Disinformation “Expert” Tells People To Only Use “Trusted Sources,” Avoid “Doing Your Own Research”
By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | April 6, 2024
Brianna Lyman, elections correspondent at The Federalist, recently reported on a panel discussion featuring Al Schmidt, Pennsylvania Secretary of the Commonwealth, and Beth Schwanke, Executive Director of the Pitt Disinformation Lab. Schmidt and Schwanke, speaking at a forum organized by Spotlight PA, voiced their stance on “misinformation” and “disinformation” surrounding elections. Strikingly, Schwanke recommended that rather than conducting self-led investigations, Pennsylvanians should place their confidence in so-called “trusted” sources. These include certain institutions and media outlets that have unfortunately been tied in the past to acts of censorship.
“One thing everyone can do to make sure they are seeing accurate information is to use trusted sources. So in elections that means using the Department of State, that means using your county elections office, it means using media organizations that follow, that adhere, to professional journalism standards like … your local NPR affiliate,” Schwanke said. “And it doesn’t mean you know, ‘doing your own research’ and just asking questions and sharing, you know, posts from – I don’t know, in my case, it’s Uncle Joe, right? It means being thoughtful about where your sources are coming from.”
Schwanke’s advice, interestingly, seemed to discourage individual research, questioning, and sharing of ideas. Instead, she advocated the use of sources like the Department of State, county elections offices, and, strikingly, media organizations such as local NPR affiliates, which she implied upheld superior journalistic standards.
Despite what Schwanke says, the importance of being vigilant about our sources of information cannot be overstated. This was vividly demonstrated in the lead-up to the 2020 election when a significant story on Hunter Biden’s laptop by the New York Post was unjustly labeled “disinformation,” and subsequently suppressed across several tech platforms.
As The Federalist reported, what made matters worse, in an incident hinting at bias, NPR blatantly refused to report on the story, with its Managing Editor Terence Samuels declaring it as unworthy of coverage.
The Pennsylvania State Department presented a similar cause for alarm. It announced its collaboration with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) to monitor and control online talks deemed a “threat” related to the election process. Despite its claimed intention to offer voters accurate, trustworthy election-related data and to counter threats such as so-called “misinformation,” there is good reason to question the impartiality of its activities. Case in point, CISA had previously facilitated the silencing of Americans expressing valid concerns on social media, as if they were spreading “disinformation,” and even had a post from President Donald Trump flagged under these pretenses.
Related:
Pennsylvania Collaborates With DHS and CISA To Monitor Online Election-Related Speech
New Challenges to the First Amendment from the Biden Administration
By Peter van Buren | We Meant Well | April 3, 2024
The great irony is despite all the fear mongering spewed out about Donald Trump ending democracy, it is mostly the Democrats who are taking shots at its most sacred freedoms, those of the First Amendment.
The House recently passed a bill, HR 7521, seeking to “ban” the popular app Tik Tok from America’s smartphones. The logic works like this: Tik Tok is owned by a Chinese company. Chinese companies are under the control of the Chinese Communists. Therefore, Tik Tok is brainwashing American youth while at the same time gathering their personal data for some undefined yet assumed nefarious use. Tik Tok thus should be banned.
No evidence has been presented for any of the assertions listed — no evidence the Chinese government exerts control over Tik Tok, whose contents are 100 percent user-created, no evidence the app has any purpose other than to make money, and no evidence the app collects data and uses it in some way, nefarious or not. It just feels scary bad, like any other Red Scare, and so the House moved to ban it. The Senate votes soon, and Joe Biden says he will sign the bill if it reaches him.
This is not the first time the government has tried to ban Tik Tok. In 2021, President Donald Trump issued an executive order against Tik Tok that was halted in federal court when a judge found it was “arbitrary and capricious.” Another judge found that the national security threat posted by Tik Tok was “phrased in the hypothetical.” When the state of Montana tried to ban the app in 2023, a federal judge found it “oversteps state power and infringes on the constitutional rights of users,” with a “pervasive undertone of anti-Chinese sentiment.” Candidate Trump now opposes the Tik Tok ban.
