Canada’s mandatory Covid-19 hotel stays are not ‘internment camps’ but they are costly forced detention
By Eva Bartlett | RT | February 10, 2021
Since at least October 2020, some Canadians have been concerned about rumours of Covid-19 “internment camps.” In reality, there may be no barbed wire or gun turrets, but a number of travellers have experienced detention firsthand.
Last October, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was asked about this. His reply didn’t address the specific claim at hand, instead he spoke generally of “noise and harmful misinformation on the Internet,” and bizarrely urged people to resist “people who would sow chaos within our communities and our democracy.” (I shudder to think which foreign interference he imagined.)
Earlier that month, Ontario member of provincial parliament (MPP) Randy Hillier had asked the province’s legislature about potential “internment camps,” referring to a federal government call for expressions of interest regarding “quarantine/isolation camps throughout every province and every territory in Canada.”
These camps fall under Canada’s Quarantine Act (2005), which specifies that the country can“designate any place in Canada as a quarantine facility.”
So fears of “being confined as a prisoner,” the standard definition of “internment,” can be laid to rest, right?
Well, while a temporary, mandatory, expensive hotel stay certainly isn’t the same as being kept in an internment camp, it is the 2021 plan for travellers flying to Canada, even if they “test negative” for Covid-19.
And many are rightly complaining that it is unlawful and goes against Canadians’ rights, including that those whisked away to secret locations are not given the right to legal counsel, much less right to contact families/friends.
At the end of January 2021, Canada decided to suspend flights to/from Mexico and Caribbean countries, and, effective February 3, implemented the three night stay-at-your-own-expense (or do jail time) hotel quarantine policy for travellers entering Canada with “positive tests” (or the “wrong” negative one). These rules were extended to travellers flying from the US, Central and South America as well.
Trudeau, on January 29, said the cost was expected to be more than Can$2000 (US$1575).
Further, as noted in the government’s news release on these measures, a violation of the quarantine instructions “is also an offence under the Quarantine Act and could lead to serious penalties, including six months in prison and/or $750,000 in fines.”
Whereas until recently it was enough to provide a negative coronavirus test, now travellers to Canada must provide specifically a “negative COVID-19 molecular (PCR) test” or do hotel time at their own expense until receiving such a result.
These new measures have already been trialled on passengers who have recently flown to Canada.
In one instance on January 30, a panicked mother (Rebekah McDonald) spoke of her son being taken away to a quarantine facility, saying, “They won’t let me talk to him. They won’t let me see him. They won’t tell me where he’s going.”
As it later turned out, while the son had complied and done a Covid-19 test (two, actually, the antigen and the PCR), he only had the paperwork for the former, and unbeknownst to him, Canada demanded the latter.
He and others likewise sent to hotel prison could be forgiven for missing the January 7, 2021 Transport Canada update specifying that antigen tests would not be accepted. Just two months prior, Government Canada listed antigen tests as a test for Covid-19.
In Ontario some days later, a passenger (Steve Duesing) also arriving with a negative test was shuttled to an approved quarantine hotel, apparently itself isolated from the public, with a “detention centre feel to it,” to wait for the Government Canada approved test results.
More recently, another passenger (Neil McCullough) subject to Canada’s arbitrary and draconian new rules spent 11 days in hotel isolation, because paperwork for his test didn’t list the clinic’s address.
In the latter case, there was an additional element of totalitarianism: according to McCullough, he and the woman in the next room he tried to speak with were allegedly both informed by the security guard that their quarantine period “would restart” if they didn’t stop talking about their experiences.
Rules for thee, but not…
The government paints its measures as precautions to limit the “spread” of Covid-19, but when numerous government officials themselves have repeatedly violated the regulations, it is clear that they don’t believe in the need for such rules.
This is not about “public safety,” but is about control of the populace.
Patty Hadju, Canada’s minister of health, is quoted as valiantly saying:
“No one should be travelling right now. Each of us has a part in keeping our communities safe, and that means avoiding non-essential travel, which can put you, your loved ones, and your community at risk.”
However, let’s recall that Hadju three times in April 2020 flew “between Ottawa and her home in Thunder Bay,” at a time when she advocated that “now is not the time for gatherings with family and friends. Connect with others with a phone call or video chat instead.”
And actually, she did more of the same in the following months, amounting to at least 11 flights.
The PM himself violated “the rules” over Easter last year, when he took his family, staff and a motorcade across provincial lines to the summer residence (after telling Canadians to suck it up and stay home).
Time will tell if the PM, health minister, and cohorts in positions of authority also violate these newest measures.
Legal action against Trudeau government
The Government Canada page on the new mandate notes that travellers will need to do the PCR test on arrival to Canada (in addition to having already just done it in order to arrive in Canada in the first place). So, according to this logic (and I use that term lightly), even if one has jumped through the absurd 2020 hoops and adapted to the early 2021 hoops, they’ll still need to do expensive hotel time upon arrival in Canada.
In any case, since the PCR test being pushed by Government Canada has long been shown to be unreliable and generate false positives, it thus becomes quite plausible that Canada’s preference of that test is because it will generate more “cases” and thus rack up fear of the pandemic.
An aside: The $2000+ for the three-night stay at government-approved hotels goes towards, Government Canada says, the test, the stay, and “all associated costs for food, cleaning and security.”
And although stays at hotels near airports are never cheap, in this case the food seems to be bordering on prison fare. A photo of Duesing’s Radisson meal shows a skimpy sandwich in a styrofoam container.
On February 3, the Justice Centre For Constitutional Freedoms published an update that it is “preparing to file legal action imminently,” regarding Government Canada’s mandatory hotel quarantine, noting they had “received hundreds of emails” since Canada announced the new travel measures.
