Make Way for the Snitch State: The All-Seeing Fourth Branch of Government
By John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead | The Rutherford Institute | June 1, 2021
We’re being spied on by a domestic army of government snitches, spies and techno-warriors.
This government of Peeping Toms is watching everything we do, reading everything we write, listening to everything we say, and monitoring everything we spend.
Beware of what you say, what you read, what you write, where you go, and with whom you communicate, because it is all being recorded, stored, and catalogued, and will be used against you eventually, at a time and place of the government’s choosing.
This far-reaching surveillance has paved the way for an omnipresent, militarized fourth branch of government—the Surveillance State—that came into being without any electoral mandate or constitutional referendum.
Indeed, long before the National Security Agency (NSA) became the agency we loved to hate, the Justice Department, the FBI, and the Drug Enforcement Administration were carrying out their own secret mass surveillance on an unsuspecting populace.
Even agencies not traditionally associated with the intelligence community are part of the government’s growing network of snitches and spies.
Just about every branch of the government—from the Postal Service to the Treasury Department and every agency in between—now has its own surveillance sector, authorized to spy on the American people. For instance, the U.S. Postal Service, which has been photographing the exterior of every piece of paper mail for the past 20 years, is also spying on Americans’ texts, emails and social media posts. Headed up by the Postal Service’s law enforcement division, the Internet Covert Operations Program (iCOP) is reportedly using facial recognition technology, combined with fake online identities, to ferret out potential troublemakers with “inflammatory” posts. The agency claims the online surveillance, which falls outside its conventional job scope of processing and delivering paper mail, is necessary to help postal workers avoid “potentially volatile situations.”
Then there are the fusion and counterterrorism centers that gather all of the data from the smaller government spies—the police, public health officials, transportation, etc.—and make it accessible for all those in power. And that doesn’t even begin to touch on the complicity of the corporate sector, which buys and sells us from cradle to grave, until we have no more data left to mine.
It’s not just what we say, where we go and what we buy that is being tracked.
We’re being surveilled right down to our genes, thanks to a potent combination of hardware, software and data collection that scans our biometrics—our faces, irises, voices, genetics, even our gait—runs them through computer programs that can break the data down into unique “identifiers,” and then offers them up to the government and its corporate allies for their respective uses.
In this way, we are now the unwitting victims of an interconnected, tightly woven, technologically evolving web of real-time, warrantless, wall-to-wall mass surveillance that makes the spy programs spawned by the USA Patriot Act look like child’s play.
Fusion centers. See Something, Say Something. Red flag laws. Behavioral threat assessments. Terror watch lists. Facial recognition. Snitch tip lines. Biometric scanners. Pre-crime. DNA databases. Data mining. Precognitive technology. Contact tracing apps.
These are all part and parcel of the widening surveillance dragnet that the government has used and abused in order to extend its reach and its power.
The COVID-19 pandemic has succeeded in acclimating us even further to being monitored, tracked and reported for so-called deviant or undesirable behavior.
Consequently, we now live in a society in which a person can be accused of any number of crimes without knowing what exactly he has done. He might be apprehended in the middle of the night by a roving band of SWAT police. He might find himself on a no-fly list, unable to travel for reasons undisclosed. He might have his phones or internet tapped based upon a secret order handed down by a secret court, with no recourse to discover why he was targeted.
This Kafkaesque nightmare has become America’s reality.
Despite the fact that its data snooping has been shown to be ineffective at detecting, let alone stopping, any actual terror attacks, the government continues to operate its domestic spying programs largely in secret, carrying out warrantless mass surveillance on hundreds of millions of Americans’ phone calls, emails, text messages and the like.
Yet the surveillance sector is merely one small part of a shadowy permanent government comprised of unelected bureaucrats who march in lockstep with profit-driven corporations that actually runs Washington, DC, and works to keep us under close watch and, thus, under control. For example, Google openly works with the NSA, Amazon has built a massive $600 million intelligence database for the CIA, and the telecommunications industry is making a fat profit by spying on us for the government.
Most recently, the Biden Administration indicated it may be open to working with non-governmental firms in order to warrantlessly monitor citizens online.
This would be nothing new, however. Vast quantities of the government’s digital surveillance is already being outsourced to private companies, who are far less restrained in how they harvest and share our personal data.
In this way, Corporate America is making a hefty profit by aiding and abetting the government in its militarized domestic surveillance efforts.
The snitch culture has further empowered the Surveillance State.
As Ezra Marcus writes for the New York Times, “Throughout the past year, American society responded to political upheaval and biological peril by turning to an age-old tactic for keeping rule breakers in check: tattling.”
This new era of snitch surveillance is the lovechild of the government’s post-9/11 “See Something, Say Something” programs combined with the self-righteousness of a politically correct, technologically-wired age.
Marcus continues:
“Technology, and our abiding love of it, is crucial to our current moment of social surveillance. Snitching isn’t just a byproduct of nosiness or fear; it’s a technological feature built into the digital architecture of the pandemic era …. the world’s most powerful technology companies, whose products you are likely using to read this story, already use a business model of mass surveillance, collecting and selling user information to advertisers at an unfathomable scale. Our cellphones track us everywhere, and our locations are bought and sold by data brokers at incredible, intimate detail. Facial recognition software used by law enforcement trawls Instagram selfies. Facebook harvests the biometric data of its users. The whole ecosystem, more or less, runs on snitching.”
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, what we are dealing with today is not just a beast that has outgrown its chains but a beast that will not be restrained.
Washington court rules YouTubers aren’t members of the news media
By Christina Maas | Reclaim the Net | June 1, 2021
The Washington State Supreme Court rules that YouTubers are not a member of the “News Media,” and therefore do not qualify for press privileges. The ruling shows how existing legislation works against individual and independent journalists whose medium is online platforms.