You’d think that was enough for Tik Tok. Yet note the ban is just on some Chinese company owning the app and the bill allows for an American company or ally to buy Tik Tok and go on its merry way. It’s not a ban, it’s a hijacking. And don’t think the Chinese won’t find an American app to retaliate against. Listening Apple and Android?
But that is not where the true First Amendment challenge lies, though “banning” the app can itself be seen as restricting speech. The real challenge lies in the details of the actual bill, another Patriot Act in hiding.
Section 2(a)(1) of the bill prohibits “foreign adversary controlled applications” (FACA) from operating in the U.S. The prohibition applies not just to the app itself but to app stores and Internet hosting providers. There’s even a provision for a penalty of $5,000 per user fine; Tik Tok has 170 million users. Effectively, the bill creates a Federal government kill switch preventing distribution of “prohibited” apps or websites at the hosting level, clear top-down central government censorship of speech and absolutely unconstitutional under the First Amendment. Unless of course the weasel excuse is used that the actual killing of the imported app is carried out by Apple and Google as proxies without being touched by the Feds, the same trick currently used to gather American citizen data, in addition to direct hoovering up of material by the NSA on a scale the Chinese could only dream of.
What is a “foreign adversary controlled application” under Section 2(g)(3) of the new bill? Any social/content-sharing website, desktop app, mobile app, or VR app that has more than a million monthly active users creating content is a FACA when two conditions are met: First, if it is “controlled by a foreign adversary” or a subsidiary of or a successor to an entity controlled by a foreign adversary. Second, if the President determines it “presents a significant threat to the national security of the United States.” The term “controlled by a foreign adversary” means that the company (a) is domiciled in, headquartered in, or organized under the laws of a foreign adversary country; or (b) has a 20 percent ownership group from one of those countries; or (c) is “subject to the direction or control of a foreign person or entity” from one of those countries (Section 2(g)(1). “Adversary” is currently defined elsewhere in the U.S. Code as Russia, China, North Korea or Iran, but can be changed to someday be, say, France (remember “Freedom Fries“?)
There in the details lies the real challenge to the First Amendment, a set of vague criteria that allow the president to ban websites and apps based on his own finding of threat. No appeals, no due process. Censorship.
Americans have a right to speak freely, and to listen/read/watch freely and make up their own minds. The Supreme Court in Lamont v. Postmaster General already ruled in 1964 that this right even extends to foreign propaganda (the case involved Soviet propaganda materials passing through the U.S. Mail.) In addition, the irony of the U.S. government showing concern for what a foreign company might do with user data when in the U.S. such data is openly for sale, including to the government itself, cannot be dismissed. The Tik Tok ban is bad law, likely unconstitutional, and generally unconscionable.
The Tik Tok bill is not the only current challenge to the First Amendment. As exposed by the Twitter Files and elsewhere, for years the Biden administration worked hand-in-glove with the big tech social media companies, @jack’s old Twitter in particular, to censor speech. Various agencies, including those responsible for Covid-19 policy, would contact the media companies to demand wrongthink posts be taken down. Particularly offensive were conservative posts questioning the efficiency and safety of the Covid vaccine, and those dealing with election fraud.
The question of whether or not the government can do that — demanding specific online speech be killed — reached the Supreme Court, and oral arguments were held earlier this month in the case of Murthy v. Missouri. The Court seemed skeptical of the idea that such action by the government was unconstitutional on its face, as the states claimed. Instead, the justices’ questions seemed to lean toward how the censorship was done. The government was free to persuade social media carriers, cajole them, argue with them but as long as the government did not force them to take something down, it was likely legal. The states contend the looming power of the federal government made each request, however bland and polite, into a threat. Same as when the mafia thug in the movies says “Nice home you have here, hate to see anything happen to it if you’re late paying us.” In one interaction a government watchdog seeking to deep six some posts stated “the White House is considering its options” if the take down effort fails.
