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Nurses in Coffey County refuse to give COVID-19 vaccine

AP Wire Fox4 Topeka

Excerpts:

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Four nurses at a rural health department in Kansas are refusing to administer any COVID-19 vaccines, citing the fast development and production of the shots.

Coffey County Public Health Administrator Lindsay Payer said the nurses made their own decisions and expressed their concerns one by one. She called the vaccine documents concerning.

“I strongly feel that if people want this vaccine, they should receive it. Absolutely,” Payer said. “But just like it’s their choice to receive it or not, I feel like it should also be my choice to give it or not.”

None of the nurses, including Payer, feel “comfortable” administering a vaccine that has gone through a speedy testing process with new technology, the Kansas City Star reported.

“Vaccination of Kansans is critical to reach the end of this pandemic,” Kristi Zears, a spokeswoman with the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, said in an email. “We are not aware of any other health departments who have expressed concerns regarding the vaccine and would point them to the safety data.”

Read the full article at Fox4 Topeka.

Comments by Brian Shilhavy | Health Impact News | January 21, 2021:

We commend these brave nurses who obviously have nothing to gain from such a decision other than a clear conscious, and much to lose, including their jobs.

As for Kristi Zears’ comments, I guess she missed this health department’s concerns in California:

California halts injections of Moderna Covid vaccine batch due to ‘higher-than-usual number of adverse events’

See Also:

Doctors Around the World Issue Dire WARNING: DO NOT GET THE COVID VACCINE!!

January 22, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science, Solidarity and Activism | | Leave a comment

FBI laments that deplatforming of ‘extremists’ makes it harder to spy on Americans

RT | January 22, 2021

Law enforcement is complaining about social media platforms’ full-frontal assault on American political dissidents’ freedom of speech, crying that removing so-called ‘extremists’ from the internet makes it harder to spy on them.

A former FBI profiler recently took to NBC to complain that while Big Tech restricting Americans’ ability to freely communicate was all well and good, it was making it harder for the US intelligence apparatus to properly snoop on every aspect of these people’s lives.

FBI alum Clint Van Zandt complained that a 70-year-old man involved in the raid on the Capitol earlier this month was totally unknown to the bureau, showing up with a truck full of Molotov cocktails, a rifle, and some “improvised grenades” unheralded by any sort of presence on social media.

Leaving aside the laughable image of the US’ deep-pocketed intelligence apparatus being thwarted by a 70-year-old man from Alabama – who, it’s worth pointing out, is not known to have even entered the Capitol building (!) – FBI agents like Van Zandt and their local counterparts in small-town sheriffs’ offices are really worried that if social media keeps purging Trump supporters and other undesirables, these platforms will create an unstoppable army of Lonnie Coffmans.

Lonnie Coffman, the man in question, had no criminal record or ties to any extremist groups, but “was struggling financially and fixated on right-wing views,” Van Zandt explained, adding – in all seriousness – that the senior citizen was the sort of threat that keeps FBI agents “up at night.”

“The purging of people with radical views from popular social platforms, which has escalated in recent weeks, deprives investigators of a crucial tool in tracking people who might move along the continuum of ideation to action,” the former agent said.

In plain English, the profiler lamented that mass deplatforming prevents FBI agents from both spying on the majority of Americans whom it considers to be potential domestic terrorism threats and entrapping wannabe criminals by posing as terrorists, militia members, and other law-breakers.

Indeed, given that nearly all high-profile FBI cases involve the bureau entrapping suspects, and that this work is increasingly done online, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube have become crucial tools in what the FBI describes as its fight against domestic extremism. Ordinary Americans might describe the agency’s work, however, as an unjustifiable effort to lure ordinary people into committing crimes in order to make the FBI and the rest of the US’ sprawling intelligence apparatus seem indispensable.

So please, Twitter and Facebook, the next time you highlight a bunch of users whose views fall outside the ever-more-stifling claustrophobia of the mainstream media and prepare to hit ‘delete’, think of the FBI.

Now that – according to such free-speech-loathing figures as former CIA director John Brennan and House intel committee chair Adam Schiff – the War on Terror is coming home, the FBI is going to need all the help it can get to manufacture the terror statistics that could possibly justify criminalizing political dissent in a nation whose Bill of Rights includes an ironclad guarantee to protect the individual right to free speech. The bureau certainly isn’t going to get that if it hasn’t been cultivating a pool of bored young men with no economic future across multiple platforms, stringing them along with promises of things that go boom.

January 22, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, False Flag Terrorism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Blacks Committed 73% of Mass Shootings In 2020. Many Cases Remain Unsolved. Where Is the FBI?

 By Eric Striker – National Justice – January 21, 2021

As the media, FBI and Anti-Defamation League declare “white supremacy” and “domestic terrorism” the gravest threats to public safety in America, neither played any role in the outbreak of violence in 2020 — one of the deadliest years in American history.

Disingenuous political actors often point to the Charleston Church Shooting in 2015, the Tree of Life Synagogue incident of 2018, or the El Paso Wal Mart killings in 2019 to demonstrate the proclivity of white men to engage in indiscriminate killings. The latest figures on the approximately 603 mass shootings last year paint a radically different picture.

