When Does a ‘Glitch’ Become a Coup? It’s Time to Regulate America’s Fly-by-Night Voting Machine Monopoly
By Robert Bridge | Strategic Culture Foundation | November 15, 2020
It’s a frightening thing to consider, but the ultimate success of democracy in the United States largely hinges on the integrity of just three voting machine companies, which conduct their affairs with almost no government oversight and regulation. Unless that changes, the greatest democracy will start looking like a banana republic in the eyes of the world.
In January 2020, the CEOs of the three companies that produce over 80 percent of voting machines in the U.S. – Election Systems & Software (ES&S), Dominion Voting Systems and Hart InterCivic – were grilled by members of Congress over the question of security at the ballot box. Perhaps it would surprise exactly nobody that the 90-minute discussion focused almost entirely on the possibility of foreign actors, specifically China and Russia, interfering in the U.S. election system. Within such a predictably narrow frame of reference – Russia! Russia! Russia! – it becomes much easier to eliminate the possibility that domestic actors may also be tempted to tamper with the vote. At the same time, Russia provides the perfect smokescreen in the event someone gets caught with their hand in the election cookie jar. But already I digress.
Currently, Dominion Voting Systems, the supplier of voting machines in 28 states, is coming under fierce scrutiny after it was reported that thousands of votes in one Michigan country intended for Donald Trump went to his challenger, Joe Biden. Officials were quick to point out that the ‘glitch’ was due to silly “human error,” as opposed to any mechanical flaws with the voting machines.
According to Michigan state government website, “[T]he erroneous reporting of unofficial results … was a result of accidental error on the part of the Antrim County Clerk (who) accidentally did not update the software used to collect voting machine data and report unofficial results.”
While I am no computer specialist, it is hard to imagine how a software update would have done anything to prevent one candidate from receiving the votes intended for another unless it was originally programmed to behave that way. But again, I am no expert.
Another state that relies heavily on Dominion Voting Systems is Georgia, which received 30,000 new voting machines last year – “the largest rollout of elections equipment in U.S. history,” according to the Government Technology newsletter. Following the announcement of the $107 million contract, the same newsletter foretold of problems down the road, saying the “new voting system is expected to be quickly challenged in court by voters who say it remains vulnerable to hacking and tampering, despite the addition of paper ballots.”
Those fears were quickly realized on the morning of Nov. 3, Election Day, when a technological glitch wreaked havoc on voting in two Georgia counties (a side note to this story is that Georgia officials blamed the abrupt pause in vote counting on a burst pipe at Atlanta’s State Farm Arena. Thus far, however, officials have not been able to produce any evidence that such an incident took place).
While the source of the ‘glitch’ is still under investigation, one state ballot supervisor, Marcia Ridley, initially told POLITICO on Nov. 3 that Dominion, which prepares the poll books for counties before elections, “uploaded something last night, which is not normal, and it caused a glitch.” That reported incident prevented staff from programming the voter smart cards for the voting machines. Ridley continued, “That is something that they don’t ever do. I’ve never seen them update anything the day before the election.”
However, Dominion officials, while admitting there was a problem with the poll books, deny there was any last-minute update made to the poll books after Oct. 31 (a press release by Dominion countered this and other allegations, including that the Pelosi family, the Feinstein family, or the Clinton Global Initiative has any relationship with the company).
And here is where things get interesting.
Ridley went on to say that Dominion assured her that “no system can be updated remotely without the knowledge of [the company],” indicating that an update could not have been made without detection. In other words, there appears to be a backdoor channel for Dominion Voting Systems to connect to the internet, and, as everybody knows, whatever appears on the internet is fair game for hackers.
Pennsylvania Department of State requested a function from Dominion Voting Software to allow local “Operators” with access to “totally blank ballots” to examine, RE-MARK IF NEEDED and allowed, and then re-scan into the tabulator.https://t.co/Iusf55hfqL pic.twitter.com/m7Hkxvigq7
— Ron (@CodeMonkeyZ) November 12, 2020
In fact, it was exactly that concern that helped dissuade the state of Texas from also purchasing the dodgy Dominion system.
In a letter from Brandon Hurley, a voting systems examiner, addressed to Keith Ingram, Director of Elections in Texas, it was determined that “some of the hardware in the Democracy 5.5-A System can be connected to the internet through Ethernet ports.”
Later in the letter, it was emphasized again that “[W]ithout question, one or more of the components of the 5.5-A System can be connected to an external communication network and this can only be avoided if the end-user takes the proper precautions to prevent such a connection.”
On Wednesday, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger announced the state would perform a hand-recount of presidential ballots before certifying the results of its election. According to the New York Times, Biden leads the incumbent Trump by 14,000 votes.
In hindsight, how could voting software named Dominion not have a nefarious purpose?
— Keith Preston (@KeithPreston) November 12, 2020
Whatever the outcome of the 2020 presidential election, which also had to wrangle with the influx of millions of mail-in ballots amid a pandemic, it will certainly go down in the history books as one of the most chaotic, controversial and fraud-prone contests in U.S. history. The tragedy is that this fiasco, which is making America look ridiculous on the global stage, could have been avoided. There have been numerous attempts to sound the alarm on the vulnerability of voting machines to accurately tabulate the results of an election, and not least of all the ongoing Trump-Biden showdown, which will determine the political, cultural and economic trajectory of the United States long into the future.
It is the opinion here that, judging by everything we know and don’t know about how the 2020 presidential election was organized, the only realistic option is to hold a nationwide recount. It is simply impossible to expect millions of American voters from either side of the political aisle to hold any doubts over an election of such tremendous consequence. Yes, a recount would be a massive undertaking, but the future peace and tranquility of the nation, already partisan to the breaking point, depends upon it. Once the recount is accomplished, the next task should be a congressional task force to examine ways of securing U.S. elections in the future, while holding the voting machine companies to severe government control and regulation. The days of monkey-wrenching U.S. elections must end.
Biden transition team’s media leader sees ‘DESIGN FLAW’ in First Amendment, advocates law against ‘hate speech’
© Reuters / Jim Urquhart
RT | November 14, 2020
Richard Stengel, the point man on state-owned media for Joe Biden’s transition team, has said protection of hateful speech that can provoke violence is a “design flaw” in the Constitution and should be fixed with “new guardrails.”
Stengel, a former MSNBC contributor, is transition team leader for the US agency for Global Media, which includes broadcasters Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks. He’s likely to head the agency if Biden becomes president in January. Ironically, that means Washington’s foreign propaganda outlets, which traditionally have promoted America’s founding principles, would be overseen by a man with restrictive views on the most fundamental of those tenets – freedom of speech.
“All speech is not equal,” Stengel wrote last year in an op-ed published by the Washington Post. “And where truth cannot drive out lies, we must add new guardrails. I’m all for protecting thought that we hate, but not speech that incites hate.”
Stengel gave the example of “sophisticated Arab diplomats” who had questioned why constitutional rights would allow a US citizen to burn a copy of the Koran. “It’s a fair question,” he said. “Yes, the First Amendment protects the thought that we hate, but it should not protect hateful speech that can cause violence by one group against another. In an age when everyone has a megaphone, that seems like a design flaw.”
Another example that Stengel cited was alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election. “Our foremost liberty protects any bad actors who hide behind it to weaken our society,” he wrote. “Russian agents assumed fake identities, promulgated false narratives and spread lies on Twitter and Facebook – all protected by the First Amendment.”
Stengel added that it’s time to consider hate-speech laws, like those enacted by other countries to discourage incitement of racial and religious tensions after World War II. He argued that mass shooters Dylann Roof and Omar Mateen were consumers of hate speech, which created a climate that made their heinous crimes more likely.
Stengel, formerly editor of Time magazine, was a US State Department undersecretary for public diplomacy and public affairs in the Obama-Biden administration. He referred to his former State Department role as “chief propagandist.”
“I’m not against propaganda,” Stengel reportedly told the Council on Foreign Relations in 2018. “Every country does it, and they have to do it to their own population. And I don’t necessarily think that’s awful.”
Trump, COVID-19, UK Lockdowns, And The Great Reset
By Andrew Korbyko | One World | November 14, 2020
COVID-19 And Lockdown
[…] the onus is on Johnson and his government to prove that lockdowns and social distancing measures work. And we are now 8 months down the line and the picture is clearer.
The statistics show that this virus has a mortality rate comparable with the flu. There has been no evidence which shows that lockdown measures such as social distancing or masks have had any effect. And numerous scientists confirm that the pandemic ended in late spring and there is no ‘second wave’. The government is conducting huge numbers of PCR tests with false positive rates which cast doubt over their use.
These tests are identifying more ’cases’, the majority of which have no symptoms or are picking up other remnants of virus in our bodies.
