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DHS is paying Deranged Leftists to find a way to make you change your political beliefs

By Eric Striker | National Justice | February 19, 2021

Fresh off a summer of prolonged murder and arson organized by leftists, the Department of Homeland Security announced the lucky winners of its “domestic terrorism prevention” grant system last September.

One recipient program is at American University’s School of Communications, which got $568,613 from the DHS to partner with Google’s Jigsaw (an AI project that specializes in manipulating search results to achieve political ends) in order to “define and describe the growing threat of violent white supremacist extremist disinformation, evaluate attitudinal inoculation as a strategy for communication to combat the threat, and develop a suite of operational tools for use by practitioners and stakeholders.”

The highly subjective language of this description is only the tip of the iceberg. The project is being led by Kurt Braddock, a professor of Public Communications at AU. Braddock is known for pioneering social engineering and Soviet-style indoctrination techniques as a “vaccine” against what he arbitrarily deems to be “hate.”

Braddock’s leading role in this project, which seeks to develop his theories and put them into practice on a wide scale, is cause for concern. He doesn’t hide his fanatical left-wing prejudices, and he makes it a point to show his disregard for fundamental American values like free speech.

“Stochastic Terrorism”

Last month, Braddock penned a piece for Common Dreams declaring Donald Trump a “stochastic terrorist.”

The logic of the stochastic terrorism concept is that an individual engaging in lawful political advocacy should be found guilty of a crime if a person who he has no relationship to but shares his critique crosses the line and becomes violent. In other words, guilt by association.

In his article, he asserts that Trump should’ve been held responsible for the FBI agent instigated plot to kidnap Gretchen Whitmer, merely for previously tweeting the slogan “LIBERATE MICHIGAN.”

To understand the absurdity of the idea, Dylann Roof told investigators that his main inspiration for the shooting spree at the Emanuel AME Church in South Carolina was reading interracial crime statistics, which the FBI itself compiles and releases every year. Under a system that prosecutes stochastic terrorism, the FBI itself would be partially responsible.

For Braddock, there is no such thing as the peaceful expression of beliefs or even raw data that challenges his worldview. Most enlightened people side with Socrates in the trial that found him guilty and put him to death for blasphemy, but the assistant professor upholds the Athenian court’s decision, “As a professor of communication, my teaching and research is based on a fact that has been clear since the days of Socrates– words have consequences,” he says.

In an interview with CBS News earlier this week, he reiterated this view, complaining that “far-right leaders” will be emboldened by Trump’s Senate acquittal into making statements that “motivate the far right” due to seeing a lack of “repercussions.”

The underlying first principle of all of Braddock’s work, seen in works like Weaponized Words which talks about using social psychology and manipulation to alter people’s political values, relies on the assertion that simply disagreeing with him on a broad range of issues is an act of violence.

Braddock’s Experiments Aren’t New

While Braddock may present his ideas and experiments as novel to DHS grant makers, they are in truth mostly taken from the established work of Chinese commissars in the 1970s and 80s.

In Michael Keane’s The Chinese Television Industry, he details the Maoist theory of culture and mass media. Journalists and state-backed intellectuals in China were instructed to become “guardians of the soul” tasked with instilling loyalty to the ruling elite’s interests as a way to “protect” the masses from the “viral infection” of so-called disinformation and counter-revolution.

The process of social engineering was referred to by Chinese officials as “positive education.” In Keane’s retelling, “positive education” was described as a way to “inoculate” the people against ideas critical of the state. Positive education methods were used until the 1980s.

In Braddock’s experiments, individuals are shown pro-white or populist arguments deliberately taken out-of-context in a way to induce a psychological response. The subjects are then rapidly bombarded with ideological “counter-arguments,” almost identical in method to what Maoists did on a wide scale in China.

Braddock claims these experiments have shown a high success rate in “inoculating” white people against anti-establishment ideas. Through his partnership with Google, he is trying to figure out ways to apply this on an industrial scale to social media, similar to how Mao attempted to solidify obedience to his doctrine through newspapers and television in China.

Petty Partisanship, Not Science

Braddock’s social media behavior reveals an individual deeply entrenched in the world of the online far-left.

In one tweet tagging Tom Cotton, he refers to him as a fascist “licking the boots of those who advocate white supremacy” over a June op-ed calling for government action against unabated anarchist violence.

In an older message from 2016, Braddock refers to Antifa members who tried to stab outnumbered Sacramento nationalists attending a permitted march as “counter-protesters.”

A cursory look at Braddock’s personal webpage is filled with Rick & Morty references and infantile writings that demonstrate a lack of professionalism, such as a self-description that reads “Terrorism is bad, so I try to understand, interpret, and stop it. Counter-terrorism is good, so I try to do work that helps it.”

It should be noted that the money behind this crusade was allocated to Braddock’s team by the Trump administration. At best, the grant is a huge waste of taxpayer dollars. But the malice behind his thinking should not be underestimated. This small-souled man isn’t a blogger for the Huffington Post, he has the full deference of history’s most advanced surveillance state. If he gets his way, half of America could be classified as terrorists targeted for re-education. The consequences of this kind of designation is no laughing matter.

February 19, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , | Leave a comment

Israel prepares law to prohibit cooperation with ICC

MEMO | February 18, 2021

Israeli authorities are preparing a law that would prohibit any cooperation with the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, and would propose five years in prison for any violations of this law, RT reported yesterday.

Reporting Israeli TV Channel 7, RT said the law would also include a ban on handing over Israeli nationals to the ICC, financing the expenses of legal defence before it and imposing penalties on the court and those working for it.

This, it explained, comes as part of a series of measures taken by Israel against the ICC after its announcement that it would probe potential Israeli war crimes against Palestinians.

Channel 7 reported that the bill is being inspired by the American Civil Service Protection Act, which was enacted in Congress in 2002.

The US law, which was known as the Invasion of The Hague, gives the US president wide ranging powers to do anything in order to release any American citizen arrested by the ICC, including the use of force.

Reporting the Israeli NGO Shurat HaDin, Channel 7 said that the Israeli law aims to create a legal safety network for Israeli soldiers and senior officials who could be prosecuted.

It will also sanction the tribunal’s members, ban them from entering Israel and impose restrictions against foreign entities that help them.

The ICC’s declared intention to investigate possible war crimes in the occupied Palestinian territories has enraged Israel. The government has apparently drafted a list of its officials and former officials who should avoid foreign travel as they may be arrested and charged with such crimes.

