theamericanconservative |What do you call a civilian law
professor who, after successfully filing for federal whistleblower
status to keep his job teaching at West Point Military Academy, proceeds
to write a bombshell book about the systematic corruption, violence,
fraud, and anti-intellectualism he says has been rampant at the historic
institution for over a hundred years?
Well, if you are part of the military leadership or an alumnus of the storied military academy, you may call him a traitor.
But
if you are anyone searching for reasons why the most powerful military
in the world has not won a war in 75 years, you might call him a
truth-teller. And a pretty brave one at that.
Tim Bakken’s The Cost of Loyalty: Dishonesty, Hubris and Failure in the U.S. Militaryis
set for release tomorrow, and it should land like a grenade. Unlike the
myriad critiques of the military that wash over the institution from
outside the Blob, this one is written by a professor with 20 years on
the inside. He knows the instructors, the culture, the admissions
process, the scandals, the cover-ups, and how its legendary
“warrior-scholars” have performed after graduation and on the
battlefield.
Bakken’s
prognosis: the military as an institution has become so separate, so
insulated, so authoritarian, that it can no longer perform effectively.
In fact, it’s worse: the very nature of this beast is that it has been
able to grow exponentially in size and mission so that it now conducts
destructive expeditionary wars overseas with little or no real cohesive
strategy or oversight. Its huge budgets are a source of corporate grift,
self-justification, and corruption. The military has become too big,
yes, but as Bakkan puts it, it’s failing in every way possible.
In
addition to losing wars, “the military’s loyalty to itself and
determined separation from society have produced an authoritarian
institution that is contributing to the erosion of American democracy,”
writes Bakkan, who is still, we emphasize, teaching at the school. “The
hubris, arrogance, and self-righteousness of officers have isolated the
military from modern thinking and mores. As a result, the military
operates in an intellectual fog, relying on philosophy and practices
that literally originated at West Point two hundred years ago.”
Tom Dispatch | When Smedley Butler retired in 1931, he was one of three Marine Corps
major generals holding a rank just below that of only the Marine
commandant and the Army chief of staff. Today, with about 900 generals
and admirals currently serving
on active duty, including 24 major generals in the Marine Corps alone,
and with scores of flag officers retiring annually, not a single one has
offered genuine public opposition to almost 19 years worth of
ill-advised, remarkably unsuccessful American wars. As for the most
senior officers, the 40 four-star generals and admirals whose vocal
antimilitarism might make the biggest splash, there are more
of them today than there were even at the height of the Vietnam War,
although the active military is now about half the size it was then.
Adulated as many of them may be, however, not one qualifies as a public
critic of today’s failing wars.
Instead, the principal patriotic dissent against those terror wars
has come from retired colonels, lieutenant colonels, and occasionally
more junior officers (like me), as well as enlisted service members. Not
that there are many of us to speak of either. I consider it disturbing
(and so should you) that I personally know just about every one of the
retired military figures who has spoken out against America’s forever
wars.
The big three are Secretary of State Colin Powell’s former chief of staff, retired Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson; Vietnam veteran and onetime West Point history instructor, retired Colonel Andrew Bacevich; and Iraq veteran and Afghan War whistleblower, retired Lieutenant Colonel Danny Davis.
All three have proven to be genuine public servants, poignant voices,
and -- on some level -- cherished personal mentors. For better or worse,
however, none carry the potential clout of a retired senior theater
commander or prominent four-star general offering the same critiques.
Something must account for veteran dissenters topping out at the
level of colonel. Obviously, there are personal reasons why individual
officers chose early retirement or didn’t make general or admiral.
Still, the system for selecting flag officers should raise at least a
few questions when it comes to the lack of antiwar voices among retired
commanders. In fact, a selection committee of top generals and admirals
is appointed each year to choose the next colonels to earn their first
star. And perhaps you won’t be surprised to learn that, according to
numerous reports,
“the members of this board are inclined, if not explicitly motivated,
to seek candidates in their own image -- officers whose careers look
like theirs.” At a minimal level, such a system is hardly built to
foster free thinkers, no less breed potential dissidents.
Consider it an irony of sorts that this system first received criticism in our era of forever wars when General David Petraeus, then commanding the highly publicized “surge”
in Iraq, had to leave that theater of war in 2007 to serve as the chair
of that selection committee. The reason: he wanted to ensure that a
twice passed-over colonel, a protégé of his -- future Trump National
Security Advisor H.R. McMaster -- earned his star.
Mainstream national security analysts reported on this affair at the
time as if it were a major scandal, since most of them were convinced
that Petraeus and his vaunted counterinsurgency or “COINdinista" protégés and their "new"
war-fighting doctrine had the magic touch that would turn around the
failing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In fact, Petraeus tried to apply
those very tactics twice -- once in each country -- as did acolytes of
his later, and you know the results of that.
But here’s the point: it took an eleventh-hour intervention by
America’s most acclaimed general of that moment to get new stars handed
out to prominent colonels who had, until then, been stonewalled by Cold
War-bred flag officers because they were promoting different (but also
strangely familiar) tactics in this country’s wars. Imagine, then, how
likely it would be for such a leadership system to produce genuine
dissenters with stars of any serious sort, no less a crew of future
Smedley Butlers.