According to demographic ​data compiled by researchers at Mass-Shootings.info, black men committed 73% of mass shootings in 2020, in contrast whites were only 13% of known culprits.

Mass Shootings Go Unpunished

What is more galling is that while the revanchist FBI has been utilizing high tech resources to track down every protester who may have entered the Capitol, the perpetrators of some of the deadliest and most brutal mass shootings of 2020 remain at large.

For example, in June, police in Alabama investigated a house fire and found that it was set to cover up the executions of seven people, including a 17-year-old girl. The FBI violent crimes unit is aiding in the investigation, but there are no suspects.

Last September, seven people at a marijuana farm were shot and killed in Riverside, California. The police and the FBI have no arrests or suspects.

In August, three men opened fire on a crowd of women and children having a block party the middle of Washington DC. 21 people were injured in the attack, with one dying and another hospitalized in critical condition. The gunmen are still at large and the DC police do not have any suspects or leads.

There are countless unsolved mass shooting cases like the aforementioned. America is the only first world nation where people can open fire on random people in a major city’s crowded street and never get caught.

As for individual shootings, the numbers in 2020 are equally stark. 70% of shootings in New York City last year remain unsolved. Murder clearance rates have plummeted across major urban areas in the country even as homicides have skyrocketed.

The FBI’s Prioritizes Punishing Dissent Over Murder

The murder rate in 2020 jumped an average of 37% in 57 cities at the closing of last year, yet the FBI’s announced priorities for 2021 do not reflect the gravity of this national emergency.

According to the Bureau’s budget request for the new year, which is available on the Department of Justice’s website, they will be receiving close to $4 billion for their “counter-terrorism” operations, while their criminal division will be getting $3.4 billion.

A 2013 examination of the FBI’s corrupt “counter-terrorism” strategy found that only 1% of the people they entrap and arrest have any connection to actual terrorists. With the FBI’s new emphasis on right-wing white men, the number is likely much lower. Usually the criminal element introduced into religious or political communities engaging in First Amendment protected activity are inserted by the FBI itself.

The FBI’s revival as an instrument for suppressing views critical of the government is not lost on its agents. In 2018, the FBI Agents Union put out a statement demanding Congress pass a new “domestic terrorism law,” as many of their political targets are not committing any actionable criminal offenses.

Senator Dick Durbin and some Republicans are working on granting them their wish by re-submitting a “domestic terrorism” bill that would allow them to utilize already freely abused Patriot Act powers on law-abiding US citizens.

The outcome is as predicted. America is now a crime-ridden and corrupt third world country that suddenly becomes techno-dystopian when a citizen dares to question the increasingly absurd whims of the status quo.

January 22, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , | Leave a comment

German opposition MPs bash Merkel government over refusal to disclose information on Navalny case

By Jonny Tickle – RT – January 21, 2021

MPs from Germany’s left-wing Die Linke party have accused the country’s government of acting suspiciously after it refused to answer most of their questions about legal assistance requested by Russia over the Navalny case.

In recent months, on multiple occasions, the Kremlin has demanded information from Germany about the alleged poisoning of Alexey Navalny. The opposition figure arrived in Berlin in a coma on August 22 and spent the next five months convalescing in the city. According to Moscow, its requests for details have been rejected, preventing a thorough investigation into the events surrounding the alleged attack.

A letter, written by parliamentarians Amira Mohamed Ali and Dr. Dietmar Bartsch on behalf of the party’s entire Bundestag representation, asked the federal authorities for information on what exactly Russia had asked for and how Berlin had responded. The questions came after Moscow accused the Germans of failing to fulfill their obligations under the 1959 European Convention on Mutual Assistance in Criminal Matters.

The government revealed that Russia had requested legal assistance on four separate occasions, but “essentially did not reply,” according to MPs Gregor Gysi and Alexander Neu. Ten out of a total of 16 questions were answered with “no comment.”

The answer received by the left-wing politicians cited the need to protect “state secrets” and “cooperation with foreign partners,” noting that these aspects are more important than keeping elected officials in the loop.

“Disclosure of the information requested would be particularly detrimental to the welfare of the state because there is a risk that details will become known that are particularly worthy of protection in the context of cooperation with foreign partners,” the government noted, pointing to the fact that the MPs’ right to ask questions is limited by interests deemed to be constitutionally protected.

“[By refusing to answer], the federal government exposes itself to suspicion,” Gysi and Neu wrote, highlighting that the government has no obligation to protect Russian state secrets. “What are Germany’s state secrets regarding the government’s handling of Russia’s requests for legal assistance? … The failure of the Federal Government to answer these questions is neither constitutional nor democratic.”

On Monday, Gysi condemned the imprisonment of Navalny, noting his hope that the anti-corruption activist would be released.

January 21, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

The Great Pretense

By Stephen Lendman | January 21, 2021

Truth-telling historians will long remember January 20, 2021 in America as a day of infamy.

Unelected Biden/Harris were sworn into office as legitimate Election 2020 winner Trump was en route to Florida aboard Air Force One for the last time.

Events pre-election last year to militarized, occupied Washington Wednesday reflected growing US tyranny’s triumph over a fast disappearing free and open society.