February 19, 2021 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

The Moral Bankruptcy of the Left on Foreign Policy

By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | February 19, 2021

Two recent articles in the mainstream press reflect the moral bankruptcy of the left when it comes to U.S. foreign policy.

The first article is actually an editorial in the Washington Post. It is entitled Biden Continues Business as Usual with Trump’s “Favorite Dictator”. The editorial provides an excellent critique of U.S. foreign aid for Egypt, which is one of the world’s most brutal dictatorships. Pointing out that Biden had criticized former President Trump for supporting Egypt’s ruler, Gen. Abdel Fatah al-Sissi, the Post’s editorial then proceeds to point out that that is precisely what President Biden is now doing:

On Tuesday, the State Department approved a $197 million sale of naval surface-to-air missiles to the Sissi regime. Spokesman Ned Price described the transfer as “a routine replenishment of defensive weapons.” In other words, if not a blank check, then business as usual with a government that pays for its U.S. weapons with $1.3 billion in annual U.S. aid — one of the largest subsidies to a foreign nation.

So, what does the Post recommend? Does it call for an end to all foreign aid or at least an end to foreign aid for brutal dictatorships or at least an end to foreign aid for Egypt’s brutal military dictatorship?

Unfortunately, no. Saying that Biden must connect his words favoring human rights and democracy to action, the Post writes: “A good first step would be to consult with the Egypt Human Rights Caucus on linking further military aid and sales to Egypt to the release of political prisoners….”

In other words, under what the Post considers to be a “good first step,” the U.S. would continue using U.S. taxpayer money to continue funding this brutal and tyrannical military dictatorship if Egypt would just release some political prisoners. By advocating this incremental “good first step,” the Post destroys the entire moral force of its editorial.

The second article is an op-ed in the Washington Examiner by a noted international leftist named Nuri Kinko. His article is entitled “Stop the Starvation of Syrian Children.” His article provides an excellent analysis of the horrific consequences of the U.S. government’s foreign policy of sanctions against Syria. Hoping that their sanctions will achieve regime change in Syria, U.S. officials have placed the Syrian populace on the verge of starvation.

So what does Nuri advocate? He says that the “U.S. and the European Union must adopt alternatives to comprehensive sanctions on Syria.”

What alternatives? He doesn’t say. Regardless, while Nuri can see the moral bankruptcy of sanctions, like other leftists (and like conservatives), he has a moral blind spot when it comes to foreign interventionism in general. In other words, he has no problem with the U.S. government taking interventionist actions against Syria; he just doesn’t want such actions to include sanctions.

There is only one moral position that can be taken with respect to foreign aid for Egypt and to sanctions on Syria: End all foreign interventionism, including foreign aid and economic sanctions. This is one of the areas where we libertarians have the moral high ground. We must continue to hold that ground and not succumb to immoral piecemeal compromises, as both liberals and conservatives do.

February 19, 2021 Posted by | Wars for Israel | , | Leave a comment

No decision on any NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan: Stoltenberg

Press TV – February 18, 2021

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg says defense ministers from the Western military alliance made no decision at a recent meeting in Brussels on whether or when to pull out of war-torn Afghanistan.

“At this stage, we have made no final decision on the future of our presence,” Stoltenberg said after a video conference with allied defense ministers on Thursday.

The defense ministers met to discuss the possibility of staying in Afghanistan beyond the May withdrawal deadline agreed between the Taliban militant group and the United States under the administration of former US President Donald Trump.

Key on the agenda at the two-day virtual conference in Brussels was the future of the US-led forces in the war-torn country.

The NATO chief said US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin promised to consult with partners on the way forward.

“As the May 1 deadline is approaching, NATO allies will continue to closely consult and coordinate in the coming weeks. We are faced with many dilemmas, and there are no easy options,” Stoltenberg said.

“If we stay beyond the first of May, we risk more violence, more attacks against our own troops … But if we leave, then we will also risk that the gains that we have made are lost.”

The administration of President Joe Biden is reviewing whether to stick to the looming deadline to withdraw or risk a bloody backlash from the Taliban.

Other NATO members have signaled a desire within the alliance to stay in Afghanistan beyond the deadline. They are willing to remain in Afghanistan if Washington does so.

German Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer said on Wednesday that the Taliban must do more to meet the terms of a 2020 agreement with Washington on the withdrawal of US.forces to allow a pullout of the foreign troops.

“We can already say that we are not yet in a position to talk about the withdrawal of international forces from Afghanistan,” the German minister said as she arrived for the meeting.

“This also means a changed security situation, an increased threat for the international forces, also for our own forces. We have to prepare for this, and we will certainly discuss this.”

Nearly two decades after the US-led invasion, Trump struck a deal with the Taliban in the Qatari capital of Doha early last year.

The former White House tenant reached the accord in February 2020, under which the US and its NATO allies are expected to withdraw all troops in 14 months in exchange for the Taliban to halt attacks on foreign forces.

President Biden, however, has said his administration would not commit to a full withdrawal by May.

The United Nations says more than 100,000 civilians have been killed or injured over the past decade across Afghanistan.

February 19, 2021 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

Biden’s Interventionism Meets Russia-China Multilateralism

By Salman Rafi Sheikh – New Eastern Outlook – 18.02.2021

In his first major foreign policy speech, the newly elected US president made it clear that the era of US’ traditional interventionist and confrontationist policy is going to take over Donald Trump’s “America First”, a controversial policy that emphasized economic nationalism and a reduced US involvement in conflicts. In his last speech as president, Trump took a lot of pride in the fact that he is the first president in last many decades who completed his tenure without starting a new war. Biden’s approach, however, shows that US interventionism and the bid to re-establish US supremacy are going to be the new cornerstones of US global politics. Anti-China and anti-Russia elements within the US establishment see Trump’s “America First” as one primary reason that allowed US rivals to take advantage of US political retreat and project themselves in many crucial regions including the Middle East and Europe, which were under US exclusive influence until a few years ago. Therefore, the foremost goal of the Joe Biden administration is going to be reclaiming the lost US supremacy. As it stands, the new administration is already projecting this policy without mincing any words, calling it a ‘great reset.’

