Why isn’t NDP critic Randall Garrison questioning $200 billion navy procurement?
By Yves Engler · January 8, 2021
The job of the opposition in Parliament is to hold the government accountable, in part by asking questions. The role of an NDP critic should be to criticize from the left. So why the silence from Randall Garrison after Canada’s leading military reporter David Pugliese published a 5,000 word expose on the Canadian Surface Combatant headlined, “Billions in trouble: How the crown jewel of Canada’s shipbuilding strategy became a possible financial disaster waiting in the wings.”
Despite revelations over the past month of costs growing to over $200 billion, extreme secrecy, the addition of ballistic ‘missile defence’ and Tomahawk missiles that travel 1,700 kilometers, there has been nary a comment from the NDP defence critic on the 15 new frigates.
Initially pegged at $14 billion, the official price tag for the frigates later rose to $26 billion and now sits at $60 billion. In 2019 the Parliamentary Budget Officer put the cost about $10 billion higher and an updated frigates cost estimate next month is expected to reach $80 billion. To keep information about the swelling costs under wraps the military has resorted to extreme secrecy, reported Pugliese in the expose.
The recent winner of a lifetime achievement award from the Canadian Committee for World Press Freedom followed his investigation into the cost and secrecy surrounding the frigates with a story about government officials criticizing companies for speaking out. Subsequently, Pugliese published a story headlined “Top of the line Canadian-made naval equipment shut out of $70-billion warship program” about government subsidized firms cut out of the Lockheed Martin led consortium set to build the frigates. As a result, Thales Canada’s government funded naval radar, which is being used on German, Danish and Dutch warships, won’t be part of the Canadian Surface Combatant.
In response to Pugliese’s reporting, the Ottawa Citizen editorial board criticized the frigate purchase in “Choppy waters for Canada’s warship program”. In November the Hill Times also published a commentary titled “Canada’s surface combatant costs might be taking on water” and a front-page story titled “DND says budget for Surface Combatants remains unchanged; PBO report expected in late February”. Two days before Christmas CBC reported an astounding estimate for the lifecycle cost of the frigates. Initially detailed in Esprit de Corps, former defence official Alan Williams’ concludes that the 15 frigates will cost $213 – 219 billion over 40 years!
One explanation for the astronomical cost of the 15 frigates is the radar system that’s been chosen. According to a CBC story from early December, the radar can be easily upgraded to a ballistic missile defence system, which successive Canadian governments have resisted joining. In the mid 2000s the Canadian Peace Alliance, Échec à la guerre, Ceasefire.ca and others forced the Liberal government to shelve its plan to formally join the US Ballistic Missile Defence. (It’s called “missile defence” because it’s designed to defend US missiles when they use them in offensive wars.)
In November a number of military focused publications reported on the weaponry expected on the vessels. “Canada’s New Frigate Will Be Brimming With Missiles”, is how The Drive described the ships. In a first outside the US, Canada’s surface combatants look set to be outfitted with Tomahawk cruise missiles capable of striking land targets up to 1,700 kilometers away. As such, the frigates could be near London and hit Berlin or, more plausibly, docked in Panama City and strike Caracas, Venezuela.
As I recently detailed in Jacobin, Ottawa has long used naval force as a “diplomatic” tool. Early Canadian ‘gunboat diplomacy’ included pressing Costa Rica to repay the Royal Bank in 1921 and helping a dictator as he was massacring peasants in El Salvador in 1932. In recent years Canadian warships have gone to war with Libya and Iraq.
Amidst growing media criticism, NDP defence critic Randall Garrison has said nothing regarding the frigates’ cost, secrecy or weaponry. He hasn’t released a single tweet (or retweet) about any of the recent stories on the surface combatant vessels.
This is abysmal. What is the point of having an NDP defence critic if they are unwilling to question or challenge the largest procurement in Canadian history?
At the NDP convention in April members need to press Garrison to clarify his position on these violent, $200 billion frigates.
While giving Americans $600, Congress sets aside $600 MILLION to fight Russia & China
RT | December 28, 2020
The omnibus spending bill US President Donald Trump eventually agreed to sign gives Americans a pittance, but over $600 million to “counter the influence” of Russia and China and “promote democracy” in Europe and Asia.
The 5,593-page legislation bundled the coronavirus “stimulus” with general 2021 spending. It faced heavy criticism from across the US political spectrum last week, for funding all sorts of pet projects while giving Americans only a $600 individual payment. That’s half of what they got in April, and the only direct assistance to mitigate the economic damage of state-imposed lockdowns.
A million times that much was earmarked for US propaganda and diplomatic efforts aimed against Beijing and Moscow, however. According to Congress, “not less than $290 million” is to be made available for the “Countering Russian Influence Fund.” The funds shall be used to, among other things, “support democracy programs in the Russian Federation and other countries in Europe, Eurasia, and Central Asia.”
One activity specifically listed is the promotion of “internet freedom” – coming from a country where Silicon Valley companies ruthlessly censor what one can think and say online.
No less than $20 million will go “to strengthen democracy and civil society in Central Europe,” including “transparency, independent media, rule of law, minority rights, and programs to combat anti-Semitism.”
Another $300 million was earmarked for the “Countering Chinese Influence Fund” to be used against the “malign influence of the Government of the People’s Republic of China and the Chinese Communist Party and entities acting on their behalf globally.”
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo may well have written those provisions himself. In a major speech in July, he denounced Beijing as a threat to “our people and our prosperity” and called for a generational struggle against the CCP. Just a week before Congress voted on the bill, he also claimed Russian President Vladimir Putin was “a real risk to those of us who love freedom.”
“We have lots of folks that want to undermine our way of life, our republic, our basic democratic principles. Russia is certainly on that list,” Pompeo told Fox News host Mark Levin on December 18.
Trump had initially refused to sign the bill, demanding that Congress cut back on the programs called out by critics and increase the individual payment to $2,000 per person. He then signed it on Sunday, saying he expected Congress to approve the increase as well as respond to several other priorities he raised.
Democrats have already said they will reject any cuts to the omnibus, however, while there is no indication the Republican-led Senate will actually do anything Trump asked.
Should Dr. Birx Be Forgiven For Breaking Her Own Rules?
By Ethan Yang | American Institute for Economic Research | December 28, 2020
Another day, another politician violates their own rule. Do as I say not as I do; this has been the prevailing theme of the pandemic as politicians openly flout the laws and recommendations they advocate for. From people like Speaker Nancy Pelosi to New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to local county supervisors in Los Angeles, hypocrisy thrives at every level of government. Our leaders tell society to suck it up and lock down while providing little justification or direction. Meanwhile, they reserve the right to travel, dine out, and see their loved ones for themselves after devoting effort to prevent the rest of us from doing so. As they enjoy these luxuries, their policies bring economic devastation, social deprivation, and encourage fellow citizens to turn on one another.
Another public official to be added to this long list of hypocrites is Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator. AP News writes,
“The day after Thanksgiving, she traveled to one of her vacation properties on Fenwick Island in Delaware. She was accompanied by three generations of her family from two households. Birx, her husband Paige Reffe, a daughter, son-in-law and two young grandchildren were present.”
This is of course after she and her colleagues made a number of recommendations not to travel or gather on Thanksgiving. According to the New York Post,
“Birx had urged people in the days leading up to Thanksgiving to keep gatherings to “your immediate household.”
“I don’t like it to be any number,” Birx said on CNN’s “New Day.”
“Because you know, if you say it can be 10, and it’s eight people from four different families, then that probably is not the same degree of safe as 10 people from your immediate household.”
Birx said at the time that every American is obligated to make sacrifices to stop the spread of the virus.”
Dr. Birx believes that we should not gather with anyone besides those in our immediate household yet here she is just like many politicians before her. The New York Post also writes that when confronted on the matter Dr. Birx attempted to justify the trip by stating that she was going to “winterize the property before a potential sale.” On the matter it reports,
“I did not go to Delaware for the purpose of celebrating Thanksgiving,” Birx said in a statement.
She argued that the members of the trip belong to her “immediate household,” though she acknowledged they live in separate homes.”
As unconvincing as that sounds, even if Dr. Birx didn’t go to celebrate Thanksgiving that doesn’t change the fact that she was meeting with people from different households. Preparing the house for sale doesn’t change things either as American businesses have been crumbling under the boot of lockdowns since March. Although failing to prepare her house for sale might have lasting and adverse consequences, every day Americans have been making these sacrifices for months.
The New York Post provides a follow up on this situation when it reports that to justify her visit Dr. Birx said the following,
“My parents stopped eating and drinking because they were so depressed,” the 64-year-old complained to Newsy.
