Secretive negotiations took place this week in Geneva, Switzerland, to discuss proposed amendments to the World Health Organization’s (WHO) International Health Regulations (IHR), considered a binding instrument of international law.
Similar negotiations took place last month for drafting a new WHO pandemic treaty.
While the two are often conflated, the proposed IHR amendments and the proposed pandemic treaty represent two separate but related sets of proposals that would fundamentally alter the WHO’s ability to respond to “public health emergencies” throughout the world — and, critics warn, significantly strip nations of their sovereignty.
According to author and researcher James Roguski, these two proposals would transform the WHO from an advisory organization to a global governing body whose policies would be legally binding.
They also would greatly expand the scope and reach of the IHR, institute a system of global health certificates and “passports” and allow the WHO to mandate medical examinations, quarantine and treatment.
Roguski said the proposed documents would give the WHO power over the means of production during a declared pandemic, call for the development of IHR infrastructure at “points of entry” (such as national borders), redirect billions of dollars to the “Pharmaceutical Hospital Emergency Industrial Complex” and remove mention of “respect for dignity, human rights and fundamental freedoms of people.”
Francis Boyle, J.D., Ph.D., professor of international law at the University of Illinois, said the proposed documents may also contravene international law.
Boyle, author of several international law textbooks and a bioweapons expert who drafted the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989, recently spoke with The Defender about the dangers — and potential illegality — of these two proposed documents
Other prominent analysts also sounded the alarm.
Proposals would create ‘worldwide totalitarian medical and scientific police state’
Meeting in Geneva between Jan. 9-13, the WHO’s IHR Review Committee worked to develop “technical recommendations to the [WHO’s] Director-General on amendments proposed by State Parties to the IHR,” according to a WHO document.
The IHR was first enacted in 2005, in the aftermath of SARS-CoV-1, and took effect in 2007. They constitute one of only two legally binding treaties the WHO has achieved since its inception in 1948 — the other being the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.
As previously reported by The Defender, the IHR framework already allows the WHO director-general to declare a public health emergency in any country, without the consent of that country’s government, though the framework requires the two sides to first attempt to reach an agreement.
According to the same WHO document, the recommendations of the IHR Review Committee and the member states’ Working Group on Amendments to the International Health Regulations (2005) (WGIHR) will be reported to WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus by mid-January, in the leadup to the WHO’s 76th World Health Assembly in late May.
Boyle said he questioned the legality of the above documents, citing for instance the fact that “the proposed WHO treaty violates the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties,” which was ratified in 1969, and which Boyle described as “the international law of treaties for every state in the world.”
Boyle explained the difference between the latest pandemic treaty and IHR proposals. “The WHO treaty would set up a separate international organization, whereas the proposed regulations would work within the context of the WHO we have today.”
However, he said, “Having read through both of them, it’s a distinction without a difference.” He explained:
“Either one or both will set up a worldwide totalitarian medical and scientific police state under the control of Tedros and the WHO, which are basically a front organization for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Tony Fauci, Bill Gates, Big Pharma, the biowarfare industry and the Chinese Communist government that pays a good chunk of their bills.
“Either they’ll get the regulations or they’ll get the treaty, but both are existentially dangerous. These are truly dangerous, existentially dangerous and insidious documents.”
Boyle, who has written extensively on international law and argued cases on behalf of Palestine and Bosnia in the International Court of Justice, told The Defender he has “never read treaties and draft international organizations that are so completely totalitarian as the IHR regulations and the WHO treaty,” adding:
“Both the IHR regulations and the WHO treaty, as far as I can tell from reading them, are specifically designed to circumvent national, state and local government authorities when it comes to pandemics, the treatment for pandemics and also including in there, vaccines.”
Talks for both the proposed pandemic treaty and the proposed IHR amendments appear to follow a similar timeline, in order to be submitted for consideration during the WHO’s World Health Assembly May 21-30.
“It’s clear to me they are preparing both the regulations and the treaty for adoption by the World Health Assembly in May of 2023,” Boyle said. “That’s where we stand right now as I see it.”
