In 1967 Jewish activists sued to overturn bans on interracial marriage in America, yet in 2020, the Jewish state retains the strictest miscegenation laws in the world.
This is the subject of a new Press TV documentary on Israelis who are not allowed to marry by the country’s Rabbinate. Some couples use a loophole that allows them to marry abroad, but with COVID travel restrictions this has become impossible.
The Zionist state does not allow its citizens to obtain a civil marriage. Jewish apologists will often assert that Israel’s marriage laws are primarily motivated by the population’s concern with religious tradition, but a Gallup survey has found that Israel is one of the least religious countries in the world.
Under the rules set by the Rabbinate, a Jew who seeks to marry an individual who might be racially impure under Halakhic law must subject their spouse to DNA tests in order to prove their “genetic Jewishness.” Converts to Judaism and communities such as Ethiopian Jews are also largely banned from wedding.
Though Israel’s population is 75% Jewish and the country is highly secular, 98% of Jews say their friends are mostly or only Jewish. 89% of Jews also say they would not accept their child marrying a Gentile, going as high as 97% were the theoretical partner a Muslim.
While mixing in general is rare, the Israeli state funds initiatives every year intended to discourage Jews from dating outside their race. A street organization composed of Jewish men called Lehava patrol more cosmopolitan neighborhoods in Jerusalem and beat up interracial couples.
Jews in the United States are also known as the people who pioneered gay marriage, but in Israel same-sex marriage is prohibited.
In Israel marriage is a respected institution that enjoys fierce government protection. 50% of Jews marry by the age of 25, while in America only 29% of people between the ages of 18 to 34 are married.
With 95% of American Jews affirming support for the state of Israel, the sincerity of our country’s vanguard of “tolerance,” cosmopolitanism and social liberalism ought to be brought into question.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is authorized to only monitor and verify Iran’s voluntary measures in accordance with the 2015 nuclear agreement, says the Iranian permanent representative to Vienna-based international organizations, stressing that the agency has no right to assess the Iranian nuclear work.
“@iaeaorg sole role is to monitor and verify the voluntary nuclear-related measures as detailed in the JCPOA and to provide regular updates in this regard,” Kazem Gharibabadi said in a post on his Twitter account on Friday, referring to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
Any assessment or analysis is out of the IAEA’s mandate, he said.
The Iranian diplomat’s tweet came in response to remarks made by the IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi, who told Sky News that Iran should not follow through on threats to increase uranium enrichment and throw out inspectors.
In the wake of the assassination of top Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh in late November, the UN nuclear agency chief warned against any further escalation after lawmakers at Iran’s Parliament overwhelmingly endorsed the outlines of a strategic action plan which aims to counteract sanctions imposed on the Iranian nation and safeguard its interests.
“If implemented,” Grossi told Sky News, “these measures would be an even further deviation from the commitments that Iran entered into when it joined the agreement.
On December 1, 251 out of 260 Iranian lawmakers present at the Parliament voted ‘yes’ to the outlines of the draft bill, which will require the Iranian administration to suspend more commitments under the JCPOA.
The plan, among other things, requires the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) to produce at least 120 kg of 20-percent enriched uranium annually and store it inside the country within two months after the adoption of the law.
It also urges the AEOI to start the installation, gas injection, enrichment and storage of nuclear materials up to an appropriate enrichment degree within a period of three months using at least 1,000 IR-2m centrifuges.
France, Germany and Britain, the three European signatories to the JCPOA, said on December 7 that they are worried by the Iranian plan to install additional, advanced uranium-enriching centrifuges at Natanz nuclear facility.
“Iran’s recent announcement to the IAEA that it intends to install an additional three cascades of advanced centrifuges at the Fuel Enrichment Plant in Natanz is contrary to the JCPOA and deeply worrying,” the three governments, dubbed the E3, claimed.
US President Donald Trump unilaterally pulled Washington out of the JCPOA in May 2018, and unleashed the “toughest ever” sanctions against the Islamic Republic in defiance of global criticism.
Since the much-criticized exit, Washington has been attempting to prevent the remaining signatories – Britain, France, China and Russia plus Germany – from abiding by their commitments and thus kill the historic agreement, which is widely viewed as a fruit of international diplomacy.
Iran remained fully compliant with the JCPOA for an entire year, waiting for the co-signatories to fulfill their end of the bargain by offsetting the impacts of American bans on the Iranian economy.
But as the European parties failed to do so, the Islamic Republic moved in May 2019 to suspend its JCPOA commitments under Articles 26 and 36 of the deal that cover Tehran’s legal rights.
The situation in Iraq, torn apart by US armed aggression, continues to deteriorate in recent months, confirming the complete fiasco of US policy in the country.
For years Iraqis have been clamoring for reform in Baghdad’s Tahrir Square, namely ending corruption, improving services and expanding job opportunities, as well as a slew of increasingly anti-American slogans. Although the authorities have taken some measures to ensure the rights of protesters, including compensation for victims of violence against protesters since October 2019, protests continue in some provinces, and their protesters remain arrested and disappear without a trace. At least 157 people were killed and 5,494 injured in the unrest, according to a report released October 20 by the Human Rights Office of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI).
Another wave of protests resumed on October 1 and spread throughout the Shiite south. At least five people died from gunshot wounds, and about 60 were injured in clashes on 28 November in the southern Iraqi city of Nasiriyah. On December 3, further protests began against the regional government of Kurdistan over non-payment of salaries to civil servants. To disperse the anti-government march, Iraqi security forces fired tear gas and opened fire, and several protesters, including the organizers, most of whom are teachers, were detained.
As Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, the head of the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq, told the UN Security Council members at the end of November, the Iraqi authorities have to act in the epicenter of several crises at once, in politics, in security, economy and finance, to solve social issues and, of course, sanitation problems. The continuing practice of people disappearing and being abducted without a trace in Iraq and the existence of a network of secret prisons is very important for the settlement of the situation in Iraq. As the experts of the UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances, which published its findings on the situation in Iraq on December 2, stated, they received reports that there are 420 secret prisons and pre-trial detention centers in this Arab country. They are also alarmed by the many mass graves in the country and the large number of unidentified bodies of the victims. Committee members called on the authorities to include punishment for crimes of kidnapping in the criminal code, and strongly recommended that such institutions be closed or converted into regular registered and controlled centers.
In addition, numerous observers note the continuing sharp conflict between government forces and DAESH cell militants in the central part of Iraq. In the Tarmia region of north Baghdad, a convoy of government forces was ambushed by terrorists, gunmen wounded three of them with sniper fire, one died from their wounds, and two more are in serious condition. In Salah ad-Din province, a truck was blown up by an explosive device left by militants. The DAESH terrorist group claimed responsibility for the November 29 rocket attack on one of the largest Iraqi oil refineries located in the city of Beiji, Salah ad Din Governorate.
