BAR |Senator Joe Biden
played a role in creating these terrible conditions. In 2005 he and 17
other democrats joined republicans in voting for the Bankruptcy Act,
which made it all but impossible to discharge student loan debt in
bankruptcy. The Delaware senator was beholden to the consumer credit
industry, like all of that state’s elected officials. They were the
drivers in ensuring that filing for bankruptcy for any reason would
become very difficult and they were always among Biden’s biggest
campaign contributors.
Of course Biden knows what people need and want. During his campaign he said,
“I propose to forgive all undergraduate tuition-related federal student
debt from two- and four-year public colleges and universities for
debt-holders earning up to $125,000.” At other times he included
Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) in this debt
forgiveness plan.
It is easy to point out the discrepancy between what he promised and
what he now proposes, but the problem is bigger than the laundry list of
Biden campaign lies. There is great confusion among Black people about
student loan debt relief, what it will really accomplish, and what is
actually needed.
Biden promised well heeled democratic fundraisers that “nothing would
fundamentally change.” Forgiving student loans or any of the other
forms of debt peonage is the last thing that the U.S. oligarchy wants to
see. The increasingly predatory capitalist system demands that Biden
does little more than give lip service instead of meeting the people’s
needs. That is why the oddly named Inflation Reduction Act will
negotiate Medicare drug prices but not until 2026 and then only for ten
drugs. Even if Biden cared he wouldn’t be allowed to do anything more
for senior citizens, student loan debtors or anyone else.
Of course the Black political class can be counted on to aid in the
subterfuges that are used to keep the people quiet. Congresswoman Ayanna
Pressley falsely proclaimed,
“President Joe Biden just canceled student debt.” Her assigned role at
this juncture is to get Black voters to the polls in November and she
can’t do that without lying about Biden. Getting voter buy-in for
neo-liberal policies is Pressley’s problem. No one else has to go along
with the inevitable falsehoods that come with the territory of holding
elective office.
She and others may call themselves “progressives” but in the end they
are no better than Senator Biden when he worsened the student debt
crisis. They are all little more than errand boys and girls for the
kleptocrats and all of them are compromised.
theamericanconservative | Look, I don't like that Russia invaded Ukraine, and I don't like that
they are succeeding in their aggression. But they have won this thing.
Why? Because the West cannot afford to continue this proxy war with
Moscow.
Artur's household is one of the
nearly 4 million in Poland that rely on coal for heating (granted, these
households are probably in better shape than the ones relying on nat
gas whose price is rising by 10-20% every day and is now almost
literally in the stratosphere) and now face shortages and price hikes,
after Poland and the European Union imposed an embargo on Russian coal
following Moscow's invasion of Ukraine in February. Poland banned
purchases with an immediate effect in April, while the bloc mandated
fading them out by August.
While Poland produces over 50 million
tonnes from its own mines every year, imported coal, much of it from
Russia, is a household staple because of competitive prices and the fact
that Russian coal is sold in lumps more suitable for home use.
Soaring
demand has forced Bogdanka and other state-controlled mines to ration
sales or offer the fuel to individual buyers via online platforms, in
limited amounts. Artur, who did not want to give his full name, said he
had collected paperwork from his extended family in the hope of picking
up all their fuel allocations at once.
Advertisement
Yesterday in Rome, I talked to a couple of Poles who are terrified of
the coming winter. If you are Polish and have the possibility of
burning firewood, you are stocking up on it. But very many Poles do not.
Nor can they burn coal in their flats for heat. What are they going to
do? They're not sure.
As rich as the West is, it can't keep its people warm in the winter by
burning cash. And so, European households are now being forced to ask if
freezing in the dark for Ukraine is something they really want to do.
This is not going to happen to Americans -- but you should think about
how you would react if this were you, and your elderly parents, and your
kids.
sonar21 | Just like Wile E Coyote, the United States and Europe are discovering
that their incredibly “clever” plan to punish Russia with draconian
economic sanctions is backfiring. And it is backfiring with a vengeance.
In Europe, things are markedly worse. The UK and Ireland are
grappling with soaring energy costs that are forcing many small
businesses to shutter their operations:
One such owner is Geraldine Dolan, who owns the Poppyfields cafe in Athlone, Ireland – and was charged nearly €10,000 (US$10,021) for just over two months of energy usage.
The
cost of electricity to the Poppyfields cafe for 73 days from early June
until the end of August came in at €9,024.70 an increase of 250 per
cent in just 12 months. There doesn’t include the €812.22 in VAT, which
brought her total bill to €9,836.92.
It has left Geraldine Dolan
wondering if she will be able to continue running the business she has
owned for the last 16 years as Ireland heads into what is certain to be a
winter of rising energy prices and cost of living spikes.
Geraldine
Dolan, of Poppy Fields Cafe, Athlone, with an electricity bill for just
under ten thousand euro for two months. Photograph: Dara Mac Dónaill /
The Irish Times Photograph: Dara Mac Donaill / The Irish Times
In short, small businesses are getting utility bills that are 10
times what they were paying a year ago. Most are going to be forced to
shutdown operations.
As the FT reports, German manufacturers are halting production in response to the surge in energy prices, a
trend the government has described as “alarming”. German economy
minister Robert Habeck said industry had worked hard to reduce its gas
consumption in recent months, partly by switching to alternative fuels
like oil, making its processes more efficient and reducing output. But
he amusingly clarified, some companies had also “stopped production altogether” — a development he said was “alarming”.
“It’s not good news,” he said, “because
it can mean that the industries in question aren’t just being
restructured but are experiencing a rupture — a structural rupture, one
that is happening under enormous pressure.”
Habeck said
rising gas prices were affecting everyone from big industrial companies
to small trading firms and the medium-sized enterprises that make up the
“Mittelstand”. “Wherever energy is an important part of the business
model, companies are experiencing sheer angst,” he said. And since
energy is a crucial part of every business model, one can only imagine the chaos, fear and loathing hammering the largest European economy right now.
Meanwhile, the Russian economy is doing okay. That is because it
produces energy and commodities and metals that the world needs. It is
not dependent on imports to stay afloat. And, the sanctions
notwithstanding, Russia continues to export oil, gas, fertilizer and
grains.
warontherocks | today’s growing wave of assassination attempts has crossed
ideologies. Certain adherents of the far left have been responsible for
attempts on the Republican baseball practice and more recently Justice
Kavanaugh. But the far-right is also active in this space and was
responsible for the most recent successful high-level political
assassination in the country: the killing
of Reverend Clementa Pinckney, state senator of South Carolina, at the
Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston in 2015. Jihadists often place
prominent figures in their crosshairs, as demonstrated by a recently disrupted plot against George W. Bush. Even the more nascent male supremacist movement has its targets: A so-called “men’s rights activist” attacked the home of U.S. District Court Judge Esther Salas in July 2020, killing her son.