At the roots of this system lay the obsession of the American officer corps with “professionalization" after the Vietnam War debacle. This first manifested itself in a decision to ditch the citizen-soldier tradition, end the draft, and create an “all-volunteer force.” The elimination of conscription, as predicted by critics at the time, created an ever-growing civil-military divide, even as it increased public apathy regarding America’s wars by erasing whatever “skin in the game" most citizens had.
More than just helping to squelch civilian antiwar activism, though,
the professionalization of the military, and of the officer corps in
particular, ensured that any future Smedley Butlers would be left in the
dust (or in retirement at the level of lieutenant colonel or colonel)
by a system geared to producing faux warrior-monks. Typical of such
figures is current chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Army General
Mark Milley. He may speak gruffly and look like a man with a head of his own, but typically he’s turned out to be just another yes-man for another war-power-hungry president.
One group of generals, however, reportedly
now does have it out for President Trump -- but not because they’re
opposed to endless war. Rather, they reportedly think that The Donald
doesn't “listen enough to military advice” on, you know, how to wage war
forever and a day.
libertyblitzkreig |“Happy 18th Birthday! Meet your new Daddy,” read one
website advertisement. “Do you have strong oral skills? We’ve got a job
for you!” cooed another.
A message on another billboard directed at the “daddies”
was more blunt: “The alternative to escorts. Desperate women will do
anything”…
SeekingArrangement was founded by Las Vegas tech tycoon
Brandon Wade. Wade is apparently worth somewhere in the neighborhood of
$40 million. His motto is, “Love is a concept invented by poor people”…
SA also markets itself as an antidote to student debt. In
the U.S. and elsewhere, college students are enduring financial
instability and hardship. Because of rising college fees and rent, and
the lack of time available for work during studies, many women are
extremely vulnerable to exploitation. “SeekingArrangement.com has helped
facilitate hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of arrangements that
have helped students graduate debt-free,” Wade boasts on the website.
Promotional videos show young, beautiful women enrolled in “Sugar Baby
University” — in classrooms, holding wads of cash, driving luxury cars,
and discussing the pleasure and ease of being a sugar baby.
When signing up for an account, potential sugar babies are told, “Tip: Using a .edu email address earns you a free upgrade!”
When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a
society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal
system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.
medium | The
billionaire class has to buy up narrative control because there is
nothing about plutocracy that is sane or healthy; people would never
knowingly consent to it unless they were manipulated into doing so.
Because power is relative, and because money is power in a plutocracy,
plutocrats are naturally incentivized to maintain a system where
everyone else is kept as poor as possible so that they can have as much
relative power as possible. A glance at what the
Sanders campaign has been able to accomplish just with small-dollar
donations and grassroots support gives you some insight into why these
plutocrats want people working long, exhausting hours with as little
spare income as possible.
Nobody would ever knowingly consent to being kept poor and busy just so some billionaires can live as modern-day kings,
so they need to be propagandized into it via narrative manipulation. If
you’ve ever wondered why it seems like the news man is always lying to
you, that’s why.
Whenever
I write about the power of plutocratic propaganda, I always get people
saying I’m just a conspiracy theorist (and that I have an awful
addiction to alliteration). They argue that sure, it’s possible to
influence public opinion a bit, but people are free agents and they make
up their own minds based on any number of potential factors, so it’s
silly to focus on media manipulation as the underlying cause of all the
world’s ills.
Oh
yeah? If people can’t be manipulated by the wealthy into supporting
agendas which don’t benefit them, how come a billionaire presidential
candidate was able to quadruple or quintuple his polling numbers in three months just by throwing money at them?
And that’s just one agenda of just one billionaire. There are 607 billionaires in the United States. And none of them are interested in giving up their plutocratic throne.
BAR | Bloomberg threw his hat and billions into the race when it became
clear that corporate surrogates Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg could not
be depended on to halt Bernie Sanders, the purported socialist who now
leads the Democratic pack. Joe Biden’s aura of electability, which was
always a media-invented mirage, evaporated when he collapsed into the
basement in Iowa and New Hampshire. The Black voters of South Carolina
are his only hope for resurrection. But Blacks don’t back Biden for
ideological reasons, or even on the strength of his service as Barack
Obama’s number two. Older (and scarier) African Americans were under the
impression that Biden was the Democrat best equipped to beat Trump –
but it turns out he can’t even beat previously unknown Democrats.
“Joe Biden’s aura of electability, which was always a
media-invented mirage, evaporated when he collapsed into the basement in
Iowa and New Hampshire.”
Some of those Black Biden supporters will now switch to Bloomberg,
believing he is the one Democrat rich enough to drown Trump in November.
Blacks don’t vote their own ideological preferences in Democratic
primaries. Rather, many will support whomever they perceive as the
strongest opponent against the White Man’s Party, the Republicans. That
invariably means the Democrat favored by corporations and their media.
Thus, the duopoly system effectively negates the core political
aspirations of Black America, the most left-leaning constituency in the
nation. The duopoly is a trap that neutralizes independent, progressive
Black politics – a mechanism to force Blacks to vote their fears, rather
than their aspirations.
However, as BAR senior columnist Margaret Kimberley points out in this issue,
there are threats to Black lives and rights even worse than the flaming
orange racist now squatting in the White House. As three-term mayor of
New York City, Bloomberg increased the frequency of his predecessor
Rudolph Giuliani’s stop-and-frisks by 700 percent.
