BY KEVIN BARRETT | JULY 23, 2023
To say that RFK Jr. goes out of his way to avoid offending Jews would be an understatement. He presents himself as the world’s biggest friend of the Jewish people in general and the Jewish (supremacist) state of Israel in particular.
The first mainstream article that covered RFK’s presidential run with a positive spin was David Samuels’s piece in the Jewish magazine Tablet. But since then there hasn’t exactly been a groundswell of Kennedy support in the mainstream Jewish community. Aside from free-thinking outliers like Naomi Wolf and some of my radio guests (Josh Mitteldorf, Barry Kissin, Steve Brown, Ron Rattner) it seems that most of American Jewry, or at least its media wing, views RFK Jr.’s candidacy with trepidation.
That trepidation metamorphosed into hysterical denunciation last week, when the candidate’s off-the-record dinner-table remarks about ethnic-specific bioweapons and COVID-19 triggered the biggest two-minute anti-Semitism media hatefest since Kanye West went defcon 3. The New York Post broke the story with a lying headline: “RFK Jr. says COVID was ‘ethnically targeted’ to spare Jews.” What Kennedy actually said, in informal conversation, was:
COVID-19. There is an argument that it is ethnically targeted. COVID-19 attacks certain races disproportionately. COVID-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese…We don’t know whether it was deliberately targeted or not but there are papers out there that show the racial or ethnic differential and impact.”
The candidate could be fairly accused of hyperbole: The study he was citing did not indicate how disproportionally COVID affected different ethnicities, but only analyzed one genetic factor, which may or may not have had much real-world effect. But that study does say pretty much what RFK says it does. What it does not say, and what RFK Jr. did not say, is that COVID was a Jewish-Chinese bioweapon designed to kill white and black people.
But you wouldn’t know that from the media coverage. Nor would you know it from remarks of Congressional reps like Debbie Wasserman Schulz, who tried to censor Kennedy’s anti-censorship testimony, saying “Mr. Kennedy has repeatedly made despicable antisemitic and anti-Asian comments.”
The witch hunt, of course, was unsurprising. What was surprising was that RFK Jr. would say something that was begging to be misinterpreted as “anti-Semitic.” This is the guy, after all, who presents himself as the most pro-Jewish, pro-Israel candidate in the known universe. Why would he even bring up the “ethnic targeting” study, much less exaggerate it in such a way as to practically force the ADL and its friends to accuse him of blaming COVID on the Jews?
Some RFK supporters might wonder if their hero, like Trump before him, is playing 3D chess. Maybe RFK knows full well who really killed his father and uncle. In that case, his exaggerated philosemitic pro-Israel schtick would be a ruse. Like his father before him, who kept publicly quiet about the murder of his brother JFK in hopes of winning the presidency and undoing the coup, RFK Jr. could be blowing (pro-Zionist) smoke to camouflage the reality of his mission. Could he have deliberately provoked the hysterical attacks in order to garner free publicity and let the media and political establishment further discredit itself—the sort of thing that Trump has made a political career out of?
All things considered, the 3D chess scenario is unlikely. RFK is considerably smarter than Trump, but he is less manipulative. Unlike Trump, RFK is sincere. He is the what-you-see-is-what-you-get candidate. I don’t think he’s lying or being manipulative when he professes undying love for Israel, hatred for Nazi Germany, and concern about COVID affecting ethnicities differently in light of what we know about ethnic-specific bioweapon research.
But the question remains: Why is Kennedy so irrationally extremist in his support for Israel? And why did he intemperately exaggerate the COVID-ethnicity study in such a way as to invite attacks? Both his rabidly Likudnik Zionism and his ill-considered “anti-Semitic” bioweapon speculation seem, shall we say, immoderate, if not a little unhinged.
So let’s put RFK Jr. on Dr. Freud’s proverbial couch. Freud coined the term reaction formation: “a defense mechanism in which people express the opposite of their true feelings, sometimes to an exaggerated extent. For instance, a man who feels insecure about his masculinity might act overly aggressive. Or a woman with substance use disorder may extol the virtues of abstinence.” In many cases, the subjects are not even consciously aware of their true feelings. The peacenik who is so bellicose in his pacifism that he is always starting fights—I have known several—is generally unaware that his real motivation is not dedication to peace, but smoldering inner aggression. And then there are the greedy, ambitious, competitive, materialistic people who adopt leftist politics to conceal their real feelings about money and status. I’ve known more than a few of those too. And don’t get me started about the ranting anti-global-warming fanatics who seem to think their bloviations will save the world while your skepticism will destroy it, even as their excessively comfortable lifestyles emit far more carbon in week than you do in a month.
So reaction formations are quite common, and often a big driver of people’s political views. RFK Jr.’s grossly exaggerated, seemingly irrational pro-Israel extremism has all the hallmarks of a classic reaction formation. If such is the case, Kennedy would be hiding his repressed hostility to the Jewish state not only from others, but also from himself.
But why would Kennedy hate Israel, yet remain in deep denial of his real feelings? For the same reason that Hamlet hated his stepfather Claudius but couldn’t bring himself to act. Israel killed Kennedy’s father, just like Claudius killed Hamlet’s. But just as Hamlet grew up in Claudius’s household, vulnerable to Claudius’s despotic power, RFK Jr. grew up in post-Zionist-coup America, helpless and defenseless. Vulnerable people in the household of an abuser, especially children, have a tendency to engage in identification with the aggressor: “an unconscious mechanism in which an individual identifies with someone who poses a threat or with an opponent who cannot be mastered.” From RFK Jr.’s perspective, that would be the Zionists. He totally identifies with them, even with their most disgustingly vulgar mediocrities like Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, and hyperbolically deems himself the biggest Zionist of all.
But What About the Blurt-Out?
If a reaction formation explains RFK’s ultra-Zionism, then what explains his COVID-targeted-to-spare-Jews blurt-out? Paging Dr. Freud again!
Actually, you don’t really need serious psychoanalytic chops to figure this one out. RFK’s repressed, unconscious hostility to Zionists, kept under wraps by his hyper-Zionist reaction formation, found a way of expressing itself. So although RFK was never consciously aware that what he was saying sounded a whole lot like “COVID was targeted to spare the Jews,” his unconscious mind was all-too-aware, and indeed put those equivocal words right into his mouth.
Like the classic Freudian slip, this kind of blurt-out scenario illustrates how the unconscious mind can occasionally short-circuit the conscious mind and speak unspeakable truths. Translation: “Outrageous Jewish anti-goy conspiracies are not always imaginary.” So the paranoid reaction of people like Debby Wasserman Schulz is not quite as crazy as it sounds: Debby’s unconscious is getting the gist of what Bobby’s unconscious is saying, and she doesn’t like it.
Intergenerational Trauma
The psychiatric symptoms on both sides stem from deeply-rooted intergenerational trauma. RFK Jr., of course, grew up with the trauma of his president-uncle’s dastardly murder in 1963, and his father’s equally dastardly murder (presumably by the same parties) in 1968. A modern-day Hamlet, he spent his formative years under tremendous social pressure to refrain from challenging his fathers’ and uncles’ murderers. We could also speculate about the Kennedy family’s roots in the holocausted earth of Ireland—the Irish have suffered real genocide and persecution to more than rival the Jews’ mostly-mythical suffering at the hands of alleged anti-Semites who supposedly hate them for no reason whatsoever—but let’s not go there, lest some of my less-enlightened readers start succumbing to Irish Holocaust denial.