Kamal Al-Hasnawi, one of the high-ranking leaders of the Al-Hashd al-Shaabi militia in Iraq, Kamal Al-Hasnawi, told the London newspaper Al-Araby Al-Jadid that one of the reasons for the periodic activity of DAESH fighters in Iraq, especially in the Iraqi Jordan -the Syrian border triangle, is their support from the United States. According to him, supporting documents are in the hands of Al-Hashd al-Shaabi, indicating that the Americans are doing this to claim that the security situation has deteriorated since the end of coalition interactions with the Iraqi government. According to the Iraqi commander, the US coalition itself trained, equipped and deployed DAESH terrorists in various cities in Iraq, especially on the Iraqi-Syrian border. At the same time, Kamal Al-Hasnawi emphasized that the Iraqi Air Force itself has enough strength and capabilities to fill the vacuum of coalition forces, just as Al-Hashd al-Shaabi itself survived heavy battles with DAESH without air support from the coalition, and in these battles he achieved victories.
At the same time, a conflict between the Peshmerga, the self-defense forces of the Kurdish Autonomous Region, and the PKK militants is growing in northern Iraq, which, according to many observers, could lead to a full-scale civil war. The impetus for this aggravation was the murder of Gazi Salih on October 8, an employee of the Sazrer border crossing, for which the local authorities blamed the PKK, although the group claimed no involvement, nevertheless claiming responsibility for the October 27 sabotage on the oil pipeline. to which oil from Iraqi Kurdistan was supplied to Turkey. It’s worth noting that the PKK, recognized as a terrorist group by Turkey, the United States and the European Union, is waging an armed struggle for the secession of the Kurdish regions of Turkey. Its main bases are in hard-to-reach areas in northwestern Iraq and it is estimated that it has about 5,000 fighters in Iraqi Kurdistan.
According to media reports, on December 3, the Iraqi capital was subjected to another rocket attack, explosions were heard in the “green zone” in the center of the Iraqi capital, where foreign and government facilities are located, as well as in the area of the International Airport in Baghdad.
In connection with the aggravation of relations between the United States and Iran, according to Politico, the United States is withdrawing half of its diplomats from Iraq. CNN News, citing reliable sources, reported that this decision was made at a meeting of the Committee for the Coordination of US National Policy and is due to “minimizing the risk” to the life of the US Embassy in Iraq, as the anniversary of the assassination of Iranian General Qasim Soleimani on January 3, 2020 is approaching as a result of a US airstrike at Baghdad airport. The sharp increase in tensions between Iran and the United States is due, among other things, to the recent death of Iranian nuclear physicist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, which, according to Tehran, was caused not only by Israel, but also by the United States.
In August, Donald Trump wrote on Twitter about the planned reduction of the US military presence in Iraq from the current 5,200 to 3,500 people, and on August 20, at a meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi in the White House, this issue was additionally discussed. However, the complete failure of the US strategy in this Arab country forces Washington, because of the opposition of the local population, not only to think about the safety of its military, but also the employees of the American diplomatic mission, whom the population of Iraq is openly kicking off of their land. Today it is already clear to everyone that US policy in Iraq, as well as in Afghanistan, has manifested itself as the epic failure it is, and the shamed US withdrawal from both of these countries is inevitable.
In a dramatic and unprecedented turn of events amid the 2020 presidential election fiasco, the Lone Star State is leading the charge to overturn results in four swing states where multiple irregularities were alleged to have occurred in delivering the presidency to the Democrat Joe Biden. Nothing less than the survival of the Republic as we know it hangs in the balance.
President Donald Trump and 17 Republican-ruled states filed motions this week in support of the Texas’ ‘Hail Mary’ effort to get the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn results in four major swing states – Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – where alleged fraud and irregularities catapulted Biden into the White House. The legal challenge comes just days before the Electoral College is scheduled to formally pronounce on the outcome.
Trump’s legal team has experienced multiple setbacks in its efforts to present its case at the state level. Those failures were not wholly unexpected considering that three of the states being sued are Democrat-run; not exactly places where the scales of justice would tip in Trump’s favor. As for Georgia, Republican Governor Brian Kemp, proving his credentials in the RINO club (‘Republican In Name Only’) has impeded efforts for a recount every step of the way.
The charges being leveled against the states by Rudy Giuliani, the head of Trump’s legal team, are serious despite being almost totally ignored by the mainstream media. The suit accuses both local voting officials as well as Dominion Voting Systems of potential fraud and “severe irregularities.” Several IT experts testified that the voting systems were not only hooked up to the internet, but the votes were tallied at overseas points.
Giuliani outlined the grievances in Atlanta, Georgia, where an alleged water-pipe break, later determined to be a hoax, halted vote counting at a time when Trump’s lead over Biden was looking insurmountable.
“In the city of Atlanta, Republicans were not allowed to watch the absentee mail-in ballot process. Inspections completely cast aside. We have numerous double voters. We have numerous out-of-state voters. And we have specific evidence of intimidation and changes of votes.”
The lawsuit filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton this week presents a compelling argument, yet has attracted mockery and disdain from some legal experts who argue that no state has the right to interfere in the affairs i.e. conducting elections of another state. The Texas-led lawsuit, however, makes the fascinating counter-argument that those four states where fraud is alleged to have happened “threaten the liberty, not just of their own citizens, but of every citizen of the United States who casts a lawful ballot in that election.” In other words, by not holding fair and transparent elections, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin have infringed upon the rights of the citizens of other states.
“States have a strong interest in ensuring that the votes of their own citizens are not diluted by the unconstitutional administration of elections in other States,” the amicus brief reads. “When non-legislative actors in other States encroach on the authority of the “Legislature thereof” in that State to administer a Presidential election, they threaten the liberty, not just of their own citizens, but of every citizen of the United States who casts a lawful ballot in that election—including the citizens of amici States.”
The legal motion went on to mention the unconstitutionality of the Supreme Courts in each state overriding the legislative branch by codifying mail-in ballots that were not properly managed. To support its claim it cited Anderson v. United States (1974), which ruled that every voter in a federal election “has a right under the Constitution to have his vote fairly counted, without its being distorted by fraudulently cast votes.”
Whether or not the filing on behalf of 17 states, as well as U.S. President Donald Trump ultimately succeeds or fails to be heard by the Supreme Court is not really the main point. What is significant is not only have so many Republican states joined together in defense of the populist leader, something that many people did not believe would happen, but it underscores the level of anger and frustration so many Americans are feeling over the outcome to this election of extreme consequence. Indeed, many believe the outcome of this presidential contest, given the strange winds now blowing through Capitol Hill, may actually mean the difference between the United States becoming more of a socialist country than a capitalist one.
