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Swedish Opposition Demands Answers About Alleged US Espionage Against Country

By Igor Kuznetsov – Sputnik – 26.11.2020

According to a whistleblower report, the US intelligence service NSA, with the help of its Danish counterpart, spied on targets in several countries, including Norway, Finland, and Sweden.

In an unexpected alliance, the Left and the Sweden Democrats, representing the opposite ends of the Swedish political spectrum, have teamed up in demanding an answer from the government about alleged US espionage.

Danish Radio earlier published a whistleblower report from the country’s Defence Intelligence Service (FE) about the US National Security Agency (NSA) spying against the Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish defence industries via access to the data centre on the island of Amager off Copenhagen. From there, the NSA reportedly targeted traffic from ministries and defence companies such as Denmark’s Terma and Sweden’s Saab.

According to Danish sources, the espionage took place at the same time as the Danish state moved to the final round of fighter aircraft procurement, in which Saab’s Gripen was a contender. The Danish state eventually bought 27 US-made F-35 fighter jets.

Left MP Håkan Svenneling asked Social Democrat Foreign Minister Ann Linde what measures the minister and the government in general have taken in connection with the reported espionage, while Sweden Democrat MP Björn Söder demanded an answer from Defence Minister Peter Hultqvist.

“This may have affected the Swedish defence industry in a very negative way and it must be clarified”, Söder explained to national broadcaster SVT, emphasising that the government has been “very slow to act.”

In response, Social Democrat Interior Minister Mikael Damberg stressed that the government is waiting for Denmark’s investigation and that he cannot comment on the “accuracy” of the information that has appeared in the media.

“On the other hand, of course, I and the relevant Swedish authorities follow the Danish investigation with great interest”, Damberg said, assuring that the government “takes very seriously all forms of espionage against Sweden”.

Norway previously launched talks with Denmark about the espionage allegations at defence minister level, involving Norway’s Frank Bakke-Jensen and Denmark’s Trine Bramsen.

According to Danish Radio, the NSA used the Amager data centre with its XKeyscore system, which was revealed in 2013 by whistleblower Edward Snowden and which is a key feature of the NSA’s entire interception apparatus. The programme allows for a large amount of data in fibre cables to sifted through with the help of “selectors”, which are keywords such as the names of people in top positions in target organisations.

Founded in 1937, Saab AB is one of Sweden’s leading defence companies. Between 1947 and 1990 it served as the parent company of renowned car manufacturer Saab Automobile. Its main focus, however, is and has been fighter aircraft, combat weapons, missile systems, torpedoes, sensor systems, and unmanned underwater vehicles, as well as airborne surveillance solutions, radars, and means of electronic warfare. With some 17,000 employees, Saab is seen as the backbone of Sweden’s military-industrial complex.

November 26, 2020 Posted by | Deception | , , | Leave a comment

Will Inquiries Into the Bidens’ Alleged Pay-to-Play Scheme Continue if Joe Occupies Oval Office?

By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 26.11.2020

The election controversy has completely eclipsed the Hunter Biden story, which made the rounds on social media last month. Wall Street analyst Charles Ortel has explained what will happen to the Senate probe into the Bidens’ alleged “pay-to-play” schemes and other inquiries into dynastic political families should Joe Biden take office.

Senators Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) have made it clear that they will continue probing foreign deals struck by ex-Vice President Joe Biden’s son Hunter in the US Congress regardless of who is sworn into office as the US president in January 2021.

“I’m not going to turn a blind eye”, Johnson, the incoming chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, told The Hill. “I’m very confident there are probably more financial transactions that will probably be revealed”.

The Republican senators, who earlier released a report on the Biden family’s questionable business dealings and potential conflicts of interest involving Hunter Biden’s foreign associates and his father’s political influence, revealed further details about the Bidens’ financial operations with overseas companies on 18 November.

Will the GOP Continue Digging Into Hunter Biden?

The fate of the Senate investigation into the Bidens is hanging in the balance given the upcoming Georgia runoffs on 5 January 2021, which will determine the fate of the upper chamber, according to Wall Street analyst and investigative journalist Charles Ortel.

“The Senate investigation will likely continue only if Republicans retain control of that body”, he says. “At present, Republicans hold 50 seats, while Democrats and allied independents hold 48 seats. Should Democrats pick up both remaining runoff races, then the Senate would be tied, 50 to 50. If Biden and Harris are inaugurated, then Harris would break any tie vote and hand effective control of the Senate to Democrats, in which event resources to continue full-fledged investigations into Biden family corruption and crimes certainly would be cut off.”

The GOP senators’ new report is partly based on evidence provided by Tony Bobulinski, a former business associate of Hunter Biden who came forward in October alleging the ex-vice president’s participation in his son’s business schemes. Having agreed to cooperate with the Senate Homeland Security Committee in October, Bobulinski revealed that he had been interviewed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) regarding Hunter’s role in Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian natural gas company.

Still, Ortel expresses scepticism with regard to the potential probe, suggesting that “the odds are minuscule that the Senate or House of Representatives will continue to probe the Bobulinski allegations and matters related to longstanding, extensive Biden family corruption, and vulnerabilities to foreign influences” if Biden wins the Oval Office.

“The mainstream press worldwide is also not likely to further required investigations into claims that seem far more significant than any claims made and pursued against Donald Trump and his allies”, the Wall Street analyst believes.

Biden & Clinton Charities: ‘Trading Money for Influence’

Meanwhile, conservative US media outlets have shed light on yet another potentially damaging episode for the Biden family and its non-profit The Biden Cancer Initiative, founded in 2017 by ex-Vice President Joe Biden and his wife. According to IRS files, the charity gave out no grants in its first two years, but spent millions of dollars “on the salaries of former Washington DC aides it hired”, as the New York Post reported on 14 November. In 2019, the non-profit entity abruptly suspended its operations after Joe Biden joined the presidential race. The story was initially reported by the Washington Free Beacon in June 2020.

“As we see from the glacial pace at which massive charity fraud and corruption involving ‘charities’ close to Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton may be conducted, shocking defects in many Biden ‘charities’ seem to be overlooked by the IRS and by the Justice Department”, Ortel says. “It almost seems that dynastic political families are allowed to trade money for influence through leaky tax-exempt organisations, as an informal perquisite of office.”

Ortel, who has been looking into the Clinton Foundation’s alleged fraud for the past several years, has repeatedly drawn attention to a supposed cover-up of the charity’s financial and organisational discrepancies by the FBI, DOJ, and IRS for decades.

At the same time, the very same government agencies are eager to go after conservative entities and Republican politicians, the analyst notes, citing a crackdown against the NRA earlier this year and charities operated by the Trump family.

MSM Will Continue to Lose Market Share & Influence

The US mainstream media has remained largely silent about the Bidens’ charity controversy, the September Senate report detailing the Bidens’ questionable financial transactions, as well as about a hard drive allegedly originating from Hunter Biden’s laptop. Much in the same vein, the MSM shied away from shedding light on the new research released by Grassley and Johnson last week.

This trend is likely to continue, according to Ortel, who believes that “it will fall to alternative media to pick up the charge”.

“Increasingly, individuals get news and information through search engines and via social media, rather than through traditional media that long has been all for unregulated globalism, for Democrats, and against conservative economic and political thinking”, he says.

To illustrate his point, the analyst draws attention to “the crushing drop in audience across Fox News shows since 3 November 2020 over their horrid reporting and ‘analysis'” and suggests it “shows how fast the viewing public does react”. He predicts that “very quickly, steep declines in viewership for Fox, and across traditional media likely will accelerate declines in all-important advertising revenue”.

“Mainstream media continues to lose market share and influence, though its anchors and pundits believe they remain super important and relevant, incorrectly”, he concludes.

November 26, 2020 Posted by | Corruption, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | | Leave a comment

Coming Soon From Joe and Kamala: Hooray for the Revolution!