Establishment media fawning in lieu of national mourning over unelected Biden/Harris is in stark contrast to unrelenting Trump bashing for the wrong reasons likely to continue against him in some form ahead.

Following shame and sham in the US capital Wednesday, virtual Biden/Harris press agent NYT defied reality with the following blazing headline in its day after edition, deceptively claiming:

“DEMOCRACY HAS PREVAILED (sic) (as) Biden takes office as 46th (US) president.”

A litany of mass deception followed.

Echoing deceptive inaugural address remarks delivered by Biden’s double because he’s too cognitively impaired to express more than sound bites in public, the Times called the delivered message “sanguine” during the Greatest ever US Main Street Depression that’s likely to fester and worsen ahead for ordinary Americans while super-rich ones grow richer by exploiting them.

Exuding unjustifiable praise for Biden/Harris by the Times was accompanied by more Trump bashing with no mention of legitimate DJT wrongdoing during his tenure.

The post-inaugural Times edition is an undisguised commercial for the incoming regime — polar opposite what journalism is supposed to be.

A blizzard of pro-Biden/Harris propaganda pieces filtered out discouraging words to conceal the true measure of the illigitimate pro-war, pro-corporate predation, anti-democratic new incumbents.

Along with the editorial board’s mass deception, an extended eulogy by other Times propagandists were featured.

“Harris makes history as the highest-ranking woman in the US” was a featured article about the first Black (sic) vice president.

The Times said featured photos were “from an inauguration day like no other… to show Americans and the world that democracy would endure (sic) despite” — its nonexistence in Police State America.

Other fawning all over Biden/Harris-Trump bashing featured a further array of mass deception reports including:

“On Day 1, Biden Moves to Undo Trump’s Legacy” — by going beyond the worst of his domestic and geopolitical agendas.

Biden issues blizzard of “executive orders and other directives”

“A Call for Unity (sic)” — that conceals no end of all-out war on humanity at home and abroad

“Washington Breathes an Uneasy Sigh of Relief (sic)” — during a changing of the guard to produce worse times ahead, not positive change for ordinary Americans

“A new era begins” — to exceed the worst of what preceded it

“How Joe Biden Became a Steady Hand Amid So Much Chaos” — ignoring his cognitive impairment likely to worsen ahead

“For Kamala Harris, an Influential Voice and a Decisive Vote” — a disturbing figure chosen to replace Biden when too cognitively far gone to continue on the job

“ ‘A Total Failure:’ The Proud Boys Now Mock Trump” — expect no end to Trump bashing for some time, part of wanting him to be too damaged goods to consider running again for office if permitted

“Biden Can Heal What Trump Broke (sic)”

“Relief, but Lingering Rage (sic)”

“Swamps R Us… Lots of things are better than” — reelected Trump kept from remaining in office by brazen fraud

“The Biden Opportunity” — for the military, industrial, security complex, Wall Street, other corporate favorites, and plotters of hardened tyranny ahead

“Is America Ungovernable Now?

Joe Biden is about to find out.”

The US has always been and continues to be governed of, by, and for the privileged few at the expense of the great majority.

“Biden’s Classy Call for an ‘America United (sic)’ ”

“Good Riddance, Leader McConnell” — his undemocratic Dem replacement to exceed the worst of how he betrayed ordinary Americans in deference to privileged ones.

“From Trump to Biden, TV Captures a Dramatic Shift… the best inaugural address I ever heard” — ignoring Biden’s history of mass deception

There’s more in the Times day after edition besides all of the unfit to read rubbish.

Imagine what’s coming ahead by establishment media — perpetual gushing over Trump’s unelected successor while bashing him at every opportunity and concealing the worst of what’s certain to unfold ahead.

Instead of the best of times to look forward to, hardened dystopia is virtually certain with nary an explanation from Big Media to continue their press agent services for a regime with no legitimacy.

Stephen Lendman is the author of:

“How Wall Street Fleeces America: Privatized Banking, Government Collusion, and Class War”

http://www.claritypress.com/product/how-wall-street-fleeces-america/

“Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity”

http://www.claritypress.com/product/banker-occupation-waging-financial-war-on-humanity/

January 21, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , | Leave a comment

Lockdown extremism: an obsession for the insane and the fascists

By Jon Rappoport | January 21, 2021

As my readers know, I’ve spent the last year refuting every so-called COVID fact promoted by public health officials—including the false notion that SARS-CoV-2 has been proven to exist.

In this article, I’m simply showing that devotees of the Cult of COVID are contradicting their own assumptions. For purposes of argument only, we’ll assume the virus exists, spreads rapidly, and causes illness.

If so, lockdowns don’t work.

This is shown by reports from almost every nation in the world. The longer the lockdowns, the greater the number of COVID cases.

The virus is unstoppable. It travels to all corners of the globe at lightning speed.

Conclusion? The only way to achieve herd immunity is to have the whole population of the planet live and work out in the open, fight through the pandemic, and eventually win.

That’s the inference to draw, once you accept the mainstream view of the virus and the pandemic.

But of course, opening up the world is not the conclusion of the experts or the political leaders. They take the opposite view: more lockdowns.

They’re acting against their own “science.”

Why?

Obviously, because they want to imprison populations, destroy lives and economies. Or, at the very least, they’re going along with the people who want to.