There was room for debate. Justice Alito stated “When I see the White House and Federal officials repeatedly saying that Facebook and the Federal government should be partners… regular meetings, constant pestering… Wow, I cannot imagine Federal officials taking that approach to print media.” Alito also thought the barrage of emails from the White House and others to the social media companies may have met the legal standard for coercion. The states agreed, saying “Pressuring platforms in back rooms, shielded from public view, is not using a bully pulpit. That’s just being a bully… We don’t need coercion as a theory. The government ‘cannot induce, encourage or promote’ to get private actors to do what government cannot: censor Americans’ speech.”
Justice Kentaji Brown Jackson came back with “Whether or not the government can do this… depends on the application of our First Amendment jurisprudence. There may be circumstances in which the government could prohibit certain speech on the internet or otherwise. My biggest concern is that your view has the First Amendment hamstringing the government in significant ways.”
Justice Barrett seemed uncomfortable with the lower courts’ conclusion that the Biden administration could be banned not only from “coercion,” but also from any action that “significantly encourages” platforms to take down protected speech. “Encouragement would sweep in an awful lot,” she said.
Interactions between administration officials and news outlets are part of a valuable dialogue that is not prohibited by the First Amendment, said Justices Kavanaugh and Kagan. The Justices suggested instead there is a role for vigorous efforts by the government to combat bad speech, for example discouraging posts harmful to children or conveying anti-Semitic or Islamophobic messages.
Brown’s, et al, remarks are frightening from a constitutional point of view, basically saying when the government is ineffective in creating dominant content of its own to address public messaging (i.e., “Vaccines are safe”) it justifies proxy censorship to eliminate counter information.
A Supreme Court decision is expected in June.
US using Nordic countries’ NATO membership to advance Arctic militarization
By Lucas Leiroz | April 6, 2024
The US plans to use the NATO access of Nordic countries to increase its military presence in the Arctic. In a recent statement, an American official announced Washington’s plan to build a large weapons warehouse in the region, with Finnish and Swedish support. The measure will significantly increase the militarization of the Arctic and aims to help the US overcome Russian military superiority in the region.
The plan was announced by US Materiel Commander Christopher Mohan during an interview with the newspaper Breaking Defense. According to him, Finland and Sweden could help the US with the project, considering their strategic geography. He did not give any details about the possible location of the depot, but stated that NATO is jointly analyzing all possibilities. He also stated that the US and allies are discussing what would be the most appropriate equipment to deploy in the region.
“The addition of the NATO partners changes the security landscape and our responsibilities as part of NATO (…) [This project will] embrace and integrate Finland and Sweden into the NATO enterprise, and that’s going to drive some changes on the ground,” he said.
The measure is just one of several policies adopted by Washington and its allies in recent years to try to reverse Russian military superiority in the Arctic. For decades, the US has not had any special focus on the Arctic in its defense strategies. The main objective of American strategic plans has always been to “encircle” and “isolate” Russia. The US has focused for many years on achieving this goal through the militarization of Europe and the destabilization of Central Asia and the Middle East, but Americans have paid little attention to the Arctic – a region where the Russians have become very strong over the decades.
Now, however, the US is concerned about this weakness in the region. With the escalation of tensions with Russia, Washington is trying to improve its positions in the Arctic in order to reverse the current scenario of Russian advantage. In recent years, several escalatory policies have been promoted by the US – some of them even openly provocative and targeted at Russia.
For example, in 2022, Lawrence Melnicoff, commander of the European Special Operations Command, stated that the US should actually “provoke” Russia in the Arctic. According to him, Washington should seek joint strategies with Norway to increase its presence in the Arctic Circle and thus deter Russia in the region. He states that Russia has expansionist plans that will be prevented only through direct deterrence, which is why NATO should maintain strategic positions that allow it to neutralize Russian forces in the Arctic in a possible conflict scenario.
“We are intentionally trying to be provocative without being escalatory (…) We’re trying to deter Russian aggression, expansionist behavior, by showing enhanced capabilities of the allies (…) It complicates Russian decision-making because we know that they’re targeting very, very large specific aggregations of allied power, [such as] Ramstein Air Base, RAF Lakenheath, things like that (…) If worse comes to worst and somebody takes out these power hubs, we can forward-project precision artillery fire across the alliance with our partners”, he said at the time.