On Wasserman-Schulz’s side, the intergenerational trauma is apparently so horrific that it can only be cured by psychedelic drugs. In “Can We Cure Anti-Semitism with Molly?” the Jewish Daily Forward’s senior editor Rob Eshman opens with a question:
“If you learned that a single pill had led a neo-Nazi to renounce his hateful beliefs, would you:
Eshman notes that Israel, the world’s MDMA capital, uses the “love drug” to treat PTSD. We may imagine that child-murdering IDF snipers like the “I shot 13 kids today” tweeter are gradually eased back into what passes for Israeli normalcy with the help of psychedelic sessions that rewire their brains for love (of fellow Zionist Jews at least) instead of drooling 24/7/365 hatred of Palestinian kids (“little snakes”) and the mothers who bear them.
But can MDMA cure Zionist Jewry of its 3000-year-old collective case of PTSD? To answer that question, we would need to know whether individual Jews really suffer the pain experienced by their persecuted ancestors. Scientists are working hard to convince us that they do.
An alternative explanation of why so many ultra-privileged Jews experience so much suffering from historical collective memories blames culture, not genetics. The film Defamation memorably shows Israeli children being horrifically traumatized by their elders, who drum it into their impressionable little heads that the goys all want to exterminate them.
And speaking of Jews traumatizing Jews, what about infant circumcision? Paging Dr. Bowlby!
Attachment studies have shown that very young children—babies, really—are extremely vulnerable to psychological trauma. A terrible experience at eight months of age or even earlier is likely to ruin your life in a way that a vastly worse experience at a later age might not. Traumatic experiences involving damage to the mother-child bond, in particular, seem to be responsible for much if not most of the world’s misery. (Moral: To form a happy and peaceful person, keep the baby in skin-to-skin contact with the mother, and breastfeed on demand, for the first two years of life, as many traditional cultures do.)
What you do NOT want to do is rip the baby out of the mother’s arms and inflict unspeakable torture by carving up the most sensitive part of its anatomy with a knife. This will wreck the mother-child bond due to the mother’s perceived betrayal of her child (and create overcompensation in the form of the Jewish mother syndrome) while forming an unconscious memory of a horrific attack by a terrifying outsider. Later in life, the child will be culturally conditioned to transfer its fear and loathing onto the imaginary figure of a new terrifying outsider: the evil goy who wants to kill us. It’s the perfect formula for creating a profoundly neurotic, powerfully ethnocentric group identity.
So to summarize: RFK Jr.’s dysfunctional relationship with Zionism—which stems from the willingness of traumatized Zionists like Ben Gurion to commit outrageous crimes in order to preserve the nuclear weapons they imagine they need to save their lives from the evil Jew-hating goys—is a complete mess. I doubt that even the best therapist, armed with all the MDMA in Israel, could effect a cure.
By Christina Maas | Reclaim The Net | July 20, 2023
In newly unveiled testimony, Laura Dehmlow, section chief of the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF), disclosed that the FBI was aware of the authenticity of Hunter Biden’s laptop as early as 2019. However, the Bureau declined to affirm its legitimacy to major tech companies during the 2020 election period.
That was already known. But it turns out that on the day the New York Post broke its report about the laptop, the FBI confirmed its validity to Twitter, only to retract their statement with a hasty “no further comment” response. From that point forward, the Bureau withheld comment on the laptop’s veracity to other tech giants, leading to widespread confusion and speculation ahead of the 2020 election.
According to a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, Dehmlow revealed in her testimony that FBI staff, who had been warning social media platforms of potential Russian interference via a “hack and leak” operation prior to the 2020 election, were aware that the Hunter Biden laptop story was not an instance of Russian disinformation.
We obtained a copy of the letter for you here.
When Twitter inquired about the laptop’s legitimacy on the day of the New York Post’s release, an FBI analyst confirmed its authenticity. However, an FBI attorney swiftly interrupted, leaving the conversation with “no further comment.” Following suit, Facebook also received the same vague response from the Bureau.
As per Dehmlow’s account, Twitter, after receiving initial confirmation about the laptop’s legitimacy, joined Facebook in imposing a censorship campaign that significantly influenced the voting behavior of a large number of Americans. Sharing the link was prohibited on Twitter, and the New York Post account was locked for several weeks. Facebook reduced the story’s visibility as well.
The FBI reportedly had regular interactions with major tech companies leading up to the election but chose to avoid answering direct questions about the laptop’s authenticity after the initial admission to Twitter.
In the backdrop of this confusing narrative, Big Tech was led to believe, by the FBI and other influencers, including the Biden campaign, that the controversial information from Hunter Biden’s laptop was Russian disinformation aimed at manipulating the election. When, in reality, many consider the censorship of the story to be the true attempt at election manipulation.
The FBI had possession of Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop as early as December 2019, a fact confirmed in Gary Shapley’s testimony, an IRS whistleblower, to the House Ways and Means Committee. Yet the FBI chose to maintain its “no comment” narrative until after the 2020 election, further compounding the confusion.
A federal judge’s memorandum ruling in Missouri v. Biden demonstrated that this approach deprived millions of Americans from getting a clear understanding of an important issue in the 2020 presidential election.
Chairman Jordan is now demanding that Wray identify those within the FBI’s FITF who knew about the laptop’s authenticity yet still advocated for the agency to remain silent until after the election. He also demanded all documents, records, and communications related to the FBI’s meetings with Silicon Valley giants since 2017 be handed over by August 3 and that all FBI employees involved in this issue be available for transcribed interviews with the committee.
Sputnik – 21.07.2023
WASHINGTON – An analyst with the FBI conducted an improper search of a US senator’s name in a surveillance database, American media reported on Friday, as lawmakers weigh the future of the agency’s surveillance authorities.
The FBI analyst searched information collected using warrantless surveillance programs using the names of a US senator and a state senator, the report said, citing a recently declassified court document.
The June 2022 searches were reportedly conducted due to information indicating the lawmakers were potentially targeted by foreign intelligence agents. However, the analyst failed to receive approval from higher-ups before conducting a sensitive search involving public officials.
Moreover, the analyst failed to demonstrate the searches would be reasonably likely to produce foreign intelligence or criminal evidence, the report said.
It was also reported the declassified court document notes there is no reason to believe the FBI has improved its compliance with surveillance protocols.
The revelation comes as lawmakers in Congress weigh whether to extend the FBI’s surveillance authorities, following multiple allegations of misuse. US intelligence and national security officials have repeatedly defended the program and its importance to their missions.
By Oleg Burunov – Sputnik – 21.07.2023
The POTUS and his son are investigated by the Republican-controlled House panel over allegations that they ran an illegal “pay-to-play” corruption scheme involving cash payments to Hunter Biden in exchange for access to his father while Biden was vice president.
