-effective technologies yet to allow us to maintain our living standards in a carbon-neutral way. That means that carbon prices will have to rise considerably in order to nudge people to change their behaviour. Another (or perhaps supplementary) option is to tighten regulatory law considerably. I know that “eco-dictatorship” is a nasty word. But we may have to ask ourselves the question whether and to what extent we may be willing to accept some kind of eco-dictatorship (in the form of regulatory law) in order to move towards climate neutrality.
When he says we have to “ask ourselves… whether and to what extent we may be willing to accept some kind of eco-dictatorship” I don’t think he has a Net Zero referendum in mind. Rather, by ‘ourselves’ he means the EU’s ruling class. It has to ask itself whether it’s willing to pass laws forcing the EU’s population to modify its behaviour to meet the 2050 ‘climate neutrality’ target, regardless of whether it has a democratic mandate to do so or not.
I suppose we should be grateful that at least Heyman hasn’t tried to sugar coat this. It should be clear what “eco-dictatorship” means, even to those most reluctant to accept that Net Zero zealots have little love for democracy.
Stop Press: Izabella Kaminska has interviewed the neo-Malthusian Turkish-American economist Nourel Roubini for the Blind Spot podcast. In his book Megathreats: The Ten Trends that Imperil Our Future, and How to Survive Them he argues that individual freedoms will have to be sacrificed if we’re to contain another pandemic or avoid a climate catastrophe.
Why was the FBI paying Twitter millions of dollars?
By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | December 20, 2022
The latest batch of Twitter Files, released by independent journalist Michael Shellenberger on December 19, revealed that the FBI paid Twitter millions of dollars to process the bureau’s requests.
“I am happy to report we have collected $3,415,323 since October 2019!” wrote an employee at Twitter’s Safety, Content, & Law Enforcement (SCALE) team, in an email sent in February 2021.
“In 2019 SCALE instituted a reimbursement program for our legal process response from the FBI,” the email continued. “Prior to the start of the program, Twitter chose not to collect under this statutory right of reimbursement for the time spent processing requests from the FBI.”
The payout to Twitter, like many other things revealed through the Twitter files, is disturbing. However, Twitter’s “Guidelines for law enforcement” has a section titled “Cost reimbursement,” which states that “Twitter may seek reimbursement for costs associated with information produced pursuant to legal process and as permitted by law (e.g., under 18 U.S.C. §2706).”
The email suggests that the FBI’s reimbursement program for paying companies to process requests was there long before Twitter began accepting the payments. That means that other social media companies were also likely getting paid. What is not clear is which companies, how much the FBI has spent, and for how long it has been making the payments.
The amount spent to pay Twitter could be seen as bribing the company more than compensating it for the extra resources required to process the requests for information or simply buying information on users.
Can the January 6 Panel Really Charge Donald Trump?
By Ilya Tsukanov – Samizdat – 19.12.2022
Congressman Adam Schiff announced Sunday that the House Select Committee Investigating January 6 had accumulated “sufficient evidence” to criminally refer Donald Trump to the Justice Department for prosecution “in connection with his efforts to overturn” the 2020 election. What kinds of charges could the former president face? Sputnik explores.
After a year-and-a-half and over $9 million worth of interviewing, interrogating, examining, and investigating, the January 6 committee is ready to present its final report on the riots and chaos that broke loose at the Capitol complex on January 6, 2021.
The report – an executive summary of which will be released later Monday, will be complemented by a committee vote on criminal referrals to the Justice Department targeting the former president and members of his staff for possible criminal activity.
“People are hungering for justice and for accountability and consequences here,” Maryland Democrat committee member Jamie Raskin told reporters earlier this month. “I know that people feel that we need to make sure that accountability runs all the way to the top. Just because you’re elected president, or used to be president, does not give you the right to engage in crimes freely,” the politician stressed.
California Democrat Adam Schiff echoed his colleague’s sentiments on Sunday, saying that the “evidence was plain” that Trump was guilty of criminal wrongdoing. “This is someone who tried to interfere with a joint session, even inciting a mob to attack the Capitol. If that’s not criminal, then I don’t know what is,” he said.
