Defining Despotism Down
By James Bovard | American Institute for Economic Research | October 27, 2020
The simultaneous defining down of both democracy and despotism is 2020’s darkest legacy. Voters are recognizing that their ballots merely choose elective dictators who can exempt themselves from the Constitution simply by pronouncing the word “emergency.” At the same time, despotism is being redefined to signify government failing to force people to do the right thing.
Hundreds of millions of Americans were locked in their homes via governors’ shutdown orders earlier this year. Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden has said he may decree a national lockdown if Covid infection numbers rise. More than 10 million jobs have been lost thanks to the shutdown orders and countless misery has been imposed on scores of millions of people unnecessarily isolated from friends and family.
New York, the state hit worst by Covid, had one of the earliest and strictest lockdowns in the nation. After Gov. Andrew Cuomo swayed the legislature to give him “authorization of absolute power,” as the New Yorker declared, he issued scores of decrees, including one compelling nursing homes to admit Covid-infected patients and permitting Covid-infected staffers to keep working at those homes. More than 10,000 New York nursing home patients died of Covid. In June, Cuomo said the nursing homes deaths occurred “because the staff brought in the infection,”
A New Yorker profile explained that Cuomo and his aides saw the battle over Covid policy as “between people who believe government can be a force for good and those who think otherwise.” For many liberals and much of the nation’s media, placing people under house arrest, padlocking schools, and bankrupting business vindicated government as “a force for good.”
But the lockdowns failed to prevent almost nine million Americans from testing positive for Covid (the actual number of cases may be ten times higher, according to the Centers for Disease Control). As AIER’s Jeffrey Tucker quipped, “Mitigating disease through compulsory lockdowns is like cleaning your house by bombing it.” The World Health Organization’s envoy for Covid-19, David Nabarro, warned that “lockdowns just have one consequence that you must never, ever belittle, and that is making poor people an awful lot poorer.” Nabarro also warned that “we may well have a doubling of world poverty by next year” or “at least a doubling of child malnutrition.”
Lockdowns that were initially justified to “flatten the curve” have been perpetuated on increasingly ludicrous pretexts:
- California Gov. Gavin Newsom recently decreed that Covid restrictions would be perpetuated in California counties based on voter turnout, alcohol availability, and other non-health factors. California assemblyman Kevin Kiley groused, “An entire county can be kept shut down because certain areas are judged to be lacking in ‘equity,’ even if the whole county has relatively few cases of Covid.”
- In Washington, D.C., the local government is perpetuating private and public school shutdowns and other restrictions as long based on a newly-decreed standard: “a requirement that more than 60 percent of new cases be closely connected to other known cases.” The city currently can connect less than 10% of cases, so this Veto on Normalcy can last forever – or at least as long as devotees pledge their devotion to (mindless) “data and science.” D.C. Covid mania is so extreme that worshippers at the Basilica at Catholic University have been prohibited from performing the “stations of the cross” inside the church, instead being ordered to sit in a pew.
The contract between citizens and the government in this nation hinges on elected politicians obeying the Constitution. After Covid crackdowns obliterated constitutional rights, courts slammed run-a-mok rulers:
- Federal judge William Stickman IV last month condemned Pennsylvania’s Covid restrictions: “Broad population-wide lockdowns are such a dramatic inversion of the concept of liberty in a free society as to be nearly presumptively unconstitutional.”
- The Michigan Supreme Court ruled earlier this month that Gov. Gretchen Whitmer had extended a “state of emergency” far beyond what an unconstitutional state law allowed.
- Federal judge Daniel Domenico last week ruled that some of Colorado’s Covid restrictions violated religious freedom: “The Constitution does not allow the State to tell a congregation how large it can be when comparable secular gatherings are not so limited, or to tell a congregation that its reason for wishing to remove facial coverings is less important than a restaurant’s or spa’s.”
- In May, the Wisconsin Supreme Court struck down a state official’s stay-at-home order as “unlawful, invalid, and unenforceable.”
The U.S. Department of Justice declared earlier this year: “There is no pandemic exclusion … to the fundamental liberties the Constitution safeguards.” Attorney General William Barr declared last month that imposing “a national lockdown, stay-at-home orders, is like house arrest. It’s — you know, other than slavery… this is the greatest intrusion on civil liberties in American history.”
But most of the media cheered almost every arbitrary restriction imposed by any government official in the name of fighting Covid. University of Chicago law professor Eric Posner fretted in the Washington Post that “judicial opposition to the lockdown orders is not just about religious liberty. It’s also, and perhaps really, about the role of government in American life.” And any limit on government power is equivalent to national suicide, apparently. A New York democratic legislator told the New Yorker that Gov. Cuomo is “inclined towards tyranny. But in a crisis that’s what people want.” The media’s valorization of Cuomo helped make his new book, American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic, a bestseller. Tyranny is comforting to some people regardless of how much havoc and pointless suffering tyrants inflict.
For many liberals, mandatory masks have become the new version of the Emancipation Proclamation. In his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention, presidential candidate Joe Biden declared, “We’ll have a national mandate to wear a mask — not as a burden but as a patriotic duty to protect one another.” When asked if he will force everyone to wear a mask, Biden replied, “This isn’t about freedom, it’s about freedom for your, your neighbors.” Biden also declared, “Every single American should be wearing a mask when they’re outside for the next three months, at a minimum.” Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in July that a federal mask mandate would be “authoritarian” but endorsed a national mask decree last week.
The ultimate symbol of maskless tyranny became Trump’s White House balcony appearance, when he removed his mask and muttered a few words after exiting Walter Reed Hospital. Even though no one was standing close by, Trump was widely compared to Mussolini – as if not wearing a mask was the ultimate betrayal of the American people.
Rather than campaigning against Trump’s abuses of power, Biden and the Democrats are condemning Trump for not seizing far more power to pretend to keep everyone safe from everything. During the first years of the War on Terror, some servile Republicans cheered on Bush administration travesties with the throwaway line: “You don’t have any constitutional rights if you’re dead.” Nowadays, many frightened Americans seem ready to support perpetual lockdowns based on the axiom: “You don’t have any rights if anyone tests positive for Covid-19.” A virus with a 99.9% survival rate has spawned a 100% presumption in favor of despotism.
The failure of iron fist policies should be the storyline of the 2020 election but instead Biden and much of the media want to double down on repression. Can the votes that are cast in the coming week close the authoritarian Pandora’s Boxes that have opened across the nation? Or will conniving invocations of “data and science” suffice to blight Americans’ rights and liberties in perpetuity?
James Bovard is the author of ten books, including Public Policy Hooligan, Attention Deficit Democracy, The Bush Betrayal, and Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty.