Republicans have gone on Twitter to react to the release of an unclassified Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) document related to President Joe Biden’s alleged involvement in an international bribery scheme, with some GOP members calling for his impeachment.
They included Marjorie Taylor Greene, who called the 46th US president “a criminal, […] leading us into WW3.”
“Republicans can no longer delay, but we need 218 Republican votes to do it. I’ve been there since day one and so are the American people. IMPEACH BIDEN!!!” she added.
Greene was echoed by Anna Paulina Luna, who argued that Biden “needs to be impeached” because of the “evidence and testimony” that she had seen as a member of the House Oversight Committee investigating the Biden family finances. “He is compromised and his son is selling access to him,” Luna tweeted.
The same tone was struck by Lauren Boebert as she wrote that it’s necessary to “Read and understand just how deep the corruption goes,” and that “Biden should be thrown out of office. Impeach!”
Similar messages were shared by Jim Banks, who described the Bidens as the “Most corrupt family to ever live in the White House,” also urging for Joe Biden’s impeachment.
The reaction comes after Republican Senator Chuck Grassley released the FBI’s FD-1023 form on Thursday, which focused on how Biden, along with his son Hunter Biden, ostensibly “coerced” chief executive of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma Nikolai Zlochevsky to pay them $5 million each in exchange for their help in getting a Ukrainian prosecutor investigating the firm fired.
The document pertains to the FBI’s interview with a “highly credible” confidential source who detailed multiple meetings and conversations he or she had with Zlochevsky over the course of several years starting in 2015. During those gatherings, the Burisma CEO at one point reportedly said that Joe Biden’s son “was stupid”, and that “his [Zlochevsky’s] dog was smarter.”
Hunter sat on the board of Burisma at the time while his father served as Barack Obama’s vice president.
Grassley, for his part, stressed that he released the document so that Americans can read it “for themselves without the filter of politicians or bureaucrats.” The senator acquired the form via legally protected disclosures by Justice Department whistleblowers, according to the senator’s office.
The FBI responded with a sharply worded statement, slamming GOP lawmakers for ignoring the bureau’s “significant concerns” about the dangers of releasing the material.
“We have repeatedly explained to Congress, in correspondence and in briefings, how critical it is to keep this source information confidential. […] Today’s release of the 1023 – at a minimum – unnecessarily risks the safety of a confidential source,” the FBI statement said.
The developments follow US Internal Revenue Service investigator Joseph Ziegler telling lawmakers he discovered Hunter Biden and his business associates received $17 million from foreign sources, including $7.3 million from Burisma, during a probe he described as hindered by senior Justice Department officials.
Ziegler had remained anonymous until his appearance at a House oversight committee hearing on Wednesday that was convened over Republican allegations that President Biden and his son Hunter were involved in a bribery scheme with Burisma.
Hunter Biden’s attorneys and the US Justice Department announced last month an agreement under which he will plead guilty to misdemeanor tax charges and enter a pretrial diversionary agreement on a felony firearms offense in an effort to resolve the criminal probe against him and avoid prison time.
Since 2018, the First Son has been under a series of investigations into tax-related crimes, drug use, money laundering and illegal business dealings in foreign countries, including Ukraine and China. Investigators are specifically looking into the content of Hunter Biden’s so-called “laptop from Hell”, which purportedly included naked photos and graphic videos of the 46th president’s son.
The Cradle – July 22, 2023
The US Senate Foreign Relations Committee proposed new legislation on 21 July to bolster normalization efforts between Israel and Arab countries, pledging nearly $120 million in funding and naming Saudi Arabia as a key candidate.
The Regional Integration and Normalization Act seeks to encourage the Arab world to solidify diplomatic ties with Israel.
US Senator Bob Menendez remarked that “this bill capitalizes on the dynamics that are profoundly reshaping the Middle East and North Africa,” adding, “Further integration in this region, one marked by conflict and disunity, must be a pillar of US foreign policy moving forward. It will remain a region that is critical to US strategic interests, and we should support efforts that increase stability and prosperity for our partners and the region’s citizens.”
This bill will create an ambassador-level official for the Abraham Accords, expand normalization and “integration, ”support the development of an Abraham Accords and Negev Forum Economic Partnership, and support joint cybersecurity training.
This development comes a few days after US President Joe Biden hosted Israeli President Isaac Herzog at the White House.
Since Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took power last year, Biden has avoided meeting with the Israeli Prime Minister due to a controversial judicial overhaul.
By Shabbir Rizvi | Press TV | July 22, 2023
On July 18, US Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib issued a joint statement with fellow Congresswoman Cori Bush, declaring they would boycott the visit of the Zionist regime president Isaac Herzog to Washington.
“Bestowing President Herzog with the rare honor of a joint address to Congress while the Israeli apartheid government continues to enable and directly support racism and brutal settler attacks is a slap in the face to victims, survivors, and their loved ones—including the families of Americans murdered by this regime like Shireen Abu Akleh and Omar Assad,” read the statement.
Many human rights groups, anti-war activists, and other so-called “progressives” hailed the statement, especially considering the popular support Israel has in US Congress – and the absolute grip of the Zionist lobby.
Meanwhile, run-of-the-mill Democrats and Conservatives condemned the boycott, using their typical smears – falsely claiming the boycott is “Anti-Semitic.”
“It’s contradictory to claim to support human rights when you’re arming the oppressors with billions of dollars of bullets and bombs,” noted the statement by Tlaib and Bush.
The choice of words was extremely interesting – especially considering Tlaib’s tweet a few days later.
“Syrian Dictator Bashar al-Assad is a war criminal,” wrote the Congresswoman who represents Michigan’s 12th District on her Twitter page.
“I introduced the Justice for Syrians resolution with Rep. Ilhan [Omar] to hold Assad accountable for crimes against humanity. It’s time for the Syrian people to have justice.”
Israel, who Tlaib and Omar boycotted, has been illegally bombing Syria for years – sometimes multiple times per week, killing innocent Syrians. Not to mention the West, spearheaded by the US, has been at war with the Arab country via direct confrontation and its proxies for over 10 years.
The United States has invested billions of dollars into destabilizing Syria, which has caused a humanitarian crisis impacting millions of people in the country, starving Syria through horrific sanctions, destroying its cities, or funding Al Qaeda-backed extremists to execute pro-Damascus supporters.
The new resolution comes the same year Syria suffered a horrific earthquake, killing thousands – and millions could not receive aid because of the previous sanctions Tlaib, Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and other “progressives” overwhelmingly supported.
The new resolutions will open a path to more sanctions where civilians will suffer, exacerbating a humanitarian crisis that the West has aided and abetted.
Boycotting the Israeli regime is morally right but these so-called “progressives” cannot condone their own government’s foreign policy that revolves around invasions and sanctions, which the likes of Tlaib, Omar and Ocasio-Cortez actively have the power to make a difference.
The fact is, you cannot serve in the halls of US Congress, at least as a Democrat or Republican – without serving imperialism. That is because the very nature of “progressivism” has shifted in the United States.
