Saturday, June 13, 2020

Former MI6 Spy Alastair Crooke: For This To Slip Would Be The 'End Of Empire'



A hot humid day, but a gentle, warm breeze is blowing. The smoke and tear gas swirl gently to and fro, hanging in the dense, sweaty air, as shafts of dazzling sunlight scythe through the smokiness at sharp angles. A mass protest is forming. Youths are chattering; people moving aimlessly.

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Former MI6 Spy Alastair Crooke: For This To Slip Would Be The 'End Of Empire'

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Former MI6 Spy Alastair Crooke: For This To Slip Would Be The 'End Of Empire' Tyler Durden Sat, 06/13/2020 - 23:30

Authored by Alastair Crooke via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

A hot humid day, but a gentle, warm breeze is blowing. The smoke and tear gas swirl gently to and fro, hanging in the dense, sweaty air, as shafts of dazzling sunlight scythe through the smokiness at sharp angles. A mass protest is forming. Youths are chattering; people moving aimlessly. It still has not solidified into purpose, yet the raw tenseness of the coming conflict hangs, as palpably as does the smoke in the air. It is evident – there will be violence today.

No, this is not America. This is the flashpoint crossroad between the radical Jewish settler outpost of Beit El in the West Bank, and its interface with the Palestinian town of Ramallah. Between the two, the Israeli army are ranged, awaiting the hostilities to commence. This was back, during the Second Palestinian Intifada; it was a time of near war, and I was present, charged with observing this, and other unfolding confrontations, on behalf of the EU.

As usual, I head to the back of the sprawling mob, for it is only from this perspective that one can understand the nature of events. You observe the silent organization in action. Young men smoothly and unobtrusively, position the piles of stones that later would be hurled (mostly ineffectually) at the soldiers who are stood just beyond the range of stone-throwers. Then the protest managers are gone – vanished.

I know what is about to unfold. I have just seen two snipers (in this instance, Palestinians), slip into position, well-back, concealed on a hillside over-looking the crossroads. It is a sad sight – the young people massing before me are not dangerous; they generally are decent, sincere young people, angry at the expanding settler-occupation, and hyped by the ‘animators’ sent amongst the crowd to stoke emotions. They are not bad young people.

I am sad, because some, I know, will soon be dead, their families mourning a child’s loss tonight. But they are the fodder – innocent fodder – and this is war. At the height of confrontation, the snipers begin. Just a couple of rounds, but enough; they fire with silenced weapons. The Israelis soldiers cannot tell (unlike me), the source of the firing. A number of Palestinian youth fall dead; the mood incandescent. Purpose achieved.

Why do I write about these twenty-year old events? Because I know well the patterns. I have seen them often. It is a playbook widely used. And I see familiar tell-tales emerging in the videos posted on the current protests in America.

Most notable, are the ubiquitous palettes of bricks that mysteriously appear in the background to many videos of the protests (see here for a typical selection). Who is positioning them? Who is paying? U.S. commentator, Michael Snyder, too has noted the “complex network of bicycle scouts to move ahead of demonstrators in different directions of where police were, and where police were not, for purposes of being able to direct groups from the larger group to… where they thought officers would not be.”

He observes too, the anticipatory raising of bail money; the preparing of medical teams, ready to treat injuries; and of caches of flammable materials (suitable for torching official vehicles), pre-positioned in places where protests would later occur. All this – with simultaneous protests in more than 380 U.S. cities – in my experience, signals much bigger, silent backstage organization. And behind ‘the organisation’, the instigators lie, far back: maybe even thousands of miles back; and somewhere out there will be the financier.

However, in the U.S., commentators say they see no leadership; the protests are amorphous. That is not unusual to see no leadership – a ‘leadership’ appears only if negotiations are sought and planned; otherwise key actors are to be protected from arrest. The most telling sign of a backstage organisation is that on one day, it is ‘full on’, and the next all is quiet – as if a switch has been pulled. It often has.