With so much riding on the line, conservative Trump supporters are growing desperate, not only with the implications of a Biden-Harris presidency, but by the absolute lack of media coverage throughout the saga. And when there is media attention devoted to the legal challenges, it is an arrogant and condescending tone, as if fraud and corruption has suddenly become a new thing.
This is where not the media and the Big Tech social media platforms are playing with real fire. If enough Republican voters come around to the conclusion that Trump was not only cheated out of another term in office, but was never given a fair hearing to forward those grievances, then we may be heading for some very rough times in the land of the free. To lose in an election is one thing, but to lose under highly dubious terms while lacking both the legal and media methods of voicing those concerns, is a recipe for disaster.
By Wednesday, the general attorneys from Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and West Virginia have filed motions with the Supreme Court. Should the highest court in the land agree to hear the case, Texas senator Ted Cruz has agreed to argue on Trump’s behalf.
Not only would such a court case make for some epic television, it may very well save the Republic from another civil war.
The NSA shut down its bulk phone records collection — authorized under Section 215 — after it became apparent it wasn’t worth the effort. Reforms put in place by the USA Freedom Act prevented the agency from collecting it all and sorting it out later. Instead, it had to approach telcos with actual targeted requests and only haul away responsive records. The NSA somehow still managed to overcollect records, putting it in violation of the law. The NSA hinted the program had outlived its usefulness anyway, suggesting it had far better collections available under other authorities that it would rather not subject to greater scrutiny.
But this didn’t end the government’s bulk records collections. It just ended the phone metadata program. The NSA still collects other records in bulk, including banking records and, oddly, books checked out by library patrons. The broad authority of Section 215 could be read to allow the government collect other records, like email metadata and internet activity. Reasoning that people voluntarily create records of their internet use by using third-party services to surf the web, the government hinted it could sweep these up just as easily as it had swept up call records.
The government’s attempt to collect internet history under this authority ran into some friction earlier this year when the Senate voted to block this collection. Senator Ron Wyden directly asked the director of national intelligence (DNI) to inform the Senate whether or not agencies under its purview had gathered internet use records under this authority. He received this answer.
In a Nov. 6 letter to Mr. Wyden, John Ratcliffe, the intelligence director, wrote that Section 215 was not used to gather internet search terms, and that none of the 61 orders issued last year under that law by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court involved collection of “web browsing” records.
Wyden took this response to mean that implementing a ban on collection of internet history records could be put into place without negatively affecting any intelligence gathering activities. But when the New York Times pressed DNI John Ratcliffe on specifics, a new party inserted itself into the conversation: the DOJ. According to its response, the FBI had already done the thing the DNI had just told Sen. Wyden it hadn’t.
In fact, “one of those 61 orders resulted in the production of information that could be characterized as information regarding browsing,” Mr. Ratcliffe wrote in the second letter. Specifically, one order had approved collection of logs revealing which computers “in a specified foreign country” had visited “a single, identified U.S. web page.”
So, the FBI was collecting internet browsing records, albeit with an order that only targeted foreign users visiting one US web page. Still, this wasn’t what the DNI originally said to Sen. Wyden. This set Wyden off. Again. The supposedly honest answer he received in response to his questions wasn’t actually all that honest. As he pointed out in his statement, the belated admission raised questions about domestic surveillance and potential abuse of Section 215 authority to collect something the DNI said no one was collecting. And, if nothing changed, there was no guarantee the Intelligence Community wouldn’t talk itself into believing a collection of internet browsing data would be cool and legal.
“More generally,” Mr. Wyden continued, “the D.N.I. has provided no guarantee that the government wouldn’t use the Patriot Act to intentionally collect Americans’ web browsing information in the future, which is why Congress must pass the warrant requirement that has already received support from a bipartisan majority in the Senate.”
Previous attempts to erect a warrant requirement for the collection of internet data or search histories have failed to reach the president’s desk. This latest admission has refueled the fire to protect Americans (or visitors to American websites) from government overreach. Even if such a collection targets only foreign internet users, there’s no guarantee it won’t sweep up US citizens — like pretty much every other bulk collection has.
At this point, everything is up in the air. There’s a new president headed into office who might be more receptive to reform efforts, but he’s also the man who served the Obama Administration — one that wasn’t all that concerned about domestic surveillance until it became impossible to ignore the documents leaked by Ed Snowden. Even then, its response was tepid at best and it still allowed IC surveillance business to continue pretty much uninterrupted — something it used to justify extrajudicial killings based on little more than metadata. This needs to be fixed, but surveillance reform advocates still lack majority support. And the guy [potentially] headed to the White House has never seemed all that concerned about surveillance abuses.
In the debate over whether a recently retired military man, Gen. Lloyd Austin, should be secretary of defense, the New York Times published an editorial yesterday emphasizing the importance of “civilian control” over the military.
How quaint! Never mind that Times, by its own admission, endorsed President Trump’s nominee for secretary of defense, Gen. James Mattis. The Times now says that two times in a row would be too much because civilian control of the military is so vitally important in America.
What nonsense. The fact is that the national-security establishment, which consists of the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA, has long been in charge of the levers of power within the federal government. Anybody who becomes secretary of defense, military or civilian, is going to be taking orders, not giving them.
But we have to cling to our myths and lies — you know, like the one that holds that American servicemen died in America’s many foreign wars to protect our “freedom.” As long as we cling to such falsehoods, myths, and unrealities, everything will be fine, or so the argument goes.
But everything isn’t fine. Just look around. Look at the ever-increasing numbers of young people committing suicide. Is that normal? That’s the surest sign yet of what clinging to lies and myths and selling them as reality can do to a nation. Add to those suicides the suicides of veterans and the massive drug addition, alcoholism, and other self-destructive behavior and all the irrational killings and other acts of violence that pervade American society.
Yep, just look around. It’s not hard to see that America is a very unhealthy society.
There is one book that captures perfectly what has happened to the United States: National Security and Double Government by Michael J. Glennon. Glennon’s thesis is a simple one: It is the national-security establishment that is in charge of the federal government.
Oh, yes, I know, everyone thinks that the other parts of the federal government — the president, the Congress, and the Supreme Court are in charge. That’s because they are inculcated with that notion in their public school civics classes or at the state-supported colleges they attended. As Glennon points out, that notion is false. The real power and control lies with the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA. They permit the other parts of the federal government to maintain the veneer of power. That doesn’t matter to them. What matters is that they are in charge and that the other three branches defer to them on critical matters, such as who is going to be secretary of defense,
And just in case you’re wondering, Glennon is not some sort of crackpot author, which makes his book so dangerous to the national-security establishment. Since 2002, he has been a professor of law at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He also served three years as counsel to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He also was a professor of law at the University of California and a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International School for Scholars. Glennon is an author to be reckoned with.
Recall that when Trump was running for president, he was making bold statements against the deep state and its “forever wars.” This was one of the big reasons so many people voted for him. Not since Dwight Eisenhower and John Kennedy had a president stood up to the “military industrial complex.”
