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America’s pro-Israel diplomacy at the UN hits a new level

 

US ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, and President of the Security Council speaks during a press conference for the Security Council programme of work in March at the UN Headquarters in New York on 1 March 2021. [TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP via Getty Images]

US ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield on 1 March 2021. [TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP via Getty Images]
By Ramona Wadi | MEMO | December 2, 2021

Israel seems to have acquired another formidably biased ally in the latest US Ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield. Her Trump era predecessor Nikki Haley once said, “If there’s anything I have no patience for, it is bullies – and the UN was being such a bully to Israel because they could.” Thomas-Greenfield is going down the same route; less fiery language, perhaps, and more diplomatic tact, but subjugating Palestinians to Israel’s colonial violence nonetheless.

During a briefing to the UN Security Council this week, Thomas-Greenfield spoke about Palestinians’ security concerns while invalidating them in the same speech by upholding Israel’s security narrative.

Israeli settlers, she noted, are attacking Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, while settlement expansion is threatening the two-state paradigm. However, Israel has “real and understandable security concerns” about which the UN is not doing enough. That’s if the US narrative is to be believed which, of course, it shouldn’t.

Israelis “interpret the overwhelming focus on Israel in this body as a denial of Israel’s right to exist and an unfair focus on this one country – and they are correct,” Thomas-Greenfield declared. Only a few days ago, the UN Secretary General made sure that the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People did not infringe on Israel’s colonial existence. So how can the US ambassador claim that the UN is denying Israel’s right to exist, when the two-state framework and the 1947 Partition Plan endorsed colonialism in Palestine and has protected it ever since?

The UN’s “unfair” focus on Israel is favourable to the settler-colonial enterprise. Its alleged unfairness has generated unrivalled impunity for Israel, while Palestinians have been begging for their political rights for decades to no avail. While Israel is recognised, endorsed and supported, Palestinians have lost so much territory that recognition of a Palestinian state renders no tangible benefits in terms of state-building. The “unfair focus” to which Thomas-Greenfield refers has allowed a colonial settlement project – with war crimes, as the International Criminal Court determined – to continue without any punitive measures, while Palestinians remain stuck in a perpetual cycle of dispossession. “Unfair focus” has also prioritised Israel’s existence over the Palestinian right of return, which the international community has long since written off as unfeasible and worthy only as a symbolic gesture, as opposed to a necessary political reckoning.

Thomas-Greenfield’s rhetoric takes the purported anti-Israel bias at the UN to a whole new level. The UN does not speak of decolonisation, let alone “a denial of Israel’s right to exist”, as she puts it. On the contrary, the UN affirmed Israel’s existence despite knowing that the creation of the settler-colonial state was based upon the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their own land.

In fact, so favourable is the UN’s focus on Israel, that Palestine is defined through Israel’s colonial requirements that will only consider complete annihilation of the land and its people as an acceptable end result. Hence the silence on Israel’s de-facto annexation of ever more Palestinian land, while issuing futile reprimands on settlement expansion and promoting dissociation between Israel’s violations of international law to avoid speaking of decolonisation. In light of all the pro-Israel bias at the UN, what else do the US and Israel expect from the international community?

December 2, 2021 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Robert Kennedy Interviewed by Tucker Carlson

Tucker Carlson Today – 11/15/21

December 2, 2021 Posted by | Book Review, Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , , | Leave a comment

Why are kids with gender dysphoria being treated like lab rats?

By Damian Wilson | RT | December 1, 2021

A damning investigation in Sweden has found that doctors are ignoring the physical harm and irreversible damage caused by giving puberty blockers to primary school children diagnosed with gender dysphoria.

Wherever you stand on trans issues, no one could fail to be shocked by the revelations coming out of Sweden about the life-changing injuries and harmful side effects inflicted on children by cavalier doctors at the Karolinska University Hospital, all in the name of the great gender debate.

The youngsters treated at the Stockholm hospital had all been diagnosed with gender dysphoria – the unshakeable feeling that their physical characteristics were mismatched with how they felt about their gender – and were subsequently injected with regular doses of oestrogen, testosterone or other hormones to effect a physical transition to their new identity.

Gender dysphoria, it must be pointed out, is not a physical affliction in any way. It is all in the head.

Now, some of those children treated at the hospital are showing signs of osteoporosis, reduced bone density, liver damage, massive weight gain – one child piled on 25kg in just one year – and severe mental health issues. Some of those transitioning to male have changed their minds and want to identify as female again, but are stuck with the irreversible characteristic of a deep voice, thanks to testosterone injections, according to an investigation by the country’s national broadcaster SVT.

This is Dr. Frankenstein territory. How can the supposedly super-progressive liberals of Sweden allow this to happen? What’s even more outrageous is that in the case of one 11-year-old in the programme, the treatment continued for three months after doctors were alerted to skeletal deformation.

These are just kids who have been treated like lab rats. Tweenies and even younger who are crying out for help with their mental health, not hormone injections. It’s mind-boggling to think that a child still in primary school can be making life-altering decisions that will put them on a one-way transitioning journey, yet they have not even experienced puberty. Their brains are not fully formed, they can’t legally drink, smoke, vote or drive a car, yet they are being credited with a self-awareness far beyond their years.

One study in the Journal of American Academy of Adolescent and Child Psychiatry revealed that around 80% of children grew out of gender dysphoria, although research for the UK’s Tavistock Gender Identity Clinic found that those who began medical intervention were less likely to change their minds.

That still doesn’t make a majority, however. So surely it makes sense that if the probability is that a child will change their mind about transitioning, then mental health support should be prioritised as the prime intervention, before harmful drugs are administered?

Where in the Hippocratic Oath – ‘primum non nocere’ (first, do no harm) – is the exception for this scandalous abuse? How can medical professionals treat children like this, so that distraught parents are left blaming themselves, with one Swedish mother heartbreakingly admitting, “Of course you feel anger towards those you trusted. But also towards myself; I am the one who will protect my child, but I have not done that in any way”?

The SVT probe found that despite most medical professionals recommending that puberty blockers should not be prescribed for longer than two years, over the last five years, one in five children in what Swedish doctors call ‘trans care’ has been given the hormones for three years. Talk about not reading the label.

One of the medical professionals involved, chief physician and pediatric endocrinologist Ricard Nergardh, admitted that administering puberty blockers was “chemical castration.” But, remarkably, it still didn’t stop him or his colleagues from doling them out.

Sure, it’s all new. Gender dysphoria as a diagnosis has really only been on the radar since around 2013. But it’s a boom time for the medical profession, with many who should know better reluctant to suggest to their younger patients that maybe this is ‘just a stage’ they’re going through, in case they attract unwanted attention from the increasingly vocal trans lobby.

However, it’s not just in Sweden that the pressure is on an increasingly compliant medical profession to imperil the mental and physical wellbeing of our children, while playing along with a wrongheaded critical theory on gender.

