The Economist Condemns Andres Manual Lopez Obrador For "Populism"

nakedcapitalism |  As The Economist urges Mexican voters to vote for anyone who isn’t AMLO, the US government is up to its old tricks: funneling money to political opposition groups. 

Andres Manuel López Obrador enjoys pride of place on the cover of the May 29-June 4 edition of The Economist. Above his picture is the headline “Mexico’s False Messiah.” An editorial inside the magazine compares AMLO, as the president is commonly known, to “authoritarian populists” such as Viktor Orbán of Hungary, Narendra Modi of India and Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil. But unlike them, AMLO has been able to escape the limelight, the newspaper said.

“This is partly because he lacks some of the vices of his populist peers. He does not deride gay people, bash Muslims or spur his supporters to torch the Amazon,” The Economist said. “To his credit, he speaks out loudly and often for Mexico’s have-nots, and he is not personally corrupt. Nonetheless, he is a danger to Mexican democracy.” As such, voters in each locality should “support whichever opposition party is best placed to win”.

President López Obrador responded to the article by describing it as “propagandistic” and highlighting the arrogance of a British weekly newspaper seeking to advise Mexicans on how to vote in next Sunday’s election:

“These foreign magazines and newspapers dedicated themselves to applauding the neoliberal policies [of past governments]; they’re in favor of privatizations, and they always kept quiet in the face of the corruption that reigned [in Mexico.]… It’s like me going to the United Kingdom and asking the English to vote for my friend [Jeremy] Corbyn of the Labour Party. I can’t do that because that’s a decision for the English. So why don’t they respect [us]?”

The Economist is not just a British newspaper. It has nearly a million subscribers in North America (far more than the 270,000 in Britain), and several hundred thousand in the rest of the world. Its readership has always comprised the crème de le crème of the financial and business elite. Within a decade of its founding, in 1843, Karl Marx described it as the organ of “the aristocracy of finance.” Not much has changed since then. As the New Yorker wrote in 2019, since the early nineties The Economist has served, alongside the Financial Times, as “the suavely British-accented voice of globalization.” And it is that voice that is now calling upon Mexican voters to frustrate AMLO’s electoral ambitions.

High-Stakes Election

This coming Sunday (June 6) Mexico will hold its biggest ever mid-term election. And the stakes could not be higher. As of six days ago 88 candidates had been killed by narco gangs. It’s a stark reminder of how strong a grip organized crime continues to hold on Mexican society.

According to the latest polls, MORENA, the umbrella movement led by AMLO, is likely to win both the congress and the senate with comfortable margins. But it’s unlikely to secure an absolute majority, which means it will still depend on other parties to pass new laws. And that is about the best result the financial and business elite, both inside and outside Mexico, could hope for.

The one thing they definitely don’t want is for AMLO to further strengthen his grip on political power in Mexico. If MORENA won an absolute majority in both legislative chambers, AMLO would be able to sign into law just about any bill. The opposition parties are exceptionally weak right now, largely because they have done such a bad job of governing in the past. Many of their members, including some of the most corrupt, have switched to MORENA, which has hardly helped MORENA’s popularity. As a friend told me, MORENA is like a garbage truck picking up old trash along the way.

The Economist cites a slew of reasons why AMLO represents a threat to Mexico’s democratic government. They include the legally questionable referendums he has held on infrastructure projects; the wide range of government tasks – including supervising large construction projects – he has entrusted to the military; his slashing of the budgets of public watchdogs; and his repeated clashes with the National Electoral Institute.

Naomi, Do You Girl, Do You...,

guardian |   Naomi Osaka has announced her withdrawal from Roland Garros one day after she was fined $15,000 by the French Open and warned that she could face expulsion from the tournament following her decision not to speak with the press during the tournament.

Osaka, who won her first match against Patricia Maria Tig and was scheduled to face Ana Bogdan in the second round, had released a statement last Wednesday stating her intention to skip her media obligations during Roland Garros because of the effects of her interactions with the press on her mental health.

In a statement on Monday signifying her withdrawal from the event, Osaka said she was leaving the tournament so that the focus could return to tennis after days of attention and widespread discussion.

“This isn’t a situation I ever imagined or intended when I posted a few days ago,” Osaka wrote on social media. “I think now the best thing for the tournament, the other players and my well-being is that I withdraw so that everyone can get back to focusing on the tennis going on in Paris.

“I never wanted to be a distraction and I accept that my timing was not ideal and my message could have been clearer. More importantly I would never trivialise mental health or use the term lightly.”

In her original statement, Osaka had noted her expectation that she would be fined and Gilles Moretton, the French Tennis Federation (FFT) president, had affirmed in a press conference with the French press last Thursday that his organisation would penalise Osaka.

However, the organisation offered no official response until the lengthy statement signed by the four grand slam tournaments on Sunday after Osaka’s first-round win. Their heavy handed approach to Osaka has received significant criticism as it meant Osaka had to choose between either risking significant punishment or else returning to conduct press conferences. The attention Osaka has received was only compounded by the announcement of her fine.

On Thursday evening Osaka’s older sister, Mari, attempted to support her sister by providing further context of her struggles on Reddit. She stated that Osaka had been hurt by frequent questioning about her ability on clay courts and that she felt she was being “told that she has a bad record on clay”. After losing in the first round of Rome, Mari Osaka said her sister was “not OK mentally”. After receiving some criticism, Mari Osaka deleted her post.

 

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Aaron Maté Got Heart And Integrity And The Empire Can't Stand It

caitlinjohnstone |  Ana Kasparian’s infamous Young Turks tantrum about Aaron Maté was the screams of a dying empire.