My judgement is that Johnson and his government have not discharged the onus of proof at any level since the virus took hold in early spring. In fact, the sheer volume of evidence which has been produced since has made a mockery of the government’s data, its interpretation, the ‘science’, and perhaps most crucially in terms of the totally disproportionate effect on physical and mental health, education, and the economy.
In summary, the government hasn’t produced a bare morsel of evidence and at times their arguments have been akin to saying the moon is made of cheese and expecting everyone to believe it, this illusion sustained by the fear and panic they’ve created. Even if their figures stood up to proper scrutiny, the effects of the measures in terms of collateral damage far outweigh any benefits the measures have had. Put simply, it is a scandal on a scale never seen before.
The Great Reset
The Great Reset is an agenda which promotes a social and economic ‘reset’ in countries around the world. It’s a not a new agenda and this is not meant to be some new revelation. The question is, does the evidence now suggest this agenda is currently being implemented under the guise of a pandemic?
Following a more recent look at the so-called ‘reset’ agenda, for me the puzzle pieces have now slotted in place.
Earlier on, I believed that gross stupidity, incompetence, and trying to find an exit strategy without exposure were the most logical reasons behind the COVID-19 decision making.
Initially, I couldn’t reconcile the differences in states in the world and measures taken by each government towards even a loosely co-ordinated agenda of economic and social reset.
The first reason I believe we are heading towards some type of economic and social reset promoted by unelected billionaires and other technocrats is because after 8 months it is now too much of a stretch to accept repeated stupidity and incompetence as reasons. The decision-making at every turn has been the opposite of what would have made the most sense when dealing with a pandemic.
My view is that they have used COVID-19 as a convenient vehicle to push through the reset agenda.
The mainly circumstantial but I think strong evidence concerns the agenda of the World Economic Forum (WEF), particularly (Klaus Schwab, who resembles a James Bond villain. This organisation makes no secret of the reset and the discussions it held at previous events attended by world leaders.
Biden and Johnson have adopted the same slogans of this organisation, such as ‘build back better’. The agenda is presented as dealing with climate change and other challenges such as sustainability, wealth distribution, and social justice. But it is all very sinister when you realise who might be involved and what the likely details are.
The World Health Organisation, the United Nations, and unelected billionaires like Bill Gates and Prince Charles seem to be driving this agenda.
As many of us will be aware, the state-affiliated giants Twitter and Facebook are censoring and banning people, including scientists who dispute the COVID-19 narrative and question lockdowns.
The BBC and mainstream media have taken it upon themselves to ‘fact-check’ the more outlandish theories about COVID-19 while ignoring valid concerns over the accuracy of government data and proportion. Therefore, the impression is created that all people who oppose lockdowns are anti-vaccine or conspiracy theorists. This coverage is now very noticeable for its bias, suggesting co-ordination between state and media.
The many references to COVID-19 by the WEF and administering vaccines and talk of issuing health passports are probably one of the most disturbing aspects and resemble China’s social credit system, a system which operates on social control, compliance, and sanctions.
This so-called ‘New World Order’ seems to be geared towards transferring wealth to the elites running it in exchange for debt relief and eventually to a society where individuals don’t own property.
In order to create this new world and get people’s acceptance, I believe a climate of fear, control, and dependence on the state is their early goal. Small businesses have been destroyed and health ruined under the cloak of a false ‘second wave’ pandemic. The constant exaggeration and misrepresentation of the data and science by the government is to keep the fraud going towards implementation of these plans.
The global elites haven’t yet fully declared their hand. But the subtle messages appearing all around us and collective material about the reset are there in plain sight for those who care to look. The circumstantial evidence, including how the COVID-19 pandemic has played out to fit in with this agenda, is too substantial to ignore.
In summary, if this is the agenda, then it is nothing less than a global coup.
Conclusion
In my previous article, I suggested that the general public should take time to calmly reflect on the evidence. Since then, there has been an awakening with more people calling out the faulty science and destructive measures.
But as we move into a worrying new phase, I think we need to put the message out that a sinister agenda seems to be playing out in the shadows. Our economy, health, and lives have been deliberately wrecked in its pursuit. I don’t believe this is about COVID-19, if it ever was.
The questions which remain for me are how far developed is this plan, how powerful are those behind it, and how far have their tentacles spread within the corridors of power and state institutions?
Once these plans become more obvious to us through awakening and realisation or through implementation, the question will then be whether it can be stopped in its tracks or if mass civil unrest be the scenario?
I believe the US election is tied into the COVID-19 pandemic. If Biden steps into power, then the reset could be a reality. With Trump, there’s perhaps a chance it can be stopped.
It wouldn’t surprise me with this going on that the forces which have been trying to remove Trump for 4 years have massively rigged the election.
No matter what political side you are on, it’s important not to dismiss the likelihood that there has been an assault on democracy in the US and certainly a high probability that it’s already well underway here and elsewhere. – Full article
Controversy as New French Security Law Could Crack Down on Filming Police
Sputnik – 14.11.2020
A proposed French law could see images of police officers restricted from circulation. While supporters claim it will only be used to crack down on cyberbullying of law enforcement, critics claim it could be a danger to freedom of the press.
Part of France’s new security bill would make it a criminal offense – under threat of punishment with one year in prison and a €45,000 fine – to spread images that harm “the physical or mental integrity” of law enforcement officers.
Stanislas Gaudon, who heads the police union ‘Alliance’, said on Friday that existing cyberbullying legislation does not currently provide effective protection for the police.
“The problem with those laws is that they can only be applied when the video is already online, but it’s too late, the damage is already done”, he said.
Gaudon said the new law should also make it “compulsory to blur police officers’ faces” in any videos distributed.
Article 24 of the law, which was first proposed La République En Marche (LREM) MP Jean-Michel Fauvergue, following lobbying pressure from Alliance.
Lawmakers supporting the bill stress that it is only intended to be used in response to “malicious” actions.
“The purpose is to forbid any calls for violence or reprisals against officers and their families in videos broadcast over social media” said LREM MP Alice Thourot while speaking to France Inter radio.
Critics of the legislation claim that it could be used to repress certain liberties. On November 8, around 30 members of France’s Society of Journalists issued an open letter denouncing the bill as a “threat to the freedom to report”.
Some 800 filmmakers and photographers sent their own letter, claiming that the proposed bill is equivalent to “censorship”. They cited that a prominent documentary on police violence, ‘Un pays qui se tient sage’ (A Wise Country) filmed amid the 2018-19 Yellow Vest demonstrations, would have been restricted from the airwaves.
Amnesty International has also said the French government would be in violation of the UN’s 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, protecting freedom of expression, if the law were to pass.
“The bill is not precise enough,” said Cécile Coudriou, head of Amnesty France. “The notion of ‘malicious intentions’ is too broad. It doesn’t conform to the standards of international law”.
Those who oppose the law highlight examples where police brutality being broadcast through social media has aided in media and legal investigations into police violence.
On 5 January, Cédric Chouviat, a 42-year-old delivery driver in Paris died from a heart attack after being place in a chokehold by police. The event was seen in at least thirteen different videos from the victim, bystanders, and one of the officers involved.
Another example of social media footage bringing police violence to light is the filmed beating of Yellow Vest demonstrators by law enforcement in a Burger King in Paris in December 2018.
Biden state media appointee advocated using propaganda against Americans and ‘rethinking’ First Amendment
By Ben Norton · The Grayzone · November 11, 2020
Richard Stengel, the top state media appointee for US President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team, has enthusiastically defended the use of propaganda against Americans.
“My old job at the State Department was what people used to joke as the chief propagandist,” Stengel said in 2018. “I’m not against propaganda. Every country does it, and they have to do it to their own population. And I don’t necessarily think it’s that awful.”
Richard “Rick” Stengel was the longest serving under-secretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs in US history.
At the State Department under President Barack Obama, Stengel boasted that he “started the only entity in government, non-classified entity, that combated Russian disinformation.” That institution was known as the Global Engagement Center, and it amounted to a massive vehicle for advancing US government propaganda around the world.
A committed crusader in what he openly describes as a global “information war,” Stengel has proudly proclaimed his dedication to the careful management of the public’s access to information.
Stengel outlined his worldview in a book he published this June, entitled “Information Wars: How We Lost the Global Battle Against Disinformation and What We Can Do About It.”
Stengel has proposed “rethinking” the First Amendment that guarantees the freedom of speech and press. In 2018, he stated, “Having once been almost a First Amendment absolutist, I have really moved my position on it, because I just think for practical reasons in society, we have to kind of rethink some of those things.”
The Biden transition team’s selection of a censorial infowarrior for its top state media position comes as a concerted suppression campaign takes hold on social media. The wave of online censorship has been overseen by US intelligence agencies, the State Department, and Silicon Valley corporations that maintain multibillion-dollar contracts with the US government.