Questions will be raised in Sweden, no doubt, but they also need to be raised in the UK, the US, Canada and Australia, where gender transition has become the cause du jour. Before any more children are irreversibly damaged.

December 1, 2021 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

After Licensing Board Threatens Disciplinary Action, Maine Physician Asks Board to Define COVID ‘Misinformation’

The Defender | November 30, 2021

The Maine Board of Licensure in Medicine this month issued a position statement in which it said: “Physicians who generate and spread COVID-19 vaccine misinformation or disinformation are risking disciplinary action by state medical boards, including the suspension or revocation of their medical license.”

In the letter below, Dr. Meryl Nass, a practicing physician in Maine and member of the Children’s Health Defense scientific advisory board, asked the board to define what it means by “misinformation” and “disinformation,” and to clarify what statutory authority the board has to discipline physicians on the basis of undefined transgressions. The letter, which includes the Nov. 16 testimony Nass gave to the New Hampshire state legislature, has been edited slightly for clarity.

November 22, 2021

To the Maine Board of Licensure in Medicine:

I am a physician, licensed in Maine for the past 24 years. I am concerned about the use of the terms “misinformation” and “disinformation” and the new threat to physicians’ licenses issued by the board today for undefined behaviors.

I require clarification regarding the board’s definition of misinformation and disinformation and would like to know what statutory authority the board has to discipline physicians on the basis of undefined transgressions.

Please tell me what law or regulation authorizes such threats for speech outside the clinic.

I thought I would provide the board with some information I provide to the public to see if the board intends to term documented facts as misinformation, intends to censor these facts and whether those who provide these facts to the public will be at risk of disciplinary action.

Here is my invited testimony to the New Hampshire legislature (Education Committee) on Nov. 16, 2021. Am I at risk for telling these truths? Please let me know.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said: “[The vaccine] doesn’t protect you against catching the disease, and it doesn’t protect you from passing it on.”

[Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said: “The vaccines no longer prevent transmission.”

In a high-quality study of all VA beneficiaries just published in Science, by September, the Johnson & Johnson vaccine was only 13% effective against infection, the Pfizer 43% and the Moderna 58%.

In a new University of California study of more than 500 vaxxed and unvaxxed people who tested positive for COVID, the amounts of virus in saliva were the same. They could transmit the infection to others, equally.

The UK’s top vaccine expert, Sir Andrew Pollard, said in August, regarding COVID vaccines: “Herd immunity is not a possibility. We need to focus on how do we prevent dying or going to hospital.”

Please understand this: Since we cannot achieve herd immunity with our vaccines, the inevitable result is that practically everyone will eventually get the disease.

Vaccines cannot achieve safe schools and workplaces, because the vaccinated can still transmit, even when asymptomatic.

While public health leaders are hoping frequent boosters will kick the can down the road, there is no reason to think boosters will prevent transmission, when the initial series didn’t.

Instead, it is crucial that we immediately focus on preventing severe disease and death — and early treatment can do this. It saves hospitalizations and lives. This is great news.

Why doesn’t everyone know it?

Because, had the benefit of existing drugs been acknowledged, there could have been no Emergency Use Authorizations (EUA) issued for vaccines, remdesivir or monoclonal antibodies — all of which are multibillion-dollar, patented products.

According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), “For FDA to issue an EUA, there must be no adequate, approved and available alternative to the product.”

Hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin were approved, adequate and available — and cheap. Thus they had to be suppressed.

Many drugs and supplements have efficacy against COVID. I created a handout of treatments for you. Please do not allow therapies for COVID to be restricted. Don’t allow doctors and pharmacists to be persecuted for providing these critical medications.

Few people are aware that in a Senate hearing on May 11, Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) asked Dr. Anthony Fauci, Dr. Peter Marks of the FDA and CDC Director Walensky, what percentage of the employees in their agencies were vaccinated.

None provided a number. Fauci and Marks guessed that a bit over half were vaccinated.

What did thousands of scientists in the National Institutes of Health, FDA and CDC know that you didn’t know? This:

  • They knew about sky-high rates of myocarditis in young men, which had been discussed in the Israeli media in April but was not disclosed in the U.S. until June.
  • They knew that deaths after vaccination were extremely high — much higher than reported for any other vaccine, ever. The CDC says that VAERS (its Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System) received more than 9,000 reports of U.S. deaths related to COVID vaccines, but claims they are rare. RARE? Record-setting deaths have also been reported in the UK and Europe after COVID vaccinations.

There have been more deaths reported to VAERS for COVID vaccines in 10 months than were reported for every vaccine used in the U.S. over 30 years.

As of Nov. 19, more than half (56%) of the deaths reported to VAERS after COVID vaccines occurred in people who experienced an onset of symptoms within 48 hours of being vaccinated. And although the CDC has not investigated them all, the agency still claims, ”A review of available clinical information … has not established a causal link to COVID-19 vaccines.”

But CDC officials haven’t linked the deaths to anything else, either.

Let me talk about kids. The CDC estimates that 147 million Americans have already had COVID — and that at least half of our kids are already immune.

Yet the FDA and CDC have not seen fit to allow Americans to use any available test — not PCR, not antibody, not T cell nor any combination of tests to prove immunity — even though the FDA accepts antibody tests as evidence of immunity in COVID vaccine clinical trials.

Why the double standard? It seems the reason to deny natural immunity is to force everyone to be vaccinated, whether they need it or not.

If the vaccines were safe, this policy would be less egregious. But they aren’t safe. The younger you are, the greater is the risk of myocarditis. Reported myocarditis rates in 12- to 17-year-old males after vaccination are 100 times higher than for men over 65.

One study showed that teenage boys are 3 to 6 times as likely to be hospitalized for a post-vaccine case of myocarditis as for a case of COVID.

Myocarditis is a serious side effect, which can cause sudden arrhythmic death. After three months, 25% of kids with myocarditis have still not recovered. No one knows how common this side effect will be in the 5- to 11-year-olds since it was not reported in Pfizer’s trial, which lasted an average of only 17 days after full vaccination for half the child subjects.

Dr. Eric Rubin, the New England Journal editor, said at FDA’s 5- to 11-year-old vaccine advisory meeting: “We’re never going to learn about how safe this vaccine is unless we start giving it.”

The FDA knows our children are the guinea pigs, and now you do too.

Did you know that in Philadelphia, Seattle and San Francisco children as young as 12 are being vaccinated without parental consent or notice? JAMA Pediatrics in July published an article calling for states to amend the law to allow children to consent for themselves.

Will New Hampshire support this attack on parental authority?

All pediatric COVID vaccines are used under EUAs. These remove manufacturer liability from the vaccines, unless willful misconduct can be proved.

Under the Public Readiness and Preparedness (PREP) Act, a finding of willful misconduct requires the manufacturer knew there was a problem with their vaccines, but sold them anyway.

The unforeseen consequence of the PREP Act is that it gives manufacturers a huge incentive to perform the most minimal testing of their products — because if they did not know there was a problem, they cannot be sued for misconduct.