By Philip Giraldi | Strategic Culture Foundation | November 26, 2020

There is something quite scary about the way leading Democrats have persistently wrapped their attempts to control the American people in platitudes and self-righteous drivel. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, who are currently pulling their team together, are no different than the Clintons and Obamas who preceded them and are already on course to establish conformity by diminishing the fundamental rights that have been hitherto enjoyed by the American people.

The current war being waged against the United States and its constitution hinges on the expressed desire to extirpate “white supremacy” aka “white privilege” aka “systemic racism.” It is a convenient campaign slogan as it immediately creates guilt and apprehension in those white people who are foolish enough to believe it. It also is a vague enough term that it becomes possible to wrap a lot of other issues into it, like gun control, destruction of traditional education, reparations and affirmative action, and even de-policing urban areas. As minorities allegedly suffer disproportionately from coronavirus it might even be expanded to include mandatory national lockdowns every time a pandemic appears, as Biden has suggested in the past.

We are already seeing how some crimes are no longer crimes if they are committed by sanctimonious social justice warriors. Prosecutors in a number of states are dismissing charges against rioters because they have “concluded the protesters were exercising their basic civil rights.” It is generally being claimed that prosecutions continue for the “real” crimes of arson, looting and destruction of public property, but at least one liberal California District Attorney will not charge anyone who maintains that he or she was doing what they did to combat racism or feed their families. She calls it considering the “needs” of the looters. The looted shops that will as a result go out of business and whose employees become unemployed evidently have no “needs.”

The Democrats have long been adept at playing identity politics. They believe that appealing to a number of groups with grievances to create a voting majority is good for the country, which it is not, because sooner or later the ticket has to be paid for and deals that abridge the freedom of most Americans must be consummated. That will certainly take place with Biden and Harris.

And Biden and Harris will likely get away with much of their divisive domestic agenda, if only because it will be carefully hidden behind fear of the Coronavirus and of more civil unrest, but the one area where they will meet real resistance is the Second Amendment. One critic describes how “There is much overlap between Biden’s platform and Harris’s previous presidential campaign proposals. They both emphasize holding gun manufacturers accountable, enacting universal background checks, banning the manufacture and sale of semiautomatic rifles and higher-capacity magazines capable of holding more than 10 rounds, [and] prohibiting those convicted of domestic violence from buying guns…” And that is only for starters, with national gun registration and some confiscation certainly being considered.

Many Republicans as well as Democrats own guns and will resist any attempt at registration, much less the seizure of certain types of firearms. The death by shooting numbers have indeed risen dramatically, particularly in urban areas, but the victims and perpetrators are largely black-on-black and the weapons used are obtained illegally. Ironically, the rise in crime is in large part attributable to Democratic Party pandering to movements like Black Lives Matter with their message that violence is acceptable to bring about change. To argue that somehow controlling the legal owners of weapons is a “safety measure” is a convenient fiction.

To help the Democratic Party agenda along there will also of necessity be restrictions on free speech. One can expect greater political control over the propagandistic state media like Voice of America and it is perhaps inevitable that already censorship-heavy social media and news sites will also be regulated for content. Biden has appointed as one of his transition team for “regulating” news reporting one Richard Stengel who has argued that there is a flaw in the First Amendment of the Constitution’s Bill of Rights. He believes that free speech cannot be allowed in some cases and that anything that constitutes a “hate speech” should be criminalized. Stengel explains somewhat confusingly “I’m all for protecting thought that we hate, but not speech that incites hate.” This is, of course, yet another Democratic Party gimmick to secure the support of groups with grievances but it will impact on every American who believes that free speech is a fundamental right.

Yet another brilliant appointment by Biden is Ezekiel Emanual, bioethicist brother of former Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. Ezekiel is on the Biden administration’s COVID transition team. He has a lot of interesting things to say, notably that the United States should give any newly developed and in short supply COVID vaccines to countries with younger populations so that the young could live while older Americans die. He has also said that everyone should die by age 75.

Finally, Joe’s ambitions do not end on the nation’s borders. In addition to pulling together a cabinet that will include a host of warmongers, there is talk that the new president will early in his presidency convene a “Summit of Democracies” with the stated intention of coordinating a response to Chinese, Iranian and, of course, Russian “aggression.” If it sounds like old wine in new bottles, it should.

Enthusiastic reporting from military contractor funded online newsletter DefenseOne supports the Biden initiative but with a warning: “And if this is truly a Democracy Summit, then Biden should make it clear that government leaders of China, Russia, Iran, Syria, North Korea and their ilk are not invited.” The process of selecting democracies will in fact be more complicated than this with politically protected states like Israel being included even though it is a serial human rights abuser and war criminal. The United States is itself a flawed democracy that is widely seen in negative terms by most of the world, but that will not stop it from attempting to host the summit.

So we Americans and presumably much of the world have a lot to look forward to in the new Biden-Harris regime that is currently taking shape. Internal democracy for all will increasingly be imperiled by pandering to special interests and more foreign wars. It is particularly interesting to note that the one thing that Democratic Party voters as well as other Americans overwhelmingly wanted above all else was a national health care system. That subject is not even on the Biden to-do list.

November 26, 2020 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Russophobia | | Leave a comment

Iranian Response Would Be Destructive: Israeli Report Says Army Hasn’t Been Instructed to Prepare for Scenarios of US Strike on Iran

Al-Manar | November 26, 2020

“Israel” Defense Website denied all the circulated rumors which claimed that the Israeli occupation army had been ordered to prepare for all the possible scenarios of a US military strike on Iran, considering that all such reports had to do with the election in US and the Zionist entity.

The website added that the drills carried out by the Israeli army were part of the military routine, noted that the US President Donald Trump and the Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu planned to use such rumors for electoral purposes.

The Zionist air force does not have the war jets which can carry the bombs needed to destroy Iran’s underground nuclear sites, according to the website which doubted the efficiency of such strikes even of they were carried out.

“Israel” Defense Website pointed out Trump needs the Congress approval to launch military strikes on Iran, adding that the US voters would not forgive him over committing such a fault.

The report also discussed Iran’s response to any US strike, highlighting the huge rocketry capabilities of the Islamic Republic.

The Iranian forces and Hezbollah will wage a huge missile attack on ‘Israel’ and the US military bases in the Guld countries, causing heavy losses, according to the report which added that hundreds of Israelis would dies in such a confrontation.

The report finally wondered whether the Zionist entity could face such a military challenge, reiterating that the rumors about Iran strike have a mere political purpose.

November 26, 2020 Posted by | Deception, Wars for Israel | , , | Leave a comment

‘Must Leave’: Iran Slams Presence of US Forces in Syria, Calls for Immediate Withdrawal

By Oleg Burunov – Sputnik – 26.11.2020

In October 2019, President Donald Trump announced that the US would be withdrawing its forces from Syria, but eventually backtracked, saying that a “small” American contingent would stay behind to allegedly “keep” the Syrian oil from being seized by Daesh.

Iran’s permanent ambassador to the United Nations (UN) Majid Takht-Ravanchi has called for the immediate and full-fledged withdrawal of US troops from Syria.

“All foreign forces whose presence is not permitted by the Syrian government must leave Syria”, the diplomat told a UN Security Council meeting on Wednesday, in an apparent nod to the US. He questioned American forces’ current role in Syria, insisting that instead of fighting terrorism, they “continue supporting UN-designated terrorist groups such as al-Nusra Front as well as looting the oil and wealth of the Syrian people”.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif earlier noted that Tehran would work to strengthen economic cooperation with Syria amid Washington’s restrictive measures under the US Caesar Act, which stipulates sanctioning almost all Syrian economic and trade activities, as well as government officials.

He was echoed by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who voiced hope in May that the “Americans won’t stay in Syria and will be [finally] expelled.”

Senior US Official Boasts About Lying to Trump to Keep US Troops in Syria

Ambassador Takht-Ravanchi’s statement comes a few weeks after Jim Jeffrey, outgoing US special representative for Syria and special presidential envoy for the western coalition against Daesh, told the news outlet Defence One that he and members of his staff deliberately covered up the true size of the US military footprint in Syria from President Donald Trump.

