racket |Hopkins reached out to me after listening in disgust to the Murthy v. Missouri Supreme
Court hearing Monday. Standing was a big issue: our government said
plaintiffs like Drs. Jay Bhattacharya and Aaron Kheriaty lacked definite
proof that the government was responsible for suppressing their speech.
No such issue exists in CJ’s case, as you can see.
Hopkins
also wanted Americans who might be up in arms about the specter of
legalized censorship in their own country to see that the phenomenon has
also spread to virtually every Western democracy, often in more extreme
forms than we’ve seen so far in the United States.
CJ’s unique
insight involves his ludicrous German case, which as you’ll read in the
Q&A below has taken bizarre turns since we last checked and will now
go to trial yet again. As an expat following the American situation
from afar, he’s seen how the authoritarian tide is rising in similar or
worse ways all around the globe.
Hopkins is facing the business end of the German version, among the worst. As detailed last June,
he was charged with “disseminating propaganda, the contents of which
are intended to further the aims of a former National Socialist
organization.” The crime? Using a barely detectible Swastika in the
cover image of his book, The Rise of the New Normal Reich.
Far from “furthering the aims” of Nazism, he was criticizing them by
comparing Nazi methods and laws to those of modern health authorities.
The offending image:
Hopkins went to trial in January and delivered an impassioned plea
to the court. “Every journalist that has covered my case, everyone in
this courtroom, understands what this prosecution is actually about,” he
said. “It has nothing to do with punishing people who actually
disseminate pro-Nazi propaganda. It is about punishing dissent, and
making an example of dissidents in order to intimidate others into
silence.”
Though the judge was clearly not a fan of Hopkins — a courtroom account by Aya Velázquez, which
I recommend reading, described how the judge said CJ’s statements were
“ideological drivel,” just “not punishable by law” — he won on the law.
After
acquittal, he was made aware that technically the case wasn’t over,
because thanks to a quirk of German jurisprudence, the prosecutor had a
week to file an appeal. Hopkins was unconcerned. “I doubt he will
[re-file]. He made a total fool of himself in front of a large audience
yesterday,” he wrote. “I can’t imagine that he will want to do that again.”
Bzzt! Wrong.
The prosecutor re-filed charges. The prosecutorial theory in the
Hopkins case was based on a bizarre interpretation of hate crime,
essentially asserting that if you have to think about an image to
realize it’s satire, it can’t be allowed. If that idea spreads, it would
make comedy or even sharp commentary impossible. This is why his
indictment, and the similar investigation of Roger Waters,
are really serious moments. Not to be heavy-handed, but eliminating the
loophole for satire or mockery is exactly what Waters meant by “Another Brick in the Wall.” Before you know it, it’ll be toohigh to see over.
thehill | Channeling Tennessee Williams in his play “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” Judge Scott McAfee wrote that, after their testimony, there remained “an odor of mendacity.”
That odor was particularly strong after the hearings indicated that
Wade may have committed perjury in his earlier divorce case, and that
both Willis and Wade were credibly accused of lying on the stand about
when their relationship began.
Yet, that distinct odor noted by Judge McAfee goes beyond the sordid affairs of Willis and Wade.
For many citizens, mendacity, or dishonesty, is wafting from various
courtrooms around the country. The odor is becoming intolerable for many
Americans as selective prosecution is being raised in a wide array of
cases.
The problem is that courts have made it virtually impossible to use
this claim to dismiss counts. Yet there is a disturbing level of merit
to some of these underlying objections.
For years, conservatives have objected that there is a two-tier
system of justice in this country. I have long resisted such claims, but
it has become increasingly difficult to deny the obvious as selective
prosecution in a variety of recent cases and opinions.
I have long stated that the charges against Trump over documents at
Mar-a-Lago are strong and based on established precedent. However, the
recent decision of Special Counsel Robert Hur not to bring criminal
charges against President Joe Biden has undermined even that case.
Hur described four decades of Biden serially violating laws governing
classified documents. The evidence included Biden telling a third party
that he had classified material in his house and actually reading from a
classified document to his non-cleared ghostwriter. There is evidence
of an effort to destroy evidence and later an effort of the White House
to change the report. There is also Biden’s repeated denial of any
knowledge or memory of the documents found in nine locations where he
worked or lived.
Hur ultimately had to justify the lack of charges based on a belief
that he could not secure a conviction from a D.C. jury with an elderly
defendant with diminished mental faculties.
Although Special Counsel Jack Smith could still proceed on
obstruction counts, his prosecution of Trump for the retention and
mishandling of national security documents is absurdly in conflict with
the treatment Biden is receiving.
In New York, the legislature changed the statute of limitations to
allow Trump to be sued while New York Attorney General Letitia James
effectively ran on a pledge of selectively prosecuting him. She never
specified any particular crime, just promising to bag Trump.
declassified | Jack Smith's Florida case. "[Judge Aileen] Cannon repeatedly asked both sides for examples of criminal prosecution for 'other officials who did the same.' She questioned the 'arbitrary enforcement' of the espionage statute, forcing the government to admit that no other former president or vice president has faced criminal prosecution for keeping similar documents and failing to return them.
'This speaks to the arbitrary enforcement...featuring in this case,' Cannon told Bratt. Cannon also pushed back on claims Trump should have expected to face prosecution for storing classified files. Once again noting no former president or vice president-Mike Pence also discovered classified records after Trump was indicted in 2023-has been charged, Cannon suggested it was fair for Trump to expect the same treatment since 'no historical precedent' is on the books. 'Given that landscape,' Cannon continued, Trump could argue he has been unfairly targeted. Which his team already has.
In a motion emailed to the court and the government last month, Trump's attorneys asked to dismiss the case based on 'selective and vindictive prosecution.' Although the motion is not public, Jack Smith quickly responded to defend the Department of Justice's choice to pursue Trump and not Biden. 'Trump, unlike Biden, is alleged to have engaged in extensive and repeated efforts to obstruct justice and thwart the return of documents bearing classification markings, which provides particularly strong evidence of willfulness and is a paradigmatic aggravating factor that prosecutors routinely rely on when making charging decisions,' Smith wrote in a March 7 response. 'Second, the evidence concerning the two men's intent-whether they knowingly possessed and willfully retained such documents-is starkly different.'