Why are we allowing experimental products that have been inadequately tested, are dangerous in older children and were produced by a manufacturer who can’t be sued to be injected into our children?

But these facts have been obscured by a smokescreen of fatuous “safe and effective” claims made by financially conflicted organizations.

Did they tell you that if your child is injured, you are unlikely to collect a penny? Did they tell you that the compensation program for EUA injuries has not compensated a single COVID drug or vaccine injury — despite a one-year statute of limitations?

Under U.S. law, you have the right to refuse EUAs. And you must be informed of all that is known and unknown about risks and benefits.

But neither of these two requirements are being followed.

Since the pandemic, the rule of law has been tossed aside. I urge you to learn about the law governing the use of EUA products, so I have provided you the relevant section of U.S. Code.

Let me conclude by saying that given the loose regulatory milieu we are in, COVID vaccines will probably be licensed for everyone soon. That imprimatur will not brush away their serious problems.

Please prevent mandates of these extremely questionable products.

Sincerely yours,

Sincerely yours, Meryl Nass, MD

Meryl Nass, M.D., ABIM, is an internist with special interests in vaccine-induced illnesses, chronic fatigue syndrome, Gulf War illness, fibromyalgia and toxicology.

© 2021 Children’s Health Defense, Inc. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of Children’s Health Defense, Inc. Want to learn more from Children’s Health Defense? Sign up for free news and updates from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and the Children’s Health Defense. Your donation will help to support us in our efforts.

December 1, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Omicron Variant Sends Pharma Stocks Soaring, as VAERS Data Show 913,000 Reported Adverse Events

By Megan Redshaw | The Defender | November 30, 2021

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released new data late Monday showing a total of 913,268 adverse events following COVID vaccines were reported between Dec. 14, 2020, and Nov. 19, 2021, to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). VAERS is the primary government-funded system for reporting adverse vaccine reactions in the U.S.

The data included a total of 19,249 reports of deaths — an increase of 396 over the previous week — and 143,395 reports of serious injuries, including deaths, during the same time period — up 4,269 compared with the previous week.

Excluding “foreign reports” to VAERS, 664,745 adverse events, including 8,898 deaths and 56,297 serious injuries, were reported in the U.S. between Dec. 14, 2020, and Nov. 19, 2021.

Foreign reports are reports received by U.S. manufacturers from their foreign subsidiaries. Under U.S. Food and Drug Administration regulations, if a manufacturer is notified of a foreign case report that describes an event that is both serious and does not appear on the product’s labeling, the manufacturer is required to submit the report to VAERS.

Of the 8,898 U.S. deaths reported as of Nov. 19, 20% occurred within 24 hours of vaccination, 26% occurred within 48 hours of vaccination and 56% occurred in people who experienced an onset of symptoms within 48 hours of being vaccinated.

In the U.S., 447.7 million COVID vaccine doses had been administered as of Nov. 19. This includes: 260 million doses of Pfizer, 171 million doses of Moderna and 16 million doses of Johnson & Johnson (J&J).

Every Friday, VAERS publishes vaccine injury reports received as of a specified date. Reports submitted to VAERS require further investigation before a causal relationship can be confirmed. Historically, VAERS has been shown to report only 1% of actual vaccine adverse events.

U.S. VAERS data from Dec. 14, 2020, to Nov. 19, 2021 for 5- to 11-year-olds show:

  • 1,103 adverse events have been reported in the 5 to 11 age group since Nov. 1.
  • The rest of the reports in VAERS for children in the 5 to 11 age group occurred prior to the authorization of Pfizer’s COVID vaccine, and are due to ”product administered to patient of inappropriate age.”

U.S. VAERS data from Dec. 14, 2020, to Nov. 19, 2021 for 12- to 17-year-olds show:

The most recent death involves a 16-year-old girl from Georgia (VAERS I.D. 1865389) who died reportedly from a heart condition and multi-organ failure two days after receiving Pfizer’s COVID vaccine.

Other recent deaths include a 16-year-old girl from Missouri (VAERS I.D. 1823671) who died after receiving her second dose of Pfizer, and a 17-year-old female from Washington (VAERS I.D. 1828901) who died Oct. 29 reportedly from a heart condition after receiving her second dose of Pfizer.

  • 59 reports of anaphylaxis among 12- to 17-year-olds where the reaction was life-threatening, required treatment or resulted in death — with 96% of cases
    attributed to Pfizer’s vaccine.
  • 560 reports of myocarditis and pericarditis (heart inflammation) with 549 cases attributed to Pfizer’s vaccine.
  • 139 reports of blood clotting disorders, with all cases attributed to Pfizer.

U.S. VAERS data from Dec. 14, 2020, to Nov. 12, 2021, for all age groups combined, show:

Man with natural immunity forced to get vaccinated against COVID to remain on lung transplant list, dies after second dose of Moderna

Bobby Bolin, a 49-year-old Texas man who previously had COVID, was told he would have to get vaccinated against COVID in order to be eligible for a double-lung transplant, even though he had already recovered from the virus.

After his second Moderna shot, received on April 17, Bolin developed a pulmonary embolism and atrial fibrillation — a heart condition characterized by an irregular heartbeat, shortness of breath, chest pain and extreme fatigue. His health rapidly deteriorated and he passed away Aug. 20, before receiving new lungs.

In an exclusive interview with The Defender, his wife, Amy Bolin, said there was no reason her husband should have been forced to get the vaccine in order to receive new lungs, but unfortunately, he was desperate and very sick.

Amy said she didn’t know what timeline her husband had with his organs, but she saw a complete change in him over four months’ time and doesn’t want others to face the same things they experienced.

Pfizer, Moderna vaccines ‘dramatically increase’ heart attack risk

In an analysis presented during a meeting of the American Heart Association, Dr. Steven Gundry, a pioneer in infant heart transplant surgery, said mRNA COVID vaccines put many patients at higher risk of a new acute coronary syndrome, such as a heart attack.

The analysis concluded in part that mRNA vaccines “dramatically increase inflammation on the endothelium and T cell infiltration of cardiac muscle and may account for the observations of increased thrombosis, cardiomyopathy and other vascular events following vaccination.”

Thousands of heart-related injuries have been reported following COVID mRNA vaccines, and scientists have established a myriad of heart- and blood-related effects in some patients, including young people.

Among the adverse events linked to the vaccines are thrombosis blood clots and heart inflammation known as myocarditis and pericarditis.

COVID vaccine stocks surge amid fears of new omicron variant

Shares of major COVID vaccine makers surged amid the latest pandemic fears surrounding the new Omicron variant, CNN Business reported.

Moderna climbed more than 20% during Black Friday’s short trading session on Wall Street and increased by an additional 10% on Monday.

Shares of BioNTech, which partners with Pfizer to produce COVID vaccines, soared 14% on Friday and were up 3% Monday, as Pfizer gained 6% Friday.

Investors are hoping the vaccine makers will be able to quickly update their COVID vaccines to offer protection for the Omicron variant.