Some want to dismantle the imperial slaughter machine and create a harmonious world; others just want the imperial slaughter machine to give them healthcare. These are two entirely different positions. It’s not strange that these factions feud—it would be strange if they didn’t.

US progressives who smear The Grayzone and other anti-imperialist media never have any other equally anti-imperialist media that they promote and uphold as good. This is because they are imperialists.

The only way to do actual foreign policy journalism in the western world is to make a conscious decision to tell the truth without being bullied into accepting any unproven US narrative, no matter how badly they smear you and no matter how hard it is to find work and make a living.

US liberals are orders of magnitude more outraged about a small group of wingnuts making people nervous in the Capitol building for a few hours than they are about the fact that their government is constantly murdering people around the world.

The blame for public distrust in government and media institutions rests solely on those government and media institutions.

Most westerners know that Bush and his allies destroyed Iraq, while hardly any westerners know Obama and his allies destroyed Syria. That right there tells you why we haven’t seen any full-scale US ground invasions lately. America’s solution to the PR crisis caused by the horrific consequences of its military interventionism has been to switch to preferencing sanctions, blockades, and proxy wars where violence is outsourced to other powers so the US doesn’t take the blame.

Syria is a perfect example of this new model of imperialist slaughter. The US power alliance absolutely demolished that country by arming jihadist proxy forces and then sanctioning the hell out of it to keep it from rebuilding, all with the goal of eventually toppling Damascus, but the general public is completely unaware of this.

And make no mistake, good PR is absolutely essential to the operation of the empire. They don’t pour that much energy into manufacturing consent because it’s fun, they do it because they have to. You can’t rule a managed democracy without good perception management.

MUCH MORE Impressed With Naomi Osaka Than I Am With Myself...,

guardian |  Naomi Osaka has surprised the tennis world by declaring days before the start of the French Open that she will not conduct her mandatory media assignments during the tournament. Osaka, the world No 2, cited the effects of reporters’ questions in press conferences on her mental health.

“I’m writing this to say I’m not going to do any press during Roland Garros,” said Osaka in a statement posted to her social media accounts. “I’ve often felt that people have no regard for athletes’ mental health and this rings true whenever I see a press conference or partake in one. We are often sat there and asked questions that we’ve been asked multiple times before or asked questions that bring doubt into our minds and I’m just not going to subject myself to people that doubt me.”

Osaka’s announcement has forced the French Tennis Federation (FFT) to conduct discussions regarding how to handle her intended rule breach. The four-time grand slam champion further explained her reason for foregoing press conferences and she acknowledged the “considerable fine” she may receive after each match.

“Me not doing press is nothing personal to the tournament and a couple journalists have interviewed me since I was young so I have a friendly relationship with most of them,” she wrote. “However, if the organisations think that they can just keep saying, ‘do press or you’re gonna be fined’ and continue to ignore the mental health of the athletes that are the centerpiece of their cooperation then I just gotta laugh.”

Gilles Moretton, the president of the FFT responded firmly to Osaka’s statement on Thursday by saying that she will be fined if she does not attend her mandatory press conferences.

“It’s a deep regret, for you journalists, for her [Osaka] personally and for tennis in general,” he said, according to l’Equipe. “I think this is a phenomenal mistake. It shows to what extent today there is strong governance in tennis. What is happening there is, in my opinion, not acceptable. There are rules, laws. We will stick to the laws and rules for penalties and fines.”

Moretton continued: “It is very detrimental to sport, to tennis, to her probably. She hits the game, she hurts tennis. This is a real problem.”

Houston Methodist Nurses Sue To Prevent Compulsory Vaccination

WaPo |  A group of 117 unvaccinated staffers from Houston Methodist Hospital filed a lawsuit Friday seeking to avoid the hospital’s coronavirus vaccine mandate, saying it’s unlawful for bosses to require the shots.

The staffers join a growing list of employees challenging compulsory immunizations at businesses, colleges and other workplaces essential to the country’s reopening. Vaccine mandates have faced mounting resistance from anti-vaccination groups and some Republican politicians, even as health officials promote the proven safety of the vaccines and millions of Americans line up to get the shots every week.

The lawsuit against Houston Methodist was filed by Jared Woodfill, a Houston-area attorney and conservative activist. It appears to mirror a legal strategy used by a New York-based law firm, Siri & Glimstad, that is closely aligned with one of the country’s biggest anti-vaccination organizations but unaffiliated with the Houston litigation.

Resistance to vaccine mandates is building. A powerful network is helping.

The complaint, filed in state court, says Houston Methodist’s vaccine mandate violates a set of medical ethics standards known as the Nuremberg Code, which was designed to prevent experimentation on human subjects without consent. The code was created after World War II in response to the medical atrocities Nazis committed against prisoners in concentration camps.

“Methodist Hospital is forcing its employees to be human ‘guinea pigs’ as a condition for continued employment,” the complaint states. It adds that the mandate “requires the employee to subject themselves to medical experimentation as a prerequisite to feeding their families.” Elsewhere, it falsely characterizes the coronavirus vaccines as an “experimental COVID-19 mRNA gene modification injection.”

Experts said the notion that the vaccines were “experimental” or based on an untested technology was incorrect.

“This claim is absurd indeed,” Akiko Iwasaki, an immunologist at Yale University, told The Washington Post.

“There were tens of thousands of people who were in the Phase 3 clinical trials for the mRNA vaccines, and no safety concerns were found,” Iwasaki told The Post in an email.

