The Zionist Plan For The Middle-East

globalresearch  |  The following document pertaining to the formation of “Greater Israel” constitutes the cornerstone of powerful Zionist factions within the current Netanyahu government,  the Likud party, as well as within the Israeli military and intelligence establishment. 

President Donald Trump had confirmed in January 2017 his support of Israel’s illegal settlements (including his opposition to UN Security Council Resolution 2334, pertaining to the illegality of the Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank). The Trump administration expressed its recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. And now the entire West Bank is being annexed to Israel. 

Under the Biden administration, despite rhetorical shifts in the political narrative, Washington remains supportive of Israel plans to annex the entire Jordan River valley as well the illegal settlements in the West Bank.

Bear in mind: The Greater Israel design is not strictly a Zionist Project for the Middle East, it is an integral part of US foreign policy, its strategic objective is to extend US hegemony as well as fracture and balkanize the Middle East.  

In this regard, Washington’s strategy consists in destabilizing and weakening regional economic powers in the Middle East including Turkey and Iran. This policy –which is consistent with the Greater Israel–  is  accompanied by a process of political fragmentation.

Since the Gulf war (1991), the Pentagon has contemplated the creation of a “Free Kurdistan” which would include the annexation of  parts of Iraq, Syria and Iran as well as Turkey

According to the founding father of Zionism Theodore Herzl, “the area of the Jewish State stretches: “From the Brook of Egypt to the Euphrates.”  According to Rabbi Fischmann,  “The Promised Land extends from the River of Egypt up to the Euphrates, it includes parts of Syria and Lebanon.”

When viewed in the current context, including the siege on Gaza, the Zionist Plan for the Middle East bears an intimate relationship to the 2003 invasion of  Iraq, the 2006 war on Lebanon, the 2011 war on Libya, the ongoing wars on Syria, Iraq and Yemen, not to mention the political crisis in Saudi Arabia.

The “Greater Israel” project consists in weakening and eventually fracturing neighboring Arab states as part of a US-Israeli expansionist project, with the support of NATO and Saudi Arabia. In this regard, the Saudi-Israeli rapprochement is from Netanyahu’s viewpoint a means to expanding Israel’s spheres of influence in the Middle East as well as confronting Iran. Needless to day, the “Greater Israel” project is consistent with America’s imperial design.

“Greater Israel” consists in an area extending from the Nile Valley to the Euphrates. According to Stephen Lendman,

“A near-century ago, the World Zionist Organization’s plan for a Jewish state included:

• historic Palestine;

• South Lebanon up to Sidon and the Litani River;

• Syria’s Golan Heights, Hauran Plain and Deraa; and

• control of the Hijaz Railway from Deraa to Amman, Jordan as well as the Gulf of Aqaba.

Some Zionists wanted more – land from the Nile in the West to the Euphrates in the East, comprising Palestine, Lebanon, Western Syria and Southern Turkey.”

The Zionist project has supported the Jewish settlement movement. More broadly it involves a policy of excluding Palestinians from Palestine leading to the annexation of both the West Bank and Gaza to the State of Israel.

The Project of “Greater Israel” is to create a number of proxy States, which could include parts of Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, the Sinai, as well as parts of  Iraq and Saudi Arabia. (See map).

According to Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya in a 2011 Global Research article,   The Yinon Plan was a continuation of Britain’s colonial design in the Middle East:

“[The Yinon plan] is an Israeli strategic plan to ensure Israeli regional superiority. It insists and stipulates that Israel must reconfigure its geo-political environment through the balkanization of the surrounding Arab states into smaller and weaker states.

Israeli strategists viewed Iraq as their biggest strategic challenge from an Arab state. This is why Iraq was outlined as the centerpiece to the balkanization of the Middle East and the Arab World. In Iraq, on the basis of the concepts of the Yinon Plan, Israeli strategists have called for the division of Iraq into a Kurdish state and two Arab states, one for Shiite Muslims and the other for Sunni Muslims. The first step towards establishing this was a war between Iraq and Iran, which the Yinon Plan discusses.

The Atlantic, in 2008, and the U.S. military’s Armed Forces Journal, in 2006, both published widely circulated maps that closely followed the outline of the Yinon Plan. Aside from a divided Iraq, which the Biden Plan also calls for, the Yinon Plan calls for a divided Lebanon, Egypt, and Syria. The partitioning of Iran, Turkey, Somalia, and Pakistan also all fall into line with these views. The Yinon Plan also calls for dissolution in North Africa and forecasts it as starting from Egypt and then spilling over into Sudan, Libya, and the rest of the region.

“Greater Israel” would require the breaking up of the existing Arab states into small states.

“The plan operates on two essential premises. To survive, Israel must

1)  become an imperial regional power, and

2) must effect the division of the whole area into small states by the dissolution of all existing Arab states.

Small here will depend on the ethnic or sectarian composition of each state. Consequently, the Zionist hope is that sectarian-based states become Israel’s satellites and, ironically, its source of moral legitimation…  This is not a new idea, nor does it surface for the first time in Zionist strategic thinking. Indeed, fragmenting all Arab states into smaller units has been a recurrent theme.” (Yinon Plan, see below)

Viewed in this context, the US-NATO led wars on Syria and Iraq are part of  the process of Israeli territorial expansion.

In this regard, the defeat of US sponsored terrorists (ISIS, Al Nusra) by Syrian Forces with the support of Russia, Iran and Hezbollah constitute a significant setback for Israel.

 

 

What Radicalized Tucker Carlson

 

What radicalised Tucker Carlson:pic.twitter.com/WTRy8qu76t

— Robin Monotti (@robinmonotti) February 12, 2024

The U.S. Operates An Unbeatable Propaganda Machine

caityjohnstone  |  In a “fact-checking” article titled “5 lies and 1 truth from Putin’s interview with Tucker Carlson”, Politico Europe labels the above claim a lie on the basis that Russia has state-run media whereas US media is privately owned.

“The biggest news media companies are privately owned and operate without direct government control, in contrast to the state-controlled media landscape in Russia,” writes Politico’s Sergey Goryashko. “Russian state TV and the primary news agencies there are the property of the government, and the Kremlin controls other media or destroys those not willing to collaborate.”

At the bottom of the article is a line which reads as follows: “Sergey Goryashko is hosted at POLITICO under the EU-funded EU4FreeMedia residency program.”

