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‘The Machines Did The Killing’: Obama Awkwardly Defends Drone Kill List In New Memoir

By Tyler Durden – Zero Hedge – 11/24/2020

Former President Barack Obama still can’t shake his legacy as the “drone president” given he still holds the record for number of ordered covert assassination strikes via drones.

“There were ten times more air strikes in the covert war on terror during President Barack Obama’s presidency than under his predecessor, George W. Bush,” one prior human rights study found.

“Obama embraced the US drone program, overseeing more strikes in his first year than Bush carried out during his entire presidency. A total of 563 strikes, largely by drones, targeted Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen during Obama’s two terms, compared to 57 strikes under Bush,” the study said.

This infamously included not only the killing of Yemeni-American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki due to his suspected al-Qaeda links, but also his son, 16-year-old US citizen and Colorado native Abdulrahman Anwar al-Awlaki, by a drone airstrike ordered by Obama on October 14, 2011. The boy was not even suspected of a crime upon his death while he had been casually eating dinner with this friends at a cafe in Yemen.

The Obama administration later claimed the teen’s death was “collateral damage” and despite lawsuits related to the CIA operation, no US official has ever been held accountable for literally assassinating two US citizens without trial or so much as filing official charges.

In his new 768-page memoir out this month, A Promised Land, there’s scant mention of the massively expanded secret drone ‘targeted killing’ program under his watch, however, when it does receive brief attention, it’s merely in passing but is still filled with cringeworthy level of self-justification and rationalization:

“… the machinery I commanded, more often had me killing them instead,” he wrote.

Clearly he and the editor (and his ghostwriters) took pains to twist the limits of grammar and bizarre sentence structure to create as much distance as possible between the former president and owning up to the killings.

Here’s the section in full from the book, where he actually attempts to present himself as the ‘savior’ of those victims he ordered killed:

In places like Yemen and Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq, the lives of millions of young men like those three dead Somalis (some of them boys, really, since the oldest pirate was believed to be nineteen) had been warped and stunted by desperation, ignorance, dreams of religious glory, the violence of their surroundings, or the schemes of older men. I wanted somehow to save them—send them to school, give them a trade, drain them of the hate that had been filling their heads. And yet the world they were a part of, and the machinery I commanded, more often had me killing them instead.

Under Obama estimates of the number of victims that were a result of the White House’s secretive “Kill List” often range from 300 to over 500 civilians killed, including over 60 children.

But that’s just a snapshot of a few years out his total two terms, and the true numbers remain classified.

The New York Times would report in 2012 that Obama began to designate “all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.”

Obama adviser Robert Gibbs previously said when asked point blank about the ordered killing of a 16-year old American citizen: He should’ve “had a more responsible father.”

So it seems years later Obama’s justification is now essentially ‘the machines did it’.

Or again in his own bizarre and twisted words, “… the machinery I commanded, more often had me killing them instead.”

Abdulrahman Awlaki, the 16-year old American-born son of Anwar al-Awlaki, was ordered killed by Obama in 2011.

And let’s not forget, this is the man awarded the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, and who is still heralded by Liberals as the most enlightened leader this country has ever had.

November 24, 2020 Posted by | Book Review, Timeless or most popular, Video, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Sen. Whitehouse Threatens to Prosecute Climate Realists If Dems Take Senate

By James Taylor – ClimateRealism – November 18, 2020

U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) threatened climate realists with criminal prosecution in an interview with E&E News, published yesterday. Whitehouse said Democrats gaining control of the U.S. Senate would be key to launching investigations, hauling climate realists in front of Senate show trials, “or even potentially in grand juries.”

E&E News reported Whitehouse is “keen on investigating the fossil fuel industry and what he sees as a massive conspiracy of dark money hindering action on climate change.”

In the interview, Whitehouse said:

“If we are not vigorously investigating that with all of the tools at our disposal, then that machinery will continue undisturbed to do its dirty work of denial and obstruction,” Whitehouse said.

“If it’s having to explain itself to legislative committees, or produce discovery about its activities in litigation, or even potentially in grand juries, then there’s a whole different complexion to our prospects going forward.”

Whitehouse explicitly singled out The Heartland Institute, which publishes ClimateRealism.com, for his threats.

“Who funded 200,000 fake textbooks that the Heartland Institute mailed around to schoolteachers all around the country? That’s a hell of a big expense…,” Whitehouse said.

Whitehouse appears to be referencing Heartland sending 300,000 copies of the book, Why Scientists Disagree About Global Warming, to K-through-12 and college science teachers throughout America. The book was co-authored by Ph.D. climate scientists S. Fred Singer, Robert Carter, and Craig Idso. Whitehouse does not appear to have a climate science Ph.D. degree.

Ironically, Whitehouse revealed his fascination with “dark money” conspiracy theories, and expressed his threats to prosecute people on the basis of his conspiracy theories, on the same day billionaire tech baron Jeff Bezos announced the first distributions from a $10 billion fund Bezos has set aside to advance climate alarmism. Recipients of Bezos’ money include dark-money climate activist groups ClimateWorks Foundation, Environmental Defense Fund, Natural Resources Defense Council, Union of Concerned Scientists, World Resources Institute, and World Wildlife Fund – none of which publicly disclose the full list of their donors.