Although real estate magnate Donald Trump infamously called for the
death penalty for the Central Park Five, it was Mayor Bloomberg who for
years delayed payment of
a $41 million settlement to the grievously wronged young Black men. And
Bloomberg was the nation’s most aggressive, unrepentant ethnic
cleanser, gleefully removing more Black and brown people from the city’s
five boroughs than any of his predecessors.
“The duopoly is a mechanism to force Blacks to vote their fears, rather than their aspirations.”
unz |But perhaps the most shocking decision made by MoMA was to name a new gallery
in its $400 million dollar expansion after Glenn Dubin, another trustee
and a Wall Street figure who has been accused by multiple people under
oath of being a child-molester who aided Jeffrey Epstein. MoMA, for all
the “wokeness” Jews and feminist whackjobs who specialize in peddling
abstract art promote, has refused to break their ties to benefactor
Dubin. Democratic Presidential contender Pete Buttigieg has also ignored calls to return donations from Dubin and his wife.
In
the plutocratic hedonistic tyranny of America, it is more controversial
to be an associate of an accused “Nazi” than it is to be closely linked
to an international trafficker of kids.
Glenn Dubin, Accused Child Rapist
Dubin’s
relationship to now deceased co-tribal Jeffrey Epstein is disturbingly
intimate. Dubin’s current wife, a Swedish social climber named Eva
Andersson, got her start as a 17-year-old model in New York City who
later became Jeffrey Epstein’s girlfriend by 1981. Epstein and Andersson
were together until he met Ghislaine Maxwell in 1991, and he personally
paid for her to attend medical school.
By 1994, Andersson got married to Dubin, but continued to speak
to Epstein every day on the phone, allowing her to become ingratiated
in his network of Jewish criminals and powerful Gentile servants.
Epstein also became closely acquainted with Dubin, and was considered a
“godfather” to the family’s children.
Epstein had a special eye for one of the Dubin children, Celina, who he personally mentored since the age of 12. The Palm Beach Postreported
after Epstein’s death that at the age of 61 he even tried to marry
19-year-old Celina, who for years referred to him as “Uncle Jeff.” The
dynamic between Epstein and Glenn Dubin, the latter who apparently had
no issue with his wife’s ex-boyfriend not only hanging around but
wanting to prey on his daughter, is peculiar to say the least.
Dubin’s
Highbridge Capital and Epstein tossed big money back and fourth to each
other in the stock market for years, but the real controversy Dubin
finds himself in is in relation to the lawsuit put into motion by former
Epstein child sex-slave, Virginia Giuffre. According to her 2016
deposition, Giuffre alleged that Dubin was the first man she was forced to have sex with after being recruited at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort by Maxwell at the age of 15.
Her implication of Dubin was substantiated by testimony
from his butler, Rinaldo Rizzo and his chef wife. According to Rizzo’s
tearful account of events, he and his wife often saw random underage
girls coming in and out of the Dubin residence. In one incident, Eva
Andersson brought a 15-year-old Swedish girl into the kitchen claiming
that she was a new au pair, and briefly left her alone with Rizzo. The
house manager made casual small talk, asking her what she did for the
Dubins, only to get the answer that she was Dubin’s “personal
assistant.”
Rizzo
did not believe it, as the girl was 15. When he pressed her on the
topic, she began to shake uncontrollably and cry, admitting that she was
being raped but was being threatened by Maxwell and Epstein into
silence.
Rizzo
and his wife soon quit their job in indignation following this
exchange, even though Rizzo was a longtime employee of the Dubins.
Who
but the rich and Jew-connected could retain their position as a
prominent internist at Mount Sinai Hospital or on the medical facility’s
board (which Dubin retains) after being merely accused of such monstrous behavior? Dr. Eva Andersson continues to work at the Dubin Breast Center at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City since it is financed by her husband, partially with Epstein’s money.
Compare
the insolence of continuing to give leadership roles and honorable
titles to the sullied names of this Jewish billionaire and his wife at a
hospital where hundreds of thousands women and girls pass through with
the phony outrage performed by St. Judes Hospital when they returned a
$27,000 dollar donation from Ethan Ralph and his fans because the Wall Street Journal called them “racist.” Virtue signaling is an oligarchy’s Fabreze to mask true moral stink – the more flowery it smells, the more extreme the rot.
WaPo |Julia
Azari is an associate professor and assistant chair in the Department
of Political Science at Marquette University. This is the third op-ed in
a series about how to improve the presidential nominating process.
Only
a fraction of the Democratic primary electorate has voted so far, but
the nomination season is off to a rocky start. Independent Bernie
Sanders seems to be leading in popular votes, while upstart Pete Buttigieg is ahead in the delegate count.
And there’s also the question of whether either one — or any of the
other candidates — can bring the party together moving forward.
The
current process is clearly flawed, but what would be better? Finding an
answer means thinking about the purpose of presidential nominations,
and about how the existing system falls short. It will require swimming
against the tide of how we’ve thought about nominations for decades — as
a contest between everyday voters and elites, or as a smaller version
of a general election. A better primary system would empower elites to
bargain and make decisions, instructed by voters.