Twitter again censors Trump as it begins spamming Americans with new Orwellian warnings
RT | October 27, 2020
Twitter has slapped a “misleading” label on yet another tweet from President Donald Trump, as it rolls out a new effort to “pre-bunk” criticism of mail-in voting and warns Americans not to expect final results on election night.
In a tweet on Monday night, Trump stressed the need to have a final vote tally on the day of the general election, stating there are “big problems and discrepancies with mail-in ballots all over the USA,” reiterating previous complaints about potential flaws in universal distance voting. The post was soon appended with a notice warning users the tweet is “disputed” and “might be misleading,” directing them to a link explaining that “voting by mail is legal and safe,” citing a coterie of favored “experts.”
Under Twitter’s new “civic integrity policy” updated in September, the platform said it would add labels to tweets “containing false or misleading information” about elections, or even reduce their visibility for other users – a form of “shadowbanning,” a practice the company has repeatedly renounced. Even before the new rule went into effect, Twitter previously ‘fact checked’ other election-related posts from the president, and attached a “misleading” label to another missive about the coronavirus earlier this month.
The company further bolstered its efforts to combat so-called disinformation on Monday, launching a new feature to preemptively debunk – or “pre-bunk” in the words of Twitter’s head of site integrity Yoel Roth – “common misleading claims” about the 2020 race, which apparently includes any form of skepticism about mail-in voting.
#Election2020 is unlike any other in US history. With so many more people voting by mail and potentially delayed results, starting today, we’ll show you prompts in your Home timeline and Search to help you stay informed on these critical topics. pic.twitter.com/OAtbnoa70W
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) October 26, 2020
We’re introducing “pre-bunks” for some of the most common misleading claims about #Election2020. Research shows that getting ahead of misinformation is a powerful way to build resilience. Excited to see this application of inoculation theory in practice. https://t.co/O0bzCtNrVv
— Yoel Roth (@yoyoel) October 26, 2020
The new “pre-bunk” alerts will be seen at the top of American users’ timelines and search pages, and will explain that they could encounter “misleading information about voting by mail,” again citing “election experts” to insist mail-in ballots are secure. The alerts also warn that “election results might be delayed,” noting this could cause confusion about who may have won the November 3 race after the polls close.
Though Twitter and its assorted ‘fact-checkers’ have repeatedly challenged claims that distance voting is linked to “fraud” in particular, Trump’s criticisms have gone beyond the narrow question of ballot-tampering. The president and others have also suggested the system will be susceptible to errors, as was seen during New York’s primary race this summer, which even the New York Times described as “botched.” With the “experts” preoccupied with allegations of fraud, however, those other concerns have largely gone ignored, and that appears set to continue as social media platforms move to purge any and all expression of doubt in the mail-in system.
Disinformation By Popular Demand: How The Authenticity of Hunter’s Laptop Became Immaterial
By Jonathan Turley | October 27, 2020
Yesterday, former Vice President Joe Biden was again insisting that the scandal involving Hunter Biden’s laptop was Russian disinformation despite the direct refutation of that claim by the FBI. No mainstream reporter bothered to ask the simple question of whether this was his son’s laptop and emails, including emails clearly engaging in an influence peddling scheme and referring to Joe Biden’s knowledge. Instead, media has maintained a consistent and narrow focus. Indeed, in her interview, Leslie Stahl immediately dismissed any “scandal” involving Hunter in an interview with the President on 60 Minutes. It was an open example of what I previously noted in a column: “After all, an allegation is a scandal only if it is damaging. No coverage, no damage, no scandal.”
In her interview with Joe Biden, CBS anchor Norah O’Donnell did not push Biden to simply confirm that the emails were fake or whether he did in fact meet with Hunter’s associates (despite his prior denials). Instead O’Donnell asked: “Do you believe the recent leak of material allegedly from Hunter’s computer is part of a Russian disinformation campaign?”
Biden responded with the same answer that has gone unchallenged dozens of times:
“From what I’ve read and know the intelligence community warned the president that Giuliani was being fed disinformation from the Russians. And we also know that Putin is trying very hard to spread disinformation about Joe Biden. And so when you put the combination of Russia, Giuliani– the president, together– it’s just what it is. It’s a smear campaign because he has nothing he wants to talk about. What is he running on? What is he running on?”
It did not matter that the answer omitted the key assertion that this was not Hunter’s laptop or emails or that he did not leave the computer with this store.
Recently, Washington Post columnist Thomas Rid said the quiet part out loud by telling the media: “We must treat the Hunter Biden leaks as if they were a foreign intelligence operation — even if they probably aren’t.”
Let that sink in for a second. It does not matter if these are real emails and not Russian disinformation. They probably are real but should be treated as disinformation even though American intelligence has repeatedly rebutted that claim. It does not even matter that the FBI has seized the computer as evidence in a criminal fraud investigation or that a Biden confidant is now giving his allegations to the FBI under threat of criminal charges if he lies to investigators.
It simply does not matter. It is disinformation because it is simply inconvenient to treat it as real information.
‘Wokeness Wars’ Coming to Your County
By Philip M. Giraldi – American Free Press – October 23, 2020
Kurt Vonnegut’s 1961 dystopian short story “Harrison Bergeron” describes a 2081 America in which the 211th, 212th, and 213th amendments to the Constitution of the United States have together mandated that all Americans must be made completely equal. No one is allowed to be more intelligent or handsome or more physically capable than anyone else. The standards are enforced by a Handicapper General, an elderly woman named Diana Moon Glampers armed with a shotgun, who mandates the wearing of disfiguring masks for those who are thought to be too beautiful while tiny radios are mounted inside the ears of intelligent people, programmed to go off at intervals and disrupt any thoughts. Those who are stronger or faster than others are required to wear heavy weights around their wrists and ankles.
Somehow, the Vonnegut story comes to mind at the present time, particularly in my home county here in Virginia. Loudoun County, a suburb of Washington D.C. where all that fiat money is printed, is the wealthiest in the United States based on per capita income. When I moved here twenty-three years ago, it was solidly Republican, but now it is controlled by the Democrats, largely due to the influx of out of state newcomers moving in to take the thousands of new federal jobs in the burgeoning Global War On Terror. When in power, the Republicans foolishly had allowed their business cronies to build large and ugly commuter housing developments that eventually changed the political power alignment when the liberal newcomers inevitably outnumbered the relatively conservative locals.
The county Board of Supervisors is headed by a black woman named Phyllis Randall. Randall has been in place since 2015 and is reliably progressive. Apart from muttering about “diversity” and “affordable housing,” she has generally avoided race issues in a county that is less than 10% black but has become more outspoken recently. The county seat Leesburg had a monument near the court house featuring a seven-foot bronze war memorial statue of a Confederate infantryman dubbed “Silent Sam” by some of the locals. Randall had described the memorial as a racist symbol that had intimidated “Thousands of Loudoun citizens, Black citizens, who never had a voice and sometimes didn’t have a vote.” It is a ridiculous argument that is often made when historical monuments are about to be purged by vandals, but apparently a statue can inspire real fear in some circles, at least according to Randall.
