strategic-culture | The New Silk Roads – or Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) – were
launched by President Xi Jinping in 2013, first in Central Asia
(Nur-Sultan) and then Southeast Asia (Jakarta).
One year later, the Chinese economy overtook the U.S. on a PPP basis.
Inexorably, year after year since the start of the millennium, the U.S.
share of the global economy shrinks while China’s increases.
China is already the key hub of the global economy and the leading trade partner of nearly 130 nations.
While the U.S. economy is hollowed out, and the casino financing of
the U.S. government – repo markets and all – reads as a dystopian
nightmare, the civilization-state steps ahead in myriad areas of
technological research, not least because of Made in China 2025.
China largely beats the U.S. on patent filings and produces at least 8 times as many STEM graduates a year than the U.S., earning the status of top contributor to global science.
A vast array of nations across the Global South signed on to be part
of BRI, which is planned for completion in 2049. Last year alone,
Chinese companies signed contracts worth up to $128 billion in
large-scale infrastructure projects in dozen of nations.
The only economic competitor to the U.S. is busy reconnecting most of the world to a 21st century, fully networked version of a trade system that was at its peak for over a millennia: the Eurasian Silk Roads.
Inevitably this state of things is something interlocking sectors of the U.S. ruling class simply would not accept.
LewRockwell | Those that prevent disease and expose virus creation are heroic, but
those that create and purposely spread disease and virus are inhuman.
Given the history of the United States government and its military
industrial complex concerning biological and germ warfare, the use of
these agents against large populations, and the desire to create agents
that are race specific strains, these powerful entities have become
compassionless purveyors of death to the innocent. Manmade viruses meant
for warfare, whether for economic destruction, starvation, or mass
death, are the workings of the truly evil among us. Predation at this
level is relegated to those in power; a president for example, could
give the order to wipe out millions due to his inability to control a
problem he caused and perpetuated, and then lay blame on the victims.
Who would ever have believed that modern warfare could be more
brutal, more torturous, more painful, and more harmful to innocents,
especially children, than past atrocities committed in war. Memories of
millions sent to their deaths fighting in trenches, cities obliterated
by atomic bombs, entire countries destroyed, and millions purposely left
to starve in order to appease some tyrant or elected “leader.” I once
thought that nuclear war would signal the end of life as we know it, but
considering modern warfare and technology, I now think that
uncontrolled and deadly viruses may consume the world population, as one
after another poisons are released as acts of hidden war. There can be
no end to this madness, as any retaliation in kind will result in the
spread of worldwide disease; all created by man.
The new Coronavirus, (2019 Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV)
one in a line of many that were not just likely but most certainly
produced by man in laboratories, is affecting almost exclusively the
Chinese at this point. This has seemingly opened the floodgates to
speculation as to its exact origin. This virus has unique
characteristics that have happened before with SARS and MERS, and has
genetic material that has never been identified, and is not tied to any
animal or human known virus. This should be troubling to all, because if
this is manmade, it was manufactured as a weapon of war. So who is
responsible for its release in China? It is possible that this virus was
created in China and was “accidentally” released into the population,
but that does not sound credible at any level. Do any think that the
Chinese government would create a Chinese race specific virus and
release it in their country?
Interestingly, in the past, U.S. universities and NGOs went to China
specifically to do illegal biological experimentation, and this was so
egregious to Chinese officials, that forcible removal of these people
was the result. Harvard University, one of the major players in this
scandal, stole the DNA samples of hundreds of thousands of Chinese
citizens, left China with those samples, and continued illegal
bio-research in the U.S. It is thought that the U.S. military, which
puts a completely different spin on the conversation, had commissioned
the research in China at the time. This is more than suspicious.
gizmodo | It’s no secret that Amazon’s marketplace is overrun with garbage—literal
or otherwise—and that the company struggles and often fails to manage
its own massive marketplace that lumps legitimately trustworthy brands
and products in with third-party sellers. Amazon’s latest challenge
appears to be regulating a burgeoning market for products feeding off of
flu and coronavirus fears—including products that claim to “kill” them.
In an email obtained by CNBC, Amazon has been contacting third-party
merchants about products that make extraordinary and unapproved claims
relating to coronavirus, as a strain that originated in Wuhan, China continues to spread
globally. In that email, Amazon informs a seller that the company
removed from its store an item “identified as a face mask or related
product that makes unapproved medical marketing claims regarding
coronavirus or the flu.”
The email cites federal regulations on products making unapproved
medical claims in their marketing and further states that its own rules
bar “the listing or sale of products that are marketed as unapproved or
unregistered medical devices.” According to CNBC, users have also posted
about receiving these warnings in seller groups on Facebook.
Disturbingly, CNBC also found multiplelivelistings
for disinfectants that were still up on Amazon’s marketplace as of this
writing, several of which claimed the item “kills coronavirus.”
Moreover, Gizmodo found that simply searching “kills coronavirus” or
“kill coronavirus” turns up numerous products with these claims in their titles, so they’re not exactly needles in a haystack.
Amazon did not respond to multiple requests for comment about the seller
notice, its ongoing response to the products, and items that remained
on its site at the time of publication.
NYPost | More eyes are reading about Ghislaine Maxwell than seeing her. Now we
hear from her longtime, oldtime friend/acquaintance Christina Oxenberg.
“I remember it: 1997. Never forget it. We were alone. Pacing around
her living room, hands on her hips, the defiance of a champion
gladiator, she said many things. All creepy. Unorthodox. Strange. I
could not believe whatever she was saying was real.
