Pinkertons Making A 21st Century Comeback With Impunity

 

counterpunch  |  During a recent visit to Portland, Oregon, my husband and I watched a private security guard help up an unhoused man from the sidewalk. Three white women looked on at the interaction that took place in the trendy Nob Hill neighborhood on August 7, 2023, right in front of a yoga studio.

But the guard was not responding with compassion. Seconds earlier, the tall and very muscular man sporting a flak jacket emblazoned with the word “security,” had walked right by me toward the unhoused man and savagely knocked him to the ground without provocation or warning. Blood streamed from the victim’s face and onto the sidewalk. He stood up as the guard hovered over him and stumbled toward the damaged glasses that had fallen off his face during the assault. The guard, who was twice the man’s size, picked up and offered him the hat that had also fallen off his head and ushered him away.

It’s increasingly common to see private security guards patrolling the streets of Portland—considered one of the most progressive cities in the United States. Not only are businesses banding together to pay for private armed patrols, but even Portland State University is using such a service on its campus. The city of Portland also recently increased its private security budget for City Hall by more than half a million dollars to hire three armed guards.

The trend is a knee-jerk response to sharply rising homelessness. There are tents belonging to unhoused people sprinkled throughout downtown Portland and Nob Hill. Like much of Portland, many of the unhoused are white, but, as Axios in a report about a homelessness survey pointed out, “the rate of homelessness among people in the Portland area who are Black, Hispanic, Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander grew more rapidly than among people who are white.”

Three summers ago, Portland—one of the nation’s whitest cities—was also an epicenter of the nationwide racial justice uprising in response to the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. “There are more Black Lives Matter signs in Portland than Black people,” joked one Black resident to the New York Times. As Donald Trump’s administration sent armed federal agents to Portland to quash the uprising, the city’s residents and officials came to symbolize a heroic resistance to rising authoritarianism.

The brutal savagery of what we witnessed in Nob Hill was in jarring contrast to the signs, stickers, and posters that many Portland businesses continue to display on their windows, declaring that “Black Lives Matter,” or “All Genders are Welcome,” and that promise safety to everyone. Everyone but the unhoused, apparently.

Shocked by the violence of the security guard’s assault, my husband and I confronted the perpetrator. He responded that hours earlier the victim had allegedly assaulted a woman in the neighborhood. In the seconds before he was attacked, however, I had walked within a few feet of the unhoused man as he muttered to himself in what sounded like a mix of English and a foreign language. The man had been minding his own business.

In a detailed three-part investigation for Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB) in December 2021, Rebecca Ellis examined how businesses have begun paying unknown sums of money to hire private security patrols. According to Ellis, “Private security firms in Oregon are notoriously underregulated, and their employees are required to receive a fraction of the training and oversight as public law enforcement.” She added, “They remain accountable primarily to their clients, not the public.”

Business owners and residents are claiming that rising homelessness is the result of increased drug addiction, forcing them to resort to private security. But researchers point to high rents and a lack of affordable housing—not drug use—as the cause of people living without homes.

Elite Maleficence And Impunity

washingtonexaminer  |  On Monday, we got a bombshell. New documents indicate the entire justification for vaccine mandates was based on a falsehood — and that public health officials knew it. 

Emails obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request show that CDC Director Rochelle Walensky and former NIH Director Francis Collins were aware of, and discussed, “breakthrough cases” of COVID in January 2021 — right when the vaccines became widely available. In her email, Walensky says that “clearly,” it is an “important area of study,” links to a study raising the issue, and assures the person she is sending it to that Dr. Anthony Fauci is looped into these conversations.

However, in public, Walensky was saying something quite different. Two months after discussing this data, she said vaccinated people “don’t carry the virus” and “don’t get sick.” In a congressional hearing, after it became clear people were able to get infected with COVID even after receiving the vaccine, she defended her original statements by claiming it was true at the time she said it — namely, for the strands we were dealing with in early 2021.

We now know that was not true and that Walensky herself knew it was not true.

Jay Bhattacharya, a professor at the Stanford School of Medicine, called the revelation “stunning.” He pointed out that despite this knowledge, “they continued to push vax mandates anyway.”

This is the real scandal, as there is little harm in getting something like this wrong in a vacuum. After all, COVID-19 vaccines certainly saved many, many lives and reduced the severity of infection for many more. But the fact vaccine mandates were pushed, even though those in charge knew people could contract and spread the virus while vaccinated, is indefensible. That they mislead the public on this makes it even worse.

If the vaccine stopped COVID dead in its tracks, as Fauci explained, then the decision to institute a vaccine mandate would merely be a controversial yet ultimately legitimate public health measure. The fact it did not do that but rather had primarily personal benefits completely removes the justification for mandates.

The Biden administration tried to impose a vaccine mandate on employers, thousands of people were fired from their jobs, and there was a time when unvaccinated people were not even allowed into restaurants in some of the country’s largest cities.

And it was all based on a lie.

 

 

We Don't Take Medically Needy People...,

wave3  |  This story began December 1 at 5 p.m. with a phone call to our newsroom from a horrified University Hospital employee. The employee claimed security had just wheeled an elderly woman all the way out to the corner of Hancock and Ali, just off hospital property, dumped the woman out of the wheelchair on the sidewalk and left.

Minutes later, we shot video of her still in a soiled hospital gown and slippers, breathing hard under a blanket placed over her in 36 degree weather. Her stuff was in a bag next to her.

The caller claimed she saw this a lot.

So I started watching, and on December 16 at 7 p.m., 35 degrees outside, I recorded three security guards surrounding an elderly woman with a walker and slowly escorting her out of the emergency room.

She couldn’t move fast.

It took several minutes to make it all the way to the same corner of Hancock and Ali.

After they had her across the street off the hospital property, the security guards turned around and went back.

When they cleared I caught up to her. She said she couldn’t breathe.

“They told me I would not stay on the premises,” she said.

“Were you there as a patient?” I asked.

“I needed to be a patient because I’m sick,” she said.