Moderna said Friday it “will rapidly advance an Omicron-specific booster candidate” while Pfizer said it hoped to have an update of its vaccine ready in 100 days if Omicron shows resistance to its current vaccine.

Moderna CEO predicts reduction in COVID vaccine effectiveness against Omicron variant

Stéphane Bancel, CEO of Moderna, said in an interview Tuesday current COVID vaccines will likely be much less effective against the new Omicron variant, compared with previous variants, The Washington Post reported.

“I just don’t know how much, because we need to wait for the data,” Bancel said. “But all the scientists I’ve talked to … are, like, ‘This is not going to be good.’”

Bancel said scientists did not expect such a highly mutative variant to emerge for another year or two, noting 32 of the 50 mutations in Omicron involve the spike protein — the area targeted by existing COVID vaccines.

In early March, Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche, a vaccinologist who worked with GSK Biologicals, Novartis Vaccines, Solvay Biologicals, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Global Health Discovery team in Seattle and Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization in Geneva, broke down the dangers of mass vaccination for COVID compared to natural infection and concluded:

“There can be no doubt that continued mass vaccination campaigns will enable new, more infectious viral variants to become increasingly dominant and ultimately result in a dramatic incline in new cases despite enhanced vaccine coverage rates. There can be no doubt either that this situation will soon lead to complete resistance of circulating variants to the current vaccines.”

As The Defender reported March 26, a combination of lockdowns and extreme selection pressure on the virus induced by the intense global mass vaccination program, might diminish the number of cases, hospitalizations and deaths in the short-term, but will ultimately induce the creation of more mutants of concern.

This is the result of what Vanden Bossche called “immune escape,” which will in turn trigger vaccine companies to further refine vaccines that will add to, not reduce, the selection pressure, producing ever more transmissible and potentially deadly variants.

Vanden Bossche argued the selection pressure would cause greater convergence in SARS-CoV-2 mutations affecting the spike protein of the virus responsible for breaking through the mucosal surfaces of our airways — the route used by the virus to enter the human body — effectively outsmarting the highly specific antigen-based vaccines that are being used and tweaked, dependent on the circulating variants.

Children’s Health Defense asks anyone who has experienced an adverse reaction, to any vaccine, to file a report following these three steps.

Megan Redshaw is a freelance reporter for The Defender. She has a background in political science, a law degree and extensive training in natural health.

BUY TODAY: Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s New Book — ‘The Real Anthony Fauci’

© 2021 Children’s Health Defense, Inc. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of Children’s Health Defense, Inc. Want to learn more from Children’s Health Defense? Sign up for free news and updates from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and the Children’s Health Defense. Your donation will help to support us in our efforts.

November 30, 2021 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

Arctic River Discharge Growing

image

By Paul Homewood | Not A Lot Of People Know That | November 30, 2021

AMHERST, Mass. — A civil and environmental engineering researcher at the University of Massachusetts Amherst has, for the first time, assimilated satellite information into on-site river measurements and hydrologic models to calculate the past 35 years of river discharge in the entire pan-Arctic region. The research reveals, with unprecedented accuracy, that the acceleration of water pouring into the Arctic Ocean could be three times higher than previously thought.

The publicly available study, published recently in Nature Communications, is the result of three years of intensive work by research assistant professor Dongmei Feng, the first and corresponding author on the paper. The unprecedented research assimilates 9.18 million river discharge estimates made from 155,710 orbital satellite images into hydrologic model simulations of 486,493 Arctic river reaches from 1984-2018. The project and the paper are called RADR (Remotely-sensed Arctic Discharge Reanalysis) and was funded by NASA and National Science Foundation programs for early career researchers.

Figure 2

https://www.eurekalert.org/multimedia/809497

The key thing about this study is not that river flows are greater than previously estimated, but that they have increased over the period of the study, 1984-2018:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-27228-1

This is significant because it means the Arctic Ocean is gradually becoming fresher. Exactly the same phenomenon occurred during what was called The Great Salinity Anomaly, GSA, which began in the 1960s. As Dickson & Osterhus described in their study, One Hundred Years in the Norwegian Sea in 2007:

Though other factors were involved in the freshening of the Arctic Ocean, such as the NAO, the GSA marked a dramatic shift in the Arctic climate, putting an end to what is known as the Warming of the North between 1920 and 1960 and bringing a much colder era.

Part of the reason for this is the fact that freshwater freezes at higher temperatures than salty water, leading to an increase in sea ice. The GSA is also known to have slowed down the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC).

HH Lamb also wrote about it, particularly how the GSA was triggered by greater run off from rivers in Canada flowing into the Arctic:

HH Lamb: Climate, History & The Modern World

And a Russian study by Viktor Kuzin shows that 11% of the world’s river water flows into the Arctic, a considerable amount.

Source

A milder Arctic tends to be a wetter one, but a wetter climate leads to freshening of the ocean and a return to colder conditions. In other words, it is cyclical.

All of this reinforces the likelihood that the Arctic will become much colder, with sea ice expanding again in the not too distant future.

November 30, 2021 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

New law allows for warrantless spying on Australians – where next?

By Kit Klarenberg | RT | November 30, 2021

The Australian Signals Directorate, Canberra’s equivalent of Britain’s GCHQ or the US National Security Agency, will be granted sweeping new powers to spy on Australians for the first time since its November 1947 founding.

The move allows the agency to collect signals intelligence on individuals within the country without a warrant, although allegedly only in situations where there is an “imminent risk to life.” Domestic terror suspects are cited as a key target in the Directorate’s crosshairs, and it will also collect intelligence in conjunction with the Australian Defence Force for military operations, with ministerial authorization.

Rules governing the reform and protecting citizens’ privacy will be published on the agency’s website, and subject to review and scrutiny by the Australian parliament’s security and intelligence committee. While framed as sincerely concerned with keeping Australians safe, experts have expressed grave reservations about the development. Among them is John Blaxland, Professor of International Security and Intelligence Studies at the Australian National University, himself a military intelligence veteran, who warned the powers were ripe for abuse.

“I’m a former insider… I have a much greater appreciation of the need for checks and balances, because power tends to corrupt,” he cautioned. “My concern is the legislation we put forward is being drafted by insiders, it’s drafted with their own concerns in mind.”

Drafted by insiders, the legislation certainly was – it’s inspired by the findings of an extensive review by Dennis Richardson, former chief of Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, the country’s FBI, conducted in close consultation with Australia’s assorted intelligence services, in a manner akin to foxes being quizzed on how best to guard a henhouse.

Published in December 2020, his appraisal’s discussion of “authorisations” noted that these agencies can already conduct warrantless intelligence-gathering if they believe it to be “necessary, proportionate, reasonable and justified” in certain circumstances, and “would like the ability” to not only use various investigative techniques without official permission, but also with “protection from criminal liability” when doing so.