After being reelected last November and backed by a unanimously gutless board in a May vote, Randall felt empowered to remove the offending statue saying that she was “correcting history” over a “statue [that] should never have been put up.” The removal was accomplished on June 21st, in the midst of the wave of looting, rioting and arson all over the United States that was triggered by the Floyd George death.
Randall has also been pushing to replace the highly respected local sheriff’s department with a police department which would be controlled by her board. The popular sheriff is an elected official and he has committed the crime of being both somewhat independent and a Republican.
Since the removal of the Confederate statue, there has been more fun and games to include an apology to the black citizens of Loudoun from both the board of supervisors and the school board for the school segregation that continued into the 1960s. The local NAACP graciously responded that the apology was “not enough.” That was followed by a slap at another perennial punching bag for the social justice warrior movement. Columbus Day on the school calendar was renamed. Indigenous Peoples Day.
All of that has been bad enough, but the clincher is what is going on with the Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS). The school board has spent $422,500 on a consultant to apply Critical Race Theory (CRT) to a new program of instruction that will be mandatory for all employees and will serve as the framework for teaching the students. When schools eventually reopen, all kindergarteners, for example, will be taught “social justice” in a course designed by the controversial Southern Poverty Law Center and “diversity training” will be integrated in all other grade levels.
Critical Race Theory has been fairly criticized as it pretends to be an antidote to systemic racism but is itself racist in nature as it opposes a race neutral system that equally benefits everyone. It proposes that all of America’s governmental bodies and infrastructures are racist and supportive of “white supremacy” and must be deconstructed. It requires everything to be examined through a value system determined by identity politics and race and it views both whites and their institutions as hopelessly corrupted, if not evil.
The principal concern currently is that the school board, which is revising its Personal Conduct Policy 7560 “Professional Conduct” for staff, is basically treating the First Amendment right to free speech as inapplicable when it comes to challenging certain policies involving the school system arguing that the Bill of Rights itself is just a tool in support of white supremacy, which is what CRT teaches. The Personal Conduct draft only addresses the First Amendment briefly, noting that the right “may be outweighed” by LCPS interest in “promoting internal…and external community harmony and peace” through “directives, including protected class equity, racial equity, and the goal to root out systemic racism.”
Section B3 of the draft revised policy requires total commitment to the forthcoming “equity” policies and it threatens punishment to include firing if anyone within the system dares to express a criticism. The full text cites “Any comments or actions that are not in alignment with the school division’s commitment to action-oriented equity policies, and which impact an individual’s abilities to perform their job responsibilities or create a breach in the trust bestowed upon them as an employee of the school division. This includes on-campus and off-campus speech, social media posts, and any other electronic or telephonic communications.”
The school board also has an “Action Plan to Combat Systemic Racism” which will require mandatory “racial literacy” classes for staff with the objective of creating “equity literacy and racial consciousness” for employees. To support struggling black students there will be non-coercive alternatives to suspension or expulsion for misbehavior, a feature that is being copied in many school districts. It is all part of the larger “Comprehensive Equity Plan” that the revised personal conduct policy is intended to protect, which includes manipulating passing grades to achieve “equity” — that is, to reward or punish people based not on their conduct and accomplishments or hard work, but primarily on their race and ethnicity. It calls specifically for the “disruption and dismantling of white racism.” It is not intended to give everyone an equal chance and is rather trying to guarantee a certain outcome. It will mean pushing people through the system based on race rather than merit until they find themselves holding jobs that they cannot possibly perform based on what they learned at school.
If that were not bad enough, the document also encourages school system employees to report on other employees who are critical of the policy. Most companies are within their rights to demand certain behavior while in the workplace, but the Loudoun County Public Schools demand that even criticizing the new policy with friends, family, at home, while on the phone, while shopping or even walking through the park is a violation subject to punishment. The draft states explicitly that employee speech “will not be tolerated” if it could be perceived as “undermining the views, positions, goals, policies or public statements” of Schools Superintendent Eric Williams or the school board. And other LCPS employees would have the “duty to report” speech violations to the school administration. Given that, the likelihood that anyone who is bold enough to surface as an employee-critic would be railroaded by the school administrators and the board is guaranteed. And, one might point out, LCPS has no teachers’ union.
Rod Dreher observes how the policy will also translate into what and how one’s children are taught. They too will be required to conform. “If your kid goes to a church that is not progressive and LGBT-affirming, she better shut up about her religious views at school, or she will be expelled. If you[r] kid won’t consent to calling a trans student by that student’s preferred pronoun, that could be the end of him at Loudoun County public schools. Anything that the left identifies as a manifestation of ‘white supremacy’ — and these days, what isn’t? — makes students who hold it targets of the system. What if a high school student believes that on balance, Robert E. Lee was a noble, if tragic, figure, and said so in a history class? He would have to fear that Loudoun County public schools, in the state of Virginia, would punish him as a white supremacist. Basically, deep-blue, wealthy, predominantly white Loudoun County in suburban Washington, DC, is going to ruin its public schools by turning them into ideology factories.”
One might also observe that imposition of a totalitarian style “equity” regime based on race will inevitably drive many of the academically better prepared students out of the system. Many of the better teachers will also move to the private academies that will spring up due to parental and student demand. Others will stop teaching altogether when confronted by political correctness at a level that prior to 2020 would have seemed unimaginable. The actual quality of education will suffer for everyone involved.
The outcry against the proposed Loudoun Public Schools Personal Conduct Policy has been such that there has been some suggestion that it might be revised, but the most recent minutes of school board meetings suggest otherwise. One suspects that if the policy ever actually is approved it will be challenged and declared to be unconstitutional, but it would be unwise to place too much trust in America’s increasingly politicized “social” judicial system.
A quote attributed to Sinclair Lewis goes “If fascism ever comes to America it will be carrying a Bible and wrapped in a flag.” He was wrong. We have learned in the past few months that totalitarianism can come from either the left or the right. Currently in America it is coming wrapped in a lot of virtue signaling coming from a gaggle of politicians and media “experts” who are working hard to turn the part of the United States that they have not burned down into what they perceive as a utopia where everyone can gather round the campfire and sing “Kumbaya.” Of course, one will have to eliminate all the deplorables first, and some radicals are clearly prepared to use informants and spies to do so. It’s ironic that the progressives who wrote the draft on Professional Conduct for Loudoun County Public Schools just cannot see that there is scant difference between the system of control and intimidation that they are promoting and the vilified regimes once in place in Russia and Germany. Well, possibly the school board will develop a spine and a conscience and reverse itself. But, on the other hand, more likely not. Sadly, the issue is quite real for me as I have grandchildren in LCPS.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is https://councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
The Last Days of the Trumpian Reich
CJ Hopkins | Consent Factory | October 27, 2020
So, according to the corporate media, this is it for Russian-backed Hitler. Game over. The walls are closing in. It’s the last days of the Trumpian Reich. Get those vuvuzelas ready!