One lesson from the 2020 and 2016 election cycles is that a lot of
candidates, many of whom are highly qualified and attract substantial
followings, will inevitably enter the race. The system as it works now —
with a long informal primary, lots of attention to early contests and
sequential primary season that unfolds over several months — is great at
testing candidates to see whether they have the skills to run for
president. What it’s not great at is choosing among the many
candidates who clear that bar, or bringing their different ideological
factions together, or reconciling competing priorities. A process in
which intermediate representatives — elected delegates who understand
the priorities of their constituents — can bargain without being bound
to specific candidates might actually produce nominees that better
reflect what voters want.
wsws | In an appearance Monday on ABC’s “The View” program, the prominent black
Democrat Stacey Abrams brushed aside the right-wing, racist record of
Democratic presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg, telling the show’s
hosts that the billionaire oligarch’s entry into the race was positive
since “for once we actually know where the money is coming from.”
The former New York City mayor, who served two terms as a Republican
and one as an independent, and who backed George W. Bush in 2004, has
pumped hundreds of millions of dollars from his $60 billion fortune into
his campaign to win the Democratic Party’s nomination for president, or
at least secure enough delegates to block Vermont Senator Bernie
Sanders at the party’s nominating convention in July.
Asked whether she thought it was an issue that Bloomberg was spending
hundreds of millions of dollars to buy a frontrunner spot in the
primary elections, Abrams replied that this was no different than a
candidate using his or her pet on the campaign trail to attract voters.
“Every person is allowed to run and should run the race that they
think they should run, and Mike Bloomberg has chosen to use his
finances. Other people are using their dog, their charisma, their
whatever,” she said. “I think it’s an appropriate question to raise. But
I don’t think it’s disqualifying for anyone to invest in fixing
America.”
She was also asked about the fact that her political action
committee, Fair Fight Action, had received $5 million from Bloomberg,
the largest donation the group has received since it was founded in
2018. Queried as to whether the donation had any influence on her
political views, she replied, “I am grateful to any person who
contributes to Fair Fight. We have more than one hundred thousand
contributors. His check just had a few more zeros on it.”
Bloomberg met with Abrams in Atlanta in January and gave a closed-door speech to a voting rights summit that she hosted.
The minority leader of the Georgia House of Representatives from 2011
to 2017 and defeated 2018 gubernatorial candidate, Abrams is widely
seen as a leading pick for vice president by whichever candidate wins
the Democratic nomination. She has been courted by former Vice President
Joe Biden, who raised her name as a possible running mate in November.
NYPost | Mike Bloomberg’s millions in campaign spending flew right out the window Wednesday night.
The billionaire’s self-bankrolled presidential bid was torn to shreds in the opening minutes
of Wednesday’s Democratic debate as his opponents skewered him for his
checkered past on sexual harassment and his record on stop-and-frisk.
Each candidate on the Las Vegas stage attacked Bloomberg right out of the gate, and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren made the former Big Apple mayor visibly squirm and roll his eyes in frustration.
“I’d like to talk about who we’re running against, a billionaire who
calls women ‘fat broads’ and ‘horse-faced lesbians,'” she said from the
Paris Theater.
“And, no, I’m not talking about Donald Trump. I’m talking about Mayor Bloomberg.”
Bloomberg, 78, started to surge in national and state polls
after pouring hundreds of millions of dollars of his personal fortune
into a slick campaign with catered campaign events and wall-to-wall TV
ads.
wired | When the notorious online forum 8chan was forced off the internet in August, after being linked to acts of violence including the Christchurch shooting, it looked like a blow to the Qanon
conspiracy movement, which had made 8chan its virtual home. Rather than
fade away, though, 8chan's Qanon posters migrated to other platforms,
where they’re still trying to use social media to influence elections.
The
two most popular new homes for Qanon followers are Endchan and 8chan's
successor 8kun. In late 2019, Qanon followers on Endchan used Twitter to
influence governors' races in Kentucky and Louisiana, posting tweets
and memes in favor of Republican candidates and attacking their
opponents. They analyzed social media conversations, including popular
hashtags, to decide where and how to weigh in. Both Republicans lost in
close elections. Now, Qanon adherents are employing the same tactics on
the 2020 presidential race.
"We need memes that are funny and
mocking of the democrat candidates, but also that are informative and
revealing about their policies that are WRONG for the United States of
America and the American people,” wrote a poster in a thread titled
"Meme War 2020" on 8kun in November 2019. “We also need memes that are
PRO-TRUMP, that explain how his policies are RIGHT for the United States
of America and the American people, and that can debunk the smears and
attacks that are no doubt going to come at POTUS.. again, and again."
Qanon followers have cultivated connections over social media with key Trump allies. President Trump himself has retweeted Qanon-linked accounts at least 72 times, including 20 times in one day
in December 2019. Other influential Trump allies also promoted
Qanon-linked accounts. For example, on December 23, Trump's personal
lawyer Rudy Giuliani retweeted @QAnonWomen4Rudy (the bio of which reads "Patriotic Ladies supporting the sexiest man alive").
The Qanon conspiracy theory
is based on the belief that Trump and a mysterious individual known as
“Q” are battling against a powerful cabal of elite pedophiles in the
media and Democratic Party. Q supposedly communicated with their
followers through encoded posts known as ”Q drops” on the
quasi-anonymous forum 8chan. After 8chan was taken down, Q, or someone
using the Q persona, resumed posting on 8kun.
