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
After Twitter revelations, Rep. Comer says Google and Facebook need to be investigated for similar censorship collusion
By Christina Maas | Reclaim The Net | December 18, 2022
Commenting on the recent Twitter Files’ revelation of the FBI’s constant communication with Twitter, including recommending account bans, Republican Ranking Member of the House Oversight Committee Rep. James Comer said investigations should go beyond Twitter to Google and Facebook.
“The entire FBI needs to be dismantled, we need to start all over. We need to enact strict reforms, and there need to be checks and balances at the FBI,” Comer said, speaking to Tammy Bruce on Fox News’ Hannity. He added that fixing and holding the FBI accountable should start with the budget process, which is why he is against the push for an omnibus.
“My concern was that this was a rogue FBI employee or two…but what we found today is the FBI had its own ministry of propaganda,” Comer continued.
“This is serious. What else are they involved in at the FBI? The entire FBI needs to be dismantled. We need to start all over. We need to enact strict reforms and there need to be checks and balances at the FBI.”
Bruce then asked, “I trust, though, that you are going to expand this beyond Twitter. You mentioned Google, you mentioned, perhaps, Facebook… are you going to expand and include those platforms, which we also know, at least from Mark Zuckerberg, he too was contacted by the FBI. I think we only know a portion of that. Are you going to expand this investigation?”
The Republican lawmaker, set to chair the Oversight Committee starting in January, replied: “Yes. This is going to take several committees focusing a lot of attention. Big tech is going to be a priority for the Republican majority…”
He added that “the FBI was involved in censorship… they have stepped in where the government does not belong. And this has to end. People have to be held accountable and we’re going to have to start with the budget, that’s what is so frustrating about what’s going on right now in Washington.”
Released files reveal how FBI grilled Twitter
RT | December 19, 2022
Twitter’s former safety chief has said he was baffled when the FBI grilled the company over assessed foreign influence threats on the platform, the latest trove of documents released by journalist Matt Taibbi and Twitter owner Elon Musk shows.
According to excerpts from internal communications that were published on Sunday, FBI agent Elvis Chan told Twitter’s former head of trust and safety, Yoel Roth, in July 2020 to expect written questions from the Foreign Influence Task Force, adding that the intelligence community sought “clarifications” from the company.
The FBI then sent a list of detailed questions, asking Twitter to explain why, during an earlier briefing for US security and intelligence agencies, “you indicated you had not observed much recent activity from official propaganda actors on your platform.” At the end of their letter, the FBI attached references to several news articles about Russian and Chinese “propaganda” campaigns on social media.
Roth shared the questionnaire with other Twitter executives, saying that he was “frankly perplexed by the requests here, which seem more like something we’d get from a congressional committee than the Bureau,” according to screenshots published by Taibbi.
The former safety head added that he felt “not particularly comfortable” with the FBI demanding written answers on the matter. According to the released files, Roth wrote that the premise of the questions “seems flawed,” arguing that the intelligence community had “fundamentally misunderstood” Twitter’s position on disinformation.
“We’ve been clear that official state propaganda is definitely a thing on Twitter,” Roth wrote, suggesting he contact Chan over the phone as soon as possible.
The exchange took place when US officials, think tanks and media outlets were warning about alleged foreign meddling in the ongoing US presidential election campaign and disinformation related to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Musk, who finalized his acquisition of Twitter in October, promised more transparency at the company, and fired some of its top executives.
The files previously released by Taibbi with Musk’s blessing revealed how Twitter staffers struggled to rationalize the permanent ban of former US President Donald Trump, and the blocking of a story about the laptop belonging to Hunter Biden, President Joe Biden’s son.
NYT, after deciding lockdowns are authoritarian and bad when China does them, now mildly terrified as Xi Jinping reopens & infections rise
You can take the New York Times out of lockdown, but you can’t take the lockdowns out of the New York Times.
eugyppius: a plague chronicle | December 19, 2022
“From Zero Covid to No Plan: Behind China’s Pandemic U-Turn” is the headline of the latest highly revealing Times reporting on the end of Zero Covid in China. “After micromanaging the coronavirus strategy for nearly three years,” we read, “… Xi Jinping has suddenly left the populace to improvise.”