“What Syria withdrawal? There was never a Syria withdrawal”, Jeffrey said, referring to Trump’s repeated orders in late 2018 and then again in 2019 to bring US troops home. “When the situation in northeast Syria had been fairly stable after we defeated ISIS, [Trump] was inclined to pull out. In each case, we then decided to come up with five better arguments for why we needed to stay. And we succeeded both times. That’s the story”, the US envoy added.

He argued that the actual number of US troops in Syria is “a lot more” than the estimated 200-400 that POTUS agreed to leave behind in 2019 to “secure” the country’s oil fields and prevent them from falling into the hands of the Syrian government or terrorists.

American troops, jointly with the Arab-Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), maintain control over a part of northeastern Syria as the US-led coalition of more than 60 nations has been carrying out airstrikes and other operations against terrorists in Syria since September 2014.

The coalition operates in Syria without the approval of the Assad government or any UN Security Council authorisation. Damascus, in turn, sees the US presence on Syrian soil as a violation of national sovereignty and an attempt to seize the country’s natural resources.

November 26, 2020 Posted by | Illegal Occupation | , , , | Leave a comment

A U.S. Color Revolution ‘Comes Home to Roost’ in the 2020 Election

By Max Parry • Unz Review • November 25, 2020

It has been more than three weeks since election day and the incumbent U.S. president still has yet to concede defeat. Despite the media’s distraction over the perspiration of his personal attorney during a bizarre press conference, the legal team led by former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani has actually done a decent job uncovering potential fraud in battleground states where vote counting was delayed for several days before the former vice president was declared a “winner” by the news media and Silicon Valley. Unfortunately, the 2020 election is not a sporting event or academic paper, therefore evidence that instances of fraud occurred will likely not be enough for the litigation to change the outcome, though it does appear his camp is finally facing up to leaving the White House come January. Then again, whether or not burden of proof was ever provided is immaterial, seeing as before he even took the oath of office a silent coup was underway to remove the democratically-elected government of Donald J. Trump that is now entering its final phase.

Trump found an unlikely voice of support contesting Biden’s premature declaration of victory in former six-term Democratic Congresswoman from Georgia and 2008 Green Party presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney, who this time was the running mate of former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura as a write-in entrant in some eligible states for the divided Greens who officially nominated labor activist Howie Hawkins. During the 2016 election, the Democrats scapegoated Jill Stein for Hillary Clinton’s unexpected loss, even baselessly implicating the Green Party nominee in the Russiagate hoax simply for having appeared at a 2015 Moscow gala for the RT television network where General Michael Flynn and Russian President Vladimir Putin were in attendance. Not only did the legislatures of swing states like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin exclude Hawkins from the ballot at the behest of Democrats in a shameless act of voter suppression, but McKinney described the irregularities which plagued electronic voting machines in her home state of Georgia in 2020 as “déjà vu”, having been cheated out of Congress herself by such tactics in 2006. McKinney also previously penned an essay entitled “The Purple Revolution: U.S. Hybrid Warfare Comes Home to Roost?” on the establishment’s efforts to remove Trump which makes an apropos historical reference.

This November 22nd marked fifty-seven years since the assassination of John F. Kennedy. When asked for his reaction to the killing of the 35th president in Dallas back in 1963 and less than two years before his own public murder, civil rights leader Malcolm X famously stated that “chickens were coming home to roost”, alluding to the U.S. government’s interventions overseas such as the CIA-orchestrated assassination of the first Prime Minister of the Congo, Patrice Lumumba, in 1960 following its independence from Belgian colonial rule. His remarks in the wake of a national tragedy proved too controversial even for the Nation of Islam which publicly censured its most recognizable minister who would announce his departure from the black nationalist organization a few months later. The following year, he would be gunned down in Harlem in an assassination long-suspected to have been the work of the FBI’s counter-intelligence program (COINTELPRO) which had infiltrated his inner circle to frame the NOI for a mysterious death equally thought by the public to have been a state-sanctioned execution like that of JFK.

It is unclear whether the African-American Muslim leader believed the U.S. government was behind Kennedy’s death, but chances are he was not naïve enough to think that the same machinations used abroad could not be implemented by those very forces domestically to remove someone elected by the American people they opposed. If the Kennedy assassination was indeed a result of the “unwarranted influence of the military-industrial complex” which his predecessor Dwight D. Eisenhower even famously warned of during his farewell address, what took place was almost certainly a secret putsch. The president had already been undercut by his own Joint Chiefs of Staff and Central Intelligence Agency in trying to defuse the Cuban Missile Crisis and his back-channel negotiations with Nikita Khrushchev were sabotaged by hawkish officials within his own administration. The internal struggle that scuttled Kennedy’s attempts at détente parallels the vying factions which undermined Trump ’s diplomacy with North Korea to a near tee.

Political scientist Michael Parenti explained in his essay The JFK Assassination: Defending the Gangster State how the 35th president was targeted by the security state which perceived Kennedy as “soft on communism” and placating the Soviet Union in his diplomatic efforts following the failed Bay of Pigs invasion:

“The dirty truth is that Kennedy was heartily hated by right-wing forces in this country, including many powerful people in the intelligence organizations. He had betrayed the national interest as they defined it, by refusing to go all out against Cuba, making overtures of rapproachment with Castro, and refusing to escalate the ground war in Vietnam. They also saw him as an anti-business liberal who was taking the country down the wrong path. Whether Kennedy really was all that liberal is another matter. What the national security rightists saw him to be was what counted.”

While the widely perceived truth about the JFK assassination remains sealed from public view, the Church Committee and Rockefeller Commissions of the 1970s exposed the numerous CIA-backed juntas which unseated popular leaders in Guatemala, Syria, Iran, the Dominican Republic, the Congo, Brazil, Indonesia, Chile, and countless other nations in the global south. Ever since, the CIA’s preferred regime change stratagem has been to use what are paradoxically labeled non-governmental organizations (NGOs) — which actually receive U.S. government funding — as cutouts to destabilize noncompliant nations under the guise of supporting “pro-democracy” opposition movements. During the Cold War, the vast majority of states overthrown were left-leaning or socialist governments aligned with the Eastern Bloc, but in the post-Soviet world many of the toppled administrations have been far from left-wing and even conservative, with their only offense favoring economic ties with Russia or China and resisting Western hegemony.

Similarly, when domestic protest movements have taken shape at home in the U.S., the political establishment has used plutocratic foundations in Big Philanthropy and the Non-Profit Industrial Complex to defang them for its own agenda. Look no further than the way the nationwide mass demonstrations against racism and police brutality this year were rapidly transformed into a movement to elect Joe Biden, who drafted the senate version of the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, with no substantial legislation passed to reform police. The corporatized Black Lives Matter movement, a recipient of $100 million dollar grants from the CIA’s philanthropic frontage in the Ford Foundation, grew out of the legacy of the short-lived Occupy Wall Street protests in 2011 which itself were coopted by reformist and pro-Democratic Party outfits. Not coincidentally, OWS was also infiltrated by Serbian political activist Srđa Popović of Otpor! (“Resistance!”) and the Centre for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies (CANVAS) fame who previously led the Bulldozer Revolution which overthrew Yugoslav President Slobodan Milošević in 2000.

A central component of the Gene Sharp-inspired ‘Color Revolution’ template is the engineering of contested election scenarios where leaders singled-out for regime change can be ousted after appearing to consolidate power, as seen in election-themed revolutions in Serbia (Bulldozer), Georgia (Rose), Ukraine (Orange), Kyrgyzstan (Tulip), Moldova (Grape), and other countries. The same manner in which Biden declared himself the victor in spite of the lawsuits filed in federal court was recently observed abroad in the disputed election aftermath in Belarus where U.S.-backed opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya announced herself the winner of its presidential contest in order to spark preplanned protests in Minsk against Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko. This was a replication of an unsuccessful blueprint from the 2009 Green Movement unrest in Iran during the incumbency of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as well as the presidential crisis in Venezuela last year, among others.