The Canadian Civil Liberties Association views these measures as an affront against civilians’ rights:
“The quarantine rules will almost certainly impact those who travel to care for ill relatives or attend funerals, those who travel to receive specialized medical care, and those who have health conditions that will make isolating in a hotel a particularly challenging and potentially dangerous proposition.”
In a follow-up video on February 3, McDonald reflected on the lack of accountability for her son’s detention, with no means to speak to anyone to ask for information or help.
Likewise, McCullough was met with vagueness during his unlawful detention of 11 days.
“When I asked the health nurse who I could call, they just answered, ‘the department of health’ … I had no rights. No one to call, no one was accountable, no option to do anything but go along.”
While Canada’s forced quarantine at travellers’ expense program has been temporarily paused, it is allegedly scheduled to rebegin in the weeks after February 14.
So yes, while these stories of being forcibly locked away with no access to lawyers are happening in hotels and not internment camps, the people being locked up aren’t citizens living under the shining democracy of Trudeau’s fantasy world.
Canadians are right to be worried about what comes next, including potentially outsourcing the 11 federally run (non-hotel) quarantine sites to a “third party service provider.”
As with the government’s other totalitarian Covid-19 policies, Canadians have no say in the matter, as their lives become increasingly controlled, and destroyed, by these policies.
Eva Bartlett is a Canadian independent journalist and activist. She has spent years on the ground covering conflict zones in the Middle East, especially in Syria and Palestine (where she lived for nearly four years). Follow her on Twitter @EvaKBartlett
The Trump Political Show Trial
By Ron Paul | February 8, 2021
The Senate trial for now twice-impeached former President Donald Trump is set to begin this week, with little doubt over the outcome. A procedural vote in the Senate on the constitutionality of “removing from office” someone who is not in office revealed that nowhere near enough Republicans were willing to join their Democrat counterparts in voting to convict.
Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, who is required by the Constitution to preside, has by refusing to participate made it clear that he does not consider the upcoming action in the Senate to be a legitimate impeachment trial.
So if it is not a legitimate trial, what is it, then? Judging from the House impeachment resolution, it looks more like a banana republic “show trial” than a careful case detailing Trump’s “high crimes and misdemeanors.”
Trump was impeached by the Democrat-controlled US House for “incitement of insurrection” over the January 6th melee at the US Capitol. Telling his supporters they must fight or they’re “not going to have a country any more” was cited in the impeachment resolution as evidence that Trump “gravely endangered the security of the United States and its institutions of Government” and has “demonstrated that he will remain a threat to national security, democracy, and the Constitution if allowed to remain in office.”
Trump also told them to march to the Capitol “peacefully and patriotically” to encourage Congress to consider his claims of election fraud, but Democrats in the House say that he didn’t really mean it.
Why the snap impeachment? Why not, as Constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley has written, hold hearings and call witnesses to explore whether the former president actually had insurrection on his mind? Did he call off or delay the National Guard troops from protecting the Capitol, for example?
Or was he simply using heated political rhetoric that his accusers in Congress have also used plenty of times?
Weeks of hearings in the House with dozens of witnesses could have helped make the case for the Senate that Trump was guilty of inciting insurrection. Such hearings could have turned the tide against Trump in the Senate, where he is certainly not universally supported within his own party.
But the House had no interest in such hearings. They wanted a snap impeachment. They wanted no witnesses. They wanted to benefit from the universal mainstream media narrative that the mob who entered the Capitol building was not just unruly Americans angry over what they believed was a rigged election, but was actually trying to overthrow the government to keep Trump in power.
The House Democrats knew that the “insurrection” narrative would not stand the test of time – anyone familiar with “color revolutions” or coups overseas would easily recognize that this was not one. So they rushed through the impeachment not because they wanted to remove him from an office he no longer occupied, but because they wanted to bar him from ever running for office again.
It does raise the question: what are they afraid of? They called their impeachment a victory for democracy, but isn’t preventing Trump from running again a subversion of democracy?
Trump would do well to ignore the Senate proceedings. There is no reason to participate in a show trial. The media has reported that he intends to focus on the “stolen” election in his defense before the Senate. That would be counterproductive. The right question to ask is, “what if they held a show trial and nobody came”?
Copyright © 2021 by RonPaul Institute.
Don’t Impeach Trump. Impeach the Deep State for Its Conspiracy to Kill the Constitution
By John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead | The Rutherford Institute| February 8, 2021
Let’s be clear about one thing: the impeachment of Donald Trump is a waste of time and money.
Impeaching Trump will accomplish very little, and it will not in any way improve the plight of the average American. It will only reinforce the spectacle and farce that have come to be synonymous with politics today.
While the nation allows itself to be distracted by yet more bread-and-circus politics, the American kakistocracy (a government run by unprincipled career politicians and corporate thieves that panders to the worst vices in our nature and has little regard for the rights of the people) continues to suck the American people into a parallel universe in which the Constitution is meaningless, the government is all-powerful, and the citizenry are powerless to defend themselves against government agents who steal, spy, lie, plunder, kill, abuse and generally inflict mayhem and sow madness on everyone and everything in their sphere.
So here’s what I propose: let’s impeach the Deep State and its cabal of government operatives from every point along the political spectrum (right, left and center) for conspiring to expand the federal government’s powers at the expense of the citizenry.
We’ve been losing our freedoms so incrementally for so long—sold to us in the name of national security and global peace, maintained by way of martial law disguised as law and order, and enforced by a standing army of militarized police and a political elite determined to maintain their powers at all costs—that it’s hard to pinpoint exactly when it all started going downhill, but we’re certainly on that downward trajectory now, and things are moving fast.
Even now, we are being pushed and prodded towards a civil war, not because the American people are so divided but because that’s how corrupt governments control a populace (i.e., divide and conquer).