Beginning
early last year, Qanon followers more explicitly embraced concepts of
“information warfare,” efforts to shape narratives and people’s beliefs
to influence events. The Russian interference in the US elections in
2016 has been described
as information warfare. In a February 2019 thread titled "Welcome to
Information Warfare" on Endchan's Qanon research forum, a poster
exhorted fellow users to "[g]et ready for a new phase in the battle
anons: the fight to take back the narrative from the [mainstream
media].” Now, Qanon users are trying to wield the same tactics to shape
the political narrative for 2020.
americanthinker |We’re
living in dramatic times that are difficult to understand. One way to
try to interpret them is through the cryptic clues provided by Q, which
appear on an anonymous online forum and imply top-secret knowledge of
upcoming events.
As I wrote in my article
“An Introduction to Q,” “Q’s followers believe that Q is a military
intelligence operation, the first of its kind, whose goal is to provide
the public with secret information… Q is a new weapon in the game of
information warfare, bypassing a hostile media and corrupt government to
communicate directly with the public.” It’s interesting to note that
shortly after my article was published here, American Thinker suffered a
series of unprecedented hacking
attempts. Also noteworthy is that Twitter permanently shut down the
account of Zero Hedge, a popular finance blog, two weeks after it posted
my article.
President Trump continues to bring attention
to Q, repeatedly retweeting Q followers, featuring Q fans in his ad
campaign, and making a public display of a “Q baby” at a rally. Yet the
media never asks Trump the obvious question: What do you think about Q?
Instead,
the media keeps ratcheting up its attacks on Q and the ever-growing
worldwide movement that Q inspires. On February 9, both the AP and New York Times published
blistering anti-Q articles, claiming that Q promotes baseless, debunked
far right conspiracies and accusing Q of inciting violence in deranged
followers. The day before this latest media ambush, a massive cyber
assault temporarily brought down 8kun, the message board on which Q
posts. Ron Watkins, 8kun’s administrator, tweeted,
“Attacks
have been coming in all day. Very sophisticated and expensive attacks;
the person paying for this likely has deep pockets.”
At
the same time that 8kun was attacked, X22 Report, which covers Q
postings, also was bombarded. On its Twitter feed, the site wrote it was
“being attacked from 54 different countries using hundreds of different
IP addresses, I have never seen anything like it.”
On
February 12, in response to these events, Q posted, “Highly
sophisticated ‘State-level’ attacks [v 8kun] followed by FAKE NEWS
attacks [v Q] the next day? Coordinated? Ask yourself a simple question -
- why? It’s time to wake up.”
In
almost 4,000 posts, Q has painted a disturbing, multi-faceted portrait
of a global crime syndicate that operates with impunity.
asiamediacentre | As a former daily newspaper editor in China, I have learnt how to
identify useful hidden information from the lengthy official statements.
Unfortunately, this is not a skill that everyone gets the opportunity
to develop.
I still remember when, at the beginning of 1997, a
series of official statements on Deng Xiaoping’s health situation was
delivered by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the PRC.
As a high
school student at that time, I noticed there was something unusual
behind the wording of the last statement, ‘As an older man in his
nineties, his (Deng Xiaoping’s) health situation is still okay’.
On 19 February 1997, Deng's death was announced.
Ordinary
people should not be expected to have text analysis skills to read
between the lines of news reports in any given scenario. But in this
case, my background and abilities helped my family escape from
uncertainty and threats we might have encountered had we not left China
early.
In the official language system, what has been emphasised
is what has been missing and needs to be solved. Below is another
example.
On 3 February 2020, President Xi Jinping held a PRC Politburo Standing Committee meeting. News coverage from the official Xinhua News Agency, shows four key points were emphasised:
– Stop the spread of the virus
– Local governments must strictly follow orders and instructions from the central government.
– Focus on the key areas, which include Wuhan and other cities in Hubei Province.
– Do everything possible to save the infected patients, reduce the infection rate and mortality rate.
There was no sign of optimism in the report.
Ten
days after that meeting, Jiang Chaoliang, the Communist Party Secretary
of Hubei Province was sacked; as was Ma Guoqiang, the Communist Party
Secretary of Wuhan City.
It’s almost impossible to know when this indirect style of official statements was established in China. But if anyone
wants to figure out what’s really going on, they should try analyse
changes in the official text rather than pouring over social media.
quartz | A video intended as a tribute to China’s female medical
workers backfired as people instead vented their frustration over the
way Chinese state-owned media outlets use women as tools for propaganda.
The video,
posted by Gansu Daily, a government-owned newspaper in Gansu province,
showed over a dozen mask-wearing female nurses, who were weeping as
their hair was shaved off. They were about to be sent to Hubei, the
Chinese province worst hit by the coronavirus, where they would help
treat patients. The video attempted to paint the women as “the most
beautiful warriors” who fight the epidemic, praising their bravery as
they sacrificed their hair so they could better wear protective gear
when treating patients. But instead, the video was met with largely
angry comments on China’s Twitter-like social network Weibo.
Many
critics said that the way the nurses were treated was humiliating, not
complimentary of their bravery. In one scene, a nurse averts her gaze so
that she doesn’t have to see her newly cut-off ponytail in her
hairdresser’s hands. In another shot, some female nurses had tears
rolling down their faces after their haircut.
The video has now been deleted after the online backlash.
“In the video, the people who shaved the women’s heads
grabbed their ponytails roughly and just started shaving their hair
using electronic clippers. Are you treating them as humans or some
animals waiting to be shaved? I am so angry that my mind’s gone blank,”
said a user (link in Chinese) on Weibo yesterday (Feb. 17), when the video started trending on the network.