In an almost comical passage, Smith admits Biden unlawfully retained classified records-just not as many as Trump. 'Biden possessed 88 documents bearing classification markings, including 18 marked Top Secret. By contrast, Trump possessed 337 documents bearing classification markings, including 64 marked Top Secret.
unherd | The US Supreme Court has been hearing arguments today
on what could be one of the most consequential rulings related to free
speech in decades. The case, Murthy v. Missouri, revolves around efforts
by US Government agencies, including the CDC and the FBI, to influence
the narrative around major events, such as Covid-19, by leaning on
social media platforms to censor posts, topics and accounts.
The case — brought by two states, Missouri and Louisiana, as well as
five individuals against the federal government — was in part animated
by Elon Musk’s decision to publish the Twitter Files, a trove of emails,
text and other company correspondence which showed the extent to which
Government agencies ranging from the CDC to the CIA were in contact with
managers at social media platforms over issues such as claims about the
vaccine and the effectiveness of lockdowns.
The case could not be more significant for American society as far as
freedom of speech is concerned. The reason is that at the heart of the
case is what constitutes disinformation and what steps governments can
take to combat it. In this case, many of the claims censored by social
media companies at the behest of the Government turned out to be true.
This includes widespread censorship of social media posts claiming that
the Covid-19 vaccines carry health risks and that the lockdowns were not only ineffective but also damaging.
Republicans have alleged that the same dynamic was at play when social media giants censored the New York Post’s
reporting on the now infamous Hunter Biden laptop story, arguing that
deep state actors leant on the platform to block the coverage. Twitter
executives involved in the decisions denied this, with one of them, Yoel
Roth, saying “I believe Twitter erred in this case because we wanted to avoid repeating the mistakes of 2016.”
The irony, of course, is that “the mistakes of 2016” refers to the
widespread allegations that Trump colluded with the Russian government
to sway that year’s election, including on Facebook. None of these
claims have been proved true — and some, like the effect of “fake news”
on the election, have been debunked.
Nevertheless, the “Russiagate” narrative — itself one of the most sweeping disinformation campaigns of recent years
— took a firm hold in American public life, in large part thanks to
claims of disinformation that lay at the heart of the campaign.
This speaks to the central challenge of the case: while the
Government’s critics argue that disinformation is a cudgel to silence
dissent, proponents argue that a core Government function is to police
information, especially during times of emergency.
abcnews | On Saturday, following
the meeting, the junta’s spokesperson, Col. Maj. Amadou Abdramane, said
U.S. flights over Niger’s territory in recent weeks were illegal.
Meanwhile, Insa Garba Saidou, a local activist who assists Niger’s
military rulers with their communications, criticized U.S. efforts to
force the junta to pick between strategic partners.
“The American bases and civilian personnel cannot stay on Nigerien soil any longer,” he told The Associated Press.
Singh
said the U.S. was aware of the March 16 statement “announcing the end
of the status of forces agreement between Niger and the United States.
We are working through diplomatic channels to seek clarification. These
are ongoing discussions and we don't have more to share at this time.”
State Department spokesman Vedant Patel said the discussions were prompted by Niger's “trajectory."
“We
are in touch with transition authorities to seek clarification of their
comments and discuss additional next steps,” Patel said.
The junta has largely
been in control in Niger since July when mutinous soldiers ousted the
country’s democratically elected president and months later asked French
forces to leave.
The
U.S. military still had some 650 troops working in Niger in December,
largely consolidated at a base farther away from Niamey, Niger's
capital. Singh said the total number of personnel still in country,
including civilians and contractors, is roughly 1,000.
The
Niger base is critical for U.S. counterterrorism operations in the
Sahel and has been used for both manned and unmanned surveillance
operations, although Singh said the only drone flights being currently
conducted are for force protection.
In the Sahel the U.S. has also supported local ground troops, including
accompanying them on missions. However, such accompanied missions have
been scaled back since U.S. troops were killed in a joint operation in
Niger in 2017.
SCF | Russian President Vladimir Putin was spot-on this week in his observation about why France’s Emmanuel Macron is strutting around and mouthing off about war in Ukraine. Putin remarked in an interview that Macron’s wanton warmongering over Ukraine was borne out of resentment due to the spectacular loss of France’s standing in Africa. One after another, France’s former colonial countries have told Paris in no uncertain terms to get out of their internal affairs. Since 2020 and the coup in Mali, there has been immense political upheaval on the continent, particularly in West and Central Africa, stretching from the vast Sahel region down to the equator. At least seven nations have undergone coups or government changes against Francophone rulers. They include Mali, Burkina Faso, Chad, Niger, Central African Republic, Gabon, and Guinea. The continent-wide changes have come as a political earthquake to France. The new African governments have adamantly rejected old-style French patronage and have asserted a newfound national independence.
Paris has had to recall unwanted ambassadors, shut down military bases, and withdraw thousands of troops. Where to put these French troops? In Ukraine, pitted against Russia? Popular sentiment across Africa is exasperated with and repudiating “Francafrique” corruption. Meanwhile, with an unmistakable end-of-era sense, French media have lamented “France’s shrinking footprint in Africa.” A former diplomat summed up the momentous geopolitical shift thus: “The deep trend confirms itself. Our military presence is no longer accepted. We need to totally rethink our relationship with Africa. We have been kicked out of Africa. We need to depart from other countries before we are told to.” Africa analysts are now watching two key countries closely. They are Senegal and Ivory Coast. Both are currently governed by pro-France presidents but the rising anti-French political tide is putting those incumbents at risk of either a coup or electoral ouster.
The blow to the French political elite cannot be overstated. The loss of status in its former colonies is conflating multiple crises tantamount to the traumatic loss of Algeria back in the early 1960s. Financially, for decades after handing over nominal independence to African nations, Paris continued to exploit these countries through control of currencies and their prodigious natural resources. Most of France’s electricity, for example, is generated from uranium ore mined in Africa – and obtained like most other African resources for a pittance. The system of neocolonial suzerainty was typically sustained by France bribing local corrupt regimes to do its bidding and offering security guarantees from the continuance of French military bases. Not for nothing did Paris think of itself as the African Gendarme.