What Charges Could Trump Face?
Schiff did not specify what criminal charges Trump could face, saying he did not “want to telegraph too much.” However, possible charges include obstruction of the certification of the outcome of the 2020 election, which Trump continues to maintain was rigged against him, seditious conspiracy or insurrection charges, conspiracy to defraud the United States, or even “dereliction of duty” charges over the former president’s purported failure to promptly stop the unrest taking place at the Capitol on that cold January day.
The obstruction and seditious conspiracy charges would be the most serious, and could land the former president up to 40 years prison time total, meaning the 76-year-old would be almost certain to die in prison if tried and convicted, and if the maximum penalty was applied. The conspiracy to defraud the United States charge could mean five years jail time.
Trump has dismissed the committee and its 18-month investigation as a “show trial” and a continuation of the “Russia-Russia-Russia” “witch hunt” against him that began shortly before he was elected president in 2016. Trump’s allies suspect that the January 6 committee’s real goal is to bar the businessman from running for president again in 2024 after two failed impeachments and the collapse of the “Russian collusion” claims.
The committee has been criticized for its partisan nature, with its nine members including just two Republicans – never-Trumpers Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger.
By law, the DoJ would be required to treat the criminal referral in a nonpartisan, unbiased way. However, as other recent criminal cases against Trump associates like Steve Bannon have demonstrated, impartiality may not exactly be the Biden DoJ’s forte. Bannon, 69, appealed his contempt of Congress conviction last month after being slapped with a four-month jail sentence and a $6,500 fine for failing to comply with two subpoenas from the January 6 committee requiring him to testify.
Charges Would Be Historic
A recommendation of criminal charges against a former president would be a precedent-setting event. No sitting or former president has ever been convicted of a crime or served jail time. Three presidents have been impeached (Andrew Johnson, Bill Clinton, and Donald Trump), but all three were acquitted by the Senate. Ulysses S. Grant was arrested in 1872 on a misdemeanor charge for speeding in his horse-drawn carriage. George W. Bush was arrested near his family’s home in Kennebunkport, Maine for drunk driving in 1976, nearly 25 years before becoming president. Other than that, most American presidents have had a squeaky clean criminal record, regardless of suspected crimes by some of them while in office.
And Dangerous
As Democrats seek to silence Trump and prevent him from running again, and mainstream Republicans’ search for a safe, more controllable alternative to the brash New York businessman, political observers on both the left and right are becoming increasingly concerned about the state of the political climate in the United States. According to one recent poll, 57 percent of Americans fear that a civil war is “very likely” or “at least somewhat likely” as Americans become increasingly divided.
Surely, DoJ action to slap criminal charges against a former president, particularly as outstanding questions about the alleged pre-election cover-up of a suspected pay-to-play scandal involving President Joe Biden’s son Hunter ahead of the 2020 election remain unresolved, wouldn’t be a measure that would cool existing tensions. Especially given that upwards of 40 percent of Americans, (and over 60 percent of Republicans) still believe that Biden didn’t win the 2020 race fair and square.
Amazingly, the likely January 6 criminal referrals aren’t even the only potential criminal charges facing the former president, with Trump also being probed by the government over the alleged improper handling and storage of classified files at his Mar-a-Lago estate (which could land him charges under the Espionage Act – and 10 years in the slammer).
Separately, the Trump Organization has been under investigation by New York City and New York State officials, with the real estate mogul’s business empire found guilty of tax fraud earlier this month, facing a fine of up to $1.6 million.
More on Anti-Antisemitism
BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • DECEMBER 20, 2022
It seems that if there is one thing that those at the top of the United States government and the national media really want for the holidays it is to be able to accuse someone new of being an antisemite. Since the Kanye West story exploded, anti-antisemitism has suddenly become big business in America with the White House hosting a December 7th conference on that theme featuring the media and the usual agitprop suspects and groups proclaiming from on high how hatred of the Jewish people is surging. Of course, it is those very groups that compile the numbers on the alleged surge to benefit their argument and one sometimes wonders if a poster on a college campus wall announcing a meeting to support Palestine that annoys a Jewish student is really antisemitism.