Attributes of the progressive movement for decades were demands for fair criminal justice, anti-police brutality, healthcare benefits, and of course, demands to stop a war.
Now, however, with an emerging generation that does not want to participate in the previous generations’ wars, a shift has been made. To appeal to the new generation of Americans, war itself is being sold as “progressive” in order for Americans to buy it.
The “Squad” – a group of so-called “progressive” Congress members (which includes Tlaib, Ocasio-Cortez, Jamaal Bowman, and more) – sells wars masterfully.
Rallying their voter base with ideas of “taxing the rich” and “social rights,” these members of Congress work in unison with the war hawks in Congress to pass bill after bill meant to support the United States’ military interests.
For example, when the United States and its clients were orchestrating deadly riots in Iran late last year, the majority of the progressive “Squad” voted “YEA” on a resolution condemning the Islamic Republic and supporting the actions of foreign-backed rioters.
There are dozens of similar examples – all one needs to do is find a military conflict the US wants to be involved in and they can find a bill that the “progressives” have signed supporting it – Syria, Iran, China, Russia, Sudan, Ethiopia, Cuba. The list goes on.
It’s no wonder why US President Joe Biden has been able to pass a series of multi-billion dollar packages for weapons shipments to Ukraine – it has become “progressive.”
The neo-Nazis that flood the military ranks of the Kiev regime are now painted as defenders of freedom, democracy, and European interests.
In order for the US to continue to wage its unpopular wars and invasions, it needs a voter base that is convinced that what the Pentagon is doing is right.
Washington has recognized that the new generation – from later millennials to the young Generation Z – cannot be so easily pulled into wars as the previous generations.
To continue its criminal missions across the globe, Washington will need to turn these wars “progressive”. They will need to become fighters for “human rights,” for “liberal democracy.”
All it takes is an analysis of the framing of war 20 years ago versus today. In 2003, then-US President George Bush told Americans that America needed to fight to “defend itself from those who want to take away its democracy.”
In 2023, Joe Biden is fueling destabilization efforts in the same regions under the guise of “bringing democracy.” Progressive-minded people need to be convinced that “human rights” and “social justice” are being “exported” – albeit via the barrel of a gun.
The new generation must wake up to this. They must see through the deception of “progressives” in Congress who are just the Cold Warriors of today. If they don’t, they will risk being pulled into another military quagmire just like previous generations, or be tricked into supporting the US’ proxy efforts.
Perhaps a good first step forward would be to question why even the most so-called “progressive” members of the US Congress want to serve the war machine.
Shabbir Rizvi is a Chicago-based political analyst with a focus on US internal security and foreign policy.
By Colonel (ret.) Douglas Macgregor, US Army | The Kennedy Beacon | July 20, 2023
From the moment the war in Ukraine started, Western reporting on the war was a radical repudiation of the truth. Washington and its NATO allies always knew that NATO expansion to Russia’s borders would precipitate an armed conflict with Moscow, but NATO’s ruling globalist class did not care. For them, Russia in 2022 was unchanged from the weak and incapable Russia of the late 1990s. The risk of failure seemed low. Ergo, Russia could be bullied into submission.
Americans and most Europeans did not bother to question or analyze. Widespread strategic ignorance about Russia and Eastern Europe ensured that most Americans and even West Europeans would react quickly and viscerally to the Western media’s distorted images and lies about Russia. At the same time, tolerance for criticism of Washington’s role in fashioning the corrupt and deceitful conduct of the Volodymyr Zelenskyy Regime and its war was disallowed in the press.
Washington’s ruling class was cheered when it dismissed Russian proposals for talks on any grounds that did not recognize NATO’s right to transform Ukraine into a base for U.S. and Allied Military Power aimed at Russia. Ukrainian flags sprouted from the lush grounds of America’s wealthier neighborhoods like flowers in an arboretum and wonders in the form of limitless military assistance, miracle weapons, and cash were promised to President Zelenskyy––promises that strategic reality did not justify.
In 2022 the Biden Administration no longer possessed the military and economic strength to wage high-end conventional warfare that it had in 1991. Waging a major war 10,000 miles from home on the Eurasian continent is impossible without the support of truly powerful Allies on the model of the British Empire during WWII. Washington’s NATO allies are military dependencies, not formidable strategic partners.
Whereas Russian Military Power is still structured for decisive operations launched from Russian soil, U.S. Military power is geared to project limited air, naval, and land power thousands of miles from home to the periphery of Asia and Africa. American military power consists of boutique forces designed for safari in Africa and the Middle East, not decisive combat operations against great continental powers like Russia or China.
Eighteen months later Ukraine is in ruins. Its latest counteroffensive achieved nothing. In the last three weeks, an estimated 26,000 Ukrainian soldiers died in pointless attacks against world-class Russian defenses ‘in depth.’ (Defenses ‘in depth’ mean a security zone of 15 -25 kilometers in front of the main defense, that consists of at least three defense belts twenty or more kilometers deep.)
By comparison, Russian losses were minimal.
Today, more than 100,000 Russian troops are conducting offensive operations along the Lyman-Kupiansk axis. These forces include 900 tanks, 555 artillery systems and 370 multiple rocket launchers. It does not take much imagination to anticipate the breakthrough of these forces to the North where they can encircle Kharkiv.
Once Russian Forces surround the city, they will become an irresistible magnet for Ukraine’s last reserve of 30-40,000 troops. Ukrainian Forces attacking to the East to break through to Kharkov will present the combination of Russian space and terrestrial-based ISR (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance) assets and Precision Strike Aerospace, Artillery, Rocket, and Missile Systems with a target array that only a blind man could miss.
None of these developments should surprise anyone in the West. Building a Ukrainian army on the fly with a hotchpotch of hastily assembled equipment from a multitude of NATO members and an officer corps of many courageous, but inexperienced officers had little chance of success even under the best of circumstances.
Wars are decided in the decades before they begin. In war, the sudden appearance of “Silver Bullet” technology seldom provides more than a temporary advantage and strong personalities in the senior ranks do not compensate for inadequate military organization, training, thinking, and effective equipment. A new, leaked memorandum from sources inside Ukraine illustrates these points:
“Units of the Ukrainian Armed Forces are at such terrible states of degradation that soldiers are abandoning their posts, and whilst not mentioned in these documents, a flood of videos have been published from Russian sources claiming Ukrainian service personnel are surrendering at the first opportunity owing to the belief that they are being treated as ‘nothing more than cannon fodder.’”
Events on the ground are beginning to overtake the carefully orchestrated charade in Kiev. There is little that pontificating retired generals and armchair military analysts can do to halt the inevitable. Moscow understands that the war will not end without Russian offensive action. Whatever Washington’s original goals may have been, they are unrealizable. Russian Forces will soon fall on the Ukrainian forces with the momentum and the impact of an avalanche.
In view of these points, before all of Ukraine’s manpower is annihilated, or a “Coalition of the Willing” from Poland and Lithuania marches into Western Ukraine, Washington can arrest Ukraine’s downward spiral into total defeat, and Washington’s own irresponsible drift into a regional war with Russia for which Washington and its allies are not prepared.