Biden’s speech was unambiguous when he addressed Russia, saying,

“I made it clear to President Putin, in a manner very different from my predecessor, that the days of the United States rolling over in the face of Russia’s aggressive actions — interfering with our elections, cyberattacks, poisoning its citizens — are over. We will not hesitate to raise the cost on Russia and defend our vital interests and our people. And we will be more effective in dealing with Russia when we work in coalition and coordination with other like-minded partners.”

Outlining his confrontation with China, Biden said,

“And we’ll also take on directly the challenges posed by our prosperity, security, and democratic values by our most serious competitor, China. We’ll confront China’s economic abuses; counter its aggressive, coercive action; to push back on China’s attack on human rights, intellectual property, and global governance.”

Of course, these “warnings” are a part of Biden’s policy to re-build American supremacy. As he said,

“It’s going to take time to rebuild what has been so badly damaged. But that’s precisely what we’re going to do.”

The Joe Biden administration, as it stands, is being facilitated by the presence of hawks in the broader US-led defense establishment including NATO. A recent paper written by an anonymous author for the NATO-funded think-tank, The Atlantic Council, said that “The single most important challenge facing the United States and the democratic world in the twenty-first century is the rise of an increasingly authoritarian and aggressive China under Xi Jinping.” What the US needs to do is, the author argues, compel China’s “ruling elites to conclude that it is in China’s best interests to continue operating within the US-led liberal international order rather than building a rival order, and that it is in the Chinese Communist Party’s best interests to not attempt to expand China’s borders or export its political model beyond China’s shores.”

This policy stands in complete contrast to what China’s Xi had only recently said in his World Economic Forum speech. To quote him, “To build small circles or start a new Cold War, to reject, threaten or intimidate others, to willfully impose decoupling, supply disruptions or sanctions, and to create isolation or estrangement will only push the world into division and even confrontation,” Xi stressed, adding that, “We cannot tackle common challenges in a divided world, and confrontation will lead us to a dead end.”

Russia’s Putin in his address to the same forum outlined an identical approach, signifying how a de-facto Russia-China alliance exists with a primary aim to counter US unilateralism and supremacy.

Putin clearly foresaw Biden’s approach when he said, “We can expect the nature of practical actions to also become more aggressive, including pressure on the countries that do not agree with a role of obedient controlled satellites, use of trade barriers, illegitimate sanctions and restrictions in the financial, technological and cyber spheres. Such a game with no rules critically increases the risk of unilateral use of military force.”

Pre-empting Biden’s aggressive drive towards US unilateralism, Putin pointed out, “… the era linked with attempts to build a centralised and unipolar world order has ended. To be honest, this era did not even begin. A mere attempt was made in this direction, but this, too, is now history. The essence of this monopoly ran counter to our civilisation’s cultural and historical diversity.”

While the win-win and multipolar vision given by Russia-China shows their resolve to resist US unilateralism and build a more inclusive global political system, it also underscores the fact that the centre of global political and economic gravity has significantly shifted to Asia. An increasing number of countries are subscribing to the logic of win-win, rejecting the zero-sum competition that hawks in the US espouse, cherish and aim to impose on the whole world.

A “war of narratives”, with win-win and zero-sum competition as its two faces, has therefore begun with full force.

And, in this war, the US is not just resisting China and Russia; it is primarily resisting its own inevitable downfall both internally and externally. The events leading to the virtual occupation of the US Congress by Trump’s supporters signifies how the US democracy, internally divided and deeply polarized between the so-called liberals and white supremacists, is no longer a “role model” for the rest of the world. On the external front, China and Russia signify how a US led global economic system is not the only path to global salvation.

Salman Rafi Sheikh is a research-analyst of International Relations and Pakistan’s foreign and domestic affairs.

February 19, 2021 Posted by | Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Fauci follows Wiki co-founder, ‘death panels’ inventor, warmonger Blair & WEF creator as winner of Israeli prize

By Helen Buyniski | RT | February 18, 2021

US corona czar Dr. Anthony Fauci has been awarded the Dan David Prize for “defending science in the face of uninformed opposition,” joining a rogues gallery of former winners including Jimmy Wales and Tony Blair.

The Dan David Foundation, which is based out of Tel Aviv University and counts such dubious luminaries as war criminal Henry Kissinger on its board of directors, has gifted $1 million to Fauci for “courageously defending science in the face of uninformed opposition during the challenging Covid crisis.”

It’s not clear from whence this “uninformed opposition” emerged – indeed, one of Fauci’s most vocal opponents has been Dr. Anthony Fauci, who spoke up against the wearing of face masks and other mandates just weeks before he came out swinging in support of such rules.

Presumably, though, the Dan David Foundation was referring to popular opposition to that version of science that more closely resembles religious dogma. Fauci’s smug, self-satisfied and above all brittle variant of “science” cannot be questioned, lest it shatter into a million pieces, and the man’s stubborn use of thought-terminating clichés makes him resemble more of a cult leader than a public health official.

The Dan David Foundation has quite a history of honoring dodgy figures, and it’s no surprise to find them promoting dogmatic Fauci-flavored science over the true scientific method. Wikipedia co-founder and famed fabulist Jimmy Wales was among its prize-winners in 2015, gifted the $1 million treasure for his work in the field of “the Information Revolution.”

While Wales generally defends his truth-averse creation by waxing poetic about a world “in which every person is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge,” Wikipedia has instead mounted a full frontal assault on human knowledge, seeking to destroy all that which does not conform to its founder’s preferred version of reality. Despite presenting itself as an encyclopedia, Wikipedia even admits it does not traffic in “truth,” but merely “verifiability,” and the site’s disclaimer notes “that nothing found here has necessarily been reviewed by people with the expertise required to provide you with complete, accurate or reliable information.”

Fauci is in good company at the Dan David Foundation. Just as the good doctor has done for Big Pharma fraudsters like Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline, Wales has taken great care to treat Israel and the many “alternative facts” with which it shrouds its own crimes with kid gloves, ensuring the average Wikipedia user doesn’t learn the truth about the horrific oppression Tel Aviv deals out to occupied Palestine on a daily basis.

The Israeli government and its private-sector collaborators have long operated ideologically-driven editing cells, a massive violation of Wikipedia’s rules but one whose owners straight-facedly describe as merely an effort to make Wikipedia “balanced and Zionist in nature.” Many of the Israelis who operate these editing initiatives receive valuable rewards from their government, and some even rise to plum positions therein – Ayelet Shaked became the Israeli Minister of Justice after putting together the pro-(illegal)-settlement Yesha Council’s editing initiative, and Naftali Bennett rose to Education Minister not long after serving in that same organization.