The costs for The Heartland Institute publishing and distributing Why Scientists Disagree About Global Warming came up somewhat short of $10 billion. The Heartland Institute has an annual budget that varies between $3 million and $7 million, not $10 billion.

James Taylor is the President of the Heartland Institute. Taylor is also director of Heartland’s Arthur B. Robinson Center for Climate and Environmental Policy.

November 24, 2020 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite, Science and Pseudo-Science | | Leave a comment

United Nations Confirms Nuclear Cooperation With Iran

teleSUR – November 24, 2020

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) published on Friday its new quarterly report in which it highlighted the goodwill of the Islamic Republic of Iran in allowing the international inspectors access to one of the Iranian strategic sites, which, according to the Agency, is one of the facilities where “suspicious” activities are allegedly taking place. The 40-page report ratifies Iran’s verification of the Non-Proliferation Treaty’s safeguards to prevent the manufacture of nuclear weapons.

In its dossier, the IAEA points out that Iranian heavy water reserves have been reduced to 130 tons, thus placing it within the framework of the Comprehensive Joint Action Plan (CJAP or JCPOA), the official name of the nuclear agreement signed in 2015 between Iran and the 5+1 Group, composed at that time by the U.S., the UK, France, Russia, and China, plus Germany.

According to the Iranian press, despite this confirmation, IAEA director Rafael Grossi, under pressure from the West, called last week for greater transparency in the Iranian peaceful nuclear program.

However, this Saturday, after learning the contents of the report, Mikhail Ulyanov, permanent representative of Russia to the international organizations based in Vienna, Austria, in a message published on his Twitter account, has stressed that this document disrupts all efforts of those who sought to undermine the issues related to Iran’s cooperation with the IAEA.

“The data in the report published by the IAEA indicates that Iran has begun to allow access to the sites indicated by the Agency. Those who wanted to create a crisis on this issue should be very disappointed,” wrote the senior Russian diplomat. After stressing that the spirit of cooperation between the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) and the IAEA prevailed, Ulyanov said that this understanding clarifies that Iran remains faithful to its nuclear commitments, unlike the United States.

U.S. President Donald Trump, despite multiple reports from the IAEA that Tehran was meeting all the commitments it accepted at the IACP, used the pretext that Tehran was not doing so to abandon the agreement May 2018 and re-impose a series of illegal sanctions on Tehran.

The new IAEA report comes after the Trump government added two major diplomatic defeats in recent weeks. First, its plan to extend the arms embargo against Iran and then its attempt to restore the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) international sanctions against Tehran, eliminated under the nuclear agreement, failed.

November 24, 2020 Posted by | Aletho News | , , | Leave a comment

Khamenei: Sanctions crime of US, European partners against Iran

Press TV | November 24, 2020

Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei has described the illegal sanctions the United States has imposed on Iran with the support of its European partners as a “bitter reality” and a “crime” against the nation.

Ayatollah Khamenei made the remarks on Tuesday during a meeting of the Supreme Council for Economic Coordination among the three branches of the Iranian government.

The Leader said the Iranian nation has been subjected to such a crime for many years, but that the sanctions have been stepped up over the past three years under the current US administration.

Ayatollah Khamenei said there are two ways to end the restrictions, either by “neutralizing the sanctions and overcoming them” or having “the bans removed.”

“Of course, we tried the path of [having] the sanctions lifted once and negotiated for several years [to that effect], but it produced no results,” he added.

Referring to the other solution, the Leader said, “This path may have difficulties at the beginning, but there will be a positive outcome.”

Ayatollah Khamenei said, “We have a lot of potential and capabilities to render the sanctions ineffective, provided that we muster the will, strive and meet the challenges outright.”

“If we manage to overcome the sanctions through [our own] efforts and initiatives while holding firm against the problems, the other side will gradually lift the bans since it will see their ineffectiveness,” the Leader added.

The Leader further urged Iranians not to rely on aid from abroad to resolve domestic problems.

“The situation of the United States is far from clear and the Europeans are constantly adopting positions against Iran,” the Leader said. “They tell us not to interfere in the region, whereas it is them who are interfering the most wrongly in the affairs of the region, with Britain and France possessing destructive nuclear missiles and Germany being on the same path. Then they tell us not to have missiles.”

November 24, 2020 Posted by | Economics, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Trump throws shade at ‘overrated general’ Mattis after ex-Pentagon chief says ‘America First’ must be ELIMINATED from policy

RT | November 24, 2020

US President Donald Trump has heaped scorn on his former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, after the general called on Joe Biden to ditch Trump’s “America First” foreign policy in favor of a “network of solid alliances.”

The president lamented not having “fired [Mattis] sooner,” insisting his administration did their “best work after he was gone” in a Tuesday tweet responding to a Fox News story about Mattis’ latest outburst of armchair-policymaking.

That says it all about Mattis. Obama fired him. I should have fired him sooner. Did best work after he was gone. World’s most overrated general! https://t.co/2i4jPWAAPA

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 24, 2020

Trump even spared a rare note of praise for his predecessor Barack Obama, admitting the Democrat had done at least one thing right – namely, firing Mattis, whom the incumbent president called the “world’s most overrated general.”