Cooler heads can prevail inside the beltway. The fighting can stop, but a ceasefire, and the diplomatic talks that must proceed from a ceasefire, will not occur unless Washington and its Allies acknowledge three critical points:
First, whatever form the Ukrainian State assumes in the aftermath of the conflict, Ukraine must be neutral and non-aligned. NATO membership is out of the question. A neutral Ukraine on the Austrian model can still provide a buffer between Russia and its Western Neighbors.
Second, Washington and its Allies must immediately suspend all military aid to Ukraine. Doubling down on failure by introducing more equipment and technology the Ukrainian Forces cannot quickly absorb and employ is wasteful and self-defeating.
Third, all U.S. and allied personnel, clandestine or in uniform, must withdraw from Ukraine. Insisting on some form of NATO presence as a face-saving measure is pointless. The attempt to extend NATO’s “new globalist world order” to Russia has failed.
The point is straightforward. It is time for Washington to turn its attention inward and address the decades of American societal, economic, and military decay that ensued after 1991. It’s time to reverse the decline in American national prosperity, and power; to avoid unnecessary overseas conflict;and to shun future interventions in the affairs of other nation states and their societies. The threats to our Republic are here, at home, not in the Eastern Hemisphere.
BY M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | INDIAN PUNCHLINE | JULY 21, 2023
The NATO Summit in Vilnius (July 11-12) signalled that there is absolutely no possibility of talks to settle the Ukraine war in a foreseeable future. The war will only intensify, as the US and its allies still hope to inflict a military defeat on Russia although that is clearly beyond their capability.
On July 14, Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of US joint chiefs of staff said that Ukraine’s counteroffensive is “far from a failure” but the fight ahead will be “long” and “bloody”. Milley has a reputation for speaking what the White House wants to hear, no matter his professional judgment.
Indeed, on July 19, the Biden administration announced additional security assistance of about $1.3 billion for Ukraine. The Pentagon said in a statement that the announcement “represents the beginning of a contracting process to provide additional priority capabilities to Ukraine.” That is to say, the US will be using funds in its Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative program, which allows the administration to buy weapons from industry rather than pull from US weapons stocks.
According to the Pentagon, the latest package includes four National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems (NASAMS) and munitions; 152 mm artillery rounds; mine clearing equipment; and drones.
Meanwhile, in an ominous development, no sooner than Russia let the UN-brokered grain deal expire on July 17, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky disclosed that he had sent official letters to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan suggesting to continue the grain deal without Russia’s participation.
On the very next day, Kiev followed up with an official letter to the UN’s International Maritime Organization spelling out a new maritime corridor passing through Romania’s territorial waters and exclusive maritime economic zone in the north-western part of the Black Sea.
Evidently, Kiev acted in concert with Romania (a NATO member country where the 101st Airborne Division of the US army is deployed). Presumably, the US and NATO are in the loop while the UN’s imprimatur is being arranged. It goes without saying that the NATO has been working on a new maritime route in the Black Sea for sometime already.
This is a serious development, as it seems a precursor to involving the NATO in some way to challenge Russia’s domain dominance in the Black Sea. Indeed, the NATO’s Vilnius Summit Communiqué (July 11) had forecast that the alliance is gearing up for a vastly enhanced presence in the Black Sea region, which has been historically a Russian preserve, where its has important military bases.
The relevant para in the NATO Communiqué said: “The Black Sea region is of strategic importance for the Alliance. This is further highlighted by Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine. We underline our continued support to Allied regional efforts aimed at upholding security, safety, stability and freedom of navigation in the Black Sea region including, as appropriate, through the 1936 Montreux Convention. We will further monitor and assess developments in the region and enhance our situational awareness, with a particular focus on the threats to our security and potential opportunities for closer cooperation with our partners in the region, as appropriate.” [Emphasis added.]
Four things need to be noted:
Most certainly, a new maritime route in northwestern and western regions of the Black Sea along Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey (all of whom are NATO member countries) will cut off the Russian garrison in Transnistria (Moldava) and would boost Kiev’s capability to strike at Crimea. The NATO involvement would complicate any future Russian operations to liberate Odessa as well, which is historically a Russian city.
Apart from the huge legacy of culture and history, Odessa is a port head for the industrial products of Russia and Ukraine. The Togliatti-Odessa ammonia pipeline (which the Ukrainian saboteurs blew up recently) is one of the best examples. The 2,471 km pipeline, the longest ammonia pipeline in the world, connected the world’s largest ammonia producer, TogliattiAzot, in Russia’s Samara region with Odessa Port.
In strategic terms, without control over Odessa, NATO cannot have force projection in the Black Sea region or hope to resurrect Ukraine as an anti-Russia outpost. Nor can NATO advance toward the Transcaucasus and the Caspian (bordering Iran) and Central Asia without dominating the Black Sea region.
And for the same reasons, Russia cannot afford to cede the Black Sea region to the NATO, either. Odessa is a vital link in any land bridge along the Black Sea coast connecting the Russian hinterland with its garrison in Transnistria, Moldova (which the US is eyeing as a potential NATO member.) In fact, Crimea’s security will be endangered if hostile forces establish themselves in Odessa. (The attack on the Kerch Bridge in October 2022 was staged from Odessa.)
Clearly, the entire US project on the new maritime route is intended to pre-empt Russia from gaining control of Odessa. It factors in the strong likelihood that with the Ukrainian offensive floundering, Russia may soon launch its counter-offensive in the direction of Odessa.
From the Russian perspective, this becomes an existential moment. The NATO has virtually encircled the Russian Navy in the North Sea and the Baltic Sea (with the induction of Sweden and Finland as members). The freedom of navigation of the Baltic Fleet and the dominance in the Black Sea, therefore, become all the more crucial for Russia to freely access the world market round the year.
Moscow has reacted strongly. On July 19, Russian ministry of defence notified that “all vessels sailing in the waters of the Black Sea to Ukrainian ports will be regarded as potential carriers of military cargo. Accordingly, the countries of such vessels will be considered to be involved in the Ukrainian conflict on the side of the Kiev regime.”
Russia has further notified that “the north-western and south-eastern parts of the international waters of the Black Sea have been declared temporarily dangerous for navigation.” The latest reports suggest that the Black Sea Fleet of warships are rehearsing the procedure for boarding foreign ships sailing to Ukrainian waters. In effect, Russia is imposing a sea blockade of Ukraine.
In an interview with Izvestia, Russian military expert Vasily Dandykin said he would now expect Russia to stop and inspect all ships sailing to Ukrainian ports. “This practice is normal: There is a war zone there, and in the past two days it has been the scene of missile strikes. We’ll see how this will work in practice and whether there will be anyone willing to send vessels to these waters, because this is very serious.”
The White House has accused Russia of laying mines to block Ukrainian ports. Of course, Washington hopes that the NATO moving in as the guarantor of the grain corridor, replacing Russia, would have resonance in the Global South. The Western propaganda caricatures Russia as creating food scarcity globally. Whereas, the fact of the matter is that the West didn’t keep its part of the bargain reciprocally to allow the export of Russian wheat and fertiliser, as has been acknowledged by the UN and Turkey.
