Turning Over That Pritzker Family Log To See What Comes Scurrying Out From Underneath...,

wikipedia  |   The Superior Bank FSB was a Hinsdale, Illinois-based savings and loan association that collapsed in July 2001^[1] with some $2.3b in assets.^[2] It was co-owned by the Pritzker family of Chicago.

Synopsis

Superior opened in 1988 under conditions created by the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, which made generous arrangements for the takeover of several failed thrifts. The bank was a 50-50 partnership between the Pritzkers (the elder Jay, Penny and Thomas) and real estate investor Alvin Dworman, who ran Superior from his New York office after Jay Pritzker's death in 1997. The Pritzkers and Dworman bought the failed Lyons Federal for the relatively modest price of $42.5 million, with each using a shell corporation to control half of Coast-to-Coast Financial Corporation (CCFC), a holding company created to own Superior.

In July 2001, Superior was seized by federal banking regulators after the Pritzkers reneged on a recapitalization program. The Pritzker family entered into a $460 million, 15 year, interest-free settlement in December 2001 to protect the family's business reputation and avoid civil forfeiture and litigation. At the time, Superior Bank was the largest bank failure in more than a decade. As of March 2012, former Superior Bank depositors are still owed over $10 million.

July 2001 collapse

According to a press release from the Office of Thrift Supervision,

Superior Bank suffered as a result of its former high-risk business strategy, which was focused on the generation of significant volumes of subprime mortgage and automobile loans for securitization and sale in the secondary market. OTS found that the bank also suffered from poor lending practices, improper record keeping and accounting, and ineffective board and management supervision.^[1]

George Kaufman, a finance professor at Loyola University Chicago called Superior's failure "a tale of gross mismanagement," adding that "[Superior] was engaged in relatively unethical practices, fancy-footwork accounting, playing it very close to the edge."^[3]

Kaufman says many share in the blame for the mess-the bank's managers, directors, and auditors, as well as banking regulators-but he also wonders how the Pritzkers, as co-owners, could have allowed it to happen. "One of the great mysteries to me is what the Pritzkers were up to, why they took these chances," he said. "It makes no sense given their wealth and visibility."^[3]

Settlement by the Pritzkers

In December 2001, the Pritzkers agreed to pay a record $460 million to the federal government to avoid being punished for the failure of Superior Bank FSB.^[4] It was a 15-year, interest-free settlement that granted the Pritzkers a share of the government's settlement with the bank's former accountants. In June 2012, news reports revealed that the Pritzker family received a discount in 2011 on the 2001 settlement.

According to The Washington Times, "But after paying $316 million of the interest-free debt, the family quietly struck a deal with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) in June 2011 to discount the balance in return for paying off the debt early. Ms. Sweet and Mr. Courtney are among 1,400 depositors still owed $10.3 million at the end of March, records show. The FDIC Insurance Fund is still out $296 million after paying off Superior’s insured depositors. It is highly unlikely the remaining depositors or the FDIC will receive much more money since nearly all of the settlement funds have been paid out, according to records and interviews."^[5]

“'The depositors got nicked coming, going and after the fact,'” said Clinton Krislov, a lawyer who represents depositors whose accounts exceeded the $100,000 covered by FDIC insurance. “'The depositors have gotten all they will from the Pritzkers.'”

RICO lawsuit

In 2002 uninsured depositors filed federal class-action charges under the RICO Act against one-time board chairwoman Penny Pritzker, her cousin Thomas Pritzker, Dworman, other bank principals and Ernst & Young. Plaintiffs’ attorney Clint Krislov claimed that those who controlled Superior induced depositors to put money in the bank, “corruptly” funneling money out of the bank to “fraudulently” profit the owners. ^[6] The lawsuit, Courtney v. Hallerin was initially filed under a district court which dismissed the claims;^[7] the appeal was argued before the 7th Circuit of the United States Court of Appeals on September 25, 2006. In her May 7, 2007 opinion, Judge Wood affirmed the lower court's decision.

Langley's Mouthpiece Said Biden Should Not Run Again

WaPo  |  Joe Biden launched his candidacy for president in 2019 with the words “we are in the battle for the soul of this nation.” He was right. And though it wasn’t obvious at first to many Democrats, he was the best person to wage that fight. He was a genial but also shrewd campaigner for the restoration of what legislators call “regular order.”

Since then, Biden has had a remarkable string of wins. He defeated President Donald Trump in the 2020 election; he led a Democratic rebuff of Trump’s acolytes in the 2022 midterms; his Justice Department has systematically prosecuted the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection that Trump championed and, now, through special counsel Jack Smith, the department is bringing Trump himself to justice.

What I admire most about President Biden is that in a polarized nation, he has governed from the center out, as he promised in his victory speech. With an unexpectedly steady hand, he passed some of the most important domestic legislation in recent decades. In foreign policy, he managed the delicate balance of helping Ukraine fight Russia without getting America itself into a war. In sum, he has been a successful and effective president.

But I don’t think Biden and Vice President Harris should run for reelection. It’s painful to say that, given my admiration for much of what they have accomplished. But if he and Harris campaign together in 2024, I think Biden risks undoing his greatest achievement — which was stopping Trump.

Biden wrote his political testament in his inaugural address: “When our days are through, our children and our children’s children will say of us: They gave their best, they did their duty, they healed a broken land.” Mr. President, maybe this is that moment when duty has been served.