Mattis, who resigned from his post as Trump’s Pentagon chief in protest against the president’s efforts to bring troops home from Syria, had called on a Biden administration to “eliminate ‘America First’ from [the US national security strategy’s] contents” in an op-ed published Monday in Foreign Affairs. The piece was co-written with two of his Hoover Institute peers and a third think-tanker hailing from the right-wing American Enterprise Institute.

Rather than trying to wind down what even the Biden campaign and other Democrats have begun referring to as “forever wars,” Mattis argued, Washington should view the never-ending conflicts in “Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere” as providing “support to friendly governments struggling to exert control over their own territory.”

“It is in the United States’ interests to build the capacity of such governments to deal with the threats that concern Americans,” the general continued, glossing over the part where US taxpayer dollars are repeatedly used to arm and otherwise fund those same “threats.” From the mujahideen in Afghanistan to the “moderate rebels” in Syria, the US has a lengthy track record of funding terrorist groups it later either fights, or leaves for others to deal with.

Instead of ending wars and shifting spending focus to rebuilding America’s decaying infrastructure, Mattis and his co-writers argued, an incoming Biden administration should “expand the cooperative space in which all countries supporting a rules-based order can work together to advance shared interests.” The term “rules-based order” has become something of a dog-whistle for NATO supremacy and a cudgel to be wielded against the US’ rivals, though Washington itself has never had a problem flagrantly violating international norms and NATO itself has a habit of demanding concessions of non-members that member countries need not submit to – such as unilateral nuclear disarmament.

While Mattis urged Biden and his team to strengthen their alliances with China’s Asian neighbors in order to keep Beijing on a tight leash, the former defense secretary also suggested the incoming president find “opportunities to cooperate with China in areas of overlapping interests, such as pandemic response, climate change, and nuclear security.” The Trump administration has torn up multiple nuclear arms treaties with Russia and is expected to let another one, the New START Treaty signed by Obama, expire next year as Moscow is unwilling to sign it on Trump’s questionable terms.

However, Mattis also stressed the importance of couching the US’ bloated military apparatus in a civilian framework, noting that “militarizing US national security can dim the attractiveness of the American model, the appeal of which makes it easier for other countries to support US policies.” Given the hundreds of US bases peppering the globe, it’s not clear how US ‘national security’ could get any more militarized, but, the general formerly known as ‘Mad Dog’ complained, alleged US isolationism was “undermining the foundations of an international order manifestly advantageous to US interests.”

“In practice, ‘America first’ has meant ‘America alone.’”

In addition to opposing the president’s efforts to put an end to war in Syria, Mattis has been one of the many establishment critics of Trump’s eleventh-hour efforts to bring troops home from Afghanistan. The US military has been deployed in that particular quagmire for close to two decades, making it the longest war in American history – but Republicans and Democrats alike are loath to call it quits and miss out on all the natural resources [or the attraction of having airbases adjacent to Iran] to be had in central Asia. Meanwhile, Biden has signaled he’s ready to resume regime-change business as usual, tapping an array of Obama-era hawks to staff his cabinet.

November 24, 2020 Posted by | Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Under Biden, expect more bombing and regime change. Tony Blinken’s record speaks for itself

By George Szamuely | RT | November 24, 2020

A US foreign policy run by Antony J. Blinken and Jake Sullivan, the likely next secretary of state and national security adviser, will mean more global interventions and regime-change operations, Clinton and Obama style.

Blinken played a prominent foreign policy role in both the Bill Clinton and Barack Obama administrations, while Sullivan was part of the Obama one.

The Democrat-boosting media are, not surprisingly, excited by media-anointed President-elect Joe Biden’s choice of Blinken, his long-time national security adviser, as his secretary of state. Along with his pick of Jake Sullivan, another close aide, as his national security adviser, these appointments supposedly signal restoration of “internationalism” and “globalpartnerships” as guiding principles of US foreign policy.

Media fawns for fake ‘internationalism’

Blinken, a “defender of global alliances,” in the soothing words of the New York Times, will “help calm American diplomats and global leaders alike after four years of the Trump administration’s ricocheting strategies and nationalist swaggering.” To the Washington Post, Blinken’s appointment would be fulfillment of Biden’s “vows to reassemble global alliances and insert the United States into a more prominent position on the world stage.” The Guardian purred that the appointees are:

“… committed internationalists, in strong contrast to the Trump era, which saw a bonfire of foreign treaties and agreements, and abrasive relations with traditional allies under the banner of ‘America First’, which Biden said during the campaign had led to ‘America alone’.”

That’s the message then: The foreign policy professionals are back, and US allies can rest assured that the United States will once again treat them with courtesy and respect. Such talk is delusional, if not downright deceptive. Blinken’s outlook is that of a career US interventionist, as is that of Sullivan. The opinions of other countries are worth considering only if they coincide with the views of US policymakers. If they don’t coincide, then they can be discounted.