Trump‘s lawyer Rudy Giuliani appeared to be confused when he alleged that the e-voting irregularities involving the election software company Dominion Voting Systems had ties to diseased former Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and international financier George Soros, who actually supports the U.S.-backed opposition to the Chavista government in Caracas. Giuliani may be mistaken but is pointing to something accurate, except in the contested U.S. election his client is in the position of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro while Biden would be the equivalent of self-appointed “interim president” Juan Guaidó. Sans a few exceptions such as Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (who certainly knows a rigged contest when he sees one), most of the “international community” congratulated Biden on his assumed win just like Venezuela’s illegitimate coup leader. Meanwhile, both the pseudo-left and conservative right seem to be equally misunderstood about Soros, who is neither the charitable billionaire or “globalist” bogeyman they imagine, but rather an anti-communist business tycoon who favors vulture capitalism and Western imperialism under the banner of liberal democracy.

As touched on by Cynthia McKinney, in the aftermath of Trump’s shocking triumph over Hillary Clinton in 2016, rumors began to swirl that a Soros-funded U.S. ‘Color Revolution’ was in the works — a ‘Purple Revolution’, monikered after the noticeable shade Mrs. Clinton chose to don in her concession speech as a combination of blue and red intended to symbolize bipartisan opposition to Trump. Whether or not that was true, it was in the wee hours following her loss that the Clinton campaign reportedly settled on placing the blame at the feet of unproven Russian interference for Trump’s unlikely victory. Or was it even earlier? Recently declassified CIA memorandums proved that months before the election in July 2016, Clinton had orchestrated a plan to whip up a smear campaign tying Trump to the alleged Russian hacking of the Democratic National Committee email server. The documents also showed beyond a doubt how the Russia probe was launched even though both the FBI and CIA were privy to Clinton’s intent on linking Trump with the Kremlin.

The three-year Russia investigation and subsequent impeachment over the Ukraine scandal were only the beginning chapters in the slow-motion soft coup against Trump. When all else failed, the U.S. elite began to prepare for his ouster in the 2020 election. In fact, the possibility of a second Trump term was evidently too much of a nightmare for the establishment to even fathom, so they only prepared for his defeat and presupposed refusal to relinquish power instead. Quite literally, an exclusive cabal of Washington insiders, establishment Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans were gathered by a former high-ranking Pentagon official, Nils Gilman, to participate in role-playing “election simulation” scenarios and tabletop “war game” exercises predicting various election outcomes which anticipated that Trump would resist acknowledging defeat and transferring power, precipitating a constitutional crisis. It was called the Transition Integrity Project (TIP) and featured Clintonites John Podesta and Donna Brazile, who were joined by prominent neoconservative figures William Kristol, Max Boot, and the former George W. Bush speechwriter who coined the “Axis of Evil” phrase, war criminal David Frum.

Most telling is that among the scenarios considered, even in the postulated drill where the premise was a decisive victory for Trump, TIP determined that Biden should ignore the vote result and consider any measures necessary to attain the presidency, including provoking a constitutional crisis and possible civil war where Democratic-held states would be encouraged to secede from the Union, the electoral college abolished, and statehood awarded to Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico. Upon reading the TIP report, it is clear that the real purpose of the bipartisan exercise was to mastermind the very disputed election outcome and concentration of power it predicts would be triggered by Trump. It is also possible that the project enlisted mass media in its scheme. Just weeks before Election Day, a highly-publicized scandal broke at The New Yorker magazine after staff writer and CNN senior legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin accidentally exposed himself during a Zoom video meeting with fellow employees. Many were too amused to notice the online conference call was revealed to be an “election simulation” featuring top columnists of the publication role-playing as participants.

It would not be out of the realm of possibility given the unprecedented extent to which corporate outlets and Big Tech companies have gone to influence the outcome of the election. Even those within legacy media such as The New York Post, one of the oldest newspapers in the United States, found itself censored by Twitter for publishing an explosive story which contained emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop of which not even the former vice president’s campaign denied the authenticity. When Trump delivered a press conference outlining his campaign’s allegations of election fraud, major news outlets not only made the Orwellian decision to “fact check” Trump live on-air but cut away from the speech in the middle of his remarks in coordinated unison. Then when the president’s own social media posts were censored and flagged as disinformation, the jig was truly up. It’s little wonder Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg openly bragged about how the platform was “partnering with the intelligence community” for censorship to be a soft power arm after the 2016 election. Lo and behold, rather than being broken up for violating anti-trust laws, Silicon Valley has already been rewarded for staying true to its roots in the national security state by Biden’s transition team which consists of executives from Airbnb, Alphabet, Amazon, Facebook, Dell, DropBox, Microsoft’s LinkedIn, Lyft, Stripe and Uber.

Can it really be that Trump is so hated because of his rejection of certain foreign policy orthodoxies like JFK alone? The truth is really so much more. It is because of his inclination to disgrace Washington’s sacred institutions for his own political gain which the entire establishment desperately needs to maintain the faith of the masses in its corrupt political system, rogue national security state, yellow press, and obsolete democratic process. It is imperative to preserve these bureaucratic cornerstones as above criticism because they are a linchpin to holding power. As a political outsider, Trump blazed his own trail to the presidency and in doing so undermined the hallowed bastions of power in Washington, promising to “drain the swamp” while eroding faith in the leading U.S. spy agencies as an unelected secret government or “deep state”, and most of all denouncing corporate media as “fake news” and the “enemy of the people.” Even though these were accuracies cynically told by Trump for his own advantage, they were misunderstood by his detractors to be falsehoods simply because he was the source.

Trump’s populist agitation even worried his own group of backers within the ruling elite who convinced him to soften his rhetoric and reverse many of his positions once he took office. Since the 2020 election has not resulted in a desirable outcome, he has only continued to increase popular distrust of the political order and its mechanisms which guarantee the status quo overrides the will of the people, signaling he is more than willing to take the whole system down with him. Indeed, polls indicate many Americans seem to agree with the president that the election was rigged in Biden’s favor. This is precisely why his rabble-rousing is viewed as dangerous by the elite which unleashed its media organs and intelligence agencies from day one to sabotage him — they knew that he is willing to lay bare the full corruption of the powers that be in order to help his own cause. For this reason, the media has resorted to the most deceitful and partisan methods to portray Trump as a unique danger that most be ousted at any cost.

It is no wonder how a coalition as incongruous as that behind Biden came into formation, from Lincoln Project “Never Trumper” Republicans to the Democratic Socialists of America, Big Tech monopolies to Black Lives Matter, Wall Street megadonors to the remnants of Occupy Wall Street, Bush-era national security officials to the inappropriately-named Revolutionary Communist Party (Refuse Fascism), and so on. Or to really give an idea of just how absurd the ideological alliance was to ensure a Biden presidency, the Transition Integrity Project was even shamefully promoted by the likes of so-called “progressive” news outlets like Democracy Now! which made its journalistic name critically covering the very neoconservative figures from the Bush years behind TIP. Somehow, those in power managed to persuade the “anti-establishment” to side with them against the bad orange man as the supposed greater evil, tricking them into defending institutions they should oppose as inviolable and the archaic U.S. electoral system which deprives them of real democracy as unimpeachable. This is the real legacy of the Trump era — only time will tell if it is its lesson.

Max Parry is an independent journalist and geopolitical analyst. His writing has appeared widely in alternative media. Max may be reached at maxrparry@live.com

November 25, 2020 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | | Leave a comment

Could a Biden Presidency Mean Return to Humanitarian Bombing of ‘Pax Obama’?

By James Tweedie – Sputnik – 25.11.2020

After the ‘America First’ foreign policy of Donald Trump – the first elected US president since Dwight Eisenhower not to start a major war – Joe Biden’s election portends a re-run of the Obama years, when the promise of peace was betrayed.