EU4FreeMedia is a European Union narrative management operation set up to help integrate “Russian journalists in exile” into leading European publications, ie to provide maximum media amplification to Russian expats who have a bone to pick with the current government in Moscow. It is run with participation from Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, a US government-funded media op under the umbrella of the US propaganda services umbrella USAGM.

I really couldn’t have come up with a more perfect illustration of what I’m talking about here than the US government and its European lackeys running a complex and elaborate project to further slant European media against the Russian Federation, which then manifests as a Politico article calling Putin a liar and claiming propaganda does not exist in the west.

There’s an old joke that goes like this:

A Soviet and an American are on an airplane seated next to each other.

“Why are you flying to the US?” asks the American.

“To study American propaganda,” replies the Soviet.

“What American propaganda?” asks the American.

“Exactly,” the Soviet replies.

In reality the nature of the US-centralized empire allows it to run a massive, nonstop international propaganda campaign through mass media platforms which are mostly privately owned. A diverse network of factors feeds into this dynamic which I’ve detailed in my unusually lengthy article “15 Reasons Why Mass Media Employees Act Like Propagandists”, but the gist of it is that anyone who’s wealthy enough to control a mass media platform is going to have a vested interest in preserving the status quo upon which their wealth is premised, and they will cooperate with establishment power structures in various ways toward that end.

The fact that these mass media outlets look independent but function as propaganda organs for the US empire allows its propaganda to fly into people’s minds without triggering any gag reflex of critical thinking or skepticism, which wouldn’t be the case if people knew those outlets were feeding them propaganda. Propaganda only really has persuasive power if you don’t know it’s happening to you.

Weaponizing Victimhood

twitter  |  So why is Israel doing this? Is there anything in it for Israel but virtually global hate? Because it doesn't seems like there is.

A couple days ago I said I was going to provide an explanation why Israel has chosen to conduct itself like it has. Here it is. It's very provocative, and it's going to mess with your mind quite a bit.

I will also remind you that I am Jewish and I have the perfect right to my own opinion on Jewish affairs.
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Before I go on, and as I know many people are going to read this, make sure that you follow me. What I have to say doesn't end here. Stay connected.
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Throughout these months, I am sure you have asked yourselves why Israel is acting as if its design is to maximize the amount of hate it stands to receive from a global community of shocked and terrified people.

There have been so many occasions for this, but I'll bet last week, when IDF soldiers executed 3 Palestinian men in a hospital, it stood out to you as outrageously brazen.

That's because the IDF took special care to get it televised. They didn't confiscate cameras or servers, and didn't hack or destroyed files. It's almost as if they were acting for the cameras.

A world wide audiences got the message, and everyone was talking about Fauda, the TV series meant to portray the humane face of Israel's apartheid.

How peculiar, right? And wait, what about all those videos by soldiers of themselves joyfully blowing up stuff? And what about the naked men filmed in their humiliated hundreds?

Let me reminds you, for contrast, that in two years of Russia's was in Ukraine, not once have you seen Russian soldiers celebrating the destruction of civilian infrastructure. And you've never seen naked and humiliated Ukrainian soldiers loaded on trucks, or sitting on the ground, eyes covered.

There may have been things like that happening. We don't know. But if scenes like these actually occurred, the Russian military took special care to conceal them from us. The IDF did not. Why?    
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Keep this question in mind, and let's make it ever more interesting. Let's ask: what is the justification, the reason, or cause for the existence of organizations such as AIPAC and ADL? I mean, seriously. Are American Jews in so much danger, and face so much persecution in the US, that perpetual billion-dollar operations are required to guard them from harm? Are Jews disproportionally jailed in the US? Designated victims of violent crime? Harassed by the authorities? Cannot be out on the street? Is American society that laser-focused on hating Jews? Aren't there other American communities who are more exposed to danger, harassment, poverty and crime? I mean, seriously?

And say an organization like AIPAC does have some nostalgic reason for being, what is doing pushing for wars? More specifically and currently: why are Jewish organizations in the US, alongside Israel, doing all they possibly can to place Jews at the epicenter of a possible world war?

Why are organizations that are supposed to keep Jews safe making Jewish affairs the formal declared  reason for a clash and a war the could destroy civilization as we know it? Isn't it the opposite of what they're supposed to be doing? Say like a military that constantly broadcasts its own astonishing cruelty, and destroys its own image?
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We are getting closer. But one more hurdle needs to be removed for us to see the answer. Stay sharp.
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Two very obvious opposites in seeing the world: paranoia and basic trust. This is true for people, but it is just as valid for political societies. Some societies are more paranoid and some are more relaxed, but no society on earth is more paranoid than the super-mega-ultra Jewish part of the Jewish people, or wider society. There is no other group on earth the world is so contently on its feet defending.

No other society, too, decided to use trauma as the center of its identity. I know many of you, especially Americans, have come to see this as just Jewish. But it is not so (and maybe you need a Mizrahi Jew to tell you this). It is one strand of Jewish perception that derives its sense of identity from pogroms and the Holocaust. Israel and IPAC act like this is natural and the only way to be Jewish. That's nonsense.  

Pogroms and the Holocaust were not all the experience of all the Jews. Many Jewish communities knew long percids of safety and prosperity. Not all Jews were victims all the time, and Jews are definitely not the only victims humanity has even known.  
Personally I always found it more than a little offsetting  to hear American Jews refer to their misery and victimhood constantly, in a country where millions of natives, organized in hundreds and thousands of flourishing communities, were wiped of the face of the planet. A country and culture that operated industrial scale slavery of black people for hundreds and hundreds of years, and fought not to recognize them as equal humans for centuries more.

I would never do that.

A country that has so much terrible, dehumanizing poverty and homelessness, so much pain. How come the most successful, heavily represented in all things power and money minority in this society is also its greatest victim?

I know this is the norm and this is the description of reality I should conform to, but no. It doesn't make sense.
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You can choose trauma and paranoia or trust and basic optimism as your guide in life. But the biggest Jewish organization in our lifetime chose one clear path: that of trauma, suspicion and what can be called Armageddonism. Always alert. Always someone out there to get you. Everybody hates us.

And as we're almost at the end of it, I will say the final part a little more directly. In choosing trauma and paranoia, both Israel and AIPAC found and unexpected source of false power.