The essence of the piece is that the Chinese have rightly regained their freedoms, but they’re now left to face a terrifying virus alone and undefended by their government, which is also very bad, and possibly worse than the lockdowns, as bad as they were.
China’s party-run media has cast the shift [from Zero Covid] as a stressful but well-considered exit, opening the way back to good economic times. Warnings about the dangers of the coronavirus have swiftly disappeared, replaced by official claims that the Omicron variant is generally mild. By holding off from easing until now, the government has saved many lives, the People’s Daily said on Thursday in a long article defending Mr. Xi’s pandemic strategy as “totally correct.”
In reality, an examination of how the shift unfolded in Chongqing and elsewhere reveals a government overtaken by a cascade of Covid outbreaks, confusion over directives, economic woes and then rare political protests. …
It’s almost like mass containment doesn’t do anything aside from wrecking the economy and ruining everyone’s lives. I’m glad the Times can finally come close to admitting this now, in the last weeks of 2022.
By changing only a handful of words, you could make key sections of the article apply to Germany, or any western nation aside from Sweden or Belarus:
Even the Chinese Communist Party, a virtuoso at controlling the narrative, is finding it difficult to sell the policy lurch to anxious residents.
[Xi] turned China’s intense top-to-bottom mobilization against the pandemic into a showcase of the party’s organizational strength. For two years, his Covid war enjoyed widespread public acceptance, but eventually the effort exhausted staff, strained local finances, and appeared to drown out attempts to discuss, let alone devise, a measured transition.
Whereas in the West, we had totally open and honest discussions about the insane, enduring closures, that weren’t marked by massive censorship and government intimidation at all. Otherwise, Western nations were themselves locked in exactly this same international competition, eager to display the fruits of their superior pandemic planning to the world, and terrified that failure would cost them legitimacy. One of the reasons Germany locked down so hard during Fall 2020, was that the Merkel government had collected many international plaudits for their handling of the first wave — effectively taking credit for the seasonality of infections. They were unwilling to surrender the regard they had earned so easily.
Mr. Xi has no likely successor and could stay in power for at least another decade. But the scars from the abrupt change may feed distrust in his domineering style.
It’s not subjecting his whole country to absurd containment theatre over what is no more than an influenza-level risk that poses a political problem for Xi, but rather “the scars from the abrupt change” in policy.
Finally the reporters get around to discussing the protests.
In Zhengzhou in central China, thousands of workers clashed with police at an iPhone plant, angry about a delay in bonuses and the handling of an outbreak.
In Haizhu, a textile manufacturing district in southern China, laborers poured onto the streets over food shortages and hardships under lockdown. Migrant workers, who depend on daily work for their livelihoods, went weeks without jobs.
“I couldn’t make a living this year,” said Zhou Kaice, a street porter in Chongqing. “Some bosses I worked for started up for a few days but were then shut by lockdowns.”
Despite the strains, officials still insisted China must win its pandemic war. Provincial leaders throughout November declared their commitment to “zero Covid,” often citing Mr. Xi as their lodestone.
“If pandemic controls were loosened, that would inevitably create mass infections,” said a Xinhua editorial on Nov. 19. “Economic and social development and the public’s physical health and safety would be seriously hurt.”
How many times did we have to read that lockdowns were the ultimate way to grow the economy, because without them, the virus would somehow destroy all business activity?
It’s also interesting how anti-lockdown protestors in the West are thugs and stupid conspiracy-crazed Nazis, while in China they are “students, workers and homeowners.”
By [November], China’s most widespread protests since 1989 had begun. Students, workers and homeowners in Beijing, Shanghai and elsewhere vented against Covid controls, angered by a fire in western China that many believed, despite official denials, had killed residents trapped in their apartments by lockdowns.