“Stuff like: ‘Jeffrey and I have everyone on video tape!’
“I didn’t have it in me to ask anything additional. Like, if she’d
actually had the actual consent of those people she videotaped. Or even
who they were. I wish I had asked. At the time, I heard a lot of things,
none of which had the ring of truth. In fact, I thought the woman was a
raving lunatic. But I wasn’t comfortable. I was keen to get away, and I
figured the less I asked the sooner I get out.
“I have since told the FBI what I know. They asked if I’m willing to
testify should it be necessary, and I said, ‘Absolutely yes.’
“I care that the women victimized as children are given some form of reparation. Maxwell’s millions are a good place to start.”
bloomberg | On Feb. 6, Charles Lieber was elected
to the National Academy of Engineering, making the Harvard
nanoscientist just the 30th person in history to achieve the hallowed
hat trick at the apex of American science: membership in all three
National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.
A
week earlier, however, he was ushered into a different federal
institution in downtown Boston, in handcuffs and an orange jailhouse
jumpsuit. He left the federal courthouse after posting $1 million in bail.
Lieber’s arrest on Jan. 28
came in connection with his dealings in China. He hasn’t been charged
with any type of economic espionage, intellectual-property theft, or
export violations. Instead, he’s accused of lying to U.S. Department of
Defense investigators about his work with the People’s Republic—an
eye-popping escalation of the Trump administration’s pursuit of scientists and engineers for secretly collaborating with America’s economic rival.
Until now, the government crackdown on undisclosed China ties has
ensnared relatively obscure researchers, nearly all of them immigrants
from China, in red states such as Georgia, Oklahoma, and Texas. But by
targeting Lieber, the chairman of Harvard’s chemistry department and a
veritable ivory tower blue blood, prosecutors struck at the crimson
heart of the academic elite, raising fears that globalism, when it comes
to doing science with China, is being criminalized. The collateral
impact, if it deters Chinese students and researchers from coming to the
U.S., threatens the American leadership in science and technology that
the Trump administration says it’s trying to protect, academic leaders
warn.
According to a government affidavit, signed by a Federal Bureau of
Investigation agent named Robert Plumb, Lieber signed at least three
agreements with Wuhan Technology University, or WUT, in central China.
These included a contract with the state-sponsored Thousand Talents Plan—an effort by Beijing to attract mostly expatriate researchers and their know-how back home—worth a total of about $653,000 a year in pay and living expenses for three years, plus $1.74 million
to support a new “Harvard-WUT Nano Key Lab” in Wuhan. The government
offered no evidence that Lieber actually received those sums.
In April 2018, when Defense Department investigators asked Lieber
about his ties to China, he responded that he was familiar with the
Thousands Talents Plan but had never been asked to participate in the
program, according to the FBI affidavit. “He also told DoD investigators
that he ‘wasn’t sure’ how China categorized him,” the agent wrote.
Lieber also deceived Harvard about his China contracts, the
affidavit said. Harvard placed Lieber on administrative leave upon his
arrest and issued a statement calling the federal charges “extremely
serious.” Lieber’s attorney, Peter Gelhaar, declined to comment.
Whatever extracurricular arrangements Lieber may have had in China, his
Harvard lab was a paragon of U.S.-China collaboration. He relied on a
pipeline of China’s brightest Ph.D. students and postdocs, often more
than a dozen at a time, to produce prize-winning research on the
revolutionary potential of so-called nanowires in biomedical implants.
Dozens of Lieber’s 100 or so former lab members from China have chosen
to stay in the U.S. Many now lead their own nanoscience labs at top
universities, including Duke, Georgia Tech, MIT, Stanford, University of
California at Berkeley, and UCLA.
SCMP | Lieber’s
arrest dovetails with Washington’s aggressive “China Initiative”, which
began in 2018. Earlier this month, the Trump administration launched a
“whole of society” counter-intelligence strategy to further guard
against Beijing “stealing our technology and intellectual property in an
effort to erode United States economic and military superiority”, the
administration said.
Chinese
intellectual property theft costs the United States up to US$600
billion annually, according to US trade representative figures. FBI
officials characterise academia as a weak link in their efforts to stem
the loss.
“The Chinese government doesn’t play by the same rules of academic fairness and freedom,”
Academics
and legal experts acknowledge the growing threat from China and admit
they need more safeguards to avoid becoming a pawn in Beijing’s hands.
But
turning universities into fortresses and jealously guarding basic
research is counterproductive, threatening to undermine the economic
leadership and innovation Washington seeks, they argue.
Academic
watchdogs say they have long warned researchers that standards were
tightening – foreign talent programmes were, until recently, viewed as
prestigious – as Washington’s distrust of Beijing increased. But their
warnings were often brushed off, they add.
“The
Lieber case has been the biggest help we could possibly get,” said Mary
Sue Coleman, the American Association of Universities’ president.
“Before the view was, if you’re not a Chinese national, not a
naturalised American citizen, it didn’t affect you.”............
FBI
agents are investigating an estimated 1,000 China-related cases from
its 56 field offices, Wray said, while US attorneys in five cities
oversee their prosecutions. Law enforcement authorities have arrested 19
people in such cases since October, compared with 24 the previous year.
Lelling
denied any administration bias in choosing which China-related cases to
investigate and prosecute. Investigating Lieber’s many Chinese students
without specific cause, for example, would be problematic, he said.
“This
isn’t racial profiling,” the US attorney said. “You have a rival nation
state made up almost 100 per cent of Han Chinese. Unfortunately there’s
going to be tremendous overlap. We’re looking for the conduct, then the
person.”