What about the vaccine as a method of inducing herd immunity? We’re already hearing about a second mutated strain of the COVID virus. If there are two strains, there will certainly be more. Many more. This sets up an analog to the flu vaccine: a new version every year, with the hope of predicting the latest mutation.

How is that working for the flu? Is it producing anything faintly resembling herd immunity? Far from it. Public health agencies report a BILLION cases of the flu each and every year, worldwide. Could the protective effects of the vaccine be any weaker?

Note: Has anyone recommended locking down the planet because of the flu? Of course not. A billion cases a year are just “what we have to live with.”

Why not adopt the same strategy for COVID?

Public officials should be demanding an end to lockdowns.

Dr. Scott Atlas, former White House coronavirus advisor: “We know the lockdowns don’t work, they do not eliminate the virus, we see it all over the world. We have 80% of people in the US wearing masks, we have all these various levels of restrictions on businesses, on in-person schools, and the virus is not eliminated by that.”

Researchers Sunetra Gupta (Oxford University), Jay Bhattacharya (Stanford University), Martin Kildorff (Harvard): “Current lockdown policies are producing devastating effects on short and long-term public health.”

Dr. John Ioannidis, professor of Medicine, Epidemiology and Population Health, and of Biomedical Data Science, and Statistics at Stanford University, responding to a question about laying on lockdowns in Greece: “It would be a devastating mistake to do so and it will run the risk of severely damaging and crippling the country.”

The Lancet, July 21, 2020: “… government actions such as border closures, full lockdowns, and a high rate of COVID-19 testing were not associated with statistically significant reductions in the number of critical cases or overall mortality,”

2006 paper in Biosecurity and Bioterrorism, “Disease Mitigation Measures in the Control of Pandemic Influenza” by Thomas V. Inglesby, Jennifer B. Nuzzo, Tara O’Toole, and D.A. Henderson. The authors conclude: “There are no historical observations or scientific studies that support the confinement by quarantine of groups of possibly infected people for extended periods in order to slow the spread of influenza.”

This is just a sprinkling of mainstream references from a much larger trove, indicating that lockdowns are harmful and don’t work.

Well, they work when a police state is the goal.

The conventional mainstream scientific view of the virus and its ability to spread inevitably leads to the conclusion: stopping it through lockdowns is like trying to keep water out of a forest.

“Well, if we build a canopy above all the trees, if we wrap each tree in layers of plastic, if we install underground suction pumps every six feet, if we spray chemicals in the sky to disperse cloud formation, if we drain every brook and stream, if we build dams in the mountains to keep the melting snow contained… we’ll still fail.”

Jon Rappoport is the author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX.

January 21, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

Infectious Diseases Expert Says UK Lockdown is Not Working

By Paul Joseph Watson | Summit News | January 21, 2021

Infectious diseases expert Professor Steven Riley says current data shows that the national lockdown in the United Kingdom is not working.

Riley, who is professor of infectious disease dynamics at Imperial College London, cited a React study which shows “the prevalence of infection increased between 6 and 15 January,” after the national lockdown was announced on January 4.

“It’s long enough that, were the lockdown working effectively, we would certainly have hoped to have seen a decline,” said Riley.

The professor added that current research “certainly doesn’t support the conclusion that lockdown is working.”

As we highlighted last week, a peer reviewed study by Stanford researchers found that mandatory lockdowns do not provide more benefits to stopping the spread of COVID-19 than voluntary measures such as social distancing.

The researchers found “no clear, significant beneficial effect of [more restrictive measures] on case growth in any country.”

While numerous studies show that lockdowns have no impact on reducing the spread of viruses, an avalanche of data shows that they cost lives.

Academics from Duke, Harvard, and Johns Hopkins have warned that there could be around a million excess deaths over the next two decades as a result of lockdowns.

Thousands of doctors and scientists are on record as opposing lockdown measures, warning that they will cause more death than the coronavirus itself.

January 21, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

Words are violence. Voting is terrorism. Free speech is a threat. Where the media establishment can’t win, they’ll redefine

By Helen Buyniski | RT | January 19, 2021

Determined to stamp out ‘wrongthink’ in all forms, the media establishment has declared a holy war against free speech. Once the bedrock of US society, it faces a redefinition into something more convenient – or oblivion.

If everyone is permitted to speak freely, their reasoning goes, people’s lives will be put at risk. Those whose opinions diverge from the mainstream should not be permitted to voice those opinions, lest their words hurt people – not just people’s feelings. Yet at the same time as this self-styled Ministry of Truth calls for free speech to be swept into the dustbin of history, it insists its victims’ freedom of speech is not under attack at all.

In the past few weeks, establishment outlets from the New York Times to NBC to the Independent have issued calls for the very idea of “freedom of speech” to be rethought – or better yet, scrapped altogether – because it is no longer in harmony with modern society. This is a tacit admission that the media establishment’s own opinions can’t compete in the marketplace of ideas, and that, despite their best efforts, they can’t censor their way out.

But at the same time as they insist this behavior does not curtail the free speech of the tens of thousands of social media users who’ve been given the boot in the past few months, they’ve called for the very idea of free speech to be retired, as it supposedly has no place in the 21st century.