“If
you didn’t tell me they were medical workers, I would have thought they
were some evil criminals who were going through this serious
humiliation… Even their tears are used by the authorities to try to
touch the audience, making them the illustration of the spirit of
collectivism,” wrote Chen Mashu,
an author for “Epoch Story,” an account on messaging app WeChat that
publishes analyses and first-person accounts of social affairs.
popularmechanics |In June 2019, the Office of Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s office, confirmed that closed door meetings on UAP have occured. More recently, last December, when asked by Conway Daily Sun
reporter Daymond Steer about the Navy UAP encounters, recent
presidential candidate and current member of the Senate Select Committee
on Intelligence, Sen. Michael Bennet, was cautious in saying
he wouldn’t share anything he’d learned on the Intelligence Committee.
However, Bennet said, “Our guys are seeing stuff that’s unidentified.
They don’t know what it is, I don’t know what it is … We’re trying to
learn more about it. The Air Force is trying to learn more about it.”
Popular Mechanics has since learned
in October 2019, staffers with the Senate Select Committee on
Intelligence and the Senate Armed Service Committee were briefed on
current UAP issues. According to people with knowledge of these
briefings, some former BAASS contractors and current AATIP leadership
were in attendance.
Insiders also say this past year, during a closed-door meeting with the Senate Intelligence Committee, Brigadier General Richard Stapp,
Director of the DoD Special Access Program Central Office, testified
the mysterious objects being encountered by the military were not
related to secret U.S. technology. The Pentagon did not respond to
requests by Popular Mechanics to confirm Stapp’s testimony before the Intelligence Committee.
In only the second time publicly discussing the event, Popular Mechanics spoke with the Navy fighter pilot who was Cdr. David Fravor’s wingman during the now-famous 2004 Nimitz UFO
encounter. Agreeing to talk only under the condition of anonymity, the
fighter pilot confirmed they testified in front of congressional
leadership about their encounter. “I’ve been requested repeatedly to go
to the Pentagon and asked, ‘Is this what you saw?’.”
During a series of email exchanges, Popular Mechanics provided
specific information to Gough, the Pentagon spokesperson, in an effort
to see if this might influence the DoD’s current position. Initially,
Gough said she would examine the information and see if she could
provide a statement in response. However, Gough has not responded to
repeated follow-up requests from Popular Mechanics.
popularmechanics | The elusive engineer behind several highly unusual
patents, filed on behalf of the U.S. Navy, has broken his silence and
finally spoken to the media. Salvatore Cezar Pais responded to emails sent by The War Zone,
but his answers bring us no closer to how the technology behind the
patents, which involve fusion power and other exotic tech, came about.
Dr.
Pais, formerly an aerospace engineer with Naval Air Systems Command/
Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division and now at the Navy’s
Strategic Systems Programs, recently achieved notoriety with the
publication of patents involving compact fusion reactor energy—truly wild stuff that stretches the limits of science—and a “hybrid aerospace-underwater craft.”
The two technologies combined could theoretically create a “UFO”-like craft similar to the one seen by U.S. Navy pilots in 2004 and 2014-15.
Although highly unusual, Naval Air Systems’ Chief Technology Officer
James Sheehy assured the U.S. Patent Technology Office (USPTO) that the
technology behind them was indeed real, and that some aspects were
already undergoing testing.
Pais recently published a paper in EEE Transactions on Plasma Science titled, “The Plasma Compression Fusion Device—Enabling Nuclear Fusion Ignition.”
The device is essentially a fusion reactor, the holy grail of energy
research. Fusion reactors promise cheap, limitless energy without
complications of nuclear power—particularly nuclear meltdowns and the
generation of nuclear waste.
charleshughsmith |Here's a sampling of complacent assertions being made about the COVID-19 virus as if they were certitudes:
It's no worse than a bad cold.
It's less deadly than a normal flu.
You can't catch it unless you're in sustained close contact with a carrier.
Carriers are only contagious for 14 days. After that, you're home free.
A vaccine is just around the corner.
The Chinese government has it under control.
Only 2,000 people have died, it's no big deal.
The few cases in other countries are being managed, and it will soon disappear.
The pandemic will fade away by April due to rising temperatures.
China's GDP will only take a 1% hit, and global growth will only drop 0.25%.
Interestingly, there is no large-scale, credible data to support any of these claims. But the complacent are not just falling for false claims being passed off as "facts" rather than what they really are--magical thinking--they're making a much larger error known as Survivorship Bias.
NYTimes | Maybe the medical authorities in China didn’t report more infections previously because they couldn’t — because, say, they were short of reliable test kits
(which they were). It’s possible that the numbers were fudged. But
maybe they weren’t, or not as much as some people seem to fear. The
change in criteria for what counts as an infection may indicate, not so
much nefarious evidence of a cover-up now exposed, but the struggles of a
local health care system overwhelmed by a sudden and colossal medical
crisis.
Last Thursday, the Hubei authorities also reported a leap in the new daily tally of deaths: 242, compared with 94 for Wednesday.
That’s a big jump, but not nearly as big as the increase in the number
of newly infected people over the same period. Which could be a cause
for some measure of relief: The disease’s lethality would seem to have
decreased or be lower than was previously thought. Yet that’s not the
takeaway likely to have prevailed.