NationalReview | U.S. government agencies including the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health dole out more than $150 billion
in research grants each year. University scientists rely on that money
to fund their labs. Because grants can make or break a career,
professors spend an inordinate amount of time navigating the funding
labyrinth. A 2007 study
found that researchers spend 42 percent of their time writing grant
proposals and ensuring compliance with the conditions of the grants they
receive. Stringent regulations on everything from affirmative action to
animal welfare place a needless burden on scientists, reducing their
productivity. Since any given proposal has a 20 percent chance of being
approved, researchers devote 170 days to proposal-writing for every grant they’re awarded.
In addition to the administrative burden, American funding programs
push researchers toward low-risk, low-reward studies. Since papers are
evaluated by the number of citations they generate, professors tend to
focus on questions that guarantee a meaningful result, rather than
taking risks on novel research that might fail. Though the latter is
more likely to deliver high gains in the long run, delayed recognition
of breakthrough research means that scientists in new fields may have to
wait years before they see results, which reduces their ability to
attract funding in the interim. A 2016 paper
found that “funding decisions which rely on traditional bibliometric
indicators . . . may be biased against ‘high risk/high gain’ novel
research.” As a result, American scientists tinker at the margins of
existing research but rarely attempt breakthroughs. This partially
explains the general slowdown of scientific progress over the past few decades.
Enter China. In 2008, the Chinese Communist party (CCP) announced the
Thousand Talents Plan (TTP), which was designed to recruit 2,000
high-quality foreign professionals within five to ten years. By 2017,
the program had lured 7,000 foreigners — more than triple its target. As
part of a broad push to achieve global technological supremacy, China
has committed 15 percent of its GDP — equivalent to $2.1 trillion in
2019 — to human-capital development.
The TTP doesn’t require grant applications or regulatory compliance,
either. Faced with a choice between a Byzantine funding apparatus at
home and instant cash from China, more than 3,000 university researchers
have opted for the latter. In return for that money, the CCP requires
its researchers to turn over intellectual property to which they have
access, as well as to sign agreements preventing them from disclosing
the results of work conducted under Chinese patronage. Some scientists
have concluded that those stipulations are worthwhile. And in a perverse
sense, it is true that the Chinese system provides a great deal of
academic freedom: no applications, no progress reports, no environmental
standards. In a few cases, TTP-linked academics have even opened
“shadow labs” in China that conduct research identical to what they are
doing domestically. The effect is a wholesale transfer of American
intellectual capital and property to our largest geostrategic foe.
theamericanconservative |What do you call a civilian law
professor who, after successfully filing for federal whistleblower
status to keep his job teaching at West Point Military Academy, proceeds
to write a bombshell book about the systematic corruption, violence,
fraud, and anti-intellectualism he says has been rampant at the historic
institution for over a hundred years?
Well, if you are part of the military leadership or an alumnus of the storied military academy, you may call him a traitor.
But
if you are anyone searching for reasons why the most powerful military
in the world has not won a war in 75 years, you might call him a
truth-teller. And a pretty brave one at that.
Tim Bakken’s The Cost of Loyalty: Dishonesty, Hubris and Failure in the U.S. Militaryis
set for release tomorrow, and it should land like a grenade. Unlike the
myriad critiques of the military that wash over the institution from
outside the Blob, this one is written by a professor with 20 years on
the inside. He knows the instructors, the culture, the admissions
process, the scandals, the cover-ups, and how its legendary
“warrior-scholars” have performed after graduation and on the
battlefield.
Bakken’s
prognosis: the military as an institution has become so separate, so
insulated, so authoritarian, that it can no longer perform effectively.
In fact, it’s worse: the very nature of this beast is that it has been
able to grow exponentially in size and mission so that it now conducts
destructive expeditionary wars overseas with little or no real cohesive
strategy or oversight. Its huge budgets are a source of corporate grift,
self-justification, and corruption. The military has become too big,
yes, but as Bakkan puts it, it’s failing in every way possible.
In
addition to losing wars, “the military’s loyalty to itself and
determined separation from society have produced an authoritarian
institution that is contributing to the erosion of American democracy,”
writes Bakkan, who is still, we emphasize, teaching at the school. “The
hubris, arrogance, and self-righteousness of officers have isolated the
military from modern thinking and mores. As a result, the military
operates in an intellectual fog, relying on philosophy and practices
that literally originated at West Point two hundred years ago.”
Tom Dispatch | When Smedley Butler retired in 1931, he was one of three Marine Corps
major generals holding a rank just below that of only the Marine
commandant and the Army chief of staff. Today, with about 900 generals
and admirals currently serving
on active duty, including 24 major generals in the Marine Corps alone,
and with scores of flag officers retiring annually, not a single one has
offered genuine public opposition to almost 19 years worth of
ill-advised, remarkably unsuccessful American wars. As for the most
senior officers, the 40 four-star generals and admirals whose vocal
antimilitarism might make the biggest splash, there are more
of them today than there were even at the height of the Vietnam War,
although the active military is now about half the size it was then.
Adulated as many of them may be, however, not one qualifies as a public
critic of today’s failing wars.
Instead, the principal patriotic dissent against those terror wars
has come from retired colonels, lieutenant colonels, and occasionally
more junior officers (like me), as well as enlisted service members. Not
that there are many of us to speak of either. I consider it disturbing
(and so should you) that I personally know just about every one of the
retired military figures who has spoken out against America’s forever
wars.