“I tell you that in this world there’s only one sickness, and that’s poverty and having no freedom, and we’ve got plenty of that,” said a Chongqing man whose tirade went viral in China.
“Give me liberty or give me death,” he shouted, using the Chinese version of the American revolutionary battle cry.
Sounds like the Canadian trucker protests — you know, those guys who posed such a threat to freedom and democracy that it proved necessary to freeze their bank accounts.
At the end, the Times assures its heavily masked and vaccinated readership that “most people are staying home,” but that “if deaths rise sharply, public anger could revive” because “infections could hinder a quick economic rebound.”
Until we Decovidify the newsrooms, there will never be sane reporting on SARS-2 in any major press outlet, ever.
25 Peruvians Murdered in a Week of Intense Repression

“Terrorists are the lawmakers and the Lima City’s press.” | Photo: Twitter/ @mario_campa
teleSUR | December 19, 2022
On Sunday, Peru’s Health Ministry acknowledged that 25 people have died during the protests against President Dina Boluarte and in favor of an immediate call for general elections.
According to official data, the departments where these deaths occurred were Ayacucho (9), Apurimac (6), Cusco (3), Junin (3), La Libertad (3), and Arequipa (1).
The Health ministry also reported 287 injured people who have already been discharged. They are distributed as follows: Apurimac (56), Ayacucho (45), Lima (37), La Libertad (36), Arequipa (35) , Junin (35), Cusco (16), Puno (15), and Huancavelica (12).
Nevertheless, 69 people remain hospitalized in Ayacucho (20), Junin (17), La Libertad (12), Ucayali (6), Apurimac (5), Lima (4), Arequipa (4), and Huancavelica (1).
Boluarte announced that the Public Ministry and the Military Justice would investigate the death of civilians during the social protests.
On Tuesday, she will appoint new officials to replace the president of the Council of Ministers and the ministers of education and culture, who resigned on Dec. 16 after stating their disagreement with the violent repression of the population.
Peruvians have been staging huge protests since Dec. 7, when Congress appointed Dina Boluarte as president after removing Pedro Castillo, who is currently sentenced to 18 months in preventive prison for rebellion. Mexico will grant political asylum to his family.
January 6 committee recommends charges for Trump
RT | December 19, 2022
The Democrat-led January 6 committee agreed on Monday to make criminal referrals against former President Donald Trump. The panel recommended that Trump be charged with defrauding the US, making false statements, obstruction, and inciting an “insurrection” on Capitol Hill last January.
The committee, made up of seven Democratic members of Congress and two Republican opponents of the former president, voted unanimously to adopt a report recommending the charges.
The report is the culmination of 18 months of investigation by the panel, which was convened to investigate Trump’s alleged role in inciting the riot by his supporters that interrupted the certification of Joe Biden’s electoral victory last year. Trump has accused the committee of orchestrating a “witch hunt” against him, calling its members “partisan hacks.”
Referring to the “insurrection” charge, Rep. Jamie Raskin said before the vote that the committee believes “that more than sufficient evidence exists for a criminal referral” of Trump for “assisting or aiding and comforting those at the Capitol who engaged in a violent attack on the United States.”
“The Committee has developed significant evidence that President Trump intended to disrupt the peaceful transition of power,” Raskin continued.
Shortly before the riot, Trump urged his supporters to protest “peacefully and patriotically” at the Capitol. The riot that followed led to the deaths of five people, but only one of these deaths has been conclusively linked to the actions of another person: that of Ashli Babbitt, a Trump supporter who was shot by a police officer.
It is now up to the Justice Department to decide whether to prosecute Trump. The former president said in September that he “can’t imagine” being indicted, but added that charges wouldn’t prevent him from seeking a return to office in 2024. Trump announced his candidacy in November.
In a tweet after the committee’s vote, Rep. Adam Kinzinger, one of the panel’s two Republicans, linked the criminal referral to Trump’s political future. “We now turn to the criminal justice system to ensure Justice under the law,” he wrote. “The American people can ensure he’s never elected again.”