And then look at what happened, almost immediately. Look at what the national-security establishment did to Donald Trump. At the very start of his administration, they defanged him and rendered him impotent. Trump surrounded himself with generals. He even appointed one to be his secretary of defense. Now nearing the the end of his four year term, he failed to end his “forever wars,” as he promised to do. Just as bad, he tried his best to start new ones, like in Iran, Yemen, Syria, and Somalia.
One of the biggest signs that Trump caved was with respect to the long-secret JFK records of the national-security establishment. Just think — almost 60 years of secrecy based on the ridiculous notion of “national security.” Early on, Trump declared openly that he was gong to release the records, as mandated by Congress 25 years before in the JFK Records Act. And then at the last minute, Trump surrendered to the will of the CIA, agreeing to its demands for more years of secrecy.
Moreover, at the risk of belaboring the obvious, the mainstream press didn’t issue a peep of protest over the continue secrecy of the records. Continued secrecy of decades-old records relating to the supposed lone-nut assassination of a president is treated as something completely normal. It’s just one more example of the weird dysfunction that pervades American life, not to mention the control that the national-security establishment wields over the mainstream press, especially when it comes to the Kennedy assassination.
Why did Donald Trump cave on the JFK records, the forever wars, and the deep state, knowing that he was inevitably going to disappoint his millions of supporters? I don’t think we can eliminate the possibility that Trump got “Hooverized” — that is, that the national-security establishment may have employed the same tactic mastered by former FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover — use secrets of a person’s personal life to acquire mastery of his public life.
With Joe Biden, they don’t need to do that. Given Biden’s lifetime of public subservience to the Washington, D.C. establishment, he’s going to bow to whatever the national-security establishment wants. In fact, I don’t think we can eliminate the idea that the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA rejected Biden’s choice for secretary of defense, another deep state lackey named Michèle Flournoy, and chose Gen. Austin instead. But hey, at least Austin’s appointment would reflect the reality of who’s in charge of the federal government.
Jacob G. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation. He was born and raised in Laredo, Texas, and received his B.A. in economics from Virginia Military Institute and his law degree from the University of Texas. He was a trial attorney for twelve years in Texas. He also was an adjunct professor at the University of Dallas, where he taught law and economics. In 1987, Mr. Hornberger left the practice of law to become director of programs at the Foundation for Economic Education.
Time magazine has designated US coronavirus czar Anthony Fauci as a ‘guardian of the year,’ a new category that emphasizes his dystopian doomsday pronouncements. The message? Sit down, muzzle up, and fear what you’re told to fear.
Since the first reports of the novel coronavirus on American shores, Fauci has been front and center, scaring the life out of Americans with apocalyptic predictions of millions of deaths that – while they haven’t come to pass – have triggered devastating economic shutdowns. A recent survey found nearly two out of five US families planned to spend the next year in “survival mode,” having no choice but to put aside long-term goals in order to do whatever they can to make ends meet as the economy circles the drain.
It’s no coincidence that Fauci’s directives to “hunker down” for the much-hyped “dark winter” came ahead of the Christmas shopping season, when most retail businesses earn their way back into the black in order to make it through the following year. Fauci and his colleagues in the US health bureaucracy are facilitating the asset-stripping of America, whether or not they’re aware of it.
The Covid-19 czar’s opposition to the cheap, off-patent malaria drug hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) has cost hundreds of thousands of lives, according to some expert estimates. While the World Health Organization (WHO) terminated its trial of HCQ stating it showed no improvement over standard treatments, there is evidence of success from countries that used the drug to treat early symptoms of Covid-19 – and the US, where the drug was demonized and politicized, is among the top ten in terms of coronavirus-related deaths per capita. Fauci has pooh-poohed the cheap drug in favor of Remdesivir, itself a failed (but fantastically expensive) ebola drug – which the WHO has likewise admitted has little therapeutic potential against the coronavirus.
Indeed, Fauci has gotten every single “epidemic” in his 50-year tenure wrong. From suppressing drugs that were effective in treating AIDS-related pneumonia, resulting in some 17,000 deaths, to shilling for the swine flu vaccine that spawned a narcolepsy epidemic among vaccinated children in 2009, he has been persistently on the wrong side of history. He has lied under oath regarding documented side effects of the measles vaccine and foisted highly toxic AIDS drugs on healthy people under the guise of “pre-exposure prophylaxis” (PrEP). The career medical official has gallons of American blood on his hands.
Ironically, these characteristics would make him ideally suited to Time’s ‘person of the year’ designation – which has been awarded to the likes of Adolf Hitler, Henry Kissinger, George W. Bush and Barack Obama. The man has always put profits before people, a characteristic which should preclude holding public office but which is praised in the sociopathic ruling class circles that anoint America’s ‘leaders.’
Many dystopian works of literature and film use the term “guardian” to denote secret police, and the term fits Fauci perfectly. The immunologist even undermined his own fearmongering when he all but admitted the “gold standard” PCR test used to diagnose Covid-19 is essentially useless – yet gleefully uses these bogus test results to terrorize the American population.
Time is far from alone in lionizing Fauci – indeed, the entire media establishment hangs on his every word. The editor of Yale University’s book of notable quotes declared Fauci’s “wear a mask” to be quote of the year – even though the official had, just a few months before imploring Americans to mask up, declared such a precaution unnecessary, and even detrimental.
Given the utter disaster 2020 has been for the US and many other countries, perhaps it’s fitting that Fauci should be selected to epitomize it. But with the rollout of barely-tested vaccines looming in the future, and the possibility that a “don’t call it a mandate” vaccination certificate will be a requirement to participate in what passes for normal life post-Covid-19, Americans should seriously reconsider placing their trust in this avatar of medical totalitarianism.
Helen Buyniski is an American journalist and political commentator at RT. Follow her on Twitter @velocirapture23
A State Senator in New Jersey wants the coronavirus vaccine made mandatory for all school age children, despite them being the least at risk group.
Middlesex Democrat Senator Joseph Vitale also wants to eliminate exemptions that have been used in the past to prevent their children from receiving shots.
“When it is that a vaccine is appropriate for children, I believe it ought to be included in that list of vaccines that are required for children,” Vitale told reporters.
“I’d like to incorporate it into the other vaccination bill that would require children to get vaccinated as a condition to entering school,” he added.
Vitale also says there is a separate effort underway to make the vaccine mandatory for University students in the state.
“It’s not complicated to decide whether or not to include a COVID vaccine as a condition of school,” he said, adding “The decision is going to be whether or not the vaccine is available, and if the science supports its efficacy.”
New Jersey currently mandates that children must have several vaccines in order to attend school, including MMR, polio, and chickenpox. However, thousands of children have been exempted from the shots, with parents citing religious beliefs.