Leaked documents exposed by journalist Annika Smethurst in April 2018 showed that high-level plans for untrammeled domestic spying by the Australian Signals Directorate date back even further. They revealed how the respective heads of Australia’s Defence and Home Affairs ministries had discussed allowing the agency to access citizens’ emails, bank records and text messages without approval, or trace. A government source told Smethurst they were “horrified” by the proposals, given “there is no actual national security gap this is aiming to fill.”

Australian Federal Police raided both the alleged leaker of the files and Smethurst the next year. In a perverse irony, the charges against her were dropped in May 2020, as Australian High Court judges unanimously ruled that the warrant secured from a magistrate in relation to the raid was invalid, because it not only “misstated the terms of the offence” but was also ambiguous if not outright absurd.

“[The warrant] lacked the clarity required to fulfil its basic purposes of adequately informing Smethurst why the search was being conducted and providing the executing officer and those assisting in the execution of the warrant with reasonable guidance to decide which things came within the scope of the warrant,” the High Court damningly concluded.

In other words, it was impossible to know from the warrant’s wording what the investigation actually concerned, what evidence or information was sought, and what, if any, crime she may or may not have committed. That this baseless and broad investigative authorization was formally granted at all renders the Directorate’s newfound power to conduct warrantless surveillance all the more disquieting. If such procedural perversion can occur even with putative oversight, what abuses will be engaged-in without any meaningful supervision?

Misuse of these capabilities is almost inevitable. In 1973, the US Supreme Court ruled warrants were mandatory for domestic intelligence gathering. Two years later, a Senate investigation found that the NSA and other US intelligence agencies had nonetheless been engaged in unauthorized spying on American citizens, including anti-war protesters, civil rights activists, and political dissidents, monitoring all their private communications from telephone conversations to telegrams. This led to the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which made it a dedicated criminal offense to eavesdrop on American citizens without judicial oversight.

Yet,it was revealed in late 2005 that the NSA had all along continued illegally intercepting the phone calls and digital communications of US citizens, with the witting help of major telecoms giants, which passed copies of all emails, web browsing and other internet traffic to and from its customers at home and abroad to the agency, and its British counterpart GCHQ. Files disclosed in 2013 by whistleblower Edward Snowden confirmed this criminal dragnet was truly global in scale, and very much ongoing.

Key components of this international spying network, known as ‘Five Eyes,’ are situated in Australia, at the Pine Gap and Kojarena satellite surveillance bases. According to investigative legend Duncan Campbell, around 80% of the messages intercepted by the latter – which employs US and British staff in key posts – are sent automatically to GCHQ and the NSA. While every Five Eyes member can theoretically veto requests for such material, “when you’re a junior ally” like Canberra, “you never refuse,” Campbell records.

One can’t help but wonder if the Directorate’s new domestic purview is an experiment, gauging levels of backlash and controversy among the Australian public, before similar measures – provably or potentially already in operation – are openly codified across all Five Eyes member states. Ongoing legal battles against mass data collection in various jurisdictions clearly necessitate the practice being legalized and legitimized. If Canberra’s American and/or British friends politely requested they run such a pilot scheme, would or even could they decline?

Reinforcing this interpretation, mere days after the Directorate’s remit was expanded, the Australian government pledged to introduce new laws forcing social media giants to “unmask” anonymous users who post offensive comments, with hefty fines doled out to those companies which are unwilling or unable to do so. The reasons for Canberra’s haste are unclear, although it’s surely no coincidence that London and Washington have battled for many years to end online anonymity for good – it’s only due to intense domestic opposition that these efforts have so far failed.

 Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions.

November 30, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Northern New England Defies Brandon

el gato malo – bad cattitude – november 30, 2021

the essence of science and scientific credibility is generating a hypothesis, making forward predictions about outcomes, and then testing them to see if you got it right.

it’s really little more than that, but it’s also certainly nothing less.

so let’s take a look at this set of hypotheses and predictions made by the president on august 3rd 2021.

attribution was crystal clear.

so, let’s see how he did on this claim:

maine is 90% 12 and up vaxxed and more than 99% of the over 65’s . yet it has seen has seen record cases, record hospitalizations and near record deaths despite being nowhere near wheat is usually peak season. that won’t be for 4-6 weeks.

compared to this date last year, hospitalizations are 85% higher.

the lion’s share of hospitalizations are in 70+ with many of the rest in 60-69. this is a 99%+ vaccinated demographic.

this is NOT a pandemic of the unvaxxed. 70+ already set new highs at 99% vaxxed vs last year’s peak when 0% were DESPITE more natural immunity as well.

new hampshire looks the same. and it’s similarly 4-6 weeks from peak season. 98% of 12 and over vaxxed. 99%+ of over 65’s.

compared to this date last year, hospitalizations are 133% higher.

maybe vermont is better? nope. 94% of over 12’s vaxxed, 99%+ of over 65’s.

compared to this date last year, hospitalizations are 214% higher.

they have all exploded since biden’s claims (made right at about seasonal nadir) and all have vastly exceeded last year at this time. on cases and hospitalization, all have already exceeded last year’s PEAKS (though cases may be affected by testing rates and i have not run the math).

all are 4-6 weeks from what is usually the seasonal peak and just coming into what was the steep ramp last year.

clearly, brandon was trying to pass off seasonality as vaccine efficacy.

this prediction of a “clear link” between vaccines and lower rates and lower severity looks to have failed utterly.

there is simply no other way to put it.

it was just a cross correlation of vaccine rates and latitude.

seasons shifted, and so did covid expression. and vaccines seem to have done little or nothing to stop it.

just like certain internet felines hypothesized.

bad cattitude
winter is coming, and the vaccine narrative is about to shift
covid is a highly seasonal disease and that seasonality varies by region. this has been obvious for over a year and i and many others have laid out graph upon graph proving it. that’s what makes claims like this so wonderfully disingenuous: she’s just mistaking seasonality for vaccine efficacy…

Read more

2 months ago · 195 likes · 171 comments · el gato malo

meanwhile, covid has dropped to the lowest rates since data collection began in the southern states biden and others were so anxious to pillory.

this has been an utter shambles of misinformation and misleading claims coming from DC. the fact that the white house is still getting this astonishingly wrong when the data is so clear that even internet DOGS much less cats are nailing it is inexcusable.

this is either such rank incompetence or such towering mendacity as to disqualify those promulgating it from any future epidemiological utterances, much less determinations on what constitutes disinformation.

November 30, 2021 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

Ghislaine Maxwell Is Finally on Trial!

Don’t expect much – the cover-up has already begun!

BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • NOVEMBER 30, 2021

Jeffrey Epstein procurer Ghislaine Maxwell is finally in court going through the juror selection process and opening arguments after a 17 month stay at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. Given Epstein’s somewhat suspicious departure from this earth in what may have been a murder rather than a suicide, Maxwell has been jailed under a somewhat more intrusive regime, with constant surveillance and only limited ability to do anything but sit on her concrete bunk and contemplate her future. She has complained frequently about her isolation, abuse by jailers and the terrible food. She was undoubtedly correct about the food. Her offer of as much as $28 million in bail money in return for her freedom while awaiting trial was turned down by the judge who observed that Maxwell had more than fifteen separate bank or investment accounts as well as multiple passports. She suggested that Ghislaine might have much more money and other assets squirreled away outside the United States, making her a flight risk, presumably to flee to Israel which has no extradition agreement with the US.