One of the loudest voices calling for a crack-down on the alleged hate criminals, the Anti-Defamation League’s (ADL) Executive Director Jonathan Greenblatt, calls the latest developments a “national crisis.” He has been particularly vocal in demanding strong hate crime type countermeasures to deal with those who dare to challenge the reality of Jewish power in the United States and has inter alia been successful in helping to convince the federal government to define criticism of Israel as ipso facto antisemitism. That leaves many of us wondering what happened to the First Amendment right to free speech, particularly as Israel is a foreign country with a dubious human rights and foreign relations history that merits considerable criticism.
The posing by Israel and its supporting cast of characters as perpetual victims is somewhat ironic, as Jews are the wealthiest, best educated and most politically powerful demographic in the United States. Joe Biden’s special envoy to monitor antisemitism worldwide Deborah Lipstadt oddly disagrees, saying that “For too long, Jew-hatred has been belittled or discounted because Jews have erroneously been considered white and privileged. This is a very real threat to Jews…” but who is she trying to kid? Jews dominate and control the entertainment and news reporting sectors of the economy and are way over represented in many high profile, highly paid and high prestige professions, including medicine, law, financial services, government and academia. Beyond that, more than 90% of the discretionary spending by the Department of Homeland Security goes to Jewish groups and organizations to provide them with “security.”
Much of the Jewish success is due to persistent and successful networking within their ethnicity to advance themselves even when it is achieved at the expense of the common good. When necessary, both antisemitism and the so-called holocaust are cited to silence critics and justify the murderous and genocidal excesses committed by a succession of Israeli governments, likely reaching its peak when the new ultra-conservative government of Benjamin Netanyahu is formed in the next few days.
Politicians, understanding that being perceived as anti-Israel or opposed to the corruption of the political system itself wrought by Jewish money, quickly learn to avoid antagonizing the Tribe. Those who do not, are removed from the system as soon as possible, frequently when they find themselves running for their next office against an exceptionally well-funded and media endorsed opponent.
The recent White House sponsored closed-door meeting bringing together Jewish leaders to discuss what to do about the antisemitism problem was addressed by no less than Doug Emhoff, the Hollywood lawyer described as the “Second Gentleman” by virtue of his marriage to the woman who currently pretends to be the Vice President of the United States. He is the first Jewish spouse of a president or vice president.
Emhoff described his boyhood growing up Jewish in New Jersey and New York and lamented the developing “epidemic of hate” directed against Jews by certain entertainers and public figures. He elaborated ““Let me be clear — words matter. People are no longer saying the quiet parts out loud, they are screaming them,” Emhoff said. “We cannot normalize this. We all have an obligation to condemn these vile acts. We must not stay silent. There is no either or. There are no two sides. Everyone must be against this.”
The meeting, held in the in the Indian Treaty Room in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the White House Campus in Washington, also featured State Department anti-Semitism envoy Lipstadt and White House domestic policy adviser Susan Rice. There were representatives from a dozen Jewish organizations, including the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, Agudath, Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, American Jewish Committee, Orthodox Union, Jewish on Campus, National Council of Jewish Women, Hillel, Secure Community Network, Religious Action Center, Anti-Defamation League, Integrity First for America and American Friends of Lubavitch.
Many of those present urged a major federal government effort to address the developing antisemitism problem, as they see it. Some stressed the importance of improving education on Jews and anti-Semitism in schools where such issues are not taught, which would mean wholesale adoption of the acceptable narrative on both Jewish issues and on what is increasingly referred to as holocaust denial.