One of the extraordinary curiosities of this neocolonial arrangement was that African nations were compelled to deposit their gold treasuries in France’s central bank. Any African nation trying to resist the neocolonial vassalage was liable to be attacked militarily through counter-coups, or its nationalist leaders were assassinated like Thomas Sankara in 1987, who was known as “Africa’s Che Guevara”. Nevertheless, the halcyon days of France’s dominance over its former colonies are over. African nations are discovering a new sense of independence and purpose, as well as solidarity to help each other fend off pressure from France to reinstate the status quo ante. The collapse of France’s status in Africa is perceived by the French establishment as a grievous loss in presumed global power.
No French politician can feel more aggrieved than President Emmanuel Macron. Macron imagines himself to be on a mission to restore “France’s greatness”. He seems to harbor fantasies of also leading the rest of Europe under the tutelage of Paris. It was Macron who proclaimed one of his grand objectives as achieving a reset in Franco-African relations, one which would renew continental respect for Paris and promote French strategic interests. How embarrassing for Macron that a whole spate of African nations are asserting that they no longer want to have anything to do with the old colonial power. Chagrin indeed.
[..] The French president declared with hysteria that: “If Russia wins this war [in Ukraine], Europe’s credibility will be reduced to zero.” Macron’s recklessness is criminal. He is talking up war with Russia based on sheer lies and vanity. When he says Europe’s credibility will be reduced to zero what he really means is that his credibility and that of NATO will be reduced to zero when Russia defeats the NATO-backed NeoNazi regime in Kiev. Macron is a most dangerous kind of politician. He has an inordinate ego that has been bruised, his delusions have been shattered, he is an impotent vassal of American imperialism, and he is desperate for his sordid political survival. The French people are all too well aware of the charlatan that poses like a Louis XIV Sun King in Elysée Palace basking in his presumed vainglory. How ironic. Kicked out of Africa… and now trying to start World War Three in Europe. How pathetic and criminal.
NYTimes | Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, on Thursday delivered a pointed speech on the Senate floor excoriating Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel as a major obstacle to peace in the Middle East and calling for new leadership in Israel, five months into the war.
Many Democratic lawmakers have condemned Mr. Netanyahu’s leadership and his right-wing governing coalition, and President Biden has even criticized the Israeli military’s offensive in Gaza as “over the top.” But Mr. Schumer’s speech amounted to the sharpest critique yet from a senior American elected official — effectively urging Israelis to replace Mr. Netanyahu.
“I believe in his heart, his highest priority is the security of Israel,” said Mr. Schumer, the highest-ranking Jewish elected official in the United States. “However, I also believe Prime Minister Netanyahu has lost his way by allowing his political survival to take precedence over the best interests of Israel.” Mr. Schumer added: “He has been too willing to tolerate the civilian toll in Gaza, which is pushing support for Israel worldwide to historic lows. Israel cannot survive if it becomes a pariah.”
The speech was the latest reflection of the growing dissatisfaction among Democrats, particularly progressives, with Israel’s conduct of the war and its toll on Palestinian civilians, which has created a strategic and political dilemma for Mr. Biden. Republicans have tried to capitalize on that dynamic for electoral advantage, hugging Mr. Netanyahu closer as Democrats repudiate him. And on Thursday, they lashed out at Mr. Schumer for his remarks.
Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, said on the Senate floor that it was “grotesque and hypocritical” for Americans “who hyperventilate about foreign interference in our own democracy to call for the removal of the democratically elected leader of Israel.” He called Mr. Schumer’s move “unprecedented.”
“The Democratic Party doesn’t have an anti-Bibi problem,” Mr. McConnell said, referring to Mr. Netanyahu by his nickname. “It has an anti-Israel problem.”
Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, called Mr. Schumer’s remarks “earth-shatteringly bad” and accused him of “calling on the people of Israel to overthrow their government.” And House Republicans, gathered in West Virginia for a party retreat, hastily called a news conference to attack Mr. Schumer for his comments and position themselves as the true friends of Israel in Congress.
Mr. Schumer’s remarks came a day after Senate Republicans invited Mr. Netanyahu to speak as their special guest at a party retreat in Washington. Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming, the No. 3 Republican, asked Mr. Netanyahu to address Republicans virtually, but he could not appear because of a last-minute scheduling conflict. Ambassador Michael Herzog, Israel’s envoy to the United States, spoke in his place and also addressed the House G.O.P. gathering on Thursday.
In his speech at the Capitol, Mr. Schumer, who represents a state with more than 20 percent of the country’s Jewish population, was careful to assert that he was not trying to dictate any electoral outcome in Israel. He prefaced his harsh criticism of Mr. Netanyahu with a long defense of the country, which he said American Jews “love in our bones.”
In an essay published Monday in City Journal,
Kulldorff wrote that his anti-mandate position got him fired from the
Mass General Brigham hospital system, where he also worked, and
consequently from his Harvard faculty position.
Kulldorff detailed how his commitment to scientific inquiry put him at odds with a system that he alleged had “lost its way.”
“I am no longer a professor of medicine at Harvard,” Kulldorff wrote.
“The Harvard motto is Veritas, Latin for truth. But, as I discovered,
truth can get you fired.”
He noted that it was clear from early 2020 that lockdowns would be futile for controlling the pandemic.
“It was also clear that lockdowns would inflict enormous collateral
damage, not only on education but also on public health, including
treatment for cancer, cardiovascular disease, and mental health,”
Kulldorff wrote.
“We will be dealing with the harm done for decades. Our children, the
elderly, the middle class, the working class, and the poor around the
world — all will suffer.”
That viewpoint got little debate in the mainstream media until the epidemiologist and his colleagues published the Great Barrington Declaration, signed by nearly 1 million public health professionals from across the world.