What remains to be seen is whether beyond the raging information war, any NATO country would dare to challenge Russia’s sea blockade. The chances are slim, the daunting deployment of the 101st Airborne Division in next-door Romania notwithstanding.
By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | July 20, 2023
A 13,685-page tranche of documents related to Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine clinical trials released Tuesday contain details about the deaths of 16 trial participants, the prevalence of severe adverse events (SAEs) and other abnormalities.
The documents, previously submitted by Moderna to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as part of the licensing process for Moderna’s Spikevax COVID-19 vaccine, also exposed an “utter lack of thoroughness” in how the trials were conducted, according to Defending the Republic (DTR), a Dallas-based nonprofit that obtained the documents via a a still-pending Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against Moderna.
The documents, shared with The Defender in advance of their public release, are the first set of “Moderna documents” to be released as part of the lawsuit — with approximately 8,000 more pages expected to follow later this year.
Travis Miller, a Fort Worth-based attorney representing DTR, told The Defender, “These documents include over 13,500 pages relating to serious adverse event listings that document injuries — such as shingles and Bell’s palsy and other more serious conditions — which we believe may be related to the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine.”
DTR also received documents describing experiments involving mRNA injections on rats in 2017-2018, prior to the onset of COVID-19. Miller told The Defender these studies revealed fetal abnormalities in pregnant rats.
Dr. Meryl Nass, an internist, biological warfare epidemiologist and member of the Children’s Health Defense scientific advisory committee, said the Moderna clinical trial data bear similarities to the outcomes seen in the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine trials, and raise several questions about safety and liability.
Nass told The Defender :
“Both the preclinical (animal) studies of Moderna and of Pfizer revealed skeletal abnormalities in the offspring of vaccinated mice and rats at higher-than-normal rates and revealed vaccine components travelled throughout the body into all organs.
“Both the Pfizer and Moderna trial data in humans reveal concerning deaths and side effects that were attributed to other causes, but likely were vaccine side effects.”
Nass said “it appears” the FDA did not perform due diligence regarding the clinical trials for each vaccine.
“Did the FDA perform its required regulatory function to oversee the conduct of the trials?” Nass asked. “Or did Operation Warp Speed wave the vaccines through without a proper FDA review of the data?”
Nass asked “who is responsible” if the FDA failed to “perform its regulatory tasks?”
She said the clinical trial data also lead to questions about the liability shield enjoyed by vaccine manufacturers:
“If Moderna (and Pfizer) knew of more problems with the vaccines than they acknowledged, will they have liability under the PREP Act?
“Finally, pilot lots of vaccine (used for the clinical trials of the Pfizer vaccine, and likely the Moderna vaccine) were considerably different than lots made later, using different methods. This was noted by the European Medicines Agency.
“Therefore, do the clinical trial findings even apply to everyone else who received the vaccine later?”
Serious adverse events routinely classified as ‘unrelated’ to vaccine
Four of the six files contained in the documents released Tuesday contained data from the human clinical trials for the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine. The documents date from between November 2020 and June 2021.
Miller criticized Moderna’s lack of scientific rigor in determining the causes of the deaths and adverse events, saying that, in several cases, “Individuals who died after receiving the Moderna vaccine were not given an autopsy.”
According to DTR, “The study’s authors indicated that of those 16 deaths, only two autopsies were performed, five of the dead were not autopsied, and the autopsy status of nine of the dead was ‘unknown.’”
In one instance, a 56-year-old woman experienced “sudden death” 182 days after receiving her second dose of the Moderna vaccine. The cause of death was listed as “unknown” and no autopsy was performed.
“It seems they purposely decided not to investigate suspicious deaths in case the Moderna vaccine might be the cause,” DTR stated in its summary.
Yet the deaths “did not stop those running these ‘studies’ from concluding, despite the absence of evidence, that the Moderna vaccine was not related to these deaths,” DTR added.
Several trial participants also developed neurological disorders, DTR said. “One 44-year-old female had ‘left side facial paralysis’ just eight days after the second dose” and “Numerous vaccinated participants saw the onset of shingles less than 10 days after vaccination.”
This was not the full extent of SAEs sustained by trial participants. According to DTR:
“A number of participants experienced: myocardial infarction (heart attack); pulmonary embolism; spontaneous abortion/miscarriage; transient ischemic attack (TIA); and lymphoma.
“Subsequent analyses of reports from the FDA VAERS [Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System] database, the Department of Defense’s DMED [Defense Medical Epidemiological Database], and European regulators showed heightened rates of these illnesses following administration of the Moderna vaccine.”
VAERS has historically been shown to report only 1% of actual vaccine adverse events.
Similar to the Pfizer documents released last year, the Moderna documents indicate SAEs were routinely classified as being “unrelated” to the vaccine. According to DTR:
“… similar to their treatment of deaths post-vaccination, the studies seemed predestined to conclude that these serious adverse events — many of them life-threatening — were not related to the Moderna vaccine. It didn’t matter whether the adverse event occurred within days of vaccination.
“All this creates serious doubt about the safety of the Moderna vaccine and the standards by which it was approved by the FDA,” Miller said.
According to DTR, the documents also contained “troubling” evidence from animal studies.
Referring to the results of one study, DTR stated, “The findings of this study are troubling: the mRNA vaccine altered the skeletal variations of the rat fetuses and the ‘female pregnancy index’ of the vaccinated rats was significantly lower than the control group.”
Other abnormalities noted in this study included an above-average rate of “common skeletal variations consisting of wavy ribs and increase[d] nodules,” a “statistically significant higher” mean number of reproductive cycle lengths and a lower incidence of mating and pregnancy in the mRNA-1273 group rats compared to the control group.
Moderna included an older study, conducted in 2017 and 2018, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, in its application for FDA approval. The study showed similar results, with mRNA found in several organs.
According to DTR, “Testing revealed that ‘mRNA-1647 was detected in all of the analyzed tissues except for kidney[s],’ with elevated levels of mRNA-1647 found in the spleen and eye. Notably, mRNA-1647 was detected in the brain and heart.”
FDA twice denied FOIA requests for release of the Moderna documents
Miller told The Defender that DTR sued Moderna after the FDA “wrongly denied our request for the expedited production of the records submitted by Moderna in support of its Biologics License Application (BLA) for its COVID-19 vaccine ‘Spikevax.’”
The lawsuit was filed June 7, 2022 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas – Dallas Division — the same federal court that previously ordered the release of the FDA documents pertaining to the approval of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine. The court rejected the FDA’s proposed release schedule to make those documents public over a period of 75 years.
DTR said it reached an agreement earlier this year with the FDA for the production of approximately 24,000 pages of some of the most important records submitted by Moderna in support of its Biologics License Application.
The agreement, announced March 31, required the FDA to release the first 13,685-page set of documents by July 17, and the remainder by the end of 2023.
The FDA granted full approval of Moderna’s Spikevax on Jan. 31, 2022. On Feb. 3, 2022, DTR filed a FOIA request with the FDA, “seeking the expedited production of records relating to the FDA’s approval of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine.”