As a Dan David Foundation winner, Fauci will also be mingling with Ezekiel Emanuel, the oncologist who infamously devised the notion of rationing healthcare – “death panels” – and suggested humans should aspire to live to no more than 75 years of age. He won the prize in 2018 for his work as “pioneer in the field of end-of-life care.” You can’t make this stuff up.

Speaking of “end-of-life care,” the Foundation also counted Tony Blair, the former UK PM who joined US President George W. Bush in his illegal and monstrous assault on Iraq, among its winners in 2009. Blair’s bio deems him “one of the most outstanding statesmen of our era,” presumably with a straight face. In his post-PM career, Blair has traveled around giving expensive speeches to repressive dictators and counseling them on how best to extract themselves from pesky human rights charges (see: Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, UAE and Israel itself), while Wales follows him around like a lovesick puppy, setting up Wikipedia projects for aforementioned dictators. After all, nothing says “democratic” like a “people’s encyclopedia” run like a Ministry of Truth!

And what gathering of ruling class ghouls would be complete without the World Economic Forum’s Klaus Schwab? The real-life Bond villain won the Dan David Prize in 2004 for “his significant contribution in fostering international dialogue and activism to resolve some of the world’s greatest issues.” So what if the corporations that comprise his little organization caused a whole bunch more “issues” in the mean time? Can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs!

As a central figure in the US medical establishment for four decades who’s personally presided over the declining life expectancy of its people, Fauci fits perfectly into the malevolent ruling class soup cooked up by the Dan David Foundation. Wikipedia made a formal alliance with the World Health Organization last year, supposedly part of an effort to fight “disinformation” related to the novel coronavirus epidemic, and Wales has long considered his website a prize weapon in the armory of modern medicine against what he calls “lunatic charlatans” – those medical practitioners who dare to dream that cures may exist outside the money-paved halls of Big Pharma.

And Fauci himself is a true believer in the wide world of orthodox pharmaceutical treatments, unwilling to concede any validity on the part of natural medicine and determined to come out of the Covid-19 pandemic looking good – no matter how many people have to die for his public relations campaign.

In reality, Fauci has done a substandard job throughout his tenure, whether it was denying access to a potentially lifesaving antibacterial drug that could have saved the lives of AIDS patients infected with a killer variant of pneumonia or pushing a dangerous swine flu vaccine for an epidemic that turned out to be largely imaginary. Unfortunately for all of humanity subject to his policymaking decisions, he’ll fit right in with Kissinger and his sorry array of pals.

Helen Buyniski is an American journalist and political commentator at RT. Follow her on Telegram

February 18, 2021 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

New York Waitress FIRED For Not Getting Covid Jab

By Richie Allen | February 18, 2021

A New York City waitress was sacked on Monday, after telling her employer that she had concerns about the safety of coronavirus vaccines and would rather wait until more was known about the jabs.

Bonnie Jacobson from Brooklyn said that her manager at Red Hook Tavern fired her a few days after she had expressed concern about how the vaccine affects fertility. She had been working at the tavern since August and she and her husband had been planning to have a baby. Speaking to NBC News yesterday, Bonnie said:

“I do support the vaccine. I’m not, as they say, an anti-vaxxer.”

She went on to say that she feels there is still a lack of research about how the vaccine affects pregnant women. She said her manager understood her concerns and assured her that the tavern wouldn’t be requiring staff to have the jab. A few days later, workers received an email which stated that the vaccines would be mandatory for all staff. NBC has seen the email:

“Please be advised that we will require that all employees receive the vaccination. This will be mandatory for all existing employees and any new hires. The exception to this policy will be if your own personal health or disability prohibits you from obtaining this vaccination. We encourage you to consult your healthcare professional to determine if getting a vaccine is right for you.”

Jacobson replied:

“While I fully support the vaccine and understand its importance I do believe this is a very personal choice. I really hope this choice would not affect my employment at Red Hook Tavern. Also once there is more research to support that it does not affect fertility I would reconsider my position.”

Two days later, she was fired.

“It was really impersonal. I was honestly shocked,” she told NBC. “My gut reaction was to just say, OK. Fine, I’ll get it. I need my job. But that just didn’t sit right with me. I was like, actually, I don’t think that’s right. I don’t think that’s the choice I need to be making here.”

The owner of Red Hook Tavern, Billy Durney, released a statement saying:

“Once New York state allowed restaurant workers to receive the Covid-19 vaccine, we thought this was the perfect opportunity to put a plan in place to keep our team and guests safe. No one has faced these challenges before and we made a decision that we thought would best protect everyone. We now realize that we need to update our policy so it’s clear to our team how the process works and what we can do to support them. We’re making these changes immediately.”

February 18, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , , | Leave a comment

Midwest Have No Surplus Power For Texas

By Paul Homewood | Not A Lot Of People Know That | February 18, 2021

Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO)

 

It is claimed that Texas would be better off as part of a wider grid. The obvious one would be MISO, to which there is already a small interconnector.

However MISO has been having severe difficulties due to the cold spell:

image

https://www.misoenergy.org/mcsnotification/?id=1131

As with Texas,  MISO is currently relying almost entirely on coal, gas and nuclear power. If they had been operating with a quarter of the power from wind, as Texas was last week,  I suspect that they would have been experiencing the same blackouts as Texas has had.

image

https://www.misoenergy.org/#

It is also not much bigger capacity wise than Texas, which has been running at around 60 GW this week. I suspect that any extra demand from Texas would quickly destabilise the MISO grid.

There is an interesting backstory to this.

image

The Natural Resources Defense Council says the Midwest energy grid operator known as MISO hasn’t planned enough interstate transmission lines.

MISO manages the system of utilities and transmission lines that operate in a wide region, from Manitoba, Canada to Louisiana.

John Moore is a senior attorney with the Council.  He says MISO for too long has approved numerous local transmission projects, but only a tiny number of interstate transmission lines – which operate much like interstate highways, moving energy, rather than vehicles,  from state to state.

He says MISO needs to plan more aggressively to meet the economic and environmental needs of the region.

“If we let business as usual take its course, then MISO may not be as bold as it needs to be,” he says.

Moore says the lack of interstate transmission capacity is leaving clean energy projects on the table.