As the state-backed censorship dragnet expands, independent media outlets increasingly find themselves in the crosshairs. In the past year, social media platforms have purged hundreds of accounts of foreign news publications, journalists, activists, and government officials from countries targeted by the United States for regime change.
Stengel’s appointment appears to be the clearest signal of a coming escalation by the Biden administration of the censorship and suppression of online media that is seen to threaten US imperatives abroad.
From Obama admin’s “chief propagandist” to Russiagate-peddling MSNBC pundit
Before being appointed as the US State Department’s “chief propagandist” in 2013, Richard Stengel was a managing editor of TIME Magazine.
In the Obama administration, Stengel not only created the Global Engagement Center propaganda vehicle; he also boasted that he “led the creation of English for All, a government-wide effort to promote the teaching of English around the world.”
After leaving the State Department in 2016, Stengel became a strategic advisor to Snap Inc., the company that runs the social media apps Snapchat and Bitmoji.
Stengel also found time for a fellowship at the Atlantic Council, a think tank closely linked to NATO and the Biden camp which has received funding from the US government, Britain, the European Union, and NATO itself, along with a host of Western weapons manufacturers, fossil fuel corporations, Gulf monarchies, and Big Tech juggernauts.
Stengel worked closely with the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, a dubious organization that has fueled efforts to censor independent media outlets in the name of fighting “disinformation.”
But Stengel is perhaps most well known as a regular political analyst on MSNBC in the Donald Trump era. On the network, he fueled Russiagate conspiracy theories, portraying the Republican president as a useful idiot of Russia and claiming Trump had a “one-sided bromance” with Vladimir Putin.
Stengel left MSNBC this November to join Biden’s presidential transition. The campaign announced that he was tapped to lead the Biden-Harris agency review team for the United States Agency for Global Media (USAGM).
Agency review teams are an integral part of the transition process, responsible for evaluating the operations of federal agencies.
Our teams are composed of diverse experts with deep policy expertise, ready to ensure we’re prepared to lead on Day One.https://t.co/2gY1E0Ey5k
— Biden-Harris Presidential Transition (@Transition46) November 10, 2020
USAGM is a state media propaganda organization that has its origins in a Cold War vehicle created by the CIA to spread disinformation against the Soviet Union and communist China. (The agency was previously called the Broadcasting Board of Governors, or BBG, until it rebranded in 2018.)
USAGM states on its website that its most important mission is to “Be consistent with the broad foreign policy objectives of the United States.”
An agency shakeup this year produced revelations that USAGM provided clandestine assistance to separatist activists during the protests that consumed Hong Kong in 2019. The program earmarked secure communications assistance for protesters and $2 million in “rapid response” payouts for anti-China activists.
Richard Stengel’s “obsessive” crusade against Russian “disinformation”
When Richard Stengel referred to himself as the State Department’s “chief propagandist,” advocated the use of propaganda against the American people, and proposed to “rethink” the First Amendment, he was participating in a May 3, 2018 panel discussion at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).
During the CFR event, titled “Political Disruptions: Combating Disinformation and Fake News,” Stengel hyped up the threat of supposed “Russian disinformation,” a vague term that is increasingly used as an empty signifier for any narrative that offends the sensibilities of Washington’s foreign policy establishment.
Stengel stated that he was “obsessed with” fighting “disinformation,” and made it clear he has a particular obsession with Moscow, accusing “the Russians” of engaging in “full spectrum” disinformation.
Joining him on stage was political scientist Kelly M. Greenhill, who mourned that alternative media platforms publish “things that seem like they could be true… that’s the sphere where it’s particularly difficult to debunk them… it’s this gray region, this gray zone, where it’s not traditional disinformation, but a combination of misinformation and play on rumors, conspiracy theories, sort of gray propaganda, that’s where I think the nub or the crux of the problem lies.”
Stengel approved, adding, “By the way those terms, the gray zone, are all from Russian active measures, that they’ve been doing for a million years.”
The panelists made no effort to hide their disdain for independent and foreign media outlets. Stengel stated clearly that a “news cartel” of mainstream corporate media outlets had long dominated US society, but he bemoaned that those “cartels don’t have hegemony like they used to.”
Stengel made it clear that his mission is to counter the alternative perspectives given a voice by foreign media platforms that challenge the US-dominated media landscape.
“The bad actors use journalistic objectivity against us. And the Russians in particular are smart about this,” Stengel grumbled.
He singled out Russia’s state-funded media network, RT, lamenting that “Vladimir Putin, when they launched Russia Today, said it was an antidote to the American English hegemony over the world media system. That’s how people saw it.”
Ben Decker, a research fellow at the Misinformation Project at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, lamented that “RT is invading every weekly finance media space.”
But Decker was cheered by the proliferation of US oligarchs committed to retaking control of the narrative. “In America and across the world,” he stated, “the donor community is very eager to address this problem, and very eager to work with communities of researchers, academics, journalists, etc. to target this problem.”
“I think that there is an appetite to solve this from the top down,” he continued, urging the many academics in the audience “to apply for grant money” in order to fight this Russian “disinformation.”
The CFR panel culminated with an African audience member rising from the crowd and confronting Stengel: “Because what is happening in America is what the United States flipped on the Global South and in the Third World, which we lived with, for many, many years, in terms of a master narrative that was and still is propaganda,” the man declared.
Rather than respond, Stengel rudely ignored the question and made his way hurriedly for the exit: “You know what, I hate last questions. Don’t you? I never, I usually just want to end something before the last question.”
The video of the revealing confrontation caused such a furor that CFR’s YouTube account disabled comments and made the video unlisted. It cannot be found in a search on Google or YouTube; it can only be found with the direct link.
The video of the full discussion is embedded below:
Less Than Half Of Americans Likely To Comply With New COVID Lockdown: Gallup
By Tyler Durden – Zero Hedge – 11/12/2020
Earlier we featured the worrisome prospect of a second national coronavirus lockdown under a future Biden administration, considering the latest scientist to join Joe Biden’s “special coronavirus transition advisory team” is calling for just that.
Dr. Michael Osterholm, who serves as director of the Center of Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, now one of Biden’s coronavirus task force doctors told Yahoo News the following on Wednesday: “We could pay for a package right now to cover all of the lost wages for individual workers… if we did that, then we could lockdown for 4 to 6 weeks.”
But we know that’s unlikely to go well based on the latest polling data, as it appears the majority of Americans would not conform to such new stay-at-home orders and travel restrictions:
Americans are less likely to comply with another coronavirus lockdown than they were in the spring, with fewer than half saying in a new poll that they’re very likely to stay home this time around, according to a new Gallup Poll released as record numbers of cases skyrocket nationwide.
Here’s the data, according to Gallup, based on the poll taken between Oct.19 and Nov.1:
- 49% say they’re “very likely” to stay home for a month if mandated, down from 67% who said they would in the spring.
- 18% said they were “somewhat likely” to comply.
- One-third said they would be “unlikely” to comply with new lockdown orders.
- This despite 61% saying they believe the situation is getting worse.
- The number of respondents who said they’d be unlikely to comply is double the rate seen from polls in the spring.
However, it appears more Americans are intentional about social distancing measures, including wearing masks, compared to in the spring.
As Newsmax summarizes of the numbers: “Meanwhile, the number of people who are wearing masks has gone up sharply.”
The report states “Only about half of Americans reported in April that they were wearing masks, just after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggested wearing them. Now, 88% reported they wear masks, after the number went up to 92% in July.”
Democrats are giving McCarthyism a major comeback by blacklisting Trump supporters, and we should all be worried
By Zachary Leeman | RT | November 12, 2020
Blacklisting anyone perceived as supportive of President Donald Trump has become a shockingly mainstream idea for liberals, who are proving day after day that they embrace the very authoritarian beliefs they claim to be against.
It may be difficult to believe, but McCarthyism seems to be making a comeback.
The late Wisconsin senator’s public hearings in the ‘50s where he investigated individuals for any and all connections to communism (which ultimately led to many losing their livelihoods) represent a dark time for the US, but Democrats appear to be taking notes on this unfortunate chapter in history for future use.
The warm embrace of a likely Biden presidency has not softened the left’s hatred for Trump supporters in any way, but rather only emboldened them to promote more and more extreme ideas.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) recently promoted “archiving” Trump “sycophants” so they cannot “downplay or deny their complicity in the future.”
One quick question for AOC: in what scenario besides a McCarthy-style hearing would someone need to “deny” their relationship to the Trump administration?
The congresswoman should be happy because Democrats have been promoting the Trump Accountability Project, which promises to hold anyone who worked for or with the Trump administration accountable for “what they did.”
“The world should never forget those who, when faced with a decision, chose to put their money, their time, and their reputations behind separating children from their families, encouraging racism and anti-Semitism, and negligently causing the unnecessary loss of life and economic devastation from our country’s failed response to the COVID-19 pandemic,” the group’s site reads.