Obviously, this is a fallacious US narrative. The Arctic is a region traditionally occupied by the countries that have access to it. Russia has the Arctic as a vital point in its strategic environment and naturally seeks to maintain a strong military presence in the region to guarantee its national security. The US and NATO countries, however, do not use access to the Arctic to develop a defensive strategy. On the contrary, they are looking for the Arctic as a possible point of attack against Russia. The Western objective in the Arctic is simply to harm Russia, not to protect itself. If the West adopted a policy of diplomacy and peaceful dialogue with Moscow, there would be no military race in the Arctic, but clearly NATO’s intention is to hurt Russia as much as possible.
To achieve these provocative objectives, the US will use the strategic location of NATO’s new members as a tool of war. The Nordic countries will be induced to actively participate in the Arctic militarization process, co-leading with Washington an escalation of tensions with Russia. And this will be extremely harmful for them, because, if the crisis escalates into an open conflict in the future, these countries will be priority targets and will be in a much greater risk zone for Russian attacks than the US.
Once again, access to NATO appears to be a trap for Finland and Sweden, which are being used as mere war tools by the US.
Lucas Leiroz is a member of the BRICS Journalists Association, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, military expert.
You can follow Lucas on X (former Twitter) and Telegram.
THE CANADIAN GOVERNMENT’S WAR ON SUPPLEMENTS
The Highwire with Del Bigtree | April 4, 2024
Constitutional Attorney & President of the Natural Health Products Protection Association, Shawn Buckley, LLB, warns Del of the Canadian government’s war on vitamins and supplements via the introduction of extreme regulations designed to restrict access and raise the cost of natural products.
Does the Hepatitis B Vaccine Used in the U.S. Stop Infection and Transmission of Hepatitis B in a School Setting?
Your bite-size dose of immunity against vaccine misinformation. Spread the truth.
Injecting Freedom by Aaron Siri | March 29, 2024
Does the Hepatitis B (HepB) vaccine used in the United States stop infection and transmission of Hepatitis B in a school setting?
“Yes” or “No”?
When picking an answer, keep in mind that HepB is mandated in every state except a handful to attend grades K-12 in the United States, and the justification for these rights-crushing mandates is to prevent transmission of Hepatitis B in the school setting.
The above is a great question and so the Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN) sent a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the CDC asking for “documentation sufficient to reflect any case(s) of transmission of Hepatitis B in an elementary, middle, or high school setting.”
In response, the CDC explained that: “A search of our [CDC] records failed to reveal any documents” of “transmission of Hepatitis B in an elementary, middle or high school setting.” This is because Hepatitis B is a bloodborne illness, typically transmitted by sex workers or drug users sharing needles — not activities that occur in a classroom setting.
And of course, at the risk of stating the obvious, just because someone hasn’t gotten a HepB vaccine doesn’t mean they have Hepatitis B! It is also noteworthy that, as the CDC explains, “almost all children 6 years and older and adults infected with the hepatitis B virus recover completely and do not develop chronic infection.”
Screenshots of the relevant portions of the websites linked above (in case they change):
Rogues’ Gallery
Never forget that they’re a bunch of liars
By John Leake | Courageous Discourse™ | April 5, 2024
Maddow, Walensky, and Biden may plead ignorance, as they apparently don’t understand anything, but Fauci, Gates, and Bourla certainly knew they were lying. As Fauci himself noted in a November 2022 paper:
… non-systemic respiratory viruses such as influenza viruses, SARS-CoV-2, and RSV tend to have significantly shorter incubation periods (Table 1) and rapid courses of viral replication. They replicate predominantly in local mucosal tissue, without causing viremia, and do not significantly encounter the systemic immune system or the full force of adaptive immune responses, which take at least 5–7 days to mature, usually well after the peak of viral replication and onward transmission to others. …
Taking all of these factors into account, it is not surprising that none of the predominantly mucosal respiratory viruses have ever been effectively controlled by vaccines.