According to the WHO, the International Negotiating Body (INB) working on the Pandemic Treaty will present a “progress report” at the May meeting, with a view toward presenting its “final outcome” to the 77th World Health Assembly in May 2024.
Boyle: proposed legally-binding pandemic treaty violates international law
Commenting on the pandemic treaty, Tedros said, “The lessons of the pandemic must not go unlearned.” He described the current “conceptual zero draft” of the treaty as “a true reflection of the aspirations for a different paradigm for strengthening pandemic prevention, preparedness, response and recovery.”
Roguski, in his analysis of the “Pandemic Treaty,” warned that it will create a “legally binding framework convention that would hand over enormous additional, legally binding authority to the WHO.”
The WHO’s 194 member states would, in other words, “agree to hand over their national sovereignty to the WHO.” This would “dramatically expand the role of the WHO,” by including an “entirely new bureaucracy,” the “Conference of the Parties,” which would include not just member states but “relevant stakeholders.”
This new bureaucracy, according to Roguski, would “be empowered to analyze social media to identify misinformation and disinformation in order to counter it with their own propaganda.”
The WHO currently partners with numerous such organizations, such as “fact-checking” firm NewsGuard, for these purposes.
Roguski said the pandemic treaty also would speed up the approval process for drugs and injectables, provide support for gain-of-function research, develop a “Global Review Mechanism” to oversee national health systems, implement the concept of “One Health,” and increase funding for so-called “tabletop exercises” or “simulations.”
“One Health,” a brainchild of the WHO, is described as “an integrated, unifying approach to balance and optimize the health of people, animals and the environment” that “mobilizes multiple sectors, disciplines and communities” and “is particularly important to prevent, predict, detect, and respond to global health threats such as the COVID-19 pandemic.”
In turn, “tabletop exercises” and “simulations” such as “Event 201,” were remarkably prescient in “predicting” the COVID-19 and monkeypox outbreaks before they actually occurred.
Roguski said the pandemic treaty would provide a structure to redirect massive amounts of money “via crony capitalism to corporations that profit from the declarations of Public Health Emergencies of International Concern” (‘pandemics’) and “the fear-mongering that naturally follows such emergency declarations.”
Boyle warned that the treaty and proposed IHR regulations go even further. “The WHO, which is a rotten, corrupt, criminal, despicable organization, will be able to issue orders going down the pike to your primary care physician on how you should be treated in the event they proclaim a pandemic.”
Moreover, Boyle said, the pandemic treaty would be unlike many other international agreements in that it would come into immediate effect. He told The Defender :
“If you read the WHO Treaty, at the very end, it says quite clearly that it will come into effect immediately upon signature.
“That violates the normal processes for ratification of treaties internationally under the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, and also under the United States Constitution, requiring the United States Senate to give its advice and consent to the terms of the treaty by two-thirds vote.”
Indeed, Article 32 of the proposed treaty regarding its “Provisional application” states:
“The [treaty] may be applied provisionally by a Party that consents to its provisional application by so notifying the Depository in writing at the time of signature or deposit of its instrument of ratification, acceptance, approval, formal confirmation or accession.
“Such provisional application shall become effective from the date of receipt of the notification by the Secretary-General of the United Nations.”
“Whoever drafted that knew exactly what they were doing to bring it into force immediately upon signature,” said Boyle. “Assuming the World Health Assembly adopts the treaty in May, Biden can just order Fauci or whoever his representative is there to sign the treaty, and it will immediately come into effect on a provisional basis,” he added.
“I don’t know, in any of my extensive studies of international treaties, let alone treaties setting up international organizations, of any that has a provision like that in it,” said Boyle. “It’s completely insidious.”
Proposed amendments to IHR described as a WHO ‘power grab’
According to Roguski, who said the WHO is “attempting a power grab,” the proposed amendments to the IHR may be even more concerning than the pandemic treaty.