In the Green vs. Pierce County case, the Washington Supreme Court ruled that the YouTuber is not a member of the “News Media.” Green runs a news YouTube channel called “Liberty’s Champion,” which has more than 18k subscribers. He submitted a public records request to Pierce County after he had a disagreement with a security guard employed by the county. The purpose of the request was to get more information about the county’s security force.
We obtained a copy of the case documents for you here.
The county obliged to the request, but did not submit all the records Green requested. He requested all the records, arguing that as a member of the news media, he was entitled to the information. The county still refused his request.
So he sued the county at the district court, which ruled in his favor. The county appealed at the supreme court, which ruled against Green.
The states laws define “news media” as:
“Any newspaper, magazine or other periodical, book publisher, news agency, wire service, radio or television station or network, cable or satellite station or network, or audio or audiovisual production company, or any entity that is in the regular business of news gathering and disseminating news or information to the public by any means, including, but not limited to, print, broadcast, photographic, mechanical, internet, or electronic distribution.”
From the definition, it is clear the statute has not been updated to keep up with the current times. While Green’s channel fits the definition of news media, it is disqualified by the phrase “entity,” whose legal definition, according to the court, should be interpreted to fit the traditional news outlets included in the statutes. Unfortunately, the list only includes organizations, not individuals.
Therefore, an online channel run by an individual does not satisfy the legal definition of “news media.” In the ruling, the court stated “Liberty’s Champion is not ‘news media’ simply because it has a YouTube channel and regularly posts content.”
It added that “there are no freedom of the press implications if there is no news media.”
According to Eric Goldman, a law professor at Santa Clara University’s Law School, the court’s perception of news media is “corporatist” and “takes an unduly narrow view of the press.” In a post on his website, he continues to argue that “in the modern era the “press” should include unaffiliated individual journalists.”
One of the dissenting judges in the bench argued that “distinguishing different news media based on size or organizational structure or status as legal entity is disfavored, if not outright impermissible.”
Even the majority did acknowledge that the statutory definition might be archaic:
“The evermore constant use of social media to access news demonstrates our increased reliance on and trust in social media, and it requires careful vetting to ensure that the news and stories we find are accurate. The manner in which we access news today is vastly different from how we did it in 2007, and this statutory definition may not comport with the current intersection of social media and the news.”
Goldman also points out that the courts, and even Green, failed to bring up the argument that Green is a “sole proprietor” of his channel, which earns money. In most cases, sole proprietorships do qualify as legal entities, in which case the majority’s ruling should have favored Green.
Additionally, the statute’s definition of “news media” does include “an employee, agent, or independent contractor” of its definition of an “entity.” So, one could argue that YouTube is the “entity” and Green is an independent contractor of YouTube.
The bottom line is, existing legislatures have ambiguous definitions that end up creating unnecessary statutory interpretation problems, especially due to the constant evolution of technology. As Goldman puts it: “the entire architecture of the news industry and journalism has changed radically, [and] we don’t have good principled ways of defining media enterprises sufficient to ensure the privileges won’t be misused.”
Illegitimate rules remove parental consent for Covid vaccines
The Rule of Law is being dismantled and our children are the prey
By Meryl Nass, MD | May 31, 2021
Continuing from the last post: the US had very high rates of Covid compared to many countries, and right now that seems to have been a good thing… since places like Australia and New Zealand seem to want to be able to impose lockdowns for the forseeable future as they pursue the impossible goal of zero Covid. Impossible because you are not going to get everyone on the planet to accept a shot, and then vaccinate the wild animals and pets who are also susceptible. We have basically reached herd immunity with a combination of vaccine and natural immunity. Since only 40% of the US population is fully vaccinated, according to the NYT, there has undoubtedly been a considerable amount of natural immunity that has accrued.
Why aren’t the media celebrating? Apparently the powers that be who have made so many disastrous decisions regarding pandemic management don’t want us to know this. Yet. Thus their huge hurry to vaccinate despite the law, despite the still experimental nature of the vaccine products:
* The colleges demanding vaccinations
* The employers firing the unvaccinated
* The authorization for 12-15 year olds
* The million dollar lotteries for vaccinees, and other excesses to coerce vaccinations
But now the ante has been upped even higher. While many laws have been disregarded during the pandemic emergency, under the rubric of an emergency, two things I learned today are the worst.
Children aged 12-15 are being invited to vaccine clinics without parental permission, in the cities of San Francisco and Philadelphia, and others, based on emergency edicts in local jurisdictions, coupled with a Declaration by Alex Azar in March 2020 broadening the liability waiver umbrella for “covered countermeasures” during a pandemic to virtually anyone who has anything to do with a vaccine program. This could be interpreted as covering anyone who chooses to mandate the vaccine, even while experimental. In other words, even though you are not permitted to mandate an experimental product, Alex Azar said he would not allow you to be punished if you did so.
There do exist real laws, which preceded the pandemic, that protect children as a special class from both being used as experimental subjects (which legally under EUA this is) and protect them by requiring parental consent for procedures, unless they are emancipated minors.
Unless these laws were revoked while I blinked, they still exist and as federal laws should supercede anything imposed by a lesser jurisdiction.
Let’s see what happens. This is “hot” news and I don’t have time to put in the links, but this is true.
Finally, the FDA has announced its vaccine advisory committee will meet on June 10 to advise (aka bless) FDA on authorization and/or licensure for pediatric Covid vaccines. Not to put too fine a point on it, it is possible the FDA will authorize Covid vaccines for younger children, or even license them, starting June 11.
Meanwhile, Israeli media have claimed that one in 3 to 6 thousand vaccinees (I think in the 15-30 age group) develops myocarditis. I am trying to get the official report on this.