Some of the reporting has amounted to a set of contradictory pronouncements,
confusing at best. Journalists could display more critical distance and
a modicum of skepticism toward the data they relay, instead of turning
the media coverage into a hall of mirrors.
One
major problem is the doing of no one in particular. The story about the
coronavirus’s spread is evolving quickly, with medical authorities in
China and elsewhere disclosing figures daily (or more often), and the
media reporting the information immediately to satisfy the fast-paced,
staccato rhythms of publishing cycles. But up-to-the-minute,
blow-by-blow accounts of hard data can create mistaken impressions about
the underlying facts, even if both the data and the accounts are
accurate.
Last Thursday, a surge in
the number of infections was reported, because of that change in
official criteria. On Monday, China announced a drop in the number of
new cases for the third consecutive day. Now what should we make of that?
Constant on-the-nose reporting, however much it seems to serve transparency, has limitations, too.
It’s
a short-term, and shortsighted, approach that’s difficult to resist,
especially when people are afraid and the authorities are taking
draconian actions. It’s only natural to compare and contrast whatever
hard facts are available. And yet it’s especially dangerous to do that
precisely because people are so anxious, and fear can trick the mind.
A
view from a loftier perch — a month’s, or even just a week’s,
perspective — would, and will, produce far more reliable information.
nakedcapitalism | We’ll focus on China, since the immediate economic concern is how the
progress of the disease and efforts to manage it hurt their citizens
and companies, which affects the West directly (supply chain disruption,
loss of critical supplies, damage to companies that do a lot of
business in and with China) and indirectly (the hit to global demand).
So forgive me a US aside before returning to the China front. Even
though the plural of anecdote is not data, I see signs of concern even
in the currently low-risk US (my scenario for how things might get
troublesome here is that coronavirus winters in the global South,
particularly Africa and Australia, and is primed to become US health
risk during the 2020-2021 flu season). For instance, a friend in Dallas
supplied me with several products, including a hand sanitizer used in
operating theaters that supposedly kills nasties for five hours.
Interestingly, she didn’t view coronavirus as a current risk but felt it
was important to establish protective habits and routines well in
advance of a potential threat. This suggests that not only will
Americans stay well away from China for some time, but some may already
be considering foregoing travel not just to Asia, but potentially even
non-essential US trips.
Back to the main event. The fact that gas prices at the pump in
low-fuel tax states are increasingly at or below $2.00 a gallon ought to
be a wake-up call that serious deflationary forces are at work, even if
cheaper fillups provide a short-term boost to consumers.
The apparent reason for continued peppy stock markets is that too
many investors are mistakenly comparing the coronavirus to China’s
2002-2003 SARS outbreak. There are plenty of reasons why this is
wrong-headed. SARS was easier to contain because China was much poorer
then, so Chinese traveled less. Its high fatality rate (nearly 10%) also
likely resulted in citizens taking social distancing measures of their
own, in addition to official ones. Experts in China also claim the
government was faster to address the contagion then. One result was the
successful identification of “supertransmitters,” which was a
considerable aid in containment.
Economically, China was vastly smaller in global GDP terms. It had
just been admitted to the WTO and thus was only beginning to become
integrated into global supply chains. And the timing of SARS worked out
to be better too. Its major outbreak took place later in the year, as
opposed to during a peak travel time.
And the coronavirus has already surpassed SARS in number of deaths and number of confirmed cases.
China has been fragile for some time. It has managed to avoid a
downturn but to a significant degree, that has occurred by virtue of
increasing risk, particularly private sector leverage. That might not be
such a cause for concern if the additional borrowing were going into
productive activities. But China bears have been pointing out for years
how borrowing is producing less and less incremental GDP growth, as
evidenced by often shoddily built ghost cities. China has been trying to
curtail bank lending, but the government has engaged in stop and go
tightening, relenting and loosening liquidity when growth flags.
China has already taken damage from the swine flu, with more costly
pork hitting consumer budgets, and from the Trump trade wars, where many
small and mid-sized Chinese companies reporting considerable delays in
getting paid, forcing them to belt-tighten to conserve cash.
globalresearch |t should be apparent that the launching of bio-warfare, as with
conventional warfare, is considerably eased by locating military bases,
offensive weapons and delivery systems as physically close as possible
to one’s potential enemies. This is one reason the US has established
its nearly 1,000 foreign military bases – to ensure the capability of
putting an enemy under attack within 30 minutes anywhere in the world.
Clearly, the same strategy applies to biological warfare, the US
military having created scores of these labs euphemistically defined as
“health-security infrastructure” in foreign countries.
It is frightening to learn that many of these foreign
bio-installations are classified as so “Top-Secret” they are outside the
knowledge and control of even the local governments in the nations
where they are built. It is also frightening to learn that the Ebola
outbreaks all occurred in close proximity to several of these well-known
(and top-secret) US bio-weapons labs in Africa.
There were great fears a few years ago when American scientists
recreated the Spanish flu virus that killed around 50 million people in
1918. They spent nine years on this effort before succeeding, and now
large quantities of this virus are stored in a high-security government
laboratory in Atlanta, Georgia. More recently, scientists have created a
mutated super-strain of the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus that is directly
transmissible among humans and would have at least a 50% kill rate,
spawning fears in 2005 of a global pandemic that might kill hundreds of
millions.