Roguski wrote that while he believes the pandemic treaty is “an important issue,” he also thinks it is “functioning as a decoy that is designed to distract people from the much larger and more immediate threat to our rights and freedoms, which are the proposed amendments to the International Health Regulations.”
The IHR Review Committee working on the proposed amendments “began its work on 6 October 2022,” according to a WHO document, and has convened five times since then, including this week’s meetings in Geneva. Access to the meetings was prohibited for the unvaccinated.
The final proposals of the IHR Review Committee and the WGIHR will be presented to Tedros in mid-January and to the World Health Assembly in May. According to Roguski, “If the proposed amendments are presented to the 76th World Health Assembly, they could be adopted by a simple majority of the 194 member nations.”
As a result, Roguski said, compared to the proposed pandemic treaty, “The amendments to the International Health Regulations are a much more immediate and direct threat to the sovereignty of every nation and the rights and freedoms of every person on earth.”
According to Roguski, “The proposed amendments would seek to remove 3 very important aspects of the existing regulations,” including “removing respect for dignity, human rights and fundamental freedoms” from the text of the IHR, changing the IHR from “non-binding” to “legally binding” and obligating nations to “assist” other nations.
“Essentially, the WHO’s Emergency Committee would be given the power to overrule actions taken by sovereign nations,” Roguski said.
According to Boyle, similarly to the pandemic treaty, “again, Biden can instruct his representative in May, assuming they adopt the regulations, to sign the regulations. And then, the Biden administration will treat that as a binding international agreement, just like they did with the 2005 regulations,” referring to the original IHR ratified that year.
He added:
“Those [the 2005 IHR] were signed and the U.S. State Department at that time considered them to be a legally binding international executive agreement that they list in the official State Department publication, ‘Treaties in Force.’
“In other words, they treat the 2005 regulations as if they were a treaty that never received the advice and consent of the United States Senate, and therefore the supreme law of the land under Article 6 of the United States Constitution that would be binding upon all state and local governments here in the United States, even if they are resisting, the IHR regulations or the WHO treaty.”
According to Roguski, “The proposed amendments would implement a great number of changes that everyone should absolutely disagree with.”
These changes include “dramatically expand[ing] the scope of the International Health Regulations from dealing with actual risks to dealing with anything that had the potential to be a risk to public health,” which Roguski said “would open up the doors wide to massive abuse beyond anything we have seen over the past three years.”
The proposed amendments also would shift the WHO’s focus “away from the health of real people” to “place primary preference upon the resilience of health care systems,” and would establish a “National Competent Authority” that “would be given great power to implement the obligations under these regulations,” Roguski said.
If the amendments come to pass, Roguski said, “The WHO will no longer need to consult any sovereign nation in which an event may or may not be occurring within that nation before declaring that there is a Public Health Emergency of International Concern within the borders of that nation.”
“Intermediate Public Health Alert[s],” “Public Health Emergenc[ies] of Regional Concern” and “World Alert and Response Notice[s]” could also be declared by the WHO’s director general, while the WHO would be recognized “as the guidance and coordinating authority during international emergencies.”
During such real or “potential” emergencies, the amendments would empower the WHO to mandate a variety of policies globally, which would be legally binding on member nations.
These policies could include requiring medical examinations or proof of such exams, requiring proof of vaccination, refusing travel, implementing quarantine and contact tracing or requiring travelers to furnish health declarations, to fill out passenger locator forms and to carry digital global health certificates.
“Competent health authorities” would also be empowered to commandeer aircraft and ships, while surveillance networks to “quickly detect public health events” within member nations would also be set up, as per the proposed amendments.
The WHO would also be empowered to be involved in the drafting of national health legislation.
The proposed amendments would give the WHO the power to develop an “Allocation Plan,” allowing it to commandeer the means of production of pharmaceuticals and other items during an “emergency,” and would oblige developed nations to provide “assistance” to developing nations.
“The proposed amendments … would facilitate digital access to everyone’s private health records,” Roguski said, and similar to the proposals in the pandemic treaty, would “also facilitate the censorship of any differing opinions under the guise of mis-information or dis-information.”