Joe Biden says his cabinet appointments show “America is back” on the world stage – but is that really a good thing?

With former vice-president Biden looking increasingly secure in his claim on the White House despite ongoing legal challenges to the election process, how will his choices for his governing team shape foreign and domestic policy?

But Biden’s presidency is already looking like an unofficial third term for Barack Obama, with a host of familiar faces packing the White House. And with many of the architects of the last Democratic president’s foreign policy back in charge, will the world see a return to the ‘Pax Obama’ of ‘humanitarian bombing’ and regime-change after four years of President Donald Trump’s America First policy?

Foreign Intervention

Antony Blinken, Biden’s designate for secretary of state, was deeply involved in Obama’s string of overseas proxy wars as deputy national security advisor and deputy secretary of state.

Blinken supported the US-led NATO bombing campaign on Libya in support of the overthrow of the Green Revolution and the murder of its leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.

He also publicly justified the transfer of arms from Libya to sectarian militants attempting to overthrow the Syrian government, and was described by the Washington Post as “one of the government’s key players in drafting Syria policy” – which he frequently defended to Congress and the media, even as money weapons and recruits ended up in the arms of al-Qaeda and Daesh.

Blinken was also a point-man for Obama’s material support for the Saudi-led bombing and invasion of Yemen, which aid agencies say has caused a nationwide famine. His appointment belies Biden’s campaign-trail opposition to the Saudi war on its southern neighbour.

Speaking in the Saudi capital Riyadh in 2015, he said the bombing campaign sent a “strong message to the Houthis and their allies that they cannot overrun Yemen by force” – in reference to the sitting Yemeni government. “As part of that effort, we have expedited weapons deliveries, we have increased our intelligence sharing, and we have established a joint coordination planning cell in the Saudi operation centre.”​Blinken supported Israel’s 2014 bombing of the Gaza Strip and has also signalled that Biden will maintain Israeli military dominance in the Middle East. Recently he said the new administration would reverse Trump’s decision to allow the sale of Lockheed F-35 Lightning II stealth attack jets to the United Arab Emirates in a “quid pro quo” for normalising relations with Tel Aviv.

Blinken has also taken a hard line on whistle-blowers, both domestic and foreign. He has previously said that National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden should return to the US from Russia and face trial, and that he wished the Obama administration could have found a way to charge Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.

Like Obama, Biden has promised to end the “forever wars” in Iraq and Afghanistan, where the Trump administration signed a peace accord with the Taliban and is withdrawing troops.

But Blinken said this week that could simply mean major troop deployments would be replaced by “discrete, small-scale, sustainable operations, maybe led by special forces to support local actors” – precisely the model used in Syria against the will of its government. He also repeated unfounded claims that Russia had put bounties on the heads of US troops in Afghanistan.

Biden’s appointment of Avril Haines, a lawyer like himself and running-mate Kamala Harris, as the first female Director of National Intelligence is not a good omen for human rights. As deputy director the Central Intelligence Agency under Obama, she worked with director John Brennan on the policy of “targeted killings” in drone strikes in nations with which the US was not at war.

The American Civil Liberties Union was highly critical of that policy, and cast doubt on the Obama administration’s 2015 claim that it had only killed between 64 and 116 “non-combatants” – as a euphemism for innocent civilians – since Obama took office in 2009. The ACLU quoted figures from journalists and human rights groups of between 200 and 1,000 civilian killing.

Haines also overruled the CIA’s inspector-general to drop charges against agents who snooped on Senate staffers working on the congressional report into the spy agency’s use of torture. She later backed Trump’s 2018 appointment of current CIA Director Gina Haspel, who had herself been accused of involvement in torture.

“This is a pretty ominous signal about what is to come” a Senate staffer told the Daily Beast. “To have the deputy CIA director touted for her record in advancing human rights and respect for the rule of law I don’t think can be adequately squared with not only her record but her deliberate choices of advocacy.”

Immigration Tsar

Biden’s homeland security secretary will be Alejandro Mayorkas, has been described as a “refugee” as his Jewish parents emigrated from socialist Cuba to the USA in 1960 when he was just a year old – which does not bode well for US relations with Latin America’s many left-wing governments.

Pro-migrant activists were quick to welcome his appointment after Trump’s four-year crackdown on illegal immigration across the southern border with Mexico that saw the fees charged by “coyotes” – human traffickers – double.

“He will not only bring critical leadership but a set of life experiences that will animate the department’s work ahead,” American Immigration Lawyers Association executive director Benjamin Johnson.

Others hoped it meant an end to detentions of illegal immigrants at the border and a strengthening of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) programme created by Obama in a 2012 executive order.

DACA allows those brought to the US illegally as children to apply every two years for right to remain, but does not grant citizenship. Trump sought to end the programme, saying he wanted Congress to legislate a permanent replacement, but was blocked by legal action from civil rights groups.

“We look forward to the immediate expansion of the DACA program and the dismantling of the detention and deportation machine that was created under Obama and expanded by Trump,” said immigrant legal aid charity RAICES chief advocacy officer Erika Andiola. “Leading this department will be no easy task, but we hope that as the first Latino and someone who has advocated for immigrant rights, he will change the direction of DHS once and for all.”

November 25, 2020 Posted by | Subjugation - Torture, Wars for Israel | , , | Leave a comment

Here’s why European leaders are swooning like giddy submissives over Biden’s warmongering ‘back to normal’ team

By Finian Cunningham | RT | November 25, 2020

The EU is trembling in anticipation at the prospect of a Joe Biden administration, like Ana Steele in Christian Grey’s Red Room of Pain, despite the policies he espouses being precisely the cause of their problems.

Their rushing to congratulate him, even before the presidential result is certified, speaks volumes of their delight that ‘daddy’ is back in the White House.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen could barely contain her joy over what she said was a “new beginning in EU-US global partnership.”

Charles Michel, the European Council president, said it was time to “rebuild a strong EU-USA alliance” and he hastily invited Biden to a European summit in Brussels in the new year, even though the American election has not yet been formally concluded.

Other European national leaders had already congratulated Biden two weeks ago, only days after the November 3 ballot, despite the controversy of incumbent Donald Trump vowing legal challenges over alleged voting fraud.

European elation grew this week with the unveiling of Biden’s would-be cabinet picks. Which seems incredible, given that the incoming White House team is made up of people associated with the Obama administrations (2008-16) for which Biden had served as vice president. Incredible, because several of Europe’s contemporary pressing problems stem from wars in North Africa and the Middle East that the Obama administration fomented.

Appearing defensive about that, Biden in his first in-depth interview as president-elect asserted that “this is not a third Obama administration.” The fact remains, though, that his cabinet nominees are Obama-era holdovers, with names like Antony Blinken for Secretary of State and Jake Sullivan as national security adviser who advocated wars or destructive interventions in Libya, Syria and Ukraine. These conflicts and others in Iraq and Afghanistan, which Biden personally endorsed as a senior senator or exacerbated while vice president to Obama, have led to myriad problems in Europe, from blowback jihadist terrorism to racial tensions with Muslim communities, to straining of resources dealing with a massive influx of refugees from war zones.

This week, while European leaders were cooing over the next Biden administration, French police caused shocking headlines by brutally forcing hundreds of mainly Afghan refugees from a makeshift encampment in the heart of Paris. Such problems stem directly from the illegal wars that were the handiwork of Obama, Biden and his reprised team of warmongers.

Thus, the question is why are European politicians so craven in welcoming the return of conventional American imperialists? Forget all the Biden team hype about “working with allies” and “multilateralism is back”. The Europeans will be treated as they always have been: adjuncts to Washington’s pursuit of its own “interests.”

It’s the political equivalent of “Who’s your daddy?” The European leaders are rolling over for more abuse and gladly doing so, too.

But why?