“My daughter hasn’t left that house in 10 months, my parents have been isolated for 10 months. They’ve become deeply depressed,” Birx said of the need to “recover from the trauma of the last 10 months.”
Although this is certainly a compelling reason to visit her family, the problem is that this is what countless Americans have been dealing with as well. Dr. Birx has simply realized what the consequences of her policies have been. For many Americans, lockdowns have generated the social agony her family has experienced. Plenty of Americans have also lost jobs and livelihoods. According to data from Yelp, 60 percent of businesses that closed will never open again. For many Americans, they have experienced even worse. According to the CDC, drug overdoses have skyrocketed in 2020, expanding the list of self-inflicted deaths both intentional and unintentional. Despite all this, the average American has obediently complied with these guidelines even though they have every right not to.
Should We Forgive Dr. Birx?
Dr. Birx and the countless politicians like her should be forgiven under the following condition: That they learn from their mistakes and empathize with the average American’s struggle with their policies. To understand the eternal lesson that policy intentions do not equal policy results. If we could have more people in power who understand this truth then society would be better off. Lockdowns are a classic example of a policy that seemed to have benevolent intentions but wound up having lethal consequences. There are laws that work and those that don’t. Lockdowns and all the arbitrary restrictions that come with them promote contempt for the rule of law while doing little to control the virus. They have not only done little to prevent the spread of Covid-19, but they have wrecked society as a result. Part of the process of leadership is having the humility to admit that you were wrong and understanding that you can’t force a square peg through a round hole. Likewise, you cannot drastically shut down society and prohibit everything it means to be human without expecting terrible results.
The great economist Friedrich Hayek once wrote,
“The basic source of social order, however, is not a deliberate decision to adopt certain common rules, but the existence among the people of certain opinions of what is right and wrong…. Except where the political unit is created by conquest, people submit to authority not to enable it to do what it likes, but because they trust somebody to act in conformity with certain common conceptions of what is just. There is not first a society which then gives itself rules, but it is common rules which weld dispersed bands into a society.”
Hayek spoke of lawmaking as a sort of discovery process of policies that are compatible with society rather than simply forcing one’s will on society. Lockdowns are a clear example of an unsustainable law that is not only incompatible with society but impossible to follow. Dr. Birx has learned firsthand that her recommendations are not sustainable in the long run and even she of all people can’t follow such an edict. Rather than feeling humiliated and ashamed, she should attempt to enlighten her colleagues about her discovery. Otherwise, this will go down as another one of countless instances of elitism and hypocrisy exercised by our public servants.
Dr. Birx may have saved her family from emotional trauma or worse by visiting them. Surely she had taken the necessary precautions to ensure that her trip was as safe as possible. It would certainly be reasonable to make such a trip given the circumstances. She weighed the dangers and rewards of the actions she was taking and made a thoughtful decision. Rather than apologizing and retreating, she should fight for the average American’s right to do the same. One could only wish.
Ethan Yang joined AIER in 2020 as an Editorial Assistant and is a graduate of Trinity College. He received a BA in Political Science alongside a minor in Legal Studies and Formal Organizations. He currently serves as Local Coordinator at Students for Liberty and the Director of the Mark Twain Center for the Study of Human Freedom at Trinity College.
The Threat of Authoritarianism in the U.S. is Very Real, and Has Nothing To Do With Trump
The COVID-driven centralization of economic power and information control in the hands of a few corporate monopolies poses enduring threats to political freedom
By Glenn Greenwald | December 28, 2020
Asserting that Donald Trump is a fascist-like dictator threatening the previously sturdy foundations of U.S. democracy has been a virtual requirement over the last four years to obtain entrance to cable news Green Rooms, sinecures as mainstream newspaper columnists, and popularity in faculty lounges. Yet it has proven to be a preposterous farce.
In 2020 alone, Trump had two perfectly crafted opportunities to seize authoritarian power — a global health pandemic and sprawling protests and sustained riots throughout American cities — and yet did virtually nothing to exploit those opportunities. Actual would-be despots such as Hungary’s Viktor Orbán quickly seized on the virus to declare martial law, while even prior U.S. presidents, to say nothing of foreign tyrants, have used the pretext of much less civil unrest than what we saw this summer to deploy the military in the streets to pacify their own citizenry.
But early in the pandemic, Trump was criticized, especially by Democrats, for failing to assert the draconian powers he had, such as commandeering the means of industrial production under the Defense Production Act of 1950, invoked by Truman to force industry to produce materials needed for the Korean War. In March, The Washington Post reported that “Governors, Democrats in Congress and some Senate Republicans have been urging Trump for at least a week to invoke the act, and his potential 2020 opponent, Joe Biden, came out in favor of it, too,” yet “Trump [gave] a variety of reasons for not doing so.” Rejecting demands to exploit a public health pandemic to assert extraordinary powers is not exactly what one expects from a striving dictator.
A similar dynamic prevailed during the sustained protests and riots that erupted after the killing of George Floyd. While conservatives such as Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK), in his controversial New York Times op-ed, urged the mass deployment of the military to quell the protesters, and while Trump threatened to deploy them if governors failed to pacify the riots, Trump failed to order anything more than a few isolated, symbolic gestures such as having troops use tear gas to clear out protesters from Lafayette Park for his now-notorious walk to a church, provoking harsh criticism from the right, including Fox News, for failing to use more aggressive force to restore order.
Virtually every prediction expressed by those who pushed this doomsday narrative of Trump as a rising dictator — usually with great profit for themselves — never materialized. While Trump radically escalated bombing campaigns he inherited from Bush and Obama, he started no new wars. When his policies were declared by courts to be unconstitutional, he either revised them to comport with judicial requirements (as in the case of his “Muslim ban”) or withdrew them (as in the case of diverting Pentagon funds to build his wall). No journalists were jailed for criticizing or reporting negatively on Trump, let alone killed, as was endlessly predicted and sometimes even implied. Bashing Trump was far more likely to yield best-selling books, social media stardom and new contracts as cable news “analysts” than interment in gulags or state reprisals. There were no Proud Boy insurrections or right-wing militias waging civil war in U.S. cities. Boastful and bizarre tweets aside, Trump’s administration was for more a continuation of the U.S. political tradition than a radical departure from it.
The hysterical Trump-as-despot script was all melodrama, a ploy for profits and ratings, and, most of all, a potent instrument to distract from the neoliberal ideology that gave rise to Trump in the first place by causing so much wreckage. Positing Trump as a grand aberration from U.S. politics and as the prime author of America’s woes — rather than what he was: a perfectly predictable extension of U.S politics and a symptom of preexisting pathologies — enabled those who have so much blood and economic destruction on their hands not only to evade responsibility for what they did, but to rehabilitate themselves as the guardians of freedom and prosperity and, ultimately, catapult themselves back into power. As of January 20, that is exactly where they will reside.
The Trump administration was by no means free of authoritarianism: his Justice Department prosecuted journalists’ sources; his White House often refused basic transparency; War on Terror and immigration detentions continued without due process. But that is largely because, as I wrote in a Washington Post op-ed in late 2016, the U.S. Government itself is authoritarian after decades of bipartisan expansion of executive powers justified by a posture of endless war. With rare exception, the lawless and power-abusing acts over the last four years were ones that inhere in the U.S. Government and long preceded Trump, not ones invented by him. To the extent Trump was an authoritarian, he was one in the way that all U.S. presidents have been since the War on Terror began and, more accurately, since the start of the Cold War and advent of the permanent national security state.
The single most revealing episode exposing this narrative fraud was when journalists and political careerists, including former Obama aides, erupted in outrage on social media upon seeing a photo of immigrant children in cages at the border — only to discover that the photo was not from a Trump concentration camp but an Obama-era detention facility (they were unaccompanied children, not ones separated from their families, but “kids in cages” are “kids in cages” from a moral perspective). And tellingly, the single most actually authoritarian Trump-era event is one that has been largely ignored by the U.S. media: namely, the decision to prosecute Julian Assange under espionage laws (but that, too, is an extension of the unprecedented war on journalism unleashed by the Obama DOJ).
The last gasp for those clinging to the Trump-as-dictator fantasy (which was really hope masquerading as concern, since putting yourself on the front lines, bravely fighting domestic fascism, is more exciting and self-glorifying, not to mention more profitable, than the dreary, mediocre work of railing against an ordinary and largely weak one-term president) was the hysterical warning that Trump was mounting a coup in order to stay in office. Trump’s terrifying “coup” consisted of a series of failed court challenges based on claims of widespread voter fraud — virtually inevitable with new COVID-based voting rules never previously used — and lame attempts to persuade state officials to overturn certified vote totals. There was never a moment when it appeared even remotely plausible that it would succeed, let alone that he could secure the backing of the institutions he would need to do so, particularly senior military leaders.