Cornpop Walks Back Potatoheaded DHS Secretary Mayorkas Vaccine Passport Talk

axios  |  The Department of Homeland Security on Friday said "there will be no federal vaccinations database and no federal mandate requiring everyone to obtain a single vaccination credential.”

Why it matters: Earlier Friday, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas on Friday told ABC's "Good Morning America" that the U.S. is "taking a very close look" at the possibility of requiring vaccine passports for international travel.

• "We’re taking a very close look at that, you know, one of our principles that has guided us throughout this pandemic is the value of diversity, equity, and inclusion, and making sure that any passport that we provide for vaccinations is accessible to all and that no one is disenfranchised," Mayorkas said.

A DHS spokesperson later on Friday clarified Mayorkas' comments, saying that there will be no "federal mandate" for vaccine passports in the U.S.

• “We’ve always said we’re looking at how we can ensure Americans traveling abroad have a quick and easy way to enter other countries," the spokesperson added.
• "That’s what the Secretary was referring to; ensuring that all U.S. travelers will be able to easily meet any anticipated foreign country entry requirements."

The big picture: The European Union and some Asian governments are developing coronavirus vaccine passports that people can access using phone apps in order to "help kickstart international travel," AP writes.

Vaccine passports have become a controversial topic in the country, with several Republican-led states banning state government and some private business from requiring them.

When Your Job's On The Line Will You Submit To The Jab?

WaPo  |  At stake in this latest contest is whether hospitals, law enforcement agencies and others can require employees to take a vaccine that was made available in an expedited process permitted during a public health emergency — and, likewise, whether schools may require the shots for students, faculty and staff members in the same way many require familiar vaccines for measles and chickenpox. There is little case law on the matter, with only one vaccine, for anthrax exposure, previously cleared in a similar way.

Employers are expected to cite the expansive evidence supporting the safety and efficacy of the coronavirus vaccines, as well as the extraordinary health risks created by the current emergency, said Kerry A. Scanlon, a former Department of Justice official who oversees labor and employment litigation at Chicago-based law firm McDermott Will & Emery.

Scanlon believes employers are in a strong position to defend compulsory vaccination, but he said many might shy away from it simply to avoid costly litigation.

ICAN is already claiming victory, thanks to the work of a legal team led by Siri & Glimstad’s managing partner, Aaron Siri. “Employers and schools that previously required the covid-19 vaccine have dropped those requirements,” the group declares in its ad on the Children’s Health Defense blog. “This includes an employer that did so on the heels of ICAN’s legal team challenging its mandate in court.”

Neither Siri nor his co-counsel in the North Carolina case, Elizabeth A. Brehm, responded to emailed questions. Bigtree did not respond to telephone messages. Kennedy said his organization is “working with firms all over the country” to challenge vaccine mandates and estimated that he receives “many hundreds” of inquiries each week about potential litigation.

Meet the New York couple donating millions to the anti-vax movement

In legal filings and letters to employers and universities, attorneys from Siri & Glimstad focus on the expedited process known as an emergency use authorization used to clear the shots during a public health emergency. Mandating a vaccine cleared that way, they argue in a complaint filed against the Durham County Sheriff’s Department, is “illegal and unenforceable.”

Their arguments go further. Pointing to the principle of informed consent, a tenet of medical ethics addressing human experimentation enshrined in the Nuremberg Code after World War II, their letter to the president of Rutgers University contends a mandate under these circumstances violates not just federal law, but also “international laws, civil and individual rights, and public policy.” Failure to rescind a requirement in Rock County, Wis., the firm informed officials there, “will result in legal action being filed against you.”

“Govern yourself accordingly,” the Feb. 2 letter advised.

Lil'Fauci Has ALWAYS Been A Gain Of Function Proponent

theaustralian |  America’s top medical adviser for the coronavirus, Anthony Fauci, argued that the benefits of experimenting on contagious viruses – manipulating and heightening their infectious potency – was worth the risk of a laboratory accident sparking a pandemic.

In previously unreported remarks, Dr Fauci supported the contentious gain-of-­function experiments that some now fear might have led to an escape from a Wuhan laboratory causing the Covid-19 pandemic, calling them “important work”.

An investigation by The Weekend Australian has also confirmed Dr Fauci, the director of the Nat­ional Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, did not alert senior White House officials before lifting the ban on gain-of-function research in 2017.

Writing in the American Society for Microbiology in October 2012, Dr Fauci acknowledged the controversial scientific research could spark a pandemic.

“In an unlikely but conceivable turn of events, what if that scientist becomes infected with the virus, which leads to an outbreak and ultimately triggers a pandemic?” he wrote. “Many ask reasonable questions: given the possibility of such a scenario – however remote – should the initial experiments have been performed and/or published in the first place, and what were the processes involved in this decision?

“Scientists working in this field might say – as indeed I have said – that the benefits of such experiments and the resulting knowledge outweigh the risks.

 

 

So, If Covid WAS Manmade, What You Gonna Do About It?!?!

WaPo |  The mainstream media is engaged in some very warranted soul-searching when it comes to the possibility that the coronavirus leaked from a lab in Wuhan, China, rather than occurring naturally. Reporters often wrote about the theory dismissively, citing scientists who backed that up. There is still no real proof the theory is true, but scientists now regard it as increasingly plausible, as The Post’s Glenn Kessler detailed this week. And the Biden administration says it’s redoubling efforts to get to the truth.

But beyond media accountability, it’s valid to ask: What’s really at stake here? If the theory were somehow proved, what would it change, including for the U.S. government, its top officials, including the current and former presidents, and China?