Because existential fear can bring a society of people together, but it's not going to be a society many people would want to live in.

So you keep people afraid all the time, and you make sure they are feeling, or actually being, hated all the time. This is how you maintain your power over them.

And as Jewish trauma has become such a huge international political thing (again: I wouldn't do that), the incentive was always there to keep this mentality alive. To organize around it. To make sure it remains the formal doctrine of Jewish institutions. Such as AIPAC and Israel.
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So Israel and American Jewish organizations took it upon themselves to keep Jews afraid and isolated. This strategy of intentional paranoia has been working for a while, but it gradually eroded. It especially eroded in the US, as younger Jews became increasingly aware that the stories they've been told are lies, and that no one really cares about their ethnicity.
 
That erosion in the power of instilled exceptionalism, isolationism and existential fear poses a very serious problem for Jewish organizations built around paranoia. The Palestinians and Arabs were a wonderful solutions for this problem for a while: by keeping Palestinians oppressed and thus hostile, the old myth of antisemitism as a huge international force could be kept on life support.

But this, too, began to fade, as younger American Jews started getting more familiar with Palestinian perspectives.
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And then October 7th hit. And the right wing, nationalistic, paranoid section of the Jewish political spectrum, realized it could be translated into political gold.

This could be used to revive the old sentiments. The ghetto, the pogroms, the trains to the east. All of it.  This is why Nazis were invoked so early on. Jews were once again the persecuted minority AIPAC and Netanyahu always told you they were. How wonderful for them.    

But October 7th was not enough, because people would immediately put it in the context of the occupation. They would ask the eternal human question: why did this happen? What happened before?

If you're Netanyahu or AIPAC, putting Jews in the context of normal human behavior is the last thing you want. What you want is boiling rage and fear to be extensively covered in all the media and all the briefings.

Need I say I would not do that, either?    
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And this is where my final point arrives. It doesn't seem like Israel is trying to be hated globally. It is actually what it's doing. It is intentionally airing its cruelty and barbarity so that it will remain closed up to the world, thus guaranteeing the continued rule of the paranoia camp.

They are doing it on purpose, for cynical political gains, out of a twisted reading of history and of human nature. Palestinians are just crash test dummies in this scenario. They count for nothing. Their deaths are used to get people angry and Israel hated, so it becomes even more paranoid.  
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For the same reason, AIPAC is putting the Jewish issue at the epicenter of the lead up to WW3. They cannot not know that Jews will be called as responsible, or at least a major factor in it.

Can you imagine millions of dead Americans, destroyed cities, populations stressed into panic and despair - all because of a war Jewish organizations pushed for? How does anyone who purports to represent Jews and care for them not recoil from this scenario? Do these people have any idea at all of what they're doing?

And I am sorry for sounding this impolite an not nice: we are on the eve of a potential world war. As a Jew I am terrified.

The last thing I want is to be blames for a world war. But the Jewish paranoia camp seems to relish the opportunity. Maybe they are sure this is how the messiah comes. I have my reservations.
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Finally, Jewish organization centered around trauma found a very welcoming and happy to help friend in American imperialists. It is so wonderful when you can market middle east invasions as battling antisemitism. Who could argue with you? In the name of defending Israel, the US can do whatever it wants. It has the perfect moral cover. It will support an actual genocide. It will go completely insane.

What they - both AIPAC and US establishments - are not including in their calculations is that a big war in the middle east can have very devastating results for both the US and Israel. In their quest for creating a Jewish psyche and a world beneficial to their paranoid vision (which America shares as a colonial power), that don't take into account that reality is a whole different business from propaganda.
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But this is why they do it, and televise and broadcast it. So that we are hated, isolated, fearful  and controlled by Bibi and AIPAC forever. There's nothing that reassures those people as hate for Israel.
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Don't fight people who thrive on hate with hate. Fight them with clarity and resolve.

Last Year Weinstein Got Drunk On Rogan And Said ALL THE QUIET PART About "The Jews" Out Loud

To hear Eric Weinstein's entire "shut it down, the goyim know" drunken rant, - in which he repudiates everything he's professed about the DISC as well as placing himself squarely in the Epstein psy-op camp - go to the 3 hour 30 minute mark on the spotify podcast with Rogan.

Epstein Pedophiles Will Never Be Punished Because They're More Valuable Unpunished

Jeffrey Epstein was a fake billionaire set up by intelligence services. His private island functioned as a massive child sex trafficking ring that was used to collect blackmail on the global elite (billionaires, celebrities and politicians, etc) pic.twitter.com/P4YjQF7Kzb

— illuminatibot (@iluminatibot) February 10, 2024

warhistoryonline |  Survivorship bias

With the war claiming many U.S. aircraft, the military wanted to increase the armor protection of their bombers to increase their survivability, but they were unsure of the best places to put this armor and were frankly unqualified to find out themselves.

Illustration of hypothetical damage pattern on a WW2 bomber. (Photo Credit: Martin Grandjean [vector], McGeddon [picture], Cameron Moll [concept] CC BY-SA 4.0)

Where do you go with such a specific issue? The Statistical Research Group, of course!

The group was given the task of analyzing the damage received by Allied aircraft from enemy fire, and recommending the best way to increase their chances of survival. It was here that Wald made massive bounds in “survivorship bias.”

When bombers returned from missions, they’d often come home covered with bullet holes. However, these bullet holes were not evenly distributed around the aircraft, but were actually concentrated on the wings and fuselage, almost twice as much as places like the engines.

Why were bullets concentrating on the fuselage and wings? Were German pilots trained to aim there? Were they firing futuristic homing bullets? Military officers came to the seemingly obvious conclusion that the armor should be added in these areas, as after all, they were taking the most fire, right?

Not quite. Wald quickly realized what was happening, and the solution was simple.

Bullets holes weren’t found on areas like the engines because aircraft that had been shot here didn’t come home! Wald believed bullets were actually hitting the aircraft equally all over, but because the ones hit in the most vulnerable areas didn’t come home, the data incorrectly suggested that these areas weren’t being hit at all.

Section of Wald’s memorandum on aircraft vulnerability. (Photo Credit: Abraham Wald, Defense Technical Information Center)

The only aircraft that could be examined were those that came home — the survivors. The aircraft that were being brought down weren’t available for inspection, thus creating the survivorship bias.