Roguski said the proposals are being made despite a “lack of input from the general public” by “unknown and unaccountable delegates” using vague and “undefined terminology” and vague criteria “by which to measure preparedness.”
He said the proposals would “trample our rights and restrict our freedoms,” including the right to privacy, to choose or refuse treatment, to express one’s opinions, to protect one’s children, to be with family and friends and to be free from discrimination, including discrimination on the basis of one’s vaccination status.
“The finality of decisions made by the Emergency Committee” foreseen by the amendments “would be a direct attack on national sovereignty,” Roguski said.
How did we get here?
According to the WHO, the members of the INB — during a meeting in Geneva July 18-21, 2022 — reached a “consensus,” agreeing that any new “convention, agreement or other international instrument on pandemic prevention, preparedness and response” would be “legally binding” on member states.
For Boyle, this is the WHO’s response to the “enormous opposition” to the COVID-19-related restrictions of the past three years. He told The Defender :
“As far as I can figure out what happened here was this: As you know, there has been enormous opposition here in the United States [against] these totalitarian edicts coming out, and this was under both Trump and Biden.
“These totalitarian edicts coming out of the federal government, the White House, the CDC, everyone else on this pandemic and also the vaccine mandates, there’s enormous grassroots opposition. And so, as far as I can tell what happened, this culminated in Trump pulling us out of the WHO, which I think was a correct decision.
“So you know, I’m a political independent. I’m just looking at this subjectively. Now, what happened was then, when Biden came to power, his top scientific advisor was Tony Fauci. So Biden put us back into the WHO and then appointed Fauci as the U.S. representative on the Executive Committee of the WHO.
“That’s where both the IHR regulations and the WHO treaty come from: to circumvent the enormous grassroots opposition to the handling of the edicts coming out of the federal government with respect to the pandemic and the vaccine mandates.”
Boyle explained what “legally binding” would mean in this context, if either set of proposals comes to pass:
“What will happen is the WHO will come up with an order, this new organization will come up with an order that they will then send to Washington, D.C., whereupon the Biden administration will enforce it as a binding international obligation of the United States of America under Article 6 of the United States Constitution, and it will usurp the state and local health authorities, who generally have constitutional authority to deal with public health under the 10th Amendment to the United States Constitution.
“The Biden administration will then argue that either the regulations or the treaty will usurp the 10th Amendment to the United States Constitution and state and local health authorities, governors, attorney generals, public health authorities will have to obey [any] order coming out of the WHO.”
Referring to his remarks about the illegality of the two proposals under the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, Boyle clarified that under Article 18 of the convention, “a treaty does not come into force when signed. When the state has signed the treaty, it is only obligated to act in a manner that does not defeat the object and purpose of the treaty.”
Article 18 states:
“A State is obliged to refrain from acts which would defeat the object and purpose of a treaty when: (a) it has signed the treaty or has exchanged instruments constituting the treaty subject to ratification, acceptance or approval, until it shall have made its intention clear not to become a party to the treaty.”
According to Boyle a state’s signature “does not provisionally bring the treaty into force.”
Boyle also described the proposals as “a massive power grab by Fauci, the CDC, the WHO, Bill Gates, Big Pharma, the biowarfare industry and Tedros.”
He added:
“I’ve never seen anything like this in any of my research, writing, teaching, litigating international organizations going back to the First Hague Peace Conference of 1899, up until today.”
Roguski and Boyle argued that the U.S. — and other countries — should exit the WHO. Boyle told The Defender :
“I’m not a supporter of President Trump, but I think we have to go back to pulling out of the WHO right away. In the last session of Congress, there was legislation introduced pulling us out of the WHO. We need that legislation reintroduced immediately, in this new session of Congress.
“I think the House of Representatives has to make it clear that they object, that there’s no way they are going to go along with any orders coming out of the WHO, the World Health Assembly [WHA] or this new international pandemic organization, and that they have the power of the purse and that they will defund anything related to the WHO.”