The establishment’s cries for a bigger, better memory hole don’t stop at praising social media censorship, though there’s plenty of that – Twitter and Facebook’s decision to suspend US President Donald Trump’s accounts has been universally praised by the paper(s) of record. Amazon’s decision to kick the entire social media app Parler off its servers is right up there with storming the beaches of Normandy in the fight against fascism, according to these outlets. They’ve even moved on to demanding cable TV providers push conservative networks such as OANN and Newsmax overboard, and alternative platforms from Telegram to Minds are now in their crosshairs.

The media establishment blames “free speech” for the raid on the Capitol earlier this month, with the Hill skewering social media platforms for putting their dependence on “clicks and ratings” above some sort of higher calling – even though the media establishment’s own dependency on clicks and ratings has forced numerous outlets to merge, downsize, or even close offices as Facebook and Google eat their lunch. Even more absurdly, NBC claimed the FBI would have warned about the raid, except they had concerns about the First Amendment – as if the FBI hasn’t at some point designated almost every American as a domestic terror threat.

The entire argument has the air of something cooked up at the last minute to justify a long-desired end, and sure enough, the media have long been frustrated watching alt-media sites and YouTubers in their bedrooms producing quality content that also – in some cases, at least – has the added value of somewhat resembling the world its audience inhabits. Trying to deplatform the most popular content creators while pretending to uphold the noble mantle of the Fourth Estate has never been an easy balance to strike, and it must come as a relief to many establishment figures to finally dispense with the pretense of embracing freedom of speech.

While not everyone in the media establishment is on board with this new direction, many of those opposed are too scared to speak up, lest they lose their job or be shunned by colleagues. But this sort of cowardly behavior is what has turned the establishment into such a monster. In less than a decade, American liberalism was co-opted by a tiny fraction of screeching malcontents who shouted sanity into hiding with their insistence that “words are violence” and strong opinions they disagreed with were the literal equivalent of curb-stomping oppressed minorities.

Because the ‘silent majority’ (who, contrary to what has become the prevailing doctrine, were not all straight white males) were reluctant to go to war with the unhinged barbarians who’d shown up at their gates, “words [that I don’t like] are violence” became the official doctrine of the academy. Most of those who didn’t like it merely gritted their teeth, held their tongues, and groused in private about the excesses of their cultish colleagues while those colleagues indoctrinated class after class of impressionable young people. Their dogma now dominates the media establishment to the point that journalistic awards are given out not for groundbreaking reporting, but for demonstrations of ideological fealty – and indeed, truth just gets in the way. No wonder much of their audience has fled to YouTube and Twitter for their news.

It’s no longer a question of “if you can’t beat them, join them” – the establishment has issued its verdict, and those whose opinions do not fall within the ever-narrowing borders of the mainstream have been declared anathema. The only problem the narrative managers now face is convincing their targets they don’t have the advantage of numbers. Thus, if you can’t beat them, ban them. What’s the point of having absolute power over the media otherwise? However reality-averse their work may be, these zealots are keenly aware that their captive audience despises being lied to, demonized, and told that the most normal behaviors – from studying the classics to voting to gathering with loved ones in their homes – constitute racism, Nazism, and attempted genocide. There is no way to package such outrageous slanders that will convince those thus degraded to swallow them. So, the only option is to ban arguments from the “other side.”

Failure to triumph in the marketplace of ideas – by the topsy-turvy logic of the Words Are Violence crowd – merely means the marketplace needs stricter regulations. If two plus two cannot be persuaded to equal five, that’s only because math is racist.

In designating freedom of speech – once the foundation of American society – as a threat to democracy, the thought police running the media establishment have essentially completed the job of destroying everything that once made the country successful. The only question remaining is whether Americans are going to take this sort of insult sitting down.

Helen Buyniski is an American journalist and political commentator at RT. Follow her on Twitter @velocirapture23

January 20, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

What Snowden’s Exile Says About America

By Brian Berletic – New Eastern Outlook – 20.01.2021

Edward Snowden’s 2013 leak of US National Security Agency (NSA) information helped the world see more clearly what the US – in its current manifestation – really is. Its extensive, abusive surveillance network targeted friends and foes alike around the globe but also pointed inward at America’s own population. It provided the clearest picture to date of the methods and means used by what many call the “Deep State” to maintain power internationally as well as domestically.

For America, the fallout from his leaks should have begun a process of intense introspection. Instead, the US sought to punish Snowden – who luckily escaped to Russia.
The US – which prides its self-appointed title of leader of what it calls a “rules based international order” – had broken all the rules.

Instead of celebrating a man who offered a rare opportunity to clean house and begin rebuilding confidence and trust between the US government and the American people as well as between the US and the world abroad – a process of doubling down began instead.

It is a process that continues even to this day.

Clearly, Donald Trump has failed to pardon Snowden and it’s unlikely that his successor would actually do this. Moreover, there are still those in the US media who attempt to build a case against such a pardon nonetheless.

An opinion piece written by Rich Lowry appearing in Politico titled, “Mr. President, Don’t Pardon Edward Snowden,” would claim:

If the former NSA contractor had been a genuine whistle-blower, he could have pursued concerns about the NSA program through lawful avenues, instead of fleeing the country.