The war on Serbia

Never was this axiom as vividly illustrated as during the Clinton administration’s protracted war against the Serbs during the 1990s. The Clinton administration, of which Blinken was an important member, had facilitated the arrival into Bosnia of international jihadi terrorists, including one Osama bin Laden. No one among Washington’s supposedly closest allies was asked what he or she thought of this policy of introducing Islamic terrorism into Europe. Richard Holbrooke, former assistant secretary of state for European and Canadian affairs in the Clinton administration, subsequently boasted about the efficacy of this policy. For him, shipping mujahedin fighters into Bosnia brought to mind “Winston Churchill’s famous comments about why Britain made common cause with Stalin against Hitler… [It] was a legitimate decision for Churchill and he knew full well the consequences. Here at a much smaller scale, this was done.”

Subsequently, the Clinton administration helped arm and train the Kosovo Liberation Army. The hope was that a KLA terrorist campaign in Yugoslavia would provoke the Belgrade authorities into overreacting. The expected humanitarian disaster could then be used to launch a NATO bombing campaign against Yugoslavia. When Belgrade refused to take the bait, the Clinton administration – in which Blinken was at that time special assistant to President Clinton and senior director for European affairs at the National Security Council – had to invent a pretext for bombing. That was provided by the Yugoslav government’s refusal to sign a Kosovo peace package at Rambouillet, France. The Yugoslav government had been issued with an ultimatum: accept the US-drafted package or face NATO bombing. Included within this package was the notorious Appendix B, which gave NATO unrestricted rights to move anywhere it wished throughout the territory of Yugoslavia, and to enjoy total immunity from prosecution.

The Clinton administration had deceitfully kept from the US public the details of Appendix B, as well as the take-it-or-leave-it ultimatum it had issued at Rambouillet. Later, when NATO’s bombing triggered the entirely foreseeable refugee flow from Kosovo, the Clinton administration claimed – again deceitfully – that NATO had launched its bombing campaign in response to Serb attempts to drive out Kosovo’s Albanian population. The claim made no sense. The refugee flight from Kosovo took place only after the start of NATO’s attack; the flight couldn’t therefore have been the pretext for NATO’s bombing.

Blinken played an integral role in orchestrating NATO’s bombing campaign, and has continued to tout his role in NATO’s legerdemain. Revealingly, Blinken appears untroubled by the Clinton administration’s refusal to seek UN Security Council authorization for the use of force against Yugoslavia. He evidently shared Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s contempt for the legalistic concerns raised by UK Foreign Secretary Robin Cook. Told that international law experts were advising a UN Security Council resolution was necessary, Albright scoffed, “Get new lawyers!”

‘Protecting civilians’ in Libya

Blinken’s disdain for international institutions was very much in evidence during the Obama administration’s 2011 bombing of Libya. Blinken, at the time Biden’s national security adviser, was an enthusiastic advocate of the bombing campaign. There was a problem though. The bombing was undertaken ostensibly in order to save the residents of Benghazi who were supposedly under threat from the forces of President Muammar Gaddafi. However, Resolution 1973, which the US and NATO used to justify the attack, only instructed UN member states “to take all necessary measures… to protect civilians and civilian populated areas under threat of attack.” It didn’t say that such “measures” should include bombing. Still less did the resolution authorize the US and NATO to use the bombing in order to topple Gaddafi. Yet, long after any conceivable threat to the residents of Benghazi had disappeared, NATO governments continued to justify their refusal to call a halt to the bombing by invoking the purported threat Gaddafi posed to Libya’s civilians. NATO didn’t let up on the bombing until the brutal execution of Gaddafi, a war crime in which NATO took an active part.

‘Doing too little’ in Syria

No sooner was Gaddafi overthrown and Libya thrown into chaos than the Obama administration shifted its attention to Syria, seeking there also to topple the legal government. The tools it deployed were familiar. Under Operation Timber Sycamore, the CIA was authorized to work with Arab intelligence services to arm and train rebels seeking to overthrow the government of President Bashar Assad. The weapons, needless to say, in no time found their way into the hands of the worst and most fanatical of the jihadi killers. Syria seemed to be on the brink of falling under the sway of Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS). Strangely enough, Blinken’s only regret about his activities in Syria is that the Obama administration didn’t do more to ensure the overthrow of Assad.

In an article last year that he co-authored with leading neocon publicist Robert Kagan, he argued that in Syria, the US made the “error of doing too little. Without bringing appropriate power to bear, no peace could be negotiated, much less imposed. Today we see the consequences, in hundreds of thousands of civilians dead, in millions of refugees who have destabilized Europe and in the growing influence of Russia, Iran and Hezbollah.”

In an interview earlier this year, Blinken made clear that regime-change in Syria was still on his agenda. He ruled out returning Syria’s oil fields to government control because the US needed leverage.

“That’s a point of leverage because the Syrian government would love to have dominion over those resources. We should not give that up for free.… And we should also use what leverage we have to insist that there be some kind of political transition that reflects the desires of the Syrian people.”