However, for Boyle, this is not just a matter for federal lawmakers. “We need, certainly, the state governments here in the United States to take the position that they will not comply with any decisions coming out of the WHO, the WHA or this new international pandemic organization,” adding that he recently made such recommendations to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
“We need that replicated all over the United States, on a state-by-state basis,” said Boyle, “and I think we need it right away because they’re trying to rush through these WHO regulations and the [pandemic] treaty for the WHO assembly in May.”
Close cooperation with Gates Foundation, others
According to the WHO, the INB discussions are taking place not just among all member states, but also with “relevant stakeholders” listed in document A/INB/2/4.
Who are these stakeholders? One example is GAVI, The Vaccine Alliance, listed as an “Observer” alongside the Holy See (Vatican), Palestine and the Red Cross.
As previously reported by The Defender, GAVI proclaims a mission to “save lives and protect people’s health,” and states it “helps vaccinate almost half the world’s children against deadly and debilitating infectious diseases.”
GAVI describes its core partnership with various international organizations, including names that are by now familiar: the WHO, UNICEF, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the World Bank, and with the ID2020 Alliance, which supports the implementation of “vaccine passports.”
ID2020’s founding members include the Gates Foundation, Microsoft and the Rockefeller Foundation.
In turn, the Gates Foundation, alongside Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Clinton Health Access Initiative, the Rockefeller Foundation, the International Air Transport Association (IATA — think “vaccine passports”) and the Population Council — founded by John D. Rockefeller and known for its “population control” initiatives — are listed in the same WHO document under Annex C as “non-state actors in official relations with WHO.”
“Other stakeholders, as decided by the INB, invited to attend [and] speak at open sessions of meetings of the INB [and] provide inputs to the INB” include IATA, the International Civil Aviation Organization and the World Bank Group.
“Open Philanthropy” and George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, and “nonprofit consumer advocacy organization” Public Citizen, are among the groups listed in the WHO document as “other stakeholders” that can “provide inputs to the INB,” alongside two Russian state-affiliated health organizations.
Lead U.S. negotiator for the pandemic treaty, Pamela Hamamoto — previously an investment banker with Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch — “helped coordinate early responses to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa in 2015 … and a strengthened WHO response.”
Hamamoto also was “instrumental in the 2014 launch of the Global Health Security Agenda” (GHSA), a “global effort … focused on strengthening the world’s ability to prevent, detect, and respond to infectious disease threats,” spearheaded by the CDC and founded with the purpose of accelerating the IHR passed in 2005.
The World Bank, the Global Health Security Consortium, the Private Sector Roundtable and the WHO are part of the GHSA’s steering group. AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson, manufacturers of COVID-19 vaccines, are members of the Private Sector Roundtable.
Advising the GHSA is the “GHSA Consortium,” which includes within its steering committee the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (which hosted Event 201) and the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI).
As previously reported by The Defender, the NTI organized a “tabletop exercise” that predicted a “fictional” May 2022 monkeypox outbreak with remarkable accuracy. “Open Philanthropy” funded the final report for this exercise.
General members of the GHSA Consortium include the Gates Foundation, Amazon Web Services (which maintained COVID-19 immunization databases for the CDC), Boston University and the institution’s National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories (NEIDL), and Emergent BioSolutions.
As previously reported by The Defender, NEIDL is where “a new strain of COVID-19 that killed 80% of the mice infected with the virus” was recently developed.
Emergent BioSolutions, which produced the Johnson & Johnson vaccine and attained infamy for losing a $600 million federal contract after millions of vaccine doses were ruined, is connected to the 2001 Dark Winter anthrax simulation.
In June 2022, with the support of the U.S., Italy (current chair of the GHSA) and then-G20 president Indonesia, the World Bank announced the launch of a $1 billion “pandemic fund.”
In November 2022, Indonesian Minister of Health Budi Gunadi Sadikin, at the G20 meeting held in Bali, pushed for an international “digital health certificate acknowledged by the WHO” to enable the public to “move around.” Indonesia is also a permanent member of the GHSA’s steering group.
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.