But this assumes that in the US there exists such “lawful avenues” in the first place. Snowden himself has claimed that his first course of action was actually attempting to find and travel down such avenues – but found none.

Lowry in Politico also claims:

The Snowden disclosures were much more wide-ranging than the NSA program, in fact so wide-ranging that it’s almost impossible to keep track. As Harvard law professor Jack Goldsmith asked, in a piece at the website Lawfare opposing a Snowden pardon by Barack Obama, why did Snowden’s devotion to the Constitution require him to disclose details of how we spy on other countries, how we cooperate with Sweden and Norway to spy on Russia, or an NSA program called MasterMind to respond to cyberattacks?

Yet US foreign policy toward Russia – for example – is one of belligerence, aggression, subversion, economic warfare, covert terrorism, semi-cover proxy war, and hybrid warfare. These are policies the US wields against many nations around the globe- policies aided by the massive and abusive surveillance methods exposed by Snowden.

These are policies problematic toward the Constitution, the will of the American people who generally seek to avoid wars, and toward international law.

The information Snowden took with him serves to shed much needed light on all aspects of US foreign policy. The term “national security” used by people like Lowry to describe what he claims Snowden’s actions threatened is dishonest. US national security faces very few real threats – surrounded by two oceans on either side of its east and west coasts and with friendly nations to its north and south.

What Lowry is actually most likely referring to is US “interests” which entails the encroachment upon and violation of the national security of other nations – nations like Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Ukraine, and even nations like Iran, Russia, and China who face the constant economic, political, and military pressure of the US.

That not only is a man who held a mirror up to Washington and the policies coming out of it exiled overseas – but that there are those still in the US dedicated to poisoning the world against him – says much about where the US is now. It is a system in irreversible decline. It is a system that refuses to look in the mirror – and as such – is a system unable to assess or rectify any of the ailments that would – if they could – stare back.

Snowden’s exile is one of many metrics we can use to measure America’s decline – and any possible, genuine pardon of Snowden could – if it ever occurred – might signal the emergence of a new, more reasonable America – one that might not only right the wrong that put Snowden in exile in the first place – but one that might be capable of addressing the problems that spurred Snowden to become a whistleblower in the first place.

Brian Berletic is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer.

January 20, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception | , | Leave a comment

Writers, of all people, are now censors

By Jon Rappoport | January 19, 2021

It had to happen.

People who call themselves WRITERS are signing a letter pressuring publishers to ban Trump, and anyone who has worked for him:

Do not publish a Trump memoir. Stay away from him.

The letter was penned by Barry Lyga. Who?

LA Times, January 15 [1]: “More than 250 authors, editors, agents, professors and others in the American literary community signed an open letter this week opposing any publisher that signs book deals with President Donald Trump or members of his administration.”

“Former DC Comics president Paul Levitz, journalist Sarah Weinman and ‘Little Fires Everywhere’ author Celeste Ng are among signatories to the letter, written by novelist Barry Lyga and titled ‘No Book Deals for Traitors’.”

“’We all love book publishing, but we have to be honest — our country is where it is in part because publishing has chased the money and notoriety of some pretty sketchy people, and has granted those same people both the imprimatur of respectability and a lot of money through sweetheart book deals,’ the letter read. ‘We affirm that participation in the administration of Donald Trump must be considered a uniquely mitigating criterion for publishing houses when considering book deals’.”

“’Consequently, we believe: No participant in an administration that caged children, performed involuntary surgeries on captive women, and scoffed at science as millions were infected with a deadly virus should be enriched by the almost rote largesse of a big book deal. And no one who incited, suborned, instigated, or otherwise supported the January 6, 2021 coup attempt should have their philosophies remunerated and disseminated through our beloved publishing houses’.”

Beloved publishing houses? I’m sure no writer, in the last ten thousand years, has ever used that phrase.

Are the author, and the signers of this letter, down on their knees, looking for their own book deals?

Since the invention of language, writers have fought to win the freedom to WRITE without interference. In the process, they’ve been arrested, charged, prosecuted, convicted, imprisoned, tortured, and murdered. That’s the history of the war.

And now this little venal band of scum—writers—wants censorship.

Here’s a chapter from that history; Giordano Bruno, 16th century Dominican friar, poet, and philosopher. For teaching a theory of reincarnation, for stating the universe was infinite, for discussing the possibility of life on other planets, on February 17, 1600 in the Campo de’ Fiori Square, “field of flowers,” the Roman Church burned him at the stake.

Yes, this happened. It wasn’t a Netflix movie. It was one stop along the way in the war for freedom.

But all right. These contemporary buffoons want to cancel Trump. Fine. Who’s next?

What about beloved Obama? I have evidence to support retroactive censorship against him. All his books, wherever they can be found, should be assembled in a great pile, in Freedom Plaza, and burned.

His publishers should demand the return of all advances and royalties, and if Obama can’t come up with the cash, a court should empower the publishers to take over his homes and sell them off.

The evidence?

The Guardian, January 9, 2017, “America dropped 26,171 bombs in 2016. What a bloody end to Obama’s reign,” by Medea Benjamin [2]:

“…in 2016 alone, the Obama administration dropped at least 26,171 bombs. This means that every day last year, the US military blasted combatants or civilians overseas with 72 bombs; that’s three bombs every hour, 24 hours a day.”