The big three are Secretary of State Colin Powell’s former chief of staff, retired Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson; Vietnam veteran and onetime West Point history instructor, retired Colonel Andrew Bacevich; and Iraq veteran and Afghan War whistleblower, retired Lieutenant Colonel Danny Davis.
All three have proven to be genuine public servants, poignant voices,
and -- on some level -- cherished personal mentors. For better or worse,
however, none carry the potential clout of a retired senior theater
commander or prominent four-star general offering the same critiques.
Something must account for veteran dissenters topping out at the
level of colonel. Obviously, there are personal reasons why individual
officers chose early retirement or didn’t make general or admiral.
Still, the system for selecting flag officers should raise at least a
few questions when it comes to the lack of antiwar voices among retired
commanders. In fact, a selection committee of top generals and admirals
is appointed each year to choose the next colonels to earn their first
star. And perhaps you won’t be surprised to learn that, according to
numerous reports,
“the members of this board are inclined, if not explicitly motivated,
to seek candidates in their own image -- officers whose careers look
like theirs.” At a minimal level, such a system is hardly built to
foster free thinkers, no less breed potential dissidents.
Consider it an irony of sorts that this system first received criticism in our era of forever wars when General David Petraeus, then commanding the highly publicized “surge”
in Iraq, had to leave that theater of war in 2007 to serve as the chair
of that selection committee. The reason: he wanted to ensure that a
twice passed-over colonel, a protégé of his -- future Trump National
Security Advisor H.R. McMaster -- earned his star.
Mainstream national security analysts reported on this affair at the
time as if it were a major scandal, since most of them were convinced
that Petraeus and his vaunted counterinsurgency or “COINdinista" protégés and their "new"
war-fighting doctrine had the magic touch that would turn around the
failing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In fact, Petraeus tried to apply
those very tactics twice -- once in each country -- as did acolytes of
his later, and you know the results of that.
But here’s the point: it took an eleventh-hour intervention by
America’s most acclaimed general of that moment to get new stars handed
out to prominent colonels who had, until then, been stonewalled by Cold
War-bred flag officers because they were promoting different (but also
strangely familiar) tactics in this country’s wars. Imagine, then, how
likely it would be for such a leadership system to produce genuine
dissenters with stars of any serious sort, no less a crew of future
Smedley Butlers.
At the roots of this system lay the obsession of the American officer corps with “professionalization" after the Vietnam War debacle. This first manifested itself in a decision to ditch the citizen-soldier tradition, end the draft, and create an “all-volunteer force.” The elimination of conscription, as predicted by critics at the time, created an ever-growing civil-military divide, even as it increased public apathy regarding America’s wars by erasing whatever “skin in the game" most citizens had.
More than just helping to squelch civilian antiwar activism, though,
the professionalization of the military, and of the officer corps in
particular, ensured that any future Smedley Butlers would be left in the
dust (or in retirement at the level of lieutenant colonel or colonel)
by a system geared to producing faux warrior-monks. Typical of such
figures is current chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Army General
Mark Milley. He may speak gruffly and look like a man with a head of his own, but typically he’s turned out to be just another yes-man for another war-power-hungry president.
One group of generals, however, reportedly
now does have it out for President Trump -- but not because they’re
opposed to endless war. Rather, they reportedly think that The Donald
doesn't “listen enough to military advice” on, you know, how to wage war
forever and a day.
libertyblitzkreig |“Happy 18th Birthday! Meet your new Daddy,” read one
website advertisement. “Do you have strong oral skills? We’ve got a job
for you!” cooed another.
A message on another billboard directed at the “daddies”
was more blunt: “The alternative to escorts. Desperate women will do
anything”…
SeekingArrangement was founded by Las Vegas tech tycoon
Brandon Wade. Wade is apparently worth somewhere in the neighborhood of
$40 million. His motto is, “Love is a concept invented by poor people”…
SA also markets itself as an antidote to student debt. In
the U.S. and elsewhere, college students are enduring financial
instability and hardship. Because of rising college fees and rent, and
the lack of time available for work during studies, many women are
extremely vulnerable to exploitation. “SeekingArrangement.com has helped
facilitate hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of arrangements that
have helped students graduate debt-free,” Wade boasts on the website.
Promotional videos show young, beautiful women enrolled in “Sugar Baby
University” — in classrooms, holding wads of cash, driving luxury cars,
and discussing the pleasure and ease of being a sugar baby.
When signing up for an account, potential sugar babies are told, “Tip: Using a .edu email address earns you a free upgrade!”
When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a
society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal
system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.
medium | The
billionaire class has to buy up narrative control because there is
nothing about plutocracy that is sane or healthy; people would never
knowingly consent to it unless they were manipulated into doing so.
Because power is relative, and because money is power in a plutocracy,
plutocrats are naturally incentivized to maintain a system where
everyone else is kept as poor as possible so that they can have as much
relative power as possible. A glance at what the
Sanders campaign has been able to accomplish just with small-dollar
donations and grassroots support gives you some insight into why these
plutocrats want people working long, exhausting hours with as little
spare income as possible.
Nobody would ever knowingly consent to being kept poor and busy just so some billionaires can live as modern-day kings,
so they need to be propagandized into it via narrative manipulation. If
you’ve ever wondered why it seems like the news man is always lying to
you, that’s why.
Whenever
I write about the power of plutocratic propaganda, I always get people
saying I’m just a conspiracy theorist (and that I have an awful
addiction to alliteration). They argue that sure, it’s possible to
influence public opinion a bit, but people are free agents and they make
up their own minds based on any number of potential factors, so it’s
silly to focus on media manipulation as the underlying cause of all the
world’s ills.