A big part of the appeal of the theory right now — beyond the chance to apply egg to the face of the popular boogeyman (particularly on the right) that is the media — lies in how intriguing it is. A deadly worldwide pandemic originating from a lab accident — or worse — is basically a Hollywood script. That it would involve a nefarious and powerful foreign government that also happens to be communist is almost a bit too over the top.

As for what it would mean for China’s culpability? We already know the virus came from China and that the Chinese government has been anything but transparent. This began on its watch, and its lack of transparency cost the world valuable time in preparing for and combating the spread of the virus.

If the virus came from one of its labs, that would mean China was even more negligent (at best) than previously known and that its coverup was even worse. It’s possible that even the Chinese government might not truly know what happened. But regardless, it has balked at admitting outside scientists who might be able to shed light on this and many other subjects.

Some have wagered that if such a theory proves true, it might turn China into something of a pariah state, given how angry other countries would be. There would be calls for extensive sanctions, particularly from the United States. But much of the world, including this country, relies upon trade with China, making such efforts fraught.

It would also raise questions about just how it leaked from the lab. We know scientists engage in sometimes-controversial “gain of function” experiments on viruses, but the most severe theories go quite a bit further: They involve the idea that China was engaging in even more dangerous conduct and possibly experimenting with a deliberate bioweapon. Proving such a thing would be even more difficult than proving a lab leak, and there are many more reasons to doubt the bioweapon theory than the lab leak theory. But it would force some very tough conversations — and pressure — to determine just how it leaked from the lab and how negligent or potentially nefarious China’s actions were.

Cornpop Stalling, Posing, and Burraschidting About "Unexamined Covid SigInt" From China

NYTimes |  President Biden’s call for a 90-day sprint to understand the origins of the coronavirus pandemic came after intelligence officials told the White House they had a raft of still-unexamined evidence that required additional computer analysis that might shed light on the mystery, according to senior administration officials.

The officials declined to describe the new evidence. But the revelation that they are hoping to apply an extraordinary amount of computer power to the question of whether the virus accidentally leaked from a Chinese laboratory suggests that the government may not have exhausted its databases of Chinese communications, the movement of lab workers and the pattern of the outbreak of the disease around the city of Wuhan.

In addition to marshaling scientific resources, Mr. Biden’s push is intended to prod American allies and intelligence agencies to mine existing information — like intercepts, witnesses or biological evidence — as well as hunt for new intelligence to determine whether the Chinese government covered up an accidental leak.

Mr. Biden committed on Thursday to making the results of the review public, but added a caveat: “unless there’s something I’m unaware of.”

His call for the study has both domestic and international political ramifications. It prompted his critics to argue that the president had dismissed the possibility that the lab was the origin until the Chinese government this week rejected allowing further investigation by the World Health Organization. And, administration officials said, the White House hopes American allies will contribute more vigorously to a serious exploration of a theory that, until now, they considered at best unlikely, and at worst a conspiracy theory.

So far, the effort to glean evidence from intercepted communications within China, a notoriously hard target to penetrate, has yielded little. Current and former intelligence officials say they strongly doubt anyone will find an email or a text message or a document that shows evidence of a lab accident.

One allied nation passed on information that three workers in the Wuhan virological laboratory were hospitalized with serious flulike symptoms in the autumn of 2019. The information about the sickened workers is considered important, but officials cautioned that it did not constitute evidence that they caught the virus at the laboratory — they may have brought it there.

 

David Asher "To Say Covid Came Out Of A Zoonotic Situation, It's Ridiculous"

Foxnews |  A government probe last year into the origins of the coronavirus found practically no evidence COVID-19 originated from nature, former State Department official David Asher told Fox News on Thursday.

"We were finding that despite the claims of our scientific community, including the National Institutes of Health and Dr. Fauci's NIAID organization, there was almost no evidence that supported a natural, zoonotic evolution or source of COVID-19," he told "America Reports."

The probe was led out of the State Department’s arms control and verification (AVC) bureau and initially launched at the request of former Trump Secretary of State Mike Pompeo before ending this year.

Asher, the lead contractor on the subject, said the team investigated the two chief hypotheses for the virus' origins, the other being the lab-leak theory that has gained credence after widespread media dismissal over the past year.

"The data disproportionately stacked up as we investigated that it was coming out of a lab or some supernatural source," he said.

Asher has a history of investigative work tracking money for the AQ Khan network, North Korea's nuclear program, and top Al Qaeda leaders, but has fallen under scrutiny from former State Department officials.

Asher was critical Thursday of former Assistant Secretary of State Chris Ford, who expressed reservations about the investigation's findings and cautioned against the lab theory. Ford told Fox News that the AVC probe had been kept secret from him and bypassed department and intelligence community biological experts, although adding the lab origin theory was "very possible."

The Wuhan Institute of Virology has become a central focus of investigators looking into the virus' origins, in part due to its known research on bat coronaviruses.

"That was the epicenter of synthetic biology in the People's Republic of China, and they were up to some very hairy stuff with synthetic biology and so-called gain-of-function techniques," Asher said, later saying the odds of natural origin were extremely long.

Luis Elizondo Accuses Pentagon Of Waging A UFO Disinformation Campaign

politico |  The former Pentagon official who went public about reports of UFOs has filed a complaint with the agency’s inspector general claiming a coordinated campaign to discredit him for speaking out — including accusing a top official of threatening to tell people he was "crazy," according to documents reviewed by POLITICO.