There is significant back story to consider when examining the Ghislaine Maxwell/Jeffrey Epstein saga. The suspicion that Epstein was working for Israel’s external intelligence agency Mossad or for its military intelligence counterpart is based on considerable evidence and that he was being “protected” has also seemingly been confirmed through both Israeli and American sources. Indeed, there already exists some evidence that Epstein was granted unusual leniency when he was convicted in Florida of sex crimes in 2008 involving 19 underage girls and received a sentence that was little more than a slap on the wrist. After the fact, the US Attorney for Miami Alexander Acosta, who was involved in the case, reported that the arrest and sentencing were above his pay grade, that he had been told that Epstein “’belonged to intelligence’, and to leave it alone” a comment that apparently was never been pursued by investigators.

Also, a recent book Epstein: Dead Men Tell No Tales written by Ari Ben-Menashe the former Israeli intelligence officer who actually claims to have run the Epstein operation, described inter alia how Epstein was blackmailing prominent politicians on behalf of Israeli intelligence. Epstein had been working directly for the Israeli government since the 1980’s and his operation, which was funded by Israel and also by prominent American Jews, was a classic “honey-trap” which used underage girls as bait to attract well-known politicians from around the world, a list that included Prince Andrew and Bill Clinton. Clinton reportedly flew at least 26 times on Epstein’s private 727 the “Lolita Express” to a mansion estate in Florida as well as to a private island owned by Epstein in the Caribbean. The island was referred to by locals as the “Pedophile Island.” The politicians would be photographed and video recorded when they were in bed with the girls. Afterwards, they would be approached and asked to do favors for Israel.

Ghislaine Maxwell is in fact the daughter of top Israeli spy Robert Maxwell, who received a state funeral in Israel after his mysterious death in 1991 which was attended by the prime minister as well as by all the former and serving heads of that country’s intelligence services. Ghislaine is presumed to have been an active participant in the Epstein operation acting as a procurer of young girls and on at least one occasion has hinted that she knows where the sex films made by Epstein are hidden. She also has claimed that the tapes featured both Bill Clinton and Donald Trump.

It doesn’t take much to pull what is already known together and ask the question “Who among the celebrities and top-level politicians that Epstein cultivated were actually Israeli spies?” And, of course, there is a subplot. Assuming that Epstein was in fact involved in recruiting and/or running high level American agents in an “influence operation” that may have involved blackmail it is plausible to come to the conclusion that he was killed in prison and that the suicide story was just a convenient cover-up. The Epstein case remains technically “open” and under investigation though it doesn’t seem that anything is actually happening, the sure sign that someone powerful in the Establishment is making certain that nothing incriminating surfaces. That is sometimes referred to as a government cover-up.

So, given all the drama and possibilities, one might plausibly ask why the media coverage of Maxwell, for all its allure of deviant sex combined with possible espionage, so much less in the media spotlight than were the recent Rittenhouse and Arbery trials? And even less than the ongoing trial of Elizabeth Holmes. Well, the answer is actually quite simple, even ignoring the liberal media’s desire to inflame racial passions whenever possible. We are in an era of government control of information and are witnessing selective management of what Maxwell is being charged with to eliminate any possible damage to senior US politicians or to Israel.

Television courtroom dramas notwithstanding, the fact is that people are only tried in court once they have been charged in advance with specific crimes. And the crimes they are charged with depend on what emerges from the police and other law enforcement investigation. The result then goes to a frequently politically biased district attorney who, if he agrees there is a case, then passes the case on to an elected or politically appointed judge for trial. That means in practice that trials by jury go through a winnowing process before they reach the courtroom and what comes out at the end is often only what the criminal justice system regards as “winnable” or desirable in terms of prevailing political viewpoints.

Or to put it another way apropos of Maxwell and Epstein, in spite of considerable evidence suggesting espionage, there is absolutely no suggestion that either the New York City police or the Federal Bureau of Investigation ever seriously interrogated either party on their relationships with IsraeI and with Israeli intelligence. Nor is there any indication that “celebrities” who might have been targeted like Bill Clinton were ever even questioned. That is no coincidence, as Israel almost always avoids any scrutiny. Indeed, Israel, in spite of its demonstrated and well-documented history of massive spying in the United States is unlikely ever to be confronted in a court of law because there is a bipartisan consensus that such an embarrassment to the world’s greatest friendship between Jerusalem and Washington should never be subjected to any serious examination. That is why Maxwell has only been charged with helping the convicted sexual predator Epstein traffic and sexually abuse four women, three of whom were underage, as well as lying in a civil suit. She has denied the charges and is heavily lawyered-up to make her defense which will likely involve debunking the nature and closeness of her relationship with Epstein. A suitable plea bargain after a few weeks of court room jousting is a likely outcome.

Maxwell’s eight count indictment was issued on March 29th. If her defense fails to convince and she is convicted on all the charges, which relate to sex trafficking and sex trafficking conspiracy, Maxwell could receive as much as an 80-year prison sentence. Epstein likewise was only arrested and charged with sex trafficking and abuse of minors when he died while awaiting trial, not with being involved with a foreign country in engaging in espionage directed against the United States as well as other nations. There are, by the way, laws against such activity, including the Espionage Act of 1918 and the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) of 1938, the latter of which has recently been enforced against Russian media outlets. If anyone expects the espionage angle to surface even implicitly during the Maxwell trial, they will be terribly disappointed because Alison Nathan, the Obama appointed j udge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York and, appropriately enough, a Lesbian, will not allow it, the prosecutor will not seek it, and the defense attorneys will not use it in their arguments.

So do not expect anything dramatic to happen in the New York courtroom. One has to suspect that a tale of Mossad running a major spy ring in the US using a pedophile and young girls might just be too much for some folks in power to tolerate and they have made sure that that aspect of the story will never see the light of day. That is the real story that is being conveniently covered-up. Israel yet again spies and Washington denies.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is https://councilforthenationalinterest.org address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org

November 30, 2021 Posted by | Deception | , | Leave a comment

Rittenhouse verdict puts “broken” Jury system in the establishment crosshairs

By Kit Knightly | OffGuardian | November 30, 2021

“If Kyle Rittenhouse didn’t break the law, we should change the law”

This quote, from late-night TV host Stephen Colbert, is one of the more concerning reactions to Kyle Rittenhouse being found not guilty of murder.

What law, precisely, Mr Colbert would see changed is never specified. The vagueness only makes the sentiment more troubling.

Other responses have been just as dishonest, manipulative and foreboding.