However, the FDA twice rejected DTR’s request — first on Feb. 9, 2022 and again on June 6, 2022 — claiming DTR had not shown “a compelling need for expedited processing” of the documents. DTR sued the FDA the following day.
While the lawsuit is still ongoing, Miller told The Defender it will be “dismissed per agreement by the parties” once the FDA provides the remaining documents.
According to Miller, these documents include:
The documents are expected to be released by the end of the year.
Miller told The Defender he hopes the findings in the Moderna documents will “at a minimum, lead to further Congressional oversight of the FDA’s approval process and for accountability within that agency.”
Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., based in Athens, Greece, is a senior reporter for The Defender and part of the rotation of hosts for CHD.TV’s “Good Morning CHD.”
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
By Jeffrey A. Tucker | Brownstone Institute | July 21, 2023
It was a strange experience watching the House hearing in which Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. was testifying. The topic was censorship and how and to what extent federal government agencies under two administrations muscled social media companies to take down posts, ban users, and throttle content. The majority made its case.
What was strange was the minority reaction throughout. They tried to shut down RFK. They moved to go to executive session so that the public could not hear the proceedings. The effort failed. Then they shouted over his words when they were questioning him. They wildly smeared him and defamed him. They even began with an attempt to block him from speaking at all, and 8 Democrats voted to support that.
This was a hearing on censorship and they were trying to censor him. It only made the point.
It became so awful that RFK was compelled to give a short tutorial on the importance of free speech as an essential right, without which all other rights and freedoms are in jeopardy. Even those words he could barely speak given the rancor in the room. It’s fair to say that free speech, even as a core principle, is in grave trouble. We cannot even get a consensus on the basics.
It seemed to viewers that RFK was the adult in the room. Put other ways, he was the preacher of fidelity in the brothel, the keeper of memory in a room full of amnesiacs, the practitioner of sanity in the sanatorium, or, as Mencken might say, the hurler of a dead cat into the temple.
It was oddly strange to hear the voice of wise statesmen in that hothouse culture of infantile corruption: it reminded the public just how far things have fallen. Notably, it was he and not the people who wanted him gagged who was citing scientific papers.
The protests against his statements were shrill and shocking. They moved quickly from “Censorship didn’t happen” to “It was necessary and wonderful” to “We need more of it.” Reporting on the spectacle, the New York Times said these are “thorny questions”: “Is misinformation protected by the First Amendment? When is it appropriate for the federal government to seek to tamp down the spread of falsehoods?”
These are not thorny questions. The real issue concerns who is to be the arbiter of truth?
Such attacks on free speech do have precedent in American history. We have already discussed the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 which led to a complete political upheaval that swept Thomas Jefferson into the White House. There were two additional bouts of censorship folly in the 20th century. Both followed great wars and an explosion in government size and reach.
The first came with the Red Scare (1917-1020) following the Great War (WWI). The Bolshevik Revolution and political instability in Europe led to a wild bout of political paranoia in the US that the communists, anarchists, and labor movement were plotting a takeover of the US government. The result was an imposition of censorship along with strict laws concerning political loyalty.
The Espionage Act of 1917 was one result. It is still in force and being deployed today, most recently against former President Trump. Many states passed censorship laws. The feds deported many people suspected of sedition and treason. Suspected communists were hauled in front of Congress and grilled.
The second bout occurred after the Second World War with the House UnAmerican Activities Committee (HUAC) and the Army-McCarthy hearings that led to blacklists and media smears of every sort. The result was a chilling of free speech across American industry that hit media particularly hard. That incident later became legendary due to the exaggerations and disregard for the First Amendment.
How does the Covid-era censorship fit into this historical context? At Brownstone, we’ve compared the wild Covid response to a wartime footing that caused as much trauma on the homeland as previous world wars.
Three years of research, documents, and reporting have established that the lockdowns and all that followed were not directed by public health authorities. They were the veneer for the national security state, which took charge in the month of February 2020 and deployed the full takeover of both government and society in mid-March. This is one reason that it’s been so difficult getting information on how and why all of this happened to us: it’s been mostly classified under the guise of national security.
In other words, this was war and the nation was ruled for a time (and maybe still is) by what amounts to quasi-martial law. Indeed, it felt like that. No one knew for sure who was in charge and who was making all these wild decisions for our lives and work. It was never clear what the penalties would be for noncompliance. The rules and edicts seemed arbitrary, having no real connection to the goal; indeed no one really knew what the goal was besides more and more control. There was no real exit strategy or end game.
As with the two previous bouts of censorship in the last century, there commenced a closure of public debate. It began almost immediately as the lockdowns edict were issued. They tightened over the months and years. Elites sought to plug every leak in the official narrative through every means possible. They invaded every space. Those they could not get to (like Parler) were simply unplugged. Amazon rejected books. YouTube deleted millions of posts. Twitter was brutal, while once-friendly Facebook became the enforcer of regime propaganda.
The hunt for dissenters took strange forms. Those who held gatherings were shamed. People who did not socially distance were called disease spreaders. Walking outside without a mask one day, a man shouted out to me in anger that “masks are socially recommended.” I kept turning that phrase around in my mind because it made no sense. The mask, no matter how obviously ineffective, was imposed as a tactic of humiliation and an exclusionary measure that targeted the incredulous. It was also a symbol: stop talking because your voice does not matter. Your speech will be muffled.
The vaccine of course came next: deployed as a tool to purge the military, public sector, academia, and the corporate world. The moment the New York Times reported that vaccine uptake was lower in states that supported Trump, the Biden administration had its talking points and agenda. The shot would be deployed to purge. Indeed, five cities briefly segregated themselves to exclude the unvaccinated from public spaces. The continued spread of the virus itself was blamed on the noncompliant.
Those who decried the trajectory could hardly find a voice much less assemble a social network. The idea was to make us all feel isolated even if we might have been the overwhelming majority. We just could not tell either way.
War and censorship go together because it is wartime that allows ruling elites to declare that ideas alone are dangerous to the goal of defeating the enemy. “Loose lips sink ships” is a clever phrase but it applies across the board in wartime. The goal is always to whip up the public in a frenzy of hate against the foreign enemy (“The Kaiser!”) and ferret out the rebels, the traitors, the subversives, and promoters of unrest. There is a reason that the protestors on January 6 were called “insurrectionists.” It is because it happened in wartime.
The war, however, was of domestic origin and targeted at Americans themselves. That’s why the precedent of 20th century censorship holds in this case. The war on Covid was in many ways an action of the national security state, something akin to a military operation prompted and administered by intelligence services in close cooperation with the administrative state. And they want to make the protocols that governed us over these years permanent. Already, European governments are issuing stay-at-home recommendations for the heat.
If you had told me that this was the essence of what was happening in 2020 or 2021, I would have rolled my eyes in disbelief. But all evidence Brownstone has gathered since then has shown exactly that. In this case, the censorship was a predictable part of the mix. The Red Scare mutated a century later to become the virus scare in which the real pathogen they tried to kill was your willingness to think for yourself.
Brownstone Institute | July 20, 2023
Despite the uproar surrounding the case, Judge Terry Doughty’s order in Missouri v. Biden was straightforward. It prohibited government actors from colluding with social media companies to censor “content containing protected free speech.”