There are several factors. A deluded nostalgia for “normalcy” after four years of fraught and nerve-fraying relations with maverick Trump. The personal umbrage of Germany’s Angela Merkel, France’s Emmanuel Macron and other European leaders from being antagonized by boorish Trump over NATO expenditures and trade tariffs is part of the relief they are feeling at getting rid of him. Also, European politicians and diplomats will see Biden and his team as people they are reconnecting with in career paths going back several years. Unlike the shambolic and confusing Trump administration, a Biden one will bring coherence and continuity – regardless of the legacy of wars – which makes for smoother personal, political interaction. Better the devil you know.

Don’t forget, too, that there are plenty of European Atlanticists who, from an ideological conviction, truly believe in the strategic benefits of an US-EU axis. These kind of European deep-state politicians and bureaucrats are credulous believers in NATO and American claims of “leading the free world” against, formerly, the Soviet Union and Red China, and now Russia and Belt & Road China. So, when they hear Biden declaring “America’s back” and “renewing alliances” it is music to their ears.

One specific upside is talk from President-elect Biden of returning the US to the Iran nuclear deal. Trump’s trashing of the 2015 accord cost European states a lot of business and investment hopes with Iran. Also, their image of presumed independence was dented from Trump wielding secondary sanctions against Europeans doing business with Iran, humiliating them to toe his line. With Biden, the Europeans see an opening for resuming economic interests in Iran. That remains to be seen, however.

Another possible upside under Biden is his seeming willingness to enter into arms-control talks with Russia. In particular, renewing the New START treaty curbing strategic nuclear weapons. Trump’s reckless walking away from arms-control conventions, including the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty and the Open Skies Treaty, caused much anxiety across Europe of a new arms race and a threat to continental security. Biden, therefore, may bring some stability on arms control, even though he and his team have made numerous aggressive sounds towards Russia.

But perhaps the most appealing thing that European leaders see in Biden is that the removal of Trump from office is a harbinger for countering the rise in European populism which has been gravely undermining the EU project. The European liberal establishment refers to the various movements as “far-right” which is an unfair broad brush. Some are rightwing, some leftwing, but generally there is a popular sentiment of alienation from the EU and national political establishments over issues related to neoliberal capitalist failure and seemingly uncontrolled immigration which is connected to endless American wars aided and abetted by European NATO powers.

Former European Council President Donald Tusk expressed this view: “Trump’s defeat can be the beginning of the end of the triumph of far-right populisms in Europe. Thank you, Joe.”

Trump was detested by European establishment politicians because they saw him as a mentor for populist, nationalist parties across Europe. His outspoken support for Brexit rankled the EU. Trump’s former ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, openly advocated for Germany’s Eurosceptic AfD party. Steve Bannon, Trump’s former political aide, tried to rally a populist revolt across Europe.

In short, Trump and his America First policy was seen as a malign influence corroding the pillars of the EU bloc.

Biden, however, is a return to conventional trans-Atlanticism, where European nations are at least treated with a modicum of respect – albeit in reality subordinates who will be told by Washington when, where and how high to jump. That’s a degrading relationship but, for the European establishment, they see it as the best way to preserve their order by taking the political oxygen away from populists. Never mind the wars, the refugees, the multicultural tensions, the economic austerity, being a sub for Uncle Sam is a comfort of sorts.

The tragic irony is this not-so “new beginning” in EU-US relations will inevitably lead to more internal contradictions down the road because Biden’s politics are predicated on more interventionism and imperialism under the banner of “leading the free world,” which is the root cause of Europe’s instability.

Finian Cunningham is an award-winning journalist. For over 25 years, he worked as a sub-editor and writer for The Mirror, Irish Times, Irish Independent and Britain’s Independent, among others.

November 25, 2020 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

A low-fat, high-carb diet has been the largest public health experiment in history. It’s past time for a rethink.

By Malcolm Kendrick | RT | November 25, 2020

New research suggests that four billion people globally will be overweight in 2050. This trend can be traced back to the ‘low-fat, high-carb’ guidelines first issued in the 70s, and should prompt a major U-turn on dietary advice.

A recent report from the Potsdam Institute predicts that by 2050 there will be four billion overweight people in the world, with one-and-a-half billion of them obese. This is not entirely surprising. The world has been getting fatter for years, and things do not seem to be slowing down.

Why is this happening? There are undoubtedly a number of factors at play here. Socio-economic status plays a significant part in many countries. Those with poorer educational attainment are more likely to be overweight, an association that is much stronger in women than men, for reasons that are not clear.

It is also fascinating to look at where obesity levels are highest in the US, essentially in the poorer southern States.

When you analyse the data, it is clear that obesity is not evenly distributed and there is a very clear difference between rich and poor. Why? That is probably beyond the scope of this article. Instead I am going to consider something else that I think is having a significant impact: dietary guidelines.

At one time, there was no such thing as a dietary guideline. The first was one was published in 1976, in the US. The UK followed suit, then much of the rest of the world. Before this, people ate pretty much whatever they wanted. Imagine that! There was no one to tell you what you should, or should not, eat. How on Earth did they survive?

The guidelines were not developed in an attempt to reduce the rates of obesity, which was not considered a major problem at the time. They were designed to protect against heart disease, which was the major killer. It still is, although the rates have fallen. The guidelines themselves promoted a low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet.

Prior to 1976, there was not really a major problem with weight or obesity in the US. Then came the guidelines, and from that point onwards, things changed, as the rising obesity levels in the US demonstrated.

In the UK, there were no dietary guidelines until 1980, at which point exactly the same upturn in obesity occurred as was seen in the US. There was an immediate uptick, then an unstoppable rise.

As an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) noted, “Beginning in the 1970s, the US government and major professional nutrition organizations recommended that individuals in the United States eat a low-fat/high-carbohydrate diet, launching arguably the largest public health experiment in history. Throughout the ensuing 40 years, the prevalence of obesity and diabetes increased several-fold, even as the proportion of fat in the US diet decreased by 25 percent.”

The article went on to say that “a comprehensive examination of this massive public health failure has not been conducted.”

Has this been a case of cause and effect? One GP in the UK, Dr. David Unwin, has done a great deal of research in this area. He has managed to reverse type-2 diabetes in very nearly 50 percent of his patients by putting them on a diet which is the exact opposite of that promoted by the dietary guidelines. It is high in fat, and low on carbohydrates. Not only did he reverse diabetes, he also achieved significant and long-lasting weight loss.

A report on his findings stated: “It was observed that a low carbohydrate diet achieved substantial weight loss in all patients and brought about normalization of blood glucose control in 16 out of 18 patients.”

In a more recent and bigger study on nearly 200 patients, he achieved a combined weight loss of 1.9 metric tons (1,900kg) in weight.

There are reasons why a diet high in carbohydrates – sugar, bread, pasta, soft sugary drinks, crisps, chips and suchlike – can drive weight gain. These reasons are based on the fact that carbohydrate consumption drives insulin release. This, in turn, promotes energy storage, and traps energy in fat cells.

The higher insulin then causes blood sugar levels to fall, driving hunger, leading to more food consumption. So, people become trapped in a cycle of eating and hunger. It has to be acknowledged, though, that there is heated medical debate in this area, to put it mildly.

However, in my opinion, the evidence is pretty overwhelming. The levels of overweightness and obesity remained pretty much flat for decades. Then, along came the dietary guidelines promoting low-fat, high-carbohydrate diets. And at that point, problems with obesity and type-2 diabetes took off, firstly in the US and then the rest of the world.

Researchers such as Dr. David Unwin, who have been brave enough to push back against the guidelines, have had spectacular results by changing the diet to high-fat, low-carb. Time for a major rethink, in my opinion.

Malcolm Kendrick is a doctor and author who works as a GP in the National Health Service in England. His blog can be read here and his book, ‘Doctoring Data – How to Sort Out Medical Advice from Medical Nonsense,’ is available here.

November 25, 2020 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

The Thanksgiving Rebellion of 2020

By Jeffrey A. Tucker | American Institute for Economic Research | November 25, 2020

The Centers for Disease Control warned us not to travel or meet in multigenerational gatherings during Thanksgiving. Which is to say: government tried to make Thanksgiving, probably the most iconic of all American holidays, practically disappear from the calendar this year.