The document made clear that no scientific consensus existed for
lockdown measures in a pandemic. It argued instead for a “focused
protection” approach for pandemic management that would protect
high-risk populations, such as elderly or medically compromised people,
and otherwise allow the COVID-19 virus to circulate among the healthy population.
Although the declaration merely summed up what previously had been conventional wisdom in public health, it was subject to tremendous backlash.
Emails obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request revealed
that Dr. Francis Collins, then-director of the National Institutes of
Health called for a “devastating published takedown” of the declaration and of the authors, who were subsequently slandered in mainstream and social media.
respectfulinsolence | So what was (and is) going on? Kulldorff now says he was fired as
though the firing happened recently, but two and a half years ago he was
already referring to his time as professor of medicine at Harvard
Medical School in the past tense. Something odd is going on here but
what could it be. One big hint is his profile on the Harvard website,
which lists him as being “on leave,”
which led me to immediately recognize that trying to figure out when
Kulldorff went on leave was a job for the almighty Wayback Machine at
Archive.org. There, I found that, as early as December 2021, Kulldorff’s
status had already been listed as “on leave.” So where did Wikipedia
get the idea that he had only been on leave since 2023? Whatever the
case, it’s clear that before his “firing,” Kulldorff had not been
working for Mass General Brigham or Harvard since at least November or
December 2021, given that the last archive of his webpage showing him
not on leave is dated October 20, 2021 and the next one on December 20, 2021 shows his status as “on leave.” This time period aligns very nicely with his move to the Brownstone Institute.
However, it also aligns with the Harvard vaccine mandate for the fall
2021 term. So maybe Harvard did fire him for refusing to be vaccinated
and raising all sorts of nonsensical objections, such as his claim that
it was against his religion because the vaccine mandate was more
religious than science-based? If that was the case, though, then why was
he listed as “on leave” on the website, rather than as suspended? Let’s
look further.
Here’s yet another hint. If you look at Kulldorff’s Harvard listing,
you’ll see that it includes his research support, specifically his
grant support. This listing indicates that he has not had NIH grant
support since 2019. To understand why this is important, you need to
know that lots of universities, but in particular Harvard Medical
School-associated positions, require faculty to maintain grant support
sufficient to cover a specific percentage of their salary. This
percentage can range from a relatively modest 30-50% to a rather
draconian 100%. (If you have to get grants to cover 100% of your salary,
I always wonder, what good is the university?) While it is true that
there is some wiggle room in that if you lose grant funding for a while
usually the university will support you until you reacquire funding, but
the university won’t support you forever. Kulldorff’s leave started a
bit more than two years after his NIH R01 grant support expired, which
is a fairly reasonable period of time for Harvard to support whatever
percentage of Kulldorff’s salary that had been grant-supported, in the
hopes that he would reacquire NIH funding.
The overall narrative is that the reason that Kulldorff had to go on
leave was because of Harvard’s vaccine mandate for its fall 2021 term,
which somewhat fits with the timeline. However, what doesn’t make sense
(at least to me, at least) about this potential explanation. Harvard got rid of its vaccine mandate a week ago.
Would Harvard decide to fire Kulldorff now, given that it had
progressively decreased its requirements for boosters and now has
eliminated the COVID-19 vaccine mandate altogether? Possibly. I can’t
rule it out entirely. Certainly, that’s what Kulldorff appears to be
claiming, that he was fired because he refused to be vaccinated.
However, it seems rather excessive that it took over two and a half
years. I also believe, based on my experience observing him, that
Kulldorff is not to be trusted, which is why I’m skeptical of his
explanation.
Here’s my educated guess as to what really happened, and I freely
acknowledge that it is nothing more than an educated guess. However, it is
a guess that makes sense given the timeline and what we know. My guess
is that in late 2021, having failed to garner any new NIH RO1 grants,
Kulldorff saw the writing on the wall and decided to go on leave in
order to accept Tucker’s offer to become senior scientific director of
the new right wing think tank that Tucker was forming, the Brownstone
Institute. (It is also possible that Harvard’s imposition of a vaccine
mandate for fall 2021 might have played into his considerations.) My
further guess is that Brigham has a limit to how long you can be on
leave before you lose your position. Here we are, over two years since
Kulldorff went on leave, and Kulldorff shows no signs of renewed
academic activity that might allow him to score new NIH or other
government grant funding. Assuming that Kulldorff was not tenured, which
now seems likely, that meant that it was time for him to go.
Of course, I still can’t totally rule out the possibility that he was
actually canned because he refused to be vaccinated against COVID-19
and that he was tenured, which somehow allowed him to drag out the
process two and a half years. However, it still seems unlikely (to me,
at least) that he would have been able to drag out the appeals process
that long even as a tenured full professor, particularly given that in
the intervening time Harvard has progressively decreased its vaccine
mandate until it got rid of it altogether a week ago. Still, it seems
rather implausible that it would take two and a half years from his
refusal to his being fired, and it seems even less plausible that
Harvard would go through with firing Kulldorff after that long given how
much the political winds have shifted with respect to mandates and how
much heat Harvard would face for doing so, in particular after its
president Claudine Gay was forced to resign over her testimony regarding campus free speech plus plagiarism charges.
BREAKING: LEAKED audio of Columbia University vice president Gerry Rosberg unable to respond when asked if Palestinians are human. He stated that this question was “intimidating”. Acknowledging that Palestinians are human is “intimidating rhetoric” to Columbia admin. pic.twitter.com/T1U2qrOQls
— Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine (@ColumbiaSJP) March 12, 2024
roburie |While the Washington Post has long been considered the mouthpiece of the CIA,
the New York Times has been more effective at carrying water for it in
recent years. The recent longish Times article entitled The Spy War: How the C.I.A. Secretly Helps Ukraine Fight Putin
contains recitation of CIA-friendly talking points that portrays it as
indispensable to ‘our’ ability to commit pointless, petty atrocities
against Russia as the US sacrifices more Ukrainians in its misguided
war. Missing from the piece is any conceivable reason for the US to
continue the war.