The antisemitism meeting was preceded by a December 5th letter to the White House that was originated by Senator Jackie Rosen of Nevada and signed by 124 other Congressmen identifying themselves as the House and Senate Bipartisan Task Forces for Combating Antisemitism. The letter called on the White House to take action against the antisemites through a “unified national strategy.” President Joe Biden responded by setting up an interagency task force to focus on the antisemitism problem, directed by the National Security Council. The group’s first task is coming up with a strategy to tackle the problem. Presidential spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre elaborated how “This strategy will raise understanding about antisemitism and the threat it poses to the Jewish community and all Americans, address antisemitic harassment and abuse both online and offline, seek to prevent antisemitic attacks and incidents, and encourage whole-of-society efforts to counter antisemitism and build a more inclusive nation.”
So the United States government and the so-called Justice Department will soon likely be going to war against alleged antisemites. Like all of America’s pointless wars, this war will be expensive and fundamental liberties will be sacrificed as the government intrudes in the daily lives of its citizens to enforce complete conformity. There are perhaps other signs that the war has already begun, at least for some public figures. One of the most astonishing stories to appear recently concerns how the Democratic Party majority on the House Foreign Affairs committee by a 26 to 22 vote margin rejected a resolution presented by a group of Republican lawmakers that would initiate auditing of the money going to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in an effort to determine how it is being spent (or wasted).
The bill had been introduced by controversial Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and a small group of mostly conservative Republicans who either oppose or seek restraint on US aid to Ukraine, but it also received some strong support including from more hawkish Republicans who generally back the war. Republican congressmen Thomas Massie (KY), Matt Gaetz (FL), Barry Moore (AL), and Andrew Clyde (GA) cosponsored Greene’s bill.
Several Democratic congressmen alleged that the legislation to set up the audit was due to the sponsors having been taken in by Russian propaganda, but the prize for Democratic Party response must go to Congresswoman Susan Wild of Pennsylvania, who opined that the bill was “a political stunt designed to tie up and slow down our critical efforts to help Ukrainian forces.” But that was preceded by a personal rant attacking Marjorie Taylor Greene. Wild told her colleagues that “I want to begin on a personal note. As a Jewish American at a time when powerful public figures, including several celebrities with global platforms are putting Jewish communities across our country at risk of violent attacks by engaging in vicious antisemitism and holocaust denial […] it is beyond shameful to see support for a measure like this one introduced by representative Greene. I am not going to attempt to recite even a fraction of the patently false, bigoted, and hateful statements and actions that have characterized Representative Greene’s time as a member of this body. I will just say that her antisemitic conspiracy theories and trivializations of Nazism stand out as particularly reprehensible reflections of her ideology and approach to holding public office. I cannot in good conscience remain silent about any of this. I find the idea of Rep. Greene — the legitimacy that comes with elevating one of her pieces of legislation to be profoundly offensive.”
So, for someone in Congress the fate of a reasonable and much needed bill to audit the billions of dollars going to Ukraine turns out to be all about the alleged antisemitism of the legislation’s sponsor, which is not true in any event unless one defines criticizing the Rothschilds and globalist demon George Soros as antisemitism. Unfortunately, Susan Wild is far from unique.
Another antisemitism event heavily promoted in the media recently concerns Francesca Albanese, an Italian lawyer-diplomat who is currently the United Nations human rights special rapporteur in charge of monitoring the situation in the Palestinian territories. American officials sharply criticized several social media messages that Albanese wrote in 2014, which seemed to them to confirm charges of anti-Israel bias in the UN’s Human Rights Council (UNHRC), where Albanese’s office is located. Michele Taylor, the US Ambassador to the UNHRC exploded, saying “We are appalled. This is outrageous, inappropriate, corrosive, and degrades the value of the UN.”
So, what was among the Albanese messages, which appeared on Facebook? She opined that “America and Europe, one of them subjugated by the Jewish lobby, and the other by the sense of guilt about the Holocaust, remain on the sidelines and continue to condemn the oppressed — the Palestinians — who defend themselves with the only means they have (deranged missiles), instead of making Israel face its international law responsibilities.” In another message she described Israeli behavior as “greedy.”