Their list of who they want to keep from getting future jobs is pretty extensive as it includes anyone who donated to the president’s campaigns, worked with his campaigns or for any groups “affiliated” with them, as well as anyone who was part of his staff.
The group has even been promoted by Democrat operatives, including former Pete Buttigieg aide Emily Abrams and former Barack Obama campaign staffer Michael Simon.
Public figures like ‘The View’ co-host Sunny Hostin and CNN’s Jake Tapper have also been accused of promoting blackballing pro-Trumpers.
“I don’t think we should look the other way,” Hostin recently said of Trump “associates.”“I think we need to remember because if you don’t remember things then past becomes prologue. I do think people need to be held accountable for their actions and um I don’t think it’s reminiscent of McCarthyism at all.”
Tapper meanwhile warned Trump supporters backing accusations of voter fraud from the president about what future employers would think of their “character.” To be fair, when confronted with the Trump Accountability Project, blacklisting seemed to become too real for the anchor and he did a complete about-face on the issue.
The idea of blacklisting someone through public shaming or (gulp) Senate hearings may sound ludicrous, but there is sadly precedent for it in this country. McCarthy capitalized on the red scare in the ‘50s and played into people’s fears and ignorance by making communists and anyone associated with communists sound like deranged spies looking to infiltrate industries and government agencies to destroy American values.
Compare that extremism to how many on the left speak of anyone they deem a Trump supporter today. They constantly slam the opposition as white supremacists, misogynists, fascists, etc. Even someone like rapper Ice Cube simply admitting to working with the administration on legislation to help black communities was enough to get him called a racist and labeled a Trump supporter.
McCarthy is sadly not the only precedent here. We only need to look to Hollywood to see how organized and powerful liberals can blacklist conservatives.
Ironically an industry many theorize is very left-leaning due to McCarthy keeping Hollywood titans out of work once they were labeled communists, Hollywood has long been accused of blackballing anyone they deem right-leaning.
Many of Hollywood’s most outspoken conservatives like James Woods and Robert Davi have detailed in the past how their politics have kept them out of certain jobs. The president himself accused the industry of blacklisting conservatives after ‘Will & Grace’ stars Debra Messing and Eric McCormack demanded knowing who was attending a Hollywood fundraiser for the president.
While accusations of Hollywood blacklisting does not amount to actual full-blown McCarthyism, the strategy of shaming and punishing conservatives and non-liberals has evolved. Instead of being behind the scenes and only kept in discussion through accusations, it is now an idea being embraced and promoted by actual politicians and media talking heads.
Right or left, every American should resist and fear a world where one side controls the other through wild accusations, public shaming, and blacklisting. Joseph McCarthy is dead. Let McCarthyism die with him.
Zachary Leeman is the author of the novel Nigh and journalist who covers art and culture. He has previously written for outlets such as Breitbart, LifeZette, and BizPac Review among others. Follow him on Twitter @WritingLeeman
Elections and Legitimacy
By James Bovard | American Institute for Economic Research | November 11, 2020
This year’s presidential election is the fourth since 2000 to be marred by either widespread allegations of voter fraud or of foreign interference. Politicians and pundits have long counted on elections to wave a magic wand of legitimacy over the reign of whoever is designated the winner. But Americans are increasingly wondering if the endlessly-trumped “consent of the governed” has become simply another sham to keep them paying and obeying.
Twenty years ago, America was in the throes of a fiercely disputed recount battle in Florida. Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Al Gore won the national popular vote but the Electoral College verdict was unclear. Florida’s 25 electoral votes would give either Gore or Republican candidate George W. Bush the 270 votes needed to win the presidency. Six million votes were cast in Florida, and Bush initially had a winning margin of 537 votes. But the count was a complete mess.
Some Florida counties had antiquated voting equipment while others had harebrained ballot designs that confounded voters, resulting in “dangling chads,” “butterfly” ballots, and other unclear preferences. After the Florida Supreme Court ordered a manual recount of disputed votes in all counties, the Bush campaign legal team quickly filed briefs with the Supreme Court seeking to stop the process.
In a controversial decision, the Supreme Court, in a 5-to-4 ruling, stopped the recount because it could result in “a cloud upon what [George W. Bush] claims to be the legitimacy of his election,” Justice Antonin Scalia wrote. Justice John Paul Stevens dissented: “The Florida court’s ruling reflects the basic principle, inherent in our Constitution and our democracy, that every legal vote should be counted.” No such luck. Two days later, the same Supreme Court majority blocked any subsequent recounting because it was “not well calculated to sustain the confidence that all citizens must have in the outcome of elections.” Sustaining confidence” was more important than counting votes. Justice Stevens again dissented: “We have never before called into question the substantive standard by which a State determines that a vote has been legally cast.”
The 2000 election results seemed almost as shaky as the story of the Lady of the Lake giving the Excalibur sword to Arthur, thereby signifying his right to rule England. At a minimum, the outcome of the 2000 presidential election was decided by lawyers and political appointees (justices), not by voters. Former President Jimmy Carter observed in 2001, “As we have seen in Florida and some other states… the expected error rate in some jurisdictions is as high as 3 percent of the [vote] total.”
Four years later, George W. Bush narrowly won reelection after a campaign that was boosted by numerous false terror attack warnings that helped frighten voters into giving him another four years. Ohio was the key state determining the outcome that time, and its results appeared tainted by numerous decisions by Republican election officials who favored Bush. Democrats also charged that the electronic voting machines used in much of Ohio had been manipulated to produce misleading vote totals.
In January 2005, Democratic members of the House of Representatives launched a brief challenge to the legitimacy of the 2004 presidential election. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Cal.) complained that many states used more sophisticated technology for lottery tickets than for elections: “Incredibly even in those few jurisdictions that have moved to electronic voting… we do not require a verifiable paper trail to protect against vote tampering.”
Republican Congressmen went ballistic. Rep. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) accused the Democrats of seeking to “obstruct the will of the American people.” Rep. J.D. Hayworth (R-Ariz.) bewailed that the protest “serves to plant the insidious seeds of doubt in the electoral process.” Rep. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), the House Majority Whip, sought to put the entire government above questioning: “It is the greatest democracy in the history of the world and it is run by people who step forward and make a system work in ways that nobody would believe until they see it produce the result of what people want to have happen on Election Day.” Blunt’s “nobody would believe” phrase was more prescient than he intended.
For tens of millions of Americans and for convention halls full of editorial writers, the 2016 presidential election results were forever tainted by allegations that the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians to score an upset victory. Those allegations spurred a Special Counsel investigation that haunted most of Trump’s presidency and helped Democrats capture control of the House of Representatives in 2018. In 2019, Special Counsel Robert Mueller finally admitted that no case of collusion existed. But we have since learned that there was pervasive collusion between Obama administration officials and federal agencies to target Trump’s 2016 campaign. And, as George Washington University professor Jonathan Turley observed, the media ignored “one of the biggest stories in decades. The Obama administration targeted the campaign of the opposing party based on false evidence.”
Instead, the media cheered secretive federal agencies that had interfered in American politics. Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson captured the Beltway’s verdict: “God bless the Deep State!” The media’s veneration will make it easier for the FBI, CIA, and National Security Agency to meddle with if not fix future elections.
This year’s presidential election may be the most fraud-ridden event since 1876, when four states had disputed results and Congress gave the presidency to Republican Rutherford Hayes despite ample evidence of conniving. Earlier this year, some states mailed ballots to all the names on the voting lists, providing thousands of dead people the chance to vote from the grave. More than 92 million people voted by mail.
President Trump warned that the shift to mail-in voting could result in “the most corrupt vote in our nation’s history.” A 2012 New York Times analysis concluded that “fraud in voting by mail is… vastly more prevalent than the in-person voting fraud that has attracted far more attention.” But that blunt admission vanished into the Memory Hole as the media endlessly derided any apprehension of electoral foul play.
Shortly before Election Day, Democratic candidate Joe Biden boasted, “We have put together I think the most extensive and inclusive voter fraud organization in the history of American politics.” A Reuters “Fact Check” analysis revealed that Biden’s comment was a “slip of the tongue” and that he likely meant “voter protection.” Since Election Day, the same media outlets that insisted that there was no corruption in the Biden family now assure Americans there was no significant voter fraud.
The 2020 election controversies are being fought out by lawyers and judges. The media is hoping that hailing Joe Biden as the rightful ruler will speedily restore legitimacy to the political system. But 70 million Trump voters are unlikely to be swayed by the same media that endlessly belittled both the president and his supporters.
Perhaps the real problem with the current American political system is that elections are practically the last remaining source of apparent legitimacy. Presidents take an oath to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” But this has long been a nonbinding throwaway gesture – if not a laugh line for Washington insiders. Elections failed to prevent every recent American commander-in-chief from expanding and exploiting the dictatorial potential of the presidency.