These are dangerous times.
These are indeed dangerous times but not because of violent crime, which remains at an all-time low, or because of terrorism, which is statistically rare, or because the borders are being invaded by foreign armies, which data reports from the Department of Homeland Security refute, or because a pandemic is spreading like a contagion, or even because raging mobs of so-called domestic terrorists are trying to overthrow elections.
No, the real danger that we face comes from none other than the U.S. government and the powers it has granted to its standing armies to rob, steal, cheat, harass, detain, brutalize, terrorize, torture and kill American citizens with immunity.
The danger “we the people” face comes from masked invaders on the government payroll who crash through our doors in the dark of night, shoot our dogs, and terrorize our families.
This danger comes from militarized henchmen on the government payroll who demand absolute obedience, instill abject fear, and shoot first and ask questions later.
This danger comes from greedy, power-hungry bureaucrats on the government payroll who have little to no understanding of their constitutional limits.
This danger comes from greedy politicians and corporations for whom profit trumps principle.
This danger comes from a surveillance state that grows more and more ominous.
Consider, if you will, all of the dastardly, devious, diabolical, dangerous, debilitating, deceitful, dehumanizing, demonic, depraved, dishonorable, disillusioning, discriminatory, dictatorial schemes inflicted on “we the people” by a bureaucratic, totalitarian regime that has long since ceased to be “a government of the people, by the people and for the people.”
Americans have no protection against police abuse.
Americans are little more than pocketbooks to fund the police state.
Americans are no longer innocent until proven guilty.
Americans no longer have a right to self-defense.
Americans no longer have a right to private property.
Americans are powerless in the face of militarized police.
Americans no longer have a right to bodily integrity.
Americans no longer have a right to the expectation of privacy.
Americans can no longer rely on the courts to mete out justice.
Americans no longer have a representative government.
We have moved beyond the era of representative government and entered a new age, let’s call it the age of authoritarianism. In fact, a study conducted by Princeton and Northwestern University concluded that the U.S. government does not represent the majority of American citizens. Instead, the study found that the government is ruled by the rich and powerful, or the so-called “economic elite.” Moreover, the researchers concluded that policies enacted by this governmental elite nearly always favor special interests and lobbying groups.
It is not overstating matters to say that Congress, which has done its best to keep their unhappy constituents at a distance, may well be the most self-serving, semi-corrupt institution in America.
In other words, we are being ruled by an oligarchy disguised as a democracy, and arguably on our way towards fascism: a form of government where private corporate interests rule, money calls the shots, and the people are seen as mere subjects to be controlled.
Rest assured that when and if fascism finally takes hold in America, the basic forms of government will remain: Fascism will appear to be friendly. The legislators will be in session. There will be elections, and the news media will continue to cover the entertainment and political trivia. Consent of the governed, however, will no longer apply. Actual control will have finally passed to the oligarchic elite controlling the government behind the scenes.
Sound familiar?
History may show that from this point forward, we will have left behind any semblance of constitutional government and entered into a totalitarian state where all citizens are suspects and security trumps freedom.
Even with its constantly shifting terrain, this topsy-turvy travesty of law and government has become America’s new normal.
From Clinton to Bush, Obama to Trump, and now Biden, it’s as if we’ve been caught in a time loop, forced to re-live the same thing over and over again: the same assaults on our freedoms, the same disregard for the rule of law, the same subservience to the Deep State, and the same corrupt, self-serving government that exists only to amass power, enrich its shareholders and ensure its continued domination.
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the powers-that-be want us to remain distracted, divided, alienated from each other based on our politics, our bank accounts, our religion, our race and our value systems.
Yet as George Orwell observed, “The real division is not between conservatives and revolutionaries but between authoritarians and libertarians.”
Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. Whitehead can be contacted at johnw@rutherford.org.
The (New Normal) War on Domestic Terror
Photo credit: Bryan Myhr/US Army National Guard
CJ Hopkins | Consent Factory | February 8, 2021
If you enjoyed the Global War on Terror, you’re going to love the new War on Domestic Terror! It’s just like the original Global War on Terror, except that this time the “Terrorists” are all “Domestic Violent Extremists” (“DVEs”), “Homegrown Violent Extremists” (“HVEs”), “Violent Conspiracy-Theorist Extremists” (“VCTEs”), “Violent Reality Denialist Extremists” (VRDEs”), “Insurrectionary Micro-Aggressionist Extremists” (“IMAEs”), “People Who Make Liberals Feel Uncomfortable” (“PWMLFUs”), and anyone else the Department of Homeland Security wants to label an “extremist” and slap a ridiculous acronym on.
According to a “National Terrorism Advisory System Bulletin” issued by the DHS on January 27, these DCEs, HVEs, VCTEs, VRDEs, IMAEs, and PWMLFUs are “ideologically-motivated violent extremists with objections to the exercise of governmental authority” and other “perceived grievances fueled by false narratives.” They are believed to be “motivated by a range of issues, including anger over Covid-19 restrictions, the 2020 election results, police use of force,” and other dangerous “false narratives” (e.g., the existence of the “deep state,” “herd immunity,” “biological sex,” “God,” and so on).
“Inspired by foreign terrorist groups” and “emboldened by the breach of the US Capitol Building,” this diabolical network of “domestic terrorists” is “plotting attacks against government facilities,” “threatening violence against critical infrastructure” and actively “citing misinformation and conspiracy theories about Covid-19.” For all we know, they might be huddled in the “Wolf’s Lair” at Mar-a-Lago right now, plotting a devastating terrorist attack with those WMDs we never found in Iraq, or generating population-adjusted death-rate charts going back 20 years, or posting pictures of “extremist frogs” on the Internet.