Fauci already knew this about influenza and coronaviruses before 2020, and it quickly became apparent that SARS-CoV-2 was no different in this respect.
Never forget this Rogues’ Gallery of liars and the lies they told the world in order to justify tyranny based on fraudulent assertions.
In New Bird Flu Scare Comes Tacit Admission Coronavirus Was Not a Big Deal
By Adam Dick | Peace and Prosperity Blog | April 5, 2024
“Bird flu pandemic could be ‘100 times worse’ than COVID, scientists warn.” That is the headline at the New York Post for one of many media reports out Thursday spreading the latest pandemic scare.
Note the “100 times worse” comparison. Why not “nearly as bad,” “as bad,” or even “twice as bad” as coronavirus? The answer is that the fearmongers know that most people are on to the coronavirus hoax whereby a run-of-the-mill health threat was exaggerated to justify tyrannical measures including forcing termination of a vast amount of in-person interaction, mandating mask wearing, and even pushing and mandating experimental “vaccine” shots marketed as safe and effective despite being both dangerous and ineffective. All the while, good early treatment options were suppressed, resulting in greater sickness and death as well as expansive use of dangerous medical procedures and pharmaceuticals for people whose serious illness could have been prevented.
The world could be turned upside down over coronavirus because of a concerted effort of government and media to paint coronavirus as both extremely dangerous to everyone and something for which there were not already available good medical countermeasures. Both of those assertions were false. But, at the time, many people bought into the charade and trusted that “the science” propounded by the government and media selected “experts” required radical changes in human behavior, widespread participation on novel medical experimentation, and extreme restraints on liberty.
But now it is a new day. Looking back on the coronavirus scare, increasingly people realize, including some who are ashamed to discuss the matter, that they were duped. And they don’t want to be duped again. “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me,” the saying goes.
Yet, trickery is a go-to tactic for expanding power. The government and its business allies in medical and other fields aren’t about to give up on that tactic that reaped such huge gains during the coronavirus scare. Thus the ploy of tacitly admitting what has become common knowledge — that coronavirus was way overblown — so that the repression and profit process can be repeated anew to deal with a threat that, trust us, is this time really, really, really bad.
And what scientist does the New York Post article quote to support the claim that scientists say the bird flu is “100 times worse than COVID” declared in the article’s title? His name is John Fulton, described in the article as “a pharmaceutical industry consultant for vaccines.”
Oh brother: Here we go again. Or do we? If enough people stand up and say “no you don’t this time,” this new dangerous charade can be stopped in its tracks.
New hacking allegations against China aren’t what they seem
By Timur Fomenko | RT | April 5, 2024
In March, the UK, in conjunction with the US and other members of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance, accused China of engaging in a state-sponsored hacking campaign against them. In response to the alleged ‘attack’ they launched coordinated sanctions against a small group of hackers and their associated businesses.
The sanctions were particularly big news in Britain, where the government suddenly decided that Beijing had been behind a hack on the electoral commission three years ago. Notably, the country’s Conservative party-aligned newspapers all pushed this narrative in an aggressive fashion.
These accusations by the Five Eyes nations are not so much genuine concerns as they are a deliberate and opportunistic act of political theatre which, largely driven by the US, seeks to slander China for diplomatic and political gain. The sanctions, although narrow in scope and thus meaningless, are designed to try and send a message to and about China. It is essentially a fearmongering campaign, which seeks to both undermine Beijing’s engagement with other countries and serve domestic political purposes in the US.
The rhythm of US escalation and de-escalation with China
The US has an adept foreign policy whereby it intentionally chooses to escalate and de-escalate tensions with China at opportune moments, which is precisely why calls for “engagement” with Beijing coming from Washington D.C. cannot be trusted. The US does not change its goals or its policies, only its tactics in consideration of what suits it at that particular moment. Hence it has always alternated between overtures and deliberate provocations. It usually does so by having a certain report or development leaked to the media at an opportunistic time, in order to craft a particular narrative which mandates a certain set of reactions and policy responses.