All the Russia tropes

Same old, same old is what we should also expect when it comes to Russia. Blinken repeats by rote all of the familiar Democratic Party talking points: Russia interfered in the 2016 elections, President Donald Trump is smitten with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Trump “took the word of Mr. Putin over our own intelligence community,” Russia put a bounty on the heads of US soldiers in Afghanistan, Russia invaded Ukraine. Blinken has advocated sending lethal weapons to Ukraine. “A President Biden would be in the business of confronting Mr. Putin for his aggressions, not embracing him,” Blinken has said. “Not trashing NATO, but strengthening its deterrence.”

A Blinken-run foreign policy will unquestionably mean abundant use of the familiar regime-change weapons in the US armory: bombs, cruise missiles, weapons shipments to jihadist and neo-Nazi groups to wage proxy wars, economic sanctions, fake “civil society” projects. As for the vaunted “international organizations” that Blinken supposedly champions, their role will be to sign off on US projects. If the organizations support US policy, including “regime change” operations, so much the better; if they don’t, they can safely be ignored. The “allies” who are now cheering the return of the “professionals” may soon have cause to regret their enthusiasm as the refugee flows from the Middle East return to 2015 levels in response to the Biden administration’s policy of relaunching the regime-change war in Syria. Should conflict with Russia escalate over Ukraine or the Baltics or the Caucasus, these “allies” may look back with nostalgia to the Trump era when the US largely preoccupied itself with its own national interests.

George Szamuely is a senior research fellow at Global Policy Institute (London) and author of Bombs for Peace: NATO’s Humanitarian War on Yugoslavia. Follow him on Twitter @GeorgeSzamuely

November 24, 2020 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

New Book Exposes History and Money Behind the Transgender Lobby

By Eric Striker • National Justice • November 23, 2022

A new book from Antelope Hill provides meticulously sourced insight into the corrupt institutions and wealthy financiers that have created and imposed the inorganic transgender movement on the West and beyond.

In The Transgender Industrial-Complex, a copy of which was provided to National Justice for review, author Scott Howard provides over 400 pages of mostly unknown names and groups who, largely over the last 20 years, have used their money to fund phony science, corrupt law, judges and politicians, disseminate disinformation, and organize often thuggish and violent activism to force mostly English-speaking liberal democracies to seriously debate whether men can get pregnant or children should be allowed to choose to take drugs and have irreversible “gender affirmation surgeries.”

Those who disagree on the grounds of ethics or science are marked for destruction.

Howard’s book is effective because its chapters focus on tracing the money, examining the history, and looks at how the European Union and Washington export transgenderism to other nations. It effectively packages the actual science on transgenderism, that it is nothing more than organized and well-funded delirium, in a highly readable format.

The history of transgenderism as we know it is believed to have originated in Jewish circles in early 20th century Germany, but Howard’s research shows that references to breaking down gender in Jewish circles go back to the 14th century, almost hundreds of years years before Martha Baer, a B’nai B’rith member in Germany, became the world’s first “sex-change” operation recipient. There is an interesting anecdote where a Jew involved in gender ideology converted to Catholicism and exposed the movement as an attempt to provoke moral chaos in European host societies. Magnus Hirschfeld is generally credited with creating the ideological rationale for “Trans” and “queerness” more broadly, but it was a Hirschfeld adept named Henry Gerber who imported the bizarre doctrine to the United States via “The Society for Human Rights” in Chicago.

Disagreeing with the concept of transgenderism or what the gender ideology does to those who subscribe to it is forbidden in American society. Howard explains the mechanism for this censorship, listing the small group of wealthy people — most of them Jews — who have created carrots and sticks in academia, the press and the culture at large for aspiring professionals to defy their own two eyes and embrace the 21st century’s Lysenkoist crusade.

Just recently, the largest study ever conducted on transsexuals found that rather than being a biological flaw for man to correct through drugs and surgery, the lifestyle and practice of wanting to change your sex is merely a type of aggressive autism with psychiatric co-morbidities such as schizophrenia.

Conservative examinations of the transgender issue rarely provide a why for the what, but Howard pulls no punches in describing the impulse behind the neo-liberal transsexual push: powerful Jews believe traditional concepts of masculinity and femininity along with the normal family are philosophical categories and social assumptions Fascism swims in — thus they must be destroyed to preserve the power of the ruling class.

By deconstructing nature, our morality breaks down and we are more likely to embrace obscene and discordant unnatural behavior across the board. This makes populations weak and defenseless.

The Transgender Industrial-Complex is an authoritative tome that answers all of one’s questions behind an issue that induces confusion and befuddlement among the vast majority of people.

Gender ideology is not just a strange liberal fad. It is a pernicious attack on Western civilization by wealthy and powerful people motivated by equal parts mental illness and malice.

November 23, 2020 Posted by | Book Review | | Leave a comment

Propaganda, Election Fraud and the Death of Journalism

By Frank Miele | Real Clear Politics | November 23, 2020

Easy question: Is it illegal to steal an election or not?

You would have to assume that it is no big deal based on the response to claims of widespread fraud in the contest between President Trump and Joe Biden. Big Media says the evidence just doesn’t exist, and most Americans seem to be lost in a blue haze of blind acceptance that whatever they are told by the talking heads on TV must be true.