They didn’t put it that way exactly. Thanksgiving is not canceled but merely “postponed” — a strange thing to say about a holiday that has a fixed day of the year and surely the one that most means “family” to people.

What they said was you need to go through a 7-point checklist that most everyone would fail. You have to check local cases (never mind that cases aren’t deaths and cases might not even be cases), check hospital capacity as if you will be stricken down like in the movie Contagion and thereby be turned away at the door, observe local quarantine rules that bespot the whole country, do not travel with someone not in your household, make sure no old people will be at the gathering, make sure never to get closer than 6 feet to another human being, and…OK this is all ridiculous. It’s fear porn, distributed by “science.”

And it’s true that our airports are getting scarier by the day with all the convoluted quarantine rules. Imagine showing up back home and knowing that you are barred from even so much as visiting a convenience store. Plus people really do not know the rules because they change by the day and hour.

The governor of Washington State proclaimed that “Gatherings have grave consequences right now.” (He was obsequious and deferential toward mass protests in June: BLM = good; Thanksgiving = bad.)

The governor of Vermont has pledged to interview any student coming back to school about whether they had gatherings outside their home. If so, they get thrown out for two weeks. Probably the track-and-trace machinery will go into place.

In Texas, the health department ran ads all over radio claiming that something as innocent as a small birthday party will spread the coronavirus, based on a now-famous case in which no one was either hospitalized or died but all got immunities.

The ads even deployed the voices of young children (“we feel guilty for gathering”) bemoaning that they got the dreaded disease which in fact has an infinitesimally small to nonexistent risk to children.

And so on it goes, the entire country pounded with anti-Thanksgiving propaganda via every public messaging source. On an 80s-style radio station in Texas, one I heard while driving, the music all proclaimed the glories of parties, dancing, defying authority, standing up against evil, taking big risks, and living large. But the ad breaks hectored people to stay home and stay safe and not have any fun. The contrast was striking, to say the least.

This bureaucratic hydra of federal, state, and local governments tried to delete Thanksgiving. And this is at a time of unprecedented sadness and depression when people are most in need of family and companionship. This is absolutely cruel.

What the heck has become of us? Well, Americans being Americans, they rebelled.

“According to the American Automobile Association,” writes Jason Riley, “there could be as many as 50 million Thanksgiving travelers this year, only 10% less than in 2019.” I saw the same at the two airports I visited. They were about 75% as busy as the old days but still bustling. Rental cars were in high demand. Americans will not be locked down on Thanksgiving.

Riley further writes:

This is a form of mass civil disobedience like nothing the country has seen since the 1960s. Some of it is born of Covid fatigue, to be sure. But the endless parade of politicians flouting their own rules surely has also played a role. It began shortly after the spring lockdowns and if anything has become more commonplace, even farcical.

Riley points out that the politicians themselves do not follow their own ridiculous rules. Like the Soviet apparatchiks of old, they believe that the theater of dictatorial compliance is for the worker and peasants but not for themselves. The “vanguard of the proletariat” has a special exemption from the rules they make for others.

They live well. Everyone else: line up at the food bank.

There is a reason why so many Americans are not buying it anymore. It’s become rather obvious that this is less about health and science than it is about social/economic/political control, regardless of the costs.

This becomes obvious once you see through the incredibly foggy blizzard of data, studies, official pronouncements, and furrowed-browed scientists Skyping into network news shows. The real underlying story here is that lots of people in powerful positions believe that they should be in charge of your life and know better how to make choices over health and safety than you do.

Once you see it this way, you stop being intimidated by their alleged authority and experience and start living your life again. After all, it is not the case that the governments have special access to health wisdom that is denied to you and yours. By now, you have read the risks, seen the problems with the posture of certainty of the supposed experts, and observed the way they utterly fail to consider the downsides of shutting businesses, schools, sports, and the arts.

Consider the following editorial in one of three of the world’s most prestigious medical journals, the Lancet in the UK. The article pits Martin Kulldorff of the Great Barrington Declaration against Massachusetts General Hospital’s Rochelle Walensky. Martin points to the carnage of lockdowns and a more humane solution to the presence of disease. Walensky’s entire argument against basic exercise of public health of the past is as follows:

“The Great Barrington Declaration is predicated on the idea that you know who is going to get sick and you can somehow isolate and protect them, but there is absolutely no evidence that we can do this”, she said. She pointed out that the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that up to 40% of Americans have some kind of co-morbidity that makes them vulnerable to the ravages of COVID-19. Identifying all these people is not straightforward. “No-one is suggesting that lockdowns should be the default position. They are a last resort. But if we just let the virus run free without mitigation strategies, such as masking, our hospitals will overflow and that would mean we would no longer be able to take care of the population’s health across the board.”

Notice her insistence that “we” cannot achieve intelligent risk assessment of the population. By we, she means experts such as herself. And she is right! They cannot. And that’s the whole point. That needs to be left to individuals. Central planning does not work for all the reasons that F.A. Hayek explained: the necessary knowledge to make intelligent decisions is decentralized and not available in useful forms for elite overseers or anyone else.

As for lockdowns as a last resort, please: they were used as a first resort in the presence of a virus that turned out to be far less severe than the models predicted. It is barely a disease at all for large swaths of the population. The fatality demographics are overwhelmingly concentrated on a low-life-expectancy population in a world where people are living longer than ever. The average age of death from Covid exceeds average life spans.

Then finally we get the invocation of the overflow problem. Hospitals cannot scale, she alleges. Why? Restaurants, bars, stores, office buildings, and supply and demand for a billion other things scales just fine. It’s a matter of increasing supply to match increased demand – a core economic problem and answer. Why does this not apply to medical services too?

Do you see what is going on here? We have a medical doctor who is pronouncing on economics and she doesn’t even know it. She sums up the problem we have had this entire year. Many health officials have stepped outside their role to become central planners of the entire society and economy. They never explained why people should grant them this power. They just took it for themselves by intimidating fearful and ignorant politicians to do their bidding.

With all due respect to the good doctor, I would translate her statement to the Lancet as follows: “You people out there are too stupid, fat, and unhealthy to be in charge of your lives; that’s where I come in!”

And the carnage is everywhere. I had hoped when I came to Texas to find a society that had long ago gone back to normal. What I find instead is heartbreaking. In this town, half the local businesses seem to be boarded up. The one movie theater for the whole county is bankrupt and closed. Most of the independently owned shops are dead. The shopping mall is barely surviving, and the masked employees are demoralized and seeing their doom.

Who survives? The big-box chain stores in town. Wal-Mart seems fine and so does Home Depot. These companies are well-capitalized enough to survive. I’m glad for them but there is something unjust about all of this. The lockdowns benefited elites at the expense of everyone else.

This small and wonderful town is now sad and broken – thanks to people like Dr. Walensky who undoubtedly had the best of intentions. She lives in Boston. I’m right now in rural Texas. The people who surround me have had their lives shattered by her and her fellow intellectuals who bear no real consequence for being wrong.

So, yes, she is correct that she does not have the capacity to know who is vulnerable and who is not. No one knows that with certainty. The solution is not to lock the whole of society down until the virus magically goes away. That is not public health. That is an unprecedented imposition of top-down brutalism.

The battle over lockdowns and public health is the struggle of our lives, the greatest crisis in generations. But the problems and solutions are not different from the ones that have consumed intellectuals for centuries. What institutions better manage society in good times and in bad: governments (run by experts, with power and resources) or free people acting with intelligence and creativity as best they can? One might have supposed we had the answer to this question already. But human beings forget. Then the tragic lessons have to be learned all over again.

November 25, 2020 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Economics, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

CNN guest explains why a mayor who protected killer cop from going to jail has no place in Biden cabinet, gets cut SECONDS later

RT | November 25, 2020

A CNN interview on why progressives are unhappy with Joe Biden’s possible cabinet picks was cut less than a minute after it began, as the guest pointed out that one of the candidates had covered up a murder while in office.