It is likely the FDA is trying to forestall any more bad news, which is why it is moving so rapidly. Furthermore, the FDA has warned us that it may not be able to provide any background documents prior to the June 10 meeting. That means the public and the advisors may be entirely in the dark as the advisors vote to provide their approval for whatever the FDA has up its sleeve.
Meanwhile, the Indian Bar Association has served legal notice for suppression of ivermectin against the WHO Chief Scientist, who is a famous Indian who headed up the Indian Council of Medical Research before transferring to the WHO.
“I Don’t Know of a Bigger Story in the World” Right Now Than Ivermectin: NY Times Best-Selling Author
So why are journalists not covering it?
By Nick Corbishley | Naked Capitalism | May 25, 2021
Michael Capuzzo, a New York Times best-selling author, has just published an article titled “The Drug That Cracked Covid”. The 15-page article chronicles the gargantuan struggle being waged by frontline doctors on all continents to get ivermectin approved as a Covid-19 treatment, as well as the tireless efforts by reporters, media outlets and social media companies to thwart them.
Because of ivermectin, Capuzzo says, there are “hundreds of thousands, actually millions, of people around the world, from Uttar Pradesh in India to Peru to Brazil, who are living and not dying.” Yet media outlets have done all they can to “debunk” the notion that ivermectin may serve as an effective, easily accessible and affordable treatment for Covid-19. They have parroted the arguments laid out by health regulators around the world that there just isn’t enough evidence to justify its use.
For his part, Capuzzo, as a reporter, “saw with [his] own eyes the other side [of the story]” that has gone unreported, of the many patients in the US whose lives have been saved by ivermectin and of five of the doctors that have led the battle to save lives around the world, Paul Marik, Umberto Meduri, José Iglesias, Pierre Kory and Joe Varon. These are all highly decorated doctors. Through their leadership of the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care (FLCCC) Alliance, they have already enhanced our treatment of Covid-19 by discovering and promoting the use of Corticoid steroids against the virus. But their calls for ivermectin to also be used have met with a wall of resistance from healthcare regulators and a wall of silence from media outlets.
“I really wish the world could see both sides,” Capuzzo laments. But unfortunately most reporters are not interested in telling the other side of the story. Even if they were, their publishers would probably refuse to publish it.
That may explain why Capuzzo, a six-time Pulitzer-nominated journalist best known for his New York Times-bestselling nonfiction books Close to Shore and Murder Room, ended up publishing his article on ivermectin in Mountain Home, a monthly local magazine for the of the Pennsylvania mountains and New York Finger Lakes region, of which Capuzzo’s wife is the editor. It’s also the reason why I decided to dedicate today’s post to Capuzzo’s article. Put simply, as many people as possible –particularly journalists — need to read his story.
As Capuzzo himself says, “I don’t know of a bigger story in the world.”
Total News Blackout
On December 8 2020, FLCCC member Dr Pierre Kory gave nine minutes of impassioned testimony to the US Homeland Security Committee Meeting on the potent anti-viral, anti-inflammatory benefits of ivermectin. A total of 9 million people (myself included) saw the video on YouTube before it was taken down by YouTube’s owner, Google. As Capuzzo exhaustively lays out, both traditional and social media have gone to extraordinary lengths to keep people in the dark about ivermectin. So effective has this been that even in some of the countries that have benefited most from its use (such as Mexico and Argentina) many people are completely unaware of its existence. And this is no surprise given how little information is actually seeping out into the public arena.
A news blackout by the world’s leading media came down on Ivermectin like an iron curtain. Reporters who trumpeted the COVID-19 terror in India and Brazil didn’t report that Ivermectin was crushing the P-1 variant in the Brazilian rain forest and killing COVID-19 and all variants in India. That Ivermectin was saving tens of thousands of lives in South America wasn’t news, but mocking the continent’s peasants for taking horse paste was. Journalists denied the world knowledge of the most effective life-saving therapies in the pandemic, Kory said, especially among the elderly, people of color, and the poor, while wringing their hands at the tragedy of their disparate rates of death.
Three days after Kory’s testimony, an Associated Press “fact-check reporter” interviewed Kory “for twenty minutes in which I recounted all of the existing trials evidence (over fifteen randomized and multiple observational trials) all showing dramatic benefits of Ivermectin,” he said. Then she wrote: “AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. There’s no evidence Ivermectin has been proven a safe or effective treatment against COVID-19.” Like many critics, she didn’t explore the Ivermectin data or evidence in any detail, but merely dismissed its “insufficient evidence,” quoting instead the lack of a recommendation by the NIH or WHO. To describe the real evidence in any detail would put the AP and public health agencies in the difficult position of explaining how the lives of thousands of poor people in developing countries don’t count in these matters.
Not just in media but in social media, Ivermectin has inspired a strange new form of Western and pharmaceutical imperialism. On January 12, 2021, the Brazilian Ministry of Health tweeted to its 1.2 million followers not to wait with COVID-19 until it’s too late but “go to a Health Unit and request early treatment,” only to have Twitter take down the official public health pronouncement of the sovereign fifth largest nation in the world for “spreading misleading and potentially harmful information.” (Early treatment is code for Ivermectin.) On January 31, the Slovak Ministry of Health announced its decision on Facebook to allow use of Ivermectin, causing Facebook to take down that post and removed the entire page it was on, the Ivermectin for MDs Team, with 10,200 members from more than 100 countries.
In Argentina, Professor and doctor Hector Carvallo, whose prophylactic studies are renowned by other researchers, says all his scientific documentation for Ivermectin is quickly scrubbed from the Internet. “I am afraid,” he wrote to Marik and his colleagues, “we have affected the most sensitive organ on humans: the wallet…” As Kory’s testimony was climbing toward nine million views, YouTube, owned by Google, erased his official Senate testimony, saying it endangered the community. Kory’s biggest voice was silenced.