In other words, the defendants – including the White House, the CDC, and the Department of Justice – must obey the Constitution they swore to uphold by adhering to the First Amendment. The censorship regime responded with familiar doublethink: denying the censorship exists while arguing that it must continue.
On Tuesday, the court held a hearing to consider whether Judge Doughty’s order should be reinstated. The oral arguments revealed the government’s three-part strategy: deny, deflect, and defend. Its lawyers denied the established facts, deflected from the controversy, and defended its actions through outlandish justifications.
In doing so, they demonstrated the censorship apparatus’s lack of remorse for stripping Americans of their constitutional liberties. Even worse, they insist that the totalitarian operations must continue.
At the hearing, government defendants maintained that plaintiffs have manufactured the case. Like their allies in the media, they argued that allegations of censorship were nothing more than “an assortment of out-of-context quotes and select portions of documents that distort the record to build a narrative that the bare facts simply do not support.”
The censorship is nonexistent, they insist. It is a “thoroughly debunked conspiracy theory,” in the words of Larry Tribe.
Unlike issues of legal interpretation, this is a factual matter. Either government actors colluded with Big Tech to suppress Americans’ free speech rights or they did not. Discovery revealed extensive documentation proving that they did, and the defendants make no effort to explain how Judge Doughty’s 155-page order detailing dozens of violations of the First Amendment is merely “an assortment of out-of-context quotes.”
Journalists including Matt Taibbi, Michael Shellenberger, and Alex Berenson have detailed the “censorship industrial complex,” the entangled web of government agencies, NGOs, and private-public partnerships that seek to control the free flow of information. But reviewing that series of connections and collusions is unnecessary – the defendants’ recorded statements contradict their denial.
“Thank you for the ongoing collaboration,” one bureaucrat wrote after a US Government “industry meeting” with Big Tech companies in October 2020.
White House Advisor Rob Flaherty took a different tack in his demands to Twitter: “Please remove this account immediately.” The company complied within an hour. “Are you guys fucking serious?” he wrote to company officials after they failed to censor critics of the Covid vaccine. “I want an answer on what happened here and I want it today.” His boss was similarly direct regarding posts from RFK, Jr. “Hey Folks-Wanted to flag the below tweet and am wondering if we can get moving on the process of having it removed ASAP.”
There is no need to recreate Judge Doughty’s 155-page opinion, but the denial of the censorship regime is facially absurd. Alex Berenson’s case, the revelations of the Twitter files, and the undisputed facts of Missouri v. Biden refute the defendant’s premise.
Rather than address the case’s inconvenient facts, government lawyers quickly pivoted to their second tactic: deflection. They avoided the case and Judge Doughty’s ruling in favor of a hypothetical narrative.
At one point, they defended government agencies’ right to issue health advisories that say “the vaccines work or smoking is dangerous.” They argued, “There’s nothing unlawful about the government’s use of the bully pulpit.” That reasoning was uncontroversial, but it was not responsive to Judge Doughty’s order.
Under Doughty’s ruling, the White House can denounce journalists, deliver press briefings, publish on social media, enjoy the bully pulpit, and take advantage of the friendly media environment; it just can’t encourage private companies to censor constitutionally protected speech.
The defense conflates free speech with control over information to deflect attention from the censorship at issue. The tactic is not limited to the government’s powers under the order.
During the hearing, the judge asked the defense attorneys whether saying “the COVID vaccine does not work” is constitutionally protected free speech. “That speech itself could be protected,” the attorney responded at one point. After repeatedly refusing to concede that the First Amendment protects political opinions that deviate from President Biden’s agenda, he resorted to Russian fear-mongering.
“Let’s say it was spoken by a covert Russian operative, that would not be protected by free speech,” he told the judge. Like the issue of the government’s “use of the bully pulpit,” restricting Russian operatives’ speech is unrelated to Judge Doughty’s order.
The attorney’s refusal to defend basic First Amendment liberties was telling. The defense instinctively changed the issue from free speech to national security, relying on an oft-used fear tactic to subvert the First Amendment.
These deflections deliberately obfuscated the purpose of the hearings. Defendants implied the plaintiffs sought to ban anti-smoking PSAs and fund Kremlin media campaigns. Like their strategy of denial, the goal was to avoid discussion of their extensive censorship operations.
When the government was forced to address the case, it resorted to claiming that Covid justified the abolition of constitutional liberties. The pandemic-made-us-censor argument continued the pervasive Doublethink. Eradicating democratic norms was necessary to protect democracy, they reasoned. Previously, the Biden Administration told the court that reversing the order was necessary “to prevent grave harm to the American people and our democratic processes.”
Defendants argued that the evidence of the case vindicates the government actors. The attorneys said “It shows, in the face of urgent crises, a once-in-a-generation pandemic and bipartisan findings of foreign interference with U.S. elections, the government responsibly exercised its prerogative to speak on matters of public concern.”
They continued, “It promoted accurate information to protect the public and our democracy from these threats. And it used the bully pulpit to call on various sectors of society, including social media companies, to make efforts to reduce the spread of misinformation.”
Demonstrating no remorse, they remain proud of their efforts to usurp the First Amendment because of their self-professed noble aims. They expect this defense to evade judicial scrutiny.
When confronted with past censorship – including CISA’s “switchboarding” leading up to the 2020 election – defendants reasoned that prior conduct was not pertinent to the case because plaintiffs could not prove it will happen again.
They described the Department of Homeland Security’s unconstitutional censorship campaigns as “occurring long in the past.” They argued that health officials’ emails working to silence opponents should be disregarded because they were sent “more than two and a half years ago.”
The censorship apparatus is asking the courts to trust them to act responsibly despite repeatedly demonstrating its indifference, or perhaps disdain, toward the First Amendment.
While the government’s denials and deflections are insulting to the citizens they purport to represent, we must remain focused on their aim: they appealed Doughty’s order because they oppose constitutional restraints on their control of information.
We would hope that requiring the government to obey the Constitution would be uncontroversial; now, it may signify whether the rule of law still stands in the United States.
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BY LAURENT GUYÉNOT • UNZ REVIEW • SEPTEMBER 6, 2022
Is it true that “9/11 was an inside job”? Yes, insofar as Israel is “inside” the U.S. But for the 9/11 truthers who have identified Israel as the main perpetrators, “9/11 was an inside job” is at best a half-truth, and at worst an integral part of the Zionist operation, like a secondary flag sewn as a lining under the false flag of Islamism. Victor Thorn (1963-2017) wrote in his book 9/11 made in Israel: The Plot Against America (2011): “In essence, the ‘9-11 truth movement’ was created prior to Sept. 11, 2001 as a means of suppressing news relating to Israeli complicity. . . . The slogan ‘9-11 was an inside job’ was quite possibly the greatest example of Israeli propaganda ever devised.” In milder terms, it is “controlled opposition”.
A genuine truth movement would have pointed to Israel as the prime suspect from the start. From day one, it was obvious who would benefit. … continue
Aletho News If Americans Knew No Tricks Zone