Amber Ruffin, another late-night “comedian”, broke down in (very fake looking) tears. Ranting about the “fucked up” jury, “white people getting away with murder” and the “broken system”. Trying to insert racial issues that don’t apply, and telling lies about the facts of the case:

https://twitter.com/ambermruffin/status/1461870102060535813

The “broken system” is all anybody wants to talk about. It’s all over the place.

In Washington, “the Squad” decried the verdict, wailing that “the system is broken”, that it “protects white supremacy”.

Even alternate media aren’t immune. Democracy Now invited the family of Jacob Blake to discuss the verdict, who have no personal ties to the case save the riot was allegedly being carried out in response to Jacob’s shooting. They too wanted to headline the “system is broken”.

But why the misrepresentations and hyperbole? Why race-baiting and manipulation? Why the exploitation of victims’ families?

What exactly do they want to change about the “broken system”?

Is it private prisons?
Is it absurd incarceration rates?
Is it the fact prisoners are used as de fecto slave labour?
Nope. It’s jury trials.

Not just jury trials, however, there are some other areas ripe for “regulation” and “reform” too.

The relentless focus on Rittenhouse “crossing state lines with a firearm” (he didn’t actually, but never mind) would suggest perhaps one potential “fix” is tighter limitations on travel. Covid has highlighted just how much the powers that be really do hate us being able to move around.

Another obvious potential target for these vague reforms is the Second Amendment. The right to bear arms is, ironically, always in the firing line. The USA certainly can’t go full-Australia while guys are allowed to carry rifles around.

Indeed, given how far into the realms of tyranny so many governments are going, all these attacks on the very idea of “self defense” could be a worrying sign.

But, for now, it looks like the first item on the menu of “reform” is definitely trial by jury.

Why do I think that? Well, both Ruffin and Democracy Now make special mention of the jury being “fucked up” and “broken”.

Oh, and this article says so:

After Kyle Rittenhouse trial, Biden still thinks the jury system works. He’s wrong.

Jury trials have been under threat for years, with “educated” middle-class authors writing that, essentially, the law is too important to be put in the hands of ordinary people who are too stupid understand it.

Juries are described as “old fashioned”, “slow” and “expensive”.

Juries are routinely described as racist, too. Before the trial even started, the Rittenhouse jury was criticised for being “too white”.

The Rittenhouse trial is not alone in being used to undermine the jury system, Covid got there first.

In Spring of 2020, the Scottish parliament briefly tried to ban jury trials “as a response to the pandemic”, this was quickly repealed after complaints from the bar association. There’s also talk of removing juries from rape cases to “clear the backlog” and “protect the victim”.

In January this year, Simon Jenkins wrote in the Guardian that Covid has given us an “opportunity” to get rid of Jury trials for good. He would see it replaced with a “trial waiver system”, as much of the US already does.

Trial waiver systems are ripe for corruption, one report describes them as “highly coercive”, and this could easily result in a lot of innocent people pleading guilty to lesser charges because they can’t afford a lawyer or don’t want to risk going to prison. It is not a fair system at all.

Nevertheless, that’s where they want to go – and whether by Covid or Kyle Rittenhouse – they’ll get us there.

November 30, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

Everything Biden touches turns to ash

By Donald Forbes | TCW Defending Freedom | November 30, 2021

FORTUNE has turned against US Democrats, eroding the tyranny of progressives, the ideological minority who control the Biden administration and swathes of the country’s key institutions such as education, justice and corporate management.

Polls say Americans are changing their minds in droves about cashiering President Trump. A CBS/YouGov poll found a 46 per cent approval rating for Biden. None has him above 50 per cent and some put him below 40. It’s mainly Trump’s base who want him back but many are telling pollsters they want a return to his policies which reinvigorated the economy, kept immigration under control and projected an America-first foreign policy.

The very success of progressives – estimated at a mere 8 per cent of the electorate – in capturing so much of the private as well as the public sector has seeded a growing reaction against their excesses and arrogance.

Firstly there is disillusion with Biden. His ten months in office has been the opposite of his promised return to normality after the turbulence of the Trump years. He has even allowed anonymous White House advisers to trash his own vice president in an effort to force her out and appoint someone who can carry the floundering Biden till 2024. The move is unprecedented in modern times and no one knows what effect the humiliation of Kamala Harris would have on the powerful feminist movement which is normally pro-Democrat.

Secondly, parents across America are in open revolt against the education system, the long closure of schools during Covid by the teachers’ unions, who finance Democrats, and the secretive teaching of white self-loathing to their children.

Thirdly, there is anger over crime with murder rates and other violent offences rising fast through a combination of lax progressive prosecutors and the collapse in police manpower as a result of the defunding of police departments. Voters, when they get the chance, veto defunding.

Fourth is a mass withdrawal of belief in what the biased corporate media tell Americans. They spent four years smearing Donald Trump as a Kremlin stooge on the basis of a dossier they knew to be untrue, and now valiantly protect Biden, hiding his failures by refusing to write about them where possible.

Leading journalists, liberals as well as conservatives, who reject the hegemony of progressives in the MSM have been fired or have quit to join influential blogging sites such as Substack, where they have found an audience hungry for honest analysis and reporting.

The attack on Vice President Harris is as much an indictment of Biden as of her own ineptitude. He picked her as a ‘co-president’ in a Biden-Harris administration. Now he wants rid of her after less than a year in office.

Even if it works, her successor will have a Sisyphean task  restoring the credibility of an unpopular administration which has the reverse of the Midas touch: everything Biden touches turns to ash.

A majority of Americans oppose Biden’s opening of the southern border to all-comers and are fearful of the return of inflation running at an annual 6 per cent and rising, which they blame on the Democrats’ spending spree.

Pump prices in the US are low by European standards but cars and trucks guzzle fuel in quantities which equalise driving costs. Voters are blaming Biden’s rush to green the economy for its overall woes which include a supply chain disrupted by the long Covid lockdown.

Biden’s catastrophic flight from Afghanistan embarrassed Americans. But signs of the turn against progressivism really became obvious at the governorship election in pro-Democratic Virginia. Parents attacked school boards for teaching children they were white supremacists. Terry McAuliffe, the Democratic candidate, responded: ‘I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they teach.’

Around that single sentence coalesced all the pent-up outrage of Americans against years of being told they needed to atone for their whiteness and guilt over long-dead slavery and to check their privilege. McAuliffe lost.

Progressive racial hysteria suffered another setback when a jury acquitted teenager Kyle Rittenhouse of murdering two white Antifa anarchists whom he shot during a riot in a Wisconsin town. The riot followed the police shooting of a black man which in progressive eyes justified violent protest. Some news outlets even reported that the men Rittenhouse killed were black. Biden himself called the boy a white supremacist. The silent majority saw a self-defence case which they said should never have been brought to court and acquittal as vindication of the traditional justice system.

Democrats won a victory in California when governor Gavin Newsom defeated a recall vote, but otherwise the history of 2021 has been one of constant setbacks for progressives and the leaden Biden administration.