“The Most Powerful Entity on Earth”
Malcom X once called the media “the most powerful entity on the earth.” They have, he said, “the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that’s power. Because they control the minds of masses”. Today, that power is now infused with the power of the world’s biggest tech and social media companies. Together social and traditional media have the power to make a medicine that has saved possibly millions of lives during the current pandemic disappear from the conversation. When it is covered, it’s almost always in a negative light. Some media organizations, including the NY Times, have even prefaced mention of the word “ivermectin” — a medicine that has done so much good over its 40-year lifespan that its creators were awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 2015 — with the word “controversial.”
Undeterred, many front-line doctors have tried to persuade their respective health regulators of the unparalleled efficacy and safety of ivermectin as a covid treatment. They include Dr. Tess Lawrie, a prominent independent medical researcher who, as Capuzzo reports, evaluates the safety and efficacy of drugs for the WHO and the National Health Service to set international clinical practice guidelines:
“[She] read all twenty-seven of the Ivermectin studies Kory cited. The resulting evidence is consistent and unequivocal,” she announced, and sent a rapid meta-analysis, an epidemiolocal statistical multi-study review considered the highest form of medical evidence, to the director of the NHS, members of parliament, and a video to Prime Minister Boris Johnson with “the good news… that we now have solid evidence of an effective treatment for COVID-19…” and Ivermectin should immediately “be adopted globally and systematically for the prevention and treatment of COVID-19.”
Ignored by British leaders and media, Lawrie convened the day-long streaming BIRD conference—British Ivermectin Recommendation Development—with more than sixty researchers and doctors from the U.S., Canada, Mexico, England, Ireland, Belgium, Argentina, South Africa, Botswana, Nigeria, Australia, and Japan. They evaluated the drug using the full “evidence-to-decision framework” that is “the gold standard tool for developing clinical practice guidelines” used by the WHO, and reached the conclusion that Ivermectin should blanket the world.
“Most of all you can trust me because I am also a medical doctor, first and foremost,” Lawrie told the prime minster, “with a moral duty to help people, to do no harm, and to save lives. Please may we start saving lives now.” She heard nothing back.
Ivermectin’s benefits were also corroborated by Dr. Andrew Hill, a renowned University of Liverpool pharmacologist and independent medical researcher, and the senior World Health Organization/UNITAID investigator of potential treatments for COVID-19. Hill’s team of twenty-three researchers in twenty-three countries had reported that, after nine months of looking for a COVID-19 treatment and finding nothing but failures like Remdesivir— “we kissed a lot of frogs”— Ivermectin was the only thing that worked against COVID-19, and its safety and efficacy were astonishing—“blindingly positive,” Hill said, and “transformative.” Ivermectin, the WHO researcher concluded, reduced COVID-19 mortality by 81 percent.
Why All the Foot Dragging?
Yet most health regulators and governments continue to drag their feet. More evidence is needed, they say. All the while, doctors in most countries around the world have no early outpatient medicines to draw upon in their struggle against the worst pandemic in century. Drawing on his own experience, Capuzzo describes the absence of treatments for COVID-19 as a global crisis:
When my daughter Grace, a vice president at a New York advertising agency, came
down with COVID-19 recently, she was quarantined in a “COVID hotel” in Times Square with homeless people and quarantining travelers. The locks on her room door were removed. Nurses prowled the halls to keep her in her room and wake her up every night to check her
vitals—not to treat her, because there is no approved treatment for COVID-19; only, if her oxygen plummeted, to move her to the hospital, where there is only a single eective approved treatment for COVID-19, steroids that may keep the lungs from failing.
There are three possible explanations for health regulators’ refusal to allow the use of a highly promising, well-tolerated off-label medicine such as ivermectin:
- As a generic, ivermectin is cheap and widely available, which means there would be a lot less money to be made by Big Pharma if it became the go-to early-stage treatment against covid.
- Other pharmaceutical companies are developing their own novel treatments for Covid-19 which would have to compete directly with ivermectin. They include ivermectin’s original manufacturer, Merck, which has an antiviral compound, molnupiravir, in Phase 3 clinical trials for COVID-19. That might explain the company’s recent statement claiming that there is “no scientific basis whatsoever for a potential therapeutic effect of ivermectin against COVID-19.
- If approved as a covid-19 treatment, ivermectin could even threaten the emergency use authorisation granted to covid-19 vaccines. One of the basic conditions for the emergency use authorisation granted to the vaccines currently being used against covid is that there are no alternative treatments available for the disease. As such, if ivermectin or some other promising medicine such as fluvoxamine were approved as an effective early treatment for Covid-19, the vaccines could be stripped of authorisation.
This may explain why affordable, readily available and minimally toxic drugs are not repurposed for use against Covid despite the growing mountains of evidence supporting their efficacy.
Ivermectin has already been approved as a covid-19 treatment in more than 20 countries. They include Mexico where the mayor of Mexico City, Claudia Scheinbaum, recently said that the medicine had reduced hospitalisations by as much as 76%. As of last week, 135,000 of the city’s residents had been treated with the medicine. The government of India — the world’s second most populous country and one of the world’s biggest manufacturers of medicines — has also recommended the use of ivermectin as an early outpatient treatment against covid-19, in direct contravention of WHO’s own advice.
Dr Vikas P. Sukhatme, the dean of Emory School of Medicine, recently wrote in a column for the Times of India that deploying drugs such as ivermectin and fluvoxamine in India is likely to “rapidly reduce the number of COVID-19 patients, reduce the number requiring hospitalization, supplemental oxygen and intensive care and improve outcomes in hospitalized patients.”
Four weeks after the government included ivermectin and budesonide among its early treatment guidelines, the country has recorded its lowest case count in 40 days.