The emerging trend is due in no small part to the reemergence of so-called “accelerationism”
as a distinct violent extremist strategy. For extremists seeking to sow
chaos and speed up some cataclysmic societal collapse, high-profile
politicians provide an attractive target, as symbols of the mainstream
liberal political order. “We need to kill the HVT’s,” one poster wrote
on Telegram in August 2019, using a military acronym for high-value
target. “When a popular HVT is gunned down, it inspires hope and
dreams.” The COVID pandemic then added fuel to the fire as public
officials were blamed and then threatened for the lockdowns and enforced
quarantines. Targets ranged from prominent health officials like
cerebral National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director
Dr. Anthony Fauci to Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, as well as many
other lower-level state officials responsible for the imposition of
these extraordinary public health measures. Fauci was forced
into constant law enforcement protection because of threats against his
life — which was only a prelude to the death threats and serial
harassment that now routinely are directed against local and state
election officials.
Political assassinations are uniquely suited to tear at the country’s
social fabric. For starters, they force opposing politicians and voters
into an apparently awkward dilemma between condemning hatred and
violence and seeming to renege on their own political positions — a
situation Democrats did not handle particularly well after the attempt on Kavanaugh’s life. As Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco stated
in June in response to that attempted attack, “We can’t come together
on this topic without acknowledging and condemning the appalling rise in
violence that we have seen from a range of ideologies directed at
public officials.” But they also risk dissuading good people, across the
political spectrum, from running for public office and participating in
a vibrant American democracy. Indeed, perhaps the most damning element
of the January 6 commission hearings has been the broadcasting of the
threats issued against everyday public servants, such as Georgia’s election workers. The Department of Justice recently announced
it has opened around 110 federal criminal investigations into “contacts
reported as hostile or harassing by the election community.” “A common
refrain I hear from my members is that nobody is going to take this
seriously until something bad happens, and we are all braced for the
worst,” the National Association of State Election Directors executive
director warned in recent written testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee. “Until recently, this was not a field you went into thinking it could cost you your life.”
Heightening the threat yet further is a growing tendency for
assailants to use untraceable or even homemade weaponry as part of
violent plots — as seen in the assassination of Abe, in which the
assassin used a fully homemade shotgun to evade Japan’s stringent gun
laws. The crude attack was reminiscent of failed drone attacks against
political leaders in Venezuela and Iraq
and may be indicative of an emerging era in which more widely
accessible tools are weaponized in these strikes against individuals —
again, regardless of the motivating ideology. Cruder technology lowers
the barriers to entry for attackers, allowing even untrained or
unprepared extremists — such as Zeldin’s assailant, who, despite being
an Army veteran, used a personal protection device disguised as a cat-shaped keychain in his assault — to attempt serious plots. As Colin Clarke and Joseph Shelzi write,
“The proliferation of emerging personal technologies like drones,
3-D-printed weapons, and other innovations will likely open the door for
more attacks against high-profile figures in the future.”
We live in an age of heightened political tensions, when political
decisions are often seen as existential crises, and where elections,
therefore, carry perceived life-or-death stakes. With a midterm around
the corner, a former president under investigation, and major upheavals
occurring on hot-button issues such as abortion and gun control,
extremists inclined to violence will be increasingly likely to lash out.
The situation is only made more serious by the seeming consent
a faction of the political right has offered to would-be assassins,
including a Florida State House candidate who was recently expelled from
Twitter for writing, “Under my plan, all Floridians will have
permission to shoot FBI, IRS, ATF and all other feds on sight! Let
freedom ring!” The conceit that fuels these would-be assassins’
fanaticism and feeds their egos poses a considerable and growing danger
to civil servants and political figures across the political spectrum —
at a time when mass shootings at schools, shopping malls, cinemas, and
other public venues have already become an increasingly frequent
occurrence. “The system was blinking red,” Director of Central
Intelligence George Tenet famously told the 9/11 Commission describing the months before September 2001 — a sentiment which feels pertinent again now.
FoxNews | President Biden took another swipe at supporters of the Second Amendment during his speech in Pennsylvania on Wednesday.
Biden
appeared in the battleground state to tout his latest "Safer America"
agenda to promote efforts to support law enforcement and deter crime.
Biden: "He used to go down in the East Side, what they call the bucket. Highest crime rate in the country. Theres a place where I was the only white guy that worked, was a lifeguard down in that area.... you could always tell where the best basketball in the state is." pic.twitter.com/Hl3o3ZwTe3
Although his speech was primarily focused on his policies, Biden later
turned his attention towards his political opponents, attacking Republicans for opposing actions on gun control.
Specifically,
he attacked defenders of the Second Amendment who argue that the right
is necessary for self-defense against foreign enemies and a tyrannical
government.
"For
those brave right-wing Americans who say it’s all about keeping America
independent and safe, if you want to fight against the country, you
need an F-15. You need something more than a gun," Biden said.
Social media users attacked the comment for being tone-deaf and
criticizing American citizens. Others pointed out that this claim
followed the one-year anniversary of Biden’s Afghanistan pullout, where
several weapons, including F-15s, were left behind for Taliban forces.
"The
only F-15s the Taliban had when they fought against our country were
the ones Biden left in Afghanistan for them," X Strategies senior
digital strategist Greg Price tweeted.
"The president has been
saying this for years but it's less and less congruent with how even his
own administration has played out. How many F-15s did the Taliban have
when Biden decided to surrender Afghanistan to them?" The Reload founder
Stephen Gutowski wrote.
Red State deputy managing editor Brandon Morse joked, "I'd say he's
ignoring the Eric Holder ‘Fast and Furious’ scandal but it's Biden and
it's very likely that he actually forgot."
caityjohnstone | None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.
None are more hopelessly ignorant than those who falsely believe they’re informed.
None are more hopelessly propagandized than those who don’t know they are propagandized.
Living
in a liberal western democracy means having the freedom to criticize
the tyranny of your government, but instead spending your time
criticizing the tyranny of foreign governments who your government
doesn’t like.
Free
speech in a liberal western democracy means you have the freedom to say
whatever you want about the abuses of your government, and the press
has the freedom to hammer you with propaganda to ensure that you never
do.
In
a liberal western democracy you are free to criticize your government,
but instead you are propagandized into criticizing the impotent puppets
who get rotated in and out of office while your government continues
doing all the same evil things regardless of who gets elected.
In
liberal western democracies you are free to call the president “Drumpf”
or “Brandon”, but you are not free to know who’s actually calling the
shots in your country underneath the official government.
In
liberal western democracies people say, “I’m so glad I don’t live in a
country like Russia or China where people are forbidden to criticize
their government. I live in the west, where I’m free to criticize Russia
and China all I want.”
It
doesn’t matter if you have freedom of speech if those in power can
control what you will say. And in liberal western democracies, this is
exactly what happens.
We
grow up saturated with US empire propaganda in the west. We marinate in
it. It pervades our consciousness. But because it’s all we’ve ever
known, most of us don’t even notice it.
We
think it’s normal that we’re always told our government is on the good
and righteous side of every international conflict. We think it’s normal
that we hear constantly about the tyranny of foreign governments while
only occasionally hearing about bad things our own government did years
ago (but it was an innocent mistake and it’ll never happen again).
“If we were being propagandized, I’m sure we’d have heard about it in the news,” we tell ourselves.
But the news is the propaganda. And it will never report on that bombshell story.
Propaganda
is the single most overlooked and underappreciated aspect of our
society. In controls how the public thinks, acts, votes and behaves, but
hardly anyone ever talks about it. Because the sources they’ve been
trained to look to for information never say anything about it.
So
people say what’s on their mind, after what’s on their mind has been
carefully curated by the imperial narrative managers who are responsible
for controlling what information goes into their mind.
responsiblestatecraft | With an article in The National Interest entitled “Don’t Rule Out Intervention in the Solomon Islands,”
Julian Spencer-Churchill provides such an example. The piece — which
makes the case that Australia and the United States ought to consider
military intervention to topple the government of the Solomon Islands in
the wake of the small nation’s adoption of a security pact with China —
presents an inartful mix of threat inflation, outright factual error,
and regurgitations of basic international relations theory, and is not
particularly worth engaging with in and of itself.
Yet Spencer-Churchill’s argument is useful in that it draws out some
important contradictions in the strategy of liberal hegemony that drives
U.S. foreign policy, and the “rules-based international order” it
supposedly upholds.
The piece begins with a brief recitation of the origins and
importance of self-determination and state sovereignty to the
international system. This is immediately followed by a claim on behalf
of the “coalition of democracies” to a right to violate these principles
more or less at will.
This coalition, Spencer-Churchill writes, has “legally and morally
valid justifications for intervention in a foreign country” first, “when
there is a dire security threat that emerges within its sphere of
influence” and second, “because liberal democracies have an
unprecedented understanding of the world population’s aspirations for
human rights-based rule of law and innovation-based prosperity for
middle-income countries.” The policies of liberal democracies, he
asserts “are moving in the broader direction of history.” The citation
for this last statement is a link to a brief summary of Francis
Fukuyama’s “End of History.”
The first claim bears a notable resemblance to Russia’s
justifications of its ongoing aggressive war against Ukraine. Such
claims of “dire security threats” can be asserted by great powers with
little evidence and no need for ratification by any third party, and, as
Spencer-Churchill demonstrates, it is easy to gin up a grave security
threat out of developments that pose no significant danger.
The second claim is even more striking. In essence, Spencer-Churchill
argues that all peoples self-evidently desire liberal democratic
capitalism, and therefore capitalist democracies like the United States
have a right to deliver this system to them by force, whether asked for
or not.
This contention, of course, is nothing new. It has helped sell
numerous U.S. military interventions since the Second World War and
itself is only a refinement of the “civilizing missions” of earlier
European imperialisms. Yet, in a year when the United States has rallied
global opposition to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in the name of
upholding the rules-based international order, state sovereignty, and
self-determination, the absurdity of Spencer-Churchill’s claims is shown
in stark relief.
In Spencer-Churchill’s formulation, the United States and its allies
serve as the guarantors of a rules-based international order, but also
enjoy license to violate these rules under broad circumstances of their
own determination. While it is not often laid out so bluntly, this is
largely how American foreign policy has operated for over seven decades.
The United States points to a liberal order as the justification for
and result of its predominant military power and global influence, and
will invoke that order in the face of other parties’ abuses, but will
accept no restraints on its own freedom of action.
This is well demonstrated by Washington’s habitual rejection
of international treaties produced by the United Nations system (the
creation of which, of course, was led by the U.S. itself). The U.S. will
nonetheless wield
these treaties against the behavior of other nations, as it does with
China’s maritime claims and the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea,
which the United States has neither signed nor ratified.
When proponents of liberal hegemony acknowledge this tension, some
argue that it is necessary, even beneficial to the project of building a
stable, liberal world order. The international system is anarchic and
actors worse than the United States abound, ready to fill any power
vacuum left vacant by Washington or its close allies. Such an order
needs a powerful state to enforce it, and sometimes it may be necessary
to bend or even break rules in defense of higher principles.
In a recent article for The Atlantic,
journalist Tom McTague made such a case, examining the “idea that
convinces U.S. leaders that they never oppress, only liberate, and that
their interventions can never be a threat to nearby powers, because
America is not imperialist.” McTague recognizes that this – the notion
that the U.S. is driven by universal values and acts in the universal
interest – is both a “delusion” and “lies at the core of [the United
States’] most costly foreign policy miscalculations.” Yet McTague
asserts that this delusion is necessary to sustain America’s commitment
to upholding global order and keeping more malicious powers at bay.
thecradle | The cold-blooded assassination of Darya Dugina
– terrorism at the gates of Moscow – may have fatefully coincided with
the six-month intersection point, but will do nothing to change the
dynamics of the current, work-in-progress, historical shift.
Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) appeared to have cracked the
case in a little over 24 hours, designating the perpetrator as a
neo-Nazi Azov operative instrumentalized by the Security Service of
Ukraine (SBU) – itself a mere tool of the CIA/MI6 combo that de facto
rules Kiev.
The Azov operative is just a patsy. The FSB will never reveal in
public the intel it has amassed on those that issued the orders, and how
they will be dealt with.
One Ilya Ponomaryov, an anti-Kremlin minor character granted
Ukrainian citizenship, boasted he was in contact with the outfit that
prepared the hit on the Dugin family. No one took him seriously.
What is manifestly serious, however, is how oligarchy-connected
organized crime factions in Russia would have a motive to eliminate
Alexander Dugin, the Christian Orthodox nationalist philosopher who,
according to them, may have influenced the Kremlin’s pivot to Asia (he
didn’t).
These organized crime factions blamed Dugin for a concerted Kremlin
offensive against the disproportional power of Jewish oligarchs in
Russia. So these actors would have both the motive and the local
know-how to mount such a coup.
If that’s the case, it potentially spells out a Mossad-linked
operation – especially given the serious schism in Moscow’s recent
relations with Tel Aviv. What’s certain is that the FSB will keep their
cards very close to their chest – and retribution will be swift, precise
and invisible.
The straw that broke the camel’s back
Instead of delivering a serious blow to Russia’s psyche that could
impact the dynamics of its operations in Ukraine, the assassination of
Darya Dugina only exposed the perpetrators as tawdry killers who have
exhausted their options.
An IED cannot kill a philosopher – or his daughter. In an essential essay, Dugin himself explained how the real war – Russia against the US-led collective west – is a war of ideas. An existential war.
Dugin correctly defines the US as a “thalassocracy,” heir to
“Britannia rules the waves.” Yet now the geopolitical tectonic plates
are spelling out a new order: The Return of the Heartland.
Russian President Vladimir Putin himself first spelled it out at the
Munich Security Conference in 2007. China’s Xi Jinping put it into
action by launching the New Silk Roads in 2013. The Empire struck back
with Maidan in 2014. Russia counter-attacked by coming to the aid of
Syria in 2015.
The Empire doubled down on Ukraine, with NATO weaponizing it non-stop
for eight years. At the end of 2021, Moscow invited Washington for a
serious dialogue on “indivisibility of security” in Europe. That was
dismissed with a non-response response.
gatestoneinstitute | Can Americans of Chinese descent be loyal to both America and China?
No. China's Communist Party has made itself an existential threat to
America and every other society. The Chinese regime, especially in
recent years under General Secretary Xi, has been pushing the notion
that it holds the Mandate of Heaven to rule tianxia, "All Under Heaven." The promotion of tianxia
means, among other things, that the Party views the U.S. government as
illegitimate and America as nothing more than a tributary society or
colony.
To make matters worse, the Chinese state has been open about its
hostility to the United States. Among other things, in May 2019 People's Daily,
the Party's self-described "mouthpiece" and therefore most
authoritative publication in China, declared a "people's war" on
America.
Let me end on a personal note, as dragon blood proudly flows in my
veins. My dad, who arrived in this country in early 1945, came from a
small farming village in Jiangsu province, across the mighty Yangtze
River from Shanghai. My mother's family traces its roots to Dundee, in
Scotland, but I have not identified with that half of my heritage. I
grew up in New Jersey, steeped in Dad's stories of the Yellow Emperor
and of course tales of dragons.
Nonetheless, my story-telling dad never missed an opportunity to vote
or tell his four children how wonderful his adopted country was. He
always said "China is my birthplace but America is my home."
We "Chinese-Americans"—I abhor the term—need to remember where we now
live. We cannot remain oblivious, as we so far have had the luxury of
doing.
Although we technically do not have an obligation to prove our
loyalty to America, we must, as a group, understand that a hostile power
is trying to weaponize us. Xi Jinping has openly called on us to become
a subversive force, to help him destroy the country we now call home.
It is time, therefore, for us to begin cleaning our own ranks. This
means, among other things, not tolerating displays promoting Chinese
communism in our country. Moreover, it means not shouting "racism" every
time law enforcement arrests someone of Chinese descent. If we do not
take the lead in these tasks, others will naturally do that for us.
We may think it unfair, but we now have to make a choice.
After all, our country—the United States of America—is in peril
because a foreign state—the People's Republic of China—is attacking it
and hoping to use us to take it down.
The Communist Party of China refers to us as "overseas patriotic
forces." People in our communities will want to know to which country we
feel patriotic.
FP | Modi’s BJP government is also undercutting India’s institutions in
unprecedented ways. It has made a mockery of India’s rich tradition of
civil liberties by charging activists and dissidents with crimes under
colonial-era laws. One egregious example is the case of left-wing activists detained
under the draconian Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act for alleged
links to Maoist groups and allegedly fomenting riots. One of the
accused, lifelong Jesuit activist Rev. Stan Swamy,
died in custody last year. Furthermore, Modi and the BJP have co-opted
much of the media and important private sector actors. Journalists have
faced intimidation and harassment;
prominent nongovernmental organizations have been cut off from foreign
funding while others can receive overseas money only into accounts with a
government-owned bank.
Unfortunately, the most important lessons from the independence
movement seem to be lost on India’s contemporary leaders, as shown by
their approach to religious pluralism and democratic institutions.
Although India’s leading revolutionaries were committed to nonviolence,
tensions between Hindus and Muslims marred the independence movement.
These tensions pulled the British Raj apart, and two new countries
emerged in its place: India and Pakistan. This week also marks the
anniversary of the Partition of India, which triggered one of the
world’s worst humanitarian disasters as Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs were
forced to flee in different directions across the new border. A few
months later, India and Pakistan went to war over the status of Jammu
and Kashmir—a disagreement that still plagues the subcontinent.
In the face of these tensions, India and Pakistan’s leaders charted
opposing courses. India’s leaders advanced a progressive and modern
vision for their new country, eschewing a national Hindu religion in
favor of a secular identity. They worked hard to minimize religious
tensions by speaking against communal strife and promoting religious
protections. When Gandhi was assassinated in 1948—for supposedly being a
supplicant to the Muslim community—his political heirs continued to
push for a liberal vision of India. Working with the opposition, they
produced a constitution that enshrined a liberal and secular democracy
that remains in force today.
On the other hand, Pakistan struggled. The country’s founder,
Muhammad Ali Jinnah, led the Muslim League that split from the Indian
National Congress. But he was rarely clear in his vision for Pakistan:
There is some evidence that he wanted a secular state,
but he also called for an Islamic republic. When Jinnah died in 1948,
he left behind a political mess. Liaquat Ali Khan, Pakistan’s first
prime minister, rejected amendments offered by the opposition in his own
founding document, which became a precursor to the country’s 1956
constitution that gave Islam its pride of place in the project of
Pakistan. By turning to communalism, Pakistan has suffered as political
actors stir religious tensions to benefit their own ends. Without
credible institutions or norms that allow political differences to be
resolved, the country has not been able to maintain political order.
Modi’s speech reflects how he and the BJP appear to embrace some of
these traits. By lionizing fringe actors from the independence
movement—including those who exacerbated religious tensions—they are
rewriting history to suit their own political agenda. They have
undermined civil liberties and shown basic disregard for political
opposition. Taking a page from Jinnah’s book, Modi has ensured that any
substantive decision must come through him. Such a system may work in
the short term, but what happens when Modi is no longer prime minister?
The contrast with then-Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s epic “A Tryst With Destiny” speech,
delivered on Aug. 14, 1947, couldn’t be starker. Nehru said he sought
to “bring freedom and opportunity to the common man, to the peasants and
workers of India; to fight poverty and ignorance and disease; to build
up a prosperous, democratic, and progressive nation.” Most poignantly,
he highlighted that India’s religious pluralism was integral to the
newly founded country: “All of us, to whatever religion we may belong,
are equally the children of India, with equal rights, privileges, and
obligations.”
India’s Independence Day has traditionally provided an opportunity to
reflect on the horrors of colonialism and the dangers of religious
discord while also celebrating the vibrance of the country’s democracy.
Modi’s speech this week reflects the departure that India’s contemporary
leaders have made from these foundational values.
It was funded by industrialists. They’ve been
acting profitably on this information since they got it. The inherent
short term interest of capitalism has always made it a death cult and
everyone who sees capitalism as an organizing principal
for an economy is buying into this cult. The death cult has recently
become a totalitarian one in the West as the US attempts to make its
surveillance capitalism a universal system.
Capitalism may have a place in a sustainable
future, but only as a carefully controlled, constrained system for
fostering technological competition contained within pro-social,
pro-ecological governing structures. We’ve probably moved beyond
that possibility already.
I think part of it is that ruling elites have a
very difficult time imagining how a society can hold together without
the hamster game of work, debt and consumption. One of the things
constricting their imagination is the fact that a different
system, one less reliant on the radical individualism that seeks to
justify outrageous levels of inequality, would eliminate much of their
power and privilege.
By now - it should be obvious to even the most
psychopathic and parasitic of our elites - that as they make the hamster
game harder and harder, that radical individualism twists itself into
Free-Dumb to such an extent that society becomes
ungovernable.
When you look at the actions of the Western
colonial nations you can see that their intent is to keep the poor
countries poor so that they won’t be able to have the high consumption
lifestyles of the West. The elites know that there isn’t
enough to go around, and they are hoarding what is available. Drilling
down a bit one sees that in individual nations in the West the wealthy
keep the poor poor so that they too won’t be able to compete for what
the wealthy have. It is truly dog eat dog at
every level of society. Propaganda is used to make the poor (and
increasingly the middle class) think that they too can live the high
life if only they get the right credentials and work hard enough.
Because it is a zero sum game the wealthy won’t actually
allow the poor and middle class to impinge on their lifestyles, but
they certainly try to convince them that it is in reach provided…
Pierre Trudeau and the global jet-set are being
hoisted on their own petards. No business can
build and operate an ocean terminal in Canada to ship Liquid Natural Gas
(LNG) to Europe in the next six months. They have turned the world into a free trade
scheme whose organizing theory relies exclusively on markets - and - whose sole purpose is to increase
corporate profits. Russia, China and Iran are trying
to break free of this new world order.
The only response in the West to the shortages and workers missing due to the Ukrainian proxy world-war - and - ongoing
unmitigated coronavirus and monkeypox pandemics - is to raise prices. The
globalist bubble is so impervious that it is
of no matter that the rising energy prices for most will be
unaffordable and many expendable proles will face an unheated winter. No one is thinking
of the consequences.
The 2021 Texas Freeze power outages only lasted for one week . These market-driven outages led to:
Widespread damage to homes and businesses
Foregone economic
activity
Contaminated water supplies
The loss of at least 111
lives
Early estimates indicate that the freeze and
outage may cost the Texas economy $80–$130 billion in direct
and indirect economic loss” (for example, frozen pipes and water damage
to homes and apartments).
If this happens next Winter in Europe, it will
collapse the EU and Western Europe. Yet, there
is no talk of an armistice or opening NORD Steam 2 gas pipeline from
Russia. The West is at war but with no working sovereign and representational governments.
All the West can do is to send money and armaments to Ukraine – ignoring
the looming disasters that await.
gilbertdoctorow | To be sure, the demand that all Russians be barred from Europe as
punishment for their war on Ukraine has not met with universal approval
within the EU. Even Germany came out against the initiative, with Scholz
saying that exceptions must be made for humanitarian reasons. Others
have debated the legality under EU law of such generalized prohibitions
directed at an entire population. But the debate rages on.
Finally, a statement made yesterday by Latvian President Egils Levits
got the full attention of Moscow. He said that Russian-speaking
residents of Latvia should be ‘isolated from society’ if they oppose his
government’s policies with respect to the war in Ukraine. Just what is
meant by “isolate” is not clear. Does Levits intend to intern them in
concentration camps? Given the absolute failure of Latvia to respect EU
human rights norms going back from the first days of the country’s
independence from the USSR in 1991, such an atrocity would not be out of
character.
I have dealt with precisely this issue in essays going back to 2014 which were included in my collection Does Russia Have a Future?:
see chapter 22 “Latvia’s 300,000 Non-Citizens and the Ukrainian Crisis
Today” and chapter 33 “Latvia’s failed U.S. inspired policies towards
Russia and Russians.” I further explored these issues in my 2019 book A Belgian Perspective on International Relations, chapter38 “Republic of Latvia, Apartheid State Within the EU.”
The point is that upon achieving independence thanks to the active
support of many of its Russian-speaking citizenry, the government of
Latvia turned around and stripped 400,000 of them of their citizenship,
close to 40% of the total population at the time, and offered them a
path to regain passports that only a tiny fraction of them could
follow. When President Levits speaks today of Russian-speaking
“residents” of Latvia, he has in mind those who were deprived of civil
rights including passports and remain stateless up to the present time.
Everything that Latvia did to its Russian-speaking population going
back 30 years set the precedents for Kiev’s repressive policies towards
its own 40% who are Russian speakers after the nationalists from Lvov
came to power in 2014.
These various developments were the main topic for discussion in yesterday’s Evening with Vladimir Solovyov
political talk show, which stood out as especially valuable. Although I
have made reference to this particular talk show frequently over the
years as a good source of information about what Russia’s political and
social elites are thinking, I freely acknowledge that the presenter
cannot and does not fill every program with material and panelists worth
listening to. Indeed, there is a lot of sludge on air between the
gems. By ‘sludge’ I mean the kind of ‘kitchen talk’ in which expert
panelists talk the same non-facts-based drivel that ordinary Russians
will engage in when they follow the principle of socializing described
by Chekhov in Act Two of The Three Sisters: “They are not serving us tea, so let’s philosophize.”
In any case, last night’s Solovyov was definitely worth
listening to. The question of neo-Nazism in Europe was the glue binding
together different elements of the discussion, ranging from Levits’
obnoxious declaration of the same day to the fate of ordinary Russians
in Kazakhstan and Central Asia after the collapse of the Soviet Union,
and what to do about all of these challenges to the Russian World.
The overriding point was that the Russophobia and ‘cancel Russian
culture’ movements that have swept Europe during 2022 mean that
Russians are the Jews of today. They are what the Hitlerites called Untermenschen,
against whom all manner of rights violations if not outright murder can
be practiced. This arises in its worst form in Ukraine, where Russians
as a people are systematically dehumanized in statements from the top
leadership of the country. In Ukraine, the ultra-nationalists call
Russians “Colorado,” a reference to the bugs that infest potato crops.
These insects carry the orange and black colors of the St George’s
ribbons that patriotic Russians wear. This is the same logic that made
possible the biological weapons attack on Russian soldiers in the
Zaporozhie that was carried out last week by Ukrainian forces, sending
the victims to intensive care treatment for botulism poisoning. That
development probably did not get coverage in your daily newspaper.
The conversation on Solovyov was particularly interesting in
the ‘what is to be done’ segment. Acknowledging that a ‘special
military operation’ against Latvia is not practicable yet given Latvia’s
membership in NATO, a panelist who heads the State Duma committee on
relations with the Former Soviet Union states, said that those Russians
who profited from the transit business between Russia and Latvia for
decades should now pay up and contribute financially to relocating the
Russian speakers in Riga to the Russian Federation, meaning providing
good housing and jobs that till now were never on offer to incentivize
immigration. A fellow panelist broadened the proposed assistance to
suggest a government program of resettlement modeled on what Israel did
some decades ago to facilitate the relocation of certain Black African
Jews from their country of persecution to the State of Israel. And it
was suggested that similar relocation offers should be extended to
Russian speakers in Kazakhstan and other Central Asian countries where
they have all been second class citizens since these countries became
independent of the USSR.
ourfiniteworld | The economy is something that grows through the “dissipation” of
energy. Examples of dissipation of energy include the digestion of food
to give energy to humans, the burning of fossil fuels, and the use of
electricity to power a light bulb. A rise in world energy consumption is
highly correlated with growth in the world economy. Falling energy
consumption is associated with economic contraction.
Figure
4. Correlation between world GDP measured in “Purchasing Power Parity”
(PPP) 2017 International $ and world energy consumption, including both
fossil fuels and renewables. GDP is as reported by the World Bank for
1990 through 2021 as of July 26, 2022; total energy consumption is as
reported by BP in its 2022 Statistical Review of World Energy.
In physics terms, the world economy is a dissipative structure, just
as all plants, animals and ecosystems are. All dissipative structures
have finite lifespans, including the world economy.
This finding is not well known because academic researchers seem to
operate in ivory towers. Researchers in economic departments aren’t
expected to understand physics and how it applies to the economy. In
fairness to academia, the discovery that the economy is a dissipative
structure did not occur until 1996.
It takes a long time for findings to filter through from one department
to another. Even now, I am one of a very small number of people in the
world writing about this issue.
Also, economic researchers are not expected to study the history of
the many smaller, more-localized civilizations that have collapsed in
the past. Typically, the population of these smaller civilizations
increased at the same time as the resources used by the population
started to degrade. The use of technology, such as dams to redirect
water flows, may have helped for a while, but eventually this was not
enough. The combination of declining availability of high quality
resources and increasing population tended to leave these civilizations
with little margin for dealing with the bad times that can be expected
to occur by chance. In many cases, such civilizations collapsed after
disease epidemics, a military invasion, or a climate fluctuation that
led to a series of crop failures.
counterpunch | Nations of the world are only too aware that fossil fuels need to be
phased out for two reasons. First, oil is a finite commodity. It’ll run
out in time. Secondly, fossil fuel emissions such as CO2 are destroying
the planet’s climate system.
However, a recent study puts a damper on the prospects of phasing out
fossil fuels in favor of renewables. More to the point, a phase out of
fossil fuels by mid century looks to be a nearly impossible Sisyphean
task. It’s all about quantities of minerals/metals contained in Mother
Earth. There aren’t enough.
Simon Michaux, PhD, Geological Survey Finland has done a detailed
study of what’s required to phase out fossil fuels in favor of
renewables, to wit:
“The quantity of metal required to make just one generation of
renewable tech units to replace fossil fuels is much larger than first
thought. Current mining production of these metals is not even close to
meeting demand. Current reported mineral reserves are also not enough in
size. Most concerning is copper as one of the flagged shortfalls.
Exploration for more at required volumes will be difficult, with this
seminar addressing these issues.” (Source: Simon P. Michaux, Associate
Research Professor of Geometallurgy Unit Minerals Processing and
Materials Research, Geological Survey of Finland, August 18, 2022 –
Seminar: What Would It Take To Replace The Existing Fossil Fuel System?)
Metals/minerals required to source gigafactories producing renewables
to power the world’s economies when fossil fuels phase out looks to be
one of the biggest quandaries of all time. There’s not enough metal.
Michaux researched and analyzed the current status of the internal
combustion engine fleet of cars, trucks, rail, maritime shipping, and
aviation for the US, Europe, and China, accessing databases to gather
information as a starting point for the study.
Michaux’s calculations for what’s required to phase out fossil fuels
uses a starting point of 2018 with 84.5% of primary energy still fossil
fuel-based and less than 1% of the world’s vehicle fleet electric.
Therefore, the first generation of renewable energy is only now coming
on stream, meaning there will be no recycling availability of production
materials for some time. Production will have to be sourced from
mining.
When Michaux presented basic information to EU analysts, it was a
shock to them. To his dismay, they had not put together the various
mineral/metal data requirements to phase out fossil fuels and replaced
by renewables. They assumed, using guesstimates, the metals would be
available.
RT | The US will not be able to replace Russian uranium in the event of an
import ban, Assistant Secretary of Energy Kathryn Huff has warned,
saying Washington must develop enrichment capabilities domestically.
"Worldwide, there's not enough capacity to replace that gap from trusted sources," Huff told the Washington Examiner on Wednesday, adding that it was the US’s responsibility to “encourage and incentivize that enrichment and conversion capability” on American soil.
Huff
told the Examiner that US reliance on Russian-sourced uranium posed
unique energy security and national security risks, and noted that
Russia still provides about 20% of the low enriched uranium at existing
US reactors.
“We have the largest nuclear fleet in the world,
and we currently do not have the capability to provide fuel for all of
our reactors,” she said, claiming that Russia is “no longer a trustworthy source of our fuel, and we need to find alternatives here and build up that supply chain.”
Russia reportedly accounted for 16.5% of the uranium imported into
the US in 2020 and 23% of the enriched uranium needed to power the
country’s commercial nuclear reactors. Currently there is nowhere else
to turn to fill the gap if uranium imports are banned, Huff said.
Legislation
before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee would indeed
ban Russian uranium imports, just as Congress previously banned imports
of Russian fossil fuels following the launch of Moscow’s military
offensive in Ukraine in February.
Huff, who has a PhD in nuclear engineering, said a "tiger team" at the energy department was currently strategizing how to expand the domestic supply chain.
US Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm has also previously called Washington's reliance on imports from Moscow a "vulnerability" for economic and national security.
The
US maintains the capacity to mine uranium, but relies heavily on Russia
for enrichment. Kick-starting the domestic uranium industry is not a
simple process, the department said previously, given that the country
has only one commercial enrichment facility remaining — a plant run by
British-German-Dutch consortium Urenco in New Mexico.
Zuckerberg stated on The Joe Rogan Experience that
“The FBI, I think, basically came to us – some folks on our team – and
was like, ‘Hey, just so you know, like, you should be on high alert… We
thought that there was a lot of Russian propaganda in the 2016
election. We have it on notice that, basically, there’s about to be some
kind of dump of that’s similar to that. So just be vigilant.’”
It is not clear why the FBI considered this type of media outreach
was part of its responsibility as a law enforcement agency. This was
before the presidential election and actively discouraged a major
platform to allow discussion of major allegations of corruption. The use
of the FBI for such a role gave Facebook officials ample cover to
expand their censorship operations.
The company only recently allowed customers to discuss the lab theory
of the origins of Covid after years of biased censorship. Facebook’s
decision to allow people to discuss the theory followed the company’s
Oversight Board upholding a ban
on any postings of Trump, a move that even figures like Germany’s
Angela Merkel and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) have criticized as a
danger to free speech. Even Trump’s voice has been banned by Facebook.
Trump remains too harmful for Facebook users to hear . . . at least
until the company decides that they are ready for such exposure.
Facebook has tried to get customers to embrace censorship in a commercial campaign despite its long record of abusive and biased “content modification.”
Zuckerberg just shrugged when pressed on his company effectively
joining the effort to kill the story before the election: “Yeah, it
sucks. It turned out, after the fact, the fact-checkers looked into it.
No one was able to say it was false.”
As with the earlier column on the CDC’s work with Twitter, there is a
growing concern over the use of such backchannels for censorship by
surrogates in these social media companies.
DailyMail | The FBI deliberately dragged its feet on the Hunter Biden
investigation and told agents not to look into the Hunter Biden laptop,
according to new whistleblowers who spoke with Sen. Ron Johnson.
Johnson,
R-Wisc., sent a letter to DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz on
Tuesday bringing forth the new whistleblower claims.
'Recently, my office heard from individuals with knowledge of the FBI’s apparent corruption,' Johnson said.
'After the FBI obtained the Hunter Biden
laptop from the Wilmington, DE computer shop, these whistleblowers
stated that local FBI leadership told employees, "you will not look at
that Hunter Biden laptop" and that the FBI is "not going to change the
outcome of the election again,"' Johnson wrote to Horowitz.
Johnson is demanding Horowitz look into the FBI's handling of the Hunter Biden laptop.
'While
I understand your hesitation to investigate a matter that may be
related to an ongoing investigation, it is clear to me based on numerous
credible whistleblower disclosures that the FBI cannot be trusted with
the handling of Hunter Biden’s laptop,' Johnson said.
'I
hope you understand that the longer your office stands on the sidelines
and delays investigating the FBI’s actions, the harder it will be for
you to uncover the truth and hold individuals accountable for
wrongdoing.'
Horowitz told Johnson in
February 2021 that the OIG would not investigate the FBI's handling of
the laptop so as not to interfere with the Department of Justice's
investigation into Hunter Biden's tax affairs.
The new claims come after whistleblower
allegations emerged in July that in the lead-up to the 2020 election the
FBI labeled the laptop as 'disinformation.'
In
October 2020, one month before the election, 'an avenue of derogatory
Hunter Biden reporting was ordered closed' by Timothy Thibault, a senior
FBI agent at the bureau's Washington Field office, Sen. Chuck Grassley,
R-Iowa, who fielded the whistleblower complaints, claimed in a letter
to FBI Director Christopher Wray and Attorney General Merrick Garland.
Thibault shut down the investigation despite evidence that some of the details were true, according to that whistleblower.
'Allegations
provided to my office appear to indicate that there was a scheme in
place among certain FBI officials to undermine derogatory information
connected to Hunter Biden by falsely suggesting it was disinformation,'
Grassley wrote.
jonathanturley | One of the most glaring contradictions in the
Mar-a-Lago controversy has been the Justice Department demanding
absolute and unwavering secrecy over the FBI raid while officials have
been leaking details on the raid. The latest example is a report in the New York Times
that the Justice Department recovered more than 300 documents with
classified markings, citing multiple sources connected to the
investigation. Most judges would be a tad annoyed by the contradiction
as the government continues to frame the public debate with its own
selective leaks while using secrecy to bar other disclosures. That
includes sections of the affidavit that detail the communications with
the Trump team, information that is already known to the target.
Someone is clearly lying. The Trump Team
said that it was cooperating and would have given access to the
government if it raised further objections. The Justice Department has
clearly indicated that time was of the essence to justify this
unprecedented raid on the home of a former president. Yet, Attorney
General Merrick Garland reportedly waited for weeks to sign off on the
application for a warrant and the FBI then waited a weekend to execute
that warrant. It is difficult to understand why such communications
could not be released in a redacted affidavit while protecting more
sensitive sections.
Previous leaks discussed various
undisclosed facts that are presumably part of the affidavit, including
the government was seeking vital nuclear weapons materials and then how
video camera evidence outside of the Mar-a-Lago storage area led the FBI
to act without delay.
The latest leak to to the New York Times
offers details on what was gathered from Mar-a-Lago. Officials state
that they collected more than 150 documents marked as classified in
January with another 150 being gathered in June and then in the August
raid.
Washington has long
floated on a sea of leaks but this is notable in that the government is
opposing even modest disclosures from the court while it has steadily
leaked details to its own advantage. It undermines the credibility of
the government and raises questions of the motivations behind the
absolute secrecy claims.
The level of detail is extraordinary
including the very account of past dealings that some of us have argued
could be released in the affidavit as well as the contents of the boxes.
The leaks describe the June meeting in Mar-a-Lago and reveals that Jay
Bratt, the chief of the counterespionage section of the national
security division of the Justice Department, met with two of Mr. Trump’s
lawyers, Evan Corcoran and Christina Bobb. He then went through the
boxes himself to identify classified material. (The Trump motion
this week also described this meeting with Bratt, which again raises
why the same information in the affidavit cannot be disclosed).
This information is likely contained in the
affidavit, which the Justice Department claimed could not be released
without harming its investigation and endangering national security.
americanmind | A week after the invasion and nine-hour
occupation of former President Trump’s home in Palm Beach, Florida, it
is becoming clearer every day that there was no plausible legal reason
for it.
It may have been, as has been widely alleged, a fishing expedition to
try to find something useful for Nancy Pelosi’s January 6 kangaroo
court inquiry into the “insurrection,” but if so, this was a desperation
play, and since no such objective was specified in the warrant nor
presumably mentioned in the affidavit supporting the warrant, such a
fishing expedition is not legal, though on recent precedent, legal
relevance is the last criterion this regime would take into account.