In late 2013, more than 50 of the world’s most eminent scientists
severely criticised the research Ron Fouchier and colleagues at the
Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam, who have been developing mutant
varieties of the H5N1 bird-flu virus that are far more dangerous to
humans. The scientists wrote that the research was designed to make the
virus fully transmissible between humans, and clearly had a dual
civil-military function. This engineered flu could kill half the world’s
population, and not by accident. The US military funded this research
with more than $400 million.
asiatimes | Besides the economic and military realm, decoupling is also occurring
at the local level of academic and people-to-people exchanges. A Bloomberg
article in June 2019 revealed that the US is purging ethnic Chinese
scientists, including US citizens, from cancer research in top
institutions, as well as various other projects in STEM – science,
technology, engineering, mathematics – fields. Many institutions have
partnered with the FBI to target Chinese scientists and scholars for
surveillance, leading to fear among Asian Americans this could be a
dangerous lurch down the path of paranoia and racial profiling, similar to China’s campaign of racially profiling Uyghurs in Xinjiang.
Back in 2015, after various bungled cases, Congressman Ted Lieu (D-Torrance) and 42 members
of Congress raised these concerns with the Department of Justice. But
in face of an increasingly fearful and tense environment in academic
institutions, there has been a chill in bilateral scholarly exchanges
and research collaboration, and this decoupling looks likely to
continue.
Given Kissinger is known to have prescient observations, at this
critical juncture it appears his warnings in regard to a new Cold War
seem apt. Paul Haenle,
a former Asia adviser to presidents Bush and Obama, said: “If you talk
to folks in the Pentagon, they say they’re no longer debating whether or
not China is an enemy. They’re planning for war… and if you talk about
cooperation, you’re [seen as] naïve.”
Evan Osnos of The New Yorker noted
how Kissinger compares the current bilateral situation to a disturbing
analogy about the First World War. In that view, the trade war is an
ominous signal of economic polarization, the same kind that pitted
Britain against Germany before 1914, which has often been a prelude to
real war.
“If it freezes into a permanent conflict, and you have two big blocs
confronting each other,” Kissinger said, “then the danger of a pre-World
War I situation is huge. Look at history: none of the leaders that
started World War I would have done so if they had known what the world
would look like at the end. That is the situation we must avoid.”
Yale historian Odd Arne Westad
agrees. He noted: “The pre-1914 parallel is, of course, not just the
growth in German power. What we, I think, need to focus on, is what
actually led to war. What led to war was the German fear of being in a
position where their power would not strengthen in the future, where
they were, as they put it in the summer of 1914, at the maximum moment.”
Fort-Russ | Faced with Trump’s often re-stated desires to build positive
relations with China and achieve a trade deal, the deep state has gone
on overdrive pushing to sabotage this dynamic by promoting the support
of Taiwan and Hong Kong independence, while working hard to shut down as
many American-based Confucius institutes which had grown to 90 at their
max.
In recent months, FBI and CIA pressure has resulted in the closing of 29 of the 100 Confucius institutes
in the past 6 years. Most recently, under pressure of the new National
Defense Authorization Acts of 2018 and 2019, 22 Institutes have been
forced to shut down with sinophobe senators Mark Rubio, and Ted Cruz
leading the charge on the republican side and sinophobe democrats like
Seth Moulton running the pressure campaign for the democrats. On top of
this, hundreds of Chinese scholars, and scientists have been fired from
their positions as professors and researchers in universities, and
slandered as espionage agents by the new McCarthyite Witch hunt run
under the Christopher Wray’s FBI. The policy is blunt and simple: Sever
as many intellectual and cultural connections between America and China
as humanly possible to prevent any alliance from forming.
Pompeo’s
deployment to the Governors’ conference was a major part of this
fanatical campaign since the oligarchy is aware that American governors
like Matt Bevin of Kentucky, Bill Lee of Tennessee, Nebraska’s Pete
Ricketts, and many others
see China’s desire to invest in American infrastructure and
agricultural products as a life line for survival where no federal
relief appears visible and an economic meltdown looms overhead.
The
irony which leading deep state operatives managing the
anti-China/Russia campaign refuse to acknowledge is that America’s
oncoming economic collapse can only be stopped by a FDR-styled
bankruptcy reorganisation of Wall Street and a new alliance with
actually viable nations like Russia and China who wish to help America
rebuild its decayed agro-industrial foundations.
SCMP | Many Chinese students see the United States as an ideal place for college, despite the current tension between the two economic superpowers.
But
students and their parents need to exercise caution. A stark
demographic drop is coming for US colleges. The US high school
population, which has been declining, will drop significantly by 2026.
This will strain an already financially stressed industry.
Like
any investor, it will be important to look at a school’s current
financial condition and assess how well it is run for future viability.
As a start, here are three areas and specific metrics commonly tracked
by schools.
First,
how good is the college at their core function(s) of teaching and/or
research? If they’re poorly run in key functions, they’re likely to be
poorly run administratively.
Look
at the following for the school overall and by major/college:
graduation rates, retention rates, teaching scores, number of books and
articles published recently, research funding and per cent of external
funding. External funding is a quick measure on how competitive research
and approaches are.
Second,
how effective is the school in getting students to their goal of
discovering a career, getting an advanced degree, or getting a job in
their desired country?
Look
at the percentage of students using career services, satisfaction
rates, and the percentage of students graduating with a job or accepted
to graduate school by major/college. Schools should publish these
numbers so be wary of any place that doesn’t.
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