Yes, apparently, the American people, who were all a bunch of Putin-worshipping, white-supremacist neo-Nazis when they elected Trump in 2016, have come to their senses and are going to deliver a landslide victory to “Slappy” Joe Biden and bring down the curtain on this “Age of Darkness,” or save the world from “racial Orwellianism” or the “bottomless pit of facsism,” or whatever.
White supremacy will be defeated and globalization will rise from the ashes! Decency will be restored! Love will trump hate! Black lives will matter!
Slappy and Kamala will immediately fly down and liberate the concentration camps. Trump will face some sort of Nuremberg trial, where he will have to answer for mass-murdering six million people with the Coronavirus by taking off his mask on the White House balcony.
Hillary Clinton will be appointed … something.
Exuberant liberals will pour into the streets, chanting unintelligible slogans through their designer masks and plastic head bubbles. OK, sure, the global economy will be ruined, and millions of people will be unemployed, and homeless, or will have needlessly died, so that GloboCap could simulate an apocalyptic global plague, and foment racialized civil unrest, and just generally create an atmosphere of confusion, depression, and paranoia, but the War on Populism will finally be over … and GloboCap will start to “Build Back Better!”
OK, it won’t be “better” right away. As our friends at the World Economic Forum note:
“Thanks to the ongoing pandemic, the world is off-balance – and it will remain so for years to come. Far from settling into a ‘new normal’, we should expect a Covid19 domino effect, triggering further disruptions – positive as well as negative – over the decade ahead. The wave of civil unrest that spread across America and beyond recently may be one example …”
So, all right, maybe not quite the end of the War on Populism, but at least a new stage of it. A chaotic, destructive, violent stage of it, which will require a lot of “emergency measures” and will end up radically transforming the planet into one big pathologized-totalitarian marketplace.
We conspiracy theorists are calling it The Great Reset … but don’t take it from us, take it from TIME magazine, which just happens to be owned by a guy named Marc Benioff, a World Economic Forum Board of Trustees member, whose net worth is approximately $7.8 billion, and who is deeply concerned about the environment, and inclusivity, and economic fairness, as is everyone at the WEF these days.
Fortunately, just by sheer coincidence, this apocalyptic global plague has provided Marc and his billionaire buddies (who own the majority of the corporate media, and who meet once a year in a remote location guarded by heavily-armed security to discuss our future with major government leaders) with an opportunity to “reset” capitalism and save the planet from … well, themselves.
That’s not how they see it, naturally. No, the way they see it, they’re not the problem. The problem is … well, the problem is people. Not rich and powerful people like themselves, or the people they need to continue working, consuming, and servicing the interest on their loans, but … you know, all those other people. Uneducated, un-woke, working-class people. Gun-toting, fanatically religious people. Racist, conspiracy-theorizing people. Deplorable people. “Populist” people. People they don’t need anymore.
These people have been a problem recently. Not only are they a drag on the system, they have been actively interfering with it, voting for Brexit, electing Donald Trump, refusing to abandon their traditional values and outmoded ideas (e.g., national sovereignty, freedom of speech, and mammalian biology) and get on board with global capitalist ideology, and have been otherwise being a real pain in the ass.
It was one thing when these problem people were mostly black- and brown-skinned people with “extremist” beliefs in faraway countries that most Western consumers couldn’t care less about, because GloboCap could just bomb the crap out of them, but they can’t really do that here in the West. Hence, the War on Populism that we have been experiencing for the last four years … and whatever new, dystopian stage of it that awaits us in the post-Trump future.
2020 has been a preview of it. The lockdowns, the masks, the “social distancing,” and other so-called “emergency measures,” the Orwellian propaganda, the censorship of dissent, the banning of political protests, the corporate media finally transforming into a full-blown Goebbelsian keyboard instrument, the goon squads raiding people’s homes, the cult-like, totalitarian conformity … it’s just a taste of what’s to come.
This was always in the cards, of course. It was just a matter of time until we got here. The folks at GloboCap are no fools. They know they can’t remake the world into one big happy neo-feudal marketplace without breaking a few proverbial eggs … and not just in those “terrorist” countries, but everywhere, throughout the global capitalist empire. And that is exactly what they intend to do. So, they needed a new official narrative to justify all the broken eggs.
They haven’t settled on an official slogan yet. “The New Normal,” “The Great Reset,” “The Green New Deal” … they’re all just trial balloons at this point. It doesn’t really matter what they call it. It amounts to a new type of totalitarianism. As I noted in my previous column, “[i]t isn’t national totalitarianism, because we’re living in a global capitalist empire, which isn’t ruled by nation-states, but rather, by supranational entities and the global capitalist system itself.” But it is totalitarianism nonetheless.
They aren’t hiding it. They’re spelling it out, not in spittle-flecked Hitlerian speeches, but, clearly, unmistakably, in corporate-speak. Here is Klaus Schwab, Chairman of the WEF:
“[T]he world must act jointly and swiftly to revamp all aspects of our societies and economies, from education to social contracts and working conditions. Every country, from the United States to China, must participate, and every industry, from oil and gas to tech, must be transformed. In short, we need a ‘Great Reset’ of capitalism.”
I added emphasis for those new to corp-speak. And, for those interested in reading more about Klaus Schwab, Winter Oak has published this disturbing profile, which you can also read on Cory Morningstar’s blog (along with a lot of other censored content).
Sorry … I was supposed to be writing about the final days of the Trumpian Reich, and I got all sidetracked with this GloboCap business. I hope you’ll forgive me for not being able to get all fired up about the election next week. Given everything else that is happening, and everything that has happened over the last four years, I’m just having a little trouble believing that there is any realistic scenario wherein GloboCap lets Trump serve a second term, regardless of who actually wins. So, that kind of takes all the suspense out of it.
Don’t worry, though, I’ll get back on the horse when the post-election rioting begins, and Donald Trump finally goes full-Hitler, declares himself Führer, dissolves the Congress, and orders his legions of Russia-loving white supremacists to start rounding up the Jews, as the corporate media, the fake “left” media, the Intelligence Community, the Democratic Party, fascism experts, Hollywood celebrities, and every hysterical liberal in existence have been promising he would since 2016.
Seriously, if he doesn’t go full-Hitler this time, and start rounding up and mass-murdering somebody, or else order the nuking of the United States and then blow his brains out in his underground bunker, some people are going to have some explaining to do.