This kind of unthinking obedience to authority is a frightening harbinger of an America that is no longer a nation of laws, but rather a nation of edicts. You can already see that unfolding in the sheep-like acceptance of COVID-19 restrictions that blatantly ignore the Constitution. But if you dare do your own independent assessment of facts — whether regarding the efficacy of mask use in preventing spread of coronavirus or regarding the security of electronic voting — you will quickly come to a different conclusion than that which is approved by Big Tech, Big Media and Big Money.

Unfortunately, most people don’t take the time to do their own research. They simply believe whatever is told to them. For those in thrall to the establishment media, that means they believe that Trump’s allegations of election fraud are “baseless.” Remember, the media made that declaration within hours of the election, long before any evidence had been presented in a court of law and before analysis had begun on the raw vote totals. Once that narrative was established, it didn’t matter how many affidavits were presented, how many witnesses came forward, or how much analysis suggested that the vote count may have been manipulated. The jury of the American people had already been tainted by Big Media to believe the narrative that Trump is a sore loser.

Don’t forget, the mainstream media — in the interests of public enlightenment (now known as wokeness) — have spent the past four years reporting as fact that the duly elected president of the United States is a liar, a tax cheat, a Russian puppet, and a racist. In other words, he is a con man who never should have been anywhere near the Oval Office in the first place. So why would anyone now believe his claims that Democrats used phony mail ballots, vote-counting software and foreign manipulation to steal the election? Most of the media is pretending that there is not even a real story to report in what, if true, would be one of the gravest constitutional crises in the history of our republic.

As Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani said in his press conference Thursday, “The coverage of this has been almost as dishonest as the scheme itself. The American people are entitled to know this,” he warned the press. “You don’t have a right to keep it from them. You don’t have a right to lie about it.”

But, the newsrooms at CNN and MSNBC are keeping it from the public. They refused to even carry Giuliani’s press conference laying out the evidence of election fraud. As for Fox News, they covered it, and then put a reporter on the air to say the claims were “simply not true” or “baseless.” Clearly, we are not going to get the truth from the media. Has there been even one reporter for a mainstream outlet such as the Washington Post asking questions about the vulnerability of electronic voting systems to hacking or manipulation? Is any news organization demanding that the Justice Department or FBI get to the bottom of the story?

The loss of a free and neutral press means that democracy cannot work even if its elections were completely above board. The capacity of the people to self-govern is dependent on their access to true and accurate information. Sadly, the opposite principle applies as well. When journalism abandons objectivity in favor of an agenda, then the people are in the position of cattle being led to slaughter.

Thomas Jefferson described the abuses of a free press in 1814 in a letter to his friend Walter Jones:

“I deplore … the putrid state into which our newspapers have passed and the malignity, the vulgarity and the mendacious spirit of those who write for them… These ordures are rapidly depraving the public taste and lessening its relish for sound food. As vehicles of information and a curb on our functionaries, they have rendered themselves useless by forfeiting all title to belief… This has, in a great degree, been produced by the violence and malignity of party spirit.”

Ouch! Take that, New York Times! Take that, CNN!

Of course, it is just such a malign “party spirit” that informs almost all mainstream journalism in the Age of Trump — a spirit that is visible in the hostility towards Trump himself, but also in the accommodation towards Democrats such as Joe Biden. Last Monday’s Biden press conference was a stunning abdication of responsibility by the media for its much-vaunted role of “speaking truth to power” — or at least asking tough questions.

Three of the first four queries were merely anti-Trump questions asked in a new way. Instead of asking Trump “How do you justify your unprecedented attempt to obstruct and delay a smooth transfer of power?” the reporters merely asked Biden what he thought about Trump’s “unprecedented attempt” blah blah blah. Then the next three questions were about COVID, which after six months of campaigning, even Sleepy Joe Biden could answer with his eyes closed.

Isn’t the media going to hold Biden accountable just like they claimed to hold Trump accountable? Why not ask about the curious patterns of vote counting in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Georgia that make millions of people think Biden tried to steal the election? Shouldn’t he be asked to support a full investigation to prove his victory was legitimate? How about a question about whether Hunter Biden will come out of hiding now that the election is over? How about asking the “president-in-waiting” to condemn the BLM and antifa violence that sent several innocent Trump supporters to the hospital two weeks ago?

How about our celebrity journalists celebrate their own crucial role as defenders of democracy? If they don’t want to “render themselves useless,” they need to swear allegiance to facts, wherever they lead, and not to one party. Or as Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana put it more indelicately, “They have to be equal opportunity assholes.”

But they aren’t — and sooner or later the American people will get tired of being manipulated. Journalism is supposed to give an honest account of the facts so that people can make up their own minds what they believe to be true. Propaganda, on the other hand, is a dishonest attempt to persuade people not to examine the facts for themselves. Journalism starts with facts and allows people to reach their own conclusion. Propaganda starts with a conclusion and manipulates people into accepting it as fact. You can decide for yourself whether what we have today is journalism or propaganda.

But the bottom line is this: Whether or not Donald Trump can prove his case in court should be irrelevant to the job of the press. What honest reporters ought to recognize is the significance of the allegation itself, the historical nature of the crime being alleged, and the importance to the future of our republic that the case must be heard.