Whether Trump secretly harbored despotic ambitions is both unknowable and irrelevant. If he did, he never exhibited the slightest ability to carry them out or orchestrate a sustained commitment to executing a democracy-subverting plot. And the most powerful U.S. institutions — the intelligence community and military brass, Silicon Valley, Wall Street, and the corporate media — opposed and subverted him from the start. In sum, U.S. democracy, in whatever form it existed when Trump ascended to the presidency, will endure more or less unchanged once he leaves office on January 20, 2021.
Whether the U.S. was a democracy in any meaningful sense prior to Trump had been the subject of substantial scholarly debate. A much-discussed 2014 study concluded that economic power has become so concentrated in the hands of such a small number of U.S. corporate giants and mega-billionaires, and that this concentration in economic power has ushered in virtually unchallengeable political power in their hands and virtually none in anyone else’s, that the U.S. more resembles oligarchy than anything else:
The central point that emerges from our research is that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence. Our results provide substantial support for theories of Economic-Elite Domination and for theories of Biased Pluralism, but not for theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy or Majoritarian Pluralism.
The U.S. Founders most certainly did not envision or desire absolute economic egalitarianism, but many, probably most, feared — long before lobbyists and candidate dependence on corporate SuperPACs — that economic inequality could become so severe, wealth concentrated in the hands of so few, that it would contaminate the political realm, where those vast wealth disparities would be replicated, rendering political and legal equality illusory.
But the premises of pre-Trump debates over how grave a problem this is have been rendered utterly obsolete by the new realities of the COVID era. A combination of sustained lockdowns, massive state-mandated transfers of wealth to corporate elites in the name of legislative “COVID relief,” and a radically increased dependence on online activities has rendered corporate behemoths close to unchallengeable in terms of both economic and political power.
The lockdowns from the pandemic have ushered in a collapse of small businesses across the U.S. that has only further fortified the power of corporate giants. “Billionaires increased their wealth by more than a quarter (27.5%) at the height of the crisis from April to July, just as millions of people around the world lost their jobs or were struggling to get by on government schemes,” reported The Guardian in September. A study from July told part of the story:
The combined wealth of the world’s super-rich reached a new peak during the coronavirus pandemic, according to a study published by the consulting firm PwC and the Swiss bank UBC on Wednesday. The more than 2,000 billionaires around the world managed to amass fortunes totalling around $10.2 trillion (€8.69 trillion) by July, surpassing the previous record of $8.9 trillion reached in 2017.
Meanwhile, though exact numbers are unknown, “roughly one in five small businesses have closed,” AP notes, adding: “restaurants, bars, beauty shops and other retailers that involve face-to-face contact have been hardest hit at a time when Americans are trying to keep distance from one another.”
Employees are now almost completely at the mercy of a handful of corporate giants, far more trans-national than with any allegiance to the U.S., which are thriving. A Brookings Institution study this week — entitled “Amazon and Walmart have raked in billions in additional profits during the pandemic, and shared almost none of it with their workers” — found that “the COVID-19 pandemic has generated record profits for America’s biggest companies, as well as immense wealth for their founders and largest shareholders—but next to nothing for workers.”
These COVID “winners” are not the Randian victors in free market capitalism. Quite the contrary, they are the recipients of enormous amounts of largesse from the U.S. Government, which they control through armies of lobbyists and donations and which therefore constantly intervenes in the market for their benefit. This is not free market capitalism rewarding innovative titans, but rather crony capitalism that is abusing the power of the state to crush small competitors, lavish corporate giants with ever more wealth and power, and turn millions of Americans into vassals whose best case scenario is working multiple jobs at low hourly wages with no benefits, few rights, and even fewer options.
Those must disgusted by this outcome should not be socialists but capitalists: this is a classic merger of state and corporate power —- also known as a hallmark of fascism in its most formal expression — that abuses state interference in markets to consolidate and centralize authority in a small handful of actors in order to disempower everyone else. Those trends were already quite visible prior to Trump and the onset of the pandemic, but have accelerated beyond anyone’s dreams in the wake of mass lockdowns, shutdowns, prolonged isolation and corporate welfare thinly disguised as legislative “relief.”
What makes this most menacing of all is that the primary beneficiaries of these rapid changes are Silicon Valley giants, at least three of which — Facebook, Google, and Amazon — are now classic monopolies. That the wealth of their primary owners and executives — Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Sundar Pichai — has skyrocketed during the pandemic is well-covered, but far more significant is the unprecedented power these companies exert over the dissemination of information and conduct of political debates, to say nothing of the immense data they possess about our lives by virtue of online surveillance.
Stay-at-home orders, lockdowns and social isolation have meant that we rely on Silicon Valley companies to conduct basic life functions more than ever before. We order online from Amazon rather than shop; we conduct meetings online rather than meet in offices; we use Google constantly to navigate and communicate; we rely on social media more than ever to receive information about the world. And exactly as a weakened population’s dependence on them has increased to unprecedented levels, their wealth and power has reached all new heights, as has their willingness to control and censor information and debate.
That Facebook, Google and Twitter are exerting more and more control over our political expression is hardly contestable. What is most remarkable, and alarming, is that they are not so much grabbing these powers as having them foisted on them, by a public — composed primarily of corporate media outlets and U.S. establishment liberals — who believe that the primary problem of social media is not excessive censorship but insufficient censorship. As Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) told Mark Zuckerberg when four Silicon Valley CEOs appeared before the Senate: “The issue is not that the companies before us today is that they’re taking too many posts down. The issue is that they’re leaving too many dangerous posts up.”
As I told the online program Rising this week when asked what the worst media failings of 2020 are, I continue to view the brute censorship by Facebook of incriminating reporting about Joe Biden in the weeks before the election as one of the most significant, and menacing, political events of the last several years. That this censorship was announced by a Facebook corporate spokesman who had spent his career previously as a Democratic Party apparatchik provided the perfect symbolic expression of this evolving danger.
These tech companies are more powerful than ever, not only because of their newly amassed wealth at a time when the population is suffering, but also because they overwhelmingly supported the Democratic Party candidate about to assume the presidency. Predictably, they are being rewarded with numerous key positions in his transition team and the same will ultimately be true of the new administration.
The Biden/Harris administration clearly intends to do a great deal for Silicon Valley, and Silicon Valley is well-positioned to do a great deal for them in return, starting with their immense power over the flow of information and debate.
The dominant strain of U.S. neoliberalism — the ruling coalition that has now consolidated power again — is authoritarianism. They view those who oppose them and reject their pieties not as adversaries to be engaged but as enemies, domestic terrorists, bigots, extremists and violence-inciters to be fired, censored, and silenced. And they have on their side — beyond the bulk of the corporate media, and the intelligence community, and Wall Street — an unprecedentedly powerful consortium of tech monopolies willing and able to exert greater control over a population that has rarely, if ever, been so divided, drained, deprived and anemic.
All of these authoritarian powers will, ironically, be invoked and justified in the name of stopping authoritarianism — not from those who wield power but from the movement that was just removed from power. Those who spent four years shrieking to great profit about the dangers of lurking “fascism” will — without realizing the irony — now use this merger of state and corporate power to consolidate their own authority, control the contours of permissible debate, and silence those who challenge them even further. Those most vocally screaming about growing authoritarianism in the U.S. over the last four years were very right in their core warning, but very wrong about the real source of that danger.
Government, Not Coronavirus, Is Killing Small Businesses
By Ron Paul | December 21, 2020
A video of a confrontation between Ventura County, California health officials and restaurant owner Anton Van Happen has gone viral. The health officials were ordering Mr. Van Happen to close his business because he allegedly violated California’s ban on outdoor dining. Mr. Van Happen asked the health officials if the government will pay his employees and his rent while his business is indefinitely closed.
Mr. Van Happen is hardly the only small business owner worried about how to pay bills during the lockdowns. Many small businesses operate on a narrow profit margin, so being forced to “temporarily” shut down or limit the number of customers they can serve is a virtual death sentence.
The lockdowns have already caused as many as 200,000 small businesses to permanently close. Lockdowns, by shrinking the number of employers, lead to long-term unemployment or lower wages for many workers.
While governments have terrorized small businesses, they have typically deemed the big chain stores “essential businesses” so they can remain open. The lockdowns are thus another government policy that gives big businesses a competitive advantage over their smaller competitors.