After the wave of attacks on her Francesca Albanese maintained that the observations were made long ago and that she had failed to contextualize them properly. I will leave it up to the reader to judge the comments, but I find them perfectly acceptable given the reality of what is going on in Israel-Palestine as well as the de facto domination of the process and narrative by Israel and its powerful lobbies in both the anglophone world and Europe. In fact, I would go farther and suggest that the essentially contrived anti-antisemitism campaign that seems to be gaining momentum in both Europe and the US indicates that, if anything, Albanese has understated her case.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
‘Twitter Files’ Make it Clear: We Must Abolish the FBI
By Ron Paul | December 19, 2022
As we learn more and more from the “Twitter Files,” it is becoming all too obvious that Federal agencies such as the FBI viewed the First Amendment of our Constitution as an annoyance and an impediment. In Friday’s release from the pre-Musk era, journalist Matt Taibbi makes an astute observation: Twitter was essentially an FBI subsidiary.
The FBI, we now know, was obsessed with Twitter. We learned that agents sent Twitter Trust and Safety chief Yoel Roth some 150 emails between 2020 and 2022. Those emails regularly featured demands from US government officials for the “private” social media company to censor comments and ban commenters they did not like.
The Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF), a US government entity that included the FBI as well as other US intelligence agencies expressly forbidden from domestic activities, numbered 80 agents engaged regularly in telling Twitter which Tweets to censor and which accounts to ban. The Department of Homeland Security brought in outside government contractors and (government-funded) non-governmental organizations to separately pressure Twitter to suppress speech the US government did not like.
US Federal government agencies literally handed Twitter lists of Americans it wanted to see silenced, and Twitter complied. Let that sink in.
This should be a massive scandal and likely it would have been had it occurred under a Trump Administration. Indeed, Congress would be gearing up for Impeachment 3.0 if Trump-allied officials had engaged in such egregious behavior. But since these US government employees were by-and-large acting to suppress pro-Trump sentiment, all we hear are crickets.
What is interesting about these Twitter revelations is how obsessed the FBI and its government partners were with satire and humor. Even minor Twitter accounts with small numbers of followers were constantly flagged by the Feds for censorship and deletion. But knowledge of history helps us understand this obsession: in Soviet times the population was always engaged in joking about the ineptitude, corruption, and idiocy of the political class. Underground publications known as samizdat were rich with satire, humor, and ridicule.
Tyrants hate humor and cannot withstand satire. That is clearly why the FBI (and CIA) was determined to see a heavy hand raised against any American poking fun at the deep state.
There is good news in all of this, however. As Constitutional Law Professor Jonathan Turley wrote over the weekend, a new Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll found that even though the mainstream media has ignored the “Twitter files,” Americans have not. Nearly two-thirds of respondents believe that Twitter was involved in politically-motivated censorship in advance of the 2020 election. Some 70 percent of those polled believe Congress must take action against this corporate/state censorship.
As Professor Turley points out, although the First Amendment only applies to the US government, “it does apply to agents or surrogates of the government. Twitter now admits that such a relationship existed between its former officials and the government.”
So now we have proof that the FBI (along with US intelligence agencies and the Department of Homeland Security) have been acting through “private” social media companies to manipulate what Americans are allowed to say when they communicate with each other.
Is there anything more un-American than that? Personally, I find it sickening.
We do not need the FBI and CIA and other federal agencies viewing us as the enemy and attacking our Constitution. End the Fed… and End the Federal Bureau of Investigation!
Copyright © 2022 by RonPaul Institute
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The New Baghdad Pact
By Dr Bouthaina Shaaban | February 23, 2017
A recently declassified CIA document prepared in 1983, and released on 20 January 2017, shows that the United States had at the time encouraged Saddam Hussein to attack Syria, which would have led to a vicious conflict between the two countries, thus draining their resources.
The report, which was then prepared by CIA officer Graham Fuller, indicates that the US tried adamantly to convince Saddam to attack Syria under any pretense available, in order to get the two most powerful countries in the Arab East to destroy each other, turning their attention away from the Arab-Israeli conflict. … continue
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