The oft ascribed motive (and here)
for the CIA’s existence is to act as the US President’s secret army
abroad. The wisdom of this arrangement has been debated over the years.
Former US President Harry Truman, who oversaw the founding of the CIA
from its predecessor, the OSS (Office of Strategic Services), later regretted the decision
and argued that the CIA should be brought to heel. Later, the Cold War
presented cover for the CIA to act badly under the cover of national
defense.
In Stephen Kinzer’s book, All the Shah’s Men,
the CIA paid people to pretend to be communists so as to convey the
fiction that the CIA’s effort was about ‘fighting communism’ rather than
stealing Iran’s oil. Similarly, in the US coup that ousted
Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz for daring to raise the minimum wage
paid by foreign-owned industries in Guatemala, also featured fake
communists intended to convince the American press that the CIA was
fighting for freedom and democracy rather than to steal wages from poor
people for the benefit of rich Americans.
Together, these
imply that fake communists had been more effectively demonized by
Federal agencies than other available out groups because of the threat
they didn’t pose to American capital. Recall, in 1919 Woodrow Wilson
sent the American Expeditionary Force to join the Brits, French, and
Japanese in trying to reverse the Russian Revolution. Later, through the
Five Eyes Alliance, ‘the West’ spent the post-War era attacking the
Soviets while alleging that they were responding to political violence
that they (Five Eyes) started.
Oddly, given recent history,
the claim that the CIA is the President’s secret army still appears to
be the received wisdom in Washington and New York. This is odd because
while the CIA appears to be acting as Joe Biden’s secret army
in Ukraine and Israel, it went to war with (the duly elected President
of the US) Donald Trump for his entire four years in office. While Mr.
Trump played the victim of the US intelligence agencies to perfection,
he didn’t do what many normal humans would have done in his
circumstance--- clear out the top few levels of management at CIA, the
FBI, and NSA and see where this leaves ‘us.’
Implied
is a reversal of political causality whose proof can only be deduced. Is
Biden directing the CIA, or is the CIA directing Biden? For instance,
while Biden was Barack Obama’s point-man in Ukraine before, during, and
after the US-led coup there in 2014, Mr. Obama was publicly arguing
that Ukraine was of no strategic value to the US. With Donald Trump
following Mr. Obama as President, the CIA likely saw its 2014 coup in
Ukraine going to waste. This interpretation sheds a different light on
the Hunter Biden laptop fraud perpetrated by 51 current and former CIA employees.
(FBI informant Alexander Smirnov has been convicted of nothing
related to the new charges of ‘Russian interference.’ As was proved
with Russiagate, charges are easy to make, difficult to prove. No one---
not a single person, was convicted on the now antique charges of
Russian collusion. Those who were convicted were convicted on process
charges unrelated to the collusion charges. This use of the law as a
political weapon is called lawfare).
The view in this piece
is that Donald Trump was elected in 2016 because Barack Obama threw
several trillion dollars at the malefactors on Wall Street who blew up
the global economy while he pissed on the unemployed, the foreclosed
upon, and every working person in the US. In so doing, an income and
wealth chasm was rebuilt between the public welfare recipients who run
Wall Street and Big Tech and the former industrial workers whose jobs
were sent abroad as the final solution to the ‘problem’ of organized
labor.
With the current panic in the US over the rise of the BRICS
(China and Russia), the same politicians and economists who thought it
wise in 1995 to gut the industrial base with NAFTA are now busy
launching WWIII. These people never learn from their mistakes. For
instance, it apparently never occurred to them that outsourcing military
production might come back to bite when geopolitical tensions
inevitably flared again. Likewise, just-in-time production and inventory
management produced economic brittleness / fragility that created
problems when the Covid-19 pandemic hit.
So,
where is this going? With the CIA’s and FBI’s undermining of the
elected President’s (Trump) political agenda and its open efforts to rig
the 2020 election in favor of his opponent (Biden), it certainly
appears that the CIA is now running the US. Biden’s foreign policy
team---Antony Blinken, Jake Sullivan, and Victoria Nuland emerged from
the Clintonite death cult buried deep within the bowels of the American
foreign policy establishment, That they appear to be as uninformed and
arrogant as their policy outcomes to date suggest they are is only a
surprise inside Washington and New York.
However, this is at best a
partial explanation. What is surprising about US foreign policy is how
ignorant of world history, US history, basic diplomacy, military
tactics, economic relations, and basic human decency the American
political leadership is. It’s almost as if the answer to every foreign
policy conundrum of the last century has been to bomb civilian
populations, kill a whole lot of people, and then pretend it never
happened. Vietnam? Check. Nicaragua? Check. Syria? Check. Iraq? Check.
Ukraine? How can the body counts be hidden from beleaguered, clueless,
citizens so effectively?
Some recent history: the US launched a war against Russia when it (the US) invaded Ukraine in an unprovoked coup there in 2014 (see here, here, here)
and ousted its elected government. The Russians had taken issue with
the US / NATO surrounding it with NATO-allied states (maps below). Years
earlier, as Russian President Vladimir Putin stated in his recent interview
with Tucker Carlson, Mr. Putin had approached former US President Bill
Clinton about Russia joining NATO. Mr. Clinton ‘spoke with his people’
before telling Mr. Putin no to joining NATO as he reneged on George H.W. Bush’ s promise to keep NATO away from Russia’s border.
A
bit of additional history is needed here. The USSR was dissolved in
1991 to be replaced by non-communist Russia surrounded by former Soviet
states. Ukraine is one such state. The political – economic reference
point of post-Soviet Russia was an anachronistic form of neoliberalism.
Recall, Americans had been told since at least the early twentieth
century that ‘communism’ was the ideological foe of Western liberalism.
Current Russian President Vladimir Putin is proudly anti-communist. But
the US MIC (military-industrial complex), of which the CIA is a part,
needs enemies to justify its existence.