The benefits big businesses get from the lockdowns — including fewer competitors, more customers, and a job market with more workers competing for fewer jobs — may explain why many big businesses are not fighting the lockdowns. Instead, most big retail chains are requiring their workers and customers to wear masks. Many big businesses may soon deny service to those who refuse to receive a Covid vaccine.
One would think that progressives who claim to oppose policies that benefit big corporations like WalMart, Target, and Amazon would oppose the lockdowns. Sadly, even many progressives are unquestioningly parroting the Covid propaganda and demonizing those who dissent.
By slowing down the development of herd immunity among the population, the lockdowns could put those truly at risk in greater danger. Lockdowns have also had negative effects such as increases in drug and alcohol abuse and increases in domestic violence. Meanwhile, many schoolchildren are deprived of the opportunity to interact with their teachers and their peers. Instead, these children are subjected to the fraud of “virtual learning.”
Resistance to Covid tyranny is growing as more people figure out that lockdowns and mandates are both unnecessary and harmful. This resistance was largely started by small business owners faced with a choice between obeying the government or making sure they, and their employees, can feed their families. Small business owners have been leaders in recent anti-lockdown protests across America.
Eventually the resistance will grow to the point where the politicians will be forced to either double down on authoritarianism or admit the lockdowns were a mistake. Either way, those of us who know the truth must resist the Covid tyranny until government officials no longer terrorize small businesses for the crime of serving willing consumers.
Copyright © 2020 by RonPaul Institute.
West yet to condemn Iranian nuclear scientist’s assassination
By Robert Inlakesh | Press TV | December 18, 2020
In the wake of the Israeli assassination of Iran’s top scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, Western governments and media are yet to actively condemn the terrorist attack which took place in Tehran.
Many analysts speculate that the respective actions of the media have acted to exacerbate regional tensions, rather than de-escalate the situation following the Israeli aggression against Iran.
Following the Israeli regime-sponsored terrorist attack on Iranian soil, what has been dubbed as psychological warfare has also been a tool used to attack Iran. With claims spread throughout the international press, regarding an alleged killing of an Iranian Quds Force commander along the Iraq-Syria border area; An unsubstantiated claim but published nonetheless.
The claim originated first in a Syrian opposition media outlet, known as Step News Agency. The story was changed several times, before it was picked up by Israeli media.
Before long, Saudi owned Al-Arabiyya News had cited an unnamed source, providing a name to the commander allegedly killed. Later Reuters, Daily Mail and even RT picked up on these claims. Showing how far false information can spread, based upon no more than allegations, sourced from untrusted news outlets with political agendas.
Israeli strikes conducted against sovereign nations have long gone under reported and have evaded condemnation from Western nations, sparking criticism that the international community operates on double-standards.
Liberal Except for Palestine
Jewish groups manipulate the message
By Philip Giraldi • Unz Review • December 15, 2020
It is remarkable how leading Jewish organizations manage to play both sides on so-called “humanitarian” and “human rights” issues. It is, of course, well established that Jewish voters lean heavily “liberal” or “progressive” and constitute perhaps the most solid of all Democratic Party constituencies, so it is almost instinctive on their part that they would want to seize what they perceive to be the moral high ground. More to the point, in terms of their relationship with the Democrats and their various grievance factions, they are also generally cited as the source of the majority of the party’s campaign funding. This has resulted in the Democratic Party establishment’s particularly sensitivity to the needs of that key constituency, invariably carefully avoiding any criticism of Israel while also tending to appoint Israel-first bureaucrats and politicians to senior positions in the government. The Jews in return support the “progressive” politics of the Democrats, both to satisfy their own tribal inclinations, and to assuage any guilt relating to the party’s history of warmongering.
Jewish groups have expressed their pleasure with the appointments so far made by Biden, most particularly Ron Klain as Chief of Staff and Jake Sullivan as National Security Adviser. But the Jewel in the Crown is Tony Blinken as Secretary of State. The Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI), which is the Israel support group within the party, has sent out an announcement saying it’s thrilled by the number and quality of “pro-Israel allies” who will be in the upcoming government. Other pro-Israel groups to include the Washington Institute for Near East Peace (WINEP) and the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD) have been similarly enthusiastic.
Jewish members of Congress are grossly disproportionate to their numbers in the general population (27 in the House and 9 in the Senate). Israeli Lobby power influencing Congress and the White House is clearly visible. Up until the last election Eliot Engel chaired the House Foreign Affairs Committee and Adam Schiff headed the House Intelligence Committee, two key posts firmly in the hands of politicians who had regularly put Israel’s interests first. Schiff’s son has been featured wearing a Mossad T-shirt, without any negative comment apart from folks like myself. One wonders what “liberal” Democrats would have thought if the lad had been wearing a shirt featuring CIA?
Engel is mirabile dictu out of office, but he has been replaced by black New York congressman Gregory Meeks, who obedient to orders did what Jeff Blankfort describes as a “full Uncle Tom,” immediately pronouncing that Israelis have a “right to defend themselves” and Palestinians need to return to the negotiating table and stop “fighting.” Three days earlier, Israeli soldiers had shot dead a fourteen-year-old Palestinian boy, something that Meeks apparently regards as “self-defense,” but, more to the point, consider for a moment the supreme ignorance of Mr. Meeks and the power he will wield over the nation’s foreign policy.
Nancy Pelosi is herself committed to the cause of Israel, having said that “If this capitol crumbled to the ground, the one thing that would remain is our commitment to our aid –and I don’t even call it aid– our cooperation with Israel. That’s fundamental to who we are,” while president-elect Joe Biden has proudly declared himself to be a Zionist and House Majority Whip Steny Hoyer has proudly declared himself to have “dual loyalty.” Add to that the appointment of Tony Blinken as Secretary of State presumptive for confirmation that the Biden White House will be the usual hotbed of pandering to Israel along the lines of the precedent set by Donald Trump.
Recently, groups like the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) have pledged their support for organizations like Black Lives Matter, partly due to their own membership base’s liberal inclinations and also to establish their fictional bona fides as honorable gentlemen and ladies seeking to take steps that are good for American democracy as they see it. They have stated that “We mourn for George Floyd, who was horrifically murdered by a police officer in Minneapolis. There are many marching in the streets across the country and around the world chanting, ‘I can’t breathe’ in tribute to his memory and to demand justice. We mourn for Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade and Rayshard Brooks among countless others whose lives were cut short as a result of systemic racism in policing. As an organization committed to fighting all forms of hate, ADL knows that these brutal deaths follow an explosion of racist murders and hate crimes across the U.S. Systemic racism, injustice, and inequality call for systemic change… Join us in combatting the bigotry, racism and discrimination that targets marginalized communities today.”
As a side benefit to all that hail-fellow-well-met conviviality, there is, of course, also a tactical consideration, which is that if Jewish groups can demonstrate such marvelous fellowship with poor downtrodden black folk in the United States, perhaps no one will notice how they look the other way while their co-religionists in Israel practice genocide on the Palestinian Arabs. The ADL statement is pure, unadulterated bullshit, ironical because Jews are by far the wealthiest and best educated demographic in the United States, powerful at all levels and hardly victims of anything. And they work hard to hide the fact that the Israel Lobby exists to serve the Jewish state’s interests, including making sure that the American public is led to believe that nothing is happening when Arab children are shot dead, when the livelihoods of Palestinians are destroyed, and when Israel operates with impunity to assassinate foreign officials and kill innocent civilians en masse in places like Iran, Gaza, Syria and Lebanon.
The hysteria on the part of some Jewish groups to identify with the grievances of black Americans is quite amazing to behold. It now includes memorials to the martyred Floyd George of Minneapolis, whose death triggered last spring and summer’s rioting, in so-called holocaust remembrance sites. The first such George Floyd exhibit has opened within the Holocaust Memorial Resource & Education Center in Orlando, Florida. The intention of the exhibitors is not completely clear, but the identification of Jewish suffering with the black counterpart is intended to suck in the inevitable critics who can conveniently be described as racists, putting both Israel/Jews and American blacks on the side of the angels even though the two have functionally nothing at all to do with each other. So, anyone who might want to argue that the Floyd-holocaust joint commemoration is both ridiculous and a political contrivance might just as well button his or her lip and in so doing avoid the sanctimonious backlash that would be generated from the Jewish managed media no matter how one spins it.
In a recent article in the Jewish publication Forward, Dr. Mia Brett examines Critical Race Theory (CRT), the educational and cultural fraud that is being used to delegitimize Western civilization and comes to the conclusion that “Rather than a tool to oppress Jews, CRT is a critical tool in fighting white supremacy — the gravest threat we face.” “We,” means of course, Jews and blacks together as perpetual victims of a malicious Caucasian kleptocracy. There is no mention of Israel in the article, nor of the Palestinian genocide, but it inter alia reveals what Dr. Brett and others like her think about the rest of us.