The Department of Homeland Security is “concerned,” as are its counterparts throughout the global capitalist empire. The (New Normal) War on Domestic Terror isn’t just a war on American “domestic terror.” The “domestic terror” threat is international. France has just passed a “Global Security Law” banning citizens from filming the police beating the living snot out of people (among other “anti-terrorist” provisions). In Germany, the government is preparing to install an anti-terror moat around the Reichstag. In the Netherlands, the police are cracking down on the VCTEs, VRDEs, and other “angry citizens who hate the system,” who have been protesting over nightly curfews. Suddenly, everywhere you look (or at least if you are looking in the corporate media), “global extremism networks are growing.” It’s time for Globocap to take the gloves off again, root the “terrorists” out of their hidey holes, and roll out a new official narrative.
Actually, there’s not much new about it. When you strip away all the silly new acronyms, the (New Normal) War on Domestic Terror is basically just a combination of the “War on Terror” narrative and the “New Normal” narrative, i.e., a militarization of the so-called “New Normal” and a pathologization of the “War on Terror.” Why would GloboCap want to do that, you ask?
I think you know, but I’ll go ahead and tell you.
See, the problem with the original “Global War on Terror” was that it wasn’t actually all that global. It was basically just a war on Islamic “terrorism” (i.e., resistance to global capitalism and its post-ideological ideology), which was fine as long as GloboCap was just destabilizing and restructuring the Greater Middle East. It was put on hold in 2016, so that GloboCap could focus on defeating “populism” (i.e., resistance to global capitalism and its post-ideological ideology), make an example of Donald Trump, and demonize everyone who voted for him (or just refused to take part in their free and fair elections), which they have just finished doing, in spectacular fashion. So, now it’s back to “War on Terror” business, except with a whole new cast of “terrorists,” or, technically, an expanded cast of “terrorists.” (I rattled off a list in my previous column.)
In short, GloboCap has simply expanded, recontextualized, and pathologized the “War on Terror” (i.e., the war on resistance to global capitalism and its post-ideological ideology). This was always inevitable, of course. A globally-hegemonic system (e.g., global capitalism) has no external enemies, as there is no territory “outside” the system. Its only enemies are within the system, and thus, by definition, are insurgents, also known as “terrorists” and “extremists.” These terms are utterly meaningless, obviously. They are purely strategic, deployed against anyone who deviates from GloboCap’s official ideology … which, in case you were wondering, is called “normality” (or, in our case, currently, “New Normality”).
In earlier times, these “terrorists” and “extremists” were known as “heretics,” “apostates,” and “blasphemers.” Today, they are also known as “deniers,” e.g., “science deniers,” “Covid deniers,” and recently, more disturbingly, “reality deniers.” This is an essential part of the pathologization of the “War on Terror” narrative. The new breed of “terrorists” do not just hate us for our freedom … they hate us because they hate “reality.” They are no longer our political or ideological opponents … they are suffering from a psychiatric disorder. They no longer need to be argued with or listened to … they need to be “treated,” “reeducated,” and “deprogrammed,” until they accept “Reality.” If you think I’m exaggerating the totalitarian nature of the “New Normal/War on Terror” narrative, read this op-ed in The New York Times exploring the concept of a “Reality Czar” to deal with our “Reality Crisis.”
And this is just the beginning, of course. The consensus (at least in GloboCap circles) is, the (New Normal) War on Domestic Terror will probably continue for the next 10 to 20 years, which should provide the global capitalist ruling classes with more than enough time to carry out the “Great Reset,” destroy what’s left of human society, and condition the public to get used to living like cringing, neo-feudal peasants who have to ask permission to leave their houses. We’re still in the initial “shock and awe” phase (which they will have to scale back a bit eventually), but just look at how much they’ve already accomplished.
The economic damage is literally incalculable … millions have been plunged into desperate poverty, countless independent businesses crushed, whole industries crippled, developing countries rendered economically dependent (i.e., compliant) for the foreseeable future, as billionaires amassed over $1 trillion in wealth and supranational corporate behemoths consolidated their dominance across the planet.
And that’s just the economic damage. The attack on society has been even more dramatic. GloboCap, in the space of a year, has transformed the majority of the global masses into an enormous, paranoid totalitarian cult that is no longer capable of even rudimentary reasoning. (I’m not going to go on about it here … at this point, you either recognize it or you’re in it.) They’re actually lining up in parking lots, the double-masked members of this Covidian cult, to be injected with an experimental “vaccine” that they believe will save the human species from a virus that causes mild to moderate symptoms in roughly 95% of those “infected,” and that over 99% of the “infected” survive.
So, it is no big surprise that these same mindless cultists are gung-ho for the (New Normal) War on Domestic Terror, and the upcoming globally-televised show trial of Donald Trump for “inciting insurrection,” and the ongoing corporate censorship of the Internet, and can’t wait to be issued their “Freedom Passports,” which will allow them to take part in “New Normal” life — double-masked and socially-distanced, naturally — while having their every movement and transaction, and every word they write on Facebook, or in an email, or say to someone on their smartphones, or in the vicinity of their 5G toasters, recorded by GloboCap’s Intelligence Services and their corporate partners, subsidiaries, and assigns. These people have nothing at all to worry about, as they would never dream of disobeying orders, and could not produce an original thought, much less one displeasing to GloboCap, if you held a fake apocalyptic plague to their heads.
As for the rest of us “extremists,” “domestic terrorists,” “heretics,” and “reality deniers,” (i.e., anyone criticizing global capitalism, or challenging its official narratives, and its increasingly totalitarian ideology, regardless of our specific DHS acronyms), I wish I had something hopeful to tell you, but, the truth is, things aren’t looking so good. I guess I’ll see you in a quarantine camp, or in the psych ward, or an offshore detention facility … or, I don’t know, maybe I’ll see you in the streets.