There was an attempt last year by lawmakers to eliminate such exemptions and mandate the vaccinations across the board, but it failed when angry parents stormed the statehouse:
While New Jersey officials have stopped short of saying they will force everyone to get the vaccine, Governor Phil Murphy has signed an executive order that will see everyone who does get it automatically enrolled into a ‘New Jersey Immunization Information System’, a move that some have seen as a way of coercing people to take the shot.
Speaking to reporters, Sue Collins, co-founder of the New Jersey Coalition for Vaccine Choice said “Putting the cart before the horse and saying when it’s available everyone has to get it does not build trust.”
“No medical procedure should ever be mandated for anyone — especially something so new, with so many unknowns and no long-term knowledge at all,” Collins added.
Pushing back against the creep toward mandating the vaccine in the state, Republican Assemblyman Gerry Scharfenberger, has sponsored a bill to prevent it from becoming compulsory.
While he says he is not anti-vaccine, Scharfenberger says he cannot support mandating medication, and is responding to the concerns of constituents.
A further 30 states, including New Jersey, currently allow religious exemptions, with 17 more states still allowing exemptions for religious and personal or philosophical beliefs.
At least eight companies affiliated with California Gov. Gavin Newsom collectively received millions of dollars from the coronavirus-related Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), according to reports released by the US government and analyzed by ABC7.
In 1992, Newsom founded the company “PlumpJack,” and under his leadership, the PlumpJack Management Group LLC grew to include five restaurants and bars, four Napa Valley wineries, a ski resort and retail establishments, according to PlumpJackWinery.com.
The newly-released reports indicate that the PlumpJack companies received $2.9 million dollars through the Small Business Administration’s Paycheck Protection Program.
According to reports by the SBA, one company received a loan for $918,720 on April 14, 2020. The SBA requires at least 60% of the loan be used to cover employee wages. This company had 14 employees. Hypothetically, if divided equally, each employee would received around $40,000 to cover their salary over a three month period – that would amount to an annual salary of around $160,000 per employee.
Sean Moulton, a senior policy analyst with Project on Government Oversight specializes in tracking PPP funds.
“It’s unexpected for a 14 employee organization to get nearly $1 million,” he said. “The purpose behind this program was to save entry-level jobs, people going in and working on that paycheck. That was what we put this out there for, to stop unemployment.”
On average, the small business loan for California companies with 14 employees was around $128,000. A PlumpJack company that also had 14 employees received more than seven times that amount at $918,720.
The PlumpJack Managment Group released a statement to ABC7, “”Like many other companies facing extreme financial duress during the pandemic, we used loan monies to protect our workers and keep them employed. Our staff members and their loved ones have depended on these programs for their livelihoods. Gavin Newsom is not affiliated with the operation of the companies in any way. Any suggestion otherwise is unequivocally false,” said Jeff Nead, spokesperson for the PlumpJack Management Group.
Newsom put his business holdings into a blind trust before he took office last year and is not affiliated with the operations of the companies, however, he is listed as the founder on the website and his sister, Hilary Newsom, is listed as the company’s President and Partner.
Over the Thanksgiving holidays, I visited Luray, Virginia, a beautiful little town nestled in the Shenandoah Valley. Walking by the county courthouse, I noticed a plaque out in front, whose inscription exemplifies a root cause of the dysfunctional nature of American society. The plaque reads:
Page County Veterans Memorial
Those who have long enjoyed such freedoms as we enjoy forget in time that man has died to win them.
Dedicated to those who served their country in times of war and peace especially dedicated to those who paid the ultimate sacrifice in order that all mankind may live free.
We all gave some and some gave all.
The plaque lists the names of American military personnel from Page County, Virginia, who died in four of America’s foreign wars: World War I, World War II, Korean War, and Vietnam War.
Of course, this type of plaque is not unique to Luray. Variations of it can be found in front of government buildings all across America.
If you want to understand one of the big reasons why the United States is riddled with massive drug addiction and alcoholism, irrational acts of violence, and ever-rising suicide rates, especially among young people and veterans, just read that plaque in front of the Page County, Virginia, courthouse.
Talk to any psychologist or psychiatrist or just read a few self-help books about living a life that denies reality. They will all tell you that when a person lives that type of life, it will inevitably lead to severe psychosis, especially if the person doesn’t realize that anything is wrong with him and instead believes that everything is fine with him.
It’s only when a person achieves a “breakthrough” as to his condition that he is able to start the long road to recovery. The first step toward recovery and health, as Alcoholics Anonymous points out, is for a person to acknowledge that he has a problem.
That’s the problem with America, or, to be more precise, with a large segment of the American populace. They are living what can be called the life of the lie and have been for their entire lives. It is a lie that holds that American soldiers have died for freedom in America’s foreign wars.
Nothing could be further from the truth. But all too many Americans simply cannot bring themselves to acknowledge the lie they are living. It’s just too comfortable living the life of the lie, which, over time, manifests itself in a massively dysfunctional society, one in which the dysfunctionality becomes increasingly worse the longer the lie persists.
World War I. No American soldier, including those from Page County, Virginia, died in World War I defending the freedom of the American people or, for that matter, anyone’s else’s freedom. The freedom of the American people was never at stake or at risk. President Wilson’s war aims were (1) to “make the world safe for democracy,” which, of course, is not the same thing as freedom and (2) to make this the war that would end war forever.
Wilson’s war aims were a crock. It didn’t take Americans long to realize that Wilson had sacrificed the lives of American soldiers for nothing. No, not for freedom, but rather for nothing. Even worse, he had destroyed freedom by conscripting — i.e. forcing — men to go thousands of miles away to be sacrificed for nothing. Moreover, there was the destruction of liberty here at home, including the jailing of American citizens who dared to criticize Wilson’s deadly folly.
World War II. Germany never attacked the United States or even threatened to do so. Hitler’s aim was always to establish dominance on the European continent and to move eastward against the Soviet Union and communism. After the fiasco of World War I, Americans wanted no part of another European war. But President Roosevelt, unwilling to let the American people have the final say, provoked the Japanese into attacking Pearl Harbor and the Philippines, especially through a very effective oil embargo, in order to give him a “back door” to getting the U.S. into the war against Germany. At no time did Japan threaten the freedom of the American people. Its war aim was limited to trying to knock out the U.S. fleet so that Japan would have a free hand in invading the Dutch East Indies to secure the oil to fund its war machine in China.
Moreover, at the end of the war, half of Germany and all of Eastern Europe were under communist control, which wasn’t any better than Nazi control. Communism, like Nazism, is the opposite of freedom. The aftermath of the war also led to the conversion of the U.S. government to a national-security state with omnipotent, dark-side powers that are antithetical to the principles of a free society. It also led to the Cold War, which brought massive infringement on the liberties and privacy of the American people.