Too bad there are so few honest reporters left.

Frank Miele, the retired editor of the Daily Inter Lake in Kalispell Mont., is a columnist for RealClearPolitics. His new book “How We Got Here: The Left’s Assault on the Constitution” is available from his Amazon author page. Visit him at HeartlandDiaryUSA.com to read his daily commentary or follow him on Facebook @HeartlandDiaryUSA or on Twitter or Parler @HeartlandDiary.

November 23, 2020 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | | Leave a comment

Ex-spooks again join for an anti-Trump missive, demanding Republican leaders pressure president to concede to Biden

RT | November 23, 2020

President Donald Trump has again inspired former US spy bosses and national security bureaucrats to get together for a joint letter – this time to demand that GOP leaders urge him to concede the election to Democrat Joe Biden.

Trump’s legal challenges to election results in several key states, more than two weeks on from media outlets declaring Biden the winner, represent “a serious threat to America’s democratic process and to our national security,” signatories to the letter said on Monday.

“It is now time for the rest of the Republican leadership to put politics aside and insist that President Trump cease his dilatory and anti-democratic efforts to undermine the result of the election and begin a smooth and orderly transition of power to President-elect Biden,” the Washington insiders said.

More than 100 former security and intelligence agency officials signed the letter. Many of the same names were on an October letter that sought – without any evidence – to dismiss reporting by the New York Post on the Biden family’s alleged influence-peddling in China and Ukraine. Team spook also came together for a collaborative letter in August to allege that Trump had “imperiled America’s security” by firing certain officials in his administration.

Much the same cast of characters highlighted the list of names on Monday’s letter, including former Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, former CIA and NSA director General Michael Hayden, ex-national intelligence director John Negroponte and Ronald Reagan-era FBI and CIA director William Webster.

The group apparently aims through a large number of names to carry more influence than might be achieved by individuals. Some of those individuals have credibility issues, such as Hayden, who was never held accountable for lying to Congress about the CIA torture program. Hayden also is a paid contributor for anti-Trump media outlet CNN. Negroponte was accused of supporting Contra death squads in Honduras.

More than 100 chief executives, concerned that the president’s refusal to accept the election results is hurting the U.S., plan to ask the administration on Monday to immediately acknowledge Joe Biden as the winner and begin a transfer of power. https://t.co/O8XnGPQF1j

— The New York Times (@nytimes) November 23, 2020

Mainstream media outlets in recent days have posted stories suggesting growing momentum to speak out against Trump’s election challenges, including such Republicans as former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and US Senator Pat Toomey (R-Pennsylvania) calling on the president to quit his fight. The New York Times on Monday promoted a story about more than 100 corporate CEOs urging Trump to concede defeat to Biden.

November 23, 2020 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Video | , , | Leave a comment

Democratic Member Seeks To Disbar Two Dozen Lawyers Challenging Election Results

By Jonathan Turley |  November 23, 2020

We have been discussing the campaign of harassment and threats against Republican lawyers to get them to drop election challenges. New Jersey Democratic Rep. Bill Pascrell expanded that campaign this week with a malicious and frivolous demand for New York and other states to disbar roughly two dozen lawyers for representing Trump, the Republican party, or the Trump campaign in the litigation. While Democratic members and the media discuss attacks on democracy and the rule of law, they appear to have little problem with campaigns to threaten and harass both lawyers and legislators for raising questions about the election.

Many of us criticized Rudy Giuliani for his performance in this litigation, particularly the controversial press conference held last week. Indeed, I have previously criticized Giuliani for his public comments and allegations. However, Pascrell wants Giuliani disbarred specifically for filing these legal actions as well as a host of other lawyers.

Pascrell wrote to the Grievance Committee for three New York Judicial Districts that “Mr. Giuliani has participated in the filing of a series of absurd lawsuits seeking to overturn the will of the voters … and has caused irreversible damage to the public trust in the fair administration of our elections.” Pascrell claimed that filing the cases constitutes “clear” evidence that he was violating the state’s Rules of Professional Misconduct that prohibit “dishonesty, fraud, deceit” and “misrepresentations.”

The letters to various state bar associations seems to go out of its way to self-identify as a vicious attack on any lawyers who do not yield to demands that they remove themselves from any election challenges:

The pattern of behavior by these individuals to effectuate Mr. Trump’s sinister arson is a danger not just to our legal system but is also unprecedented in our national life. In carrying out that perversion, they have clearly violated the … Rules of Professional Conduct they swore to uphold and should face the severest sanction your body can mete out: revocation of their law licensures. The holding of a law license is a sacred responsibility. You have an opportunity here to make a powerful statement in support of our democracy and deter future charlatans and miscreants from warping our legal and political systems for their own profit.

As I have previously discussed, it is a familiar campaign that is unfolding without objections from most media figures, lawyers, or law professors. Indeed, this is a campaign that has been led by lawyers against lawyers.