The massive amount of damage on bombers’ fuselages and wings was actually evidence that these areas did not need reinforcing, as they were clearly able to take a large amount of punishment. Therefore, as Wald concluded, the armor should be placed on the areas that seemingly received the least damage.

How Long Did They Believe They Could Keep Up The Charade?

NEW: MSNBC’s finest, Rachel Maddow, Lawrence O'Donnell and Joy Reid, melt down after the special counsel said that the mentally declining president is mentally declining.

The Three Stooges couldn’t fathom how the special counsel thought Biden had mental issues.

“This line that… pic.twitter.com/AO3XRcpNI3

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) February 9, 2024

outsidethebeltway  | In the comments to yesterday’s post, “Biden ‘An Elderly Man with a Poor Memory’,” my friend and co-blogger Steven Taylor notes that, despite being a quarter century younger than the President, he has long had issues with remembering dates, concluding,

Quite clearly Biden is old, but the reducing of all of his mental faculties down to specific examples is ludicrous. I bet every single person reading this said something yesterday that, if taken in isolation, would make them sound like an dottering fool.

While I’ve always been really good at dates, I’ve long been pretty bad with names—an issue that has increased significantly in recent years. I’m 58 and have no reason to think I’m going senile.

As for Biden, he’s clearly slowing down with age and is having more of these mental lapses. But, while I wish there were a younger option available, I think he’s still mentally up to the job—and light years better than the seeming alternative, Donald Trump.

Alas, this isn’t an objective conversation. People are looking at both candidates through partisan lenses and, like it or not, Biden’s gaffes are judged much more harshly than Trump’s.

NPR’s Domenico Montanaro (“Biden’s rough week highlights his biggest vulnerability — one he can’t change“):

The special counsel report about Biden’s handling of classified material didn’t charge him with a crime, but special counsel Robert Hur, a Republican, seemed to go out of his way to include damning commentary about Biden’s supposedly faulty memory, like referencing that Biden, 81, “did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died.”

That was stinging.

“It clears him legally and kneecaps him politically,” Paul Begala, a veteran Democratic strategist and former Bill Clinton adviser, said of the report.

The 388-page report set off a political firestorm — and an ensuing clumsy response from the White House and the president himself.

Biden angrily rejected Hur’s claim, saying Thursday night in a press conference he felt questions about Beau weren’t “any of their damn business.”

The president got choked up while showing a rosary he was wearing on his wrist in memory of Beau, then thundered, “I don’t need anyone to remind me when he passed away.”

If Biden had left it at that, that might be what people remembered about the news conference.

Instead, Biden wound up walking right into the stereotype laid out by Hur when he mistakenly said that President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi of Egypt was the “president of Mexico” while answering a question about current hostage negotiations with Israel and Hamas.

It’s a mistake. Verbal slips happen. Everyone makes them — including Trump, who is only four years younger than Biden. Trump often meanders, recently appeared to confuse his primary opponent Nikki Haley for former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi; on more than half a dozen occasions in the past year mistakenly referred to former President Barack Obama when he should have said Biden; and while in Iowa, called “Sioux City” “Sioux Falls,” which is 90 miles up the road in South Dakota.

But because more Americans are concerned with Biden’s age and fitness to do the job in a second term than they are about Trump’s age, every time Biden makes a flub it will have more resonance politically.

“It’s certainly true that anything that feeds the master negative narrative is especially harmful,” Begala said. “For [Bill] Clinton, it was cheating, for [George W.] Bush, it was ‘dumb,’ Obama ‘elitist,’ which is why when Obama said 57 states, it didn’t hurt him. If it was Bush, it would have.”

“Obviously with Biden, it’s ‘old.’ So, this really really hurts him.”

[…]

“Fair or not, this just amplified Biden’s greatest challenge,” David Axelrod, a former senior adviser in the Obama White House, said of the special counsel report. “It screams through every poll and focus group.”

Axelrod went viral back in November for raising whether it was “wise” for Biden to run for reelection after a series of swing-state polls showed him losing to Trump.

“Many people have made a judgment about his age and command and discount his accomplishments and attribute every problem to it,” Axelrod said.

The Atlantic‘s Yair Rosenberg (“What Biden’s Critics Get Wrong About His Gaffes“) tries to handwave this away:

[T]he truth is, mistakes like these are nothing new for Biden, who has been mixing up names and places for his entire political career. Back in 2008, he infamously introduced his running mate as “the next president of the United States, Barack America.” At the time, Biden’s well-known propensity for bizarre tangents, ahistorical riffs, and malapropisms compelled Slate to publish an entire column explaining “why Joe Biden’s gaffes don’t hurt him much.” The article included such gems as the time that then-Senator Biden told the journalist Katie Couric that “when the markets crashed in 1929, ‘Franklin Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t just talk about the princes of greed. He said, “Look, here’s what happened.”’” The only problem with this story, Slate laconically noted, was that “FDR wasn’t president then, nor did television exist.”

In other words, even a cursory history of Biden’s bungling shows that he is the same person he has always been, just older and slower—a gaffe-prone, middling public speaker with above-average emotional intelligence and an instinct for legislative horse-trading. 

But he recognizes that there’s a perception problem and that the Biden team needs to address it head-on:

The president’s staff is understandably reluctant to put Biden front and center, knowing that his slower speed and inevitable gaffes—both real and fabricated—will feed the mental-acuity narrative. But in actuality, the bar for Biden has been set so laughably low that he can’t help but vault over it simply by showing up. By contrast, limiting his appearances ensures that the public mostly encounters the president through decontextualized social-media clips of his slipups.

As Slate observed in 2008, the frequency of Biden’s rhetorical miscues helped neutralize them in the eyes of the public. In 2024, Biden will have an assist from another source: Donald Trump. Among other recent lapses, the former president has called Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán “the leader of Turkey,” confused Nancy Pelosi and Nikki Haley, and repeatedly expressed the strange belief that he won the 2020 election. With an opponent prone to vastly worse feats of viscous verbosity, Biden can’t help but look better by comparison, especially if he starts playing offense instead of defense.

But none of this will happen by itself. If the president and his campaign want the headlines to be something other than “Yes, Biden Knows Who the President of Egypt Is,” they’ll have to start making news, not reacting to it.

This strikes me as wishful thinking. Few people watch these speeches and interviews in full. If the press seizes on the gaffes—and they will—that’s what most will remember.