#
Photos: (1) Build Back Better collage/Ian Jenkins; (2) Time Magazine/Twitter
Russia Rejects US Proposals on New START Verification, Ryabkov Says
By Irina Acheeva – Sputnik – 27.10.2020
Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin suggested extending the last arms control agreement between the United States and Russia for another year without any conditions, stressing that a world without the New START would be worryingly vulnerable.
Moscow maintains active dialogue on the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), but will not make any other concessions, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said.
Ryabkov further elaborated that Moscow does not accept the US proposal for verification within the framework of the New START.
“We have the full impression that the Americans do not need any agreements, they only need verification. And verification, in the way proposed by them, is, basically, to establish external control over the most sensitive elements of ensuring the entire systems of our national security. This is unacceptable for us”, the deputy minister said.
According to Ryabkov, Russia “cannot agree to such a proposal for higher reasons”.
“We said and continue to say that any agreement in this area is possible only where both interests are balanced, as a certain compromise. We are ready for this but see no indication that the US side is prepared to compromise. Therefore we conclude that attaining basic agreement in the present segment is, to put it mildly, doubtful”, the diplomat noted.
He added that Moscow is disappointed by the signs it sees from the US regarding an extension of the New START.
“We are having vigorous talks with the US on these issues. The signs we are getting from them disappoint us. The Americans do not seem to understand that we cannot implement proposals, when the US, rather than making requests, keeps piling on demand after demand”, Ryabkov said.
The statement comes after Russian Ambassador to the United States Anatoly Antonov said that Russia is urging the US to stop trying to bargain for benefits in the last days of the New START. Antonov also pointed out that Washington has bluntly rejected to prolong the treaty as it was signed without any conditions.
On 22 October, Russian President Vladimir Putin said “nothing bad will happen” if the New START gets extended for one year, as it would provide both sides with more time to find a compromise. US National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien has commented on Putin’s proposal calling it a “non-starter“.
The United States had previously suggested prolonging the treaty for one year if Moscow and Washington froze the number of their nuclear warheads during that period.
The New START that is set to expire in February 2021, is the last arms control agreement between the United States and Russia.
Leaked papers: UK ran secret training & PR op for Syrian militants costing millions, despite knowing risks
By Kit Klarenberg | RT | October 27, 2020
A swath of what appear to be secret Foreign & Commonwealth Office documents outline a multimillion-pound British effort to train rebel fighters in Syria via private companies, knowing but brushing off the risk of jihadist hijack.
The documents released by the hacktivist collective Anonymous appear to expose a variety of covert actions undertaken by the UK government against the Syrian state over many years.
The overriding objective behind them all, the papers suggest, was to destabilise the government of Bashar Assad, convince Syrians, Western citizens, foreign governments, and international bodies that the Free Syrian Army (FSA) was a legitimate alternative, and flood media the world over with pro-opposition propaganda.
The dimensions of the assorted information warfare operations implied in the papers, some of which have been detailed by the Grayzone Project, were vast. In a representative example, “social enterprise” firm ARK, founded by veteran Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) operative Alistair Harris, “rebranded” the Syrian Military Council, “softening the Free Syrian Army’s image” in order to “distinguish it from extremist armed opposition groups and establish the image of a functioning, inclusive, disciplined and professional military body.”
Training ‘credible and effective’ militants
At least one cog in this cloak and dagger connivance was overtly militant in nature. From August 2016, a consortium of private contractors ran a programme for the FCO, through which “training, equipment, and other forms of support” was provided to the FSA’s ‘Southern Front’ coalition, to “foster a negotiated political transition, support moderate structures and groups in opposition held areas of Syria, counter violent extremism and prevent the establishment of a terrorist safe-haven.”
Under its clandestine auspices, up to 600 belligerents were trained every year the operation ran, an indeterminate total – the endeavour was dubbed MAO B-FOR (Moderate Armed Opposition Border Force Capability Project), and forecast to cost the FCO £15,767,599.
B-FOR’s ‘statement of requirements’ document sets out in succinct detail Whitehall’s objectives in pursuing the project.
“The aim… is to generate pressure on the Assad regime and on extremists, in the south the country… If MAO border groups are better able to secure and maintain control of specific areas of responsibility across liberated near-border communities along Syria’s southern border with Jordan… the MAO will demonstrate its tangible value to the local and international community as an effective security actor… This will reinforce perceptions that there is a credible and effective moderate opposition able to provide support for an alternative pathway to political transition,” the project tender states.
In practical terms, fighters in “international borders under MAO control” and “areas bordering MAO control under the control of another entity or under no control” – the Jordan-Syria border being the FCO’s “current priority area” – were intended to be “better able to control their AOR [areas of responsibility] through effective use of relevant tactics, operations, equipment, infrastructure, and ability to react to a changing tactical situation.”
To this end, the UK government provided a “dedicated training site” in Jordan “at no cost” to project contractors. The site is situated 45 minutes from the Jordanian capital, Amman, according to an annotated Google Earth snapshot found among the leaked papers. The 600-acre expanse comprised “accommodation, ablution, dining, classrooms, driving track, outside rural environment areas, and open space for equipment storage solutions.” In particular, trainees were to be tutored in the effective use of AK-47s, PK machine guns, and pistols, with 175 fighters able to be accommodated on-site at a time, four weeks the maximum period they could be tutored there continuously.
Contractors were also asked to ensure the project took into account, among other things, Whitehall’s “policy toward gender” – a reflection, just like the tender’s references to “reinforcing perceptions,” of B-FOR’s strong psychological component.
‘Kill, Burn and Loot’
In response, global advisory firm Adam Smith International (ASI) apparently submitted an extensive proposal to the department, offering to head a consortium of contractors, comprised of Pilgrims Group, Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR), Oakas, and GlenGulf.
We have reached out to the companies for comment.
In terms of project roles, ASI – which according to the proposal had been operating in Syria since early 2013, and boasted “well over” 100 field staff in the country – was to provide “strategic stakeholder engagement, project management, project leadership positions, conflict research and analysis and monitoring and evaluation functions.” Pilgrims Group – said to have “supported a large number of media organisations operating in Ukraine” – was tasked with “training delivery, initial military skills assessment, training programme design.”
KBR – which has reaped untold millions from a variety of US conflicts, been embroiled in numerous high-profile scandals, and was reportedly nicknamed “Kill, Burn & Loot” by US marines during the Iraq War – had responsibility for “manning procurement and logistics functions,” including providing the facility’s “quartermaster, storemen and a liaison officer at the key port of entry for imported goods.” Oakas was to offer “bespoke training for MAO command elements (‘battle staffs’) on decision making and planning,” and GlenGulf the “provision of training to officers and commanders on human intelligence gathering and management.”