Lue Elizondo, a career counterintelligence specialist who was assigned in 2008 to work for a Pentagon program that investigated reports of "unmanned aerial phenomena," filed the 64-page complaint to the independent watchdog on May 3 and has met several times with investigators, according to his legal team.

The claim that the government is trying to discredit him comes weeks before the director of national intelligence and the Pentagon are expected to deliver an unclassified report to Congress about UFOs and the government’s strategy for investigating such encounters. The report is expected to include a detailed accounting of the agencies, personnel and surveillance systems that gather and analyze the data.

“What he is saying is there are certain individuals in the Defense Department who in fact were attacking him and lying about him publicly, using the color of authority of their offices to disparage him and discredit him and were interfering in his ability to seek and obtain gainful employment out in the world,” said Daniel Sheehan, Elizondo’s attorney. “And also threatening his security clearance.”

Sheehan, a public interest lawyer and activist, has a long history of taking on the federal government on behalf of high-profile clients, including defending The New York Times in the Pentagon Papers case as well as one of the Watergate burglars.

He is also widely viewed as a provocateur who has an abiding interest in UFOs and has spoken publicly about alien visitations. He also served as counsel for the Disclosure Project, led by ufologist Steven Greer, that has sought to force more government transparency on UFOs.

When asked for comment, Elizondo referred questions to Sheehan.

Gov. Gavin Newsome Launching A PAC To Solve UFO Mystery?

Forbes  |  A team of political consultants and business leaders launched a political action committee Thursday dedicated to pushing the government to disclose more information on UFOs, weeks before Congress is set to receive a report on “unidentified aerial phenomena”—military jargon for what used to be known as unidentified flying objects—from U.S. intelligence agencies.

“We created the UFOPac because it has become clear to us that there may be more to this topic than governments are willing to share,” Fisher said in a statement. “UFOPac.org will help build a mass movement to share this with our elected representatives - regardless of party or political affiliation.” On its website, the group says that once “UFO phenomenon is verified by the government and available data is released” it will help academic and technology communities study the “technologies, physics, and mechanics of these crafts” without stigma.

Key Background

As part of the massive $2.3 trillion spending bill Congress passed in December, lawmakers instructed the director of national intelligence and secretary of defense to work together to deliver a report on “unidentified aerial phenomena.” Lawmakers gave intelligence officials 180 days to hand over the report to Congress, a deadline that comes next month. The legislation stipulates the report must offer “detailed analysis of unidentified aerial phenomena data and intelligence” and “a detailed description of an interagency process” to report sightings of UFOs. In March, former intelligence director John Ratcliffe told Fox News, “Frankly, there are a lot more sightings than have been made public.”, From 2007 to 2012, the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency gathered information on UFOs under a $22 million unclassified program sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.)  that the public was unaware of until 2017, when media outlets reported on it. 

 Chief Critic 

“There’s a stigma on Capitol Hill. Some of my colleagues are very interested in this topic and some kind of giggle when you bring it up,” Rubio added during his 60 Minutes interview.

Surprising Fact

Last April, the Pentagon released three unclassified videos of "unidentified aerial phenomena” shot by Navy pilots that were previously published by the New York Times in 2017. In one clip, an oblong object moves through the sky as a pilot yells, “Look at that thing, dude — it's rotating!"

 

We Need Benton Quest To Solve This UFO Mystery...,

WaPo  |  With a government report due in June on unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) and a recent “60 Minutes” story on U.S. Navy pilots’ sightings and videos of mysterious images, prominent people in politics, the military and national intelligence are finally asking: What are we looking at?

It’s the wrong question — or, at least, it’s premature.

Before we get to what these mysterious phenomena are, we need to be asking how we can figure out what they are. This is where scientists, notably absent from the current UAP conversation, come in.

For too long, the scientific study of unidentified flying objects and aerial phenomena — UFOs and UAPs, in the shorthand — has been taboo. A big driver of that taboo is the vacuum of knowledge that is being filled by unscientific claims thanks to a lack of scientific investigation.

In recent decades, science has focused on aspects of extraterrestrial inquiry, including the search for signs of life on other planets — think the Mars rover— and techno-signatures — radio signals that appear to emanate from outside Earth.

The research has been complex, evidence-based and demanding, pulling in scientists from across disciplines and all around the globe. The same should be true for the exploration of UAP sightings. If we want to understand what UAP are, then we need to engage the mainstream scientific community in a concerted effort to study them.

Covid Lab Origin Went From "Awful Racist Theory" To Highly Plausible In the Mainstream Media Overnight

🧵THREAD🧵

That the Covid pandemic could’ve leaked from a lab in Wuhan went from terrible, racist conspiracy theory to plausible overnight for the mainstream media, without a shred of accountability.

If you don’t believe me, look at these stories side-by-side, then vs. now⤵️

— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) May 25, 2021

China Big Mad Its Biden Investments Not Shielding It From Scrutiny...,

china-embassy | Lately, some people have played the old trick of political hype on the origin tracing of COVID-19 in the world. Smear campaign and blame shifting are making a comeback, and the conspiracy theory of "lab leak" is resurfacing.

Since the outbreak of COVID-19 last year, some political forces have been fixated on political manipulation and blame game, while ignoring their people's urgent need to fight the pandemic and the international demand for cooperation on this front, which has caused a tragic loss of many lives. The lesson from last year is still fresh in our memory. While the pandemic is still causing great damage in today's world and the international community is expecting greater coordination among countries, some people are turning to their old playbook. We cannot but wonder, have they already put that bitter lesson behind them, so soon? Or do they want to see a replay of tragedies? With such irresponsible behaviors, how can they face up to their own people? How can they face up to the international community? And how can they face up to human conscience?