Following the
dissolution of the USSR (1991), there was discussion inside the US
regarding a ‘peace dividend,’ of redirecting military spending inflated
by the Cold War towards domestic purposes like schools, hospitals, and
civilian infrastructure. However, the CIA had been so hemmed in by
Federal budget constraints that it had inserted itself into
the international narcotics trade forty years prior in apparent
anticipation of just such an event. With the (George H.W.) Bush
recession of 1991, an election year, the peace dividend was rescinded.
thecradle |
British Defense Minister James Heappey informed parliament that Israeli
military operatives are “currently … posted in the UK,” both within Tel
Aviv’s diplomatic mission “and as participants in UK defense-led
training courses.” This hitherto unacknowledged arrangement amply
demonstrates how, despite
recent calls from
officials in London for Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to exercise
restraint in its genocide of Gaza – if not institute a ceasefire – the
UK remains international Zionism’s covert nerve center.
Mere days earlier, Heappey likewise admitted that
nine Israeli military aircraft landed in Britain since Operation Al
Aqsa Flood on 7 October last year. Investigations by independent
investigative website Declassified UK show that Royal Air Force
aircraft have flown to
and from Israel in the same period, along with 65 spy plane missions
launched from the UK’s vast, little-known military and intelligence base in Cyprus.
The
purpose of those flights and who and/or what they carried are a state
secret. Freedom of Information requests have been denied, Britain's
Ministry of Defense has refused to comment, and local media is by and
large silent.
Nonetheless, in July 2023,
British ministers admitted that the UK's training of Israeli military
personnel includes battlefield medical assistance, “organizational
design and concepts,” and “defense education.” It is unknown if that
“education” has in any way informed the slaughter of more than 30,000 Palestinians since 7 October.
British military presence in occupied Palestine
Yet,
indications that London has long provided a highly influential guiding
hand to Tel Aviv in its oppression and mass murder of Palestinians are
unambiguous, even if hidden in plain sight. For example, in September 2019, the Israeli air force participated in a joint combat exercise with its British, German, and Italian counterparts.
The
Israelis deployed F-15 warplanes for the purpose, which have been
blitzing Gaza on a virtually daily basis since 7 October,
indiscriminately flattening schools, hospitals, businesses, and homes
and killing untold innocents.
A year earlier, in October 2022, it was quietly admitted in
parliament that London maintains several “permanent military personnel
in Israel,” all posted in the British Embassy in Tel Aviv:
“They
carry out key activities in defense engagement and diplomacy. The
Ministry of Defense supports the HMG Middle East Peace Process Programme
in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and Israel. The program aims to
help protect the political and physical viability of a two-state
solution. We would not disclose the location and numbers of military
personnel for security reasons.”
'Joint activity'
Netanyahu
and other Israeli officials have openly and repeatedly boasted of their
personal role in blocking Palestinian statehood. We are thus left to
ponder what these British operatives are truly concerned about – it
certainly isn’t protecting “the political and physical viability of a
two-state solution,” as that entire project was evidently never
“viable,” by design. It could be those “permanent military personnel”
who are present under the auspices of a highly confidential December 2020 military cooperation agreement inked by London and Tel Aviv.
British
Ministry of Defense officials describe the agreement as an “important
piece of defense diplomacy,” which “strengthens” military ties between
the pair while providing “a mechanism for planning our joint activity.”
Its
contents are nonetheless concealed not only from the public but also
from elected lawmakers. Speculation can only abound that the agreement
compels Britain to defend Israel in the event it is attacked. Such
suspicions are only compounded by the visible presence of the UK’s elite SAS forces in Gaza today.
As a December 2023 investigation by The Cradle revealed,
this apparent deployment is protected from media and public scrutiny by
a dedicated Ministry of Defense-issued D-notice, as are other ominous
indicators Britain is shaping the theater and setting the stage in West
Asia for a full-blown, protracted region-wide war.
This included an as-yet-failed effort to pressure Beirut into
allowing armed British soldiers total, unrestricted freedom of movement
within Lebanon, along with immunity from arrest and prosecution for
committing any crime.
The monarchy's departure from neutrality
At countless protests the
world over in solidarity with Palestinians since last October,
demonstrators have brandished banners and signs imploring US President
Joe Biden to impose a ceasefire in Gaza, if not order Netanyahu to seek
peace. It is a noble demand, yet potentially misdirected. The true power
to halt Tel Aviv’s current push to fulfill Zionism’s genocidal founding
mission may not lie in Washington DC but in London – specifically,
Buckingham Palace.
An
extraordinary and largely unremarked upon development since Israel’s
military assault on Gaza began has been the British monarchy’s shameless
abandonment of “political neutrality” over Israel.
Queen
Elizabeth II, publicly at least, refrained from commenting on current
affairs or appearing to take “sides” on any issue throughout her 70-year
reign. However, her recently coronated son has apparently, without
fanfare, comprehensively shredded that longstanding convention.
King Charles the Zionist
Within hours of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’s eruption, King Charles openly condemned Hamas,
saying he was “profoundly distressed” and “appalled” by the “horrors
inflicted” by the resistance group and its “barbaric acts of terrorism.”
Hamas is not recognized as a terrorist entity by a majority of
countries internationally, while the BBC – which has relentlessly manufactured consent for genocide in Gaza every step of the way – rejects the designation’s use.
In the years immediately prior to taking the throne, Charles made his Zionism abundantly clear,
breaking with his mother’s unspoken policy of not visiting Israel,
secretly attending the funerals of former Israeli leaders Yitzhak Rabin
and Shimon Peres. In the latter instance, in 2016, he also visited the graves of
his grandmother, Princess Alice, and her aunt, Grand Duchess Elisabeth,
in a cemetery on Jerusalem’s Mount of Olives, near the world’s largest
Jewish cemetery. Both were Christian Zionists.
The Jerusalem Post approvingly dubbed Charles’
Zionist sympathies and familial connection to the Mount “a problem for
Palestinians,” arguing he has a clear view of “who the city and the
country belong to.” Meanwhile, the Times of Israel has hailed him as “a friend” to Jewry “with special and historic ties to Israel.” One such “tie” was an intimate friendship with Britain’s former chief Rabbi and President of United Jewish Israel Appeal, Jonathan Sacks.