“What’s wrong with you?” I asked.

“I’ve got COPD,” she said. “I got diabetes.”

“So they wouldn’t treat you?” I asked.

“The doctor talked to me for one minute,” she said.

“And told you what?” I said.

“That I had to leave,” she said.

“What reason did he give you?” I asked.

“He didn’t give me a reason,” she said.

She told me she was homeless.

“I’ve got to go because I’m hurting,” she said. “I’m in pain.”

Matthew Hauber and his mother claimed a similar story. They met us in front of Wayside Christian Mission in the spot where they said he was dumped in October.

“I was in a car crash,” Matthew said. “I completely shattered my hip and pelvis. I got like 30-some screws.”

“They said we can’t find a rehab right now,” Linda Hauber said.

She said when Norton Hospital told her they had a room lined up for Matthew at Wayside, she checked it out.

“I called Wayside just to confirm, and they said ‘No, we can’t do that, we can’t.’” Linda said. “‘We have beds and help find jobs, but we don’t take medically needy people, we don’t do that.’”

She said she then had a conference call with the hospital staff.

“The social worker said ‘We’re going to take him to a shelter’ and I said ‘Which one?’” Linda said. “And they said Wayside Christian Mission. And I said ‘Well I know that’s not true, because I called them and they don’t take them.’ Then the social worker said ‘That’s history, we’ll think of something else.’”
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Linda said the next day, her son was unloaded from a transport vehicle on the curb in the rain on Jackson Street in front of Wayside.

“I thought ‘They’ve dumped my son...’ my garbage I have to put out to the curb, that’s how they dumped my son,” Linda said. “Like garbage.”

Linda said she was in no shape to care for him at home. She died after the interview with us.

“They put all their stuff on the sidewalk over there, dump them off on the sidewalk, get back in their vehicle and get out of here just as fast as they can,” Wayside staffer Perry Layne said.
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Never Forget That Fish Rot From The Head...,

theeconomiccollapseblog  |  In order for a civilized society to function, most people have to willingly follow the rules of that society.  If that happens, law enforcement authorities can deal with the few that choose to be lawless.  For generations, that is how things worked in America.  There was a high standard of morality among the general population, and so the police were able to successfully handle the few bad apples that insisted on breaking the law.  But now everything has changed.  As a result of decades of extreme moral decay, lawlessness is rampant and there are vast multitudes of young people that openly flaunt the rules of our society.  In fact, there are already some areas of the country that are literally on the verge of being ungovernable.

A perfect example of what I am talking about happened in southern California on Saturday.

Dozens of lawless young thieves systematically looted the Nordstrom store at the Westfield Topanga mall, and they were able to get away with tens of thousands of dollars worth of merchandise…

Shoppers at the Westfield Topanga mall in Canoga Park were in for quite a shock when dozens of thieves ransacked the Nordstrom inside the mall on Saturday, Aug. 12, smashing displays and stealing an estimated $60,000- $100,000 worth of merchandise, authorities said.

The Los Angeles Police Department responded to the mall at around 4 p.m. after hearing reports that between 20 and 50 people ran through the Nordstrom grabbing merchandise, leaving some on the ground and taking armfuls with them.

When I was growing up, this sort of thing simply did not happen.

But now we are seeing mobs of looters go haywire all over the nation on a regular basis.

This heist was obviously well coordinated, and not one of the thieves even showed a shred of remorse.

Apparently these young people are not exactly languishing in poverty, because a BMW and a Lexus were among the getaway vehicles that they used…

After grabbing between $60,000 and $100,000 worth of goods, the crew fled in several cars including a BMW and a Lexus, cops said.

At least one guard was doused with bear spray — which causes violent eye and respiratory irritation in humans. The guard was treated by paramedics.

How are we supposed to respond to this?

As I stated earlier, we are seeing robberies of this nature so often now.

Several days earlier, dozens of  young people looted the Yves Saint Laurent store in Glendale…

Earlier this week a high-end designer store in Glendale, California was looted by dozens of people in another flash mob burglary on Tuesday.

At least 30 suspects “flooded” the Yves Saint Laurent store in The Americana at Brand Tuesday afternoon and stole clothing and other merchandise before fleeing on foot and leaving the location in numerous vehicles, said police in a statement.

The total loss is estimated to be approximately $300,000.

Some people attempt to downplay the severity of these crimes by saying that these big corporate retailers can afford the losses they are experiencing.

No, they can’t.

Overall, U.S. retailers will lose more than 100 billion dollars due to theft this year alone.

This has become a major national crisis, and as J. Lee Grady has aptly pointed out, we truly have become “the land of the free-for-all”…

 

 

 

Dirty Cop Gideon Cody Raids Newspaper Causing Death Of 98 Year Old Owner...,

boing boing  |  The Marion County Record was raided by local police, who took all of its equipment and even confiscated the personal cellphones of workers there, they claim. The newspaper's co-owner, 98-year-old Joan Meyer, died within hours of the smash-and-grab, and journalistic organizations are sounding the alarm about a shocking attack on the press.

The Marion County Record's co-owner and publisher, Eric Meyer, believes Friday's raid was prompted by a story published Wednesday about a local business owner. Authorities countered they are investigating what they called "identity theft" and "unlawful acts concerning computers," according to a search warrant.

"Based on public reporting, the search warrant that has been published online, and your public statements to the press, there appears to be no justification for the breadth and intrusiveness of the search —particularly when other investigative steps may have been available — and we are concerned that it may have violated federal law strictly limiting federal, state, and local law enforcement's ability to conduct newsroom searches," the letter said.

Turns out the police chief, Gideon Cody, thought that the paper was about to publish a story about him leaving his last job after allegations of sexual misconduct.

Meyer said that, before the raid, his newspaper had investigated Cody's background and his time at the Kansas City Police Department before he came to Marion. He declined to provide details of the newspaper's investigation of Cody. "I really don't think it would be advisable for me to say what it was we were investigating, other than to characterize the charges as serious….," Meyer said. He told The Star the newspaper didn't publish a story about the allegations. "We didn't publish it because we couldn't nail it down to the point that we thought it was ready for publication," he said. "He (Cody) didn't know who our sources were. He does now." Meyer said the newspaper told city leaders they had received information about Cody but could not confirm it.

Another factor in the raid appears to be the anger of a local politically-involved restauranteur:

He and his reporter Phyllis Zorn were kicked out of an August 2nd meeting at a local establishment with US Congressman Jake LaTurner (R-KS) by the City of Marion Police Chief after restaurant owner Kari Newell demanded they leave. Meyer and Zorn published a subsequent story about the hostile encounter, which infuriated Newell and prompted angry Facebook posts. 

The paper then received a tip about Newell having her license suspended in 2008 after a DUI, checked it out, decided not to publish it, and ultimately shared it with the local police because they believed it might've been shared with them as part of Newell's ongoing divorce battle. The police then told Newell what the newspaper shared, and she attended Monday's City Council meeting to make outrageous claims about the newspaper and one of the council members (who had also obtained the letter) violating her rights. She also called Meyer later that evening and erroneously accused him of identity theft. Not even four days later, police arrived at the newspaper office, Meyer's home and the council member's home with search warrants signed by a judge

 Lots of things about to be tried in this small town.

The Profound Irony Of David Brooks Sermonizing On Moral Formation In Collapsing America

theatlantic  | A modern vision of how to build character. The old-fashioned models of character-building were hopelessly gendered. Men were supposed to display iron willpower that would help them achieve self-mastery over their unruly passions. Women were to sequester themselves in a world of ladylike gentility in order to not be corrupted by bad influences and base desires. Those formulas are obsolete today.

The best modern approach to building character is described in Iris Murdoch’s book The Sovereignty of Good. Murdoch writes that “nothing in life is of any value except the attempt to be virtuous.” For her, moral life is not defined merely by great deeds of courage or sacrifice in epic moments. Instead, moral life is something that goes on continually—treating people considerately in the complex situations of daily existence. For her, the essential moral act is casting a “just and loving” attention on other people.

Normally, she argues, we go about our days with self-centered, self-serving eyes. We see and judge people in ways that satisfy our own ego. We diminish and stereotype and ignore, reducing other people to bit players in our own all-consuming personal drama. But we become morally better, she continues, as we learn to see others deeply, as we learn to envelop others in the kind of patient, caring regard that makes them feel seen, heard, and understood. This is the kind of attention that implicitly asks, “What are you going through?” and cares about the answer.

I become a better person as I become more curious about those around me, as I become more skilled in seeing from their point of view. As I learn to perceive you with a patient and loving regard, I will tend to treat you well. We can, Murdoch concluded, “grow by looking.”

Mandatory social-skills courses. Murdoch’s character-building formula roots us in the simple act of paying attention: Do I attend to you well? It also emphasizes that character is formed and displayed as we treat others considerately. This requires not just a good heart, but good social skills: how to listen well. How to disagree with respect. How to ask for and offer forgiveness. How to patiently cultivate a friendship. How to sit with someone who is grieving or depressed. How to be a good conversationalist.

These are some of the most important skills a person can have. And yet somehow, we don’t teach them. Our schools spend years prepping students with professional skills—but offer little guidance on how to be an upstanding person in everyday life. If we’re going to build a decent society, elementary schools and high schools should require students to take courses that teach these specific social skills, and thus prepare them for life with one another. We could have courses in how to be a good listener or how to build a friendship. The late feminist philosopher Nel Noddings developed a whole pedagogy around how to effectively care for others.

A new core curriculum. More and more colleges and universities are offering courses in what you might call “How to Live.” Yale has one called “Life Worth Living.” Notre Dame has one called “God and the Good Life.” A first-year honors program in this vein at Valparaiso University, in Indiana, involves not just conducting formal debates on ideas gleaned from the Great Books, but putting on a musical production based on their themes. Many of these courses don’t give students a ready-made formula, but they introduce students to some of the venerated moral traditions—Buddhism, Judeo-Christianity, and Enlightenment rationalism, among others. They introduce students to those thinkers who have thought hard on moral problems, from Aristotle to Desmond Tutu to Martha Nussbaum. They hold up diverse exemplars to serve as models of how to live well. They put the big questions of life firmly on the table: What is the ruling passion of your soul? Whom are you responsible to? What are my moral obligations? What will it take for my life to be meaningful? What does it mean to be a good human in today’s world? What are the central issues we need to engage with concerning new technology and human life?

These questions clash with the ethos of the modern university, which is built around specialization and passing on professional or technical knowledge. But they are the most important courses a college can offer. They shouldn’t be on the margins of academic life. They should be part of the required core curriculum.

Intergenerational service. We spend most of our lives living by the logic of the meritocracy: Life is an individual climb upward toward success. It’s about pursuing self-interest.

There should be at least two periods of life when people have a chance to take a sabbatical from the meritocracy and live by an alternative logic—the logic of service: You have to give to receive. You have to lose yourself in a common cause to find yourself. The deepest human relationships are gift relationships, based on mutual care. (An obvious model for at least some aspects of this is the culture of the U.S. military, which similarly emphasizes honor, service, selflessness, and character in support of a purpose greater than oneself, throwing together Americans of different ages and backgrounds who forge strong social bonds.)

Those sabbaticals could happen at the end of the school years and at the end of the working years. National service programs could bring younger and older people together to work to address community needs.

These programs would allow people to experience other-centered ways of being and develop practical moral habits: how to cooperate with people unlike you. How to show up day after day when progress is slow. How to do work that is generous and hard.

Moral organizations. Most organizations serve two sets of goals—moral goals and instrumental goals. Hospitals heal the sick and also seek to make money. Newspapers and magazines inform the public and also try to generate clicks. Law firms defend clients and also try to maximize billable hours. Nonprofits aim to serve the public good and also raise money.

In our society, the commercial or utilitarian goals tend to eclipse the moral goals. Doctors are pressured by hospital administrators to rush through patients so they can charge more fees. Journalists are incentivized to write stories that confirm reader prejudices in order to climb the most-read lists. Whole companies slip into an optimization mindset, in which everything is done to increase output and efficiency.

Moral renewal won’t come until we have leaders who are explicit, loud, and credible about both sets of goals. Here’s how we’re growing financially, but also Here’s how we’re learning to treat one another with consideration and respect; here’s how we’re going to forgo some financial returns in order to better serve our higher mission.

Early in my career, as a TV pundit at PBS NewsHour, I worked with its host, Jim Lehrer. Every day, with a series of small gestures, he signaled what kind of behavior was valued there and what kind of behavior was unacceptable. In this subtle way, he established a set of norms and practices that still lives on. He and others built a thick and coherent moral ecology, and its way of being was internalized by most of the people who have worked there.

Lots Of Talk About Depopulation Agendas

⚠️Holy shit⚠️

US Congressman @RonJohnsonWI alleges that covid was “pre-planned by an elite group of people. Event 201”.

In reference to the John’s Hopkins Center tabletop exercise with the WEF and the Gates Foundation.

Pretty substantial allegations!pic.twitter.com/IfziWIE3SB

— Clandestine (@WarClandestine) August 11, 2023

merylnass  |  Here is another wonderfully researched and written look into the long morbid history of how the powerful repeatedly sterilize the powerless. Hard to believe, but California was still sterilizing women in prisons until about 20 years ago, that we know of. The Midwestern Doctor has produced another tour de force.

The Forgotten Side of Medicine

How Did We Know That the COVID-19 Vaccines Would Decimate Global Fertility?

When I started this Substack, my goal was to draw attention to the things with the vaccines I felt would create significant problems in the future if something was not done about them. One of the initial topics I decided to cover (on April 2nd 2022) was the history of elitist population control initiatives because I saw a lot of different signs that re…

Read more

15 days ago · 442 likes · 334 comments · A Midwestern Doctor

Michel Chossudofsky discusses actual news reports of meetings on depopulation:

https://www.globalresearch.ca/secret-may-2009-meeting-of-the-good-club-billionaire-club-in-bid-to-curb-overpopulation/5742626

“Billionaires Try to Shrink World’s Population”: Secret Gathering Sponsored by Bill Gates, 2009 Meeting of “The Good Club”

Is Worldwide Depopulation Part of the Billionaire's "Great Reset"

For more than ten years, meetings have been held by billionaires described as philanthropists to Reduce the Size of the World’s Population culminating with the 2020-2022 Covid crisis.

Recent developments suggest that “Depopulation” is an integral part of the so-called Covid mandates including the lockdown policies and the mRNA “vaccine”. 

Flash back to 2009. According to the Wall Street Journal: “Billionaires Try to Shrink World’s Population”.

In May 2009, the Billionaire philanthropists met behind closed doors at the home of the president of The Rockefeller University in Manhattan.

This Secret Gathering was sponsored by Bill Gates. They called themselves “The Good Club”. 

Among the participants were the late David Rockefeller, Warren Buffett, George Soros, Michael Bloomberg  Ted Turner, Oprah Winfrey and many more. 

In May 2009, the WSJ as well as the Sunday Times reported: (John Harlow, Los Angeles) that

“Some of America’s leading billionaires have met secretly to consider how their wealth could be used to slow the growth of the world’s population and speed up improvements in health and education.”

The emphasis was not on population growth (i.e Planned Parenthood) but on “Depopulation”, i.e,. the reduction in the absolute size of the World’s population.

To read complete WSJ article click here—and I have a subscription so have reproduced the full text at the bottom of the page—Meryl

Um, Er, Ah..., Despite Causing Us Massive Injury - NONE OF THEM Have Yet Been Held Accountable!!!

alt-market  |  When I think back to the first days of the covid pandemic lockdowns, I suspect the majority of people, even many conservatives and liberty movement types, had a healthy concern about the effects of the virus and the potential for structural upheaval if it turned out to be as deadly as the World Health Organization initially claimed. If covid had an Infection Fatality Rate of 3% or more as global health officials warned, then the damage would be substantial enough to change our world for many years to come.

Anyone who was not at least partially concerned about a biological disaster (or biological warfare) was probably an idiot. Anyone who was smart was prepared.  However, after a few months of the spread of the virus and after the first flurry of scientific data, several facts became evident:

1) The lockdowns did nothing to stop the spread, they were simply destroying our economy.

2) The masks were useless and did nothing to prevent transmission of the virus.

3) The IFR of covid was a tiny 0.23%, and that’s not accounting for all the co-morbidity deaths that were falsely labeled as covid deaths.

4) The vaccines did not prevent transmission for millions of people. They did not prevent infection in many cases and numerous vaccinated people have died from the virus. Not only that, but unvaccinated people with natural immunity were better protected than those that took the vaccine and boosters.

5) Studies show that the vaccines cause dangerous side effects at a much greater rate than the CDC admitted.

Everything government officials told us during the pandemic was a lie. It was not a mistake, it was not bureaucratic confusion, it was a lie. Even after this information became available, they KEPT GOING – They kept people locked down, kept them masked and they even tried to force-vaccinate the population. There were some Republican politicians that also went along with the panic, many of them Neocons (fake conservatives).  However, the majority of red states quickly ended the restrictions once the contradictory data was made public.  In the meantime, the blue states looked ridiculous and paranoid as they desperately clung to the mandates.

I believe the only reason Biden, the Democrats and globalist institutions eventually stopped was not because they realized their science was incorrect; it was because they realized millions of conservatives and independents were ready start a shooting war over the mandates and they knew they would lose.

Even today, months after Biden was forced to finally end the national emergency status on covid, there are still a lot of people out there running around with masks, still isolating in their homes and still complaining all over social media that the public has moved on from the pandemic hysteria. Where does this behavior originate? And why did so many Americans (mainly leftists) jump on the authoritarian bandwagon when it comes to lockdowns and forced vaccination?

I want to explore the psychology of such people here, because I think it’s the natural inclination of the public today to move on quickly from the discomfort of terrible events and ignore the deeper implications. We cannot move on from this, because the ultimate problem was never solved. These same leftists and globalists were never admonished for their behavior, they never had to admit they were wrong and they WILL attempt the same draconian measures again in the future if left unchecked.

Here is what I think happened during the covid cult frenzy…

A Useful Weapon Against The Constitution

Leftists are quick these days to change the subject or outright deny their authoritarian activities during covid. It makes sense, they view the next election as a defining election and they want people to forget that we almost lost what remains of our constitutional rights because of their policies. But again, we can’t allow these things to fade into the ether. Here’s a list of the worst trespasses on the part of leftists and globalists during the pandemic:

They lied about the effectiveness of the lockdowns.

They lied about the effectiveness of the masks.

They lied about the effectiveness of the vaccines.

They lied about how extensive the testing was for the covid vaccines.

They lied about the “pandemic of the unvaccinated.”

They enforced lockdowns OUTSIDE where it is nearly impossible to contract a virus.

They tried to put the population under house arrest.

They put legislation in motion in some states to build “covid camps” in the US.

In some countries, they did build covid camps, not just for travelers, but for everyone.

They conspired to suppress ample evidence linking the Wuhan Lab in China with the outbreak.

They (Government and Big Tech) conspired to use social media as a tool for mass censorship of conflicting data.

They exploited algorithms through search engines to bury any and all contrary information.

As many leftists openly admitted, the goal was to make life so difficult for the unvaccinated that they would eventually comply in order to survive. In this way, establishment elites and leftists could claim that people “volunteered” for the vaccines and no one was forced. What they really meant was, no one was forced at gunpoint, but we all knew that threat was coming next.  In fact, polling showed that a large percentage of Democrats were willing to scrap the Bill of Rights altogether and declare war on the unvaccinated…

Moonraker And The Breakaway Civilization

espionagehistoryarchive  |   A notable example of the breakaway civilization in film is the 1979 film adaptation of Ian Fleming’s Moonraker. Moonraker the film differs significantly from the Fleming’s novel, but the differences and parallels are important to highlight: the novel focuses on a kind of Operation Paperclip scenario, wherein Sir Hugo Drax is secretly building a V-2 rocket in tandem with the Nazis to destroy England and rebuild the Reich. For many, the film adaptation a few decades later represented an exceedingly outlandish interpolation on a pulp spy novel that failed to achieve much more than mimicking the box office success of science-fiction blockbusters it attempted to copy, cinematic innovations like 2001 and Star Wars.

On the contrary, more is at work here than just inserting 007 into a Star Wars laser-battle setting. The most obvious factor to recall is that 1979 is roughly the birth of the Strategic Defense Initiative (born at Bohemian Grove), where plans would be posited for a DARPA-style space-based weapons system in the vein of Skynet. Thus, concurrent with this deep- state project initiated under the auspices of the Cold War showdown with the Soviets, Tesla-esque satellite decapitation and directed-energy weapon scenarios would become the Skynet/Smartgrid Internet of Things as we see it today.

In tandem with the decades early planning, predictive programming in Hollywood blockbusters would prepare generations for the implementation of that grid – such as ARPANET (the Internet) – in the near future. Thus, Moonraker the film represents the second phase of the Operation Paperclip/NASA program that birthed the rocket and “UFO/foo fighter” aerospace technology. Taking a step back, the 1954 Fleming book Moonraker was the first stage of the same “space program” that Moonraker the film symbolically updated, and that is the deeper reason for the science-fiction trajectory of the narrative. Recall as well that by the late 1970’s, 007 was already history’s largest film franchise, so we can expect it to have been crucial in preparatory induction for the planned technocratic age. 

And so with Moonraker, the most ridiculous and silly of 007 films, all the obligatory puns and innuendos so characteristic of the Roger Moore era serve to mask a rather profound secret of the overall deep-state agenda. In the plot we discover that Hugo Drax has stolen a space shuttle through his German underlings to reverse-engineer the technology for nefarious machinations. Meanwhile, 007 is on his trail battling the laughable Jaws (Richard Kiel) in mid-air as Jaws loses his parachute, plummeting into no less than a circus tent. At first, one can brush this off as pure absurdity common to the Moore era, but comparisons to Diamonds Are Forever began to emerge, as the circus theme of Las Vegas functioned prominently there, as well. Both films run roughly parallel, describing the same themes and events – a private space program that operates under various fronts and shells, intent on cornering the market under a shadow-government technocracy (SPECTRE) intent on mass depopulation and the creation of a “new world” modelled after Noah’s Ark.

In both films our respective villains also work together with the mafia and criminal underground to achieve their designs, with the various crime groups subservient to the overriding, internationalist SPECTRE. Even though Drax is not a member of SPECTRE like Blofeld, the principles he enacts are all the same. Blofeld’s jewel heist and his casino/aerospace takeover operation perfectly mirror Drax’s technological theft and private aerospace company, with various shells and fronts funding the true programs of both “fictional” oligarchs. In fact, the Moonraker facility Drax runs resembles NASA and other deep state-facilities, yet it is not the real Drax aerospace facility.

007 And The "Normalized" World Above Our World....,

espionagehistoryarchive |  We’ve analyzed 007 in the past, as well as Howard Hughes in light of Scorcese’s The Aviator, but could there be a connection between the two? What if Ian Fleming was encoding an explosive, real-world conspiracy involving Howard Hughes, JFK, Aristotle Onassis and a legendary kidnapping? Not only is there evidence to suggest this, but the film version of his 1954 novel Diamonds Are Forever subtly suggests much more. We know Fleming was a high-level Royal Navy psychological warfare specialist and involved in numerous covert operations, and as I’ve argued many times, Fleming’s novels and the film versions, in their own respective ways, elucidate these clandestine activities, touching on everything from black-market smuggling networks to actual espionage and assassinations.

Fleming’s inspiration for the novel stemmed from meetings and discussions with former MI5 chief Sir Percy Stillitoe, then working for the DeBeers diamond empire. Combined with these tips, as well as information he received from wealthy socialite William Woodward and Los Angeles police intelligence on organized crime and smuggling operations, Fleming composed the fourth Bond novel in 1954 as a literary means of detailing the dark world of precious gem and jewel markets. To add intrigue to this already intriguing tale, Fleming was also approached by Aristotle Onassis for a film version of either Casino Royale or Dr. No, with Onassis desiring to be a part of the funding (Ian Fleming by Andrew Lycett, pgs. 336-7). No stranger to Hollywood, Onassis was also a friend of numerous tinsel-town heavyweights, including the Greek film executive Spyros Skouras.

With these connections, my thesis here, in concert with the fascinating insight of Basil Valentine, is that Diamonds Are Forever the film provides a crucial insight into the coded reference of Willard Whyte as a stand in for Howard Hughes. As I argued in my Scorcese analysis, Hughes was intimately tied to the CIA through Robert Maheu, an intelligence-establishment figure who emerged from the CIA-dominated advertising world. It is possible Maheu was involved in the reported kidnapping escapade of Hughes, which The Gemstone Files allege was orchestrated by Onassis, leading to Hughes being spirited away to the magnate’s lavish island, Skorpios.

In regard to Diamonds Are Forever the 1971 film, it is a curious note that Whyte, the Hughes stand-in, is said to have been kidnapped and/or never emerging from his penthouse for years. As it turns out, it is the inimical Bond villain Blofeld, and particularly Ernst Stavro Blofeld, that is behind the diamond smuggling plot as a means of moving in on Whyte’s aerospace operations. If Basil’s thesis is correct, then Stavro could be a composite of Onassis and Niarchos, the brother-in-law of Onassis and a rival shipping magnate. Stavros Niarchos is reported to have been counted as a Bilderberg member, as well as being a close associate of the Rockefeller Foundation for certain. These considerations are admittedly speculative.  

When we consider Hughes’ close connection to the CIA through operations like Project AZORIAN, which sounds just like a SPECTRE-style operation from a 007 film, we can certainly presume much more was being conveyed here. Even questions relating to the moon mission arise, given the seemingly out-of-place shot of Bond stumbling across a sound stage in Hughes’ facility, where actors in astronaut suits are staging a phony lunar landing. Is Fleming implying that the moon mission itself was a psychological operation? Speculation is welcomed here, but the real message of Diamonds centers around exotic weaponry along directed energy lines. The same theme re-emerges in the 1974 film adaptation of Fleming’s The Man with the Golden Gun, where alchemy and techne combine to reveal the Pentagon’s darkest future tech. Given that Jackie married Aristotle Onassis just five years after JFK was gone, could this signify a mafia-mandated marriage tradition? Perhaps Fleming knew the answer about this and the real SPECTRE.

Using Ken Klippenstein DoD Tries To Discredit David Grush By Leaking His Medical Records

theintercept  |  On Tuesday evening, Ross Coulthart, an Australian independent journalist who covers UFOs and has interviewed Grusch, posted a statement attributed to Grusch on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.

“It has come to my attention that The Intercept intends to publish an article about two incidents in 2014 and 2018 that highlights previous personal struggles I had with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Grief and Depression,” the statement reads. “As I stated under oath in my congressional testimony, over 40 credentialed intelligence and military personnel provided myself and my colleagues the information I transmitted to the Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG) and I took the leadership role to represent the concerns of these distinguished and patriotic individuals.”

Grusch’s wife, Jessica Grusch, did not respond to several requests for comment.

A former colleague of Grusch’s expressed shock that he retained his clearance after the 2014 incident, which was also documented in public records obtained by The Intercept.

“I think it’s like any insular group: Once you’re in, they generally protect their own,” said the former colleague, who asked not to be named because they feared professional reprisals.

The former colleague said that the 2014 incident was known to Grusch’s superiors, a claim that Coulthart appeared to confirm in an interview on NewsNation, a subscription television network owned by Nexstar Media.

“The intelligence community and the Defense Department clearly accepted there was no issue because he was allowed to keep his security clearance,” Coulthart told Chris Cuomo Tuesday night.

Two Republican members of the House Oversight Committee, Reps. Anna Paulina Luna and Tim Burchett, were tasked with organizing the July 26 hearing after Grusch’s whistleblower claims became public. Not all House Republicans are supportive of the effort. Rep. Mike Turner, chair of the House Intelligence Committee, has taken a dim view of Grusch’s claims.

“Every decade there’s been individuals who’ve said the United States has such pieces of unidentified flying objects that are from outer space,” Turner said. “There’s no evidence of this and certainly it would be quite a conspiracy for this to be maintained, especially at this level.”

Grusch emerged as the hearing’s star witness, but his evidence was largely secondhand: When asked, Grusch said he hasn’t seen any of the recovered alien vehicles or bodies himself. While two former Navy fighter pilots alleged unidentified aerial phenomena, neither said anything about their provenance. Grusch was alone among the witnesses in attributing them to extraterrestrials.

“My testimony is based on information I have been given by individuals with a longstanding track record of legitimacy,” Grusch said in his opening statement.

Shortly after The Intercept reached out to Grusch for comment for this story, Coulthart went on Cuomo’s show and said that The Intercept was planning to publish “confidential medical records” about Grusch that had been leaked by the intelligence community. Coulthart, an ardent defender of Grusch, told NewsNation that “Grusch believes the government may now be behind an effort to release his medical records in an effort to smear his credibility.”

“This is a document that would be, if the media had done the right thing, it would be in his police department file, in the file in the county sheriff’s office,” Coulthart said in his interview with Cuomo. “But Dave has checked today, because he assumed that the journalist had done his homework and just asked the local sheriff for the files. The sheriff has confirmed it did not come from him. The only other place that had this information is the intelligence community, Dave’s personal files inside the intelligence community, where quite properly, when anybody is security assist, things like this have to be looked at, and somebody inside the intelligence community leaked it.”

Coulthart went on to compare the purported leak to Richard Nixon’s attempts to discredit Daniel Ellsberg, who shared the Pentagon Papers with the New York Times.

“I think there should be an inquiry into the circumstances of how sensitive records pertaining to a decorated combat veteran’s file found their way to a journalist not through the proper channels,” Coulthart said. “This could’ve been requested under FOI, as is normal, but the county sheriff has confirmed that did not happen.”

Ken Klippenstein Wrote About The DoD Office Of Information And Perception Management (IPMO)

theintercept  |   While perception management involves denying, or blocking, propaganda, it can also entail advancing the U.S.’s own narrative. The Defense Department defines perception management in its official dictionary as “[a]ctions to convey and/or deny selected information and indicators to foreign audiences to influence their emotions, motives, and objective reasoning.” This is the part that has, historically, tended to raise the public’s skepticism of the Pentagon’s work.

The term “perception management” hearkens back to the Reagan administration’s attempts to shape the narrative around the Contras in Nicaragua. The Reagan administration sought to kick what his Vice President George H.W. Bush would later call the “Vietnam syndrome,” which it believed was driving American public opposition to support for the Contras. Ronald Reagan’s CIA director, William Casey, directed the agency’s leading propaganda specialist to oversee an interagency effort to portray the Contras — who had been implicated in grisly atrocities — as noble freedom fighters.

“An elaborate system of inter-agency committees was eventually formed and charged with the task of working closely with private groups and individuals involved in fundraising, lobbying campaigns and propagandistic activities aimed at influencing public opinion and governmental action,” an unpublished draft chapter of Congress’s investigation into Iran-Contra states. (Democrats dropped the chapter in order to get several Republicans to sign the report.)

The Smith-Mundt Act, passed in 1948 in the wake of the Second World War, prohibits the the State Department from disseminating “public diplomacy” — i.e., propaganda — domestically, instead requiring that those materials be targeted at foreign audiences. The Defense Department considered itself bound by this requirement as well.

After the invasion of Iraq, the Pentagon triggered backlash after U.S. propaganda was disseminated in the U.S. In 2004, the military signaled that it had begun its siege on Fallujah. Just hours later, CNN discovered that this was not true.

But in 2012, the law was amended to allow propaganda to be circulated domestically, under the bipartisan Smith-Mundt Modernization Act, introduced by Reps. Adam Smith, D-Wash., and Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, which was later rolled into the National Defense Authorization Act.

“Proponents of amending these two sections argue that the ban on domestic dissemination of public diplomacy information is impractical given the global reach of modern communications, especially the Internet, and that it unnecessarily prevents valid U.S. government communications with foreign publics due to U.S. officials’ fear of violating the ban,” a congressional research service report said at the time of the proposed amendments. “Critics of lifting the ban state that it may open the door to more aggressive U.S. government activities to persuade U.S. citizens to support government policies, and might also divert the focus of State Department and the BBG [Broadcasting Board of Governors] communications from foreign publics, reducing their effectiveness.”

The Obama administration subsequently approved a highly classified covert action finding designed to counter foreign malign influence activities, a finding renewed and updated by the Biden administration, as The Intercept has reported.

The IPMO memo produced for the academic institution hints at its role in such propagandistic efforts now. “Among other things, the IPMO is tasked with the development of broad thematic messaging guidance and specific strategies for the execution of DoD activities designed to influence foreign defense-related decision-makers to behave in a manner beneficial to U.S. interests,” the memo states.

As the global war on terror draws to a close, the Pentagon has turned its attention to so-called great power adversaries like Russia and China. Following Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election, which in part involved state-backed efforts to disseminate falsehoods on social media, offices tasked with combating disinformation started springing up all over the U.S. government, as The Intercept has reported.

The director of national intelligence last year established a new center to oversee all the various efforts, including the Department of Homeland Security’s Countering Foreign Influence Task Force and the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force.

The Pentagon’s IPMO differs from the others in one key respect: secrecy. Whereas most of the Department of Homeland Security’s counter-disinformation efforts are unclassified in nature — as one former DHS contractor not authorized to speak publicly explained to The Intercept — the IPMO involves a great deal of highly classified work.

That the office’s work goes beyond simple messaging into the rarefied world of intelligence is clear from its location within the Pentagon hierarchy. “The Influence and Perception Management Office will serve as the senior advisor to the USD(I&S) [Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security] for strategic operational influence and perception management (reveal and conceal) matters,” the budget notes.

When asked about the intelligence community’s counter-disinformation efforts, Lt. Gen. Scott Berrier, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told Congress this month, “I think DIA’s perspective on this, senator, is really speed: We want to be able to detect that and it’s really with our open-source collection capability working with our combatant command partners where this is happening all over the world — and then the ability to turn something quickly with them, under the right authorities, to counter that disinformation, misinformation.”

Like Project Blue Book, The AARO Is DoD's UAP Public Affairs And Coverup Office

defensescoop  |  AARO Director Sean Kirkpatrick issued a fiery statement spotlighting “his own personal observations and opinions” — but “not necessarily official DOD and IG positions” — on social media Thursday. The Pentagon authenticated his post Friday. 

In it, Kirkpatrick wrote that he “cannot let yesterday’s hearing pass without sharing how insulting it was to the officers of” the Defense Department and the intelligence community who have been “working diligently, tirelessly, and often in the face of harassment and animosity, to fulfill their Congressionally-mandated mission.”  

Allegations of “retaliation, to include physical assault and hints of murder, are extraordinarily serious, which is why law enforcement is a critical member of the AARO team, specifically to address and take swift action should anyone come forward with such claims. Yet, contrary to assertions made in the hearing, the central source of those allegations has refused to speak with AARO,” Kirkpatrick wrote — pointing at Grusch without directly stating his name. 

He also said AARO has yet to see credible proof regarding allegations of any reverse-engineering programs for non-human technology, and that some information reportedly obtained by Congress has not been shared with his office. 

Pentagon spokesperson Sue Gough declined to weigh in on Kirkpatrick’s statement in an email to DefenseScoop late Friday evening. 

“The department is aware of Dr. Kirkpatrick’s post, which are his personal opinions expressed in his capacity as a private citizen and we won’t comment directly on the contents of the post. We do want to reinforce the department’s unwavering commitment to openness and accountability to the American people and Congress,” she wrote.

Still, Gough’s official Pentagon responses also echoed some of the notions articulated by the AARO director.

“The department has no information that any individual has been harmed or killed as a result of providing information to AARO. Any unsubstantiated claims that individuals have been harmed or killed in the process of providing information to AARO will serve to discourage individuals with relevant information from coming forward to aid in AARO’s efforts,” she wrote.  

“To date, AARO has not discovered any verifiable information to substantiate claims that any programs regarding the possession or reverse-engineering of extraterrestrial materials have existed in the past or exist currently,” she reiterated.

Gough did not respond to follow-up questions from DefenseScoop Monday regarding new or existing channels for service members to flag UAP incidents, and whether or not there’s been an uptick in new reports to AARO — or intensified harassment — since the hearing. 

According to Graves, the former F-18 pilot who testified last week, DOD’s responses reflect “a perfect example of why witnesses are reluctant to come forward.”

“The Pentagon Press Office statement following the hearing was misleading. The disconnect between pilot witness testimony under oath at the Congressional hearing and the Pentagon Press Office’s dismissal is a perfect example of why witnesses are reluctant to come forward. It makes zero sense that our military would undermine its own servicemen and women when they are reporting serious flight risks,” he told DefenseScoop on Monday. 

Based on his own experiences with military-connected UAP, Graves formed and now runs the witness program Americans for Safe Aerospace to provide an entity for the public to safely and securely report observations or encounters. He testified at the hearing that his team estimates roughly only 5% of UAP sightings are currently reported to AARO.

“I hope Congress will hold DOD accountable and push for more support for witnesses and whistleblowers. For example, the [Pentagon] Press Office says AARO welcomes witness accounts — but AARO has not even implemented a public reporting mechanism as required by last year’s [National Defense Authorization Act]. How are witnesses even supposed to get in contact?” Graves told DefenseScoop.

Gen Mark Milley Don't Know Nuffin Dindu Nuffin Bout No UAP's...,

washingtontimes  |   EXIT INTERVIEW: Army Gen. Mark A. Milley has had a momentous — and at times polarizing — four-year run as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Presidents Trump and Biden. In the first of a series of articles ahead of the scheduled end of his tenure in October, Gen. Milley sat down with senior Washington Times military correspondent Ben Wolfgang to discuss some of the achievements and controversies of his time as the Pentagon’s highest-ranking military officer.

Some UFO sightings by military personnel are “difficult to explain,” said Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but the nation’s top general insists he has seen no evidence to back up public allegations that the Pentagon has recovered extraterrestrial beings or has engaged in decades of cover-ups to hide the truth from the American public.

In an exclusive interview with The Washington Times, Gen. Milley acknowledged that some reports of what the government now calls unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAP, lack easy explanations despite serious, ongoing research inside the Pentagon and a growing belief that at least some of the craft could pose national security threats. He made the comments less than two weeks after former U.S. intelligence officer David Grusch told Congress under oath that he is aware of “a multidecade UAP crash retrieval and reverse-engineering program” and even suggested that the Pentagon has been secretly keeping extraterrestrial bodies in storage.

Gen. Milley didn’t address the credibility of Mr. Grusch’s testimony but made clear he has seen no evidence backing up the extraordinary claims.

“The guy was under oath. I’m sure that he was trying to say whatever he thought was true. … I’m not going to doubt his testimony or anything like that,” Gen. Milley told The Times during a wide-ranging interview in his Pentagon office on Friday. “I can tell you, though, that as the chairman, I have been briefed on several different occasions by the [Pentagon’s] UAP office. And I have not seen anything that indicates to me about quote-unquote ‘aliens’ or that there’s some sort of cover-up program. I just haven’t seen it.” 

 

 

Russian Military Using Weapons That Didn't Even Exist 18 Month Ago

sputnik |  Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov earlier said that Kiev’s counteroffensive, which was launched on June 4, has been unsuccessful on all fronts as Russia continues its special military operation in Ukraine.

The next few weeks will see the Ukrainian counteroffensive “run its course”, former International Monetary Fund (IMF) economist and Bank of America strategist David Woo has told Russian media.

Woo said that he was “really impressed” with the fact that "Russian military technology has literally been going through a revolution every three months" and "the Russians are constantly learning from their mistakes."

“The Russians are now fighting with weapons they didn’t have 18 months ago because they didn’t exist 18 months ago. And that to me is the most impressive thing, […] whereas the West is still walking around in the same circle, Russia’s getting better and better, and this war is gonna [sic] be won by technology in the end,” the former IMF economist argued.

Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov earlier said that Kiev’s counteroffensive, which was launched on June 4, has been unsuccessful on all fronts as Russia continues its special military operation in Ukraine.
The next few weeks will see the Ukrainian counteroffensive “run its course”, former International Monetary Fund (IMF) economist and Bank of America strategist David Woo has told Russian media.

Woo said that he was “really impressed” with the fact that "Russian military technology has literally been going through a revolution every three months" and "the Russians are constantly learning from their mistakes."
“The Russians are now fighting with weapons they didn’t have 18 months ago because they didn’t exist 18 months ago. And that to me is the most impressive thing, […] whereas the West is still walking around in the same circle, Russia’s getting better and better, and this war is gonna [sic] be won by technology in the end,” the former IMF economist argued.

He was echoed by the Russian Defense Ministry, which, in turn, said that Ukrainian troops kept trying, but were failing to advance as they continue to suffer heavy losses in men and materiel. A number of Western media outlets also pointed to the unimpressive results of Kiev's counteroffensive, admitting that its progress was "slower than desired." Fist tap Dale