Why We Can't Have Nice Things....,

dailysignal  |  President Joe Biden gave a tumultuous news conference hours after special counsel Robert Hur released a report Thursday recommending against charging him for retaining classified documents from his years as vice president and senator, in part because the jury would find Biden sympathetic as an “elderly man with a poor memory” and because his “diminished faculties” make it less likely he intentionally violated the law.

During the news conference, Biden claimed that Hur’s comments about his mental state were “extraneous commentary,” and he attempted to allay concerns. Yet the president blamed his staff for the mishandling of classified documents, insisted that his memory was fine but mixed up the countries of Egypt and Mexico and appeared to forget where his son Beau got a set of rosary beads the bereaved father says he highly values.

House Speaker Mike Johnson responded on X, saying the conference proved Biden is not fit to be president.

“The president’s press conference this evening further confirmed on live television what the special counsel report outlined. He is not fit to be president,” Johnson wrote.

In January 2023, Attorney General Merrick Garland tapped Hur, the U.S. attorney in Maryland appointed by then-President Donald Trump, to investigate Biden’s improper retention of classified documents after he left the Senate in 2009 and the vice presidency in 2017.

The records Biden kept included classified documents regarding military and foreign policy in Afghanistan, along with national security records that implicated “sensitive intelligence sources and methods,” Hur’s report finds.

The special counsel’s report finds a “shortage of evidence” proving that Biden intentionally violated the law and concludes “there are other innocent explanations for the documents that we cannot refute.” Yet the report also finds that Biden “willfully retained and disclosed classified materials.”

An attorney for Biden claimed the classified documents were “unexpectedly discovered” Nov. 2, 2022, at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement in Washington, D.C., and that he immediately notified the National Archives and Records Administration. Biden lawyers later discovered a “small number” of additional classified documents in a storage space in the garage of Biden’s private home in Wilmington, Delaware.

These admissions from Biden’s attorneys came after the FBI opened an investigation into Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents in March 2022. Eight months later, Garland appointed former DOJ official Jack Smith to investigate Trump’s retention of classified documents. A grand jury ultimately indicted Trump for his alleged offenses in June 2023.

Hur’s report notes Biden’s willing cooperation with his investigation, saying that cooperation “will likely convince some jurors that he made an innocent mistake, rather than acting willfully—that is, with intent to break the law—as the statute requires.”

Hur’s report also takes Biden’s mental state into account on numerous occasions, finding that his “poor memory” and “diminished faculties” make his defenses plausible and would likely endear him to a jury.

“We have also considered that, at trial, Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” the report notes. “Based on our direct interactions with and observations of him, he is someone for whom many jurors will want to identify reasonable doubt. It would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him—by then a former president well into his eighties—of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness.”

 

Biden Is A Corrupt Putrid Old Sack Of Shit Who Told On Himself

dailycaller  |  Among the documents recovered was a transcript of a Dec. 11, 2015 phone call between then-Vice President Biden and then-Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, according to Hur’s report.

Federal investigators found a handwritten note with a tipsheet for the phone call Joe Biden placed in a red “VP Personal” fold in addition to the transcript. 

“Get [a] copy of this conversation from Sit Rm for my Records please,” the note to Biden’s assistant says. Biden’s signature is at the end of the note.

Biden’s attorneys and the DOJ discovered the documents at his Delaware residence and at his former office at D.C.’s Penn Biden Center between Nov. 2022 and Jan. 2023

At the time of the phone call with Yatsenyuk, Biden’s son Hunter was making more than $80,000 per month as a board member of Ukrainian energy firm Burisma Holdings, bank records show. He joined the company in spring 2014 despite lacking experience in either Ukraine or the energy sector. He departed the firm in 2019, when his father was a private citizen and possessed the classified documents.

Ahead of his appointment with Burisma, Hunter Biden sent then-business partner Devon Archer, who served alongside Biden on Burisma’s board, detailed information about Ukraine’s political situation and energy sector.

In Dec. 2015, Joe Biden took a trip to Ukraine and spoke to the country’s parliament, urging them to step up anti-corruption measures, according to an archived transcript of his speech.

A few months later, Ukraine fired its top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, an individual viewed by Burisma as a “threat” to its business, Devon Archer told Daily Caller co-founder Tucker Carlson in August. (RELATED: The Biggest Question From Devon Archer’s Testimony About The Biden Family Remains Unanswered)

Carlson interviewed Archer in the days following his testimony before the House Oversight Committee. Archer told lawmakers the Biden family “brand” protected Burisma from scrutiny and recalled a spring 2015 dinner attended by then-VP Biden and Burisma executive Vadim Pozharskyi.

 

 

Tucker Added To UkroNazi Kill List Myrotvorets...,

Forbes  |  After former Fox News host Tucker Carlson announced his sitdown interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin, viral social media posts began to claim Carlson was added to Ukrainian government “kill list,” though the controversial site is not government-run and has criticized Carlson for earlier remarks made by Carlson about Russia and the war.

Myrotvorets is a running list made in 2014 by an independent organization called the Myrotvorets (or Peacemaker) Center, which keeps track of people it believes have committed crimes against the “national security of Ukraine, human life and health, peace, human security and the international legal order,” including musician and Russia defender Roger Waters and NBC journalist Keir Simmons.

People on the list who have died from various causes are marked as liquidated, including former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who died in 2022 from disease, daughter of Russian nationalist Daria Dugina, who died in a car bomb attack the U.S. believes elements of the Ukrainian government was behind, and Italian journalist Andrea Rocchelli, who died after being hit by mortar fire in Ukraine while covering the conflict.

The site claims that Carlson was added to the list on June 08, 2023, after posting a 10-minute long video to X where he called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “rat-like,” and suggested the destruction of the Kakhovka dam in Ukraine was a Ukrainian terrorist act; Forbes could not independently verify when his name was added.

The site does list Carlson’s interview with Putin as another offense against Ukraine, along with a 2022 statement he made on Fox News, saying Ukraine’s army was too small to win a victory against Russia.

Ukrainian politician George Tuka told the Times of London the site doesn’t receive government funding and is not government-affiliated, and was created to keep track of Ukrainian political officials, ex-military and ex-police officers who were pro-Russia—Forbes has reached out to the Myrotvorets Center for comment.