Oh
yeah? If people can’t be manipulated by the wealthy into supporting
agendas which don’t benefit them, how come a billionaire presidential
candidate was able to quadruple or quintuple his polling numbers in three months just by throwing money at them?
And that’s just one agenda of just one billionaire. There are 607 billionaires in the United States. And none of them are interested in giving up their plutocratic throne.
BAR | Bloomberg threw his hat and billions into the race when it became
clear that corporate surrogates Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg could not
be depended on to halt Bernie Sanders, the purported socialist who now
leads the Democratic pack. Joe Biden’s aura of electability, which was
always a media-invented mirage, evaporated when he collapsed into the
basement in Iowa and New Hampshire. The Black voters of South Carolina
are his only hope for resurrection. But Blacks don’t back Biden for
ideological reasons, or even on the strength of his service as Barack
Obama’s number two. Older (and scarier) African Americans were under the
impression that Biden was the Democrat best equipped to beat Trump –
but it turns out he can’t even beat previously unknown Democrats.
“Joe Biden’s aura of electability, which was always a
media-invented mirage, evaporated when he collapsed into the basement in
Iowa and New Hampshire.”
Some of those Black Biden supporters will now switch to Bloomberg,
believing he is the one Democrat rich enough to drown Trump in November.
Blacks don’t vote their own ideological preferences in Democratic
primaries. Rather, many will support whomever they perceive as the
strongest opponent against the White Man’s Party, the Republicans. That
invariably means the Democrat favored by corporations and their media.
Thus, the duopoly system effectively negates the core political
aspirations of Black America, the most left-leaning constituency in the
nation. The duopoly is a trap that neutralizes independent, progressive
Black politics – a mechanism to force Blacks to vote their fears, rather
than their aspirations.
However, as BAR senior columnist Margaret Kimberley points out in this issue,
there are threats to Black lives and rights even worse than the flaming
orange racist now squatting in the White House. As three-term mayor of
New York City, Bloomberg increased the frequency of his predecessor
Rudolph Giuliani’s stop-and-frisks by 700 percent.
Although real estate magnate Donald Trump infamously called for the
death penalty for the Central Park Five, it was Mayor Bloomberg who for
years delayed payment of
a $41 million settlement to the grievously wronged young Black men. And
Bloomberg was the nation’s most aggressive, unrepentant ethnic
cleanser, gleefully removing more Black and brown people from the city’s
five boroughs than any of his predecessors.
“The duopoly is a mechanism to force Blacks to vote their fears, rather than their aspirations.”
unz |But perhaps the most shocking decision made by MoMA was to name a new gallery
in its $400 million dollar expansion after Glenn Dubin, another trustee
and a Wall Street figure who has been accused by multiple people under
oath of being a child-molester who aided Jeffrey Epstein. MoMA, for all
the “wokeness” Jews and feminist whackjobs who specialize in peddling
abstract art promote, has refused to break their ties to benefactor
Dubin. Democratic Presidential contender Pete Buttigieg has also ignored calls to return donations from Dubin and his wife.
In
the plutocratic hedonistic tyranny of America, it is more controversial
to be an associate of an accused “Nazi” than it is to be closely linked
to an international trafficker of kids.
Glenn Dubin, Accused Child Rapist
Dubin’s
relationship to now deceased co-tribal Jeffrey Epstein is disturbingly
intimate. Dubin’s current wife, a Swedish social climber named Eva
Andersson, got her start as a 17-year-old model in New York City who
later became Jeffrey Epstein’s girlfriend by 1981. Epstein and Andersson
were together until he met Ghislaine Maxwell in 1991, and he personally
paid for her to attend medical school.
By 1994, Andersson got married to Dubin, but continued to speak
to Epstein every day on the phone, allowing her to become ingratiated
in his network of Jewish criminals and powerful Gentile servants.
Epstein also became closely acquainted with Dubin, and was considered a
“godfather” to the family’s children.
Epstein had a special eye for one of the Dubin children, Celina, who he personally mentored since the age of 12. The Palm Beach Postreported
after Epstein’s death that at the age of 61 he even tried to marry
19-year-old Celina, who for years referred to him as “Uncle Jeff.” The
dynamic between Epstein and Glenn Dubin, the latter who apparently had
no issue with his wife’s ex-boyfriend not only hanging around but
wanting to prey on his daughter, is peculiar to say the least.
Dubin’s
Highbridge Capital and Epstein tossed big money back and fourth to each
other in the stock market for years, but the real controversy Dubin
finds himself in is in relation to the lawsuit put into motion by former
Epstein child sex-slave, Virginia Giuffre. According to her 2016
deposition, Giuffre alleged that Dubin was the first man she was forced to have sex with after being recruited at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort by Maxwell at the age of 15.
Her implication of Dubin was substantiated by testimony
from his butler, Rinaldo Rizzo and his chef wife. According to Rizzo’s
tearful account of events, he and his wife often saw random underage
girls coming in and out of the Dubin residence. In one incident, Eva
Andersson brought a 15-year-old Swedish girl into the kitchen claiming
that she was a new au pair, and briefly left her alone with Rizzo. The
house manager made casual small talk, asking her what she did for the
Dubins, only to get the answer that she was Dubin’s “personal
assistant.”
Rizzo
did not believe it, as the girl was 15. When he pressed her on the
topic, she began to shake uncontrollably and cry, admitting that she was
being raped but was being threatened by Maxwell and Epstein into
silence.