“While most of these air attacks were in Syria and Iraq, US bombs also rained down on people in Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan. That’s seven majority-Muslim countries.”

“One bombing technique that President Obama championed is drone strikes. As drone-warrior-in-chief, he spread the use of drones outside the declared battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq, mainly to Pakistan and Yemen. Obama authorized over 10 times more drone strikes than George W Bush, and automatically painted all males of military age in these regions as combatants, making them fair game for remote controlled killing.”

“President Obama has claimed that his overseas military adventures are legal under the 2001 and 2003 authorizations for the use of military force passed by Congress to go after al-Qaida. But today’s wars have little or nothing to do with those who attacked the United States on September 11, 2001.”

“Given that drones account for only a small portion of the munitions dropped in the past eight years, the numbers of civilians killed by Obama’s bombs could be in the thousands. But we can’t know for sure as the administration, and the mainstream media, has been virtually silent about the civilian toll of the administration’s failed interventions.”

“In May 2013, I interrupted President Obama during his foreign policy address at the National Defense University. I had just returned from visiting the families of innocent people killed by US drone attacks in Yemen and Pakistan, including the Rehman children who saw their grandmother blown to bits while in the field picking okra.”

“Speaking out on behalf of grieving families whose losses have never been acknowledged by the US government, I asked President Obama to apologize to them. As I was being dragged out, President Obama said: ‘The voice of that woman is worth paying attention to’.”

“Too bad he never did.”

If you petty little band of censors—who call yourselves writers—want to shut down Trump, then you have to go after Obama.

And then GW Bush, and Clinton, and so on. Don’t stop there.

There are lots of American politicians you can assail, going back to the 17th century.

You’re every censor who ever existed. You think you’ve got a special case in Trump. You don’t have a clue.

You don’t know anything about the history of writers.

I wouldn’t trade three dried-out yak turds for one of your books.

But those books won’t be censored. That’s how generous and consoling freedom is. I could say you should try freedom yourselves, but I know better than that.

I see who you are.

Miniature gargoyles, peddling your virtue-signaling inquisition.

SOURCES:

[1] https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/books/story/2021-01-15/book-world-signs-letter-to-block-trump-book-deals

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/09/america-dropped-26171-bombs-2016-obama-legacy

Jon Rappoport is the author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX.

January 20, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | | Leave a comment

Democrats and neocons clamor to bring the ‘war on terror’ home, targeting Trump supporters as ‘domestic terrorists’

Biden or Bush?

By Nebojsa Malic | RT | January 20, 2021

Just like that, the Democrats became the party of George W. Bush. You’re either with them, or with Trump supporters who need to be treated just like Al-Qaeda, the media and political paladins of Our Democracy are now declaring.

“The pro-Trump fanatics stormed and trashed the citadel of American democracy, nearly executing what al-Qaeda had failed to do: destroy the US Capitol,” Jeff Stein of the Daily Beast argued on Monday, gushing over a Democrat proposal to empower law enforcement to “prevent violent acts of domestic terrorism.”

Wait, you might say. Al-Qaeda was accused of killing nearly 3,000 Americans at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. How can five deaths that happened during the Capitol unrest compare? Silence, bigot! What are you, a terrorist?

Why yes, you are, according to the same Democrats who spent 2020 endorsing the Black Lives Matter chants of “ACAB” and “defund the police,” and now want to empower the police to go after 74-plus million Trump as “white terrorists” who are basically the same as Osama Bin Laden.

In the same breath as he called for “unity” and “healing,” Joe Biden denounced his opposition as “domestic terrorists” and Nazis. Even before he gets sworn in, his party is using the Capitol unrest to criminalize political dissent in America.

Almost every single mainstream outlet is rushing to interview “national security experts” and “extremism researchers,” who are selling the line that a new War on Terror is needed, right here at home, with fellow Americans as the enemy – and them in charge, obviously.

Joining the Democrats in this crusade are the neocons, from the NeverTrump shriekers Max Boot, Bill Kristol and David Frum – architects and instigators of the original WoT and the Iraq invasion launched under its pretext – to Bush alumni who worked on the inside to sabotage Trump’s agenda until they decided denouncing him would profit them more. One of them is Elizabeth Neumann, a Bush alum embedded in Trump’s Homeland Security department until she resigned in a huff last May, who denounced her former boss in TIME magazine as near enough the equivalent of OBL.

If you thought social media bans, no-fly lists, denials of service by banks and hotels, and mass layoffs were bad, wait till you hear former FBI agent Ali Soufan. Interviewed in the same TIME article, he gushed about the drone strike President Barack Obama ordered against Anwar al-Awlaki in 2011, saying he had it coming because he was “instigating” terrorism. Al-Awlaki also happened to be an American citizen and, therefore, ostensibly entitled to due process, but his extrajudicial execution was conducted with absolute impunity.

Some veterans of the “war on terror” are all too eager to see it happen domestically. General Stanley McChrystal, who oversaw the deaths of more than 1,000 US troops in Afghanistan during the “surge” there, now says the problem with America is white men angry about losing their “privileged position,” and claims Trump supporters are the KKK. Who could’ve guessed that Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota) had won the war for the hearts and minds of the US military?