NYTimes | PIKALEVO, Russia
Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin arrived here by helicopter on Thursday
to publicly chastise the three businessmen who jointly own the city’s
lone factory, which has not paid its workers for the last three months.
He saved his sharpest criticism for Oleg Deripaska, once Russia’s richest man.
“I wanted the authors of what happened here to see it with their own eyes,” Mr. Putin said in a televised meeting
inside the factory. “Addressing these authors, I must say that you’ve
made thousands of residents of Pikalevo hostages of your ambition, your
nonprofessionalism and maybe your greed. Thousands of people. It’s
totally unacceptable.”
Mr. Deripaska
hung his head like a schoolboy. Meanwhile, $1.5 million in back wages
flowed into citizens’ bank accounts, and snaking lines appeared in front
of cash dispensers all over the city.
Mr.
Putin’s intervention in Pikalevo, population 22,000, comes as similar
economic troubles unfold across Russia’s industrial heartland, despite
the recent rise in world oil prices, which has relieved some budgetary
pressures on the Kremlin. There are at least 400 Russian “mono-cities,”
places like Pikalevo where the shuttering of a single factory could
throw a whole population into crisis.
Since late last
year, sociologists have debated whether these towns had the potential to
explode or whether Russians would quietly adapt to hardship, as they
have in the past. For months, evidence has pointed to the latter.
But
that calculus changed this week in Pikalevo, where many workers have
been surviving on staples like cabbage soup and becoming progressively
angrier. When the local utility shut off the city’s hot water over
unpaid wages in mid-May, a group of them forced their way into the mayor’s office. On Tuesday, several hundred people blocked a federal highway for six hours; the next step, they said, was blocking the railroad, or a hunger strike.
During
his visit, Mr. Putin took pains to say he did not approve of the
workers’ protest actions, and even suggested that demonstrators had been
paid to participate. But the police did not disperse Pikalevo’s
demonstrators, mostly middle-age women who had logged decades at the
factory. As they celebrated, citizens here said they could never have
attracted Mr. Putin’s attention if it were not for the protests.
Pikalevo
“is not dying, it’s already practically dead,” said Aleksandr Kruglov,
26. “People were so worried about their families that they went out into
the street. I think it is the only way to defend yourself.”
That
message could resonate in other industrial cities. Mikhail Viktorovich
Shmakov, chairman of the Federation of Independent Trade Unions, said
Thursday that the protest mood was rising in “many one-factory towns,”
among them the cities of Tsvetlogorsk and Baikalsk, where 42 employees
of a paper mill have begun a hunger strike over unpaid wages.
The Banks that control the world are run by by the Rothschilds family. Mayer Rothschil 5 sons were sent by their father on his dying bed to control vital parts of Europe through loans and interest.
The Rothschild family is behind The Federal Reserve and the creation of Israel.… pic.twitter.com/eA5VUCegj2
— Dom Lucre | Breaker of Narratives (@dom_lucre) March 8, 2024
archive | The black nobility is the base of the global crime syndicate that controls this planet. The black nobility or black aristocracy are the aristocratic families that sided with the papacy under Pope Pius IX after the army of the Kingdom of Italy led by the Savoy family entered Rome on September 20, 1870, overthrew the pope . and the Papal States, and took over the Quirinal Palace, and the nobles later ennobled by the Pope prior to the Lateran Treaty of 1929.
Any family that produced popes for the Vatican is royalty. Most of the black nobility are Vatican royalty. The black nobility consider themselves sovereign princes. These families earned the title of "black" nobility for their relentless unscrupulousness. They used murder, rape, kidnapping, robbery and all kinds of deception on a large scale, without resisting the achievement of their objectives.
The black nobility were the families that financed and created the holy corporation of the Vatican with the aim of imposing world slavery as a necessary institution, with the sole belief that some are born to rule and others to be ruled. The idea that certain families were born to rule as an arbitrary elite, while the vast majority of a given population is condemned to oppression, servitude, or slavery became the theological position of this elite. The "New World Order" is an attempt to take control of society by these fascist families with the purpose of the total slavery of humanity.
The Vatican is an imperial nation and is the largest empire in this world. The Vatican City, or the Holy Vatican Corporation, officially the Vatican City State, is a nation that operates as the largest intelligence network in the world. The Holy See is the "All-Seeing Eye" in society and a corporate entity connected to many other corporations and governments through papal and royal statutes. Archbishops and high-level bishops are the overseers of society within their districts and oversee politics, police, business, and organized crime. The same year that the professor of ecclesiastical law and practical philosophy at the University of Ingolstadt, Adam Weishaupt, created the Order of the Illuminati, was the same year that they created the United States as a corporation to run it as their private army and lead I dig the agenda of a "New World Order" for the elites, mainly, thanks to the infiltrated Freemasonry and directed by the Jesuits. The New World Order is a conspiracy of lineage at the top. They are ancient and evil bloodlines that build and destroy empires for control through an order out of chaos.
Royal and noble houses are corporate entities and claim to rule and own land, resources, and people. Landlords have always been the dominant owners of gold and precious metals. They empower and finance bankers and entrepreneurs to work for them through their corporate homes. They authorize and issue the creation of laws, agencies, the military, companies, and universities. They create and run religions and secret societies. They also finance and organize organized crime syndicates as if they were commercial enterprises. Some of the major royal bloodlines include Savoy, Bourbon, Medici, Glücksburg, Wittelsbach, Nassau-Weilberg, Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Romanov, Grimaldi, Orleans, Braganza, Habsburg, Hannover, Windsor, Saud, Thani, Khalifa, Alouwite , Zogu, Hohenzollern, Orange-Nassau, Bonaparte and Bernadotte. Many royal bloodlines still rule their nations as heads of state such as the United Kingdom, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Monaco, Spain, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Morocco, Sweden, Norway, and Luxembourg.