Rizzo
and his wife soon quit their job in indignation following this
exchange, even though Rizzo was a longtime employee of the Dubins.
Who
but the rich and Jew-connected could retain their position as a
prominent internist at Mount Sinai Hospital or on the medical facility’s
board (which Dubin retains) after being merely accused of such monstrous behavior? Dr. Eva Andersson continues to work at the Dubin Breast Center at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City since it is financed by her husband, partially with Epstein’s money.
Compare
the insolence of continuing to give leadership roles and honorable
titles to the sullied names of this Jewish billionaire and his wife at a
hospital where hundreds of thousands women and girls pass through with
the phony outrage performed by St. Judes Hospital when they returned a
$27,000 dollar donation from Ethan Ralph and his fans because the Wall Street Journal called them “racist.” Virtue signaling is an oligarchy’s Fabreze to mask true moral stink – the more flowery it smells, the more extreme the rot.
WaPo |Julia
Azari is an associate professor and assistant chair in the Department
of Political Science at Marquette University. This is the third op-ed in
a series about how to improve the presidential nominating process.
Only
a fraction of the Democratic primary electorate has voted so far, but
the nomination season is off to a rocky start. Independent Bernie
Sanders seems to be leading in popular votes, while upstart Pete Buttigieg is ahead in the delegate count.
And there’s also the question of whether either one — or any of the
other candidates — can bring the party together moving forward.
The
current process is clearly flawed, but what would be better? Finding an
answer means thinking about the purpose of presidential nominations,
and about how the existing system falls short. It will require swimming
against the tide of how we’ve thought about nominations for decades — as
a contest between everyday voters and elites, or as a smaller version
of a general election. A better primary system would empower elites to
bargain and make decisions, instructed by voters.
One lesson from the 2020 and 2016 election cycles is that a lot of
candidates, many of whom are highly qualified and attract substantial
followings, will inevitably enter the race. The system as it works now —
with a long informal primary, lots of attention to early contests and
sequential primary season that unfolds over several months — is great at
testing candidates to see whether they have the skills to run for
president. What it’s not great at is choosing among the many
candidates who clear that bar, or bringing their different ideological
factions together, or reconciling competing priorities. A process in
which intermediate representatives — elected delegates who understand
the priorities of their constituents — can bargain without being bound
to specific candidates might actually produce nominees that better
reflect what voters want.
wsws | In an appearance Monday on ABC’s “The View” program, the prominent black
Democrat Stacey Abrams brushed aside the right-wing, racist record of
Democratic presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg, telling the show’s
hosts that the billionaire oligarch’s entry into the race was positive
since “for once we actually know where the money is coming from.”
The former New York City mayor, who served two terms as a Republican
and one as an independent, and who backed George W. Bush in 2004, has
pumped hundreds of millions of dollars from his $60 billion fortune into
his campaign to win the Democratic Party’s nomination for president, or
at least secure enough delegates to block Vermont Senator Bernie
Sanders at the party’s nominating convention in July.
Asked whether she thought it was an issue that Bloomberg was spending
hundreds of millions of dollars to buy a frontrunner spot in the
primary elections, Abrams replied that this was no different than a
candidate using his or her pet on the campaign trail to attract voters.
“Every person is allowed to run and should run the race that they
think they should run, and Mike Bloomberg has chosen to use his
finances. Other people are using their dog, their charisma, their
whatever,” she said. “I think it’s an appropriate question to raise. But
I don’t think it’s disqualifying for anyone to invest in fixing
America.”
She was also asked about the fact that her political action
committee, Fair Fight Action, had received $5 million from Bloomberg,
the largest donation the group has received since it was founded in
2018. Queried as to whether the donation had any influence on her
political views, she replied, “I am grateful to any person who
contributes to Fair Fight. We have more than one hundred thousand
contributors. His check just had a few more zeros on it.”
Bloomberg met with Abrams in Atlanta in January and gave a closed-door speech to a voting rights summit that she hosted.
The minority leader of the Georgia House of Representatives from 2011
to 2017 and defeated 2018 gubernatorial candidate, Abrams is widely
seen as a leading pick for vice president by whichever candidate wins
the Democratic nomination. She has been courted by former Vice President
Joe Biden, who raised her name as a possible running mate in November.
NYPost | Mike Bloomberg’s millions in campaign spending flew right out the window Wednesday night.
The billionaire’s self-bankrolled presidential bid was torn to shreds in the opening minutes
of Wednesday’s Democratic debate as his opponents skewered him for his
checkered past on sexual harassment and his record on stop-and-frisk.
Each candidate on the Las Vegas stage attacked Bloomberg right out of the gate, and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren made the former Big Apple mayor visibly squirm and roll his eyes in frustration.
“I’d like to talk about who we’re running against, a billionaire who
calls women ‘fat broads’ and ‘horse-faced lesbians,'” she said from the
Paris Theater.
“And, no, I’m not talking about Donald Trump. I’m talking about Mayor Bloomberg.”
Bloomberg, 78, started to surge in national and state polls
after pouring hundreds of millions of dollars of his personal fortune
into a slick campaign with catered campaign events and wall-to-wall TV
ads.
wired | When the notorious online forum 8chan was forced off the internet in August, after being linked to acts of violence including the Christchurch shooting, it looked like a blow to the Qanon
conspiracy movement, which had made 8chan its virtual home. Rather than
fade away, though, 8chan's Qanon posters migrated to other platforms,
where they’re still trying to use social media to influence elections.