Excerpt from alleged ASI document
Accompanying project staff CVs reveal many individuals involved in B-FOR were senior UK military veterans, who all received sizeable three-figure per diem fees for their participation. For instance, its ranks included a former senior British military advisor to US Central Command, experience ASI claims granted him “in-depth knowledge” of the Syrian “context.”
US-backed rebel front collapses
Part of that context at the time would’ve been the virtual collapse of Southern Front as a serious fighting force. Formed in February 2014 at the behest of the US Military Operations Command (MOC) in Jordan, the Front was a coalition of 50-60 rebel groups. As ASI’s proposal notes, its constituent factions were “given various types of support from the MOC,” including “small arms, artillery, anti-tank guided missiles, ammunition, vehicles, communications equipment, and uniforms,” the Command also paying fighters’ salaries.
Washington’s largesse was fundamental in the Front scoring a series of victories over government forces throughout 2014 and the first half of the next year. In the process, it became the largest rebel umbrella organization in southern Syria, comprising 25-30,000 fighters, and challenging the political and military dominance of Salafist Al-Nusra, the region’s then-largest jihadist group. The mainstream media widely promoted the Front as Western leaders’ best hope of achieving a “moderate” Syrian “revolution” – despite many of its units frequently cooperating and collaborating with Al-Nusra.
However, an over-ambitious attempt by the Front to wrest the city of Deraa’s northern and eastern districts from government control in June 2015 ended in embarrassing failure. The cataclysm led to almost total cessation of MOC support, which in turn meant the Front lost much of its operational capabilities and many of its fighters, who defected in droves to other rebel groups offering salaries. Saudi Arabia subsequently stepped in to provide weapons and fresh funding to the ailing force – B-FOR represented London’s illicit contribution to keeping it functional, and ASI’s proposal makes clear the consortium well-understood the many risks attached to the project.
Risks known, responsibility offloaded
A lengthy section of ASI’s proposal – ‘oversight and management of threats and risks’ – details some of these myriad hazards, along with their likelihood and impact. It was considered highly probable, for instance, groups such as Al-Nusra and ISIS would interfere in the program, “due to perceptions of an ‘international political agenda’” – as a result, extremists “may seek to prevent trainees from joining or inhibit them from fulfilling their functions once trained via kidnap, assault and theft of equipment.”
The possibility that the consortium’s curated fighters may choose or be forced to join other, non-border force Southern Front operations, in turn “[leading] to a weakening of the border capability and perception of UK support to active military operations,” was rated as “medium.” Border force trainees collaborating with extremist actors and/or committing human rights abuses, in the process compromising “the legal and reputational viability of the programme,” was likewise considered of “medium” likelihood and impact.
ASI’s proposed method of dealing with these and other dangers was almost invariably to simply “transfer” responsibility for “owning and managing” the problem to the FCO itself, even suggesting the UK government must simply “tolerate” failings such as the loss of equipment “to a reasonable degree.”
It seems the FCO either acquiesced to shouldering the inherent burdens, or was intensely relaxed about such issues, for the consortium was duly awarded the B-FOR contract, judging by other papers found in the leak.
Non-Disclosure Agreements signed June 10, 2016 by the firms involved indicate they were obliged to adhere to the stringent confidentiality requirements of the 1911 and 1989 Official Secrets Acts, forbidding them from “disseminating any information related to the project to any third party.” Meticulous instructions for disposing of ‘secret’, ‘restricted’, and ‘confidential’ FCO communications were also included.
‘Jihadis You Pay For’
It’s uncertain how many years, or perhaps months, B-FOR endured. Its ‘statement of requirements’ forecast the project would “cover a period until 31st March 2019 with a clause for a breakpoint at the end of each financial year.”
However, in February 2017, a report by Parliament’s international development committee found ASI staff had submitted fake testimonials from aid recipients to a House of Commons inquiry into its activities, set up in response to allegations the firm had been seeking improper financial benefit from UK aid spending.
In response, DfID blocked the company from bidding on future government contracts, and the next month, ASI’s three founding executives resigned. Even more damningly, in December that year, a BBC Panorama documentary (Jihadis You Pay For) exposed how FCO cash ASI distributed in Syria had ended up in extremists’ pockets.
The investigation focused on the FCO’s Access to Justice and Community Security (AJACS) program, under which ASI funded and trained the Free Syria Police, an unarmed civilian force set up to re-establish law and order in opposition-controlled areas.
It found ASI had identified links between several FSP stations and sharia courts run by Al-Nusra and not ended its funding of the stations, or compelled them to sever all connections with the courts – FSP officers in theoretical receipt of FCO funds via ASI had also been present when women were stoned to death. Troublingly, ASI’s B-FOR pitch states its “experience and knowledge” of running AJACS will be “leveraged” to ensure optimal delivery of the border project.
Whether B-FOR was quietly shelved or simply handed over to other contractors in response to these damaging exposures is unknown. In any event, in July 2018, the Front was comprehensively crushed by pro-government forces, its surrendering fighters either agreeing to reconciliation deals or fleeing to Idlib.
It’s also unknown how many fighters trained via the program went on to join jihadist groups, and how much equipment was “lost” over the course of its operation, ending up in the hands of extremists and used to slaughter and maim innocent civilians. The companies running the operation, much less the UK government, certainly weren’t keeping count.
Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions. Follow Kit on Twitter @KitKlarenberg
Will US continue to further implement RAND Corporation’s strategy in relation to Russia?
By Lucas Leiroz | October 27, 2020
The recent conflicts in the Russian zone of influence have attracted attention around the world. But little has been said about the possibility that such conflicts are part of a single common plan, designed to geopolitically destabilize Russia. This possibility is what we can deduce when we recall some recent writings of the renowned think tank RAND Corporation, which, in 2019, openly defended the adoption of a series of measures to weaken Moscow, exploiting its vulnerabilities. Among such measures in the economic sphere the document proposed the manipulation of oil and gas prices that affect the Russian defense budget, as well as the imposition of increasingly rigid sanctions and in the political sphere – the spread of regional conflicts in its “periphery” which could perfectly include Nagorno-Karabakh, Kyrgyzstan and others.
Several of the points highlighted in the RAND’s document entitled “Overextending and Unbalancing Russia”, in its more than 350 pages, have been implemented so far, especially in the “immediate periphery”. The recent Belarusian political crisis itself, for example, highlights the role of external agents interested in the destabilization of this historic Russian ally – something that is openly defended in such a document which proposes a colorful revolution in Belarus. In addition, the incitement of conflicts in the Caucasus and Central Asia, the deterioration of the Syrian and Ukrainian situations, among others, are also strategic points raised by the dossier.