Korean War and Vietnam War. These were nothing more than civil wars that were no business of the U.S. government. At no time did North Korea or North Vietnam threaten the freedom of the American people. The U.S. interventions into these civil wars actually destroyed freedom at home through conscription and destruction of civil liberties.
Maybe nobody from Page County has been killed in Iraq or Afghanistan, given that those two forever wars aren’t listed on the plaque. But the same principle applies there as well: Soldiers who have died in those two foreign escapades did not die for freedom, given that the freedom of the American people was never being threatened by either the Afghan regime or the Iraqi regime. American soldiers in Afghanistan or Iraq have died for the same thing that American soldiers died for in other foreign escapades: they have died for nothing.
But Americans cannot bring themselves to face these discomforting and painful truths. They insist on continuing the life of the life — the life that defers to and, even worse, glorifies the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA, the three principal components of the national-security establishment that itself has destroyed the freedom and well-being of the American people. Americans simply cannot bring themselves to acknowledge reality — that American soldiers who died in these foreign escapades died not for freedom but for nothing and that many of them were forced to do so through conscription.
Until Americans come to grips with reality, the suicides will continue, especially among young people and veterans, as so will the massive drug addiction, alcoholism, and other self-destructive behavior, not to mention the many irrational acts of violence. That’s the type of dysfunctional society that the life of the lie — a life that denies reality — produces.
On 2 December, high-profile Hong Kong activist Joshua Wong was sentenced to over a year in prison for his involvement in an unauthorised protest outside the territory’s police headquarters in June 2019.
It marks the third time the 24-year-old has been jailed for his political activities, and follows an amazingly rapid ascent to international prominence, which began in 2014, when the group he founded, Scholarism, played a pivotal role in the Occupy Central protests that year.
Wong was subsequently listed among Time magazine’s Most Influential Teens of 2014 and nominated as its Person of the Year, declared one of the “world’s greatest leaders” by Fortune the following year, and even nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017.
He somehow also found time to establish and lead pro-democracy political party Demosisto – which called for “self-determination” from China – until its disbandment after the implementation of the city’s highly controversial national security law in June, and was instrumental in influencing US lawmakers to pass the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act in November 2019.
One would be hard pushed not to be awed by all Wong has achieved, or inspired by his indefatigable determination in the face of such risks to his liberty. That his campaigning efforts have captured the attention and imaginations of quite so many in the Western world is unsurprising.
However, there are strong indications that unseen forces surreptitiously helped Wong along every step of the way, and consciously groomed the young activist for many years for the position he now occupies.
“Davos for Dissidents”
In November 2014, the BBC’s Newsnight program broadcast an extraordinarily revealing report on the activities of the Oslo Freedom Foundation (OFF). The British state broadcaster dubbed it a place where “the aristocracy of activists” meet to “share ideas and learn about agitating for positive change over champagne and canapés.”
“In the basement of this four-star hotel, human-rights activists come to what feels a bit like a school for revolution,” intoned Laura Kuenssberg, then-Newsnight’s chief correspondent, now BBC News’s political editor. “This workshop? How to make sure your message – whether in Egypt, Ukraine, Hong Kong or North Korea – catches on. This may not evoke the spirit of the barricades, but the teaching here is that, to be successful, to topple a government for good, you have to be organized, and plan meticulously.”
She went on to note that activists present in the class had been involved “in organizing the current protests in Hong Kong,” strikingly revealing “their plan to put thousands on the streets of the territory was, in fact, hatched nearly two years ago.”
The report then cuts to an interview with Yang Jianli, who, in his mid-20s, was involved in the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, and subsequently fled to the US. On his return to China in April 2002 on a friend’s passport to monitor labor unrest, he was arbitrarily detained for four years, then for another year for refusing to leave the country following his release.
On a table next to Yang is a laptop, via which he’s conducting a conversation with none other than Joshua Wong. Kuenssberg notes Yang has been talking to student activists in Hong Kong “on a daily, almost hourly basis,” and reiterates the fact that demonstrators in the territory were “trained, long before taking to the streets, to use non-violent action as a weapon of mass destruction.”
This segues into a brief interview with Jamila Raqib, Executive Director of the Albert Einstein Institution, which “advances freedom with non-violent action,” and has received funding from, among others, US government regime-change arm the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).
“Protesters were taught how to behave in a protest, how to keep ranks, how to speak to police, how to manage their movements, how to behave when arrested,” she says.
The report ends with clips of an ensuing bout of booze-fuelled revelry, Kuenssberg noting that “like at any good conference, the evenings see deals done over drinks.”
“Schmoozing for democracy! To say this is a strange event hardly begins to cover it,” she says without apparent irony. “There’s something deeply incongruous about North Korean defectors, Ukrainian freedom fighters, even hackers, trading information over glasses of champagne. They call it ‘Davos for Dissidents’ for a very good reason.”
Kuenssberg concludes that, while viewers will “never know” most of those in attendance at the OFF summit, “the next revolutionary, who will change their country, could just be in this room,” while members of Pussy Riot snap selfies with other attendees.
Oddly, days after broadcast,the BBC issued a clarification, stating that, while the report “may have given the impression the Hong Kong pro-democracy protests were planned by foreign activists,” in fact, “references to the demonstrations were intended to mean the planning was carried out in Hong Kong, with support from abroad.”
“Fostering awareness”
Kuenssberg’s reference to the blueprints for the Occupy Central protests being “hatched” two years prior to her report’s broadcast is conspicuous, given it was in 2012 that the aforementioned NED began funding the National Democratic Institute (NDI) in Hong Kong to the tune of US$460,000 annually.
The NDI’s objective was “to foster awareness regarding political institutions and constitutional reform … and develop the capacity of citizens – particularly university students – to more effectively participate in public debate … allowing students and citizens to explore possible reforms leading to universal suffrage.”
This sounds highly relevant to the Occupy Central protests, and, in September 2016, the NDI published a report on the progress of its “democratization” efforts in Hong Kong, which made repeated references to Wong, Scholarism, and Demosisto.
In the meantime, NED grants and the organization’s involvement with activists in Hong Kong grew apace, expanding to include groups such as the Institute of Human Resource Management, Confederation of Trade Unions, Journalists Association, Civic Party, Labor Party and Democratic Party. NED funding extended to these groups exceeded US$1.8 million from 2017 to 2020 alone – a period concurrent with ever-escalating levels of protest in Hong Kong.
In 2015, the US’s Freedom House, which works closely with the NED, honoured Wong alongside Martin Lee, the founder of the Democratic Party and another noteworthy figure in the 2014 Occupy Central protests.
The NED was founded in November 1983, and then-US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director William Casey was at the heart of its creation. He wished to construct a public mechanism to support groups and individuals inside “enemy” countries that would engage in propaganda and political action, which the CIA had historically organized and paid for covertly, under the bogus aegis of democracy and human-rights promotion.