Of course, the overwhelming majority of protestors in the U.S. this last week, were – and are – decent sincere Americans, outraged at George Floyd’s killing and continuing social and institutional racism. Was this then, an Antifa and anarchist operation, as the White House contends? I doubt it – any more than those Palestinian youth in Beit El constituted anything other than fodder for the front of stage. We simply don’t know the backstage. Keep an open mind.

Tom Luongo presciently suggests that should we wish to understand better the context to these recent events – and not be stuck at stage appearances – we need to look to Hong Kong for indicators.

Writing in October 2019, Luongo noted that: “What started as peaceful protests against an extradition law and worry over reunification with China has morphed into an ugly and vicious assault on the city’s economic future. [This is] being perpetrated by the so-called “Block Bloc”, roving bands of mask-wearing, police-tactic defying vandals attacking randomly around the city to disrupt people going to work”.

An exasperated local man exclaims: “Not only you [i.e. Block Bloc protestors are] harming the people making their living in businesses, companies, shopping malls. You’re destroying subway stations. You’re destroying our streets. You’re destroying our hard-earned reputation as a safe, international business centre. You’re destroying our economy”. The man cannot explain why there was not a single police officer in sight, for hours, as the rampage continued.

What is going on? Luongo quotes a September Bloomberg interview with HK tycoon, Jimmy Lai, billionaire publisher of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) scourge, the Apple Daily, and the highly visible interlocutor of official Washington notables, such as Mike Pence, Mike Pompeo and John Bolton. In it, Lai pronounced himself convinced that if protests in HK turned violent, China would have no choice but to send the People’s Armed Police units from Shenzen into Hong Kong to put down unrest: “That,” Lai said on Bloomberg TV, “will be a repeat of the Tiananmen Square massacre; and that will bring in the whole world against China … Hong Kong will be done, and … China will be done, too”.

In brief, Lai proposes to ‘burn’ Hong Kong – to ‘save’ Hong Kong. That is, ‘burn it to save it’ from the CCP – to keep its residue in the ‘Anglo-sphere’.

“Jimmy Lai”, Luongo writes, “is telling you what the strategy is here. The goal is to thoroughly undermine China’s standing on the world stage and raise that of the U.S. This is economic warfare, it’s a hybrid war tactic. And the soldiers are radicalized kids in uniforms bonking old men on the heads with sticks and taunting cops. Sound familiar? Because that’s what’s going on in places like Portland, Oregon with Antifa … And that cause is chaos”. (Recall, Luongo wrote this more than six months ago).

Well, here we are today: Steve Bannon, closely allied with what he, himself, terms the U.S.’ China super-hawks, and allied with yet another Chinese billionaire financier, Guo Wengui (a fugitive from the Chinese Authorities, and member at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club), is pursuing an incandescent campaign of denigration and vitriol against the Chinese Communist Party – intended, like Lai’s campaign, to destroy utterly China’s global standing.

Here it is again – the tightly-knit band of U.S. and exile super-hawks want to ‘burn’ down the CCP, to ‘save’ what? To save the ‘Empire Waning’ (America), through ‘burning’ the ‘Empire Rising’ (China). Bannon (at least, and to his credit), is explicit about the risk: A failure to prevail in this this info-war mounted against the CCP, he says, will end in “kinetic war”.

Via The New York Times

So, back to the U.S. protests, and drawing on Luongo’s insights from Hong Kong – I wrote last week that Trump sees himself fighting a hidden global ‘war’ to retain America’s present dominance over global money (the dollar) – now America’s principal source of external power. For America to lose this struggle to a putative multi-lateral cosmopolitan governance – Trump perceives – would result in the whole, white Anglo-sphere’s ejection from control over the global financial system – and its associated political privilege. It would entail control of the global financial and political system slipping away to an amorphous multi-lateral financial governance, operated by an international institution, or some global Central Bank. Since before WW1, control of global financial governance has been in the hands of the Anglo-American nexus running between London and New York. It still does, just about – albeit that today’s Wall Street elite is cosmopolitan, rather than Anglo, yet still it is firmly anchored to Washington, via the Fed and the U.S. Treasury. For this to slip would be the ‘end of Empire’.