Should we expect anything different from Biden? When he was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, he co-authored numerous oppressive drug laws and forfeiture laws that helped obliterate much of the Bill of Rights. His political philosophy never went beyond his famous utterance: “Lock the S.O.B.s up!” He supported expanding federal power whenever there were votes or campaign contributions to be pocketed.
Biden has said he would dictate a national mask mandate and could impose a national lockdown if Covid infection rates rise. The same media outlets that served as Biden’s Basement Barricade during the campaign – helping him avoid challenges that might have raised questions about his positions and mental capacity – will cheer any restrictive Covid policy Biden imposes. In lieu of constitutionality, we’ll hear that it is the “will of the people” or some such pablum.
Nor will there likely be any way to constrain Biden if he follows the advice of his bellicose foreign policy advisors. Counterpunch editor Jeffrey St. Clair asked: “Which country will Biden bomb first in order to ‘restore America’s place in the world?’” The Biden campaign promised to “increase pressure” on Syrian president Bashar Assad – presumably by providing more arms and money to the terrorist groups that Obama began aiding almost a decade ago. Biden will sanctify his foreign bombing campaigns with the same lame legal tautology that the Obama administration used to justify killing Libyans in 2011. The Justice Department announced that Obama “had the constitutional authority” to attack Libya “because he could reasonably determine that such use of force was in the national interest.”
The more power presidents capture, the more facts they can suppress. The federal government is creating trillions of pages of new secrets every year, effectively making it impossible for average citizens to learn the truth about foreign policy until long after U.S. bombs have dropped. Biden is unlikely to end the pervasive secrecy that makes a mockery of self-government.
In his victory speech last Saturday, Biden pledged to “restore the soul of America.” But Americans were not voting for a faith healer; they were selecting a chief executive for a federal government. Only 20 percent of Americans nowadays trust the government to “do the right thing” most of the time, according to a Pew Research Center survey. The election results will likely further erode federal legitimacy at a time when Uncle Sam has no trust to spare. How many more election debacles and brazen abuses of power does Washington believe the American people will tolerate?
James Bovard is the author of ten books, including Public Policy Hooligan, Attention Deficit Democracy, The Bush Betrayal, and Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty. He has written for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Playboy, Washington Post, New Republic, Reader’s Digest, and many other publications. He is a member of the USA Today Board of Contributors, a frequent contributor to The Hill, and a contributing editor for American Conservative.
U.S. Color Revolution: The Not So Phantom Menace
By Tom Luongo | Gold Goats n’ Guns | November 9, 2020
“There is no civility, there is only politics…
The Bureaucrats are in charge now…”
— Senator Palpatine
The Black Revolution in the U.S. is proceeding according to script. We are into the 3rd act of it.
Act I was the Coronapocalypse setting the stage for vastly expanded government powers and the systemic undermining of the sitting President.
Act II was the summer of violence and fake polling data which created the illusion of a society at war with that same President for not addressing the needs of the people.
Underneath the headlines the forces arrayed against Trump were building the infrastructure to ensure that however the people voted on November 3rd, the outcome was pre-determined in their favor against him.
Act III is the election itself and the aftermath. The coup has begun. The pressure campaign to force the incumbent Trump, hated by the establishment, to concede has ratcheted up to eleven.
This is all very normal for color revolutions, just ask Alexander Lukashenko in Belarus or Viktor Yanukovich formerly of the Ukraine. We can’t ask Slobodon Milosovic. He dead.
But one thing happened they didn’t count on, Trump actually winning the election by margins in swing states that couldn’t be overcome without overt and blatant fraud.
That’s created the opportunity for a complete reversal of the current results and a successful countering of the color revolution strategy, which rests on a media-made frenzy supported by foreign government leaders to oust the sitting president from power quickly without proper adherence to the process.
And that feeds the plot points for the next eight weeks until Congress convenes to certify (or not) the Electoral College.
President Trump refuses to concede the election, and rightly so. There are multiple paths to not only victory for him but also exposing the deep corruption of the election process and the people who control it.
Lukashenko survived the color revolution in Belarus because the attempt there was ham-fisted. It lacked the ingredients necessary to pull it off — identitarian division within the people and ‘corporate’ sponsorship.
The conditions weren’t ripe for that kind of result. All he had to do was offer reforms once the energy died down and make peace with Russia and he would survive.
Ousting him from power may not have been the primary goal, but achieving the secondary goal of severing EU and US ties to it and forcing Russia to devote resources to Belarus is almost as important.
So, if Trump wants to lead the nation he has to show it by fighting tooth and claw, just like Lukashenko did. And that means organizing support for him across the country. This is why he is incredibly smart to organize rallies. According to Axios :
President Trump plans to brandish obituaries of people who supposedly voted but are dead — plus hold campaign-style rallies — in an effort to prolong his fight against apparent insurmountable election results, four Trump advisers told me during a conference call this afternoon.
“Insurmountable election results??” Really? A few thousand votes separates Trump from outright sweeping all the battleground states whose vote totals are very sketchy and this is ‘insurmountable?’
This is what I mean by the pressure campaign having gone plaid. There is no responsible journalism left within the major media outlets.
Only those who were forced out on principle or corruption have the ability to speak their mind now.
Never in a million years would I look to Megyn Kelly for the voice of rationality. But it looks like being excommunicated from the inner circle does wonders for one’s ability to tell the truth.
The division today was cynically stoked and nurtured for this current operation to effect this exact result. The bigger point Megyn doesn’t articulate is that this division is exactly the kind of ‘secondary goal’ desired if Trump prevails in the courts or through the Electoral College.
Regardless of the outcome that division cuts deep enough to ensure an America permanently weakened, ripe for a complete remaking into a hellish place. There is a full-court press on right now across the world to attack sovereignty of important states whose populations are dissident to The Davos Crowd’s Great Reset — notably the U.K., the U.S., Poland and Russia.
Trump’s fight is their fight. His supporters and sovereigntists of all stripes are to be ritualistically humiliated by every headline, every utterance, every Tweet and every newscast between now and when the State Legislatures meet to select slates of Electors in December.
The media will never concede they were wrong, will never report on anything fairly. They are in on the grift. Looking for them to admit anything is a waste of energy and time. Simply turn them off and become #Ungovernable.
This is a psychological war now, designed to rob you of your reason and sap your willingness to fight by creating an overwhelming picture of Trump as the bad guy, Quixotically clinging to power we’re being told he’s already lost.
But Megyn Kelly is right in telling people that there will be no reconciliation without acceptance. And since, at its core, leftism is a religion without the ability to forgive, since it is vehemently anti-Christian, there will be no acceptance back into the fold, including for her.
It will be marginalization, retribution and continued vitriol of all Trump supporters and anyone not down with being reset into the grand vision of the New Soviet Green Man.
They haven’t even secured the presidency yet and BLM/Antifa are already turning on white Biden supporters who are urging peace.
Nothing shields you from the mob once the mob gets going. I hope this person’s conscience is clean that he did his part to stop Orange Man Bad because once this is over, that’s all he’ll have left.
Klaus Schwab told you this. You’ll Own Nothing and be Happy.
Or else.
The choice was struggle sessions or Trump rallies. I told you months ago you would be faced with the Hobson’s Choice of accepting their dystopic future or having your house burned down.
Millions chose poorly last week and they will have massive buyer’s remorse as the plans are rolled out and they are sacrificed.
Don’t believe me? Ask Ukrainians if they are better off six years after their color revolution or not? That one was successful.
Act III of a color revolution is the most dangerous. It is the one where chaos can reign for months and the balance tipped by the slimmest of margins. But in the end it always comes down to the willingness of the people to decide their future.
Because taking down the U.S. is such a monumental undertaking they had to create a problem global in scale, COVID-19.
The U.S. has everything against it in this situation. The oligarchy and its quislings are firmly in command of the narrative. There are real, deep divisions to keep people fighting each other while the oligarchs proceed with their plans.
Trump is trying to marshal a counter-revolution on the ground and in the courts. The evidence will be presented. Apparatchiks will ignore their orders. Protests will miraculously spring up in all the right places.
The media will misrepresent everything.
It will be up to us to decide which way the State Legislatures decide whose electors go to Washington D.C. next month by putting real pressure on them to act on their conscience and the evidence. That’s the law.
But the menace of it is real and it won’t go away regardless of the outcome of the election. It no longer lurks in the shadows. It slouches towards Washington waiting to be reborn.
US – UK Intel Agencies Declare Cyber War on Independent Media
By Whitney Webb |
Unlimited Hangout| November 11, 2020
In just the past week, the national-security states of the United States and United Kingdom have discreetly let it be known that the cyber tools and online tactics previously designed for use in the post-9/11 “war on terror” are now being repurposed for use against information sources promoting “vaccine hesitancy” and information related to Covid-19 that runs counter to their state narratives.