In 1991, senior NED official Allen Weinstein acknowledged that “a lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.”
Seeing in colours
Intriguingly, the Agency also played a role in the creation of the Albert Einstein Institution, which was briefly featured in the Newsnight report.
In 1965, its founder, Gene Sharp, was recruited to Harvard’s Center for International Affairs, known colloquially as “the CIA at Harvard”. Its founders and staff were all prominent Cold War intellectuals, with intimate ties to the US national security state, the first co-directors being Henry Kissinger and Robert Bowie, future CIA deputy chief.
It was here that Sharp, who died in 2018, created many resistance methods that have influenced protest movements the world over ever since, earning him the nickname of the “Machiavelli of nonviolence.”
Sharp and the Albert Einstein Institution, through instructional writing and direct training, have helped out numerous revolutionary groups since the 1990s. They include Yugoslavia’s Otpor, which also received millions in NED funding, and whose members proceeded to found the Center for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies, which trained the various groups involved in the ‘colour revolutions’ that engulfed former Soviet states in the mid-2000s, as well as key Arab Spring activists.
“The bible of Pora has been the book of Gene Sharp … it’s called ‘From Dictatorship to Democracy’. Pora activists translated it themselves. We [wrote] to Sharp … he became very sympathetic towards our initiative, and the Institution provided funding to print over 12,000 copies of this book for free,” a member of Pora, a group central to Ukraine’s ‘orange revolution’, has said.
According to a 2006 US embassy cable published by WikiLeaks, protesters in Syria were tutored in Sharp’s writings. Another embassy cable the next year indicated Burmese officials feared Sharp was part of a “a vast internal and external alliance” that was trying to bring down the government.
The Albert Einstein Institution staffer featured in the Newsnight clip, Jamila Raqib, is a recurrent OFF speaker, to the point that she has a dedicated profile on the organization’s website. It notes she worked “closely” with Sharp and that, together, they authored ‘Self-Liberation’, which OFF states “has been used throughout the world as a practical guide for nonviolent resistance.”
If Raqib’s statements in the BBC report are accurate, she – and Sharp, whether directly or indirectly – had an intimate hand in training the Hong Kong protesters, even if remotely.
It’s unclear which other would-be insurrectionists have benefited from their collective expertise, although White Helmets chief Raed al-Saleh spoke at the Forum’s 2017 meeting, and self-avowed Belarusian president-in-waiting Svetlana Tikhanovskaya was guest-of-honour at OFF’s virtual 2020 summit.
Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions. Follow Kit on Twitter @KitKlarenberg
Hunter Biden acknowledged today that he has been notified of an active criminal investigation into his tax affairs by the U.S. Attorney for Delaware. Among the numerous prongs of the inquiry, CNN reports, investigators are examining “whether Hunter Biden and his associates violated tax and money laundering laws in business dealings in foreign countries, principally China.”
Documents relating to Hunter Biden’s exploitation of his father’s name to enrich himself and other relatives through deals with China were among the cache published in the week before the election by The New York Post — revelations censored by Twitter and Facebook and steadfastly ignored by most mainstream news outlets. That concerted repression effort by media outlets and Silicon Valley left it to right-wing outlets such as Fox News and The Daily Caller to report, which in turn meant that millions of Americans were kept in the dark before voting.
But the just-revealed federal criminal investigation in Delaware is focused on exactly the questions which corporate media outlets refused to examine for fear that doing so would help Trump: namely, whether Hunter Biden engaged in illicit behavior in China and what impact that might have on his father’s presidency.
The allegations at the heart of this investigation compel an examination of a fascinating and at-times disturbing speech at a major financial event held last week in Shanghai. In that speech, a Chinese scholar of political science and international finance, Di Donghseng, insisted that Beijing will have far more influence in Washington under a Biden administration than it did with the Trump administration.
The reason, Di said, is that China’s ability to get its way in Washington has long depended upon its numerous powerful Wall Street allies. But those allies, he said, had difficulty controlling Trump, but will exert virtually unfettered power over Biden. That China cultivated extensive financial ties to Hunter Biden, Di explained, will be crucial for bolstering Beijing’s influence even further.
Di, who in addition to his teaching positions is also Vice Dean of Beijing’s Renmin University’s School of International Relations, delivered his remarks alongside three other Chinese banking and development experts. Di’s speech at the event, entitled “Will China’s Opening up of its Financial Sector Attract Wall Street?,” was translated and posted by Jennifer Zeng, a Chinese Communist Party critic who left China years ago, citing religious persecution, and now lives in the U.S. A source fluent in Mandarin confirmed the accuracy of the translation.
The centerpiece of Di’s speech was the history he set forth of how Beijing has long successfully managed to protect its interests in the halls of American power: namely, by relying on “friends” in Wall Street and other U.S. ruling class sectors — which worked efficiently until the Trump presidency.
Referring to the Trump-era trade war between the two countries, Di posed this question: “Why did China and the U.S. use to be able to settle all kinds of issues between 1992 [when Clinton became President] and 2016 [when Obama’s left office]?” He then provided this answer:
No matter what kind of crises we encountered — be it the Yinhe incident [when the U.S. interdicted a Chinese ship in the mistaken belief it carried chemical weapons for Iran], the bombing of the embassy [the 1992 bombing by the U.S. of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade], or the crashing of the plane [the 2001 crashing of a U.S. military spy plane into a Chinese fighter jet] — things were all solved in no time, like a couple do with their quarrels starting at the bedhead but ending at the bed end. We fixed everything in two months. What is the reason? I’m going to throw out something maybe a little bit explosive here.
It’s just because we have people at the top. We have our old friends who are at the top of America’s core inner circle of power and influence.
Who are these “old friends” of China’s “who are at the top of America’s core inner circle of power and influence” and have ensured that, in his words, “for the past 30 years, 40 years, we have been utilizing the core power of the United States”? Di provided the answer: Wall Street, with whom the Chinese Community Party and Chinese industry maintain a close, multi-pronged and inter-dependent relationship.
“Since the 1970s, Wall Street had a very strong influence on the domestic and foreign affairs of the United States,” Di observed. Thus, “we had a channel to rely on.”
To illustrate the point of how helpful Wall Street has been to Chinese interests in the U.S., Di recounted a colorful story, albeit one fused with anti-Semitic tropes, of his unsuccessful efforts in 2015 to secure the preferred venue in Washington for the debut of President Xi Jinping’s book about China. No matter how much he cajoled the owner of the iconic D.C. bookstore Politics and Prose, or what he offered him, Di was told it was unavailable, already promised to a different author. So he conveyed his failure to Party leadership.
But at the last minute, Di recounts, he was told that venue had suddenly changed its mind and agreed to host Xi’s book event. This was the work, he said, of someone to whom Party leaders introduced him: “She is from a famous, leading global financial institution on Wall Street,” Di said, “the president of the Asia region of a top-level financial institution,” who speaks perfect Mandarin and has a sprawling home in Beijing.