Then again, McChrystal has already been waging war on Americans, albeit of the psychological kind. Back in May 2020, the Washington Post reported that he was advising a Democrat group called Defeat Disinfo, which was “planning to deploy technology originally developed to counter Islamic State propaganda in service of a domestic political goal,” namely, the election of Joe Biden. The mainstream media saw nothing wrong with this, just as they cheer the calls to outlaw half of America now.

Not that the mainstream media will remind you, but the original War on Terror resulted in mass warrantless spying on Americans – eventually exposed by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden – and war crimes in places such as Iraq and Afghanistan, exposed by Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. It also led to the massive expansion of administrative searches and seizures – from airports onward – and encroachment on civil liberties. These were all denounced as a bad thing.

All of that pales in comparison to what has already been done by private companies in the name of “resisting” Trump, and what the incoming government is preparing to do, with zero pushback from civil libertarians such as the American Civil Liberties Union, which is now fully on board.

Well, not exactly zero. The one objection came from a somewhat unexpected quarter: the “Squad” of progressive members of Congress, who wrote a letter opposing any expansion of domestic national security and surveillance powers.

The existing laws, powers and regulations are quite enough to go after “white nationalist and QAnon groups,” they argued, since “increasing the reach and power of our national security apparatus now would only serve to further the oppression of Black, brown, Indigenous, people of color, and leftist groups.” The What is just fine, it’s the Who/Whom that’s the problem, you see.

The pinnacle of irony is that in the very same speech, delivered before Congress, Bush said the  terrorists attacked America because “they hate our freedoms” – specifically citing “our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other.” With the notable exception of the Squad’s virtue-signaling – that is unlikely to accomplish much to shift the Democrats leftward – the very same people who once compared George W. Bush to Hitler are now rehabilitating his acolytes and policies, and echo his September 2001 message that “either you are with us or you are with the terrorists.”

With those freedoms now effectively abolished in the name of protecting Our Democracy, does that mean the terrorists have no reason to hate America? That’s one way to win the ‘war on terror’ – just in time to start another, at home.

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 and on Twitter @NebojsaMalic

January 20, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , | Leave a comment

DC mayor calls to Terminate National Guardsmen with ‘conflicting views’, requests machine guns for inauguration

RT | January 20, 2021

Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser set a chilling standard for what might make someone a terrorist threat, saying soldiers in the US capital must vow “allegiance to their mission” of guarding President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration.

Bowser spoke to reporters on Tuesday regarding the thousands of National Guardsmen being brought to the District of Columbia from all across the nation to help provide beefed-up inauguration security in the wake of the January 6 US Capitol riot.

“It’s prudent to make sure that they’re being vetted and that anybody who cannot pledge allegiance to…,” Bowser said before pausing. Rather than saying “the Constitution” or “the United States,” she continued by saying, “their mission, and may be pulled by other views, needs not only to be removed from this duty; they need to be removed from the Guard.”

Following the Capitol breach by election-fraud protesters, Washington has its largest troop presence since the May 1965 Grand Review of the Armies following the Civil War, with about 25,000 National Guardsmen deployed to the city.

But Democrats, such as US Representatives Jason Crow (D-Colorado) and Steve Cohen (D-Tennessee), have raised concerns that the troops could themselves be a security threat, given the likelihood that many voted for US President Donald Trump. Cohen went so far as to say that those who voted for Trump “might want to do something” during the inauguration, suggesting that mere differences in political affiliation constitute a security threat in today’s America.

The Pentagon and FBI are racing to vet all 25,000 National Guard troops assigned to the inauguration. A dozen Guardsmen were removed from the detail after they were found to have alleged ties to right-wing militia groups or to have shared “extremist” material online, the Associated Press said on Tuesday, citing anonymous officials. But Acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller has said that no “insider threat” has been found through the vetting process, and officials confirmed that the 12 troops who were removed from the mission didn’t pose a threat to Biden. Presumably, every major troop deployment in history has involved people of differing political views and affiliations.

Bowser is apparently torn between her desire for strong security firepower and her fears of Republican troops. Fox News reporter John Roberts said the Democrat mayor asked that “crew-served machine guns be included in the National Guard’s arsenal,” but Homeland Security official Ken Cuccinelli denied the request, saying such weapons have no place in securing a civilian event.

Social media users suggested that Bowser’s comments suggested a “witch hunt” and were insulting to the National Guard. Others pointed to the “slippery slope” of questioning whether soldiers can do their jobs based on political affiliations, while still others noted that members of the military swear an oath only to the Constitution, not to a leader or a mission.

“At no time in our history have soldiers been required to swear their allegiance to a single individual,” one observer said on Twitter. “They swear their loyalty to the country, to the Constitution and to their commander-in-chief, not just the commander-in-chief they voted for. This vetting and Joe Biden disgust me.”

Another commenter tweeted, “Surrounded by 23,000 armed troops swearing an oath of allegiance, Biden’s installation looks more like a Banana Republic coup than an inauguration of the most popular president ever.”

January 20, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties | | Leave a comment

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