To give some examples of such, the Trump administration played down tensions with China directly in 2019, even amidst the Hong Kong crisis, in order to secure a “trade deal” with Beijing. Once it got what it wanted by 2020, and the Covid-19 pandemic struck, it deliberately unleashed a full-on crusade against Beijing on every front. Similarly, the Biden administration came into office and then immediately upped tensions with China on the Xinjiang issue in order to damage China’s ties with Europe in a build-up to coordinated sanctions as a display of transatlantic unity.
After this was done, it then decided it wanted to “cool” things down for a bit and establish “guardrails” so the rhetoric guns went silent for a few months as Washington reached out to Beijing. Then, as the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics came, it took the “Xinjiang card” off the shelf again with a number of timed leaks and publications geared towards supporting a Winter Olympics boycott, as well as a sweeping ban on all Xinjiang goods under the premise of “forced labour” at that time.
What we see is that the US does not truly de-escalate with China, it “blows hot and cold” and essentially manipulates the media cycle to pursue its policy preferences as it sees fit. This means that major issues pertaining to China only tend to appear when there is an agenda serving it.
The newest phase
Now, the Biden administration has made a political design to escalate tensions with China by accusing it, in coordination with the Five Eyes, of state-backed hacking and cybercrime. The fact that the British government would sit on such an accusation for three years suggests both clear political purpose and timing. The question is, why? First, we are approaching a Presidential election in the US. It was always an inevitability that the administration would want to appear “tough” on China to prevent the issue from being used as an attack point by Biden’s rival, Donald Trump. As seen in 2020, an election year tends to become a year of very aggressive rhetoric and extreme theatrics.
Secondly, there is the goal of undermining China’s engagement with Europe. It has been publicly announced that Xi Jinping will visit a number of European countries in May, including France. As stated above, the US, with the support of the Five Eyes countries, actively seeks to damage Chinese diplomacy with Europe by weaponizing negative publicity in order to narrow political space for engagement.
What we see from this is that the US engages China on its own terms, but seeks to prevent those it deems as “allies” from doing the same, and thus resorts to psychological warfare through the manipulation of mass media.
In conclusion, when one sees these strategies being utilised, one recognises that the Western media has far less independence and impartiality than it claims to have, but is indirectly subject to the preferences of US policy. When the White House says “jump”, reporters ask, “how high?” and thus we see that a new propaganda campaign has been cultivated against Beijing, but of course, we should not be blind to the reality that there is no greater weaponisation of cyberspace and espionage in the world than the system created by the Five Eyes. And are we really going to pretend the CIA doesn’t hack anyone?
US Diplomacy ‘Utterly Failed’ in Ukraine, Washington Should Seek Negotiations – Jeffrey Sachs
Sputnik – 05.04.2024
WASHINGTON – US policy in Ukraine has failed and instead of encouraging the country’s NATO membership bid Washington should seek peace negotiations with Russia, world-renowned economics professor Jeffrey Sachs told Sputnik.
While in Brussels, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Ukraine would become a member of NATO but did not specify a timeline. He added that the 2024 NATO summit in Washington will help build a bridge for Ukraine to join the alliance.
“Secretary Blinken’s statement is another disaster for Ukraine… American diplomacy has utterly failed and indeed collapsed,” said Sachs, Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University. “Secretary Blinken should be sitting down in negotiations with his counterpart Foreign Minister Lavrov rather than reiterating the utterly failed foreign policy that has brought on this war.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that NATO’s expansion to include Ukraine would create a direct national security threat to Russia and that Moscow considers the non-aligned status of Ukraine to be extremely important to put an end to the years-long conflict.
Trump warns: “lunatic” Biden could start World War III
By Ahmed Adel | April 5, 2024
Former US leader and current Republican Party presidential candidate Donald Trump warned in Michigan on April 2 that US President Joe Biden could trigger World War III. Trump’s comments come as he surges in the polls while Biden’s policy on Ukraine is continuously scrutinised. The former president also criticised the way his successor handled the nuclear issue, questioned his mental condition, and claimed that other foreign powers respected the US during his presidency.