Biden would carry two big liabilities into a 2024 campaign. He would be 82 when he began a second term. According to a recent Associated Press-NORC poll, 77 percent of the public, including 69 percent of Democrats, think he’s too old to be effective for four more years. Biden’s age isn’t just a Fox News trope; it’s been the subject of dinner-table conversations across America this summer.

Because of their concerns about Biden’s age, voters would sensibly focus on his presumptive running mate, Harris. She is less popular than Biden, with a 39.5 percent approval rating, according to polling website FiveThirtyEight. Harris has many laudable qualities, but the simple fact is that she has failed to gain traction in the country or even within her own party.

Biden could encourage a more open vice-presidential selection process that could produce a stronger running mate. There are many good alternatives, starting with now-Mayor of Los Angeles Karen Bass, whom I wish Biden had chosen in the first place, or Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo. But breaking up the ticket would be a free-for-all that could alienate Black women, a key constituency. Biden might end up more vulnerable.

Politicians who know Biden well say that if he were convinced that Trump were truly vanquished, he would feel he had accomplished his political mission. He will run again if he believes in his gut that Trump will be the GOP nominee and that he has the best chance to defeat Trump and save the country from the nightmare of a revenge presidency.

Biden has never been good at saying no. He should have resisted the choice of Harris, who was a colleague of his beloved son Beau when they were both state attorneys general. He should have blocked then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, which has done considerable damage to the island’s security. He should have stopped his son Hunter from joining the board of a Ukrainian gas company and representing companies in China — and he certainly should have resisted Hunter’s attempts to impress clients by getting Dad on the phone.

Biden has another chance to say no — to himself, this time — by withdrawing from the 2024 race. It might not be in character for Biden, but it would be a wise choice for the country.

Biden has in many ways remade himself as president. He is no longer the garrulous glad-hander I met when I first covered Congress more than four decades ago. He’s still an old-time pol, to be sure, but he is now more focused and strategic; he executes policies systematically, at home and abroad. As Franklin Foer writes in “The Last Politician,” a new account of Biden’s presidency, “he will be remembered as the old hack who could.”

Time is running out. In a month or so, this decision will be cast in stone. It will be too late for other Democrats, including Harris, to test themselves in primaries and see whether they have the stuff of presidential leadership. Right now, there’s no clear alternative to Biden — no screamingly obvious replacement waiting in the wings. That might be the decider for Biden, that there’s seemingly nobody else. But maybe he will trust in democracy to discover new leadership, “in the arena.”

I hope Biden has this conversation with himself about whether to run, and that he levels with the country about it. It would focus the 2024 campaign. Who is the best person to stop Trump? That was the question when Biden decided to run in 2019, and it’s still the essential test of a Democratic nominee today.

Five Facts That Compel Biden Impeachment

jonathanturley  |  Consider just five established facts:

First, there appears to be evidence that Joe Biden lied to the public for years in denying knowledge of his son’s business dealings. Hunter Biden’s ex-business associate, Tony Bobulinski, has said repeatedly that he discussed some dealings directly with Joe Biden. Devon Archer, Hunter’s close friend and partner, described the president’s denials of knowledge as “categorically false.”

Moreover, Hunter’s laptop has communications from his father discussing the dealings, including audio messages from the president. The president allegedly spoke with his son on speakerphone during meetings with his associates on at least 20 occasions, according to Archer, attended dinners with some clients, and took photographs with others.

Second, we know that more than $20 million was paid to the Bidens by foreign sources, including figures in China, Ukraine, Russia and Romania. There is no apparent reason for the multilayers of accounts and companies other than to hide these transfers. Some of these foreign figures have allegedly told others they were buying influence with Joe Biden, and Hunter himself repeatedly invoked his father’s name — including a text exchange with a Chinese businessman in which he said his father was sitting next to him as Hunter demanded millions in payment. While some Democrats now admit that Hunter was selling the “illusion” of influence and access to his father, these figures clearly believed they were getting more than an illusion. That includes one Ukrainian businessman who reportedly described Hunter as dumber than his dog.

Third, specific demands were made on Hunter, including dealing with the threat of a Ukrainian prosecutor to the Ukrainian energy company Burisma, where Hunter was given a lucrative board position. Five days later, Joe Biden forced the Ukrainians to fire the prosecutor, even though State Department and intelligence reports suggested that progress was being made on corruption. Likewise, despite warnings from State Department officials that Hunter was undermining anti-corruption efforts in Ukraine, he continued to receive high-level meetings with then-Secretary of State John Kerry and other State Department officials.

Fourth, Hunter repeatedly stated in emails that he paid his father as much as half of what he earned. There also are references to deals that included free office space and other perks for Joe Biden and his wife; other emails reference how Joe and Hunter Biden would use the same accounts and credit cards. Beyond those alleged direct benefits, Joe Biden clearly benefited from money going to his extended family.

Fifth, there is evidence of alleged criminal conduct by Hunter that could be linked to covering up these payments, from the failure to pay taxes to the failure to register as a foreign lobbyist. What is not established is the assumption by many that Joe Biden was fully aware of both the business dealings and any efforts to conceal them.

The White House is reportedly involved in marshaling the media to swat down any further investigation. In a letter drafted by the White House Counsel’s office, according to a CNN report media executives were told they need to “ramp up their scrutiny” of House Republicans “for opening an impeachment inquiry based on lies.” It is a dangerous erosion of separation between the White House and the president’s personal legal team. Yet, many in the media have previously followed such directions from the Biden team — from emphasizing the story that the laptop might be “Russian disinformation” to an unquestioning acceptance of the president’s denial of any knowledge of his son’s dealings.

Notably, despite the vast majority of media echoing different defenses for the Bidens for years, the American public is not buying it. Polls show that most Americans view the Justice Department as compromised and Hunter Biden as getting special treatment for his alleged criminal conduct. According to a recent CNN poll, 61% of Americans believe Joe Biden was involved in his family’s business deals with China and Ukraine; only 1% say he was involved but did nothing wrong.

Operation Sunrise: How We Came To Be The 4th Reich

Allen Dulles was a part of Operation Sunrise and it appears he went against orders and did not negotiate an unconditional surrender but instead brokered deals with the nazis. It doesn't help that nazi sympathy was fairly rampant throughout the military and government hence the willingness to proceed with Operation Paperclip. Dulles worked for a law firm that protected IG Farben (corporation that participated in slave labor and genocide) and I'm currently looking into his prewar antics as it appears he may have been involved in helping fund the rise of the nazis from the beginning. Money was apparently stolen from a bank in England. Also, during the war Dulles had his OSS operation set up in Switzerland. The Swiss bank basically legitimatized the nazi's money and the idea that they were "neutral" is kind of ridiculous. The nazi's couldn't have operated without those bank accounts so taking their money was aiding and abetting. I still need to sit down and follow all the money, but some really fucky things were going on before the war even broke out. Don't forget the 1930's failed business plot to install a fascist leader in the US. The people involved in that likely came up with some new plans.

It's pretty amazing how the US reshaped Wernher von Braun's public persona. He was literally an SS Major and the director of a military unit making the most advanced weapon systems for the Nazis. You don't get in those positions without being heavily involved in the Nazi party.

The dossier on him literally has a 'carrot' style insertion to change "ardent Nazi" to "not an ardent Nazi." He went from a leader of Nazis to literally hosting shows on Disney about space travel.

There's quite a bit there, actually, from the Vatican-NAZI connection in the whole UFO affair, to the Knights of Malta in more recent years.

I'll start at a random point of connection:

Dulles helped Mengele flee to Argentina, where the CIA later supported a right-wing authoritarian coup

https://www.jstor.org/stable/4383422

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1976_Argentine_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat

NAZI Walter Schreiber -- who conducted LSD experiments with MKULTRA -- wound up in Argentina.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/what-cold-war-cia-interrogators-learned-from-the-nazis

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Schreiber#Emigration

NAZIs also fled to Chile, where the CIA later backed a dictator that used NAZIs to torture dissidents

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonia_Dignidad

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_Chilean_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat

Walter Rauff was a NAZI that had CIA connections, who also worked for Mossad (Israel) and the Chilean secret service

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Rauff

The NAZI-CIA connection goes beyond Paperclip. US intelligence services used NAZIs in the Gehlen Organization

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gehlen_Organization

So there's a global intelligence service / NAZI connection.

Here's the main Vatican - NAZI link: The Vatican got independence from Mussolini, who was soon allied with Hitler.

David Grusch has talked about the Vatican - NAZI - UFO connection, and there has been, from the beginning, a broad connection with intelligence services.

There's another interesting Vatican-Intelligence service link with the Knights of Malta, the only nation on the planet without any territory, it has diplomatic relations with over 100 countries, issues its own passports, is controlled by the Vatican, and has prominent representatives in the US intelligence services.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_Military_Order_of_Malta

CIA Director William Casey was a member of the Knights of Malta. William F. Buckley Jr was a member of the Knights of Malta. James J. Angleton was a member.

Buckley was also a member of the Skull and Bones -- the same secret society both George W. Bush (son of former CIA director George HW Bush) and his 2004 Presidential competitor John Kerry both belonged to (the same year no less), but which neither would discuss

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwJDs1cg9Eo

So there's a CIA-Vatican-NAZI-Secret Society international right-wing apparatus that took hold on planet Earth around 1945.

I could keep going with this but I have other things to do.

But I will say the US Navy -- where the videos started leaking from -- is tied into all this to. It was, for example, and Naval intelligence officer Dr. Charles Savage was involved in LSD experiments with programs that became MKULTRA

https://ahrp.org/1947-1953-navys-project-chatter-tested-drugs-for-interrogation/

and, as we keep hearing, there seems to be an inter-dimensional component to all this, which LSD may sensitize people to. Like information about UFO's, the cognitive states unlocked by LSD are tightly controlled. LSD in the US is a schedule I substance, more tightly controlled than cocaine, and as tightly controlled as heroin.

Religious scholars like Huston Smith argued that the prohibition on psychedelics may be a prohibition on human cognitive evolution, since this experience has been with humanity since early times

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/r-i-p-huston-smith-religious-scholar-who-defended-psychedelics-spiritual-potential/

So there may be a NAZI-CIA-Vatican-UFO-Industry conspiracy that is both keeping technology from us, and also keeping our minds under tight control by limiting our ability to perceive non-desirable aspects of reality.

There's a shit ton of baggage in there.

Bonus weirdness:

Timothy Leary was using LSD to channel messages from aliens in Sirius

https://incaseyoureinterested.com/2018/03/06/tomorrow-tuesday-tim-learys-starseed/

http://rawilsonfans.de/en/the-starseed-signals/

Aliester Crowley was also channeling messages from Sirius, as well as an entity he called "AIWAS"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleister_Crowley

Here is what AIWAS looked like

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/eb/36/e1/eb36e169f555d973eb307bf3297218cb.png

The first head of the US Jet Propulsion lab was a follower of Crowley, named Jack Parsons

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Parsons

 

Mexico Once Again Showing The World Why It's F*cking Mexico...,

reuters  |  Mexican lawmakers heard testimony that "we are not alone" in the universe and saw the alleged remains of non-human beings in an extraordinary hearing marking the Latin American country's first congressional event on UFOs.

In the hearing on Tuesday on FANI, the Spanish acronym for what are usually now termed Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP), politicians were shown two artifacts that Mexican journalist and long-time UFO enthusiast Jaime Maussan claimed were the corpses of extraterrestrials.

The specimens were not related to any life on Earth, Maussan said.

The two tiny "bodies," displayed in cases, have three fingers on each hand and elongated heads. Maussan said they were recovered in Peru near the ancient Nazca Lines in 2017. He said that they were about 1,000 years old.

Similar such finds in the past have turned out to be the remains of mummified children.

"This is the first time extraterrestrial life is presented in such a form and I think there is a clear demonstration that we are dealing with non-human specimens that are not related to any other species in our world and that any scientific institution can investigate it," Maussan said.

"We are not alone," he added.

Jose de Jesus Zalce Benitez, Director of the Scientific Institute for Health of the Mexican navy, said X-rays, 3-D reconstruction and DNA analysis had been carried out on the remains.

"I can affirm that these bodies have no relation to human beings," he said.

Lawmakers also heard from former U.S. Navy pilot Ryan Graves, who has participated in U.S. Congressional hearings about his personal experience with UAP and the stigma around reporting such sightings.

In recent years, the U.S. government has done an about-face on public information on UAP after decades of stonewalling and deflecting. The Pentagon has been actively investigating reported sightings in recent years by military aviators, while an independent NASA panel studying UFOs is the first of its kind by the space agency.

NASA is set to discuss findings from the study on Thursday.

 

 

 

David Grusch New Interview

 

12:00 onwards - Grusch outlines that leakers are under penalty of imprisonment and execution.

16:50 onward “non human Biologics” he stated in an interview previously they’re pilots and he doesn’t know what their actual job was. They were “nonhuman intelligence” pilots.

18:00 onward he was cleared by the Pentagon to talk about this.

19:00 onward Grusch insinuates that the initial reasoning for hiding the information was the ontological shock it would cause in society due to society’s religiousness at the time, along with concealing the information from adversaries like Russia.

20:40 onward - the officials involved in the Manhattan Project also created the laws related to obfuscation and secrecy of the topic. 21:28 - retrieved UAP materials that give off radiation are classified under the Atomic Energy Act (intentionally).

23:00 onward - there was a deeper classified project (related to the Manhattan Project) studying UFOs aside from Project Blue Book

28:00 onward- Grusch states that it’s hard to tell how far ahead their (the nonhuman intelligence) technology is. “It’s hard to state how far in advance it is. You’re just assuming some sort of linear progression. They’ve made an asymptotal leap that put them over the edge. They’re similarly as advanced as us but they’ve had an asymmetric evolution they went a different path than us. While we’ve made nuclear weapons, they’ve made a propulsion discovery but they’re not that much more advanced than you and I”.

29:50- Grusch states that once we unlocked nuclear power we made major technological strides. We may be one discovery away from manipulating spacetime.

30:29- the UFOs are interested in our nuclear technology.

36:00 onward - Grusch references Lue Elizondo’s comment on the ETs studying us and it’s possible the UFO crashes were intentionally seeded to test humanity’s development in relation to being exposed to this technology.

42:00 onwards - there may have been scientific breakthroughs that were hidden from the public.

44:00 - Dr Hal Puthoff of the Pentagon insinuates that antigravity research did get somewhere (made progress) and then was hidden.

47:00 onward - UFO metamaterials are discussed.

59:50- the connection of the “UFO Disclosure” movement (and intentional disinformation) to the “elite” is described by the host.

1:04:00 onwards - there’s a long history of “UFO debunkers” being directly linked to government organizations that have actually studied UAP.

1:17:28- this portion is interesting since it references information that Elizondo and Dr Garry Nolan have stated.

For background, Elizondo (Pentagon), Dr. Garry Nolan (accomplished academic who was approached by the CIA to study UAPs, also stated they told him information regarding the beings operating the crafts), and John Ramirez [CIA- was referenced as having worked there separately by Jim Semivan of the CIA, referenced in this article (https://www.benzinga.com/amp/content/34082411)] have all stated, in summary, that members within the defense establishment believe these beings are bioengineered AI.

Grusch notably references this at this time stamp as a possibility to what these beings are. If you notice, he goes out of his way to reference specifically what Elizondo had stated in a past interview, that the ETs are designed to look humanoid to interact with humans. (In Elizondo’s interview, he brought up an example of how zookeepers in China disguise themselves as pandas to interact with the pandas, and what we are seeing is a similar situation).

1:19:30- ETs being our descendants from the future is discussed. The host describes this as being a possible reason for the ET non-interventionism. As in, they don’t want to harm the timeline too much such that their own existence is nullified. (My note: it would be interesting if some of what people have witnessed is in fact humans from the future that have mastered ET propulsion and time travel technology, which is why they only appear fleetingly in some instances and choose not to intervene in major events).

1:27:00 onward - military sensory systems disproportionately detect UFOs since their collection mechanisms are more advanced than what’s available to the average person.

1:32:30 onward - Grusch details how being on the Autism spectrum have shaped his interactions.

Grusch background (wiki): David Charles Grusch is a decorated Afghanistan combat veteran and former Air Force intelligence officer[1] who worked in the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) and the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO).[2][3][4][5] From 2019 to 2021, he was the representative of the NRO to the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force.[3][4][6] From late 2021 to July 2022, he was the co-lead for UAP analysis at the NGA and its representative to the task force.[2] He assisted in drafting the National Defense Authorization Act of 2023,[7] which includes provisions for reporting of UFOs, including whistleblower protections and exemptions to non-disclosure orders and agreements.[8][9][10] Congressional interest in UFO sightings immediately prior to Grusch's public claims surrounded questions about the four objects that the Air Force shot down in February 2023.[11]

ROSS COULTHART’S RESPONSE TO MEDIAWATCH

MEDIAWATCH’S QUESTIONS:
1. Why do you believe David Grusch’s Congressional testimony when there is no
firsthand evidence?
2. Do you believe alien spacecraft have visited earth?
3. Do you believe the US government has retrieved alien spacecraft and bodies but covered up the evidence?
4. Do you know if an alien spacecraft is secretly held in the US, and if so, why not reveal its location?
5. Have you maintained your journalist objectivity in covering David Grusch’s claims?
 

ROSS COULTHART’S RESPONSE:
• The tenor of these questions suggests that MediaWatch has a pre-conceived agenda in how it will report this issue. This is because MediaWatch’s questions are grounded in a false assumption.

• MediaWatch’s questions state as a fact that there is no first-hand evidence to support David Grusch’s allegations. Contrary to misreporting in some US legacy media, there is first-hand evidence, and it has been presented under oath to the Intelligence Community Inspector General in private hearings (the ICIG is the oversight body for the US’ intelligence services). I have confirmed this testimony with multiple sources directly and I have interviewed first-hand witnesses myself directly.

• The current ICIG Thomas Monheim is still preparing his report into Mr Grusch’s allegations, comprising both Grusch’s complaint about reprisals against him for being a zealous UAPTF investigator and whistleblower and also, most importantly, the Inspector General is investigating Mr Grusch’s complaint that there has been a conspiracy within both the US Defense Dept & intelligence community and senior executives in private aerospace to illegally conceal a non-human intelligence [NHI] crash retrieval program and reverse engineering program from Congressional oversight.

• As I have confirmed both with Mr Grusch and Congressional sources, the current ICIG was so concerned about Mr Grusch’s allegations, after conducting his own investigations, that he referred all of them immediately to Congress, deeming all of Grusch’s complaints “urgent and credible”.
 

• I emphasise, these ICIG investigations included multiple interviews with first-hand witnesses to the NHI crash retrieval and reverse engineering program known to Mr Grusch, as well as other evidence. Other first-hand witnesses have also testified to the ICIG who are not known to Mr Grusch, backing his allegations.

The U.S. Government Cancels DEEP VZN

dailymail  |  US officials are quietly shutting down a taxpayer-funded $125million project to hunt for new viruses due to fears it could spark another pandemic. 

DEEP VZN - pronounced deep vision - was launched in October 2021 with the aim of finding and studying novel pathogens in wildlife in Asia, Africa and Latin America. 

While the research was meant to prevent human outbreaks and pandemics, critics, including Biden administration officials, are afraid it could do the opposite and have voiced their fears about the potentially 'catastrophic risks' of virus hunting.

And their concerns are amplified due to the growing suspicion Covid emerged from an American-sponsored lab in Wuhan, China - a theory the FBI subscribes to.

The project was meant to run until 2026, but DEEP VZN was shut down without a formal public announcement in July 2023.

USAID's DEEP VZN (pronounced deep vision) project was hunting viruses among wildlife in Asia , Africa and Latin America.

While this is the most recent to come to light, it is far from the first research the US has conducted on this matter. 

For more than a decade the government has funded international projects aimed at identifying exotic viruses among wildlife that could infect humans someday, sending millions to support various similar projects. 

Money has flown overseas from the Department of Defense and the National Institutes of Health to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.

DEEP VZN, which stands for Discovery & Exploration of Emerging Pathogens - Viral Zoonoses, was launched by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in October 2021 and less than two years later, USAID officials informed members of Senate committees with jurisdiction over DEEP VZN the program was being shut down. 

The premature closure of the project came abruptly and was privately relayed to Senate aides by the office of Atul Gawande, USAID's assistant administrator for global health.

The news was buried in a congressional budget document hundreds of pages long and was discussed during interviews Mr William conducted with federal lawmakers and researchers. 

A scientist at the center of the Covid lab leak theory has admitted he cannot rule out the possibility the virus escaped a Chinese research facility.

At its launch, USAID said the 'ambitious new project' was meant to work with partner countries and the global community to 'build better preparedness for future global health threats.'

The organization said the project would 'strengthen global capacity to detect and understand the risks of viral spillover from wildlife to humans that could cause another pandemic.

'The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated how infectious diseases threaten all of society, up-ending people's lives and attacking societies at their cores. 

'It is also a strong reminder of the connection between animals, humans, and the environment, and the effect that an emerging pathogen spilling over into humans can have on people's health and on global economies.'

The project was being carried out by scientists from the Washington State University Paul Allen School for Global Health among other research and partner entities. 

The goal was to collect more than 800,000 samples over the five-year period, mostly from wildlife, to identify a subset of 'previously unknown' viruses that 'pose a significant pandemic threat.'

The university sought to detect 12,000 new viruses throughout the program's run and scientists hoped the information would not only help prevent future pandemics, but also better prepare health officials if one did emerge. 

'DEEP VZN is a critical next step in the evolution of USAID's work to understand and address the risks posed by zoonotic diseases that can be transmitted from animals to humans.'

However, in a statement regarding the closure of the program, USAID said it had determined the research was 'not an agency global health security priority at this time' and its decision reflected 'the relative risks and impact of our programming.'

 

 

Do You Remember Those Bioweapons Labs In Ukraine That Victoria Nuland Admitted To Marco Rubio?

greatgameindia  |  Russian military uncovered US-operated biolabs in Ukraine while conducting a special operation in the nation. Some very interesting findings in the form of list of Americans coordinating bioweapons research at Pentagon biolabs in Ukraine have been revealed as well.

On Thursday, the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) released new files procured by Russian forces in eastern Ukraine, which include communications between American financier Hunter Biden – the son of US President Joe Biden – and figures engaged in biological research in Ukraine that his investment company aided in financing.

 The emails disclosed the identities of numerous key American leaders from Metabiota and Black & Veatch, and also officials from the US Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), who were involved in biological research initiatives. Those named include:

 

THEY Tryna Kanye X And Its African American Owner Elon Musk...,

Slate  | To get this out of the way: I am still using the site formerly known as Twitter.

I have been posting regularly on what is now known as X since December 2011. The site brought me many things over the years—close friendships, news from around the world, a husband—but these days I mostly use it for one reason. That reason is that I am a freelance journalist, and Twitter—excuse me, X—is still the most useful place to share and get work. In other words, it helps me get paid.

But there is a certain tension in this. I regularly write on Jewish history and politics. This includes politics around antisemitism, and the threat posed by antisemitism. Increasingly, that means that in order to potentially have the professional opportunity to cover the threat of antisemitism, I use a social media platform owned by someone who, I would argue, is using the same platform to make the threat of antisemitism actively worse.

Twitter has long had its issues, but Elon Musk, since taking over late last year, has made existing problems more pronounced—for example, in allowing accounts that had been previously suspended for hate speech to come back—and has invented problems that didn’t need to exist, including by getting rid of check marks that verified identity (and also firing thousands of staff). Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, top advertisers have left the platform and ad sales have reportedly fallen dramatically.

But Musk has found someone other than himself to blame: the Anti-Defamation League, which he has now threatened to sue.

“Our US advertising revenue is still down 60%, primarily due to pressure on advertisers by @ADL (that’s what advertisers tell us), so they almost succeeded in killing X/Twitter!” Musk posted on Monday. He added, “If this continues, we will have no choice but to file a defamation suit against, ironically, the ‘Anti-Defamation’ League.”

The Anti-Defamation League dates back to the 1910s, and per its founder, attorney Sigmund Livingston, exists “to stop the defamation of the Jewish people, and to secure justice and fair treatment to all.” Today, the organization tracks hate-crime laws in the United States and provides legal services, such as serving as co-counsel in a federal lawsuit against the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers for their role in attacking the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

That doesn’t mean the ADL is above reproach. Increasingly, it has come under criticism from the left for putting the fight against antisemitism and for civil rights second to the desire to defend Israel and Zionism. In 2021, progressive outlet Jewish Currents published a report based on interviews with former staffers that charged that “CEO Jonathan Greenblatt has repeatedly chosen to support crackdowns on criticism of Israel over protecting civil liberties, putting him in conflict with his own civil rights office.” Earlier this year, the New Republic ran a piece that took Greenblatt to task for not doing enough to tackle white supremacy, noting that his keynote speech at the ADL’s annual leadership summit this year “had virtually nothing to say about the rise of white Christian nationalism. … Instead, he focused his ire on what the ADL calls ‘hostile anti-Zionist activists groups’ like Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace, which loudly criticize and protest against Israel on America’s college campuses, calling them ‘the photo inverse of the extreme right.’ ” Ironically, Greenblatt faced backlash last year when, on television, he said, “Elon Musk is an amazing entrepreneur and extraordinary innovator. He’s the Henry Ford of our time.”

But one does not need to think that Greenblatt is good at his job, or even to think that the ADL has any credibility as an institution, to be concerned that Musk appears to share with Henry Ford not only ownership of an automobile company, but also a penchant for blaming Jews. In looking for someone to blame for his troubles, Musk is lashing out at a Jewish institution that, at least in theory, exists to push back against antisemitism.

This encourages others to join in: Right-wing figure Charlie Kirk, who days earlier had posted that the ADL today is “a hate group that dons a religious mask to justify stoking hatred of the left’s enemies,” tweeted out a video of Greenblatt on MSNBC that Kirk said showed Greenblatt “bragging” about “how the group extorts every single tech company in Silicon Valley to censor Americans and ‘ban’ hate speech.” Stephen Miller, the former senior adviser in the Trump White House who was called an immigration hypocrite by his uncle, also chimed in, offering: “Speaking as a Jew: ADL is NOT a Jewish organization,” which was then reposted thousands of times. The idea that a person (or, in this case, institution) can be deemed “not really Jewish” and thus fair game for an antisemitic smear is a not uncommon one.

 

The 4th Reich Is BIG MAD With Elon Musk

nbcnews  |  Tech billionaire Elon Musk has come under fire from Ukraine after it emerged he thwarted a major attack on the Russian navy.

According to excerpts published by CNN, a soon-to-be-released biography of the SpaceX CEO claims that Musk secretly ordered his engineers to turn off his Starlink satellite network over Russian-occupied Crimea last year in order to prevent a Ukrainian drone attack on Russia’s naval fleet. 

Musk was worried that the planned attack on the Kremlin’s Black Sea fleet, which occurred early in the war, could escalate tensions and potentially lead to nuclear conflict, according to the extract from historian Walter Isaacson’s upcoming book.

The claim was immediately met with criticism from Kyiv. 

Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, blasted the tech billionaire on X, formerly Twitter, which Musk owns. 

“Sometimes a mistake is much more than just a mistake,” Podolyak wrote. 

“By not allowing Ukrainian drones to destroy part of the Russian military (!) fleet via #Starlink interference, @elonmusk allowed this fleet to fire Kalibr missiles at Ukrainian cities,” he added.

Russia is known to have used its naval ships in the Black Sea to strike deep into Ukrainian territory and impose an effective blockade of the Ukrainian Black Sea coast, which is crucial to global grain shipments. 

“As a result, civilians, children are being killed,” Podolyak said. “This is the price of a cocktail of ignorance and big ego. However, the question still remains: why do some people so desperately want to defend war criminals and their desire to commit murder? And do they now realize that they are committing evil and encouraging evil?”

Musk responded to the report, denying that he turned off the service but accepting he had chosen not to enable the attack as he did not want to become directly involved in the war. 

“The Starlink regions in question were not activated. SpaceX did not deactivate anything,” Musk said in a response to a thread on X about the new book’s claims. 

“There was an emergency request from government authorities to activate Starlink all the way to Sevastopol,” he said in another response, referring to a key port city in Crimea that is home to Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. 

“The obvious intent being to sink most of the Russian fleet at anchor,” Musk added. “If I had agreed to their request, then SpaceX would be explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation.”

According to the excerpts from the new biography, it meant that Ukrainian submarine drones packed with explosives lost connectivity as they approached the Russian ships, and saw them “washed ashore harmlessly.”

The book also delves into how Musk’s decision played out, alleging Musk spoke with top U.S. officials along with the Russian ambassador to the U.S.

NBC News has reached out to SpaceX and Zelenskyy’s office for comment.

 

Obama Literally Would Not Exist Without The Central Intelligence Agency

reason  |  Although the debate over Barack Obama's national identity ended with the release of his long-form birth certificate, questions about his political identity continue. Is he a socialist, a New Deal liberal, a neoliberal, a neoconservative, a fascist, an Uncle Tom, a black nationalist, or just an unprincipled coward? Does he identify with whites, with blacks, or, as Cornel West recently claimed, with Jews? Does he want an accountable or monarchical executive branch? Does he side with investment bankers or with foreclosed mortgagers? Does he really believe in God? If so, which one?

Obama's apparent inconsistency on several issues has helped fuel the public debate over his beliefs. But if anything in Obama's rhetoric and policies has been constant, it is his devotion to the American empire. Throughout the presidential campaign, he promised to fulfill the mission of his heroes, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and John F. Kennedy: strengthening American influence across the world. Obama declared that, like the globalist American leaders of the past, "we must embrace America's singular role in the course of human events."

Many of the candidate's most loyal supporters were veterans of the movements against U.S. interventions in Southeast Asia and Central America, but Obama himself flatly asserted that the United States "has been one of the greatest sources of progress that the world has ever known" and therefore "must lead the world, by deed and example." Before audiences who somehow saw him as a peace candidate, he lauded Franklin Roosevelt for building "the most formidable military the world has ever seen" and promised to continue the tradition. As lifelong peaceniks plastered his face on their cars and homes and made their children march in parades for him, the candidate made it clear, in speeches, articles, and the 2008 Democratic National Platform, that if elected he would seek to enlarge the Army and Marine Corps, increase military spending, and escalate the war in Afghanistan.

Similarly, 10 months after taking office, Obama used the Nobel Peace Prize to declare war on potentially most of the world. In his October 2009 acceptance speech, the president pledged to go "beyond self-defense"—with armed intervention when necessary—anywhere "the inherent rights and dignity of every individual" are denied. Moreover, he ominously asserted that economic development "rarely takes root without security" and that "military leaders in my own country" believe that "our common security hangs in the balance" so long as climate change is not swiftly and forcefully addressed. Seldom has a political leader delivered such a strident and comprehensive call for American hegemony.

As we now know, Obama's imperial rhetoric was not empty. With the cooperation of both Democrats and Republicans in Congress, he did in fact increase Pentagon spending and expand the Army and Marine Corps to create the largest and most powerful military in the history of the world, tripled down in Afghanistan and Pakistan, launched new military operations in Libya, Yemen, and Somalia, and maintained 50,000 troops in Iraq.

Clearly, anyone who saw Obama as a peacemaker simply did not listen to what he was saying. But his commitment to preserving and expanding the American empire should also be no surprise to anyone familiar with the facts of his childhood. Obama is, after all, the empire's son. Neither New York Times reporter Janny Scott nor conservative public intellectual Dinesh D'Souza—the authors of books on Obama's mother and father, respectively—understand this. But for anyone with knowledge of the involvement of the United States in Indonesia and Kenya during Obama's childhood, the information Scott and D'Souza provide makes it clear that Obama is fundamentally a product of American imperialism.

 

Do You Believe That Obama Has MUCH In Common With J. Edgar Hoover?

salon  |  It’s one of the enduring mysteries of Barack Obama’s presidency, as it sinks toward the sunset: How did this suave and intelligent guy, with the cosmopolitan demeanor, the sardonic sense of humor and the instinct for an irresistible photo-op, end up running the most hidden, most clandestine and most secrecy-obsessed administration in American history? And what does the fact that nobody in the 2016 campaign — not Bernie Sanders, not Hillary Clinton, not anybody — ever talks about this mean for the future? The answer to the second question is easy: Nothing good. The answer to the first one might be that those things are unrelated: Personality doesn’t tell us anything about policy, and our superficial judgments about political leaders are often meaningless.

Bill Moyers warned me about this some years ago, when I asked him how he evaluated George W. Bush as a person. He wasn’t much interested in character or personality in politics, he said. Lyndon Johnson had been one of the most difficult people he’d ever known, and Moyers had never liked him, but Johnson was an extraordinarily effective politician. I wasn’t sharp enough to ask the obvious follow-up question, which was whether Johnson’s personal flaws had fed into his disastrous policy errors in Vietnam.

Bill Moyers has forgotten more about politics than I will ever know, but the thing is, I do perceive a relationship between surface and substance, and I believe we learn something important about people almost right away. George W. Bush was profoundly incurious about the world, and insulated by layers of smarter people and money. Richard Nixon was always a creep. Bill Clinton wanted to make you cry and get your panties off. Ronald Reagan never had any idea what day it was. Barack Obama seems like a smart, funny, cool guy, and maybe he’s too much of all those things for his own good. Maybe we will look back decades from now and perceive the Obama paradox — the baffling relationship between his appealing persona and his abysmal record on surveillance, government secrecy and national security — in a different light. For one thing, whatever they told him between November of 2008 and January of 2009 must have been really scary.

I called up John Kiriakou, a former CIA agent who spent 23 months in federal prison thinking this stuff over, to see if he could help. Kiriakou is one of the nine government leakers or whistleblowers that the Obama White House and/or the Justice Department has sought to prosecute under the Espionage Act, a law passed under Woodrow Wilson during World War I that was meant to target double agents working for foreign governments. (Among the other eight actual or prospective defendants are Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden.) Under all previous presidents, incurious George included, the Espionage Act was used for that purpose exactly three times. If you’re keeping score, that’s nine attempted prosecutions in seven years, versus three in 91 years.

Kiriakou had a whole lot to say, especially about former Attorney General Eric Holder and current CIA director John Brennan, whom he sees as the prime movers behind the administration’s secrets-and-lies agenda — and also as the guys who railroaded him over what he describes as a minor indiscretion. Kiriakou spent 15 years in the CIA, first as an analyst and then as a covert operative. He was involved in the capture of Abu Zubaydah, and apparently knew that the alleged senior al-Qaida operative was waterboarded by CIA interrogators, although he was not directly involved.

Privatization Is At The Core Of Fascism

off-guardian  |  The first group of privatizations occurred in the first fascist nation, Italy, in the 1920s; and the second group of privatizations occurred in the second fascist nation, Germany, in the 1930s. Privatizations started under Mussolini, and then were instituted under Hitler. That got the fascist ball rolling; and, after a few decades of hiatus in the wake of fascism’s embarrassing supposed defeat in WW II, it resurfaced and then surged yet again after 1970, when fascist forces in the global aristocracy, such as via the CIA, IMF, Bilderberg group, and Trilateral Commission, imposed the global reign of the world’s main private holders of bonds and of stocks: the world’s aristocrats are taking on an increasing percentage of what were previously public assets.

Privatizations, after starting in fascisms during the pre-WWII years, resumed again in the 1970s under the fascist Chilean leader Augusto Pinochet; and in the 1980s under the fascist British leader Margaret Thatcher (a passionate supporter of apartheid in South Africa) and also under the smiling fascist American leader Ronald Reagan (who followed the prior success of Richard Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” of White domination in the by-then resurgent-conservative U.S., and might even be said to have been America’s first fully fascist President); and in the 1990s under several fascist (formerly communist) leaders throughout the former Soviet Union, under the guidance of Harvard University’s fascist economics department, which transferred control from the former nomenklatura, to the new (Western-dependent) “oligarchs,” all under the virtual guidance of its former head, Lawrence Summers, who then was serving as the World Bank President.

And, privatizations are now all the rage throughout the world, such as in today’s fascist United States, and today’s fascist United Kingdom.

Mussolini was the man-of-the-future, but — after Franklin Delano Roosevelt died, and finally Thatcher and Reagan and other ‘free-marketeers’ came into office — Mussolini’s “future” has increasingly become our own “now”: the Axis Powers’ ideology has actually been winning in the post-WW-II world. Only, this time, it’s called instead by such names as “libertarianism” or “neo-liberalism,” no longer “fascism,” so that only the true-believing fascists, the aristocrats, will even know that it’s actually fascism. It’s their Big Con. It’s their Big Lie. Just renaming fascism as “libertarianism” or “neo-liberalism,” has fooled the masses to think that it’s pro-democratic. “Capitalism” has thus come to be re-defined to refer to only the aristocratically controlled form of capitalism: fascism. The ideological battle has thus apparently been won by a cheap terminological deceit. That’s all it takes for dictatorship to be able to win.

The democratically controlled form of capitalism, such as in some northern European countries, has commonly been called “socialism”; and, of course, it’s opposed to all forms of dictatorship, both communist and fascist. Socialism is the democratic form of capitalism. It’s not the dictatorial form of socialism, which is Marxism. It’s the form of capitalism that serves the public, instead of the aristocracy, at any point where the two have conflicting interests. It subordinates the aristocracy to the public. Fascism instead subordinates the public to the aristocracy, which is the natural tendency (because the “World’s Richest 0.7% Own 13.67 Times as Much as World’s Poorest 68.7%,” and the “World’s Richest 80 People Own Same Amount as World’s Bottom 50%”).