January 13, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine, Gates Foundation, Human rights, Rockefeller Foundation, United States, WHO |
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The recession of the world economy has little to do with the military conflict in Ukraine, according to a commentator, saying the main reason is Western sanctions against countries such as Russia, which is the main source of energy and food in the world.
Clive Menzies, a researcher and political economy analyst, made these remarks in an interview with Press TV’s Spotlight program.
The World Bank slashed its 2023 growth forecasts on Tuesday to levels teetering on the brink of recession for many countries as the impact of central bank rate hikes intensifies, Russia’s war in Ukraine continues, and the world’s major economic engines sputter.
The development lender said it now expected global GDP growth of 1.7 percent in 2023 — the slowest pace outside the 2009 and 2020 recessions in nearly three decades. In its previous Global Economic Prospects report, in June 2022, the bank had forecast 2023 global growth at 3.0 percent.
Menzies said the global economic collapse was predictable.
“We were warning seven years ago that we are heading for a global economic collapse and last summer when the governor of the Bank of England was suggesting that they were going to adhere to their two percent inflation target, that seemed somewhat laughable,” he remarked.
“The primary mechanisms that are causing this crisis have been long-standing… So there’s been money supply or money printing by the central banks; the major central banks ever since 2008 and that has accelerated in the last three years since September 2019.”
The World Bank says major slowdowns in advanced economies, including sharp cuts to its forecast to 0.5 percent for both the United States and the eurozone, could foreshadow a new global recession less than three years after the last one.
“The World Bank cited Ukraine as one of the factors in all this but actually it has nothing to do with Ukraine. It has to do with the sanctions,” Menzies noted.
“I was on a program in May 2022 where all of the commentators including myself were suggesting that the EU primarily shot itself in the foot with America’s encouragement; because it’s the sanctions that have created this acute problem.”
“The West believes that they can control the world centrally, they believe that there are too many of us on the planet, so they’re looking to reduce the population and at the same time exercise control and if you control food then you control populations.”
Russia launched a military operation in Ukraine in late February, following Kiev’s failure to implement the terms of the Minsk agreements and Moscow’s recognition of the breakaway regions of Donetsk and Luhansk.
At the time, Russian President Vladimir Putin said one of the goals of what he called a “special military operation” was to “de-Nazify” Ukraine.
Since the outbreak of war, Western countries, led by the United States and the United Kingdom, have announced unprecedented sanctions on Russia while supporting Ukraine militarily, steps that Russia has warned would only prolong the war.
World Bank President David Malpass said in a statement that weakness in growth and business investment “will compound the already devastating reversals in education, health, poverty and infrastructure and the increasing demands from climate change”.
“We’ve been at war since 2001 and it is the war of the structure,” read the statement.
The World Bank noted that some inflationary pressures started to abate as 2022 drew to a close, with lower energy and commodity prices, but warned that risks of new supply disruptions were high, and elevated core inflation may persist.
The bank called for increased support from the international community to help low-income countries deal with food and energy shocks, people displaced by conflicts, and a growing risk of debt crises.
It further said new concessional financing and grants are needed along with the leveraging of private capital and domestic resources to help boost investment in climate adaptation, human capital and health.
January 13, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Economics | European Union, UK, United States |
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Last Friday, President Biden held a White House ceremony commemorating the second anniversary of the January 6 Capitol riot. Biden showered a dozen Presidential Service Medals on people connected to the 2020 election or the January 6 events. Biden talked of the anniversary as a “day of remembrance”—perhaps echoing the International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Many Americans would be happy to never hear about January 6 again. No such luck. Vice President Kamala Harris equated January 6 with 9/11 and threw in Pearl Harbor to score a trifecta. Biden endlessly invoked January 6 in his speeches supporting Democrats in the mid-term congressional elections. In August, Biden denounced Republicans for “semi-fascism.” In September, he claimed that MAGA Republicans (which effortlessly became all Republicans) “embrace political violence.” In a preview of Biden’s speech last week, Politico accurately forecast that Biden will “again put center stage the danger and chaos posed by election deniers… He will link Republicans to the extremists who attempted to forcibly overturn the results of Donald Trump’s defeat.”