“This guy has no clue,” the former president said about Biden. “He can’t put two sentences together, and he’s dealing with Putin, and he’s dealing with President Xi, and he’s dealing with Kim Jong-un. All people I know very well. We were under no threat from anybody until this guy got in office. Now they’re talking nuclear all the time. We didn’t talk nuclear.”
Trump recalled that, during his term, he rebuilt “nuclear power” to a level that “no one has” and that, in this context, it was “four safe years.”
“You were safe because they respected your president, and they respected the United States of America. And now you’re not safe. I will tell you we could end up in World War III with this lunatic,” he stressed.
According to a new Wall Street Journal poll published on April 3, Trump leads Biden in six of the seven closest swing states. Although Biden won Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania in 2020, Trump now holds a two-point lead in Michigan and a three-point lead in Pennsylvania. Biden also won Georgia, Nevada, and Arizona in the last election, but now the three states have stronger support for Trump, with the former president leading Georgia by three points, Nevada by four points, and Arizona by five points.
In a recent statement to USA Today, Trump spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said: “There are more than 100 polls showing President Trump crushing Joe Biden, including recent polling that has him leading in every key battleground state and winning independents by double digits.”
The prospect of Trump’s return has triggered an increase in debate among NATO allies about what Europe should do to ensure Washington continues to invest in transatlantic security. The Republican’s possible return also raised concerns among European officials that Trump could withdraw US aid to Ukraine because of comments that he would try to end the war in one day.
Reuters, citing five diplomats, reported on April 2 that NATO boss Jens Stoltenberg has proposed a $107 billion, five-year package of military aid to Ukraine so the Western alliance could have a more direct role in supporting Kiev. The NATO chief said the plan is in part “to shield against winds of political change,” but Trump is foremost on the minds of many, a senior NATO diplomat told the British agency.
The diplomats said that discussions were only at an early stage and that it was still unclear whether the $107 billion would be accepted by all 32 members—since a consensus must be reached—or how it would be financed.
“It goes some way to protecting in case of Trump. But it is impossible to create something Trump-proof,” said another diplomat. “A fund of 100 billion looks very optimistic, knowing how difficult it was to agree on a smaller amount at EU level.”
As part of the proposed package, NATO could also take over the operational functions of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, which coordinates arms deliveries from around 50 countries to Kiev and is now led by the US. With NATO’s Europe Supreme Allied Commander, General Chris Cavoli, in office, such a move could protect the Group from any political changes after the November US elections.
In effect, NATO recognises that there is a high possibility that Trump could return to the White House and is already preparing for a post-Biden scenario. Biden has supported most initiatives for Ukraine, but as his cognitive decline deepens and his numbers suffer in the polls, a Trump victory would almost certainly result in the retraction of support and force Kiev to negotiate with Moscow.
As Trump highlighted, Biden is a “lunatic” who is fanning the flames of a Third World War. Although it is unlikely the US would escalate with Russia to the extent of World War III for the sake of Ukraine, the former president highlights that global tensions were not as intense as they have been since Biden came to power, and he aims to return to this scenario. This prospect frightens NATO and much of Europe.
Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.
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From the Archives
The great ADHD swindle
By Daniel Ken | TCW Defending Freedom | May 20, 2023
Over more than two decades in the classroom I’ve taught thousands of children and teenagers: some were lovely and lots were hard-working. On the other hand, quite a number were disruptive and argumentative, and a number were violently opposed to learning. But I don’t think I’ve taught more than a handful of kids who could be properly described as having the symptoms of ADHD. And that handful could just as easily have had something else wrong with them. Because here’s the thing: despite the fact that the best part of a million children are medicated for the condition, ADHD doesn’t exist.
There’s no definitive medical test for it, experts can’t agree on what it actually means, and most of the symptoms disappear if the child in question has lots of exercise, good diet and, crucially, a set of clear behavioural boundaries, preferably set early in childhood and, for the boys at least, enforced by a stable adult male living at home. … continue
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