Indeed, the claim that some Jewish groups and leaders do not regard themselves beholden to American interests at all has a certain cogency, as does the argument that they do not consider their fellow U.S. citizens to be quite their equal given their Chosen status. Religious leader and Grand Rabbi of the Satmar Hassidim community of Williamsburg, New York, Rabbi Zalman Teitelbaum, recently declared that his numerous followers should not consider themselves as American but rather as Jews in exile.
Teitelbaum’s views are not unique. There exists an International Council of Jewish Parliamentarians, which is based in Israel. It exists to support Israel and to “To promote an ongoing dialogue and a sense of fraternity among Jewish legislators and ministers.” One might well ask why a parliamentarian representing the people in a country should identify with and, let’s face it, conspire with foreign representatives of other nations based on religion? And support the interests of a foreign country, Israel, also due to religious affinity? One might suggest that that is what charges of “dual loyalty” are all about, though it might indeed be better described as “singular” or primary loyalty.
There should be little doubt that American Jews have by hook and by crook come to occupy the driver’s seat in many key sectors of both the economy and in political life. The trick of lining up with those oppressed both to demonstrate one’s ethical superiority and to avoid having one’s interests scrutinized through assertion of having suffered a similar victimhood has been played again and again. Floyd George in a holocaust memorial? Sure, why not. The reality of George does not exactly fit in with the hagiography that has grown up around him since his death just as Israel and American Jews constantly claiming victimhood so that their own behavior and that of Israel cannot be subject to accountability is also a hypocritical political ploy that does not reflect reality.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is https://councilforthenationalinterest.org address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org
Jack Dorsey, the CIA and Twitter Censorship in the Age of Covid-19
By Vanessa Beeley |
Unlimited Hangout| December 10, 2020
Twitter CEO, Jack Dorsey, has embedded himself in some of the most powerful global influencer complexes. His techno-mining of African potential and the increasing use of Twitter as a surveillance tool for the corporatocracy have generated the opportunity for Dorsey to play an increasingly pivotal role in the roll-out of the World Economic Forum’s Great Reset.
In Part 1 of this series on the emergence of the “celebrity humanitarianism” complex of the 21st century and its role in the ongoing Covid-19 crisis, I covered the evolution of Hollywood actor Sean Penn from anti-Iraq-war activist to establishment narrative endorser and advocate for the predator class factions dominated by the Clinton family cabal and globalism.
Penn was one of the three men together on a beach holiday that was featured in a Daily Mail article in November 2020. Another of the three global influencers strolling on the beach with Penn was “technology entrepreneur” and the CEO and co-founder of Twitter, Jack Dorsey. Dorsey’s meteoric rise to fame as a leading innovator in the world of data technology began to falter in 2016/17 when 247 Wall Street listed Dorsey among the twenty worst CEOs in America. In this article, I will investigate Dorsey’s involvement in the narrative management of Covid-19 and his potential contribution to the roll out of the World Economic Forum’s Great Reset that has been accelerated by the Coronavirus “pandemic” exercise.
Like Penn, Dorsey is a supporter of the Democratic Party. Dorsey broke ranks with the billionaire bloc to donate $ 5600 to Tulsi Gabbard’s campaign after the June 2019 Democratic debates. Dorsey cites Gabbard’s anti-war stance as the reason for his support. Dorsey also contributed to the campaigns of Andrew Yang and Jay Inslee. Dorsey commends Yang for his “focus on artificial intelligence and automation” (emphasis added). Dorsey has also endorsed the philanthrocapitalist “climate change” portfolio – in a tweet Dorsey says that Gabbard and Yang’s “voices are important to surface in debates”, adding:
“Along with systemically addressing climate change and economic injustice, these are the key issues of global consequence I want to see considered and discussed more.”
Dorsey as well as the CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, were subpoenaed to a US Senate hearing in November 2020, where their platforms were accused of anti-conservative bias after their effective suppression of the Hunter Biden China scandal. Of the two social media platforms, Twitter was deemed to be the most aggressive in its censorship of the New York Post article.
US conservatives were outraged that a story critical of Joe Biden, with potential to turn the election in favour of Donald Trump, was being buried by platforms as influential as Twitter and Facebook. Dorsey’s rationale for this unprecedented censorship had been that Twitter policies prohibit “directly distributing content obtained through hacking that contains private information”. Dorsey later back-pedalled but by then, the story had effectively been “disappeared” and damage to the Biden campaign had been successfully limited.
Dorsey’s apparent absorption into the transnational billionaire complex controlling the global response to the Covid-19 “pandemic” and orchestrating the Fourth Industrial Revolution, will be explored throughout this article.
From Square to Covid-19 – Dorsey transfers $ 1 billion to “disarm the pandemic”
In addition to Twitter, Dorsey is also the CEO of Square, a digital payments platform. In April 2020, Dorsey transferred an alleged 28% of his wealth from Square to his Start Small LLC (SS) to fund Covid-19 relief globally. The $1 billion donation represents the most significant “philanthropic” donation made by the tech-billionaire during his entire career.
One month after the launch of SS, Dorsey announced on Twitter the disbursement of $87.8 million to a number of initiatives apparently responding to fall-out from Covid-19 response measures. The disbursements included $600,000 to help develop “high impact digital learning tools to support special needs students and English language learners who are most affected by the crisis and will experience the most learning loss during school closures”.
The reality is that none of these measures would be necessary if scientists, doctors, epidemiologists, medical staff and experts opposing the disproportionate response to a virus [seemingly] less deadly than seasonal flu had been taken into consideration by the institutions and governments rolling out the draconian “lockdown” of global populations in preparation for the Great Reset. Dorsey’s and Twitter’s role in ensuring the censorship and de-platforming of dissenting voices is also examined in this article.
Let us not forget that “a report from the Institute for Policy Studies found that, while tens of millions of Americans have lost their jobs during the coronavirus ‘pandemic’, America’s ultra-wealthy elite have seen their net worth surge by $ 82 billion in just 23 days” as picked up by journalist, Cory Morningstar, who is also cited below.
In May 2020, Dorsey donated $10 million to Sean Penn’s CORE response which supported CORE’s national expansion of Covid-19 drive-through test sites “into Atlanta, Detroit, New Orleans and the Navajo Nation”. The origins of the CORE initiative are examined in detail in Part 1 of this series. Dorsey is also credited with persuading Penn to join Twitter in May 2020.
As Dorsey stated in his April 2020 tweet:
“After we disarm this pandemic, the focus will shift to girl’s health and education, and [Universal Basic Income] or UBI.”
Dorsey’s involvement in the promotion of UBI demonstrates his endorsement of measures which are designed to shore up economic privilege for members of the global billionaire cartels while asset-stripping and disenfranchising the working classes and what remains of an already decimated middle class in the West.
Cory Morningstar, one of the foremost voices speaking out about the unprecedented power grab being facilitated by the Covid-19 narratives, gave me this statement with regards to the covert threat of UBI:
Covid-19 is the catalyst for the Great Reset, in which universal basic income plays a securing role. Universal Basic Income (UBI) is the strategic solution to protect the ruling classes from Molotov cocktails and global civil unrest by those being methodically dispossessed of their occupations, dignity and self-preservation – the working class, much middle class, peasantry, artisans, and those that comprise the informal economy that presides in the Global South. Disclosures on coming “disbanding of existing safety-net programs” are not included in the foundation-funded marketing campaigns.
When UBI begins to be rolled out globally, one can expect public healthcare to slowly disappear, replaced by privatized services (largely Telehealth). Further, UBI payments will be linked to benefits via blockchain – ensuring full spectrum compliance and servitude of whole societies. Billionaires are supporting/financing UBI marketing campaigns for good reason: it is preferable to pay a pittance to the citizenry than to risk losing the social license that allows for the continued decimation of the Earth, coupled with the continued exploitation of those most oppressed and vulnerable.
The real motive behind Jack Dorsey’s interest in Africa
Dorsey’s focus on UBI and girl’s health and education is mirrored, coincidentally, by the interests of the Clinton Foundation in Africa. Dorsey had been planning to relocate to Africa for six months in 2020, plans that were apparently derailed by the Coronavirus crisis although a more likely obstacle was investor concern that his pivot to Square and the opportunities presented for digital payment remodeling in Africa’s cash-based society would lead to his neglect of Twitter.