The
two most popular new homes for Qanon followers are Endchan and 8chan's
successor 8kun. In late 2019, Qanon followers on Endchan used Twitter to
influence governors' races in Kentucky and Louisiana, posting tweets
and memes in favor of Republican candidates and attacking their
opponents. They analyzed social media conversations, including popular
hashtags, to decide where and how to weigh in. Both Republicans lost in
close elections. Now, Qanon adherents are employing the same tactics on
the 2020 presidential race.
"We need memes that are funny and
mocking of the democrat candidates, but also that are informative and
revealing about their policies that are WRONG for the United States of
America and the American people,” wrote a poster in a thread titled
"Meme War 2020" on 8kun in November 2019. “We also need memes that are
PRO-TRUMP, that explain how his policies are RIGHT for the United States
of America and the American people, and that can debunk the smears and
attacks that are no doubt going to come at POTUS.. again, and again."
Qanon followers have cultivated connections over social media with key Trump allies. President Trump himself has retweeted Qanon-linked accounts at least 72 times, including 20 times in one day
in December 2019. Other influential Trump allies also promoted
Qanon-linked accounts. For example, on December 23, Trump's personal
lawyer Rudy Giuliani retweeted @QAnonWomen4Rudy (the bio of which reads "Patriotic Ladies supporting the sexiest man alive").
The Qanon conspiracy theory
is based on the belief that Trump and a mysterious individual known as
“Q” are battling against a powerful cabal of elite pedophiles in the
media and Democratic Party. Q supposedly communicated with their
followers through encoded posts known as ”Q drops” on the
quasi-anonymous forum 8chan. After 8chan was taken down, Q, or someone
using the Q persona, resumed posting on 8kun.
Beginning
early last year, Qanon followers more explicitly embraced concepts of
“information warfare,” efforts to shape narratives and people’s beliefs
to influence events. The Russian interference in the US elections in
2016 has been described
as information warfare. In a February 2019 thread titled "Welcome to
Information Warfare" on Endchan's Qanon research forum, a poster
exhorted fellow users to "[g]et ready for a new phase in the battle
anons: the fight to take back the narrative from the [mainstream
media].” Now, Qanon users are trying to wield the same tactics to shape
the political narrative for 2020.
americanthinker |We’re
living in dramatic times that are difficult to understand. One way to
try to interpret them is through the cryptic clues provided by Q, which
appear on an anonymous online forum and imply top-secret knowledge of
upcoming events.
As I wrote in my article
“An Introduction to Q,” “Q’s followers believe that Q is a military
intelligence operation, the first of its kind, whose goal is to provide
the public with secret information… Q is a new weapon in the game of
information warfare, bypassing a hostile media and corrupt government to
communicate directly with the public.” It’s interesting to note that
shortly after my article was published here, American Thinker suffered a
series of unprecedented hacking
attempts. Also noteworthy is that Twitter permanently shut down the
account of Zero Hedge, a popular finance blog, two weeks after it posted
my article.
President Trump continues to bring attention
to Q, repeatedly retweeting Q followers, featuring Q fans in his ad
campaign, and making a public display of a “Q baby” at a rally. Yet the
media never asks Trump the obvious question: What do you think about Q?
Instead,
the media keeps ratcheting up its attacks on Q and the ever-growing
worldwide movement that Q inspires. On February 9, both the AP and New York Times published
blistering anti-Q articles, claiming that Q promotes baseless, debunked
far right conspiracies and accusing Q of inciting violence in deranged
followers. The day before this latest media ambush, a massive cyber
assault temporarily brought down 8kun, the message board on which Q
posts. Ron Watkins, 8kun’s administrator, tweeted,
“Attacks
have been coming in all day. Very sophisticated and expensive attacks;
the person paying for this likely has deep pockets.”
At
the same time that 8kun was attacked, X22 Report, which covers Q
postings, also was bombarded. On its Twitter feed, the site wrote it was
“being attacked from 54 different countries using hundreds of different
IP addresses, I have never seen anything like it.”
On
February 12, in response to these events, Q posted, “Highly
sophisticated ‘State-level’ attacks [v 8kun] followed by FAKE NEWS
attacks [v Q] the next day? Coordinated? Ask yourself a simple question -
- why? It’s time to wake up.”
In
almost 4,000 posts, Q has painted a disturbing, multi-faceted portrait
of a global crime syndicate that operates with impunity.
asiamediacentre | As a former daily newspaper editor in China, I have learnt how to
identify useful hidden information from the lengthy official statements.
Unfortunately, this is not a skill that everyone gets the opportunity
to develop.
I still remember when, at the beginning of 1997, a
series of official statements on Deng Xiaoping’s health situation was
delivered by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the PRC.
As a high
school student at that time, I noticed there was something unusual
behind the wording of the last statement, ‘As an older man in his
nineties, his (Deng Xiaoping’s) health situation is still okay’.
On 19 February 1997, Deng's death was announced.
Ordinary
people should not be expected to have text analysis skills to read
between the lines of news reports in any given scenario. But in this
case, my background and abilities helped my family escape from
uncertainty and threats we might have encountered had we not left China
early.
In the official language system, what has been emphasised
is what has been missing and needs to be solved. Below is another
example.
On 3 February 2020, President Xi Jinping held a PRC Politburo Standing Committee meeting. News coverage from the official Xinhua News Agency, shows four key points were emphasised:
– Stop the spread of the virus
– Local governments must strictly follow orders and instructions from the central government.