#
Firms CAN Insist That Staff Are Vaccinated Say Ministers
By Richie Allen | February 8, 2021
No jab no job is moving ever closer. Last night UK health ministers said that companies should be able to amend their existing health and safety policies to demand that employees are vaccinated against Covid-19. It has been suggested however, that it may be easier to enforce the policy when hiring staff. Firing existing employees who refuse to comply, may prove more difficult.
The government has been discussing the introduction of vaccine passports, which would allow employers to ask for proof of vaccination.
Yesterday, Vaccine Minister Nadhim Zahawi was dismissive of any such scheme calling it “discriminatory” and “not how we do things in the UK.” However, The Telegraph newspaper says that it understands that health ministers are arguing in favour of the scheme:
One government source said: “If someone is working in an environment where people haven’t been vaccinated, it becomes a public health risk. “Health and safety laws say you have to protect other people at work, and when it becomes about protecting other people the argument gets stronger. “If there is clear evidence that vaccines prevent transmission, the next stage is to make sure more and more people are taking up the vaccine. “If people have allergies or other reasons for not getting jabbed, then of course they should be exempt, but where it’s an unjustified fear, we have got to help people get into the right place.”
Other ministers argued that allowing firms to insist that staff be vaccinated is discriminatory and sets a dangerous precedent. Those voices are being drowned out though. Vaccine passports are here to stay. Back in November Nadhim Zahawi said that health passports would be driven by the private sector. Speaking to SKY News at the time, he acknowledged that businesses would want to know that customers had proof of a negative test or had been vaccinated. Soon, you will be unable to do anything or go anywhere without your health passport.
Lost in all of this of course, is the fact that none of the jabs prevent the recipient from contracting the virus. Equally, there’s no evidence that suggests they prevent against transmission. By definition, these medicines are not vaccines at all. All they have going for them is the claim that if you have been vaccinated and then you come down with Covid, your symptoms MIGHT be milder than if you hadn’t had the jab at all. I know that this is ridiculous, you know that this is ridiculous, but we are in a tiny minority.
Senator Marco Rubio Introduces Bill to Suspend Gun Rights of Anyone ever “Investigated” for Domestic Terrorism
By Eric Striker – National Justice – February 7, 2021
Republican lawmaker Marco Rubio has reintroduced legislation that seeks to suspend the Second Amendment rights of any person who has been investigated for “terrorism” related offenses within 10 years of attempting a gun purchase.
The Senate bill, named the Terror Intelligence Improvement Act, was reentered last week in hopes of exploiting the hysteria surrounding the January 6th Capitol protests. The law intends to violate the civil liberties of American citizens who are not charged or convicted of a crime if somebody is deemed politically dangerous.
If passed, the law will grant the FBI and DNI the authority to draw up lists of US citizens arbitrarily labeled “domestic terrorists” and flag them during background checks. Those placed on the new watch list could be registered based solely on suspicion, even if an investigation fails to find evidence of criminal or “terrorist” wrongdoing. Federal courts that have examined the FBI’s various “terrorist watch lists” uncovered that the Bureau regularly places law-abiding citizens on them because they don’t like who they are or their political views.
While Rubio’s bill does provide optional redress for those targeted to obtain counsel and fight their designation, it would require individuals not charged or convicted of a crime to have to spend enormous amounts of money and time and gamble on getting a judge that upholds the Constitution just so they can exercise their gun rights.
As ongoing challenges to comparatively weaker state red flag law abuses show, challenging such decisions or even figuring out how they’re made is like pulling teeth.
The mixed record attorneys have had in combating the excesses of the Patriot Act since 2001 show that this mitigation option will largely be ignored by judges and those listed. While Muslim victims of federal surveillance and harassment power can sometimes count on the ACLU and others to defend their rights, said groups make it a point to refuse service to ordinary white people who have their civil liberties trampled.
The law’s threshold for being put on the list is low. Under Rubio’s legislation, being “investigated” for “domestic terrorism” — a vaguely interpreted offense mainly defined by partisan journalists and NGOs — which potentially millions of non-leftist Americans could be subjected to today, would nullify your ability to purchase a firearm.
Reporting done by Tucker Carlson Tonight recently revealed that the FBI collected the bank records of hundreds of people who traveled or made purchases in Washington DC on 1/6 without a warrant. A hotel worker who had attended the Trump rally near the Capitol but did not enter the building was investigated by the FBI, even though they had no probable cause to do so. The FBI would have the authority to put the aforementioned on this new list, without any meaningful checks and balances.
Rubio’s brazen attack on the Second Amendment is a testament to the organizational decline of the National Rifle Association. In 2015, Senator Rubio, who at the time had Presidential ambitions, led the fight against Senate Democrats when they tried to pass an almost identical bill.
Today, Rubio somehow maintains an A+ rating on the NRA’s website despite being a leading advocate for federal red flag laws and now, political blacklists that will disproportionately harm his own voters.
Laws like the Terror Intelligence Improvement Act are clogging up the Congressional agenda. Support for a dirty war against millions of red state Americans is bipartisan.
Big Media v. Marjorie Greene and Lou Dobbs
By Stephen Lendman | February 7, 2021
Instead of exposing and denouncing 2020 election rigging for Biden over Trump, establishment media cheerled the outcome.
They’ve been hostile toward everything Trump related and his supporters.
Instead of slamming what happened to Rep. Marjorie Greene and Fox News host Lou Dobbs, they expressed support for the constitutional breach of their First Amendment rights.
The hostile to truth and full disclosure NYT slammed Greene as an “QAnon congresswoman, a far-right influencer and gun fanatic who dabbles in anti-Semitism and anti-Muslim bigotry,” followed by a further litany of over-the-top remarks that were all about her support for Trump.