The Vatican City State is also a kingdom with the Pope of Rome as its monarch. The Black Nobility are the ancient bloodlines of the Papal States and they own the Holy See and the Vatican. They produced the first popes of Rome and held leadership positions in the Vatican from its inception. The Colonna and Torlonia still hold the hereditary positions of the Assistant Princes to the Papal Throne. The black nobility consider themselves sovereign princes. The Vatican is used as a central point of control and the Holy See is one of the oldest and most criminal corporate entities in existence. The Spanish Catholic Church is immensely rich, it has not suffered the crisis and also enjoys a true tax haven, being free to pay taxes, such as the IBI, works, companies, etc. The vast majority of the assets in their possession and on their accounts are completely opaque. This situation is illegitimate, unfair and presumably illegal, and this occurs with the complicity and consent of the public powers.
NYTimes |Mark
Robinson, the Republican nominee for governor of North Carolina, has
for some reason not bothered to take down his old Facebook posts about
the Jews.
“There
is a REASON the liberal media fills the airwaves with programs about
the NAZI and the ‘6 million Jews’ they murdered,” Robinson, the state’s
lieutenant governor, wrote
in one 2017 post. (The reason was left unsaid, but the scare quotes
spoke loudly.) He regularly argued on Facebook that focusing on the
evils of Nazism obscured the greater danger: the one represented by the
Democratic Party. “George Soros is alive. Adolf Hitler is dead,” he wrote in one post, and in another, “Who do you think has been pushing this Nazi boogeyman narrative all these years?”
In
2018, Robinson, who is Black, offered some thoughts about what he
seemed to see as a Jewish plot behind the hit movie “Black Panther.” The
title character, he wrote,
was “created by an agnostic Jew and put to film by satanic Marxist,”
calling the movie “trash” that was “created to pull the shekels” from
the pockets of Black people, whom he referred to using a Yiddish slur.
He has refused to apologize for these statements, though he called them
“poorly worded” and has denied that he’s antisemitic.
None
of this appears to have hurt Robinson with the Republican electorate in
North Carolina, where on Tuesday he won nearly 65 percent of the vote
in the gubernatorial primary. (In November, he will face the Democratic
state attorney general, Josh Stein, who is Jewish.) Donald Trump
enthusiastically endorsed Robinson, calling him
“better than Martin Luther King.” We’re in the middle of a wrenching
national discussion about antisemitism on the left, and where it
overlaps with anti-Zionism. But Robinson is a reminder that in electoral
politics, there is far more tolerance for antisemitism in the
Republican Party than the Democratic one.
I
don’t want to downplay the problem of left-wing antisemitism or its
closely related cousin, a jejune anti-imperialism that treats Hamas as
heroes. Both phenomena have shocked me in the months since Oct. 7, and
shouldn’t be rationalized as understandable reactions to Israeli
savagery in Gaza.
In an Atlantic cover story, Franklin Foer recently reported
on anti-Jewish bullying, vandalism and conspiracy-mongering in Northern
California. “In the hatred that I witnessed in the Bay Area, and that
has been evident on college campuses and in progressive activist circles
nationwide, I’ve come to see left-wing antisemitism as characterized by
many of the same violent delusions as the right-wing strain,” he wrote.
The fact that this kind of antisemitism more often comes from random
civilians than public officials or authority figures is unlikely to
comfort most Jews, who’ve inherited a deep fear of the mob as well as
the autocrat.
Still,
we should be clear about which political faction is willing to give
antisemites power. And even if you believe that the Michigan Democrat
Rashida Tlaib’s use of the anti-Zionist slogan “from the river to the
sea” is obviously antisemitic — I don’t — it’s worth asking why it
received so much more coverage than Robinson’s apparent Holocaust
denial, or for that matter, the promotion of antisemitic websites and
social media posts by Republican congressmen like Arizona’s Paul Gosar and Georgia’s Mike Collins.
According
to NBC News’s Ben Goggin, this year, white nationalists had an
unusually easy time penetrating the Conservative Political Action
Conference, keynoted by Trump. “At the Young Republican mixer Friday
evening, a group of Nazis who openly identified as national socialists
mingled with mainstream conservative personalities, including some from
Turning Point USA, and discussed ‘race science’ and antisemitic
conspiracy theories,” Goggin wrote. If this caused a national uproar, I missed it.
There
are several reasons that anti-Jewish attitudes on the right — including
Robinson’s — often don’t get the attention they should. For one thing,
they’re old news. Back in 2022, the scholars Eitan Hersh and Laura
Royden debunked the idea that antisemitism is a similar problem on both
left-and right-wing ideological extremes, writing,
“The data show the epicenter of antisemitic attitudes is young adults
on the far right.” Antisemitism at Columbia University, located in a
city with the largest Jewish population in the world, is surprising in a
way that antisemitism among, say, Trump supporters no longer is.
And
like Trump — who, let’s remember, had dinner with the antisemitic
rapper Ye and leading white nationalist Nick Fuentes in 2022 — Robinson
has many other terrible qualities that can overshadow his history of
anti-Jewish rhetoric. Chief among them is his misogyny. The lieutenant
governor is in the news for a recently unearthed video
from 2020 in which he said, “I absolutely want to go back to the
America where women couldn’t vote.” (His somewhat incomprehensible
argument was that in those halcyon days, Republicans led on issues
including women’s suffrage.) “The only thing worse than a woman who
doesn’t know her place is a man who doesn’t know his,” he wrote in 2017.
There’s
also a tendency for some in the Jewish establishment to overlook
antisemitism among supporters of Israel. That’s how we ended up with the
end-times preacher John Hagee, who has said
that Hitler was sent by God to drive the Jews to their rightful home in
the holy land, speaking at a major November rally against antisemitism,
and the Anti-Defamation League praising Elon Musk, despite both Musk’s own antisemitic posts and the platform he’s given to virulent Jew-haters.
A Foundation of Joy
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Two years and I've lost count of how many times my eye has been operated
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eel ...
April Three
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4/3
43
When 1 = A and 26 = Z
March = 43
What day?
4 to the power of 3 is 64
64th day is March 5
My birthday
March also has 5 letters.
4 x 3 = 12
...
Return of the Magi
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New Travels
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Covid-19 Preys Upon The Elderly And The Obese
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sciencemag | This spring, after days of flulike symptoms and fever, a man
arrived at the emergency room at the University of Vermont Medical Center.
He ...