Groups like the Lincoln Project targeted law firms and launched a campaign to force lawyers to abandon Trump or his campaign as a client. This effort resulted in Twitter blocking the Lincoln Project for targeting individual Trump lawyers in a tweet (accompanied by a skull-and-crossbones emoji) that was deemed threatening and abusive. That only seemed to thrill the Lincoln Project. It reportedly joined Democrats in targeting law firms like Porter, Wright, Morris & Arthur and threatening its lawyers with professional ruin. It claimed that any firm working for Trump on election litigation was part of a “dangerous attack on our democracy.” Trying to strip people of their counsel, of course, is the real attack on our democracy — and it worked: The firm buckled and withdrew, saying the pressure caused internal struggles and at least one lawyer’s resignation.

At the same time, Democratic leaders like Michigan’s Attorney General  Dana Nessel have threatened criminal prosecution against those who have posted videos alleging voting fraud and even threatened possible prosecution of legislators who meet with President Trump or raise challenges to the election results.  The media is virtually silent on these threats to coerce lawyers and legislators into silence. That is not viewed as a threat to the rule of law.  The threats against lawyers follows a pattern where Democratic members are calling for blacklists and others denounce any questioning of the Biden victory as akin to “Holocaust denial.” I spoke last week to Republican lawyers who described death threats, doxxing, and continual harassment for their representation in these lawsuits. The message is that if you represent the wrong side you will be denounced, doxxed, and disbarred.

Pascrell is not alone in calling for such bar actions as a new way to pressuring Republican lawyers, particularly after the dismissal of the Pennsylvania lawsuit a couple days ago. However, while the court offered a scathing analysis of the claims, it also found that the individual voters had “adequately pled that their votes were denied” and might be entitled to other relief. However, the court balked at the notion of negating the votes of others in response to such alleged voting errors.  That is not the type of ruling that leads to suspension, let alone disbarment. While the court slammed the Trump campaign on its legal claims, it did not impose sanctions against the lawyers. I agree with the court’s conclusion and I have been critical of claims in some of these lawsuits as facially insufficient to block certification. However, that does not mean that these voters — or their lawyers — should be barred or punished in seeking judicial review.

What Pascrell is doing is undermining our legal system by using his office to advance a campaign targeting lawyers and legislators who raise objections to his party prevailing in the presidential election. As with the Lincoln Project’s campaign, this is raw retaliation and intimidation to deter the use of our legal process. When such actions were taken against lawyers representing civil rights groups and others in the 1960s, it was correctly denounced as an outrageous abuse of our legal system. Now that Republican lawyers are being targeted, it has become a campaign supported by members of Congress, thousands of lawyers, and the media.

What Pascrell is doing is a dangerous form of demagoguery that should be denounced by people of good-faith regardless of their political affiliations.

November 23, 2020 Posted by | Civil Liberties | | Leave a comment

Expert Witness to the Kennedy assassination – Killed

More at: http://www.BrasscheckTV.com

November 23, 2020 Posted by | Deception, Timeless or most popular, Video | , | Leave a comment

Biden signals US return to full-on globalism and foreign meddling by picking interventionist Anthony Blinken as secretary of state

RT | November 23, 2020

Joe Biden has named Anthony Blinken – an advocate for isolating Russia, cozying up to China and intervening in Syria – as secretary of state, cementing a foreign policy built on military forays and multi-national motivations.

Biden, the nominal president-elect, announced his selection of Blinken along with other members of his foreign-policy and national-security team, which is filled with such veteran Washington insiders as John Kerry, the new climate czar and formerly secretary of state in the Obama-Biden administration.

Blinken, a long-time adviser to Biden and deputy secretary of state under President Barack Obama, has been hailed by fellow Democrats and globalists, such as retired General Barry McCaffrey, as an experienced bureaucrat with “global contacts and respect.” Enrico Letta, dean of the Paris School of International Affairs, called Biden’s choice the “right step to relaunch transatlantic ties.”

He was even praised for a 2016 appearance on the Sesame Street children’s television program, where he explained to the show’s ‘Grover’ character the benefits of accepting refugees.

While some critics focused on how Blinken “got rich working for corporate clients” during President Donald Trump’s term in office, the new foreign-affairs chief’s neoconservative policy recommendations might be cause for greater concern. He advocated for the Iraq War and the bombings of such countries as Libya and Yemen.

Blinken is still arguing for a resurgence in Washington’s military intervention in Syria. He lamented in a May interview that the Obama-Biden administration hadn’t done enough to prevent a “horrific situation” in Syria, and he faulted Trump for squandering what remaining leverage the US had on the Bashar Assad regime by pulling troops out of the country.

“Our leverage is vastly even less than it was, but I think we do have points of leverage to try to effectuate some more positive developments,” Blinken said. For instance, US special forces in northeast Syria are located near Syrian oil fields. “The Syrian government would love to have dominion over those resources. We should not give that up for free.”

Blinken also sees Biden strengthening NATO, isolating Russia politically and “confronting Mr. [President Vladimir] Putin for his aggressions.”

As for China, Blinken has said Washington needs to look for ways to cooperate with Beijing. Reinvesting in international alliances that were weakened by Trump will help the Biden administration deal with China “from a position of strength” as it pushes back against the Chinese Communist Party’s human-rights abuses, he said.

November 23, 2020 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Militarism, Russophobia, Wars for Israel | , , | Leave a comment

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