Progressives are still powerful. But their waning influence was demonstrated when Democratic senators refused to vote for a Soviet-educated bank regulator who said the government should control all financial exchange and the bank account of every American as well. Finally, too much is too much.

November 29, 2021 Posted by | Corruption, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

Democracy Demands Transparency

By Robert E. Wright | American Institute for Economic Research | November 29, 2021

Have you noticed that many Democrats today are not particularly democratic? Oh, they want everyone, and then some, to vote, but that is where their conception of democracy seems to end. President Biden wants to tamp down on conspiracy theories, but this more by surveilling the public than making the government transparent and accountable.

The banner of one of the party’s leading newspapers, the Washington Post, has asserted that since 2017 that “democracy dies in darkness.” But another of its rags, the New York Times, delayed a story about the Kenosha riots thought troublesome for Democratic Party candidates until after the 2020 election.

What are they going to write when secessionist movements pick up even more momentum? According to a 2018 Rasmussen study, almost two-in-five Democrats thought civil war was likely within the next five years, i.e., by 2023. That was partly due to hatred/distrust of then-president Donald Trump but also an indication that Democrats are more likely to try to use force to keep a disintegrating nation together. Their paternalistic view of the world compels them to reject federalism in favor of centralized power. You’ll own nothing and accept novel medical treatments and like it, or else.

The key to preventing the further disintegration of our governance is access to information, not voting per se. Some people proudly don “I Voted” stickers and buttons. That’s swell, but why did those folks vote as they did? How can Americans discern who to vote for if they do not know who made which decisions, when they made them, and on what basis? Such information has become extremely difficult to obtain without the help of costly lawsuits, like one in Missouri that recently revealed that lawmakers had unconstitutionally ceded power to unelected government administrators.

Similarly, the Fifth Circuit federal court reviewing the Biden-OSHA workplace Covid vaccination mandate could not be cancelled or shouted down, so it easily demolished all the pretexts for the mandate. If the mandated medical treatment (which can be called a “vaccine” only because of a change in the CDC’s definition of that term) is effective, then the only people at risk are the unvaccinated. If it is ineffective, then on what basis can it be mandated? If an emergency truly exists, why wasn’t the mandate put in place earlier and why did it not include small companies? How dangerous is Covid-19 for working people anyway? OSHA could not answer such questions, revealing the vacuity of the mandate.

Even after the court stayed implementation, however, Biden urged companies to comply anyway. Say what? That is not how the rule of law works. Again, it seems that Americans all need to contact a judge or governor to protect themselves from charges of misprision of felony, if not misprision of treason.

Does the Biden administration have pertinent information that it is not disclosing? Or is it covering something up? We may never know, at least those of us in middle age or older, as the FDA wants 55 years to process Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests related to its Covid policies. That is not a typo! Nobody involved in this colossal Covid cluster wants to take the blame, and the only way to protect themselves from the flood of FOIA that I predicted last year is to stall, hem and haw, and obfuscate. Then stall some more.

How can Americans allow politicians to spend their money with almost no accountability or transparency? Details of the contracts between the government and major Covid “vaccine” manufacturers, unless leaked earlier, will be unavailable for at least five years. (Canadians and other alleged democrats face similar restrictions.) According to private sector auditors, the Pentagon cannot account for trillions of dollars. Americans will never know the details of that fraud because auditors could not finish their work due to the government’s “many bookkeeping deficiencies, irregularities, and errors.”

Similarly, manipulation of the FOIA request system stymies the investigation of past government mistakes at a wide range of bureaucracies, including the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which has long been infamous for its arbitrary decision-making processes.

While with help from another business historian I was able to use FOIA to obtain the information necessary to expose the SEC’s role in creating the conditions at the credit rating agencies that made virtually inevitable the global financial crisis of 2007-9, I cannot be certain that we found everything relevant to the SEC’s flawed decision-making process. The FOIA system was so slow and onerous that it appeared deliberately designed to dissuade researchers from investigating the SEC’s past.

Nevertheless, we wanted next to look at changes in the SEC’s so-called Town Hall Rule regarding stockholders’ right to use management proxy materials to submit proposals to fellow stockholders. After reviewing the extant secondary literature, which is thin and repetitive because it is based solely on the same few publicly-available sources, we decided to press on with an in-depth analysis. This time, though, our fee waiver request was denied on nonsense grounds and our information request was subjected to repeated demands for more specific information.

The demand for more specific information, though, presented us with a Catch-22 or chicken and egg problem. The SEC does not provide researchers with a finding aid, a document routinely created by archival staff to guide researchers to potentially relevant documents. (For an example of a simple one that I helped to create, see here.) Without a finding aid, researchers like me have no idea whether the documents they would like to see even exist, much less the details about them that the SEC’s FOIA request officers purport to need to see. See? FOIA reveals the government at its most inefficient, or systematically corrupt.

All extant historical information related to the U.S. federal government should be saved, catalogued, and/or made text searchable via the National Archives and Records Administration so that researchers can assess previous government actions and decisions lest the government, and nation, fall (again) into the trap of repeating past mistakes. Obviously, the subjects of researcher-led probes should not be in charge of the process of determining which documents are saved and/or made available to researchers. One would think government agencies would relish the opportunity of outside review to help burnish their reputations. Their mistakes are mostly those of administration, not (usually anyway) crimes against humanity. Yet, they jealously guard their turf from outside auditors and other researchers.

Given all that, I would like to take transparency and outside review one step further. People truly committed to the substance of democracy, instead of the charade of voting based on labels, or animal mascots, or vague slogans (ever notice how Make America Great Again and Build Back Better can seem to mean the same thing?), should insist on much greater levels of transparency.

Because the capture of FOIA proves that governments can bureaucratize and render ineffective any citizen information request system, it is high time that democrats begin to insist on the instantaneous release of all government information related to all domestic matters: video recordings of meetings, emails, letters, Slack or text messages, and other forms of electronic or personal communication between government officials, elected and bureaucratic, and between said officials and U.S. residents, including candidates for elected office. The federal government surveils millions of American citizens, so why cannot citizens compel the government to surveil itself, or at least make public all but the most sensitive of its own activities?

Advances in data mining aided by artificial intelligence will allow watchdogs to parse through all that data to expose inefficient, corrupt, or just plain dumb governance in real time. (Maybe they will even find specific instances where government programs work well.) Journalists and “fact checkers” will have access to primary sources of verified authenticity that they can link to to (dis)prove claims of “misinformation.” Then Americans can all vote with the aid of a full, impartial, verifiable analysis about who and what they are voting for, or against.

If complete and instantaneous disclosure proves impossible politically, the United States should return to a government with powers so limited that it need not be constantly audited, watched, or dreaded.

Robert E. Wright is a Senior Research Fellow at the American Institute for Economic Research.

He is the (co)author or (co)editor of over two dozen major books, book series, and edited collections, including AIER’s The Best of Thomas Paine (2021) and Financial Exclusion (2019).

November 29, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

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