A new cyber offensive was launched on Monday by the UK’s signal intelligence agency, Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), which seeks to target websites that publish content deemed to be “propaganda” that raises concerns regarding state-sponsored Covid-19 vaccine development and the multi-national pharmaceutical corporations involved.
Similar efforts are underway in the United States, with the US military recently funding a CIA-backed firm—stuffed with former counterterrorism officials who were behind the occupation of Iraq and the rise of the so-called Islamic State—to develop an AI algorithm aimed specifically at new websites promoting “suspected” disinformation related to the Covid-19 crisis and the US military–led Covid-19 vaccination effort known as Operation Warp Speed.
Both countries are preparing to silence independent journalists who raise legitimate concerns over pharmaceutical industry corruption or the extreme secrecy surrounding state-sponsored Covid-19 vaccination efforts, now that Pfizer’s vaccine candidate is slated to be approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) by month’s end.
Pfizer’s history of being fined billions for illegal marketing and for bribing government officials to help them cover up an illegal drug trial that killed eleven children (among other crimes) has gone unmentioned by most mass media outlets, which instead have celebrated the apparently imminent approval of the company’s Covid-19 vaccine without questioning the company’s history or that the mRNA technology used in the vaccine has sped through normal safety trial protocols and has never been approved for human use. Also unmentioned is that the head of the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, Patrizia Cavazzoni, is the former Pfizer vice president for product safety who covered up the connection of one of its products to birth defects.
Essentially, the power of the state is being wielded like never before to police online speech and to deplatform news websites to protect the interests of powerful corporations like Pfizer and other scandal-ridden pharmaceutical giants as well as the interests of the US and UK national-security states, which themselves are intimately involved in the Covid-19 vaccination endeavor.
UK Intelligence’s New Cyberwar Targeting “Anti-Vaccine Propaganda”
On Monday, the UK newspaper The Times reported that the UK’s GCHQ “has begun an offensive cyber-operation to disrupt anti-vaccine propaganda being spread by hostile states” and “is using a toolkit developed to tackle disinformation and recruitment material peddled by Islamic State” to do so. In addition, the UK government has ordered the British military’s 77th Brigade, which specializes in “information warfare,” to launch an online campaign to counter “deceptive narratives” about Covid-19 vaccine candidates.
The newly announced GCHQ “cyber war” will not only take down “anti-vaccine propaganda” but will also seek to “disrupt the operations of the cyberactors responsible for it, including encrypting their data so they cannot access it and blocking their communications with each other.” The effort will also involve GCHQ reaching out to other countries in the “Five Eyes” alliance (US, Australia, New Zealand and Canada) to alert their partner agencies in those countries to target such “propaganda” sites hosted within their borders.
The Times stated that “the government regards tackling false information about inoculation as a rising priority as the prospect of a reliable vaccine against the coronavirus draws closer,” suggesting that efforts will continue to ramp up as a vaccine candidate gets closer to approval.
It seems that, from the perspective of the UK national-security state, those who question corruption in the pharmaceutical industry and its possible impact on the leading experimental Covid-19 vaccine candidates (all of which use experimental vaccine technologies that have never before been approved for human use) should be targeted with tools originally designed to combat terrorist propaganda.
While The Times asserted that the effort would target content “that originated only from state adversaries” and would not target the sites of “ordinary citizens,” the newspaper suggested that the effort would rely on the US government for determining whether or not a site is part of a “foreign disinformation” operation.
This is highly troubling given that the US recently seized the domains of many sites, including the American Herald Tribune, which it erroneously labeled as “Iranian propaganda,” despite its editor in chief, Anthony Hall, being based in Canada. The US government made this claim about the American Herald Tribune after the cybersecurity firm FireEye, a US government contractor, stated that it had “moderate confidence” that the site had been “founded in Iran.”
In addition, the fact that GCHQ has alleged that most of the sites it plans to target are “linked to Moscow” gives further cause for concern given that the UK government was caught funding the Institute for Statecraft’s Integrity Initiative, which falsely labeled critics of the UK government’s actions as well as its narratives with respect to the Syria conflict as being related to “Russian disinformation” campaigns.
Given this precedent, it is certainly plausible that GCHQ could take the word of either an allied government, a government contractor, or perhaps even an allied media organization such as Bellingcat or the Atlantic Council’s DFRLab that a given site is “foreign propaganda” in order to launch a cyber offensive against it. Such concerns are only amplified when one of the main government sources for The Times article bluntly stated that “GCHQ has been told to take out antivaxers [sic] online and on social media. There are ways they have used to monitor and disrupt terrorist propaganda,” which suggests that the targets of GCHQ’s new cyber war will, in fact, be determined by the content itself rather than their suspected “foreign” origin. The “foreign” aspect instead appears to be a means of evading the prohibition in GCHQ’s operational mandate on targeting the speech or websites of ordinary citizens.
This larger pivot toward treating alleged “anti-vaxxers” as “national security threats” has been ongoing for much of this year, spearheaded in part by Imran Ahmed, the CEO of the UK-based Center for Countering Digital Hate, a member of the UK government’s Steering Committee on Countering Extremism Pilot Task Force, which is part of the UK government’s Commission for Countering Extremism.
Ahmed told the UK newspaper The Independent in July that “I would go beyond calling anti-vaxxers conspiracy theorists to say they are an extremist group that pose a national security risk.” He then stated that “once someone has been exposed to one type of conspiracy it’s easy to lead them down a path where they embrace more radical world views that can lead to violent extremism,” thereby implying that “anti-vaxxers” might engage in acts of violent extremism. Among the websites cited by Ahmed’s organization as promoting such “extremism” that poses a “national security risk” were Children’s Health Defense, the National Vaccine Information Center, Informed Consent Action Network, and Mercola.com, among others.
Similarly, a think tank tied to US intelligence—whose GCHQ equivalent, the National Security Agency, will take part in the newly announced “cyber war”—argued in a research paper published just months before the onset of the Covid-19 crisis that “the US ‘anti-vaxxer’ movement would pose a threat to national security in the event of a ‘pandemic with a novel organism.’”
InfraGard, “a partnership between the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and members of the private sector,” warned in the paper published last June that “the US anti-vaccine movement would also be connected with ‘social media misinformation and propaganda campaigns’ orchestrated by the Russian government,” as cited by The Guardian. The InfraGard paper further claimed that prominent “anti-vaxxers” are aligned “with other conspiracy movements including the far right . . . and social media misinformation and propaganda campaigns by many foreign and domestic actors. Included among these actors is the Internet Research Agency, the Russian government–aligned organization.”
An article published just last month by the Washington Post argued that “vaccine hesitancy is mixing with coronavirus denial and merging with far-right American conspiracy theories, including Qanon,” which the FBI named a potential domestic terror threat last year. The article quoted Peter Hotez, dean of the School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, as saying “The US anti-vaccination movement is globalizing and it’s going toward more-extremist tendencies.”
Simone Warstat attends a rally against a legislative bill to make it more difficult for parents to opt out for non-medical reasons to immunize their children, June 7, 2020, in Denver Colorado.
It is worth pointing out that many so-called “anti-vaxxers” are actually critics of the pharmaceutical industry and are not necessarily opposed to vaccines in and of themselves, making the labels “anti-vaxxer” and “anti-vaccine” misleading. Given that many pharmaceutical giants involved in making Covid-19 vaccines donate heavily to politicians in both countries and have been involved in numerous safety scandals, using state intelligence agencies to wage cyber war against sites that investigate such concerns is not only troubling for the future of journalism but it suggests that the UK is taking a dangerous leap toward becoming a country that uses its state powers to treat the enemies of corporations as enemies of the state.
The CIA-Backed Firm “Weaponizing Truth” with AI
In early October, the US Air Force and US Special Operations Command announced that they had awarded a multimillion-dollar contract to the US-based “machine intelligence” company Primer. Per the press release, “Primer will develop the first-ever machine learning platform to automatically identify and assess suspected disinformation [emphasis added]. Primer will also enhance its natural language processing platform to automatically analyze tactical events to provide commanders with unprecedented insight as events unfold in near real-time.”
According to Primer, the company “builds software machines that read and write in English, Russian, and Chinese to automatically unearth trends and patterns across large volumes of data,” and their work “supports the mission of the intelligence community and broader DOD by automating reading and research tasks to enhance the speed and quality of decision-making.” In other words, Primer is developing an algorithm that would allow the national-security state to outsource many military and intelligence analyst positions to AI. In fact, the company openly admits this, stating that their current effort “will automate the work typically done by dozens of analysts in a security operations center to ingest all of the data relevant to an event as it happens and funnel it into a unified user interface.”
Primer’s ultimate goal is to use their AI to entirely automate the shaping of public perceptions and become the arbiter of “truth,” as defined by the state. Primer’s founder, Sean Gourley, who previously created AI programs for the military to track “insurgency” in post-invasion Iraq, asserted in an April blog post that “computational warfare and disinformation campaigns will, in 2020, become a more serious threat than physical war, and we will have to rethink the weapons we deploy to fight them.”
In that same post, Gourley argued for the creation of a “Manhattan Project for truth” that would create a publicly available Wikipedia-style database built off of “knowledge bases [that] already exist inside many countries’ intelligence agencies for national security purposes.” Gourley then wrote that “this effort would be ultimately about building and enhancing our collective intelligence and establishing a baseline for what’s true or not” as established by intelligence agencies. He concludes his blog post by stating that “in 2020, we will begin to weaponize truth.”
Notably, on November 9, the same day that GCHQ announced its plans to target “anti-vaccine propaganda,” the US website NextGov reported that Primer’s Pentagon-funded effort had turned its attention specifically to “Covid-19 related disinformation.” According to Primer’s director of science, John Bohannon, “Primer will be integrating bot detection, synthetic text detection and unstructured textual claims analysis capabilities into our existing artificial intelligence platform currently in use with DOD. . . . This will create the first unified mission-ready platform to effectively counter Covid-19-related disinformation in near-real time.”
Bohannon, who previously worked as a mainstream journalist embedded with NATO forces in Afghanistan, also told NextGov that Primer’s new Covid-19–focused effort “automatically classifies documents into one of 10 categories to enable the detection of the impact of COVID” on areas such as “business, science and technology, employment, the global economy, and elections.” The final product is expected to be delivered to the Pentagon in the second quarter of next year.
Though a so-called private company, Primer is deeply linked to the national-security state it is designed to protect by “weaponizing truth.” Primer proudly promotes itself as having more than 15 percent of its staff hailing from the US intelligence community or military. The director of the company’s National Security Group is Brian Raymond, a former CIA intelligence officer who served as the Director for Iraq on the US National Security Council after leaving the agency.
The company also recently added several prominent national-security officials to its board including:
- Gen. Raymond Thomas (ret.), who led the command of all US and NATO Special Operations Forces in Afghanistan and is the former commander of both US Special Operations Command and Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC).
- Lt. Gen. VeraLinn Jamieson (ret.), the former deputy chief of staff for Air Force Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance who led the Air Force’s intelligence and cyber forces. She also personally developed “strategic partnerships” between the Air Force and Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and IBM in order “to accelerate the Air Force’s digital transformation.”
- Brett McGurk, one of the “chief architects” of the Iraq War “surge,” alongside the notorious Kagan family, as NSC Director for Iraq, and then as special assistant to the president and senior Director for Iraq and Afghanistan during the Bush administration. Under Obama and during part of the Trump administration, McGurk was the special presidential envoy for the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS at the State Department, helping to manage the “dirty war” waged by the US, the UK, and other allies against Syria.
In addition to those recent board hires, Primer brought on Sue Gordon, the former principal deputy director of National Intelligence, as a strategic adviser. Gordon previously “drove partnerships within the US Intelligence Community and provided advice to the National Security Council in her role as deputy director of national intelligence” and had a twenty-seven-year career at the CIA. The deep links are unsurprising, given that Primer is financially backed by the CIA’s venture-capital arm In-Q-Tel and the venture-capital arm of billionaire Mike Bloomberg, Bloomberg Beta.
Operation Warp Speed’s Disinformation Blitzkrieg
The rapid increase in interest by the US and UK national-security states toward Covid-19 “disinformation,” particularly as it relates to upcoming Covid-19 vaccination campaigns, is intimately related to the media-engagement strategy of the US government’s Operation Warp Speed.
Officially a “public-private partnership,” Operation Warp Speed, which has the goal of vaccinating 300 million Americans by next January, is dominated by the US military and also involves several US intelligence agencies, including the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), as well as intelligence-linked tech giants Google, Oracle, and Palantir. Several reports published in The Last American Vagabond by this author and journalist Derrick Broze have revealed the extreme secrecy of the operation, its numerous conflicts of interest, and its deep ties to Silicon Valley and Orwellian technocratic initiatives.
Warp Speed’s official guidance discusses at length its phased plan for engaging the public and addressing issues of “vaccine hesitancy.” According to the Warp Speed document entitled “From the Factory to the Frontlines,” “strategic communications and public messaging are critical to ensure maximum acceptance of vaccines, requiring a saturation of messaging across the national media.” It also states that “working with established partners—especially those that are trusted sources for target audiences—is critical to advancing public understanding of, access to, and acceptance of eventual vaccines” and that “identifying the right messages to promote vaccine confidence, countering misinformation, and targeting outreach to vulnerable and at-risk populations will be necessary to achieve high coverage.”
The document also notes that Warp Speed will employ the CDC’s three-pronged strategic framework for its communications effort. The third pillar of that strategy is entitled “Stop Myths” and has as a main focus “establish[ing] partnerships to contain the spread of misinformation” as well as “work[ing] with local partners and trusted messengers to improve confidence in vaccines.”
Though that particular Warp Speed document is short on specifics, the CDC’s Covid-19 Vaccination Program Interim Playbook contains additional information. It states that Operation Warp Speed will “engage and use a wide range of partners, collaborations, and communication and news media channels to achieve communication goals, understanding that channel preferences and credible sources vary among audiences and people at higher risk for severe illness and critical populations, and channels vary in their capacity to achieve different communication objectives.” It states that it will focus its efforts in this regard on “traditional media channels” (print, radio, and TV) as well as “digital media” (internet, social media, and text messaging).
The CDC document further reveals that the “public messaging” campaign to “promote vaccine uptake” and address “vaccine hesitancy” is divided into four phases and adds that the overall communication strategy of Warp Speed “should be timely and applicable for the current phase of the Covid-19 Vaccination program.”
Those phases are:
- Before a vaccine is available
- The vaccine is available in limited supply for certain populations of early focus
- The vaccine is increasingly available for other critical populations and the general public
- The vaccine is widely available
Given that the Covid-19 vaccine candidate produced by Pfizer is expected to be approved by the end of November, it appears that the US national-security state, which is essentially running Operation Warp Speed, along with “trusted messengers” in mass media, is preparing to enter the second phase of its communications strategy, one in which news organizations and journalists who raise legitimate concerns about Warp Speed will be de-platformed to make way for the “required” saturation of pro-vaccine messaging across the English-speaking media landscape.
Ongoing legal battle over 2005 UK police killing brings to light covert op to smear victim justice campaigns
By Kit Klarenberg | RT | November 10, 2020
On July 22, 2005, Jean Charles de Menezes was executed by armed police on a London Underground train. He was quickly found innocent, but his family’s fight for justice goes on, exposing police efforts to dodge responsibility.
Due to a litany of catastrophic blunders and miscommunications by senior officials and officers on-the-ground, he’d been wrongly identified as one of the fugitives involved in a string of failed suicide bombings the previous day.
Followed by a team of plainclothes police from his home to nearby Stockwell Underground station, despite clear orders from Metropolitan Police ‘Gold Command’ he be apprehended, Jean Charles was shot seven times in the head and once in the shoulder at close range in an underground train carriage. His body was said to be “unrecognizable” afterwards.
Lying squad
In the immediate aftermath, confusion and hysteria abounded, thanks largely to contradictory witness accounts and numerous “off-record” briefings from police being eagerly and uncritically amplified and speculated upon over and again by the mainstream media.
The day after his killing, it was fully established that Jean Charles hadn’t been a bombing suspect, and was in fact entirely innocent. Yet news outlets seemed oddly determined to imply he wasn’t entirely guiltless.
It was widely reported that he’d been an illegal immigrant, wires had been trailing from his rucksack, he’d been acting dubiously, fled from police after being challenged, vaulted the station ticket barriers, and refused to stop running despite shouted demands from officers.
All of these stories were entirely untrue, and widely acknowledged to be false over the course of subsequent months, but these impressions endure to this day in the minds of many. Suspiciously, the stories all seemed purpose-built to cast doubt on Jean Charles’ actions and character, and in the process mitigate the seriousness of the police’s fatal errors.
A subsequent investigation of Jean Charles’ killing by the then-Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) specifically examined the question of how these lies entered the public domain.
It determined that no officer had knowingly fed disinformation to the press, but somewhat contradictorily, concluded that once officials knew Jean Charles was innocent the morning of July 23, 2005, “they should have refrained from publicly discussing the shooting until… the facts had been fully established.”
“Whilst [police] admitted to having made a tragic mistake they continued to try to justify the shooting by referring to de Menezes’ own actions and clothing,” the IPCC added.
The same probe concluded none of the officers involved would face disciplinary charges, while criticising the Metropolitan Police’s command structure. As of November 2020, no one has ever been criminally prosecuted for their actions on that fateful day.
Without knowledge or consent
Jean Charles’ family have never given up their quest for British police to be held accountable for his killing. In August 2005, they launched a campaign, Justice4Jean, calling for a public inquiry into his “unlawful killing.”
Shockingly, in 2014 they were contacted by representatives of Operation Herne, which was investigating the activities of the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS), a now-defunct covert unit of Special Branch, Britain’s elite national security police force. They were told information about them and their campaign had been inappropriately gathered by undercover operatives.
Among them was Patricia Armani Da Silva, Jean Charles’ first cousin and flatmate, who’d played a prominent role in Justice4Jean since its foundation. At a subsequent meeting with Herne investigators, she and other family members were shown five heavily redacted intelligence reports. The documents recorded covertly obtained information about individuals connected with the campaign and its meetings. For reasons unclear, the details gathered included the family’s political views.
In October 2015, Patricia was granted core participant status in the Undercover Policing Inquiry (UCPI), established by then-home secretary Theresa May to investigate numerous controversies surrounding the British state’s use of clandestine operatives.
Despite offering to actively participate with the investigation and two judicial reviews into her surveillance, in 2020 Patricia remains entirely in the dark as to why she, her relatives, and their campaign, were spied on by police. Now the UCPI has finally begun hearing evidence, and an opening statement on her behalf was read to the Inquiry on November 9 by Phillipa Kaufmann QC.
She outlined the immensely distressing impact mendacious media allegations had on Jean Charles’ family at the time, as they knew it highly unlikely their law-abiding, respectable son could have done anything wrong. She also noted they often relive the pain of the dark, harrowing period following his death, as they still encounter those bogus allegations, and are frequently forced to counter erroneous perceptions that Jean Charles in some way contributed to his own killing.
Moreover though, Kaufmann made it clear that the family are adamant police were fundamental to the dissemination of these stories, and continued to perfidiously pump discrediting disinformation about Jean Charles into the public domain long after he was so brutally slain.
For example, at the start of 2006, it was widely reported that a woman had approached police and claimed a man bearing a “striking resemblance” to Jean Charles had sexually assaulted her in a hotel room on New Year’s Eve 2002 in West London. After initially refusing, his family consented to a blood sample being taken from Jean Charles’ autopsy for forensic tests, and in April that year, Scotland Yard announced he’d been fully exonerated.
Strikingly, Kaufmann revealed that in March 2006, Patricia’s solicitor Harriet Wistrich received a telephone call from DI Paul Settle informing her that an article detailing the woman’s allegations would soon be published by the Sunday Mirror. Moreover, Wistrich clearly recalls that Settle “gave the unambiguous impression” the article was a result of a police leak.
The matter was investigated by the Metropolitan Police Service’s Directorate of Professional Standards, under the supervision of the IPCC. Settle denied having suggested the information was leaked by police, and the probe halted after concluding the number of people who knew of the allegations, including those outside the police, meant further investigation was unlikely to identify its source.
Undermining campaigning efforts
To say the least, Jean Charles’ relatives well understand the critical role that information and disinformation play in shaping public narratives about police action.
It’s in this context that undercover surveillance of the family justice campaign gains an even more sinister dimension. Illicitly obtained private information about them could easily be weaponised to discredit them and undermine their battle, in the same way disinformation served to discredit Jean Charles and by implication exonerate police.
In all, undercover officers spied on at least 18 family justice campaigns between 1968 and 2011. Such a profusion suggests a clear pattern of behaviour, a pattern in turn plausibly influenced by established internal policy. However, police consistently seek to characterise surveillance of justice campaigns as mere ‘collateral intrusion’ – inadvertent and unintentional intelligence gathering by covert operatives investigating individuals involved, rather than direct and deliberate targeting of grieving relatives themselves.
Families are deeply sceptical of this explanation, particularly in light of the revelations of former undercover officer Peter Francis, who as ‘Pete Black’ infiltrated 12 separate justice campaigns between 1993 and 1997. In 2010, under the alias ‘Officer A’, he said his presence in these groups was specifically intended to make the truth they sought “harder to obtain,” as part of a wider wrecking tendency on the part of SDS. Once the unit infiltrated an organisation, it was “effectively finished,” he claims.
In later years, Francis identified himself publicly, and shed further light on his undercover activities, particularly in regard to the Stephen Lawrence justice campaign, set up after the South London teenager was murdered in a cold-blooded racist attack. He alleged he was specifically tasked with unearthing incriminating information on Stephen’s parents and friends, which could halt their crusade in its tracks.
“Had I… found anything detrimental, the police using the media would’ve used that information to smear the family. My superiors were after any intelligence of that order. That was made clear to me. The Lawrences weren’t unique in this. I suggest journalists read some of the information leaked to the press at the time about these campaigns and seriously question where they came from and why,” he has claimed.
Kaufmann said that for Patricia, there was a “chilling parallel” between the disinformation about her cousin perpetuated in public, and Francis’ accounts of seeking out dishonouring dirt at his superiors’ behest.
While an individual spied-upon campaign may not be able to prove particular information was disseminated as part of a deliberate police strategy to smear them, if this is provably a common experience across many such groups, then defences of accidental error, or denial of attribution, on the part of the police by definition become very difficult to maintain.
“The inquiry is asked to scrutinise very carefully, with a penetrating sceptical gaze, the purported explanation advanced by the [police] for undercover reporting on justice campaigns… Patricia asks the inquiry to seek out the evidence of those involved in the campaigns and consider whether there are common aspects of their experiences which call into question those denials,” Kauffman concluded.
Isolated examples of disinformation about victims of police misconduct circulated by news outlets may be dismissed as perverse mishaps, the result of misunderstandings, breakdowns in communication, overzealous officials carelessly hypothesising beyond available evidence. Repeated instances of information on these groups and their members being secretly obtained and committed to internal police documents raise obvious questions over ulterior motives and ultimate objectives.
Patricia has waited over 15 years for justice in respect of Jean Charles’ killing, and over six to learn the truth about the police surveillance of her and her family. She’s now forced to wait even longer to see whether the UCPI delivers the answers she so deserves. Inquiry hearings related to police undercover activities between 1993 and 2007 are only expected to commence in the first half of 2023.
Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions. Follow Kit on Twitter @KitKlarenberg
Featured Video
Billionaires and Officials Are Just Blatantly Ignoring the Will of the People
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
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
Blog Roll
Aletho News- Hamas leaders say targeting families will fail to extract concessions
- Harrowing testimonies expose Israeli torture of Gaza hospital director
- UAE provides $100m for US-backed Gaza police force vetted by Shin Bet
- Britain quietly approves $11.85m arms licence to Israel despite Gaza ban
- Britain’s population replacement has passed the point of no return
- US-Iran ‘Calibrated Escalation’ Risks Sliding Into All-Out War – Expert
- Iran – End of the Drought & the Destruction of US Radar Installations in the Middle East
- Prediction: NATO’s Collapse & Nuclear War
- ‘Operation Fauxios’: Axios, Israeli spy, and $2 billion oil scam to prop up Trump
- Iran blasts US ceasefire violations, says Washington trapped in ‘self-created quagmire’
- If Americans Knew
- A Conservative’s View: Trump’s War on Iran Is Destroying America
- Israel’s war on the West Bank comes for Palestinian greenhouses
- New $270 million Israeli-only roads project in the West Bank is Netanyahu’s latest bid to impose de facto annexation
- Gaza investigation: A family’s fight to find their missing relatives
- MSF: Israel’s deliberate restriction of food and aid led to alarming malnutrition levels in Gaza
- Israel earmarks $270M for Israeli-only roads (that’s apartheid) – Daily Update
- Two Supreme Court Justices were secret agents who helped Israel cover up its attack on the USS Liberty
- Bari Weiss ‘Meddles’ With ‘CBS Sunday Morning’ Story on Palestine
- Zionists Are Gunning for Your Freedom of Speech
- The horrors in Gaza continue: Here are the facts
- No Tricks Zone
- New Study: Declining Trends In 1980-2023 Tropical Cyclone Frequency, Accumulated Energy
- 46 IPCC Scientists Break Rank, Publicly Challenge Long-Standing Dogmatic Climate Claims
- Another Study Links Warming To Cloud Forcing, Shortwave Radiation, Natural Atmospheric Circulation
- Wind Energy Is Toxic, Hazardous To Human Health, Scientific Review Shows
- Oversupply Of Volatile Solar Energy Leads To Record NEGATIVE Prices!
- New Study: Extreme Heat Records, Heatwaves, Extreme Cold Records Declining Across US Since 1899
- It’s The Cold, Stupid! Cold 20 Times More Lethal Than Heat, Multiple Studies Show
- European Institute For Climate And Energy: “Climate Debate is Seldom About Science”
- New Study: The Climate May Be 5 Times More Sensitive To Solar Forcing Than Commonly Assumed
- EV Industry Reached $70 Billion In Losses In 2024 Due To Delusional Green Ideologies
Aletho News 