RAND’s goal is to define the areas where the US can compete most effectively, providing reports and proposals based on concrete data. Such reports must accurately define the vulnerabilities in the economic and military spheres of each nation against which the United States is competing, helping Washington to create its strategies. Several of the policies adopted by the US are the result of advices from RAND’s analysts. In this sense, RAND’s analysis about Russia and its draft strategy for a competition between the US and Russia today proposes that the best way to weaken Moscow is through a siege of conflicts in its territorial proximities. Obviously, it is not proposed to attack Russia, but to create wars along its entire border, destabilizing international security in the region – a scenario from which many other possibilities arise.
Despite all the complex political and military strategy, in the RAND document it is highlighted that the biggest Russian weakness in a dispute with the US is the economic issue. The think tank’s proposal focuses on heavy investment in energy production, mainly renewable energy, as well as encouraging domestic production of such energy sources in countries allied to the US, with the aim of reducing Russian exports – which would strongly affect Russian defense budgets. The central role of the US in the boycott against the construction of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline is a clear example of how such strategies are being put into practice.
Another type of measures that RAND recommends is in the ideological and informational spheres. The Corporation advises a vigorous pro-Western information campaign aimed at highlighting aspects allegedly present in the Russian regime, such as endemic corruption. In any case, RAND considers this disinformation strategy to be “risky”, as it would encourage Moscow to highlight the weaknesses of Western democracies, leading to a new ideological war through disinformation campaigns.
Interestingly, Russia is constantly accused of interfering in the American electoral process through campaigns of disinformation and cyber war since the rise of Donald Trump four years ago. Now, with the new elections, the tendency is for such accusations to grow exponentially, showing a strategy of mass disinformation meticulously planned by strategists with clear goals.
In fact, there is no doubt about the power of influence of RAND Corporation’s analysis in the construction of US foreign policy strategies. The siege that is being proposed in the document gradually materializes, with strategies of economic suffocation, disinformation and inciting regional conflicts, but it remains to be seen what the consequences for the US domestic scenario will be. The RAND report had no way of predicting the emergence of a global tragedy such as the new coronavirus pandemic. In the context of more than 220,000 deaths due to the virus in the US, popular rebellions and inflamed racial tensions across the country and in the midst of a decisive electoral process, will Washington be able to maintain such a siege strategy? Is it sustainable for the US to stir up conflict in the vicinity of Russia when its internal bases are crumbling?
Perhaps the strategies designed by RAND last year are absolutely useless today. The pandemic structurally changed the dynamics of world geopolitics and currently the idea of an American siege against Russia is not conceivable. The tendency is that all conflicts will diminish as no major military power will intervene. The situation in Nagorno-Karabakh shows how the tendency is for conflicts to gradually stabilize. On the contrary, within the US, everything just tends to get worse. Perhaps Washington is taking a step beyond its reach. Or perhaps the interests of strategists at RAND Corporation and the American Deep State do not exactly imply what is best for the US.
Lucas Leiroz is a research fellow in international law at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.
‘Pseudo-expert’: College dropout billionaire Bill Gates attacks Trump adviser Dr. Scott Atlas over Covid-19 stance
RT | October 26, 2020
Self-styled Covid-19 authority and Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates has weaponized media demands to “trust the science” to tear into Trump adviser (and actual medical doctor) Scott Atlas for not backing stricter Covid policies.
“We now have a pseudo-expert advising the president,” Gates snarled during an interview at Yahoo Finance’s All Markets Summit on Monday, denouncing Atlas – who, unlike the billionaire software tycoon, completed both college and medical school – as an “off the rails” bad influence on the Trump administration.
“The most malign thing is where you start to attack your own experts and suggest that maybe politicians know better than disease experts,” Gates continued. The billionaire is neither a politician nor a medical doctor, despite the vast sums he has spent through his Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and its affiliates in an effort to vaccinate the developing world. Atlas, on the other hand, has a medical degree from the University of Chicago and has taught healthcare policy at Stanford University’s Hoover Institute.
While Gates’s words might seem to apply to his own denunciation of Atlas, the billionaire meant them as a condemnation of the Trump administration over its alleged line-by-line tweaks to health guidelines issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in May. He has bemoaned the “politicization” of both the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for months, blaming the White House for both their loss of public trust and unspecified yet “very unfortunate” setbacks to the rollout of a Covid-19 vaccine.
However, medical experts have insisted for years that both institutions were co-opted long ago by the pharmaceutical industry, of which Gates is both a significant funder and a well-remunerated beneficiary.
Yahoo (and other media organizations, many of which have received and avoided disclosing funding from Gates’ foundations) have almost universally backed the avuncular software tycoon in his dispute with Atlas, suggesting it is the trained medical expert who stepped out of his place in dissenting from prevailing orthodoxy. Forbes even called Atlas a “bad scientist” for not deferring to Gates’ favorite expert, US corona czar Dr. Anthony Fauci.
Atlas has long been seen as a thorn in the side of Gates and his ideological cheerleaders for his refusal to toe the lockdown line, however. A tweet “falsely” downplaying the effectiveness of masks and an article warning the US’ pandemic-related economic shutdowns will have lasting consequences far worse than the deaths thus far attributed to the virus have been held up as proof Atlas knows not of what he speaks – even as experts in other countries have echoed his economic concerns and the science remains far from settled on masks.
Since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, Gates has been hailed by the media as a venerable expert on viral outbreaks for a 2015 Ted Talk in which he bemoaned the lack of epidemic preparedness among the world’s governments. However, Gates was far from the only person to predict a pandemic (or the societal upheaval it would trigger).
The Rockefeller Foundation, along with the Global Business Network, predicted in a 2010 “scenario” that a devastating viral outbreak would bring about an authoritarian crackdown, devastating entire industries while making totalitarianism palatable to the populations of previously democratic countries. And Fauci himself predicted in 2017 that Trump’s administration would be faced with a deadly pandemic it was unprepared for. The US military and private sector partners have also run several simulations of major pandemics, each time finding (yet never doing much to fix) that the government is woefully unprepared.
WHO Taps ‘Anti-Conspiracy’ Crusader to Sway Public Opinion on COVID Vaccine
By Jeremy Loffredo | Children’s Health Defense | October 23, 2020
An outspoken proponent of government-led tactics to influence public opinion on policy and to undermine the credibility of “conspiracy theorists” will lead the World Health Organization’s (WHO) efforts to encourage public acceptance of a COVID-19 vaccine, Children’s Health Defense has learned.
Last week, WHO’s general director, Dr. Tedros Ghebreyesus, tweeted that he was glad to speak with the organization’s Technical Advisory Group (TAG) on Behavioural Insights and Sciences for Health to “discuss vaccine acceptance and uptake in the context of COVID-19.”
In his next tweet Ghebreyesus announced that Cass Sunstein, founder and director of the Program on Behavioral Economics and Public Policy at Harvard Law School, will chair the advisory group, which was created in July.
Sunstein was former President Barack Obama’s head of Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs where he was responsible for overseeing policies relating to information quality.