Despite not being government-run, Ukrainian secret services reportedly keep “close ties” with the website, and the former Ukrainian Minister of Internal Affairs Arsen Avakov supported the site, while former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko condemned it, according to the U.S. Department of State.

Myrotvorets has received criticism from Western countries for exposing journalists. After Western journalists’ personal information was leaked on the site, G7 Ambassadors stated they were “deeply concerned” about the leak. They worried threats made against the journalists were a result of the leak, and called for the personal information to be taken down. The United Nations urged Ukrainian police to investigate personal data leaks on Myrotvorets and remove the data from the site. The U.S. State Department also regularly includes Myrotvorets in its annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, identifying the various times journalists’ personal information was leaked on the site. A Ukrainian journalist’s personal data was leaked after a story she wrote led to the firing of a Ukrainian official, which reportedly led to her receiving threats, according to the State Department’s 2022 report.

Be There Or Be Square

 

Tucker Carlson: Why I'm Interviewing President Vladimir Putin

 

Why I'm interviewing Vladimir Putin. pic.twitter.com/hqvXUZqvHX

— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) February 6, 2024

BBC |  The news host has long been a familiar face for Russians, with clips of his critical outbursts on Fox News against US foreign policy aired extensively across Russian state TV.

Kremlin-controlled television continues to dominate the Russian media, with around two-thirds of people receiving most of their news from there.

In Russia, Carlson is frequently cited as an authoritative source of news, particularly when it comes to his views on the war in Ukraine.

In September last year, Russian news channel Rossiya 24 even began airing lengthy excerpts of his "Tucker on X" show, dubbed into Russian.

While Carlson has not spoken directly to any of Russia's TV channels, their shows are revelling in his visit and the US reaction to it.

"In the West they're comparing this visit to actress Jane Fonda's visit to Vietnam in 1972, following which she ended up on the list of America's top ten traitors and the Hollywood blacklist," presenter and pro-Putin politician Yevgeny Popov told viewers of his 60 Minutes talk show.

Popov also jibed that Carlson had managed to experience Moscow's modern public transport system during his visit.

"Americans can't even dream of such wonders of civilisation!" he said.

Before Carlson confirmed plans to interview Mr Putin, NTV, Russia's second most popular channel, promoted a post on X by Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene saying that "Democrats and their propagandists in the media are spasming" at the prospect of Carlson interviewing Mr Putin.

"In Washington they suspect with good reason that the journalist didn't fly to Moscow to sightsee," NTV's presenter commented.

Hearing President Vladimir Putin In His Own Words....,

 

For A Very Modest Fee I'd Be Willing To Solve Your Squatter Infestation Problem....,

NYPost  |  Squatters are ruining entire neighborhoods in Atlanta and police response to evict is so slow, some homeowners have resorted to paying nuisances to leave.

Brazen squatters even opened an illegal strip club on a property they had taken over — one of the 1,200 homes which has been squatted in the city, according to the National Rental Home Council (NRHC) trade group.

“I’d be terrified in Atlanta to lease out one of my properties,” Matt Urbanski, who manages a local home-cleaning company, told Bloomberg.

Urbanski’s company cleans out homes for corporate landlords, and in some cases has to remove squatters’ possessions.

Recently one of his employees was shot after attempting to remove intruders from a property.Simon Frost, CEO of large-scale landlord Tiber Capital Group, said there have been incidents of unlawful occupants brandishing weapons and threatening neighbors, which affects the safety of neighborhoods and other residents, according to Bloomberg.

Evicting squatters in Atlanta is tough, involving negotiating court backlogs and strained police resources.

Meanwhile, online listings and virtual real estate agents make it easy for squatters to identify vacant properties to break into.

Simon Frost, CEO of large-scale landlord Tiber Capital Group, said there have been incidents of unlawful occupants brandishing weapons and threatening neighbors, which affects the safety of neighborhoods and other residents, according to Bloomberg.

Evicting squatters in Atlanta is tough, involving negotiating court backlogs and strained police resources.

Meanwhile, online listings and virtual real estate agents make it easy for squatters to identify vacant properties to break into.

In October, an Atlanta neighborhood found itself at the center of a scandal involving squatters who transformed a home into an illegal strip club, complete with weekend parties and even live horses on the property.

The drama unfolded in the South Fulton area, where four individuals — DeAnthony Maddox, Jeremy Wheat, Kelvin Hall and Tarahsjay Forde — took up residence without permission. Little did the neighbors know that the 4,000-square-foot, five-bedroom home with three bathrooms would become a den of illicit activity.

The squatters ran the clandestine strip club, held noisy parties and even organized car races in the street, ruining the neighborhood for others, according to local reports.

 

 

Forget About Gun Control, Let's Talk About Ammo Control!!!

expats.cz  |  United States Senator J.D. Vance has written a letter to U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen urging her to suspend the sale Sporting Products, the arms and ammunition division of U.S. company Vista Outdoor, to Czechoslovak Group (CSG). According to Vance, there are potential security risks in the sale to the Czech company, including alleged ties to Russia.

CSG, a prominent industrial-technology holding, entered into a $1.91 billion (roughly CZK 44.6 billion) sales agreement with Vista Outdoor earlier this month, marking a significant deal within the arms industry.

Senator Vance, however, has raised concerns about CSG's alleged history of collusion and alleged connections with entities hostile to the United States. In his letter, Vance stressed the need for a thorough assessment of potential risks, stating that the transaction poses clear threats to U.S. national security.

CSG, in response to the senator's claims, has vehemently denied any links to Russian authorities. Andrej Čírtek, a spokesperson for the Czech holding company, emphasized that CSG is a private entity committed to selling its products to partner countries within NATO and the EU.

Čírtek highlighted CSG's collaboration with leading defense companies, including U.S.-based Raytheon and General Dynamics European Land Systems.

Senator Vance's letter further referenced CSG's alleged ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin's inner circle, raising concerns about the company's sponsorship of a show in Moscow aimed at facilitating Russian authorities' access to European military technology.

Additionally, the senator pointed to a report by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, which implicated CSG in the violation of the arms sales embargo to Azerbaijan.

CSG has countered these allegations, asserting that their exports have always been conducted with duly granted licenses. The company spokesperson pointed to their previous acquisition of Fiochci, a U.S.-based small-caliber ammunition manufacturer, as well as high-level security clearances, as evidence of their adherence to stringent security protocols.