Since Biden is running for re-election, he will likely be perpetually flogging January 6 in his speeches between now and November 2024. Thus, it is worthwhile to have a closer analysis of Biden’s speech and the continuing effort to exploit January 6 to vilify political dissent.
In his White House speech last week, Biden repeated his efforts to portray January 6 as a conspiracy to destroy American democracy. Biden declared that “a violent mob of insurrectionists… vandalized sacred halls,” seeking to “overthrow the will of the people and usurp the peaceful transfer of power.” Biden repeatedly slurred his pronunciation of “insurrectionists” and referred to the attacks on “July the sixth” (instead of January the sixth).
Exploiting the boundless historical illiteracy of his audience, Biden declared, “The U.S. Capitol was breached, which had never happened before in the history of the United States of America, even during the Civil War.” Actually, the British Army burned the Capitol down in 1814. But since none of the British were wearing furry horned hats, it would be unfair to compare their soldiers to the January 6 protestors.
Seeking to vivify the viciousness of the protestors, Biden lamented that a police officer he gave an award to “was tased.” Unfortunately, tasing only counts as a human rights abuse when law enforcement is on the voltage receiving end. Biden listed five police who had died (several by suicide) in the wake of January 6 but did not mention Ashli Babbitt, the only person who was gunned down and killed that day. The Capitol policeman who shot Babbitt (who was unarmed) was hailed as a hero.
Biden, staying on script, repeated his claim that the January 6 clash “was fueled by lies about the 2020 election.” And since the protestors were spurred by false claims, Biden was automatically exempted from any obligation for candor. The January 6 protestors magically become collectively guilty for anything bad that happened inside the District of Columbia for the rest of 2021.
Biden declared:
“Today is a ceremony to honor heroes of January 6th, but we also recognize the late U.S. Capitol Police Officer, Billy Evans. Three months after January 6th, while they were still cordoning off the Capitol because threats these—by these sick insurrectionists continued to be profligated on the Internet, again, all of America saw what happened, what Officer Evans was killed defending a checkpoint you had to go through to get up to the Capitol, because of these God-awful, sick threats that continue to move forth. And the whole world saw it.”
The whole world saw what? If someone relied on Biden’s spiel, they would assume some wacko wearing a MAGA hat brutally killed a cop on Capitol Hill. Actually, Evans was killed by Noah Green, a black 25-year-old Nation of Islam zealot who struggled with hallucinations and drug addiction. After Green smashed his car into a checkpoint, he leaped out with a knife and lunged at officers before he was shot and killed. The effort to blame Evans’ death on the January 6 protestors epitomized Biden’s “close enough for government work” demonology.
Biden claimed that the checkpoint was necessary “because of these God-awful, sick threats that continue to move forth.” The media has memory-holed the militarization of Washington that Biden and congressional allies ordered in 2021. More than 10,000 National Guard troops occupied much of Washington the following months and Capitol Hill was surrounded by fences topped with barbed wire. Some skeptics believed that the ominous trappings sought to frighten members of Congress to support sweeping new anti-terrorism legislation to vilify any American who distrusted Washington.
The so-called “Temple of Democracy” looked like a Beirut bunker. Some members of Congress favored permanently turning Capitol Hill into the equivalent of a supermax prison. The American Civil Liberties Union recognized that Congress hiding behind a fence projects “the kind of message that heads of autocratic regimes send by cloistering themselves away from their populaces in armored fortresses.” The closing off of the Capitol illustrated how far politicians would go to exploit one day’s violence for an extended shutdown of the trappings of democracy.
Some January 6 protestors were violent and destructive and deserve to be sent up the river. But the Biden January 6 narrative is bolstered by endless prosecutions of folks who were little more than hapless bystanders to the violence that day. Attorney General Merrick Garland boasted last Wednesday that the January 6 “investigation has resulted in the arrest of more than 950 defendants for their alleged roles in the attack.” The total arrests far exceed the number of violent private citizens at the Capitol that day. A Justice Department press release noted, “860 defendants have been charged with entering or remaining in a restricted federal building or grounds.” Shades of Lee Harvey Oswald!