Bezos owned, CIA-linked WaPo called her a “dangerous (GOP) crackpot (with an) extensive history of offensive conspiracy theorizing.”
According to WaPo, the Times, and other Big Media, Trump supporters are crackpot right-wing extremists for daring to challenge the official narrative — especially about the 9/11 mother of all US state-sponsored false flags, its imperial wars, and 2020 election rigging for Biden over DJT.
The Times called what led to stripping her of committee assignments “another chapter in an ongoing story: the two-step between the far right and the Republican Party and the degree to which the former is never actually that far from the latter.”
Ignored by the Times and other Big Media is that both wings of US one-party rule are hostile to an open, free society — undemocratic Dems outdistancing Republicans on issues related to warmaking on humanity at home and abroad.
WaPo said “Republicans should have sidelined” Greene straightaway, calling her appointment to House committees “abhorrent,” adding:
Support by most GOP “colleagues (is) one more sign of the… morally adrift party.”
“Thursday’s vote should never have had to happen.”
“Republicans should have had more self-respect than to support her last year, to welcome her with full honors and to allow the situation to escalate as it did.”
If Greene was anti-Trump, pro-Biden/Harris, demonizing articles about her by WaPo and the Times never would have been written.
The Times expressed support for action by Fox News to cancel Lou Dobbs Tonight.
In typical Times disinformation fashion, it called his program a “clearinghouse for baseless theories of electoral fraud in the weeks after Mr. Trump lost the 2020 presidential race (sic).”
There’s nothing “baseless” about indisputable election fraud — supported by the Times instead of exposing and denouncing it.
The Times cited an unnamed source — that may or may not exist because of dubious anonymity — allegedly saying:
“Dobbs’ extreme and unrepentant endorsements of Mr. Trump’s false election claims had imperiled his position.”
There’s nothing remotely false about claims proved true by indisputable evidence.
Like the Times, WaPo called Dobbs a “promoter of Trump’s false election fraud claims” — that evidence proved true no matter how hard Big Media try sweeping what’s indisputable under the rug.
Reached by WaPo text message on Friday, Dobbs said he had “no comment at this time.”
Until the unacceptable lawsuit is resolved, his lawyer(s) surely advised against commenting on the issue publicly.
Corporate controlled voting machines manipulate US election results with electronic ease.
Other techniques include ballot box stuffing, undercounting, double-counting, disenfranchising unwanted voters, demonizing candidates considered unacceptable by powerful interests, among other dirty tricks to prevent democratic outcomes.
Dirty tricks have been longstanding in US federal, state and local elections since at least the early 19th century.
Today’s sophisticated software makes losers winners and the other way around with nary a fingerprint to trace.
Throughout his time in office, Trump has been wrong on one issue after another.
On all things Election 2020 he’s right, brazen fraud deprived him of another term.
History one day will set things straight when it’s too late to matter except for the official record.
Biden/Harris entered office illegitimately — selected, not elected on January 20 while winner Trump was en route to Florida aboard Air Force One for the last time.
There WAS a color revolution in the US after all – its architects now boast they ‘fortified’ the 2020 election
By Nebojsa Malic | RT | February 5, 2021
The 2020 US presidential elections wasn’t “rigged,” oh no, but “fortified” by a conspiracy of activists united in saving “Our Democracy” from the Bad Orange Man, now proud to share their story in a friendly tell-all piece in TIME.
“There was a conspiracy unfolding behind the scenes,” writes Molly Ball – a biographer of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, by the way – in TIME magazine this week, describing it as a “vast, cross-partisan campaign to protect the election – an extraordinary shadow effort.”
Ball’s article reveals a lot, from why there were no street riots by Democrats either on November 4 or on January 6 – the organizers of this “conspiracy” stopped them – to who was behind the push to alter election rules in key states and set up mail-in voting, who organized “information” campaigns about the results of the election, and who even threatened election officials into making the “right” decision to certify the vote.
While everyone – myself included – was focused on the summer riots as a possible “color revolution,” they turned out to be misdirection. According to TIME, the real action was taking place behind the scenes, as Democrat activists and unions joined forces with NeverTrump Republicans, Chamber of Commerce, corporations, and Big Tech to make sure the 2020 election turns out the way they wanted. They call this a victory of democracy and the will of the people, of course, for no one is ever a villain in their own story.
“Their work touched every aspect of the election,” Ball writes, from getting states to “change voting system laws” and fending off “voter-suppression lawsuits,” to recruiting “armies” of poll workers and pressuring social media companies to “take a harder line against disinformation.”
Then, after Election Day, “they monitored every pressure point to ensure that Trump could not overturn the result.” Alarmed yet? Maybe you should be.
So who are these shadowy saviors of Our Democracy? One of them is union organizer Mike Podhorzer of AFL-CIO, a traditional Democrat powerhouse. Another is Ian Bassin, associate White House counsel in Barack Obama’s first administration. The roster of his “nonpartisan, rule-of-law” outfit called Protect Democracy includes a lot of Obama lawyers, a John McCain campaign aide, an editor from the defunct neocon Weekly Standard, and someone from SPLC, while among their advisers is the NeverTrump failed presidential candidate and ex-CIA spy Evan McMullin.
Bear that in mind when you read Bassin’s quote that “Every attempt to interfere with the proper outcome of the election was defeated,” (emphasis added) but “it’s massively important for the country to understand that it didn’t happen accidentally. The system didn’t work magically. Democracy is not self-executing.” Chilling words.
A leading member of this effort is Norm Eisen, another White House counsel under Obama. The pro-Trump Revolver News even raised the alarm about Eisen plotting a “color revolution” in September – but by then it was too late, even if anyone had been paying attention.