In many of India’s regions the case numbers are plunging in almost vertical fashion. In the capital Delhi, as in Mexico City, hospitalisations have plummeted. In the space of 10 days ICU occupancy fell from 99% to 70%. Deaths are also falling. The test positivity ratio slumped from 35% to 5% in just one month.
One of the outliers of this trend is the state of Tamil Nadu, where cases are still rising steeply. This may have something to do with the fact that the state’s newly elected governor, MK Stalin, decided to exclude ivermectin from the region’s treatment protocol in favor of Remdesivir. The result? Soaring cases. Late last week, Stalin reversed course once again and readopted ivermectin.
For the moment deaths in India remain extremely high. And there are concerns that the numbers are being under-reported. Yet they may also begin to fall in the coming days. In all of the countries that have used ivermectin widely, fatalities are the last thing to fall, after case numbers and hospitalizations. Of course, there’s no way of definitively proving that these rapid falloffs are due to the use of ivermectin. Correlation, even as consistent as this, is not causation. Other factors such as strict lockdowns and travel restrictions no doubt also play a part.
But a clear pattern across nations and territories has formed that strongly supports ivermectin’s purported efficacy. And that efficacy has been amply demonstrated in three meta-analyses.
India’s decision to adopt ivermectin, including as a prophylaxis in some states, is already a potential game-changer. As I wrote three weeks ago, if case numbers, hospitalizations and fatalities fall in India as precipitously as they have in other countries that have adopted ivermectin, it could even become a watershed moment. But for that to happen, the news must reach enough eyes and ears. And for that to happen, reporters must, as Capuzzo says, begin to do their job and report both sides of this vital story.
What Was Utah Racial Justice Activist John Sullivan Really up to During 6 January Capitol Protests?
By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 31.05.2021
John Earle Sullivan, 26, is the founder of the racial justice group Insurgence USA. He participated in the 6 January Capitol breach but claims he’s a journalist and was only there to record the protests. Now Sullivan faces a total of eight criminal counts, according to court documents released last week. How will the case pan out for him?
Sullivan was arrested by the DOJ on 14 January in Utah and released conditionally without bail by a federal court, despite prosecutors insisting that the protester remains a danger to the community. Earlier, on 13 July 2020, the Utah resident was charged with rioting and criminal mischief related to his activities around a 30 June 2020 protest during which a civilian was shot and injured.
At that time observers questioned this apparently kid-glove treatment of Sullivan, given that other Capitol protestors like Jacob Chansley, also known as the “QAnon Shaman,” and Richard Barnett, who was photographed with his feet on Nancy Pelosi’s desk, were put behind bars. Barnett was refused bail even though he has no criminal record and faces no violent charges, as American Greatness’ Julie Kelly detailed on 25 May. To date, federal prosecutors have charged over 400 people in connection to the 6 January Capitol breach.
Was Sullivan Deliberately Instigating Riots?
After seizing Sullivan’s funds linked to alleged crimes, the DOJ has now brought additional charges against the racial justice activist, including weapons charges. According to court documents, Sullivan said “Hey guys, I have a knife. Let me up.” In addition to that, the Utah resident was allegedly heard bragging of bringing a megaphone to instigate the riot:
“I brought my megaphone to instigate s**t. I was like, guys we’re going inside, we’re f***ing s**t up…. I’m gonna make these Trump supporters f*** all this s**t up,” Sullivan allegedly told a witness after leaving the Capitol on 6 January.
Sullivan also brought a camera to the Capitol building to record the protests and portrayed himself as a journalist who was documenting the incident. However, investigators have not found any connection or arrangements made between Sullivan and any news organisation prior to the DC incident.
“Sullivan may be the luckiest ‘journalist’ in Washington DC,” says investigative journalist and founder of Crowdsource the Truth Jason Goodman. “He captured stunning, up close footage of Ashli Babbitts’ killing from start to finish. He promptly sold it to CNN and NBC for as much as $90,000. The money has now been seized by the Department of Justice.”
At the same time, the 26-year-old appeared to be actively participating in the breach, calling on others to “burn this s**t down.” “There are so many people. Let’s go. This s**t is ours!” He could also be heard saying, “I am ready bro. I’ve been to too many riots. I’ve been in so many riots.”
The racial justice activist’s support of Trump is questionable given he was seen at a Washington DC racial justice gathering in August, saying: “We gotta… rip Trump right out of that office right there,” and “It’s time for revolution.” At the same time, Black Lives Matter’s Utah chapter earlier disavowed Sullivan, calling him a reckless agitator and a “loose cannon.” Others suggested that he could be a “double agent.”
It is unclear what John Sullivan was doing in the Capitol during the riot, says Goodman, who interviewed him in March 2021. According to the journalist, it’s just as likely that the Utah resident is an adventurist – who has implicated himself by sharing his footage of the breach – or a well-trained provocateur.
Sullivan Was Prepared for the Breach
Goodman draws attention to the fact that Sullivan was well prepared and equipped for the incident: the individual had a camera, megaphone, ballistics vest, tactical pants, and gas mask. Speaking to the journalist on 5 March 2021, Sullivan confirmed that he had known about the upcoming storming of the DC Capitol as it was on “social media prior to this.”
“Wait a minute,” Goodman said. “What do you mean ‘on social media prior to this’? Planning for what happened at the Capitol?”
“Ye-eah,” Sullivan responded. “Flyers have been passed around by various groups saying that they are going storm all Capitols on 6 January.”
Indeed, around 4 January, the racial justice activist posted a livestream on social media saying that he was in DC for forthcoming protests: “It’s going to be massively insane… If it’s a mixture of Trump people and Black Lives Matter people, damn, that’s even more intense for me, that’s something I want to see,” he allegedly said.