"Our acquisition of Fiochci, which manufactures small-caliber ammunition in the U.S., has successfully passed the U.S. Committee on Foreign Investment's review," Čírtek  states. "Some of the companies owned by CSG have both Czech and NATO security clearances. None of this would be possible for a company with ties to Russia."

 

 

Why Is The Mainstream Media So Quiet About The Southern Border?

FAIR  |  The United States is on the verge of a constitutional crisis, one that enlivens the nationalist fervor of Trump America and that centers on a violent, racist closed-border policy.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (NBC, 1/14/24): “The only thing we are not doing is we’re not shooting people who come across the border, because, of course, the Biden administration would charge us with murder.”

In January, the Supreme Court, with a five-vote majority that included both Republican and Democratic appointees, ruled that federal agents can “remove the razor wire that Texas state officials have set up along some sections of the US/Mexico border” to make immigration more dangerous (CBS, 1/23/24). The state’s extreme border policy is not merely immoral as an idea, but has proven to be deadly and torturous in practice (USA Today, 8/3/23; NBC, 1/14/24; Texas Observer, 1/17/24).

In a statement (1/22/24), Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton decried the decision, saying that it “allows Biden to continue his illegal effort to aid the foreign invasion of America.” Paxton, a Republican, vowed that the “fight is not over, and I look forward to defending our state’s sovereignty.”

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, also a Republican, “is doubling down, blocking the agents from entering the area,” the PBS NewsHour (1/25/24) reported. PBS quoted Abbott declaring that the state’s constitutional authority is “the supreme law of the land and supersedes any federal statutes to the contrary.”

University of Texas law professor Stephen Vladeck (Houston Chronicle, 1/26/24) observed that Abbott’s position “has eerie parallels to arguments advanced by Southerners during the Antebellum era.”

For a great many people, a Southern state invoking its “sovereignty” over the federal government in defense of violent and inhumane policing of non-white people sounds eerily familiar to the foundation of the nation’s first civil war.  And 25 other states are supporting Texas in defying the Supreme Court (USA Today, 1/26/24), although none of them are states that border Mexico.

Texas media are sounding the alarm about this conflict. The Texas Tribune (1/25/24):

From the Texas House to former President Donald Trump, Republicans across the country are rallying behind Gov. Greg Abbott’s legal standoff with the federal government at the southern border, intensifying concerns about a constitutional crisis amid an ongoing dispute with the Biden administration.

Houston public media KUHF (1/24/24) said this “could be the beginning of a constitutional crisis.” University of Texas law professor Stephen Vladeck said in an op-ed in the Houston Chronicle (1/26/24) that Abbott’s position is a “dangerous misreading” of the Constitution.

Other legal scholars are watching with concern. Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the law school of the University of California at Berkeley, told FAIR, “I think that this is reminiscent of Southern governors disobeying the Supreme Court’s desegregation decisions.” He added, “I agree that it is a constitutional crisis in the sense that this is a challenge to a basic element of the Constitution: the supremacy of federal law over state law.”

But the New York Times has not covered the issue since the Supreme Court decision came down (1/21/24). The AP (1/27/24) framed the story around Donald Trump, saying the former president “lavished praise” on the governor “for not allowing the Biden administration entry to remove razor wire in a popular corridor for migrants illegally entering the US.” The Washington Post (1/26/24) did show right-wing politicians and pundits were using the standoff to grandstand about a new civil war. NPR (1/22/24) covered the Supreme Court case, but has fallen behind on the aftermath.

The “legal expert” quoted in Fox News‘ headline (1/25/24) works for America First Legal, a group founded by white nationalist Stephen Miller to “oppose the radical left’s anti-jobs, anti-freedom, anti-faith, anti-borders, anti-police, and anti-American crusade.”

Meanwhile, Fox News (1/25/24, 1/25/24, 1/27/24) has given Texas extensive and favorable coverage of its feud with the White House, citing its own legal sources (from America First Legal and the Edwin Meese III Center—1/25/24) saying that Texas was in the right and the high court was in the wrong.

Breitbart celebrated Abbott’s defiance as a states’ rights revolution, with a series of articles labeled “border showdown” (1/24/24, 1/24/24, 1/24/24, 1/25/24, 1/28/24) and several others about Republican governors standing with Texas in solidarity (1/26/24, 1/28/24).

The white nationalist publication American Renaissance (1/25/24) stood with Abbott but lowered the temperature, saying that it is “unclear whether this could cause a constitutional crisis, but the optics are not great for the White House in an election year.” “This will not be a ‘Civil War’ or anything close to it unless someone on the ground wildly miscalculates by firing on the Texas National Guard,” the openly racist outlet asserted. Rather, the publication saw Abbott as recentering the immigration debate as a way to weaken President Joe Biden’s reelection chances. “We couldn’t hope for a better start to the election-year campaign,” it said.

The National Review (1/28/24) admitted that Abbott is probably wrong on the constitutional question. Nevertheless, it called him the “MVP of border hawks” for orchestrating a public relations coup by forcing the federal government’s hand:

Abbott has managed to get the federal government in the position of actually removing physical barriers to illegal immigration at the border and insisting that it is imperative that it be permitted to continue doing so. This alone is a PR debacle for the administration, but it comes in a controversy—with its fraught legal and constitutional implications—that will garner massive attention out of proportion to its practical importance.

This is impressive by any measure.

The support of Republican states for Abbott elevates the matter further, but this also is a relatively small thing. The backing for Abbott is entirely rhetorical at this point and perhaps not very serious on the part of some Republican governors. It nonetheless serves to elevate a conflict over security on a small part of the border into what feels like a larger confrontation between all of Red America and the federal government.

Getting Warhammer Vibes - We'll See It On European Cops First

new atlas  |  Soldiers and tactical unit police officers often have a lot of heavy gear to carry, including the ballistic body armor that they're wearing. That's where the ExoM Up-Armoured Exoskeleton is intended to come in, as it's load-reducing and bulletproof.

The exoskeleton is manufactured by German company Mehler Protection, which designed the product in collaboration with Canadian biomechanics tech company Mawashi Science & Technology, and French tactical police force GIGN (Groupe d’Intervention de la Gendarmerie Nationale).