That includes 42 clean energy proposals in Michigan since 2016 that were unable to proceed, because the existing transmission system couldn’t handle them.

https://www.michiganradio.org/post/nrdc-midwest-grid-operator-plan-blocking-clean-energy

Installing more wind power inevitably means more long distance transmission capacity is needed. The unpredictability of wind power results in huge surpluses at times, which require transmitting to areas short of power. This could often be over distances of hundreds of miles.

Since that is the case, surely it is a cost that wind farms should be paying, something that would probably make them totally unviable economically.

February 18, 2021 Posted by | Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Science and Pseudo-Science | | Leave a comment

The Decline of the West: American Education Surrenders to ‘Equity’

By Philip Giraldi | Strategic Culture Foundation | February 18, 2021

Public education in the United States, if measured by results, has been producing graduates that are less competent in language skills and dramatically less well taught in the sciences and mathematics since 1964, when Scholastic Aptitude Test scores peaked. The decline in science and math skills has accelerated in the past decade according to rankings of American students compared to their peers overseas. A recent assessment, from 2015, placed the U.S. at 38th out of 71 countries in math and 24th in science. Among the 35 members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development OECD), the United States came in at 30th in math and 19th in science. Those poor results must be placed in a context of American taxpayers spending more money per student than any other country in the world, so the availability of resources is not necessarily a factor in most school districts.

Much of the decline is due to technical advances that level the playing field for teachers worldwide, but one must also consider changing perceptions of the role of education in a social context. In the United States in particular, political and cultural unrest certainly have been relevant factors. But all of that said and considered, the U.S. is now confronting a reassessment of values that will likely alter forever traditional education and will also make American students even more non-competitive with their foreign peers.

Many schools in the United States have ceased issuing grades that have any meaning, or they have dropped grading altogether, which means there is no way to judge progress or achievement. National test scores for evaluating possible college entry are on the way out almost everywhere as they are increasingly being condemned as “racist” in terms of how they assess learning based solely on the fact that blacks do less well on them than Asians and whites. This has all been part of an agenda that is being pushed that will search for and eliminate any taint of racism in the public space. It has also meant the destruction or removal of numerous historic monuments and an avoidance of any honest discussion of American history. San Francisco schools are, for example, notoriously spending more than $1 million to change the names of 44 schools that honor individuals who have been examined under the “racism and oppression” microscope and found wanting. They include George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Paul Revere.

The new world order for education is built around the concept of “equity,” sometimes described as using the public education system to “ensure equitable outcomes.” But the concept itself is deeply flawed as the pursuit of equity means treating all Americans unequally to guarantee that everyone that comes out of the schools is the same and has learned the same things. That is, of course, ridiculous and it penalizes the good student to make sure that the bad student is somehow pushed through the system and winds up with the same piece of paper.

And the quality overall of public education will sharply decline. One might reasonably observe that imposition of a totalitarian style “equity” regime based on race will inevitably drive many of the academically better prepared students out of the system. Many of the better teachers will also move to the private academies that will spring up due to parental and student demand. Others will stop teaching altogether when confronted by political correctness at a level that prior to 2020 would have seemed unimaginable. The actual quality of education will suffer for everyone involved.

All of that has been bad enough, but the clincher is that this transformation is taking place all over the United States with the encouragement of federal, state and local governments and once the new regime is established it will be difficult or even impossible to go back to a system where learning is actually a discipline that sometimes requires hard work and dedication. In many school districts, the actual process of change is also being put on the back of the taxpayer. In one Virginia county the local school board spent $422,500 on a consultant to apply so-called Critical Race Theory (CRT) to a new program of instruction that will be mandatory for all employees and will serve as the framework for teaching the students. When schools eventually reopen, all kindergarteners, for example, will be taught “social justice” in a course designed by the controversial Southern Poverty Law Center and “diversity training” will be integrated in all other grade levels. Teaching reading, writing and arithmetic will take a back seat of “social justice.”

Critical Race Theory, which is being promoted as the framework for reorganizing the schools along lines of racial preferences, has been fairly criticized as it pretends to be an antidote to systemic racism but is itself racist in nature as it opposes a race neutral system that equally benefits everyone. It proposes that all of America’s governmental bodies and infrastructures are racist and supportive of “white supremacy” and must be deconstructed. It requires everything to be examined through a value system determined by identity politics and race and it views both whites and their institutions as hopelessly corrupted, if not evil.

Fortunately, some pushback to the Jacobins of political correctness is developing. Parents in many school districts are starting to attend school board meetings to register their opposition and even some school board members and teachers are refusing to cooperate. The teachers do so at risk of losing their jobs. At the elite Dalton private school in New York City parents have sent a letter to the Head of School Jim Best complaining how the newly introduced “anti-racist” curriculum has been gravely distorted by Critical Race Theory and the pursuit of “equity” to such an extent that it has included “a pessimistic and age-inappropriate litany of grievances in EVERY class. We have confused a progressive pedagogical model with progressive politics. Even for people who are sympathetic to that political viewpoint, the role of a school is not to indoctrinate politically. It’s to open the minds of children to the wonders of the world and learning. The Dalton we love, that has changed our lives, is nowhere to be found. And that is a huge loss.”

The letter also stated that “Every class this year has had an obsessive focus on race and identity, ‘racist cop’ reenactments in science, ‘decentering whiteness’ in art class, learning about white supremacy and sexuality in health class. Wildly age-inappropriate, many of these classes feel more akin to a Zoom corporate sensitivity training than to Dalton’s intellectually engaging curriculum.”

Ironically, much of the new curriculum is being driven by a core of radicalized Dalton faculty members, who in December signed on to an “anti-racism manifesto” which demanded that the school “hire 12 full-time diversity officers, abolish high-level academic courses if Black students’ performance isn’t on par with White students’, and require anti-racism ‘statements’ from all members of the staff.”

Inevitably what is going on at Dalton and elsewhere is also playing out at many of America’s top universities, so the rot will persist into the next generation when today’s college students themselves become teachers. A black Princeton professor of classics is calling for all classics departments to be done away with because they promote “racism, slavery and white supremacy.” America’s education system, once upon a time, benefited the nation and its people, but we are now watching it in its death throes. And please don’t expect the Joe Biden administration to do anything to save it. They are on the side of the wreckers.

February 18, 2021 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Progressive Hypocrite | , | Leave a comment

Unelected President Kamala Harris?

By Stephen Lendman | February 18, 2021

Harris is substituting for Biden on calls to foreign leaders.