Still, most of the crowd that gathered at DC on 6 January apparently had no idea about the forthcoming storming of the Capitol, Goodman notes. The investigative journalist, who did not breach the restricted area with thousands of other Trump supporters on 6 January, points out that only a small minority of demonstrators broke into the Capitol building.
According to Goodman, who talked to the Insurgence USA founder for more than an hour on 5 March, Sullivan appears to be smart and choosing his words wisely while on record. Judging from this, it would be hard to imagine that the 26-year-old did not know about the potential risks associated with entering restricted grounds without permission, let alone recording himself entering the restricted area, according to the investigative journalist.
“Sullivan’s confidence belies his age particularly given the serious legal jeopardy he is in. He behaves like someone who believes he will be ‘protected’. Perhaps this is due to the multiple instances when Antifa groups and racial justice activists were caught and then released last year, or perhaps he knows something we don’t know,” Goodman says.
Capitol Breach Still Raises a Lot of Questions
Meanwhile, the Sullivan case and his controversial behaviour evoke memories of Newsweek’s 17 May story about the Pentagon’s “clandestine army” of “soldiers, civilians, and contractors [who are] working under false identities,” according to Goodman. In addition, it’s also reminiscent of one of the Biden administration’s apparent plans to use private individuals and contractors to infiltrate right-wing chat rooms and track potential “domestic extremists,” reported by CNN.
The Crowdsource The Truth founder does not rule out that not only Sullivan “instigated” rioters on 6 January: apparently, there could be other individuals who, like the 26-year-old, weren’t actually “Trump supporters.”
The Capitol breach has left a lot of unanswered questions, the journalist says. For example, it still remains unclear who planted two explosive devices near the Capitol in Washington, DC ahead of the protests. It’s mind-boggling that this person has not been found yet given the number of surveillance cameras in the US capital.
According to Goodman, the Sullivan case may potentially shed some light on this: “There is a long trial ahead,” he says. “It remains to be seen if Sullivan is simply young, dumb and overconfident or if he indeed has a powerful guardian angel making sure he stays out of trouble.
Denmark helped NSA spy on Merkel & other European leaders, new reports reveal, as Snowden says Biden was ‘deeply involved’
RT | May 30, 2021
The US National Intelligence Agency received support from Denmark in spying on European politicians, according to a new joint media report, something President Joe Biden is well-informed to answer for, says Edward Snowden.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Frank Walter-Steinmeier are among those who were spied on by the NSA with the cooperation and help of the Danish Defense Intelligence Service (FE), according to the European media investigation.
The US spying on not only its own citizens, but also leaders in foreign countries is an accusation that came to light in 2013, mostly thanks to documents leaked by former NSA contractor-turned-whistleblower – though he remains a fugitive in the US – Edward Snowden. Snowden’s leaks specifically revealed Merkel’s private cell phone had been monitored by US authorities.
The new revelations come as a result of multiple European news outlets – including Danish state broadcaster DR, German NDR, Swedish SVT, Norwegian NRK and French Le Monde among others – obtaining access to internal reports and information from Danish Secret Service sources.
According to the investigation, politicians in Germany, Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands, France and even Danish finance industries were also targeted by the NSA with the help of Danish spies. The Danish government has reportedly known about the cooperation for years and forced FE leadership to step down in 2020 after discovering the full extent of the relationship following an internal investigation. They did not, however, report the findings to any European Union allies.
The spying was primarily done through hijacking Danish electronic communications systems as the country has landing stations for subsea internet cables between numerous countries, such as Germany and Sweden. By using politicians’ and officials’ phone numbers, authorities were able to pull texts and phone calls, while those being spied on were none the wiser.
Snowden, who made his revelations about the NSA while Biden was vice president, says the current president is “well-prepared” to answer the accusations and that there should be a requirement of “full disclosure” from both Denmark and the US.
“Biden is well-prepared to answer for this when he soon visits Europe since, of course, he was deeply involved in this scandal the first time around,” he tweeted. “There should be an explicit requirement for full public disclosure not only from Denmark, but their senior partner as well.”
In response to explosive reports, Norway’s Defence Minister Frank Bakke-Jensen said they were “taking the allegations seriously,” while Sweden’s Defence Minister Peter Hultqvist said he “demanded full information on these things.” Neither the NSA nor the Danish Defence Intelligence Service have issued a comment yet.
Former German opposition leader and Merkel rival, Peer Steinbrück, who also reportedly had his communications monitored, told German broadcaster ARD that he considers the situation to be a “scandal.”
“It is grotesque that friendly intelligence services are indeed intercepting and spying on top representatives of other countries,” he said.
Biden Is on the Same Page As Trump in Maintaining an Anti-Cuba Stance
By Ramona Wadi | Strategic Culture Foundation | May 30, 2021
U.S. President Joe Biden has given every indication so far that U.S. policies on Cuba will not veer away from those of the Trump Administration. In March this year, U.S. officials told Reuters that Cuba is not a top foreign policy item for Biden. The statement was left open to interpretation until now, when the current U.S. administration decided to retain Cuba on the unilateral and defaming U.S. State Sponsors of Terrorism list. The conditions for removal are very much based on how much U.S. influence the listed country will allow – in other words, becoming a U.S. accomplice in foreign policy is a must.
This week, a note signed by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was published, which stated, “I hereby determine and certify to the Congress that the following countries are not cooperating fully with United States anti-terrorism efforts.” Cuba was listed, along with Iran, Syria, Venezuela and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
Cuba’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs unequivocally rejected Blinken’s stance: “This is a totally unfounded and political accusation that tries to justify aggression against Cuba, including the inhumane economic, commercial and financial blockades which our people have suffered.”