The Myth of Pandemic Preparedness
The entire effort is based on the false assumption that pandemic preparedness would actually work. In fact, all it has done is create new pandemics.
1. The most recent WHO-declared Public Health Emergencies of International Concern (PHEICs) for SARS-CoV-2 and Monkeypox were both caused by lab-created viruses, based on many careful analyses of their genomes.
2. There is no evidence that pandemic preparedness ever benefited anyone but the preparedness industry, and substantial evidence that it led to the creation of the COVID pandemic.
3. The Democrat majority staff report, “Preparing for and preventing the next public health emergency.” echoes the WHO Amendments.
4. The Global Preparedness Monitoring Board has also geared up to push the identical program as the WHO: surveillance, One Health, and investment — “all topics that the GPMB has long recognised are crucial for the advancement of resilient pandemic preparedness mechanisms.”
5. The G20 nations agreed last April to a $50 Billion dollars a year price tag for gloval pandemic preparedness.
6. The Globalist agenda is out in the open for all to see.
The pandemic preparedness concept is based on fantasy; it is a dangerous money grab for a new biodefense industry. It brought:
· Many more high-containment BSL-3 and BSL-4 labs,
· 15,000 new scientists trained to research biowarfare pathogens,
· Poorly tested drugs and vaccines for which the manufacturers had no liability
· More corruption and pork for politicians to distribute.
· Nathan Wolfe’s company: biolabs in Ukraine, squire to Ghislaine Maxwell, funding by Hunter Biden’s investment group
· Peter Daszak’s ‘nonprofit’ that collected dangerous viruses from over 30 countries to bring to the US Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DOD’s DTRA) for further investigation
· Extremely dangerous anthrax, smallpox and COVID vaccines
· The COVID drug paxlovid, which led to relapses of COVID in President Biden, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky and NIAID Director and Presidential COVID adviser Anthony Fauci and millions of Americans, presumably prolonging their infectiousness and causing more cases of COVID
· Expensive new federal agencies (ASPR, BARDA in DHHS, and subagencies within DHS and within DOD) and new funding streams to the NIH
· An excuse to censor alternate medical/scientific views
Fauci says not pushing back against online “misinformation” would be a blow to society
By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | December 17, 2022
President Joe Biden’s outgoing chief medical adviser Anthony Fauci dismissed criticism from Twitter owner Elon Musk, adding that the platform has become a “cesspool of misinformation.”
“I don’t pay attention to that,” Fauci said in an interview with MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell. “I mean, yeah, he has a big megaphone, but, I mean, the Twittersphere as it is has really gone berserk lately. It’s kind of become almost a cesspool of misinformation.”
Last Sunday, Musk criticized Fauci and called for his prosecution for lying to the American public and funding research that might have been the origin of the virus.
“My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci,” Musk wrote.
He later shared a meme showing Fauci telling Biden, “Just one more lockdown, my king.”
In another interview on David Axelrod’s podcast, Fauci also dismissed criticism from Musk.
“I don’t respond to him,” Fauci said. “I don’t pay any attention to him because that’s merely a distraction,” he said. “And if you get drawn into that, and I have to be honest, that cesspool of interaction … there’s no value added to that, David. It doesn’t help anything.”
Dr. Fauci was asked by MSNBC host Andrea Mitchell if society was becoming “anti-science,” referring to the rise of what she called “disinformation and misinformation” spreading online.
“The answer is yes,” Fauci responded. “The short answer to your question, Andrea. But the other thing is that there is so much misinformation that we were experiencing the normalization of untruths. Where there is so much disinformation that spreads predominately through social media that people just get so used to the untruths that it becomes normalized which is really bad because then you don’t push back against it. You say, well, that’s just the way it is. That would be a terrible blow to society. And I believe to our democracy if all of a sudden people say, well, what’s the use?
“There’s so much untruth out there we might as well not even push back on it. It’s hopeless. We’ve got to not accept the normalization of untruths.”
Dr. Fauci is currently facing a lawsuit for allegedly working with social media platforms to suppress speech.