Body armor panels throughout the full-body exoskeleton provide ballistic protection up to the European standard of VPAM 8. This means that they can withstand being hit by three 7.62 × 39-mm rounds (which AK-47 rifles use) fired from a distance of approximately 10 meters (33 ft).

Additionally, the exoskeleton's titanium frame reportedly redistributes as much as 70% of the overall load from the wearer's shoulders down to the ground (via structural soles inside the user's boots). At the same time, the ExoM's flexible spine, sliding waist belt and articulated hip, knee, and ankle joints are claimed to ensure that the wearer retains up to 99% of their usual range of motion.

Finally, because the ExoM is a passive exoskeleton (meaning it doesn't utilize any motorized actuators), it doesn't have any batteries that add weight or require charging – the latter could definitely prove challenging in remote locations, or on long missions.

We're still waiting to hear back from Mehler regarding information such as the type of ballistic material utilized, and the setup's total weight.

The Mainstream Lie By Omission

 

🚨🇫🇷 Macron - France

The Mainstream Media LIE by Omission

In France MSM are focused on Emmanuel Macrons visit to meet the Swedish Royal Family all the while France is on Fire.

This is brilliant 👏👇 pic.twitter.com/FBIzru0cBt

— Concerned Citizen (@BGatesIsaPyscho) February 3, 2024

I'm A Swiftie Because Of How She Bitch-Slapped The Carlyle Group Over Her Catalog

NTD  |  Taylor Swift has yet to endorse a candidate in the 2024 presidential race. But questions continue to swirl about the potential impact the pop sensation may have on the upcoming November election.

Ms. Swift has remained largely apolitical throughout her career, but chronicled her newfound interest in politics in her 2020 Netflix documentary “Miss Americana.”

In the film, she attributes her former political apathy to her beginnings in country music. “Part of the fabric of being a country artist is don’t force your politics on people,” she says. “Let people live their lives. That is grilled into us.”

However, the singer’s connection to George Soros has been a point of concern for many supporters of former President Donald Trump. In 2019, Ms. Swift, 34, gave a speech at the Billboard Women in Music event, claiming the billionaire Democrat donor helped fund the purchase of her music catalog.

“This just happened to me without my approval, consultation, or consent,” she said. “After I was denied the chance to purchase my music outright, my entire catalog was sold to Scooter Braun’s Ithaca Holdings in a deal that I’m told was funded by the Soros family, 23 Capital, and that Carlyle Group.”

The singer became an outspoken critic of President Donald Trump during his term and publicly endorsed the Biden–Harris ticket in 2020.

“After stoking the fires of white supremacy and racism your entire presidency, you have the nerve to feign moral superiority before threatening violence?” she wrote about President Trump on Twitter, now X, in May 2020. “‘When the looting starts the shooting starts’??? We will vote you out in November.”

She later wrote: “Donald Trump’s ineffective leadership gravely worsened the crisis that we are in and he is now taking advantage of it to subvert and destroy our right to vote and vote safely.”

Many conservatives have speculated about the timing of her interest in politics.

“Thinking about when Taylor Swift called out the Soros family in 2019 for buying the rights to her music and then how she came out a super liberal in 2020,” conservative political activist Jack Posobiec wrote on X on Jan. 28.

The following day, former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy responded to Mr. Posobiec’s tweet. “I wonder who’s going to win the Super Bowl next month,” Mr. Ramaswamy said, alluding to Ms. Swift’s relationship with boyfriend Travis Kelce, a tight end for the NFL’s Kansas City Chiefs.

“And I wonder if there’s a major presidential endorsement coming from an artificially culturally propped-up couple this fall,” he continued. “Just some wild speculation over here, let’s see how it ages over the next 8 months.”

Seems Like A Mistake To Me To Think That Taylor Swift Is An NPC

wired  |  Taylor Swift remains inescapable. Tales of her reign are legion, as are her fans. Next to Beyoncé, her power and influence have reached heights so unbridled it’s almost unfathomable. Her Eras Tour made nearly a billion dollars in 2023, and the concert film of that tour has brought in nearly $250 million worldwide. When rumors started swirling in the fall that she was dating Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, they upended American football. Still, when Time named her Person of the Year, conspiracy theorists saw only one explanation. They allege Swift is a psyop.

If you’ve lived on the internet long enough, you will have heard this kind of thing before. Back in 2016, when she was largely apolitical in her public life, Swift was a hero of the so-called alt-right who some believed was actually red-pilling America to further a racist, conservative agenda. When she piped up about politics in 2018, some people online (somewhat jokingly) theorized she’d been replaced by an NPC. The latest twist? “The regime has plans to weaponize her just in time for 2024,” the @EndWokeness account posted on X Wednesday, adding that if you didn’t find this plausible “you clearly have not been paying attention.”

@EndWokeness has 1.9 million followers, and, as of Monday morning, the post had more than 788,000 views. On Telegram, a QAnon influencer account posted that “we need to wake the next generation up to the occult forces colluding with their favorite celebrities.” Right-wing commentator Jack Posobiec posted on X that “the Taylor Swift girlboss psyop has been fully activated.”

Last week’s Person of the Year honor was also followed by resurfaced allegations that Swift is performing witchcraft to further her success and that the left is using her to influence the 2024 US presidential election. Stephen Miller, a senior adviser during Donald Trump’s presidency, posted a message on X saying that “what’s happening with Taylor Swift is not organic.”

All of this happened the same week WIRED reporter David Gilbert published an investigation into a pro-Russia campaign that used fake Swift quotes in a series of Facebook and X posts attempting to seed anti-Ukraine sentiment, reinforcing—in a totally different way—that celebrity is a powerful tool for manipulation. A few days later, Microsoft researchers revealed a similar effort by an unknown Russian group to alter Cameo videos by celebs like Elijah Wood and Mike Tyson to make it look like they were being critical of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky.

Swift exists as a unique example of the intersection of celebrity and politics, and how it operates globally, says Jonathan Dean, a professor of politics at the University of Leeds. “An important feature of culture and politics over the past 10 years, certainly in the UK and the US and I think probably more broadly as well, is that there’s been a significant convergence in the grammar and style and mode, if you like, of pop culture fandom and political citizenship,” he says, referencing the similar ways fandoms and political parties can operate. “Taylor Swift is interesting in that sense because I think she’s a real embodiment of those convergences.”