To maintain the status of the dollar, Trump therefore has assiduously devoted himself to disrupting the multi-lateral global order, sensing this danger to the unique privileges conveyed by control of the world’s monetary base. His particular concern would be to see a Europe that was umbilically-linked to the financial and technological heavy-weight that is China. This, in itself, effectively would presage a different world financial governance.

But, is the fear that the threat principally lies with Europe’s Soros-style vision justified? There may – just as well – be a fifth-column at home. The billionaires’ club of the very rich has long ceased to be culturally ‘Anglo’. It has become a borderless, ‘self-selecting’, governing entity unto itself.

Perhaps an earlier ‘end of Époque’ metamorphosis shows us how readily an old-established elite can swap horses in order to survive. In the historical Sicilian novel, The Leopard, Prince Salina’s nephew tells his uncle that the old order is ‘done’, and with it, the family is ‘done’ too, unless … “Unless we ourselves take a hand now, they’ll foist a republic on us. If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change”.

It is clear that some billionaire oligarchs – whether American or not – can see the ‘writing on the wall’: A financial crisis is coming. And so, too, is a social one. A recent survey done by one such member, showed that 55% of American millennials supported the end to the capitalist system. Perhaps the brotherhood of billionaires is thinking that ‘unless we ourselves take a hand now, they’ll foist socialism on us’. If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change. The recent disorder in the U.S. will have unnerved them further.

The push towards radical change – towards that global financial, political and ecological governance that threatens dollar hegemony – paradoxically may emerge from within: from within America’s own financial elite.  ‘Burning’ the dollar’s privileged global status may become seen as the price for things to stay as they are — and for the elite to be saved. The future of Empire hangs on this issue: Can US dollar hegemony be preserved, or might the financial ‘nobility’ see that things must change – if they are to stay as they are? That is, the Revolution may come from within — and not necessarily from abroad.

In recent days, Trump has pivoted to being the President of ‘Law and Order’ – a shift which he explicitly connected to 1968, when, in response to protests in Minneapolis after the police suffocation last week of George Floyd, Trump tweeted: “When the looting begins, the shooting starts”. These were the words used by Governor George Wallace, the segregationist third-party candidate, in the 1968 Presidential election: Republicans launched their “southern strategy” to win over resentful white Democrats after the civil rights revolution.

Trump is determined to prevail – but today is not 1968. Can a Law and Order platform work now? U.S. demography in the south has shifted, and it is not clear that the liberal, urban electorates of America would sign up to a law-and-order platform, which implicitly appeals to white anxieties?

In a sense, President Trump finds himself between a rock and a hard place. If the protests are not quelled, and “the right normal (not) restored” (as per Esper’s words), Trump may lose those remaining ‘law and order’ conservatives. But, were he to lose control and over-react using the military, then it may be Trump who has his own ‘Tiananmen Square’ – one, which Jimmy Lai (gleefully) predicted in Hong Kong’s case would bring in the whole world against China: “Hong Kong will be done, and … China will be done, too.”

Or, in this instance, Trump might be done, and… the U.S. too.



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60% Of People Naturally Resistant To SARS-COV2, New Study Reveals



Via Off-Guardian.org, A new study has found that Sars-Cov-2, the virus linked to Covid19, maybe five times more widespread than previously thought, and therefore five times less deadly.

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Twitter Reinstates Zerohedge After Admitting It Made An "Error"

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Twitter Reinstates Zerohedge After Admitting It Made An "Error" Tyler Durden Sat, 06/13/2020 - 08:32

133 days after Twitter "permanently" banned Zero Hedge on January 31, the social network has reinstated us after admitting it made an error.

As a reminder, what happened in late January was confusing. Shortly after we asked if "This [Is] The Man Behind The Global Coronavirus Pandemic", referring to Wuhan Institute Of Virology scientist Peng Zhou (who three months later was being investigated by western spy agencies for his role in creating Covid) and some low-grade "reporter" from Buzzfeed decided to report us  to Twitter for "doxxing" Zhou using publicly available information, Twitter told us that the account had been suspended for "violating Twitter rules against abuse and harassment", which was false as we neither incited abuse nor harrassment, but merely asked questions. But the confusing part is that at the same time, Twitter fabricated an entirely different explanation for its decision when speaking to outside media, telling them the suspension was due to "platform manipulation" -  whatever that means.

An odd mix of conflicting explanations but in any case, neither was true as we said at the time,  and as we further told Bloomberg, the suspension was "unjustified, and likely motivated by reasons other than the stated ones" adding that "we are confident that we did not violate any of the stated Twitter terms: we neither incited harassment, nor did we ‘dox’ the public official, whose contact information is as of this moment listed on the Wuhan institute’s website."

Fast forward to late Friday night, when unexpectedly we received a brief email from Twitter Support informing us that "we made an error in our enforcement action" as a result of which "we have unsuspended your account."

Speaking to Bloomberg, a Twitter spokesperson said that "we made an error in our enforcement action in this case. Based on additional context from the account holder in appeal, we have reinstated the account. We have a dedicated appeals process for all account holders."

Funny how mistakes happen when you ban first and ask questions later (and only when prompted to do so).

In any case, no bad blood right - honest mistake? Well, not really: before all this happened, none other than Twitter's CEO was following us.

Not anymore.

The @zerohedge account also remains highly shadow banned (try searching for the actual zerohedge account on twitter, good luck), perhaps as an innocuous consequence of the "error."

That's OK though, we never expected an apology. We are just glad that we will be able to share facts and perspectives with our now 700K Twitter followers, a number which has spiked by more than 30K in just the past few hours since the suspension was overturned.



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Narrative Control Operations Escalate As America Burns

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In 2017, representatives of Facebook, Twitter, and Google were instructed in a US Senate Judiciary Committee hearing that it is their responsibility to “quell information rebellions” and adopt a “mission statement” expressing their commitment to “prevent the fomenting of discord.”

“Civil wars don’t start with gunshots, they start with words,” the representatives were told by cold warrior think tank denizen Clint Watts. “America’s war with itself has already begun. We all must act now on the social media battlefield to quell information rebellions that can quickly lead to violent confrontations and easily transform us into the Divided States of America.”

“Stopping the false information artillery barrage landing on social media users comes only when those outlets distributing bogus stories are silenced — silence the guns and the barrage will end,” Watts added.

Those words rattle around in the memory now as America burns with nationwide protests demanding an end to the police state, and as narrative control operations ramp up with frantic urgency.

 — @TheGrayzoneNews

 — @AlanRMacLeod

The Grayzone reports that it has been blacklisted as a source on Wikipedia following a concerted campaign by a suspicious-looking group of editor accounts, many of whom appear to have ties to the right-wing opposition in Venezuela. Wikipedia, whose co-founder once told the US Senate that the online encyclopedia project “may be helpful to government operations and homeland security”, has added The Grayzone to a very short list of outlets that are never to be used under any circumstances, claiming on apparently no basis whatsoever that it publishes false information.

“In fact, in its more than four years of existence, including its first two years hosted at the website AlterNet (whose use is not forbidden on Wikipedia), The Grayzone has never had to issue a major correction or retract a story,” Grayzone’s Ben Norton says in its report on the matter. Norton documents how the Wikipedia editors are unable to cite any actual false information in any of the outlet’s publications in their arguments, leaving only their objection that Grayzone doesn’t parrot US government-approved narratives like The New York Times, Bellingcat, and Wikipedia’s other designated “reliable sources”.

Norton also notes how Wikipedia has designated the leak publication outlet WikiLeaks an unreliable source despite its nearly 14-year record of authentic publications. Wikipedia designates WikiLeaks as “generally unreliable,” making the utterly baseless claim that “there are concerns regarding whether the documents are genuine or tampered.”

“The internet encyclopedia has become a deeply undemocratic platform, dominated by Western state-backed actors and corporate public relations flacks, easily manipulated by powerful forces. And it is run by figures who often represent these same elite interests, or align with their regime-change politics,” Norton writes.

Norton’s breakdown of the ways Wikipedia is slanted to consistently favor pro-establishment narratives is comprehensive, and well worth reading in its entirety. This short Mintpress News article by Alan MacLeod on the way this same monopolistic editing dynamic has seen Mintpress, teleSur English, and Venezuela Analysis blacklisted from Wikipedia in the same way is also worth a look.

 — @ajitxsingh

 — @RaniaKhalek

This all comes out as we learn that Facebook is attaching warning labels to posts from outlets sponsored by governments which have not been absorbed into the US-centralized empire like RT and CGTN, but attaching no such label to outlets funded by imperial governments like BBC and Radio Free Europe. There is not any discernible difference in the degree of bias shown in state media from unabsorbed nations like Russia and China than there is in state media from the US and UK (or oligarchic media from the US and UK for that matter), but Facebook causes its 2.6 billion active users to look at one with suspicion but not the other.

This also comes out at the same time we learn that Twitter has deleted over 170,000 accounts for “spreading geopolitical narratives favorable to the Communist Party of China”. CNN reports that the accounts were determined to be “tied to the Chinese government” by “experts” who we learn later in the article are none other than the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), a think tank geared explicitly toward fomenting anti-China sentiment in Australia.

“Former Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr has slammed ASPI for pushing a ‘one-sided, pro-American view of the world’, while the former Australian ambassador to China Geoff Raby added that ASPI is ‘the architect of the China threat theory in Australia’,” journalist Ajit Singh noted on Twitter, adding, “Australian Senator Kim Carr has slammed ASPI for seeking to ‘promote a new cold war with China’ in collaboration with the US. In February, Carr highlighted that ASPI received $450,000 funding from the US State Department in 2019–20.”

This blatant imperialist narrative manipulation operation are the “experts” Twitter consulted in determining which accounts were “tied to the Chinese government” and therefore needed to be silenced. Twitter meanwhile continues to allow known fake accounts like the MEK propaganda operation “Heshmat Alavi” to continue inauthentically posing as real people, even when their propaganda is publicized by the President of the United States, because such accounts toe the imperialist line against empire-targeted governments.

 — @AliAhmadi_Iran

 — @ABC

This also comes out at the same time the mass media are warning us that Russia, China and Iran are “employing state media, proxy outlets, and social media accounts to amplify criticism of the United States related to the death of George Floyd and subsequent events.”

“As protesters hit the streets in cities across the country, America’s foreign adversaries have flooded social media with content meant to sow division and discord in the wake of George Floyd’s death, according to a U.S. government intelligence bulletin obtained by ABC News,” we are told by the Disney-owned ABC.

“These actors criticize the United States as hypocritical, corrupt, undemocratic, racist, guilty of human rights abuses and on the verge of collapsing,” the bulletin reads, which to anyone who’s been paying attention is obviously true. This is a news story about people from other countries saying true things about the United States of America.

“This is yet another indicator that Russia is using the combination of overt propaganda and covertly disseminated disinformation to sow discord across our populace, expand the cracks in our society, and undermine the credibility of the U.S. government,” former senior Department of Homeland Security official and current ABC News contributor John Cohen informs us.

Ahh, okay. Cool. Thank you for the information, former senior Department of Homeland Security official and current ABC News contributor John Cohen. Man it sure is a good thing America doesn’t have state media. Think about how bad the disinformation would be.

 — @selectedwisdom

Social media outlets were told that they need to censor their platforms to “prevent the fomenting of discord,” but obviously they didn’t move quickly enough, because the discord has been well and truly fomented. And now they are in a mad scramble to prevent Americans from hearing what people in foreign nations have to say about that, still apparently laboring under the delusion that this is anything other than homegrown, purebred, cornfed, American-as-apple-pie discord.

The most distinctive feature of the last four years has been expanding consciousness. Expanding consciousness of media corruption, of DNC corruption, of government corruption, of the excessive amount of power wielded by the US presidency and the absurd esteem people used to have for that position, of the abuse of immigrants, of police militarization, of unhealed racial wounds, etc.

This is encouraging, because you can’t fix something you haven’t made conscious. This is true of our own unresolved psychological issues, and it’s true of our unresolved collective issues as well. The first step toward a healthy world is expanded consciousness.