By then, the National Vote at Home Institute – an organization barely two years old, and part of the effort – had already instructed secretaries of state across the US with “technical advice on everything from which vendors to use to how to locate drop boxes,” and even provided them “communications tool kits,” i.e. talking points.
In November 2019 – a full year before the election! – Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg hosted “nine civil rights leaders” for dinner, one of whom was Vanita Gupta, Obama’s assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights. It was part of this shadowy coalition’s campaign for “more rigorous rules and enforcement” on social media platforms – just in case you were wondering how Trump ended up deplatformed, or the New York Post’s story about Hunter Biden’s laptop got suppressed before the election.
Podhorzer’s messaging efforts were informed by Anat Shenker-Osorio, who “applies tools from cognitive science and linguistics in her work with progressive organizations globally,” according to her 2018 fellowship bio from George Soros’s Open Society Foundation. Ironically, as part of their pressure on Big Tech Democrats had whipped up a moral panic about super-targeted “Russian” internet memes that somehow “influenced” the 2016 election – yet Ball’s article says that two groups involved with the conspiracy “created state-specific memes and graphics, spread by email, text, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, urging that every vote be counted.”
Though Ball doesn’t mention it specifically, those Twitter and Facebook “pre-bunking” labels about safety of mail-in ballots and the winner not being known on Election Day are also the activists’ talking points.
Remember how Republican observers were thrown out of the ballot-counting facility in Detroit? Reports at the time said it was because of overcrowding, but the Time article reveals that a Democrat activist mobilized “dozens of reinforcements” to “provide a counterweight” to them, so eventually “racial-justice activists from Detroit Will Breathe worked alongside suburban women from Fems for Dems and local elected officials.”
It was activists who came up with a strategy of denouncing any challenge to Detroit vote counts as racist, too.
When President Donald Trump asked Michigan’s Republican-majority legislators to challenge the results, Eisen called it “the scariest moment” of the election, and the “democracy defenders” sprung into action.
Eisen’s lawyers dug up dirt on the two lawmakers invited to Washington, activists hounded them at airports, NeverTrump Republicans made calls to party friends, and Bassin’s outfit commissioned an op-ed threatening criminal charges by Michigan’s Democrat AG – whose office then retweeted it. The two were even picketed at the Trump Hotel in DC. The brigading eventually worked, as Michigan Republicans agreed to certify the elections – and other contested states followed.
Perhaps the most intriguing part is buried towards the end. Ball reveals that she got a text from Podhorzer – the AFL-CIO organizer – on the morning of January 6, hours before what the Democrats would describe as “insurrection” by Trump supporters at the US Capitol, saying that the “activist left” was “strenuously discouraging counter activity” in order to “preserve safety and ensure they couldn’t be blamed for any mayhem.”
How did Podhorzer know there would be “mayhem,” hours before the “storming” of the Capitol that Democrats claim Trump “incited” at the rally outside the White House at noon? It’s a mystery.
What’s not a mystery is the result of the “conspiracy” Ball has revealed: a de facto one-party state in which Democrats hold absolute power at every level of government and seek to prosecute dissent and disenfranchise the opposition.
Last month, with no inkling of the behind-the-scenes operation just revealed in Time, I wrote of a non-kinetic “fifth-generation” civil war that had unfolded as “a battle for hearts and minds, a series of psychological operations that played out on the media, political and economic fronts.” I argued it had successfully swapped the American Republic for something called “Our Democracy,” which maintains the form but has a radically different content.
One of the “heroes” of Ball’s piece, NeverTrump Republican Jeff Timmer, has a quote in the article about how “Our democracy only survives if we all believe and don’t look down,” referring to the cartoon character Wile E. Coyote.
It’s an interesting admission, as the coyote is the villain of those cartoons – and the one actually immune to the effects of gravity is the roadrunner bird. But you’re not supposed to notice this – and besides, noticing will soon be a crime in Our Democracy.
Nebojsa Malic is a Serbian-American journalist, blogger and translator, who wrote a regular column for Antiwar.com from 2000 to 2015, and is now senior writer at RT. Follow him on Telegram @TheNebulator
Revoking CGTN’s Licence is Attack on Freedom of Speech, Part of Broader UK-China Row
By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 06.02.2021
On 4 February, the Office of Communications, the UK government-approved regulatory body commonly known as Ofcom, announced that it had withdrawn the licence for China Global Television Network (CGTN) to broadcast in the UK.
China Global Television Network has been banned by Ofcom in the UK on the pretext that Star China Media Limited (SCML), the licence-holder for the broadcaster, did not have editorial responsibility for the latter’s output; and that an entity called China Global Television Network Corporation (CGTNC), which exercises general control over the broadcaster, cannot hold the licence since it is controlled by the Chinese government.
On 5 February, the Information Department of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs accused the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) of pushing “fake news” in its 29 January coverage of the People’s Republic’s tackling the pandemic. According to the ministry’s statement, the BBC video linked COVID-19 with politics and hyped up topics concerning the origins of the virus. Beijing urged the BBC to offer public apologies to China, adding that it “reserves the right to take further measures“. In response, the BBC said it stood by the story, rejecting the accusations of “fake news or ideological bias”.
Freedom of Speech is Under Attack
The revocation of licence for CGTN seems surprising given that the regulator did not mention any complaint regarding the content provided by the broadcaster, according to Earl Rasmussen, executive vice-president of Eurasia Centre. When it comes to CGTN’s links to the Chinese Communist Party, one should bear in mind that the BBC has an obvious connection with the British government, the scholar adds.
Indeed, according to the BBC website, four of the non-executive members are specifically appointed as members for each of the nations of the UK, and “the chairman and the non-executive members for the nations are appointed by HM The Queen on the recommendation of ministers while the other members of the Board are appointed by the BBC through the Board’s Nominations Committee”.