The point — that China’s close relationship with Wall Street has given it very powerful friends in the U.S. — was so clear that it sufficed for him to coyly laugh with the audience: “Do you understand what I mean? If you do, put your hands together!” They knowingly applauded.
All of that provoked an obvious question: why did this close relationship with Wall Street not enable China to exert the same influence during the Trump years, including avoiding a costly trade war? Di explained that — aside from Wall Street’s reduced standing due to the 2008 financial crisis — everything changed when Trump ascended to the presidency; specifically, Wall Street could not control him the way it had previous presidents because of Trump’s prior conflicts with Wall Street:
But the problem is that after 2008, the status of Wall Street has declined, and more importantly, after 2016, Wall Street can’t fix Trump. It’s very awkward. Why? Trump had a previous soft default issue with Wall Street, so there was a conflict between them, but I won’t go into details, I may not have enough time.
So during the US-China trade war, [Wall Street] tried to help, and I know that my friends on the US side told me that they tried to help, but they couldn’t do much.
But as Di shifted to his discussion of the new incoming administration, his tone palpably changed, becoming far more animated, excited and optimistic. That’s because a Biden presidency means a restoration of the old order, where Wall Street exerts great influence with the White House and can thus do China’s bidding: “But now we’re seeing Biden was elected, the traditional elite, the political elite, the establishment, they’re very close to Wall Street, so you see that, right?”
And Di specifically referenced the work Beijing did to cultivate Hunter:
Trump has been saying that Biden’s son has some sort of global foundation. Have you noticed that?
Who helped [Biden’s son] build the foundations? Got it? There are a lot of deals inside all these.
Some excerpts of Di’s speech can be seen below, and the translated transcript of it here.
The claims in his speech can be seen in a new light given today’s revelations that the U.S. Attorney has resumed its active criminal investigation into Hunter Biden’s business dealings in China and whether he accounted to the I.R.S. for the income (CNN’s Shimon Prokupecz says that “at least one of the matters investigators have examined is a 2017 gift of a 2.8-carat diamond that Hunter Biden received from CEFC [China Energy’]’s founder and former chairman Ye Jianming after a Miami business meeting.”
The pronouncements of this University Professor and administrator should not be taken as gospel, but there is substantial independent confirmation for much of what he claimed. That is even more true after today’s news about Hunter Biden.
That Hunter Biden received large sums of money from Chinese entities is not in dispute. A report from the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs earlier this year, while finding no wrongdoing by Joe Biden, documented millions in cash flow between Hunter and his relatives and Chinese interests.
Nor can it be reasonably disputed that Wall Street exerts significant influence in Democratic Party politics generally and in the world of Joe Biden specifically. Citing data from the Center for Responsive Politics, CNBC reported in the weeks before the election:
People in the securities and investment industry will finish the 2020 election cycle contributing over $74 million to back Joe Biden’s candidacy for president, a much larger sum than what President Donald Trump raised from Wall Street.
They added: “Biden also received a ton of financial support from leaders on Wall Street in the third quarter.” At the same time, said CNN, “professionals on Wall Street are shunning Trump and funneling staggering amounts of money to his opponent.” Wall Street executives, CNBC reported, specially celebrated Biden’s choice of Kamala Harris as his running mate, noting that her own short-lived presidential campaign was deluged with “contributions from executives in a wide range of industries, including film, TV, real estate and finance.”
Moreover, Biden’s top appointees thus far overwhelmingly have massive ties to Wall Street and the industries which spend the most to control the U.S. government. As but one egregious example, Pine Island Investment Corp. — an investment firm in which key Biden appointees including Secretary of State nominee Antony Blinken and Pentagon chief nominee Gen. Lloyd Austin have been centrally involved — “is seeing a surge in support from Wall Street players after pitching access to investors.”
Prior to the formal selection of Blinken and Austin for key Cabinet posts, The Daily Poster reported that “two former government officials who may now run President-elect Joe Biden’s national security team have been partners at a private equity firm now promising investors big profits off government business because of its ties to those officials.” The New York Timeslast week said “the Biden team’s links to these entities are presenting the incoming administration with its first test of transparency and ethics” and that Pine Island is an example “of how former officials leverage their expertise, connections and access on behalf of corporations and other interests, without in some cases disclosing details about their work, including the names of the clients or what they are paid.”
That China and Wall Street have an extremely close relationship has been documented for years. Financial Times — under the headline “Beijing and Wall Street deepen ties despite geopolitical rivalry” — last month reported that “Wall Street groups including BlackRock, Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase have each been given approval to expand their businesses in China over recent months.”
A major Wall Street Journal story from last week, bearing the headline “China Has One Powerful Friend Left in the U.S.: Wall Street,” echoed Di’s speech by noting that “Chinese leaders have time and again turned to Wall Street for assistance in periods of trouble.” That WSJ article particularly emphasized the growing ties between China and the asset-manager giant BlackRock, a firm that already has outsized influence in the Biden administration. And Michael Bloomberg’s ties to China have been so crucial that he has regularly heaped praise on Beijing even when doing so was politically deleterious.
Even the smaller details of Di’s speech — including his anecdote about the book event he tried to arrange for Xi — check out. Contemporaneous news accounts show that exactly the book event he described was held at Politics and Prose in 2015, just as he recalled.
None of this means that Trump was some sort of stalwart enemy of Wall Street. From massive corporate tax cuts to rollbacks of regulations in numerous industries and many of their own in key positions, the financial sector benefited in all sorts of ways from the Trump presidency.
But all of their behavior indicates that they view a Biden/Harris administration as far more beneficial to their interests, and far more susceptible to their control. And that, in turn, makes Beijing far more confident that they will wield significantly more influence in Washington than they could over the last four years.
That confidence is due, says Professor Di, to Beijing’s close ties to a newly empowered Wall Street as well as their efforts to cultivate Hunter Biden, efforts we are likely to learn much more about now that Hunter’s activities in China are under active criminal investigation in Delaware. We should and could have learned about these transactions prior to the election had the bulk of the media not corruptly decided to ignore any incriminating reporting on Biden, but learning about them now is, one might say, a case of better late than never.
Slava Zilber: Sam, three years ago, you appeared on Talk Nation Radio with David Swanson and spoke about the case of the GCHQ whistleblower Katharine Gun. You pointed out that the people involved in the spying on the UN and the people authorizing the Iraq War were not held accountable:
“Virtually everybody who went along with the war, whether it is Kerry or Clinton, of course, the Bush administration themselves has falsified their own records in terms of why, what they did, when they did, why they did it, to the extent that they’ve been scrutinised at all.”
You also address it in a recent article. And recently, Joe Biden has been lying about his position on the Iraq War. How can such an important issue escape meaningful scrutiny? … continue
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