In 2008, Sunstein wrote a paper proposing that governments employ teams of covert agents to “cognitively infiltrate” online dissident groups and websites which advocate “false conspiracy theories” about the government. In the paper, Sunstein and his co-authors wrote:
“Our principal claim here involves the potential value of cognitive infiltration of extremist groups, designed to introduce informational diversity into such groups and to expose indefensible conspiracy theories as such.”
The government-led operations described in Sunstein’s paper would work to increase faith in government policy and policymakers and undermine the credibility of “conspiracists” who question their motives. They would also maintain a vigorous “counter misinformation establishment” to counter “conspiracy” groups opposed to government policies that aim to protect the common good.
Some of this would be accomplished by sending undercover agents, or government-paid third parties, into “online social networks or even real space groups.”
Sunstein also advocated in 2008 that the government pay “independent experts” to publicly advocate on the government’s behalf, whether on television or social media. He says this is effective because people don’t trust the government as much as they trust people they believe are “independent.”
WHO has already contracted the public relations firm, Hill + Knowlton. The PR giant, best known for its role in manufacturing false testimonies in support of the Gulf War, was hired by WHO to “ensure the science and public health credibility of the WHO in order to ensure WHO’s advice and guidance is followed.”
WHO paid Hill + Knowlton $135,000 to identify micro-influencers, macro-influencers and “hidden heroes” who could covertly promote WHO’s advice and messaging on social media, and also protect and promote the organization’s image as a COVID-19 authority.
There’s no evidence that WHO has yet implemented any “cognitive infiltration” policies similar to what Sunstein advocated in 2008. If the organization were to adopt such a strategy, and use it to convince hesitant populations to take a COVID vaccine, it would raise questions of legality.
As put forward in a report by the Congressional Research Service, illegal “publicity or propaganda” is defined by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) to mean either (1) self-aggrandizement by public officials; (2) purely partisan activity; or (3) “covert propaganda.” By covert propaganda, GAO means information which originates from the government but is unattributed and made to appear as though it came from a third party.
Because WHO is a multinational organization and not a U.S. Government agency, covert “cognitive infiltration” policies could fall into a gray area, or even be considered legal.
Dr. Margaret Chan, former general-director of WHO, once stated that the organization’s policies are “driven by what [she called] donor interests.”
According to a 2012 article in Foreign Affairs, “few policy initiatives or normative standards set by the WHO are announced before they have been casually, unofficially vetted by Gates Foundation staff.” Or, as other sources told Politico in 2017, “Gates’ priorities have become the WHO’s.”
WHO’s current general director, Ghebreyesus, was previously on the board of two organizations that Gates founded, provided seed money for and continues to fund to this day: GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance, a public–private global health partnership focused on increased access to vaccines in poor countries, and the Global Fund, which says it aims to accelerate the “development, production and equitable global access to safe, quality, effective, and affordable COVID-19 diagnostics, therapeutics and vaccines.”
If, as Politico put it, “Gates priorities have become the WHO’s,” and if WHO’s policies are driven by “donor interests,” this raises questions as to what online groups, people and websites would be targeted by such covert programs.
The idea of government agents carrying out psychological operations on social media is not far fetched. Earlier this year the head of editorial for Twitter’s Middle East and Africa office was outed as an active officer in the British Army’s psychological warfare unit, known as the 77th brigade, which specializes in online behavioral change operations.
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Whoever wins the US presidency the pressure on Venezuela will continue: Scholar
Press TV | October 26, 2020
Whoever wins the presidency on November 3 election in the United States the pressure on Venezuela will continue, an American human rights expert and peace activist says.
Daniel Kovalik, who teaches international human rights at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law in the state of Pennsylvania, made the remarks in an interview with Press TV on Monday.
In Venezuela, many say US presidential candidates Donald Trump and Joe Biden represent the same threat against peace in the world, especially in Latin America. They believe whoever the winner is, the South American country will go on fighting against illegal US sanctions.
“In terms of Venezuela they’re certainly correct that whoever wins the presidency whether Joe Biden or Donald Trump the pressure on Venezuela will continue in the form of sanctions and other provocations,” Kovalik told Press TV on Monday.
“You have to remember in fact that it was Obama that began the sanctions regime against Venezuela when Joe Biden was Vice President,” he said.
“And in terms of resisting, it’s critical that Venezuela continue to resist this pressure and hold firm. I think it gives courage to other countries around the world like Iran, North Korea, Nicaragua, Cuba that are also under pressure by the US – pressure to change their governments,” he added.
“We see what happened in Bolivia recently with the election, which voted out the coup government after a year. And I think that’s given a lot of hope to people. So I, you know, Venezuela has to hold on tight, regardless of who wins the US election,” he concluded.
Venezuelans claim that US presidential election will not improve the foreign policy of the United States toward other nations, including those in Latin America, as this region is regarded by Washington as its political backyard.
Whether Republican Trump is re-elected or his Democratic rival Biden emerges victorious, Venezuelans affirm that the meddlesome and aggressive US policy against the Bolivarian Republic will not cease as both politicians belong to a political system that characterizes US imperialism. Venezuelans say Trump and Biden are the same in political terms.
Regarding the US sanctions, experts believe they won’t be lifted if Biden wins the Presidency. In spite of the US savage policies against Venezuela, people seem to be hopeful about a better future.
Observers say Democrats and Republicans in Washington have both led hostile policies against Latin American, Venezuelans say no matter who wins the US Presidency, the hostility will go on but Venezuelans won’t surrender.
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From the Archives
Examples of hate speech by Israel against Palestine
1. “There is a huge gap between us (Jews) and our enemies, not just in ability but in morality, culture, sanctity of life, and conscience. They are our neighbors here, but it seems as if at a distance of a few hundred meters away, there are people who do not belong to our continent, to our world, but actually belong to a different galaxy.” Israeli president Moshe Katsav. The Jerusalem Post, May 10, 2001
2. “The Palestinians are like crocodiles, the more you give them meat, they want more”…. Ehud Barak, Prime Minister of Israel at the time – August 28, 2000. Reported in the Jerusalem Post, August 30, 2000
3. ” [The Palestinians are] beasts walking on two legs.” Menahim Begin, speech to the Knesset, quoted in Amnon Kapeliouk, “Begin and the Beasts”. New Statesman, 25 June 1982.
4. “The Palestinians” would be crushed like grasshoppers … heads smashed against the boulders and walls.” Isreali Prime Minister (at the time) in a speech to Jewish settlers New York Times April 1, 1988
5. “When we have settled the land, all the Arabs will be able to do about it will be to scurry around like drugged cockroaches in a bottle.” Raphael Eitan, Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defence Forces, New York Times, 14 April 1983.
6. “How can we return the occupied territories? There is nobody to return them to.” Golda Maier, March 8, 1969.
… Continue
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