Is she de facto president, Joe Biden a mere figurehead?

Is he too cognitively impaired to fulfill the duties of any public office, let alone the nation’s highest?

Occasional misstatements, mangling of words, and forgetfulness aren’t signs of dementia.

According to Washington insiders willing to speak candidly, Biden is cognitively impaired, his condition worsening over time, likely heading for Alzheimer’s disease.

It’s an advanced stage of dementia that destroys normal memory, thinking and behavior.

Biden appears well on the way to this state.

He forgot lines adolescents know from the Declaration of Independence, jumbling them saying:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident. All men and women are created, by the, you know, you know the thing.”

He momentarily forgot what office he was running for, saying:

“My name’s Joe Biden. I’m a (Dem) candidate for the United States Senate.”

Earlier he said “I think we can win back the House” now controlled by Dems. He called Super Tuesday “Super Thursday.”

Twice he confused Trump with GW Bush as his challenger for the White House.

Time and again, he’s been factually incorrect in explaining what he was involved in earlier, requiring damage control corrections from staff.

He falsely claimed to have worked with China’s Deng Xiaoping on the 2016 Paris Climate Accord. Deng died in 1997.

He falsely claimed that “150 million people have been killed (by guns) since 2007” in the US.

He said Dems should “choose truth over facts.” At times campaigning last year he was unsure what state he was in.

Campaigning in New Hampshire last year, he thought he was in Vermont.

Early last year, he falsely said he was arrested in South Africa for trying to visit Nelson Mandela in prison, what his campaign explained never occurred.

He claimed his tax credit plan will put 720 million US women back to work. He told Iowans “(w)e choose truth over facts.”

He falsely called his late son Beau “attorney general of the United States.”

He confused former UK prime minister Theresa May with Margaret Thatcher.

He mistook the Second Amendment for the First one.

He called Obama “the first African American in the history of the United States.”

He once introduced Obama as his “Barack America” running-mate.

He also called him “the first mainstream African American who is articulate and bright and clean.”

He claimed Franklin Roosevelt appeared on television in 1929, long before it existed.

Last year before chosen as Dem standard bearer, the Washington Post said it’s “fair to ask whether voters are choosing a candidate who’s not up to the job.”

In summer 2019, the Washington Post called him a “gaffe machine.”

Biden earlier had brain surgery twice. According to Science Daily, “(m)ajor surgery is associated with a small long-term decline in cognitive functioning.”

Was running mate Harris chosen as de facto president? Will she formally assume the role when Biden’s cognitive is too impaired to pretend otherwise?

On Wednesday, the New York Post reported that Harris “held her second call with a foreign leader — speaking with French President Emmanuel Macron after a talk earlier this month with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, as well as with World Health Organization Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in January,” adding:

Harris stressed to Macron “her commitment to strengthening bilateral ties between the United States and France and to revitalizing the transatlantic alliance,” adding:

They “agreed on the need for close bilateral and multilateral cooperation to address covid, climate change, and support democracy at home and around the world (sic),” according to her office’s readout.

“They also discussed numerous regional challenges, including those in the Middle East and Africa, and the need to confront them together.”

She “thanked… Macron for his leadership on the issue of gender equality and for France’s contribution to NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover.”

On February 1, she and Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau discussed “covid… climate change, and expanding our economic partnership in ways that advance the recovery and create jobs.”

On February 17, AP News said Harris appeared on NBC’s Today show to discuss widespread power outages in Texas that are denying heat and electricity to many state residents during a severe cold snap.

On Tuesday, Reuters reported that “Harris is taking a (significant) foreign policy role” in place of Biden.

On the same day, Fox News said Harris “is proving that she will play an important role in the White House as she hosts calls with foreign leaders without Biden.”

In 2019, former US war secretary Robert Gates questioned whether someone of Biden’s age has the mental and physical ability to serve as president.

Separately last Sunday, GOP Senator Lindsey Graham said if Republicans retake the House in 2023, “I don’t know how Kamala Harris doesn’t get impeached… because she bailed out (BLM) rioters, and one of the rioters went back to the streets and broke somebody’s head open.”

Well before Biden was chosen as Dem standard bearer, it was clear that he’d be a figurehead leader if inaugurated into office — others behind the scenes running things.

After a few weeks in office, Harris may have taken over some of his duties.

Is it just a matter of time before he steps down and she replaces him?

Contact Stephen Lendman at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

February 18, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties | | Leave a comment

Pelosi’s 9/11-Type Commission to Give More Powers to US Domestic Spying Apparatus

By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 18.02.2021

On 15 February, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced plans to form a “9/11-type commission” to probe the Capitol protests. The Dems real aim is to give more powers to US spy agencies, expand homeland security, and anti-terrorism measures and use them against the American right-wingers, US observers say.

A new independent 9/11-type Commission will be assigned to “investigate and report on the facts and causes relating to the January 6, 2021 domestic terrorist attack upon the United States Capitol Complex,” Pelosi wrote to her party fellows on Monday. According to CNN, the commission of this nature is typically established by a statute, passed by both chambers of the Congress and signed into law by the president.

9/11-Type Commission to Bolster Domestic Surveillance

The original 9/11 Commission was established on 27 November 2002 by President George W. Bush and the United States Congress with the aim “to prepare a full and complete account of the circumstances surrounding the September 11 attacks.” The bipartisan body consisted of five Democrats and five Republicans and was chaired by former New Jersey Republican Governor Tom Kean.

​”The 9/11 Commission was supposed to be a bipartisan effort to find out what went wrong on 9/11,” says American author and political analyst William Stroock. “Today the Dems will use this ‘9/11’ style commission to stoke fears of Q, white nationalism, Trump and his supporters in general. This commission will not be independent at all and will not be interested in ascertaining facts, only in assigning blame to Republicans, conservatives and Trump supporters.”

​Nearly 20 years on, it’s clear that 9/11 has proven disastrous for the US in many ways, according to Strook. However, first and foremost it led to the creation of a “vast domestic spying apparatus with secret courts and gave the Feds vast new spying powers,” says the political analyst. Stroock suggests the Democrats “will want to give even more power to the domestic spying apparatus and turn it upon the right.”

Irreconcilable Contradictions in Democratic Party’s Policies

Meanwhile, the Biden administration plans to expand grants from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for studying and preventing “domestic violent extremism”, according to NBC News’ Friday report. Earlier, on 27 January, the DHS released its first-ever national terrorism bulletin warning about the looming threat of violent domestic extremism supposedly encouraged by the Capitol Hill protests.