On the origin tracing of COVID-19, we have been calling for international cooperation on the basis of respecting facts and science, with a view to better coping with unexpected epidemics in the future. To politicize origin tracing, a matter of science, will not only make it hard to find the origin of the virus, but give free rein to the "political virus" and seriously hamper international cooperation on the pandemic. Out of a sense of responsibility towards the health of mankind, we support a comprehensive study of all early cases of COVID-19 found worldwide and a thorough investigation into some secretive bases and biological laboratories all over the world. Such study and investigation shall be full, transparent and evidence-based, and shall get to the bottom to make everything clear.

You Ever Wonder Why Ole'Cornpop Won't Be Cancelling Any Student Loan Debt?

theanalysis |  The Federal Reserve’s job is to make sure that the economy is run for the banking system and for the bond holders, rather than having the banking system and bond markets run for the economy. So we’re living in an upside down economy where everything is being run in order to sustain the bond holders and the banks. And the problem with this is that the mortgage debts, the student loan debts, the personal debts, the car loan debts, they’re growing at an exponentially high rate, while the economy is not growing at a high rate. All of the economy’s growth since 2008 has been only for the top five percent of the population. For 95 percent of the population since 2008, the GDP has actually shrunk. And so you’re having a very sharp polarization right now. So I think if you’re talking about the debt issue, the question is, do you want to sustain this polarization between creditors at the top and the indebted 95 percent or do you want to restore the kind of equality that people think usually is the hallmark of democracy, at least of economic democracy? And the choice by the government is we’re going to sustain the polarization. No matter what, the creditors won’t lose a penny. The debtors will lose.

Paul Jay
OK, so why do you think Biden, and not just Biden, but that section of finance that they represent, why don’t they want to forgive student debt?

Michael Hudson
I think partly it’s what you said. It’s the whole idea that if you admit that you should write down debts when the effect is to help the economy grow and you write down debts that impair economic growth, then people would put economic growth over the welfare of creditors. And that’s revolution. That’s not what our economy is all about. We put creditors first, not the economy. And the very thought of putting the welfare of the people first over the creditors in general, well that’s totalitarianism. That’s a dictatorship. We can’t possibly have that. So it’s the greed of the creditors and the fact that the creditors are able to control politics and who gets nominated, et cetera, enables them to prevent anything that might shock the assumption that the sanctity of property is really the sanctity of creditors to evict property owners if they can’t pay. It’s really the sanctity of debt. And if you talk about the sanctity of debt, it’s the sanctity of the exponential growth of debt, even when it’s beyond the ability to pay, even when it pushes the economy into a chronic depression. And in fact, what we’re suffering now is debt deflation. And the debt deflation at the bottom, students are experiencing, the unemployed are experiencing, cities and states are experiencing it. The transportation systems are running at deficits. All of these deficits are the savings and the gains and the wealth of the one percent or five percent or whatever you want to call the banking and creditor class.

Paul Jay
And of course, the irony of banking as a public utility and the finance sector’s opposition to that is they can’t exist without government subsidy and bailouts and all the rest. And actually, it kind of is a public utility, except for the people that owe the banks.

Michael Hudson
It’s an unregulated public utility, because, again, as Bill Black has explained, there’s been regulatory capture. The problem in the United States is the creation of the Federal Reserve by banks. The Federal Reserve was created in 1913 to move to make banking a private enterprise, not a public utility. And very explicitly to shift the center of money creation and credit and credit rules away from Washington, towards Wall Street and Philadelphia and Boston, and to decentralize it, to get the government out of the credit and debt system and let the creditors run wild over the economy. That was what they said the result was. They even removed the secretary of the Treasury from membership on the Federal Reserve Board at that time. This was a new class war. And it wasn’t the kind of class war that Marx warned about. It was a class war of finance against the rest of the economy. It was a resurgence of the rentier economy, except the rentiers in the 20th century and the 21st century are the creditors and the bankers and the financial institutions, not the landlords.

 

Austerity Is About Preserving The Power Of The Few To Compel The Many

project-syndicate |   Even if everyone agreed that printing another trillion dollars to finance a basic income for the poor would boost neither inflation nor interest rates, the rich and powerful would still oppose it. After all, their most important interest is not to conserve economic potential, but to preserve the power of the few to compel the many.

ATHENS – Back in the 1830s, Thomas Peel decided to migrate from England to Swan River in Western Australia. A man of means, Peel took along, besides his family, “300 persons of the working class, men, women, and children,” as well as “means of subsistence and production to the amount of £50,000.” But soon after arrival, Peel’s plans were in ruins.

The cause was not disease, disaster, or bad soil. Peel’s labor force abandoned him, got themselves plots of land in the surrounding wilderness, and went into “business” for themselves. Although Peel had brought labor, money, and physical capital with him, the workers’ access to alternatives meant that he could not bring capitalism.

Karl Marx recounted Peel’s story in Capital, Volume I to make the point that “capital is not a thing, but a social relation between persons.” The parable remains useful today in illuminating not only the difference between money and capital, but also why austerity, despite its illogicality, keeps coming back.

For now, austerity is out of fashion. With governments spending like there’s no tomorrow – or, rather, to ensure that there is a tomorrow – fiscal spending cuts to rein in public debt do not rank high among political priorities. 