“Trespassing plus thought crimes equals terrorism” is the Biden standard for prosecuting January 6 defendants. The FBI treats every individual charged with a January 6 offense “as domestic terrorists.” Prosecutors are not formally charging January 6 defendants with terrorism because that unsubstantiated charge would be laughed out of federal courtrooms. But for Biden scoring of January 6 federal triumphs, “parading without a permit” is close enough to terrorism.
While Biden paints all the January 6 arrestees as deadly perils to democracy, federal judges are scoffing at histrionic Justice Department claims. The Washington Post reported last week that “judges in U.S. District Court in Washington… have gone below federal prosecutors’ sentencing recommendations in more than three-quarters of the cases so far.” While the Justice Department boasts of the total number of arrests, “only 69 have been convicted and sentenced so far [for felonies], mostly for assaulting police or obstructing Congress.”
The House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack conducted many hearings and issued an 845-page report on their findings. At the behest of Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), the committee’s final report expunged criticism of the failure of law enforcement, enraging Democratic committee staffers. This was a bizarre omission—considering that even the Washington Post condemned “one of the biggest security failures in the nation’s history.” The U.S. Capitol Police have almost 2,000 officers and a budget larger than that of Detroit and St. Louis. However, fewer than 200 Capitol police “were deployed to interior or exterior posts at the US Capitol” January 6 — as if the cops were prepping for the annual visit from the Future Farmers of America.
Nor did the House Select Committee show any interest in the role of federal informants or undercover agents in the Capitol clash. A year ago at a congressional hearing, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) asked senior FBI official Jill Sanborn: “How many FBI agents or confidential informants actively participated in the events of Jan. 6?” She refused to answer.
Two months ago, it was revealed that the FBI had as many as eight informants inside the Proud Boys, a far right group that has been charged with seditious conspiracy for their January 6 violence. Suspicions have also been spurred by Ray Epps, an Arizona activist who urged people to go inside the Capitol building and boasted that he “orchestrated” January 6 has faced no criminal charges. Epps, a darling witness of the House Select Committee, has been accused of being an informant (which he denies). Nor did the Select Committee push to disclose the thousands of hours of videotape from the Capitol’s cameras that could resolve many of the J6 controversies. According to Darren Beatty, the founder of Revolver News, “Without federal involvement, that rally could not have turned into the riot that it did.” But we have not seen the evidence to confirm or rebut Beatty’s conclusion.
The January 6 prosecutions are part of a growing FBI onslaught against dissent. The FBI crackdown is skewed because “Washington is obsessed with threats to Washington itself,” as a senior government official recently told Newsweek’s William Arkin, one of the best investigative journalists in DC. “We’ve become too prone to labeling anything we don’t like as extremism, and then any extremist as a terrorist,” the official observed. The FBI is expanding its targeting of “Anti-Government or Anti-Authority Violent Extremists (AGAAVEs),” groups or individuals the feds claim “intend to commit violence or criminal activity.” And how will the FBI know their intentions? Trust thousands of FBI informants to gin up the evidence to keep propelling the prosecution juggernaut. And every anti-government “extremist” who is indicted can be portrayed by politicians as a co-conspirator with the January 6 traitors.
Biden will continue to invoke January 6 (or July 6, depending on how he is doing that day) to portray himself as the only thing standing between America and utter chaos. But the Biden storyline hinges on keeping Americans blindfolded on many details that occurred at the Capitol before, during, and after that day. Biden’s pitch also hinges on Americans acquiescing to federal agencies and prosecutors vilifying ever more dissenters. Unfortunately, there is no reason to presume that the coverups and the demagoguery will cease working any time soon.
Jim Bovard is the author of Public Policy Hooligan (2012), Attention Deficit Democracy (2006), Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty (1994), and 7 other books.
January 12, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Progressive Hypocrite | FBI, United States |
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