​In the wake of the DC incident, the Democratic Party also pushed ahead with the Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act (DTPA). Andrew McCarthy, former assistant United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, suggested in his January op-ed for National Review that the bill “is not about countering terrorism” but “weaving a political narrative.”

The legislation fell short of targeting jihadists, Antifa or Black Lives Matter militants, while focusing on white supremacists, “or, more specifically, Trump-inspired insurrectionists in the wake of the January 6 Capitol riot,” according to the lawyer.

“The double standard here is appalling,” says Stroock. “The Democrat Party has winked and nodded at the BLM/Antifa riots… The media even invented a new term to describe the orgy of looting and destruction, ‘mostly peaceful.’ To see them comparing the Capitol Hill riot to the 9/11 terrorist attacks is pretty rich.”

It’s not the only controversy haunting the Democrats, according to American independent journalist Max Parry: the Dems have previously supported the BLM’s “defund the police” movement and now they are advocating the expansion of homeland security and anti-terrorism measures.

“These are an inherent and irreconcilable contradictions,” Parry says. “Meanwhile, curiously absent is any mobilisation to demilitarise the police, which under the 1033 Program with the Pentagon has hyper militarised US domestic law enforcement even in small towns in the past few decades, yet numerous studies shows has not resulted in lower crime rates… So the irony of calling to ‘defund’ the police while trying to ram through legislation that would likely increase their counter-terrorism training and militarisation is incompatible.”

The movement to “defund the police” was well intentioned but potentially misguided where the legitimate concerns of citizens about the need to reform law enforcement could be used for other agendas, the journalist warns.

How GOP May Give Dems a Taste of Their Own Medicine

While cracking down on Trump supporters in the aftermath of the DC protests, the Dems have failed to convict former President Donald Trump over the alleged incitement of insurrection. As a result, Trump was once again acquitted in the Senate.

​”It seems they really thought they would convince 17 Republicans to crossover and vote to convict”, notes Stroock. “Only seven Republicans did so and they’re now in deep trouble with their voters back home. Several have already been censured by their state parties. The Democrats had a plan, a bad one, and had no idea what to do when the plan was foiled by reality.”

Now that the Dems created a new legislative tool, the “snap impeachment,” the GOP could hypothetically fight back and give their political opponents a taste of their own medicine, the political analyst presumes.

“Given the way political gravity works, the Republicans will almost certainly win control of the House and Senate in 2022,” he says. “The Republican base will call for the GOP to impeach Joe Biden. Given the Dem’s own precedent, why not?”

Kamala Harris may also find herself in a heap of trouble given that she earlier tweeted support for a fund that bailed out rioters, according to Strook. Following Trump’s acquittal Republican Senator Lindsey Graham warned that Harris could be impeached because she “actually bailed out [BLM] rioters,” pointing to her support of a Minnesota-based bail fund.

“It’s quite a bit of a stretch to say that Harris could be impeached for asking to contribute to a fund that went towards bailing out activists, especially since there is no evidence she herself bailed anyone out,” Parry suggests. “However, that Graham made such threats does show how the prospect of impeachment is now being thrown around so loosely as a political football since the bar has been set so low by the Democrats who impeached Trump over a dubious phone conversation.”

While a lot may happen before the 2022 midterms, the GOP should jump at the opportunity to instrumentalise the potential 9/11-style Commission, argues Strook.

“The Republicans will (or should) approach this commission with great skepticism, turn the camera around and highlight the violence and racism of the left. This commission is a tremendous opportunity for the GOP,” the political analyst believes.

February 18, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite | , | Leave a comment

Navalny and Treason

By Patrick Armstrong | Strategic Culture Foundation | February 8, 2021

Collaborating with foreign intelligence structures to create a poisoning narrative would appear to fit the definition of treason. How about writing a letter to a foreign head of state asking him to sanction your country?

(Thanks to John Helmer who, as far as I know, was the first to suggest that Moscow is preparing a treason accusation against him.)

On 1 February RT published a video taken by the FSB of a meeting between Second Secretary Ford of the British Embassy in Moscow, identified by the FSB as an SIS officer, and Vladimir Ashurkov at a restaurant in Moscow. The video was filmed some time in 2012. Ashurkov is the Executive Director of Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation; he is presently living in the UK where he sought refuge after being charged with embezzlement. In the video he is making a pitch for financial support to the tune of “10, 20 million dollars a year” not, he assures Ford, “a big amount of money for people who have billions at stake”. In short, invest in us us and, when we take over, we’ll pay you back. With interest. Big interest. In the meantime, perhaps Ford could get him some kompromat for use inside Russia. In a word, he’s trying to sell Russia to a foreign power. Which, by any standards, is treason. Ford is non-committal and merely suggests that Ashurkov look to one of the foreign NGOs that the British fund. (It should be understood that the “N” in “NGO”, is silent like the “p” in “pseudo”.). But, given that the video was made six or seven years ago, we don’t know whether the British or others took up Ashurkov on his offer. But we can be reasonably sure that the FSB knows the answer to the question.

I believe that the publication of this video marks a major step towards the Russian government charging Navalny and his organisation with treason. Note that RT attached to its report a discussion of the famous “spy rock”. Utter nonsense: “alleged… allegedly… allegations”, a “fabrication”, more “pressure against Russian NGOs” RFE/RL assured us in 2006; “they had us bang to rights” admitted a British official in 2012. The FSB has cleverly disarmed the expected cries of fake! setup! lies! and other denials from the West by reminding everyone that it was the FSB that told the truth that time.

Security services hate revealing anything. Their unvarying intention is to hang onto information because a little bit of information can be nursed into a lot of information: a seed revealed is just a seed, but a seed kept and nurtured can grow into a forest. I recommend Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America to show how the ancestors of Russia’s security organisations nurtured every little seed until they grew so big a network in the American government that they were probably better informed than the White House. So, to get them to give up a seed is a big step. It doesn’t happen, as they say, by accident.

Consider what seeds and seedlings the FSB gave up with this video.

The video exposed a man the FSB had identified as British intelligence. They could have marked him, followed his career, noticed with whom he associated, where he went, whom he met. Fed him false information, exposed his network, found others, followed them and, who knows, turned or compromised some. Now, he’s blown and probably won’t go anywhere near the Russian world again. The British will be back-checking his contacts and network and making a damage assessment and probably shutting things down. So, the FSB gave up years of exposure and mapping of networks.