So, when one talks about one’s editorial independence, one can hardly say that the BBC is “independent” in this respect, says Andy Vermaut, a Belgian human rights activist and political commentator. He suggests that the UK is “preparing a new cold war, where China and the Chinese voice in society is cut short and another dimensional voice is not allowed”, adding that “this is diametrically opposed to the British model which supposedly promotes freedom of the press”.
“What channel and country will be next?” Vermaut asks.Although London could regard CGTN’s narrative as “pretty unpleasant” it’s unclear why the UK decided to ban it “because after all, this was a satellite station”, according to Andrew Tettenborn, professor of Law at Swansea University.
“I believe this is politically motivated and a move to steer the narrative that is presented to the public, essentially a form of censorship to silence dissident or countering voices,” Rasmussen says. “In a free and open society it is important that we are able to obtain differing perspectives and to promote a diversity of thought. However, the UK has now lost the perspective and voice of the world’s largest economy and one of the most globally influential countries. It is a sad day for the freedom of the press, freedom of speech and democracy.”The trend of limiting “the spectrum of conversation” goes beyond Ofcom’s actions, warns Gordon Dimmack, an independent media reporter: “Media freedoms in the UK and worldwide have been constricted ever more so over the past few years, and I expect that to continue”, he adds in an apparent reference to the US Big Tech wiping out accounts of former President Donald Trump and his ardent supporters in the wake of the Capitol Hill riots, and suppression earlier of The New York Post’s reporting of the supposed foreign business dealings of Joe Biden’s son, Hunter.
Revocation of CGTN’s Licence is Part of a Broader Trend
Ofcom’s move is yet another sign of deteriorating relations between London and Beijing, deems Kerry Brown, professor of Chinese studies and director of the Lau China Institute at King’s College, London.
“I think the UK is aligned with America on a relatively soft target because it’s kind of saying that it’s going to do something like America did with Xinhua and other news agencies about 18 months ago,” the professor says. “This is not a kind of huge move because the CGTN wasn’t a big player. It’s not important for Britain. It’s a way that Britain wants to show solidarity with America. And also the ruling Conservative Party in Britain shows that they’re trying to be tough on China without any hugely consequential outcomes at the moment”.Although the Johnson government previously indicated that it was willing to enhance UK-China ties in the post-Brexit era, tensions between the two countries have escalated over the past few years. Thus, No 10 abruptly reversed its plans to use 5G Huawei equipment in its next-generation wireless networks because of pressure from Washington. The UK also joined the US-led chorus of nations who pinned the blame for the pandemic spread on Beijing and questioned the coronavirus’s origins.
To complicate matters even further, in 2020 the UK offered a path to citizenship for around 3 million Hong Kongers with British National (Overseas) status, accusing the People’s Republic of breaking the terms of the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration after Beijing formally adopted a new security law in Hong Kong. Once the British scheme came into force in January 2021, China declared that it would no longer recognise the passports of British national overseas citizens as a travel or ID document, and “reserves the right to take further actions”.
China is Facing Growing Challenges from Western & Indo-Pacific States
Beijing is unlikely to ignore Ofcom’s insult and may take it out on the BBC, believes Jeff J. Brown, editor of China Rising Radio Sinoland: “Beijing could possibly react by reducing the number of its staff in-country, but would be unlikely to kick them out”, he suggests.
Citing the Chinese Foreign Ministry statement accusing the BBC of political bias, Kerry Brown suggests that this move could be seen as a backlash for stripping CGTN of its broadcasting licence.
“One way China will hit back is by basically attacking the credibility of the BBC,” he says. “The BBC has been a big problem for China for many decades. I think they’re basically escalating their kind of language towards the BBC. One of the issues is that obviously China is very sensitive about this responsibility for the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak and has said that it’s been unfairly blamed and it was kind of not willing to share information”.Though it would appear that Beijing sees the UK now “as easier to attack because it’s not in the EU” and “a more isolated target”, China is now facing a growing challenge from a number of states, aside from the EU, including the US, Australia and others, according to the professor.
On 22 November, the UK’s influential conservative think tank Policy Exchange issued a report calling upon British allies and partners to team up in order to confront China’s rise and advocating the British naval build up in the South China Sea along with the US forces. According to the think tank, the report “reflects a broad consensus of views on Britain’s role in the Indo-Pacific region” voiced by former political and military leaders of the UK, Canada, the US, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, India, Sri Lanka, and Indonesia.
“I don’t think that [China’s] argument with the UK is necessarily going to escalate, but I don’t think it’s going to improve”, Brown says. “I think that the relationship is now in a period of long-term negativity. And I don’t think that that’s going to change for some while. I think this is the new normal”.
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Villains of Judea
Samuel Zemurray
The ruthless businessman who financed coups in Central America and shaped Israeli statehood
José Niño Unfiltered | May 7, 2026
Leftist commentators consistently push a shallow and economically reductive narrative that frames American foreign policy as the sole domain of greedy White capitalists while choosing to ignore the obvious Jewish power structure directing these events. When the veneer of this supposed corporate imperialism is stripped away, it becomes clear that the United States has often served as a vehicle for the specific goals of organized Jewry. The life of Samuel Zemurray stands as prime evidence of this hidden mechanism.
Few figures in American business history wielded power as ruthlessly or as secretly as Zemurray. Born Schmiel Zmurri on January 18, 1877, to a poor Jewish family in Imperial Russia, this teenage immigrant would rise from peddling rotting bananas off railroad cars in Alabama to become the controlling force behind the United Fruit Company, the most powerful agricultural corporation on earth. Along the way he overthrew governments, bribed presidents, hired mercenaries, and played a pivotal behind-the-scenes role in the creation of the State of Israel. … continue
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