US President Joe Biden’s unexpectedly large – and popular – stimulus and investment program has pushed austerity further down the agenda. But, like mass tourism and large wedding parties, austerity is lingering in the shadows, ready for a comeback, egged on by ubiquitous chatter about impending hyperinflation and crippling bond yields unless governments re-embrace it.

There is little doubt that austerity is based on faulty thinking, leading to self-defeating policy. The fallacy lies in the failure to recognize that, unlike a person, family, or company, government cannot bank on its income being independent of its spending. If you and I choose to save money that we could have spent on new shoes, we will keep that money. But this way of saving is not open to the government. If it cuts spending during periods of low or falling private spending, then the sum of private and government spending will decline faster. This sum is national income. So, for governments pursuing austerity, spending cuts mean lower national income and fewer taxes. Unlike a household or a business, if the government cuts its spending during tough times, it is cutting its revenues, too.

But Of Course, Huntergate Influenced EVERYTHING!!!

CNN  |  President Joe Biden's team shut down a closely-held State Department effort launched late in the Trump administration to prove the coronavirus originated in a Chinese lab over concerns about the quality of its work, according to three sources familiar with the decision.

The existence of the State Department inquiry and its termination this spring by the Biden administration -- neither of which has been previously reported -- comes to light amid renewed interest in whether the virus could have leaked out of a Wuhan lab with links to the Chinese military. The Biden administration is also facing scrutiny of its own efforts to determine if the Chinese government was responsible for the virus. 

 

Those involved in the previously undisclosed inquiry, which was launched last fall by allies of then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, say it was an honest effort to probe what many initially dismissed: that China's biological weapons program could have had a greater role in the pandemic's origin in Wuhan, according to two additional sources. 

 

But the inquiry quickly became mired in internal discord amid concerns that it was part of a broader politicized effort by the Trump administration to blame China and cherry-pick facts to prove a theory. 

 

The decision to terminate the inquiry, which was run primarily out of the State Department's arms control and verification bureau, was made after Biden officials were briefed on the team's draft findings in February and March of this year, a State Department spokesperson said. Questions were raised about the legitimacy of the findings and the project was deemed to be an ineffective use of resources, explained a source familiar with the decision.

 

Sources involved in the Trump-era inquiry rejected criticisms over the quality of their work and told CNN their objective had been to examine scientific research and information from the US intelligence community which backed the lab leak theory and shone more light on how it could have emerged in the lab.

 

A day after CNN reported this story, the State Department disputed that it had shut down the Trump-era inquiry and instead said that its work had been completed. Several sources involved with the inquiry who spoke to CNN said it was their impression that there was more work to be done.

 

On Wednesday, Biden issued a statement that he has directed the US intelligence community to redouble its efforts in investigating the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic and report back to him in 90 days.

 

"They" Didn't Want Huntergate To Influence The Election

mediaite |  Russell Brand said Monday that he didn’t appreciate the way media and social-media companies suppressed news about President Joe Biden’s family, including his son, Hunter Biden, and brother, Jim Biden.

The British actor made the comment during an interview with journalist Glenn Greenwald on his YouTube channel, but started out with a caveat. “I’m not a pro-Republican person,” Brand said. “I don’t see myself that way. I don’t see myself as conservative, or that I’m in a Trump, or Giuliani, or [the] kind of media establishments that were reporting on these revelations [about Biden’s family]. They are not my cultural, social, or political allies. That’s certainly not how I see myself.

“However, it seems to me — what reason is Hunter Biden sat [sic] on the board of an energy company in … Ukraine?” he added. “What reason is James Biden sat on the board, or receiving payments from an energy company, in China?”

Brand was referring to Hunter Biden’s 2014-19 term on the board of Burisma Holdings, a natural-gas company with operations in Ukraine. He and Jim Biden were also involved in a failed venture with CEFC, a Chinese energy company. Twitter and Facebook prevented users from sharing certain stories that touched on the dealings in the month leading up to the 2020 election, while Twitter took the added step of suspending The New York Post’s account on the platform.

“We’re talking about sleaze, corruption, financial misdemeanors, and relationships between corporations, big business, and politicians — let’s face it, unless you’re bloody stupid, you know that’s going on all the time,” Brand told Greenwald. “For me, revelations that there are financial connections between energy companies in … Ukraine, energy companies in China, and the Biden family are troubling. That should be public knowledge. And it’s even more troubling that Twitter, and Facebook and the media at large deliberately kept it out of the news because they didn’t want it to influence the election.”

Taking a more philosophical tone — and turning his fire on the Democratic Party — Brand added, “What is democracy then? It suggests to me that democracy is, ‘We want you to vote for this person. We don’t want you to vote for that person.’ As I’ve said, Donald Trump, you know, I don’t think Donald Trump’s the answer, but I’m sad to realize that I can no longer even claim to believe Joe Biden or the Democratic Party might be the answer, because look at how they behave. And look at the relationships between media, social media, and that party. They conspired to keep information away from you because it was not convenient to their agenda.”

Watch above via Russell Brand on YouTube.

 

Why Did So Many Nazi's Find Safe Haven In Argentina?

thoughtco |  By 1945, as the Allies were mopping up the last remnants of the Axis, it was clear that the next great conflict would come between the capitalist USA and the communist USSR. Some people, including Perón and some of his advisors, predicted that World War III would break out as soon as 1948.

In this upcoming "inevitable" conflict, third parties such as Argentina could tip the balance one way or the other. Perón envisioned nothing less than Argentina taking its place as a crucially important diplomatic third party in the war, emerging as a superpower and leader of a new world order. The Nazi war criminals and collaborators may have been butchers, but there is no doubt that they were rabidly anti-communist. Perón thought these men would come in useful in the "upcoming" conflict between the USA and the USSR. As time passed and the Cold War dragged on, these Nazis would eventually be seen as the bloodthirsty dinosaurs they were.