The video also reveals the degree to which the FSB is following Navalny’s organisation. Everyone assumed that it was, of course, but it appears that the surveillance team was waiting in the restaurant. So that gives away another part of the FSB’s modus operandi. For all we know, the restaurant was a favourite place of the Navalny organisation; not any more: they won’t be going there again.

Note how good the sound recording is. That would presumably reveal something about the technology and trade-craft the FSB possesses. I’m sure that, to those who know these things, other details of trade-craft and equipment were revealed as well.

It is an easy deduction that the FSB has more information that it has not revealed: for example whether Ashurkov’s pitch resulted in a sale. (Note that Navalny’s organisation receives a certain amount of funds via the anonymous Bitcoin). Neither has it revealed any other videos of similar sales pitches that one must assume it has. One can only assume that the FSB already has a good case and can trace the money.

As everyone knows, Navalny fell sick on a flight inside Russia and a few days later, wound up in a hospital in Germany saying he had been poisoned with novichok. While the ever-changing story requires the reader to completely suspend disbelief, as usual in the information war against Russia, new variants are rolled out, confident that its targets aren’t paying attention past the headlines that Putin has poisoned someone again. Thanks to John Helmer’s reporting, we know that the doctors at the Charité Hospital found many health problems when it examined Navalny but no evidence of novichok. The novichok “evidence” comes from German and Swedish military facilities which have declined to publish their findings. Navalny, for his part, has several times asserted that Putin attempted to kill him with novichok. So, we have evidence from two civilian hospitals that show no novichok; there are assertions that it was novichok, but they’re secret and come from military sources; Navalny says it was novichok. Does this look like prima facie evidence that Navalny collaborated with foreign intelligence agencies against his country?

Where did Navalny get the illustrations for his video on Putin’s supposed palace? We know that the building is very far from finished because people went to see it. So somebody supplied the faked-up interiors (complete with Putin himself). A Germany-USA production? “in early December, the [German] studio received a request from the United States about whether it had free production capacity. In strict secrecy, work began on Navalny’s film”. Perhaps there’s another charge here, given the expected importance of this “proof” of Putin’s supposed corruption for Navalny’s campaign. (Another silly story for the gullible, by the way: where would he keep his loot and when does he have time to enjoy it?)

The entire Western propaganda structure leapt on the story. I’ll just quote this one thing from the NYT’s resident sage, Thomas Friedman, because of its amusement value:

Putin is not very important to us at all. He’s a Moscow mafia don who had his agents try to kill an anti-corruption activist, Aleksei Navalny, by sprinkling a Soviet-era nerve agent, Novichok, in the crotch of his underwear. I’m not making that up! Russia once gave the world Tolstoy, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Dostoyevsky, Sakharov and Solzhenitsyn. Putin’s Russia will be remembered for giving the world poisoned underwear.

“Poisoned underwear”, “mafia don”, “he keeps stalking us”. Plenty more where that came from: if it’s Putin or Russia, the accusation is the proof. Vide Biden’s demand that “He should be released immediately and without condition“. Suspiciously like a coordinated operation; perhaps the FSB can actually show connections.

Navalny is the latest in a long line of Western anti-Putin heroes. I’ve been in this business for three decades and I’ve forgotten half of them. Reports on protests that carefully avoid mentioning people who would spoil the narritive. Putin is a “moral idiot“. Lots of poisonings of opponents (is the absence from that list of the long-recovered and now-discarded Yushchenko significant?) and even non-poisonings; but no explanations for why the (almost invariably ineffective) poisons change: dioxin, thallium polonium and now novichok. Protests are always about to bring him down. Endless endless nonsense about Putin himself – too much to catalogue. Russophrenia. And so on and on; the people change – Browder and Khodorkovskiy fade to the background, Berezovskiy gives up, begs to be allowed home, kills himself (they say) – but the story never changes. Pussy Riot was huge until it wasn’t. Pavlenskiy does something in Russia, he’s a hero, same thing in France, he’s arrested. Always a fraudulent election in Russia (Moscow should take a leaf out of Washington’s book and call all such claims “conspiracy theories” and block discussion.) Washington says it had the MH17 shootdown on film, but you can’t see it. Nothing is ever proven but it never stops. The audience is assumed to have the IQ and attention span of gnats: Moscow hacked the U.S. election system in 2016 but in 2020 the system was watertight while Russia was hacking everything else. It’s information war; most of it nonsense from proven liars. Maybe Moscow has had enough. The Biden Administration is full of Russia-baiters all fully invested in the Trump/Putin conspiracy theory; there will be no change; it’s time for Moscow to give up expecting anything else.

Maybe Moscow is going to make an example of the latest Western favourite and charge him with treason and prove it. Maybe that’s why this video was released. It would appear to be a case of “providing financial, technical, advisory or other assistance to a foreign state or international organization . . . directed at harming Russia’s security” as the treason law puts it. A revision of the law that came into effect, as it happens, in the year the video was recorded. Collaborating with foreign intelligence structures to create a poisoning narrative would appear to fit the definition too. How about writing a letter to a foreign head of state asking him to sanction your country?

And more hints of evaporated patience: Moscow handed over to the OSCE videos of Western police beating up protesters – Austria, the Netherlands, Poland, the USA, Finland, France and the Czech Republic – helpfully pointing out “For doubters, we have shown a contrasting model. How they do it and how we do it. Feel the difference”. The message is clear: motes and beams; or, as they like to say in the West, “whataboutism“. Moscow then expelled diplomats from three countries, accusing them of participating in protests.

Washington, London et alia will protest in the usual way with all the usual statements about human rights that they themselves are pretty casual about at home (“Почувствуйте разницу”), but I suspect that Moscow doesn’t care much what its enemies say. In this matter it may well be that the idiotic Navalny poisoning story, coming after all the other evidence-free accusations, was the last straw. And perhaps Beijing’s success in shutting down the equally foreign-inspired troubles in Hong Kong was an encouraging example.

We will see, but it’s another indication that Moscow has had enough. After all, there’s an audience out there that isn’t glued to CNN and the NYT. There’s no chance of changing minds in Washington or London; it might still be possible in Berlin and Paris – Nord Stream II is probably the test – but there are hundreds of millions out there who are listening. Zone B, the Saker calls it.

February 18, 2021 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment