Biden appoints transgender Penn. official Rachel Levine despite grisly record on nursing home deaths
© Reuters / Daniel Shanken
RT | January 19, 2021
As the media hail president-elect Joe Biden’s appointment of the first-ever trans cabinet official, few note how she presided over a massive Covid-19 death toll in care homes in her prior post as Pennsylvania’s health secretary.
Biden announced on Tuesday that he will appoint Dr. Rachel Levine as assistant health secretary in his administration, setting her up to become the first openly transgender official confirmed by the Senate.
Levine has served in her post as Pennsylvania health secretary since 2018 and, before that, was the state’s assistant health secretary for a year. She had previously spent two years as physician general for Pennsylvania.
Biden has made a point of packing his administration with demographic “firsts.” He praised Levine as a “historic and deeply qualified choice to help lead our administration’s health efforts.”
“Dr. Rachel Levine will bring the steady leadership and essential expertise we need to get people through this pandemic – no matter their zip code, race, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability,” the president-elect continued.
Despite the praise she has received from her new boss, Levine came under fire during the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic for moving her 95-year-old mother out of a care home in May – an act many have highlighted as proof she knew what carnage her policies were causing.
The health secretary had in March required long-term care facilities to accept Covid-positive patients who had been discharged from hospitals – a policy that led to massive death tolls in such residences. Fully 70 percent of Pennsylvania’s deaths with Covid-19 had taken place in care homes at the time Levine removed her mother from her facility. Other Democrat-run states that enacted similar policies, such as New York and Michigan, also saw astronomical death tolls in care homes.
The Pennsylvania attorney general opened a criminal investigation into some care homes in May, citing the high number of deaths associated with the facilities, but its findings have not yet been made public. Pennsylvania also received a letter from the US Department of Justice, seeking data on publicly run nursing homes as part of a multi-state probe.
New York Bill Would Limit Warrantless Drone Spying and Hinder the Federal Surveillance State
By Mike Maharrey | Tenth Amendment Center | January 11, 2021
A bill filed in the New York Assembly would limit the warrantless use of surveillance drones. The legislation would not only establish important privacy protections at the state level; it would also help thwart the federal surveillance state.
Assm. Nick Perry (D-Brooklyn), along with two Democrat cosponsors, filed Assembly Bill 417 (A417). The legislation would require a warrant for drone surveillance in most situations.
No law enforcement agency or a state, county or municipal agency shall use a drone or other unmanned aircraft to gather, store or collect evidence of any type, including audio or video recordings, or both, or other information pertaining to criminal conduct or conduct in violation of a statute or regulation except to the extent specifically authorized in a valid search warrant; provided, however, that the use of a drone by a law enforcement agency or a state, county or municipal agency is not prohibited when exigent circumstances exist.
Under the proposed law, exigent circumstances would exist if a law enforcement agency possesses reasonable suspicion that swift action is necessary to prevent imminent danger to life.
Police could still use drones without a warrant to “counter the risk of a terrorist incident,” or to patrol national borders.
Any evidence collected or derived from information gathered in violation of the law would be inadmissible in court.
Impact on the Federal Surveillance State
Although the proposed law would only apply to state and local drone use, it throws a high hurdle in front of some federal programs.
According to a report by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, drones can be equipped with various types of surveillance equipment that can collect high definition video and still images day and night. Drones can be equipped with technology allowing them to intercept cell phone calls, determine GPS locations, and gather license plate information. Drones can be used to determine whether individuals are carrying guns. Synthetic-aperture radar can identify changes in the landscape, such as footprints and tire tracks. Some drones are even equipped with facial recognition. According to research from the Center for the Study of the Drone at Bard College, 347 U.S. police, sheriff, fire, and emergency response units acquired drones between 2009 and early 2017—primarily sheriff’s offices and local police departments.
Much of the funding for drones at the state and local level comes from the federal government, in and of itself a constitutional violation. In return, federal agencies tap into the information gathered by state and local law enforcement through fusion centers and the Information Sharing Environment (ISE).
Fusion centers were sold as a tool to combat terrorism, but that is not how they are being used. The ACLU pointed to a bipartisan congressional report to demonstrate the true nature of government fusion centers: “They haven’t contributed anything meaningful to counterterrorism efforts. Instead, they have largely served as police surveillance and information sharing nodes for law enforcement efforts targeting the frequent subjects of police attention: Black and brown people, immigrants, dissidents, and the poor.”
According to its website, the ISE “provides analysts, operators, and investigators with information needed to enhance national security. These analysts, operators, and investigators… have mission needs to collaborate and share information with each other and with private sector partners and our foreign allies.” In other words, ISE serves as a conduit for the sharing of information gathered without a warrant.
The federal government encourages and funds a network of drones at the state and local level across the U.S., thereby gaining access to a massive data pool on Americans without having to expend the resources to collect the information itself. By placing restrictions on drone use, state and local governments limit the data available that the feds can access.
Currently, at least 19 states—Alaska, Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, Montana, Nevada, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oregon, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, and Wisconsin—require law enforcement agencies in certain circumstances to obtain a search warrant to use drones for surveillance or to conduct a search.
In a nutshell, without state and local cooperation, the feds have a much more difficult time gathering information. This represents a major blow to the surveillance state and a win for privacy.
WHAT’S NEXT
A417 will be officially introduced when the New York Assembly convenes for the 2021 session on Jan. 6. It will be referred to the Governmental Operations Committee where it must pass by a majority vote before moving forward in the legislative process.
Michael Maharrey [send him email] is the Communications Director for the Tenth Amendment Center. He is from the original home of the Principles of ’98 – Kentucky and currently resides in northern Florida. See his blog archive here and his article archive here. He is the author of the book, Our Last Hope: Rediscovering the Lost Path to Liberty. You can visit his personal website at MichaelMaharrey.com
Parents Shocked as Armed Cops Show Up at Their Homes to Talk About Kids’ Grades
By Matt Agorist | The Free Thought Project | January 18, 2021
St. Louis County, MO — Over the last decade, TFTP has been reporting on the encroachment of the police state into the public education system. As we previously reported, schools across the country are increasingly hiring police officers to do the job that teachers and guidance counselors once did. This is resulting in the criminalization of childhood as well as increased police violence against children. Never, however, have we reported on what you are about to read below.
While the data shows that students have declining access to a kind and caring role model to guide them through their high school careers, the number of students who have access to a police officer is growing.
A whopping 1.6 million (k – 12th grade) students attend a school that employs a law enforcement officer — but has no counselor.
According to a Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC) survey, which counted cops in schools for the very first time in 2014, 24 percent of elementary schools and 42 percent of high schools have armed police officers. In schools with higher concentrations of minorities that number skyrockets.
Now, as schools districts react to the COVID-19 pandemic, we are seeing something even more ominous than an increase in cops in schools. We are seeing cops going to the homes of students.
Parents of at least 1,500 children in St. Louis County are speaking out this month after armed officers have been showing up to their homes. To be clear, the children have not been accused of a crime, instead, the cops are showing up to discuss grades with students and parents — while carrying their guns.
Yes, you read that correctly. Armed agents of the state — with absolutely zero training in how to teach children — are going door to door to talk to children and parents about their grades. The parents who have been visited, however, aren’t buying it, don’t want it, and say that officers showing up at their homes is a scare tactic.
“It was unimaginable, I can’t even really describe how I felt in the moment,” Porsha Outen told KSDK.
Outen said she was frightened and panicked the entire time the cop was in her home.
“I was shaking my voice was cracking, I was emotional because I did not understand,” said Outen. “I couldn’t keep my eyes off his firearm.”
Outen explained to KSDK the officer showed up with a counselor — unannounced at their door — at 8:30 a.m. after students returned from Christmas break. Outen’s daughter, a 15-year-old student at Ritenour High School, allegedly failed to turn in an assignment, so a cop was sent to her home.
“He questioned my daughter about the work that she was supposed to turn in, she answered him, he also asked her if she understood what she was saying to him. At that point I said this conversation is over,” said Outen.
Another parent, Christine Troupe told the media outlet that they received a visit from police as well.
“The implication of the police showing up to your house is like you’ve done something wrong and it’s like even if you’ve not done anything it’s that feeling of something is criminal is happening here,” said Troupe.
Troupe said the cop was at their house because her child has a failing grade in a ceramics art class.
“If the intention is to help our kids or hold them accountable then to me that’s not conducive to them learning basically it’s a scare tactic it’s something you do for something you’re serving a warrant on not for a child that may need a tutor for a ceramics art class,” said Troupe.
School officials — who are now hiding behind the barrel of a gun to carry out their duties — claim the intention is not to intimidate and after the feedback they received, they say police will be told to act differently.
“The presence of an officer is triggering, we’ve gotten that feedback now so now the responsibility is on us in that specific situation to act differently,” said Superintendent Dr. Kilbride, adding that the district has carried out over 1,500 of these visits since August.
“It’s about positive visits as well, it’s about resources, it’s also about areas for improvement as well,” he added.
But parents don’t see the visits as a positive experience at all and want this to stop immediately. Since she was visited by police, Outen has teamed up with the NAACP to make sure they don’t happen anymore.
“As a parent I don’t ever want my child to associate her education with a police officer, I don’t want my child associating a grade that needs to be approved with a gun,” said Outen.
It seems that schools in America are starting to more closely resemble prisons than learning facilities. Think about it — before being locked down in their homes for COVID, children were locked behind steel doors all day long as armed agents of the state patrol the grounds. A few minutes out of the day, the students are given a little yard time — and again, they are kept under the watch of armed state agents.
Video after video shows the horrific nature of such a practice as children are seen being pepper sprayed, beaten, and tasered for normal childhood behaviors. And now, these armed agents are coming to the homes. A slippery slope indeed.
Matt Agorist is an honorably discharged veteran of the USMC and former intelligence operator directly tasked by the NSA. This prior experience gives him unique insight into the world of government corruption and the American police state. Agorist has been an independent journalist for over a decade and has been featured on mainstream networks around the world. Agorist is also the Editor at Large at the Free Thought Project. Follow @MattAgorist on Twitter, Steemit, and now on Minds.
The documentary, MLK/FBI, is just slick propaganda that reveals nothing new about the bureau’s harassment of King
By Michael McCaffrey | RT | January 18, 2021
The new film, released just before Martin Luther King Jr. Day and available from various video-on-demand sites, poses as an important piece of work, but avoids the big questions in favor of placating the establishment.
I’ve heard it said that Americans are the most propagandized people on the planet. I think that statement is quite accurate.
What makes the propaganda fed to Americans so insidious is that it’s so subtle that audiences, even the supposedly intellectual ones, are blissfully unaware of their indoctrination and conditioning.
A perfect example of this is MLK/FBI, the new documentary directed by Sam Pollard that premiered in theaters and video-on-demand on January 15, which chronicles the FBI’s wiretapping and harassment of civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr.
A documentary dealing with intelligence community nefariousness and MLK, the greatest American strategist and tactician of the 20th century, has my attention.
Unfortunately, after watching MLK/FBI, I was left frustrated and infuriated because it was so obviously a docile and deferential piece of establishment-friendly propaganda meant to distract and deceive viewers.
This movie is 104 minutes of flaccid history and impotent insights disguised as setting the record straight with revolutionary revelations. But there is no new information presented in the film and no new perspectives on the information already known.
The most interesting statement in the movie comes in the final ten minutes and is from MLK aide Andrew Young, who would go on to become a congressman, the US Ambassador to the UN, and the Mayor of Atlanta.
This should be where the movie starts, not where it ends. Young says in regards to James Earl Ray, the man convicted of the assassination of MLK, “I don’t think James Earl Ray had anything to do with that, Dr. King’s assassination, so I can’t really comment on that.”
What makes the FBI’s harassment of MLK noteworthy is that they were gathering salacious information on his private life in an attempt to assassinate his character and thus derail his morally authoritative movement.
The FBI actively tried to get members of the press to publish stories of King’s infidelity but none took the bait, and so the agency was left with lots of ammunition but no one willing to fire it.
It was when King expanded his civil rights work and, in 1968, began the Poor People’s Campaign, which set out to bring poor people of all colors together to fight for economic justice and against American militarism, that the FBI ratcheted up its anti-King work, and this is where the infamous “rape participation” allegation first is documented by the FBI.
The claim, that King watched and laughed as another pastor raped a woman, is dubious and is not thoroughly fleshed out in the film, but it reveals that the FBI understood the greater threat King now posed to the ruling order with the Poor People’s Campaign, and that it was willing to push the envelope to stop him.
Other civil rights groups and leaders faced similar escalation when they dared to cross color lines and work on behalf of all people instead of just black people.
It wasn’t until Malcolm X left the Nation of Islam and evolved into a more racially inclusive yet no less revolutionary figure, that he got assassinated under shadowy circumstances.
The Black Panthers’ free breakfast program, open to children of all races, was deemed by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to be “the greatest internal threat to the United States.” The Black Panthers were quickly infiltrated and some, including Fred Hampton, were assassinated.
And so it was with King’s Poor People’s Campaign, which triggered the FBI to “up its game.” Coincidentally, just a few weeks later he was assassinated in Memphis.
MLK/FBI is much too “respectable” to investigate or challenge Andrew Young’s claim regarding Ray’s innocence in the assassination of King, even though Ray himself claimed he was not guilty, the King family believes he is innocent and a civil court ruled he was not the assassin. It’s this desperation for respectability at the expense of truth that makes the film establishment propaganda.
The other tell-tale sign it’s propaganda is that the film acts like FBI and intel community deviousness and depravity are some remote experience from a dark, distant past instead of a pressing issue of our time.
This allows liberals, especially ones like Bill Maher and John Oliver who pose as anti-establishmentarians, to continue to fawn over and fellate the “heroes” of the intel community under the guise that malicious misdeeds only occurred in the past.
The FBI’s invasive surveillance of King pales in comparison to what the intel community is capable of now. What the FBI did to King the intel community is now able to do to everyone, since we all carry cell phones, mini eavesdropping devices that track our every movement, contact and conversation.
The film’s flaccidity also allows liberals to continue to giddily cheer the intel community’s crackdown on nationalists, militias and Julian Assange, just as conservatives once cheered Hoover’s targeting of King, civil rights and anti-war groups, and communists.
It also surreptitiously endorses the Black Lives Matter movement and allows woke advocates to deceive t$hemselves into thinking they’re morally equivalent to Dr. King.
BLM is no Poor People’s Campaign meant to threaten the establishment order. It’s a contrived and manipulative movement meant to uphold the status quo, not disrupt it, which is why it’s been swiftly embraced by Washington, the media and corporate America.
In conclusion, by being a documentary that talks an awful lot but never really has anything useful to say, MLK/FBI is a deceptive piece of establishment propaganda not worthy of your time.
Michael McCaffrey is a writer and cultural critic who lives in Los Angeles. His work can be read at RT, Counterpunch and at his website mpmacting.com/blog. He is also the host of the popular cinema podcast Looking California and Feeling Minnesota. Follow him on Twitter @MPMActingCo
The Unwelcome Return of the Real Purveyors of Violence
By Ron Paul | January 18, 2021
With the mainstream media still obsessing about the January 6th “violent coup attempt” at the US Capitol Building, the incoming Biden Administration looks to be chock full of actual purveyors of violent coups. Don’t look to the mainstream media to report on this, however. Some of the same politicians and bureaucrats denouncing the ridiculous farce at the Capitol as if it were the equivalent of 9/11 have been involved for decades in planning and executing real coups overseas. In their real coups, many thousands of civilians have died.
Take returning Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, for example. More than anyone else she is the face of the US-led violent coup against a democratically-elected government in Ukraine in 2014. Nuland not only passed out snacks to the coup leaders, she was caught on a phone call actually plotting the coup right down to who would take power once the smoke cleared.
Unlike the fake Capitol “coup,” this was a real overthrow. Unlike the buffalo horn-wearing joke who desecrated the “sacred” Senate chamber, the Ukraine coup had real armed insurrectionists with a real plan to overthrow the government. Eventually, with the help of incoming Assistant Secretary of State Nuland, they succeeded – after thousands of civilians were killed.
As we were unfortunately reminded during the last four years of the Trump Administration, the personnel is the policy. So while President Trump railed against the “stupid wars” and promised to bring the troops home, he hired people like John Bolton and Mike Pompeo to get the job done. They spent their time “clarifying” Trump’s call for ending wars to mean he wanted to actually continue the wars. It was a colossal failure.
So it’s hard to be optimistic about a Biden Administration with so many hyper-interventionist Obama retreads.
While the US Agency for International Development (USAID) likes to sell itself as the compassionate arm of the US foreign policy, in fact USAID is one of the main US “regime change” agencies. Biden has announced that a top “humanitarian interventionist” – Samantha Power – would head that Agency in his Administration.
Power, who served on President Obama’s National Security Council staff and as US Ambassador to the UN, argued passionately and successfully that a US attack on the Gaddafi government in Libya would result in a liberation of the people and the outbreak of democracy in the country. In reality, her justification was all based on lies and the US assault has left nothing but murder and mayhem. Gaddafi’s relatively peaceful, if authoritarian, government has been replaced by radical terrorists and even slave markets.
At the end of the day, the Bush Republicans – like Rep. Liz Cheney – will join hands with the Biden Democrats to reinstate “American leadership.” This of course means more US overt and covert wars overseas. The unholy alliance between Big Tech and the US government will happily assist the US State Department under Secretary of State Tony Blinken and Assistant Secretary of State Nuland with the technology to foment more “regime change” operations wherever the Biden Administration sees fit. Finish destroying Syria and the secular Assad? Sure! Go back into Iraq? Why not? Afghanistan? That’s the good war! And Russia and China must be punished as well.
These are grave moments for we non-interventionists. But also we have a unique opportunity, informed by history, to denounce the warmongers and push for a peaceful and non-interventionist foreign policy.
Copyright © 2021 by RonPaul Institute
US-based nonprofit sues Apple to REMOVE Telegram over failure to censor ‘hate speech,’ cites Parler crackdown
RT | January 18, 2021
Coalition for a Safer Web, a non-profit founded by a former US ambassador, has sued Apple, demanding it delete Telegram from its store, arguing that the app is being used to “incite extreme violence” ahead of the inauguration.
The Washington-based nonprofit and its president Marc Ginsberg, who served as US ambassador to Morocco from 1994 to 1998 and was Deputy Senior Adviser to the US President on Middle East Policy (1978–1981), argue in the newly-filed federal lawsuit that Apple fails to hold Telegram accountable for violating its terms of service.
The complaint, filed on Sunday with the US District Court for Northern California, accuses Telegram of allowing anti-Semites, white supremacists and other extremists to thrive on its platform, with Apple purportedly turning a blind eye on the fact.
The suit posits that if Apple fails to remove the app, it may give rise to street violence, arguing that the app “is currently being used to coordinate and incite extreme violence before the inauguration of President [-elect] Joe Biden.”
“Telegram currently serves as the preferred Neo-Nazi/white nationalist communications channel, fanning anti-Semitic and anti-black incitement during the current wave of protests across America,” the lawsuit argues. It alleges that the privacy-focused messaging app is poised to become an even bigger breeding ground for extremist content as users “migrate to Telegram” after Big Tech’s crackdown on Parler, booted from Apple and Google stores for giving a platform to some of the pro-Trump supporters that stormed the US Capitol.
Ginsberg, who is a co-plaintiff in the suit, notes that in a letter to Apple in July he already asked the tech behemoth to pull Telegram to hold its “financial feet to the fire,” but has received no reply. The former US official, who is Jewish, argues that Apple’s inaction has caused him “emotional distress” through the use of his iPhone. Ginsberg estimated damages he allegedly suffered as a result of Apple’s perceived leniency towards the messaging app at over $75,000.
“By continuing to host Telegram on the Apple App Store, Defendant facilitates religious threats against him and his family that has caused Ambassador Ginsberg to fear for his life,” the complaint charges.
The nonprofit told the Washington Post on Sunday that it plans to mount a similar lawsuit against Google.
Arguing that Apple should banish Telegram from its store without delay, the suit draws on Parler’s case as a precedent, noting that: “Apple has not taken any action against Telegram comparable to the action it has taken against Parler to compel Telegram to improve its content moderation policies.”
Telegram has seen an explosive growth in its user base after established social media platforms, such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube blocked US President Donald Trump and launched a crackdown on his supporters.
The messaging platform, which prides itself for its end-to-end encryption for messages, reported over 500 million monthly users in the first week of January, with CEO Pavel Durov saying that it added 25 million new users in just 72 hours. However, while some portion of the newcomers might have indeed been conservatives fleeing the wide-ranging social media purge, Durov said that almost two in five new clients came from Asia, 27 percent from Europe, and 21 percent from Latin America.
While facing constant criticism for its lax moderation policies, Telegram has recently made headlines for banning“dozens of public channels” for inciting violence.
Without Democracy in the U.S., Can the Simulacra of Democracy Survive Elsewhere?
By Alastair Crooke | Strategic Culture Foundation | January 17, 2021
The ‘Ides of March’, they came early this year – on 6 January, at least for one current U.S. ‘Caesar’. What happened; how it happened; who concocted the Capitol events, will be long debated. However, the daggers had long been sharpened for Caesar, well before the invasion of the Capitol. In a sense, the stage was already set – Trump walked into the DC ‘Forum’, and ended ‘stabbed to death’, as had Julius. It has been truly Shakespearean.
It was well-known that Trump might well reject the election results, because of postal ballot potential fraud (as postal ballots assumed their disproportionate 2020 electoral predominance). The Transition Integrity Project (TIP) precisely (purposefully?) had taunted Trump last June with its forecast of a contested election in which Trump would lose – after “all of the mail-in ballots had been tallied”. The TIP then had turned to the prospective tactics and tasks for forcefully ousting a President-in-denial from the White House. (The media and ‘platforms’ had been participants in this early war-gaming of how to deal with a Trump, who contested the election result, and questioned the legality and authenticity of postal ballots).
It needn’t have been this way – but no compromise on rules on postal balloting was attempted (rather, the reverse). In any event, the Capitol invasion now stands as a major psychic event (the “Insurrection”) searing the American consciousness. Apart from unnerving the legislators, unused to experiencing a sudden loss of security, the invasion has become the sacrilege to a ‘sacred space’ (with all the additional connotations of America’s exceptional, divine mission). The daggers were gleefully plunged in – Trump is impeached again; he is to be tried in the Senate after the Biden inauguration; and he and his family, may expect the legal dismemberment that will follow.
The ‘Blue State’ has – from Trump’s first election – been determined to crush him. That is underway. And somehow sychronistically, we now have the Tech digital deletion of Red America from social platforms, with talk of a ‘purge’ and cultural ‘re-education’ for his supporters (and their children), as well. Biden is already speaking like a War President (and the Capitol now has taken the air of a theatre of war, with troops and weapons strewn about its corridors): “Trump”, said Biden, “has unleashed an all-out assault on our institutions of democracy, from the outset, and yesterday was but the culmination of that unrelenting attack”.
Here is the key first implication to that ‘psychic event’ – not just for Americans, but for the world spectating the unfolding events: Biden has called for measures against “domestic terrorism”, and used language that is usually reserved for combat with an external enemy state – language such as accompanies major wars. This is ‘revenge cycle’ material. In the case of two nations, literally at war, they do do this. This is a part of it. They hope to resolve their conflict through humiliation, repression and the forced submission of the other (i.e. Japan after WW2). But America is, at least nominally, one nation. What happens when a single nation splits, with one turning the ‘seditious’ elements into an ‘alien other’?
We do not know. But hatred is intense, both toward Trump and the ‘deplorables’. And now, these sentiments are reciprocated in the wake of the President’s humiliation, at a contents-free impeachment, reached in few hours. What seems certain is that the course of events likely will lead to a self-reinforcing cycle of ever greater polarisation.
The rise of Trumpism has created a new radical Manicheanism amongst the liberal élite. Tech, with its algos feeding like-minded material to the like-minded, has a lot to do with this digital and ideological divide. But the bottom line is that this divide is (falsely) cast as a death-struggle now underway between a monolithic liberalism and a monolithic illiberalism.
This carries a huge message for Russia, Iran and China (and others) – the U.S. is deeply divided, but its ‘new mission’ will be a ‘moral high-ground’ war against illiberalism – at home, firstly – and then overseas.
Yet of greater – and wider – significance is that the ‘noble lie’ – the mask concealing the cynical arrangement that is American ‘democracy’ – has been stripped away. The crucial import was underlined by the German FM, Heiko Maas, when he observed: “Without democracy in the U.S., [there is] no democracy in Europe”.
What might have Maas meant? Possibly, he was referring to the angry 75 millions of Red America that have now grasped the shocking magnitude of the fraud played on them. By fraud here is not a reference to the particular claims about 3 November, but to the much bigger fraud of a system rigged in the interests of the Establishment. This has been one of the basic props to the engineered consent upon which public order and social stability in America and Europe has rested for decades: the naïve belief in the democratic essence of the system.
This prop is being overturned by the ‘Blue State’ precisely in order to savour a sweet revenge on Trump for pulling aside the mask on so much else of ‘Establishment America’. Trump laid bare how corrupt the ‘swamp’ had become, and he articulated Red America’s deepest concerns and frustrations about off-shored jobs, economic precarity and ‘forever wars’. They, in turn, had projected their exasperation, bitterness, and illusions back onto him, turning him, by default, into their standard-bearer.
Yet – astonishingly – this toppling of the pillar of an engineered ‘noble lie’ is being done precisely by those (the Establishment), who one might have thought, had the most interest in keeping it intact. But they cannot resist it. They just cannot forgive ‘outsider’ Trump’s intrusion into their neatly constructed illusions: trashing their elaborate ‘construct’ of reality, simply by magicking up new ‘facts’ to contest their ‘science’.
Isn’t this what is so frightening for Merkel and Maas? The EU has its own, more fragile, ‘noble lie’. It is this: States – by relinquishing a portion of their sovereignty – might hope to participate in a ‘greater sovereignty’ (i.e. the European Project), and still believe that it is ‘democratic’.
This cynical European arrangement only stands if Merkel and Macron can hold up American ‘democracy’ as the guiding principle to the European Project (however misleading that may be). But now, with the ‘lights going out’ in the ‘City on the Hill’, and with only a broken democracy ideal under which EU leaders may shelter, how will the dreary formula of a diluted sovereignty, with no real democracy; with no roots in the ground below; with the EU moving to ever closer oligarchy, and led by an unaccountable, and secretive ‘politburo’, survive?
The point is that European ‘democracy’ is also rigged towards Germany and the élites. And ordinary Europeans have noticed, (especially when only one part of the community bears a disproportionate burden of the Covid economic pain). The élites fear Trump: he may lay it all bare, for all to see.
Some EU leaders may hope that Trumpism will be so completely crushed, and its voice silenced, that Europe’s own fracturing engineered public consent can be contained. Yet they must know, in their hearts, that recourse to identity and gender ideology (as pretext for greater state-ism), will only armour-plate the bubbles and divisions because they prevent people from hearing each other. It is the post-persuasion, post-argument politics of polarisation.
For sure, the rest of the world are taking close note. They will not be accepting moral lectures from Europe in the future (though undoubtedly, they will still get them), and states will look to build ‘public consent’ around quite different ‘poles’ – loose concerts of states, traditional culture and the historic narratives of their communities.
The Masks Are Coming Off
By Rob Slane | The Blogmire | January 9, 2021
I had intended to start the New Year with a heart-warming piece entitled, “2021: The Year of Censorship of Dissent”. It would have been a somewhat prophetical piece, shocking some readers with predictions of a coming crackdown on dissent, and causing others to hoot with laughter because they haven’t quite caught up with the times we are in. You know, the types who say things like “Oh perrrlease! Social Media companies are private companies and they have the right to decide who they allow on their platform” and “Stop making out it’s the gulag” etc.
Unfortunately, my plans were scuppered by the fact that media and social media companies — let’s call them Global Pravda — have come out of the blocks even earlier than even I anticipated, and have been censoring left right and centre. As a result, my intended “prophetical” utterance seems like yesterday’s news.
We’ve had the censoring of Talk Radio on YouTube. Although this was then restored after intervention at the highest level, I understand some of the wonderful conversations between Mike Graham and Peter Hitchens are still banned. YouTube have also banned videos from extremely qualified scientists around the world, including two lengthy interviews given in English by one of the most qualified microbiologists on planet earth, Professor Sucharit Bhakdi.
We’ve then seen the President of the United States being banned from Facebook, Instagram and more recently Twitter. I am no fan of Donald Trump, but it is clear that he has never used these platforms to “incite violence” – the excuse given for his ban –, and it is obvious that there is something else going on there. And we’ve also seen numerous conservatives and scientists who oppose or question the mass quarantining of healthy people literally losing hundreds of Twitter followers in the last few days. Their followers are simply being deleted by Jack’s Magical Dissent Removing Algorithm, which has been invoked with a vengeance.
Last year really was nuts. It was a year when the authorities managed to convince people that even though they have no symptoms of an illness and feel as right as rain, they need to go get tested for the illness they don’t have, using a test that is not fit-for-purpose, such that they come away telling others that they have the illness they don’t actually have. Imagine doing that before 2020:
“Doctor, doctor, I think I have flu.”
“Oh really, what symptoms have you got. A cough? Achiness?”
“Oh no, I feel perfectly well. No symptoms whatsoever.”
“Then what makes you think you’ve got the flu?”
“I just think I might have it. Can I have a test?”
I imagine you’d have been laughed out of the surgery. Yet not only is this what people have been doing for over 9 months, but we’ve been told that people who aren’t ill need to be placed in quarantine and cover their respiratory passages with a piece of cloth, lest they spread the illness they don’t have to others. It’s quite mad, but we can at least comfort ourselves that it will be a source of amusement for our descendants.
It makes me quite nostalgic for the past. Well, 2009 anyway. Back then, when certain folks were trying to ramp up the fear and hysteria over the H1N1 (Swine Flu) outbreak (one Neil Ferguson prophesying 65,000 deaths in Britain), and Mexico announced a shutdown of much of its society for a time, the then Director General of the World Health Organisation, Dr. Margaret Chan, appealed for calm:
“In this regard, let me make a strong plea to countries to refrain from introducing measures that are economically and socially disruptive, yet have no scientific justification and bring no clear public health benefit. Rational responses are always best. They are all the more important at a time of economic downturn.”
Yet despite 2020 craziness, it doesn’t seem like it will hold a candle to 2021. If the first week or so is any barometer, it may be that 2020 was just the trailer or the warm-up act for the real thing. We’ve already seen the Chief Medical Adviser telling people who don’t have an illness to act as if they do have an illness. We’ve already seen the rollout of a vaccine, the study for which is not due to be completed until on 27th January 2023. And we’ve already seen international organisations telling us that restrictions are likely to continue for the foreseeable future, Salvation by Vaccine notwithstanding – although those of us who have followed things carefully knew this anyway.
Yet the real story of 2021 — if anyone is allowed to tell it — is likely to be mass censorship. What we are already seeing is, ironically, an unmasking. If 2020 was the year in which people put their Masks on, 2021 is already shaping up to be the year when the Globalists and Global Pravda really take theirs off. They are really going for it, blatantly censoring dissent, brazenly de-platforming alternative views, and shamelessly using technology to ensure that reasoned, fact-based challenges to establishment narratives are silenced.
It is ugly, its sinister and its menacing. And unless you are someone who longs to live in a more totalitarian state, you need to get wise to it now, you need to pray against it now, and you need to fight against it now. The masks are coming off and freedom is being crushed. Choose which side you want to stand on.
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TV Drama Review
Japanese drama projects Japan’s wartime atrocities onto Chinese characters
Global Times | October 25, 2026
By portraying Chinese characters as perpetrators of ruthless violence while casting Japanese Self-Defense Forces (SDF) intelligence operatives as defenders, the season 2 of the Japanese drama Vivant has recently drawn criticism from Chinese netizens, who argue that its depiction turns historical reality on its head while ignoring Japan’s wartime atrocities.
The TBS drama series – a spy suspense story in which an alleged unofficial intelligence unit of the SDF operates across the globe — has attracted a passionate fanbase. Its currently airing season 2 opened with a household rating of 18.8 percent, the highest for a TV drama this year, according toa commentary article by Japanese media Toyo Keizai.
What draws attention is the portrayal of the enemies in the series, the article noted. Scenes in which the Chinese organization subjects kidnapped members of the SDF unit to brutal torture are repeated with unrelenting intensity.
It is rare for Japanese TV dramas to explicitly portray a real-life country as the enemy, the article noted.
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi also made a reference to the drama, saying that she has been recording Vivant and hopes to binge-watch it over the year-end and New Year holidays, according to Japanese media outlets.
China’s CCTV News report on Sunday revealed that the drama features scenes in which Chinese personnel cut off the fingers of and stab Japanese intelligence operatives in the abdomen. Such acts bear striking similarities to the torture inflicted on Chinese nationals by invading Japanese troops during the World War II.
The drama distorts the truth by attributing these atrocities to modern Chinese characters. Beneath the surface, it subtly glorifies Japan’s cross-border overseas operations, blurs the functional boundaries of the SDF and implicitly promotes an expansionist narrative, per CCTV News. … continue
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