These are, if not the identical authors, certainly kindred spirits in
the law enforcement bureaucracy of those who inflicted upon the
much-wronged and disserved people of the United States the Trump-Russia
collusion fraud, the whitewash of Hillary Clinton’s destruction of
33,000 subpoenaed emails and reckless and illegal use of a home server
for confidential official information, the two spurious impeachments,
and the scandalous mishandling of the Biden family’s financial
shenanigans, and many other triumphs of malice and incompetence.
The burden of the deluge of semi-official leaks pipelined through the
docile Trump-hating media last week gradually back-pedaled from the
lofty insinuations of those elusive “high crimes and misdemeanors”
equivalent to treason, to an archival dispute of the kind that all
departing presidents have. The climb-down spiked briefly with the
absurdity of misuse of nuclear military information in contravention of
the Espionage Act, and wound up the week as a toothless,
general-purpose, normal legal precaution. The normal Democrat practice
in this kind of perversion of the prosecutorial apparatus is to rely
upon the docile and rabidly partisan national political media to
transmit a Niagara of dishonest official leaks. The New York Times, usually reliable as an administration source, has revealed
that President Biden pressured the attorney general to prosecute Trump.
The best he could do, apparently, was this burlesque of due process,
with a feeble and belated acknowledgment that he had approved the
invasion and that, of course, the fact of an investigation in progress
prevented him from saying anything about it.
In this case, the spigots of leaks shut down after a few days, and in
an agile act of improvisation, the anti-Trump media has taken to
accusing the former president and his followers of inciting disrespect
for the justice system and betraying a sense of unease at having Trump’s
papers and conduct closely examined, thus inciting the inference that
he must have been guilty of something. This is the familiar reasoning of
people so possessed by hate that they wish to charge somebody with
something, and in failing to find any useful evidence, they cite the
absence of the evidence as illustrative of the fiendish cunning of the
targeted person, in hiding or destroying the evidence.
This was the basis of the late Christopher Hitchens’ accusation
against Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger of being responsible for the
death of Chilean president Salvador Allende in 1973. And it was the
essence of journeyman historian Michael Beschloss’ comments that while
it was true that what was being done to President Trump was
unprecedented, that was only because Trump was so obviously more
criminally dishonest in his behavior than any previous American
president, and so there was no need to elaborate upon it.
The fact that there is no evidence against Trump of having done
anything illegal, despite years of obsessive and frequently illegal
official persecution of him to unearth such evidence, merely confirms
the satanic depths of his wickedness. Next we will have
historian-for-hire John Meacham give us another chorus about Joe Biden’s
resemblance to Franklin D. Roosevelt (who in four terms as he led the
country out of the Great Depression and to the brink of victory in World
War II never had one day of a negative public approval rating).
The Wall Street Journal, which has been quite professional
and even-handed in its treatment of Donald Trump as a politician, warned
on the weekend that it would damage his credibility if he objected to
the publication of the warrant for the intrusion at his house. They need
not have worried: Trump was happy to have it made public and the shoe
was now on the other foot, as the Justice Department is reduced to lame
excuses for not releasing the affidavit on the basis of which the
judge-shopped, professedly Trump-hating, magistrate to whom the
affidavit was submitted, authorized the intrusion.
Legally, it need now hardly be pointed out that the execution of the
search warrant at Trump’s home was an outrage. Justice should have
proceeded by subpoena, and cannot explain why it waited for 19 months
since Trump left office, during which Trump claims he cooperated
entirely with it, to take this step. Even if there was some dispute on
the matter of the subpoena, one hardly needs to launch a major raid to
handle the disposition of such a non-urgent matter. Since a president
can declassify anything he wants, the regime’s media apologists are
reduced to claiming he must have declassified some things incorrectly.
justthenews | Long before it professed no prior knowledge of the raid on Donald
Trump's estate, the Biden White House worked directly with the Justice
Department and National Archives to instigate the criminal probe into
alleged mishandling of documents, allowing the FBI to review evidence
retrieved from Mar-a-Lago this spring and eliminating the 45th
president's claims to executive privilege, according to contemporaneous
government documents reviewed by Just the News.
The memos show then-White House Deputy Counsel Jonathan Su was
engaged in conversations with the FBI, DOJ and National Archives as
early as April, shortly after 15 boxes of classified and other materials
were voluntarily returned to the federal historical agency from Trump's
Florida home.
By May, Su conveyed to the Archives that President Joe Biden would
not object to waiving his predecessor's claims to executive privilege, a
decision that opened the door for DOJ to get a grand jury to issue a
subpoena compelling Trump to turn over any remaining materials he
possessed from his presidency.
The machinations are summarized in several memos and emails exchanged
between the various agencies in spring 2022, months before the FBI took
the added unprecedented step of raiding Trump's Florida compound with a
court-issued search warrant.
The most complete summary was contained in a lengthy letter dated May
10 that acting National Archivist Debra Steidel Wall sent Trump's
lawyers summarizing the White House's involvement.
"On April 11, 2022, the White House Counsel's Office — affirming a
request from the Department of Justice supported by an FBI letterhead
memorandum — formally transmitted a request that NARA provide the FBI
access to the 15 boxes for its review within seven days, with the
possibility that the FBI might request copies of specific documents
following its review of the boxes," Wall wrote Trump defense attorney
Evan Corcoran.
That letter revealed Biden empowered the National Archives and
Records Administration to waive any claims to executive privilege that
Trump might assert to block DOJ from gaining access to the documents.
"The Counsel to the President has informed me that, in light of the
particular circumstances presented here, President Biden defers to my
determination, in consultation with the Assistant Attorney General for
the Office of Legal Counsel, regarding whether or not I should uphold
the former President's purported 'protective assertion of executive
privilege,'" Wall wrote. "... I have therefore decided not to honor the
former President's 'protective' claim of privilege."
A Foundation of Joy
-
Two years and I've lost count of how many times my eye has been operated
on, either beating the fuck out of the tumor, or reattaching that slippery
eel ...
April Three
-
4/3
43
When 1 = A and 26 = Z
March = 43
What day?
4 to the power of 3 is 64
64th day is March 5
My birthday
March also has 5 letters.
4 x 3 = 12
...
Return of the Magi
-
Lately, the Holy Spirit is in the air. Emotional energy is swirling out of
the earth.I can feel it bubbling up, effervescing and evaporating around
us, s...
New Travels
-
Haven’t published on the Blog in quite a while. I at least part have been
immersed in the area of writing books. My focus is on Science Fiction an
Historic...
Covid-19 Preys Upon The Elderly And The Obese
-
sciencemag | This spring, after days of flulike symptoms and fever, a man
arrived at the emergency room at the University of Vermont Medical Center.
He ...