In 2015, Bill and Chelsea Clinton led an entourage of powerful elite sponsors of the Clinton Foundation to Africa for Bill Clinton’s 12th visit to the resource-plundered continent. Dorsey joined the Clintons, Microsoft (via Bill Gates), Facebook and Google in a bid to ensnare the developing market sector into their accelerator programmes and debt enslavement campaigns. Visa, Mastercard and Salesforce are also establishing venture investments in African start-ups.
According to “Witney Schneidman, a Brookings fellow with the Africa Growth Initiative and former deputy secretary of state Clinton administration”, Dorsey was in the right place at the right time. In November 2019, Dorsey tweeted that Africa “will define the future (especially the bitcoin one)” The African continent comprises 54 countries with a combined population of 1.3 billion people with the highest population growth rate in the world. The world’s largest population of people without banks, trading in cash. Ripe for exploitation by the world’s robber barons and financial-tech-carpet-baggers.
In November 2020, Dorsey was the closing keynote speaker for the Africa Fintech Summit sponsored by Dedalus Global and Ibex Frontier. Dorsey is described as a “futurist”, a “visionary”, and one of the “biggest influencers in tech ecosystems worldwide”. “With an unbanked population of 66% and a credit card penetration rate that averages 1.5%, the applications for crypto in sub-Saharan Africa can only help solidify Dorsey’s interest in the continent” (Africa News )
Dorsey is investing in the reinvention of colonialism as smart growth, the new-age digital colonialism. The Facebook’s internet footprint in Africa and its Orwellian ambitions for that continent are covered in detail in this article by investigative journalist, Cory Morningstar. Morningstar has showed in her recent and past work how the billionaire class seeks to facilitate the absorption of the Global South into a paternalistic, inherently racist, Global North power structure that will suck the lifeblood out of these nations via “philanthropic” channels that have been constructed to mine data, resources, livelihoods and cultural infrastructure until it is an overpopulated, micro-managed colony with no access to development unless it is plugged into the predator class mothership.
“As Africa meets the 4IR Fourth Industrial Revolution], its youth will be one of its most important assets” – August 2020, World Economic Forum: How can Africa succeed in the Fourth Industrial Revolution?
Dorsey, the Clintons and the technological “disruption” of Haiti
Dorsey’s history of rubbing shoulders with the Clinton clan goes way back. Just as Sean Penn was heavily involved with the Clinton’s rapacious policies in Haiti, Dorsey was a keynote speaker at the Haiti Tech Summit in 2018, an event that is also described as the “Davos of the Caribbean”. The summit was organised by the Global Startup Ecosystem which, according to their website, “hosts the world’s first and largest digital accelerator- supporting 1000 companies from 90 countries every year”. Target regions are Africa, America, Asia, Europe, Caribbean, Latin America and the Middle East.
Taken from their website, in 2017, GSE launched a 13 year initiative to accelerate emerging market ecosystems every year until 2030 in alignment with the Sustainable Development Goals.
The “iconic” Haiti Tech Summit was the pilot launch. The company was projecting 54 tech summits in 2020, to be held virtually and “across all major hubs globally”. Alongside Dorsey at the 2018 Haiti Tech summit were representatives from other Silicon Valley giants — Google, Facebook and YouTube. The end of summit message from the summit’s founder and GSE’s co-founder, Christine Souffrant Ntim, informed the audience that Haiti “was ready for disruption”. This is an unfortunate choice of words considering the decades of “disruption” that have been inflicted upon the semi-colonised island by a series of US administrations, dominated by the Clintons’ exploitation policies targeting Haiti.

Screenshot from Haitian Times video report on the Tech Summit 2018.
This is nothing less than implementation of UN Agenda 2030, an agenda that aims to privatise and seize control of land, resources, energy, education and to digitalise the world we live in, to bring us all into city-based data colonies that can be easily controlled and manipulated for the benefit of the vulture class – the billionaire elites who perceive this world to be their exclusive bread basket and the “little people” as the “useless” expendables.
GSE’s website lists Dorsey as a member of their speaker network that includes Ben Horowitz and Sophia, the world’s celebrity robot. Horowitz is co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm that invests in technology start-ups, and their better-known investments include GitHub, Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter. GSE partners include LinkedIn, Google Cloud, IBM Cloud and Forbes. GSE’s mission is to “prepare individuals and organisations for the digital age” according to Einstein Ntim, managing partner at GSE – a goal completely in line with the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the Covid-19-facilitated Great Reset.
Dorsey and the Transition Integrity Project – Berggruen Institute
Dorsey’s involvement with the Berggruen Institute (BI) is an indication of his collaboration with some of the most powerful neoconservative influencers in US politics. BI is another transformational future-shaping conglomerate “promoting long term answers to the biggest challenges of the 21st Century”. Nicolas Berggruen is the co-founder and chairman of BI. Berggruen has been pivotal in the restructuring and reinventing of “democracy” for the new digital age. Berggruen used the institute as a launch pad for a number of government reform projects. These include the 21st Century Council which brought together former heads of state – with Tony Blair, Gerhard Schroder, Helle Thorning Schmidt and Nicolas Sarkozybeing just a few of names on the list. Dorsey was a member of the 21st Century Council and is one of Berggruen’s “people”.
Berggruen established the “Think Long Committee for California” in 2010. The committee included such neoconservative and “progressive” luminaries as Condoleeza Rice and Eric Schmidt (Google CEO) and its purpose was to effectively create a new set of rules for governance, using Agenda 21 Sustainable Development grants to impose regional governance.

Soros/Berggruen/von der Leyen
In 2012, Berggruen’s Council for the Future of Europe met in Berlin to discuss Europe Beyond the Crisis. Speeches were given by former UK Labour Party leader and criminal globalist, Tony Blair, billionaire influencer and transnational interventionist, George Soros and George Papandreou, former PM of Greece and last in a long line of corrupt imperialist sycophants. Dorsey has effectively embedded himself into one of the most influential and predatory of the neocon cartels. Dorsey is a minor in the billionaire circle but a major in identifying the foremost power hubs.
Berggruen is also behind the Transition Integrity Project (TIP), recently covered by investigative journalist, Whitney Webb, for Unlimited Hangout who described the TIP as:
“A group of Democratic Party insiders and former Obama and Clinton era officials as well as a cadre of “Never Trump” neoconservative Republicans have spent the past few months conducting simulations and “war games” regarding different 2020 election “doomsday” scenarios.”
Another sinister Berggruen programme is the “Transformations of the Human” which has all the hallmarks of a transhumanism agenda. The concept involves the placing of philosophers and artists in key research sites “to foster dialogue with technologists”. The “aim of the program is to render AI and Biotech visible as unusually potent experimental sites for reformulating our vocabulary for thinking about ourselves” which could be interpreted as reprogramming humanity. The findings will be fed back into the “production of both AI and biotech and to thereby contribute to both human and non-human flourishing” or perhaps to merge the two?
As investigative journalist, James Corbett, warns “are we ready to give up our humanity” to succumb to the “ethical use of technology to extend human capabilities?”. The redesigning or genetic modification of the human condition is not science fiction, it is the bedrock of the ideology of those who rule this world behind the facade of government.
As Julian Huxley, an influential English evolutionary biologist, eugenicist, and internationalist wrote, in the last century:
“… unless [civilised societies] invent and enforce adequate measures for regulating human reproduction, for controlling the quantity of population, and at least preventing the deterioration of quality of racial stock, they are doomed to decay …”
Huxley invented the term “transhumanism” just before he became President of the British Eugenics Society, 1959-62. Huxley was also the first Director General of UNESCO.
Author, Dean Koontz, described the age of Transhumanism and the Fourth Industrial Revolution very succinctly:
“We live in hubristic age, when politicians imagine themselves to be messiahs and when many in the sciences frankly discuss their dreams of creating a “post-human” civilization of genetically engineered supermen, ignorant of the fact that like minds have often come before them and have left no legacy but death, destruction, and despair.”
Dorsey’s close ties to those whose purpose is to reinstate a Silicon Valley-backed Democrat as US President and to oust President Trump who, to some degree, slowed down the global military interventionism of the neocon camp in Washington as well as Twitter’s record of protectionism of the Biden election campaign are perhaps what, currently, make Dorsey an accepted member of the overclass.
It should be no surprise, therefore, that Nicholas Pacilio, senior communications manager at Twitter, who deleted Trump tweets claiming (correctly) children are almost immune from Covid-19, was formerly the press secretary for Kamala Harris, Biden’s pick for vice president. Twitter’s proclaimed neutrality is rendered nonsensical by all the above and by their collaboration across the board with global influencers whose futurist agenda is reliant upon the acceptance of official Covid-19 narratives.
Dorsey’s anti-conservative Twitter censorship policy is also supported by online petition giant, Avaaz, who were instrumental in the fomenting of conflict in Syria from the outset in 2011 and well versed in the art of selling hate for Empire.
Bill Gates and Jack Dorsey – investing in civil unrest?
Dorsey and Covid-19 impresario, Bill Gates, are alleged indirect funders of the BAIL Project (BP). The project was established to bail out protestors who participated in the George Floyd demonstrations and riots. BAIL is reported to have connections to Antifa, an organisation associated with stoking civil unrest and being “primary instigators of violence at public rallies” according to declassified Department of Homeland Security and FBI studies from 2016, the first year of Trump’s presidency. While many of the reports linking Dorsey to BAIL and BAIL to Antifa can be described as “conservative”, Dorsey’s Start Small initiative has donated to Black Lives Matter, suspected to be another of the billionaire co-opted organisations designed to harness and control black power globally.
The Audacious Project (housed at TED) was seed-funded $ 250 million by Gates, Skoll and Dalio Foundations. The BAIL Project was one of the five recipients of $ 50 million funding from the Audacious Project and is partnered by TED directly according to their own website. The Audacious Project, “a new model to inspire change”, is yet another node in the philanthrocapitalist complex wreaking havoc globally under the pretext of building a better future for all. In reality, such groups are building a system that will make the world’s wealthiest class even wealthier and will give ever increasing control over the global resource inventory.
When the connection is made to the Transition Integrity Project and Gates and Dorsey’s suspected involvement in BAIL and potentially Antifa, it makes sense that these narrative builders of the Covid-19 paradigm would be behind the scenes of the planned civil unrest in the US.
Further evidence of Twitter’s role as a surveillance tool for US intelligence agencies and influencers on Covid-19 response came when The Intercept exposed the AI start-up Dataminr and that company’s involvement in the monitoring of the Floyd protests and provision of that data to police and security forces nationwide. While both Twitter and Dataminr deny any engagement in domestic surveillance, these accusations followed on from the 2016 controversies that aligned Twitter with the CIA as investors in, or partners of Dataminr. The Twitter-Dataminr collaboration permitted Dataminr to scan every public tweet as soon as it was published, giving them advance warning of any incoming protests or dissident action.

Despite the denial of surveillance activity by both Twitter and Dataminr, “monitoring activities and forwarding information to the police is clearly surveillance” explained Andrew Ferguson, author of “The Rise of Big Data Policing: Surveillance, Race, and the Future of Law Enforcement.”
In 2016, Twitter allegedly asked that Dataminr stop providing intelligence agencies with Twitter tools and content but as TechCrunch reported:
“… Dataminr isn’t ending its relationship with the government altogether: Dataminir still counts In-Q-Tel, the non-profit investment arm of the CIA, as an investor. Dataminr has taken investment from Twitter, too, highlighting some of the conflicts that remain as tech companies fight for more transparency and autonomy from government control.”
Dataminr’s Yale leadership is believed to still have a $ 255,000 contract with the Department of Homeland Security. The protestations of Twitter and apparent withdrawal from US intelligence blood-hounding by Dataminr appear to be nothing more than smoke and mirrors designed to put the public off the scent.
However, perhaps even more relevant to the Twitter censorship of Covid-19 dissident media, scientists and medical experts, and famously, David Icke, all of whom were challenging establishment “science”, is perhaps also related to its partnership with Dataminr. In late 2016, Twitter told TechCrunch that Dataminr “uses public Tweets to sell breaking news alerts to […] government agencies such as the World Health Organisation” although the “not for surveillance” caveat was thrown in.
The billionaire complex apprentices, managing narratives for their mentors
Penn and Dorsey are not in the upper echelons of the ruling elite circles. They are the keen instruments of power, eager to please and to do the bidding of those in positions of power they perhaps aspire to one day. The wealthiest people in the world are providing funding for the Covid-19 response, with good reason. It is the portal to the world vision they have been working towards for decades, perhaps even centuries.
At the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, January 2020, historian and philosopher, Yuval Harari, gave talks on the future of humanity. Harari talks about the “useless class”, he describes the data colonies that will be formed under some projected “dictator.” In the world, Harari envision, if a dissident’s mind can be read by a centralised AI data hub, he can be arrested for non-compliance with the dictatorship.
Of course, the global dictatorship is already here with the Covid-19 measures, the obligatory masking, martial law, the Army deployed to roll out testing and vaccines, mandatory vaccines (you will not be able to function in society without one), the incarceration of the elderly, the destitution and isolation of children in schools and distance learning, digitalised education systems. The future according to this totalitarian, neo-feudalist system is bleak for humanity unless we collectively wake up.
Penn and Dorsey are just two of a collection of useful pathways to the Great Reset. They are the fear-stokers and narrative managers, ensuring that people fear death, fear their own powerlessness against a “virus” that stalks them even in their own home.
As journalist, Peter Koenig, described earlier this year:
“The virus is just a clever idea to use an invisible enemy for instilling fear, worldwide, by this minuscule, insanely rich and psychotically power-hungry elite to put the entire world population to its knees. FEAR that obliterates the human immune system and may bring about a range of illnesses far worse than covid-19, including cancer, coronary diseases, diabetes – and much more.”
It is time to recognise that death is an inevitable part of our existence as human beings, that visions of immortality offered by those who will distort and twist humanity out of shape to create a dystopian future for all but the very privileged few, are nothing but the erosion of all that is human. Being human is what will enable us to fight back. When we remember what we cherish as human beings, a smile, a hug, the comfort of touch and the warmth of human interaction perhaps we will start fighting before we lose what makes us who we are to the vision of those who see us as ultimately expendable.
When Do We Start Coming out of the Covid-19 Mass Hysteria?
By Michael Fumento | American Institute for Economic Research | December 13, 2020
Men . . . go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.” So wrote Scottish journalist Charles Mackay in his 1841 book Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, which for good reason to this day remains in print.
The Covid-19 hysteria, scientifically called mass psychogenic illness, that began in March has yet to peak. And if some have it their way it will continue indefinitely, merely going, in medical terminology, from epidemic to endemic. That is, it will never fully go away no matter what. We apparently finally have some medicines that work with countless more being tested, doctors have gotten better at applying treatments, vaccines are being administered in what is by far record time, and yet the media and public health community onslaught shows absolutely no sign of abating.
We have heard White House Covid-19 task force member Dr. Deborah Birx claim “This is not just the worst public health event. This is the worst event that this country will face, not just from a public health side.” Oy! This even as we’re now hearing the mainstream media, led by cult figure Dr. Anthony Fauci, say that the vaccinations now being rolled out don’t mean the masks can come off. Start with the second first.
There are any number of cute memes asking in some manner, “If masks work, why do we need social distancing? If social distancing works, why do we need masks?” Well, it’s called a layered defense (with no pun intended regarding the use of masks or those people you see wearing two at once.) Cars are filled with a vast number of safety devices and roads have also been made safer in myriad ways, but it doesn’t mean they all don’t work in their own manner. So whatever arguments there are against masks (such as that they don’t stop aerosolized virus) aren’t necessarily negated because social distancing is still encouraged or mandated.
But we are left wondering, “Then when do masks come off? When do the other measures end if it’s independent of vaccinations?”
Remember that originally lockdowns and masking were supposed to be extremely temporary, as little as 15 days, to “flatten the curve.” And it was supposed to be a one-time flattening. But it didn’t work out that way. Once the original goal was achieved, the posts were moved. And nobody told us to where. It’s like literal goalposts; if not the zero-yard line then any other goal is arbitrary.
Except. For. One. That’s total elimination of the disease. That may be close to impossible and incredibly expensive to even try, but like eliminating all carbon emissions in a decade it is a goal.
The problem, of course, is that we’ve never eliminated an airborne virus by quarantining healthy people and there’s no scientific breakthrough that has made that any more possible now than it’s ever been. For example, the masks virtually everyone is using, even first-liners, are no better than what some people used during the Spanish flu a century ago. Social distancing dividers at various businesses and schools are just like the sneeze guards at the local buffet. Contact tracing with use of mobile devices has been hailed as a savior of sorts, and perhaps can be of help, albeit at the expense of invading privacy. At least it’s targeted, right? Well, no. It seems to be of limited efficacy without distancing.
So again, when do masks get to come off? Can we ever return to pre-Covid life? Or is the answer contained in the term “New Normal?” That is at least until Covid-19 is eliminated, which took 25 years with a smallpox vaccine. (By the way, the polio eradication program has a target date of 2005.) That’s not a typo. And now it’s being threatened by a shift of resources to, you guessed it, Covid-19.