– Focus on the key areas, which include Wuhan and other cities in Hubei Province.
– Do everything possible to save the infected patients, reduce the infection rate and mortality rate.
There was no sign of optimism in the report.
Ten
days after that meeting, Jiang Chaoliang, the Communist Party Secretary
of Hubei Province was sacked; as was Ma Guoqiang, the Communist Party
Secretary of Wuhan City.
It’s almost impossible to know when this indirect style of official statements was established in China. But if anyone
wants to figure out what’s really going on, they should try analyse
changes in the official text rather than pouring over social media.
quartz | A video intended as a tribute to China’s female medical
workers backfired as people instead vented their frustration over the
way Chinese state-owned media outlets use women as tools for propaganda.
The video,
posted by Gansu Daily, a government-owned newspaper in Gansu province,
showed over a dozen mask-wearing female nurses, who were weeping as
their hair was shaved off. They were about to be sent to Hubei, the
Chinese province worst hit by the coronavirus, where they would help
treat patients. The video attempted to paint the women as “the most
beautiful warriors” who fight the epidemic, praising their bravery as
they sacrificed their hair so they could better wear protective gear
when treating patients. But instead, the video was met with largely
angry comments on China’s Twitter-like social network Weibo.
Many
critics said that the way the nurses were treated was humiliating, not
complimentary of their bravery. In one scene, a nurse averts her gaze so
that she doesn’t have to see her newly cut-off ponytail in her
hairdresser’s hands. In another shot, some female nurses had tears
rolling down their faces after their haircut.
The video has now been deleted after the online backlash.
“In the video, the people who shaved the women’s heads
grabbed their ponytails roughly and just started shaving their hair
using electronic clippers. Are you treating them as humans or some
animals waiting to be shaved? I am so angry that my mind’s gone blank,”
said a user (link in Chinese) on Weibo yesterday (Feb. 17), when the video started trending on the network.
“If
you didn’t tell me they were medical workers, I would have thought they
were some evil criminals who were going through this serious
humiliation… Even their tears are used by the authorities to try to
touch the audience, making them the illustration of the spirit of
collectivism,” wrote Chen Mashu,
an author for “Epoch Story,” an account on messaging app WeChat that
publishes analyses and first-person accounts of social affairs.
popularmechanics |In June 2019, the Office of Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s office, confirmed that closed door meetings on UAP have occured. More recently, last December, when asked by Conway Daily Sun
reporter Daymond Steer about the Navy UAP encounters, recent
presidential candidate and current member of the Senate Select Committee
on Intelligence, Sen. Michael Bennet, was cautious in saying
he wouldn’t share anything he’d learned on the Intelligence Committee.
However, Bennet said, “Our guys are seeing stuff that’s unidentified.
They don’t know what it is, I don’t know what it is … We’re trying to
learn more about it. The Air Force is trying to learn more about it.”
Popular Mechanics has since learned
in October 2019, staffers with the Senate Select Committee on
Intelligence and the Senate Armed Service Committee were briefed on
current UAP issues. According to people with knowledge of these
briefings, some former BAASS contractors and current AATIP leadership
were in attendance.
Insiders also say this past year, during a closed-door meeting with the Senate Intelligence Committee, Brigadier General Richard Stapp,
Director of the DoD Special Access Program Central Office, testified
the mysterious objects being encountered by the military were not
related to secret U.S. technology. The Pentagon did not respond to
requests by Popular Mechanics to confirm Stapp’s testimony before the Intelligence Committee.
In only the second time publicly discussing the event, Popular Mechanics spoke with the Navy fighter pilot who was Cdr. David Fravor’s wingman during the now-famous 2004 Nimitz UFO
encounter. Agreeing to talk only under the condition of anonymity, the
fighter pilot confirmed they testified in front of congressional
leadership about their encounter. “I’ve been requested repeatedly to go
to the Pentagon and asked, ‘Is this what you saw?’.”
During a series of email exchanges, Popular Mechanics provided
specific information to Gough, the Pentagon spokesperson, in an effort
to see if this might influence the DoD’s current position. Initially,
Gough said she would examine the information and see if she could
provide a statement in response. However, Gough has not responded to
repeated follow-up requests from Popular Mechanics.
popularmechanics | The elusive engineer behind several highly unusual
patents, filed on behalf of the U.S. Navy, has broken his silence and
finally spoken to the media. Salvatore Cezar Pais responded to emails sent by The War Zone,
but his answers bring us no closer to how the technology behind the
patents, which involve fusion power and other exotic tech, came about.
Dr.
Pais, formerly an aerospace engineer with Naval Air Systems Command/
Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division and now at the Navy’s
Strategic Systems Programs, recently achieved notoriety with the
publication of patents involving compact fusion reactor energy—truly wild stuff that stretches the limits of science—and a “hybrid aerospace-underwater craft.”
The two technologies combined could theoretically create a “UFO”-like craft similar to the one seen by U.S. Navy pilots in 2004 and 2014-15.
Although highly unusual, Naval Air Systems’ Chief Technology Officer
James Sheehy assured the U.S. Patent Technology Office (USPTO) that the
technology behind them was indeed real, and that some aspects were
already undergoing testing.
Pais recently published a paper in EEE Transactions on Plasma Science titled, “The Plasma Compression Fusion Device—Enabling Nuclear Fusion Ignition.”
The device is essentially a fusion reactor, the holy grail of energy
research. Fusion reactors promise cheap, limitless energy without
complications of nuclear power—particularly nuclear meltdowns and the
generation of nuclear waste.
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