Cuba has been a victim of U.S. terrorism and invasions since the triumph of the Cuban revolution. Recently on social media, the Central Intelligence Agency drew attention to a commemorative coin which was created to mark an anticipated victory at the Bay of Pigs invasion in April 1961, which ended in failure 72 hours later. The CIA-sponsored invasion of Cuba spouted the same rhetoric that is being used by the current administration to justify its oppression of Cuba. Only the U.S. can determine what freedom means for Cuba, in imperialist rhetoric, and the Biden administration is not letting go of the narrative that has suited the U.S. so well.
In case the U.S. needs a reminder, Cuba raised its responsibilities against all forms of terrorism in the new national constitution adopted in 2019. Article 16 (1) of Chapter II of the constitution states that Cuba “rejects and condemns terrorism in all its forms and manifestations, in particular state terrorism.”
At an international level, Cuba signed the Code of Conduct Towards Achieving a World Free of Terrorism in 2018. It has also declared itself committed to implementing the UN Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy.
The issue is not Cuba’s commitment to fighting terrorism, but the U.S. inability to accept an independent, socialist sovereign state that has resisted against interference, despite all odds against it. When in 1998, Cuba’s State Security had notified the U.S. of terror activities against the island being planned by dissidents in Miami, the FBI made no move against the planned terror and proceeded to arrest the Cuban Five instead. Likewise, the U.S. never targeted the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF) – a powerful lobby group involved in many attempted assassinations of Fidel Castro. Neither did the U.S. take action against well-known terrorists Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles, both trained by the CIA.
It is more pertinent to ask why a powerful country that has sponsored so much global terror remains unchallenged in its designations of countries allegedly funding terrorism. The Biden Administration is prioritising Cuba in its foreign policy, but going about it in a backhanded manner. By maintaining Trump’s designation, Biden is taking an active part in attempting to diplomatically isolate Cuba, apart from upholding the ramifications of the illegal U.S. blockade on the island.
Rather than assume that the diplomatic rhetoric about “reviewing” Trump’s designation indicates a possible change in U.S. relations with Cuba, it might be better to hold the Biden Administration accountable to its actions. After all, Biden was voted in as an alternative to Trump. How well is that working in terms of U.S. foreign policy?
Russia Falsely Accused of Hacking USAID
By Stephen Lendman | May 29, 2021
Virtually all accusations by Washington and its complicit partners against Russia and other nations free from US control lack evidence supporting them because none exists.
Yet they surface time and again, supported by Western press agent media.
On Friday, the Russophobic NYT was at it again, falsely accusing Moscow of hacking USAID.
In response to an earlier phony US accusation of Russian hacking last year, its US embassy said the following:
“We paid attention to another unfounded attempt of the US media to blame Russia for hacker attacks on US governmental bodies.”
“We declare responsibly: malicious activities in the information space contradicts the principles of the Russian foreign policy, national interests and our understanding of interstate relations.”
“Russia does not conduct offensive operations in the cyber domain.”
“What is more, the Russian Federation actively promotes bilateral and multilateral cyber security agreements.”
“In this regard, we would like to remind (the US regime) of the initiative put forward by President Vladimir Putin on September 25 on a comprehensive program of measures to restore Russian-US cooperation in the field of international information security.”
“We have received no reply from Washington.”
“Many our other suggestions to start constructive and equal dialogue with the US remain unanswered.”
Hacking and countless other crimes are how the US-dominated West and Israel operate.
In sharp contrast, Russia fully complies with its international obligations, according to the rule of law.
Yet once again, NYT fake news falsely claimed the following:
“Hackers linked to Russia’s main intelligence agency surreptitiously seized an email system used by (USAID) to burrow into the computer networks of human rights groups and other organizations of the sort that have been critical of President Vladimir V. Putin, Microsoft Corporation disclosed on Thursday (sic).”
When accusations are unsupported by independently verified evidence, they’re baseless.
None exists to support accusations against Russia under Vladimir Putin.
Will the latest phony one be used as a pretext to cancel a scheduled mid-June summit between Putin and Biden’s impersonator — because he can only recite lines scripted for him.
If held, the summit will be farcical — a know-nothing imposter engaging with a world leader of Putin’s stature.
Perhaps the latest phony accusation against Russia will be used to cancel it — to avoid US embarrassment if they meet face-to-face.
No Russian hack of USAID occurred, no evidence suggesting it.
What the Times indicated as the aim of the phony claim fell flat like earlier baseless accusations against Russia.
An invented scenario by the Times reads like a rejected grade B Hollywood script.
Corporate predator Microsoft is complicit with wars by hot and/or other means on invented US enemies.
So are the Times and other establishment media — operating as mouthpieces for US imperial interests on all things geopolitical, notably against Russia, China, and nations victimized by US aggression.
No phony NYT claim of Russian “malicious activity (or) appetite for disruption” against the US or other countries exists, no evidence suggesting it.
An unnamed DHS official falsely claimed that the agency was “aware of the potential compromise” at USAID (sic) and is “working with the FBI and (the State Department’s agency) to better understand the extent of the compromise (sic) and assist potential victims (sic).”
No Russian SolarWinds hack occurred earlier or other hacking it was falsely accused of earlier.
Yet Microsoft and the Times falsely claimed a Nobelium group in Russia hacked SolarWinds and USAID despite no verifiable evidence because there is none.
Time and again, Times reports don’t pass the smell test.
Its daily editions feature managed news misinformation, disinformation and fake news on major domestic and geopolitical issues — far removed from all the news it claims to be fit to print.
A Final Comment
Undemocratic Dem war goddess Samantha Power heads USAID.
Like other interventionist extremists, she never met a nation free from US control she didn’t want smashed.
She once called US foreign policy “a tool box” with a range of options to advance the nation’s hegemonic aims.