Americans and British Didn't Want to Give Them to Communist Countries

After the war, communist regimes were created in Poland, Yugoslavia, and other parts of Eastern Europe. These new nations requested the extradition of many war criminals in allied prisons. A handful of them, such as the Ustashi General Vladimir Kren, were eventually sent back, tried, and executed. Many more were allowed to go to Argentina instead because the Allies were reluctant to hand them over to their new communist rivals where the outcome of their war trials would inevitably result in their executions.

The Catholic Church also lobbied heavily in favor of these individuals not being repatriated. The allies did not want to try these men themselves (only 22 defendants were tried at the first of the infamous Nuremberg Trials and all told, 199 defendants were tried of which 161 were convicted and 37 were sentenced to death), nor did they want to send them to the communist nations that were requesting them, so they turned a blind eye to the ratlines carrying them by the boatload to Argentina.1

 

Is The Abduction Motif Somehow Related To The Lebensborn Program?

Medium |  Ingrid von Oelhafen (born in 1941) had a tough childhood. Her father Herman von Oelhafen was often away. Her mother Gisela was emotionally distant. Her parents sent Ingrid to the children’s home, where she grew up without true parental love.

When she was eleven years old, she found out that she was a foster child. Her actual name was Erika Matko. Her father Herman and mother Gisela were not her true parents. Her brother Dietmar was not her real brother.

When she was fifteen, she saw a Red Cross poster with her childhood image with the name Erika Matko on the streets of Hamburg. She realized she was not German.

In 1999, Red Cross contacted Ingrid, asking if she wanted to learn about her true origins. She was fifty-eight years old.

Medium |  ABBA was one of the most popular music groups in history. You have probably heard at least one of their hits. For example Waterloo, SOS, or Mamma Mia. At the height of their popularity, ABBA earned more money than another Swedish trademark — automobile company Volvo.

Lebensborn means Spring of life in German. However, this word received a much more malevolent meaning in the time of Nazi Germany. The Lebensborn program was a notorious Nazi project, which tried to increase the Aryan population. They used various inhumane methods, including state-sponsored breeding and abducting of children from Nazi-occupied countries such as Poland, Russia, and Yugoslavia.

The ideal Aryan had blue eyes and blonde hair. The Scandinavians perfectly fit into this requirement. The Lebensborn program encouraged German soldiers to have relationships with Danish and Norwegian women. In Norway only, over 12,000 children were born from such relationships.

wikipedia |  Lebensborn e.V. (literally: "Fount of Life") was an SS-initiated, state-supported, registered association in Nazi Germany with the goal of raising the birth rate of Aryan children of persons classified as 'racially pure' and 'healthy' based on Nazi racial hygiene and health ideology. Lebensborn provided welfare to its mostly unmarried mothers, encouraged anonymous births by unmarried women at their maternity homes, and mediated adoption of these children by likewise 'racially pure' and 'healthy' parents, particularly SS members and their families. The Cross of Honour of the German Mother was given to the women who bore the most Aryan children. Abortion was legalised (and, more commonly, endorsed) by the Nazis for disabled and non-Germanic children, but strictly punished otherwise.

Initially set up in Germany in 1935, Lebensborn expanded into several occupied European countries with Germanic populations during the Second World War. It included the selection of 'racially worthy' orphans for adoption and care for children born from Aryan women who had been in relationships with SS members. It originally excluded children born from unions between common soldiers and foreign women, because there was no proof of 'racial purity' on both sides. During the war, many children were kidnapped from their parents and judged by Aryan criteria for their suitability to be raised in Lebensborn homes, and fostering by German families.

Why Is The Phenomenon Of UFO's/UAP's Associated Almost Exclusively With The U.S. Military?

strategic-culture |   The stoking of UFO controversy appears to be a classic psyops perpetrated by U.S. military intelligence for the objective of population control, Finian Cunningham writes.

There are reasons to be skeptical. After decades of stonewalling on the issue, suddenly American military chiefs appear to be giving credence to claims of UFOs invading Earth. Several viral video clips purporting to show extraordinary flying technology have been “confirmed” by the Pentagon as authentic. The Pentagon move is unprecedented.

The videos of the Unidentified Flying Objects were taken by U.S. air force flight crews or by naval surveillance and subsequently “leaked” to the public. The question is: were the “leaks” authorized by Pentagon spooks to stoke the public imagination of visitors from space? The Pentagon doesn’t actually say what it believes the UFOs are, only that the videos are “authentic”.

A Senate intelligence committee is to receive a report from the Department of Defense’s Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) Task Force next month. That has also raised public interest in the possibility of alien life breaching our skies equipped with physics-defying technology far superior to existing supersonic jets and surveillance systems.

Several other questions come to mind that beg skepticism. Why does the phenomenon of UFOs or UAP only seem to be associated with the American military? This goes back decades to the speculation during the 1950s about aliens crashing at Roswell in New Mexico. Why is it that only the American military seems privy to such strange encounters? Why not the Russian or Chinese military which would have comparable detection technology to the Americans but they don’t seem to have made any public disclosures on alien encounters? Such a discrepancy is implausible unless we believe that life-forms from lightyears away have a fixation solely on the United States. That’s intergalactic American “exceptionalism” for you!

Also, the alleged sightings of UFOs invariably are associated with U.S. military training grounds or high-security areas.