When is it okay to sit next to another human being or be touched again without being guilt-tripped – or fined and jailed? It doesn’t seem an unreasonable query, but nobody at the press conferences dazzled by the glow of Fauci’s halo ever thinks to ask.
As for Birx’s claim, repeated by CDC director Robert Redfield, she’s either off her rocker or simply lying. There’s no third option. In 1918-19, the so-called Spanish Flu swept through the world killing, adjusted to today’s population, 325 to 430 million. These people died of the flu, not with. And, notes the CDC, in direct contrast with coronavirus, “The high mortality in healthy people, including those in the 20-40 year age group, was a unique feature of this pandemic.”
At the same time the world was suffering the torment of WWI (perhaps 20 million deaths), not to mention the horrific smallpox, and vastly higher rates than today of malaria, yellow fever, Dengue, measles, mumps, rubella and a host of other lethal diseases against which there weren’t even treatments. Remember that President Calvin Coolidge’s son died of infection from a blister in 1924. No antibiotics.
As for Time’s “Worst Year Ever” cover, perhaps it’s a matter of perspective, as exemplified in the satirical term “First World Problem.” Which to a great extent is what Covid-19 is. Consider that all those comorbidities tied to higher mortality are related to the cultures of advanced societies – essentially bad diet, sedentary lifestyles, and simply living longer. Covid-19 this year could represent “a loss of less than 1/1,000th of the population’s remaining years to live,” according to one published analysis. Imagine throwing a brick into an Olympic-sized pool and trying to measure a rise in the waterline.
Meanwhile about 2.2 million children alone die each and every year in poorer countries from diarrhea, according to the CDC. That’s last year, this year, and next year as well. (Assuming coronavirus doesn’t drain anti-diarrheal efforts – which apparently it is. No Covid-19 shibboleth is more disingenuous than “All lives matter.” Perhaps, but obviously some lives matter more than most.
What we clearly have is a pandemic of self-absorption, part and parcel to mass psychogenic illness. At some point hopefully we will feel the shame of the Salem witch hunters and all those who aided and abetted them, those in the courts who squirmed and screamed every time a suspect witch was questioned. Maybe we’ll shun the current panic-mongers, as those people were later shunned. But for now it’s full-bore hysteria. And there’s no end in sight. It’s more for that reason that, indeed, 2020 has been a very bad year.
Michael Fumento is a lawyer, author, and journalist who has been writing on epidemic hysterias for 35 years. His Website is http://www.fumento.com.
Pope Francis plans to ‘fix’ global capitalism – with the help of the Rothschilds, Rockerfellers and Mastercard
By Robert Bridge | RT | December 11, 2020
The Vatican has said it will partner with Fortune 500 companies to address various economic grievances, including inequality and environmental degradation. But is it really incumbent upon the Bishop of Rome to virtue-signal?
Anyone entertaining hopes that planet Earth might escape the insanity of 2020 without any more mind-blowing stories may wish to fasten their seatbelts for a hard landing.
At a time when a global pandemic has swept away millions of jobs, and transformed a handful of global capitalists from ‘merely wealthy’ to fantastically wealthy overnight, Pope Francis has decided to take sides in this epic battle. Any hunches what side that might be? Hint: much like the Vatican, it is immensely wealthy, influential, and acts like a government unto itself.
Yes, you guessed it. Instead of the poor and destitute – you know, ‘the meek who shall inherit the earth’ rigmarole – taking their rightful place alongside the Pope to fight against globalization on steroids, the Vatican has announced it will form a “historic partnership” with big business, known as the Council for Inclusive Capitalism. You can’t make this stuff up. And make no mistake: this is no mere talk shop, but rather a vast undertaking that involves “more than $10.5 trillion in assets under management, companies with over $2.1 trillion of market capitalization, and 200 million workers in more than 163 countries.”
“Capitalism has created enormous global prosperity, but it has also left too many people behind, led to the degradation of our planet, and is not widely trusted in society,” said Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild, Founder of the Council and Managing Partner of Inclusive Capital Partners. “This council will follow the warning from Pope Francis to listen to ‘the cry of the Earth and the cry of the poor’ and answer society’s demands for a more equitable and sustainable model of growth.”
In other words, in an apparent act of divine intervention, the Rothschild family (whose wealth is estimated at $20 billion, although nobody really knows for sure), together with other famous brand names of globalization, such as the Rockefellers and Mastercard, will now take up the standard for the world’s downtrodden. Who will be the first one to hold their breath?
I tried to contain my skepticism, I really did, until I read a bit deeper into this contract between the Catholic Church and corporate power. Any guesses as to who will ensure the corporate chieftains live up to their end of the bargain?
Known as the Guardians for Inclusive Capitalism – I kid you not – these 27 devout and morally outstanding individuals all hail from the golden one percent. Let’s call them the Pope’s 27 billionaire disciples. Really outstanding people, such as President of the Rockefeller Foundation Rajiv Shah, CEO of Mastercard Ajay Banga, and CEO of Salesforce Marc Benioff, will now behave like Good Samaritans, carrying out the will of the Holy See around a ravaged, lockdown-wearied planet. And here is the catch: there is not a single Vatican cardinal or even a deacon on the list of Guardians. So, who will guard over the guardians? Yes, the corporate elite themselves! They must have read Donald Trump’s ‘The Art of the Deal’.
My initial skepticism shot into overdrive when it became clear what acts of charity the council would promote: “The Guardians will hold themselves accountable, committing to a list of intended actions involving environmental, social and governance matters,” Forbes reported. “The Guardians … have said they plan to hire and promote more women, increase diversity hires, commit to clean energy by purchasing 100% renewable electricity, reduce greenhouse gas emissions…” Yada, yada, yada.
Forgive me, Father, but that sounds an awful lot like the controversial progressive platform being touted by Joe Biden and Kamala Harris that has divided the United States down the middle. In other words, this unholy marriage has already alienated at least one half of the US population, who fear a Biden presidency will herald in an age of socialism in America. Meanwhile, it is hardly reassuring that these profit-driven individuals will be allowed to “hold themselves accountable” to take on unspecified “social and governance matters” and “other initiatives,” whatever those happen to be.
The reason for suspicion should be obvious. Aside from the absurdity of letting profit-driven corporations play guardian over themselves, we are now living in a time when these out-of-control behemoths are no longer content to just hawk their products to consumers; they have taken a serious stand on cultural and political issues, which many people find unacceptable yet must bear silently with a smile.
Using their profits from consumer spending, corporations such as Coca-Cola can run an extremely controversial Sprite advertisement campaign, for example, that promotes a transgender lifestyle and that will be seen by millions of impressionable children. Or how about Gillette’s massively disappointing (and disliked) commercial that took issue with so-called ‘toxic masculinity.’ Are these the “other initiatives” that corporations will be forcing on an unsuspecting public with the stamp of papal authority? Personally, I’ve never heard Pope Francis speak out against these extremely provocative ideas.
Perhaps even more worrying is that many companies, compelled to prove they are taking a stand on behalf of the latest cause célèbre, have enthusiastically jumped aboard the Black Lives Matter juggernaut, which critics – of which there is no shortage, even among the black American population – say works to the disadvantage of other races, not least white Americans, who have become the bane of Western civilization overnight.
Is this the sort of ‘equality’ big business will be promoting with the quiet blessing of the Vatican? In their woke bid to become more ‘equal and diverse,’ will corporations begin to promote particular groups of people at the expense of others? After all, the Trump administration was just forced to take executive action against ‘critical race theory’ inside the government, while academia is now rampant with lectures teaching the evils of the ignoble white man. Are we on the precipice of a new age of racism in the United States and elsewhere, where the historic tables are turned with the help of corporate America?
Although Pope Francis may have the best intentions at heart in promoting this sort of dialogue between the Vatican and the corporate world, unless there is real involvement by the Church to rein in corporate power, it will become a wasted opportunity in very short order.
The Council for Inclusive Capitalism is nothing more and nothing less than a cynical PR stunt for corporate power that allows their controversial initiatives, heavily steeped in the rapacious accumulation of profit, as well as the promotion of dangerous ‘woke’ values, to win the seal of approval from one of the most powerful religious authorities on the planet.
Such a program really amounts to an act of mindless virtue-signaling from the Catholic Church, which has fallen out of favor of late, and a cheap opportunity for the corporate world to conceal its behavior behind the shroud of morality and saintliness. It would have been far more effective and symbolic had Pope Francis committed himself to a contract with the people, with his true followers, in the fight against corporate power. Instead, he made a pact with the devil.
Robert Bridge is an American writer and journalist. He is the author of ‘Midnight in the American Empire,’ How Corporations and Their Political Servants are Destroying the American Dream. @Robert_Bridge