Civil rights lawyer Chase Madar earlier called her hellish agenda “a richly instructive example of the weaponization of human rights.”
Like other US hostile to the rule of law officials, she falsely blames others for its high crimes of war and against humanity.
Chances are she was behind the latest false accusation of Russian hacking, enlisting Microsoft to make the phony claim.
Her maliciously destructive worldview is polar opposite values just societies cherish.
Media outlets try to deflect from lab leak theory and censorship
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim the Net | May 29, 2021
Mainstream media, now embarrassingly forced to follow President Biden’s policy and abruptly reverse course on the Wuhan lab leak theory – after branding and ridiculing it as a conspiracy theory for months – are working to downplay the importance of censorship around the topic that was enforced until just a few days ago.
One would think it would be hard to find a single person who has been through more than a year of lockdowns and myriads of restrictions who would not be interested to learn what the virus is and where it came from – but apparently, such people exist, in media outlets like The Verge.
An article that could easily be described as a distraction in its own right from the topic of why the lab leak theory was suppressed and censored so vigorously, now claims that the origin of coronavirus doesn’t really matter and suggests that it should be swept under the rug as a distraction from truly important topics.
While briefly paying lip service to the importance of discovering the origin of the virus, the article’s real goal is to convince its readers to change the topic. Forced to eat their own words, this class of media are no longer calling the Wuhan theory a fringe conspiracy, but “an extraordinary claim” that is “technically possible.”
But discussing the topic is discouraged as no less than “a distraction from the rest of the urgent work governments and health agencies around the world need to do in order to end this pandemic and prepare for the next one” – while at the same time calling for vaccination efforts to be doubled.
And as scientists who have tried to study the origin of coronavirus, including the possibility that it was artificially created, are finally getting a chance to speak after being censored and ostracized for a long time – mainstream media are scrambling to adjust to the new reality around the topic.
The New York Times has already done its U-turn, reporting on Friday that US intelligence agencies have a large amount of evidence concerning the Wuhan lab – but one of its reporters, Apoorva Mandavilli, didn’t get the memo immediately.
On the same day President Biden announced an investigation, Mandavilli tweeted, “Someday we will stop talking about the lab leak theory and maybe even admit its racist roots. But alas, that day is not yet here” – only to quickly delete the post after receiving backlash for making the claim that it was “racist” to consider the possibility that the virus was engineered by humans.
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Trita Parsi: Israel Set a Trap for Total War in the Region
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From the Archive
Zionism’s Violent Legacy
By Donald Neff | Washington Report On Middle East Affairs | January 1996
On January 4, 1948, Jewish terrorists drove a truck loaded with explosives into the center of the all Arab city of Jaffa and detonated it, killing 26 and wounding around 100 Palestinian men, women and children.[1] The attack was the work of the Irgun Zvai Leumi – the “National Military Organization,” also known by the Hebrew letters Etzel – the largest Jewish terrorist group in Palestine. The Irgun was headed by Revisionist Zionist Menachem Begin and had been killing and maiming Arabs, Britons and even Jews for the previous ten years in its efforts to establish a Jewish state.
This terror campaign meant that at the core of Revisionist Zionism there existed a philosophical embrace of violence. … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- Trita Parsi: Israel Set a Trap for Total War in the Region
- Trump’s Iran war is on an Israeli leash
- Saudi oil boss issues global supply warning
- Riyadh Says Its Oil System Is Intact. The Numbers Say Otherwise.
- Trump and Netanyahu Want to “Finish the Job” on Iran
- US ‘one-sided dictation’ not Iran’s beliefs makes rational talks impossible: Baghaei
- Iran’s Next Strike May Not Explode. It Could Shut You Down /Col Doug Macgregor
- Iran: US political targets legitimate if assassinations return
- Iraq shuts key border crossing with Iran under US pressure: Report
- Undersea Internet cables could be targeted in retaliation for attacks on Iran: IRGC deputy chief
- If Americans Knew
- The Israel Lobby’s Changing Fortunes
- AIPAC has become such a political liability that it’s shifting to a more “nimble” approach to buying politicians
- At least 160 Israeli settler attacks in 2 weeks
- Will Gaza’s Ancient Christian Community Disappear Forever?
- Israel’s vision of regional security rests on keeping Arab states weak
- Heidi Levine recounts how Palestinian youths helped save her in settler attack
- DAILY UPDATE: Latest essential news on Palestine, Israel, & region
- Trump’s Intensifying Sabotage of the ICC, for Israel’s Sake
- Israeli military detain US and UK volunteers in West Bank including Democratic NY politician Brad Lander
- Americans at National Conservatism Conference held in Israel this year criticize Israel
- No Tricks Zone
- E-Cars Reduce CO2 Emissions By Only 41% Compared To Internal Combustion Engine Vehicles
- Predictions Made By Renowned Climate Professor Over Past Decades Have Been Proven To Be Poor
- New Study Suggests Large Regions Of The Pacific Ocean Have Been Cooling For The Last 80 Years
- Germany’s Green Energy Debacle: High Energy Costs Force Kahla Porzellan to Close After 182 Years!
- New Study: 50 Years Of The Most Aggressive ‘Net Zero’ Policies Can Only Affect The Global Climate By 0.03°C
- US September “Heat” Was No Record…Many Records Set Decades Ago
- Latest European Green Energy Debacle; Portugal’s Largest Flagship Solar Park Insolvent!
- Green Energy Debacle: German Expert Professor Fritz Vahrenholt Warns Of Severe Economic And Social Consequences
- Two More Paleo Reconstructions Affirm Meters-Higher Sea Levels Across Ireland, Brazil 7000-6000 Years Ago
- New Study: Earth And Venus Surface Warmth Largely Explained By Convection And Lapse Rate, Not CO2 Or Radiation