Rahm Emanuel, a star Democratic fundraiser and the former mayor of Chicago, was floated this week as a potential secretary of transport for Biden. After the suggestion was met with a tsunami of anger from the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, rumor had it that a “less visible” position would be offered to him instead.

On Tuesday, CNN invited Jamaal Bowman, a progressive New York politician who earlier this year unseated 16-term congressman Eliot Engel in a primary landslide victory, to discuss Biden’s transition and whether there was a “progressive enough” candidate to get his endorsement.

Bowman, who is black, started saying it was “incredibly alarming” that they were considering a person who tried to cover up a murder of a black 17-year-old by a white cop, when the broadcast suddenly froze mid-sentence and was replaced with the CNN logo.

Most important, it appears CNN never had him back on after the “technical difficulty”/censoring of Jamaal Bowman’s comments on Rahm Emanuel in the below video. https://t.co/IbewOmM2p0

— 💥Robert (@CronoMage) November 25, 2020

Emanuel is accused of standing in the way of an investigation into the murder of Laquan McDonald. The black teen was gunned down by a Chicago police officer in October 2014, just as Emanuel was fighting an uphill battle for his second term as mayor. Only months after his reelection, a judge forced the release of dashcam footage which became key evidence in the murder trial and conviction of the officer responsible for McDonald’s death. Before its release, no charges had been made in the case.

Leaked emails later showed how the mayor’s office tried to keep the damning video confidential as part of a settlement with the victim’s family. They also indicated that Emanuel was more concerned with his campaign than in serving justice for McDonald.

There is a laundry list of other reasons why progressives hate the idea of Emanuel joining Biden’s administration. To name a few, he pushed for the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), mass deportations and the 1994 crime bill, lobbied for bailing out the “too big to fail” banks during the 2008 financial crisis, and shut down dozens of public schools in Chicago’s poorest neighborhoods.

Some even suspect that floating his candidacy was meant as a distraction: whichever bland centrist eventually gets the position will be perceived by the progressives as being at least not as awful as Emanuel.

November 25, 2020 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , | Leave a comment

Demanding Silicon Valley Suppress “Hyper-Partisan Sites” in Favor of “Mainstream News” (The NYT) is a Fraud

By Glenn Greenwald | November 25, 2020

The most prolific activism demanding more Silicon Valley censorship is found in the nation’s largest news outlets: the media reporters of CNN, the “disinformation” unit of NBC News, and especially the tech reporters of The New York Times. That is where the most aggressive and sustained pro-internet-censorship campaigns are waged.

Due in part to a self-interested desire to re-establish their monopoly on discourse by crushing any independent or dissenting voices, and in part by a censorious and arrogant mindset which convinces them that only those of their worldview and pedigree have a right to be heard, they largely devote themselves to complaining that Facebook, Google and Twitter are not suppressing enough speech. It is hall-monitor tattletale whining masquerading as journalism: petulantly complaining that tech platforms are permitting speech that, in their view, ought instead be silenced.

In Tuesday’s New York Times, three of those censorious tech reporters — Kevin Roose, Mike Isaac, and Sheera Frenkel — published an article on Facebook’s post-election deliberations over how to alter its algorithms to prevent the spread of what they deem “misinformation” regarding the election. The most consequential change they implemented, The New York Times explained, was one in which “hyperpartisan pages” are repressed in favor of promoting “a spike in visibility for big, mainstream publishers like CNN, The New York Times and NPR” — a change the Paper of Record heralded as having fostered “a calmer, less divisive Facebook.”

More alarmingly, the NYT suggested (i.e., prayed) that these changes, designed by Facebook as an election-related emergency measure, would instead become permanent. Marvel at these two paragraphs and all of tenuous and self-serving assumptions buried in them:

New York Times article, “Facebook Struggles to Balance Civility and Growth,” Nov. 24, 2020

The conceit that outlets like The New York Times, CNN and NPR are the alternatives to “hyper-partisan pages” is one you would be eager to believe, or at least want to induce others to believe, if you were a tech reporter at The New York Times, furious and hurt that millions upon millions of people would rather hear other voices than your own, and simply do not trust what you tell them. Inducing Facebook to manipulate the algorithmic underbelly of social media to artificially force your content down the throats of citizens who prefer to avoid it, while rendering your critics’ speech invisible — all in the name of reducing “hyper-partisanship,” “divisiveness,” and “misinformation” — is of course a highly desirable outcome for mainstream outlets like the NYT.

The problem with this claim is that it’s a complete and utter fraud, one that is easily demonstrated as such. There are few sites more “hyper-partisan” than the three outlets which the NYT applauded Facebook for promoting. In the 2020 election, over 70 million Americans — close to half of the voting population — voted for Donald Trump, yet not one of them is employed by the op-ed page of the “non-partisan” New York Times and are almost never heard on NPR or CNN. That’s because those news outlets, by design, are pro-Democratic-Party organs, who speak overwhelmingly to Democratic readers and viewers.

It is hard to get more partisan than the news outlets which the NYT tech reporters, and apparently Facebook, consider to be the alternatives to “hyper-partisan” discourse. In April, Pew Research asked Americans which outlet is their primary source of news, and the polling firm found that the audiences of NPR, CNN and especially The New York Times are overwhelmingly Democrats, in some cases almost entirely so.

As Pew put it: “about nine-in-ten of those who name The New York Times (91%) and NPR (87%) as their main political news source identify as Democrats, with CNN at about eight-in-ten (79%).” These outlets speak to Democrats, are built for Democrats, and produce news content designed to be pleasing and affirming to Democrats — so they keep watching and buying. One can say many things about these news outlets, but the idea that they are the alternatives to “hyper-partisan pages” is the exact opposite of the truth: it is difficult to find more hyper-partisan organs than these.

Then there is the question of who does and does not spread “misinformation.” It is rather astonishing that the news outlets that did more than anyone to convince Americans to believe the most destructive misinformation of this generation: that Saddam had WMDs and was in an alliance with Al Qaeda — The New York Times, The Atlantic, NBC and The New Yorker — have the audacity to prance around as the bulwarks against misinformation rather than what they are: the primary purveyors of it.

Over the last four years, they devoted themselves to the ultimate deranged, mangled conspiracy theory: that the Kremlin had infiltrated the U.S. and was clandestinely controlling the levers of American power through some combination of sexual and financial blackmail. The endless pursuit of that twisted conspiracy led them to produce one article after the next that spread utter falsehoods, embraced reckless journalism and fostered humiliating debacles. The only thing more absurd than these hyper-partisan, reckless outlets posturing as the alternatives to hyper-partisanship is them insisting that they’re the only safeguards against misinformation.

Note how insidiously creepy is The New York Times’ description of a censored, regulated internet. They call it “a vision of what a calmer, less divisive Facebook might look like,” and claim an unnamed Facebook employee described it as “a nicer news feed.”

Yes, discourse that is centralized and regulated, where no dissent is tolerated, where alternative voices are silenced, is always “calmer” and “less divisive.” That’s always the core goal of censorsing speech and ideas: to eliminate “divisiveness” and to pacify the population (“calmer” and “nicer”). That is always the result when orthodoxies imposed downward from the most powerful institutions of authority can no longer be meaningfully challenged.

The censorious mentality being peddled with increasing aggression is always chilling and dangerous. That it is media outlets — which ought to be the most vocal champions of free discourse — instead taking the lead in begging and pressuring Silicon Valley to censure the internet more and more is warped beyond belief. The internet should be free and left alone, especially by those with their record of deceit and propaganda.

Indeed, if we are to have it an internet controlled from above by unseen tech overlords in the name of eliminating “hyper-partisanship” and “disinformation” and fostering a “calmer” and “nicer” population, the sites now being artificially and manipulatively promoted are the absolute last ones who can credibly claim entitlement to that benefit.

November 25, 2020 Posted by | Fake News, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | , , , , | Leave a comment