This is why increasing government opacity, internet censorship, and the war on journalism are so dangerous. Corruption and abuse thrive in darkness, and corrupt abusers want to keep that darkness intact. They want to keep things as unconscious as possible.

It’s beginning to look like that cat’s out of the bag, though, and I would be very surprised if they ever manage to get that sucker back in there.

What an exciting time to be alive.

____________________

Thanks for reading! The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for my website, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following my antics onTwitter, checking out my podcast on either Youtube, soundcloud, Apple podcasts or Spotify, following me on Steemit, throwing some money into my tip jar on Patreon or Paypal, purchasing some of my sweet merchandise, buying my books Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone and Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge.

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Friday, June 12, 2020

COVID-19 Political Risk - Dems Say 'Yes' To Antifa Protests, 'No' To Trump Rallies

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COVID-19 Political Risk - Dems Say 'Yes' To Antifa Protests, 'No' To Trump Rallies Tyler Durden Fri, 06/12/2020 - 16:45

As hundreds of thousands of Americans take to the streets in protest at systemic racism, capitalism, rich people, Trump supporters, white people, straight people, and civilized people (we are sure we are missing some instigators of violence here), politicians, leaders, and the liberal intelligentsia went out of their way to explain how COVID-19 had become a 'woke' virus of sorts.

On June 4, more than 1,200 public-health experts signed a letter saying the protests were “vital to the national public health and to the threatened health specifically of black people in the United States...

"...as public health advocates, we do not condemn these gatherings as risky for COVID-19 transmission. We support them as vital to the national public health and to the threatened health specifically of Black people in the United States.

... This should not be confused with a permissive stance on all gatherings, particularly protests against stay-home orders. ”

One protester in Minneapolis even claimed,

“Yes, corona is happening. It’s real, it’s deadly. But racism kills way more lives.”

We'd like to see the 'math' on that one.

This hypocritical malarkey was already exposed when considering the rabid reaction to "peaceful protesters" who urged their local officials nationwide to ease the lockdown and let them be free once again.

However, Democratic Party hypocrisy just went to '11' after President trump announced plans to restart his infamously well-attended rallies.

U.S. Rep. Val Demings, D-Fla., said in a tweet this week...

The president’s plan to hold mass rallies in Florida and elsewhere as we experience a resurgence in COVID cases is irresponsible and selfish. https://t.co/G6tdqua70c

— Rep. Val Demings (@RepValDemings) June 11, 2020

And, as SaraACarter.com notes, Demings was not the only democrat to call out Trump rallies, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont also tweeted:

“Trump wants 15,000 delegates cheering him at his GOP convention in Florida. No social distancing. His rejection of medical advice endangers not only those there but those they come in contact with. Trump’s a threat to the health and well-being of the country. He must be defeated.”

Trump wants 15,000 delegates cheering him at his GOP convention in Florida. No social distancing. His rejection of medical advice endangers not only those there but those they come in contact with. Trump's a threat to the health and well-being of the country. He must be defeated.

— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) June 11, 2020

And just in case you were unsure if Dr. Fauci was 'political', he has suddenly become very worried about American attending rallies... (oddly quiet duringt the protestations of the last few weeks...

Fauci warns about the risks of mass gatherings -- like protests, or Trump rallies, via @jonkarl:https://t.co/fiApqxfXJn

— Josh Wingrove (@josh_wingrove) June 12, 2020

And of course, no one has the least bit of shame in proclaiming this total and utter hypocrisy!



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Over 95% Of UK "COVID-19" Deaths Had "Pre-Existing Condition"

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Over 95% Of UK "COVID-19" Deaths Had "Pre-Existing Condition" Tyler Durden Fri, 06/12/2020 - 03:30

Via Off-Guardian.org,

Over 95% of “COVID Deaths” recorded in England and Wales had potentially serious comorbidities, according to statistics released by NHS England.

The latest figures make for pretty stark reading. Or, rather, they would make for stark reading…if they didn’t follow the exact same pattern already shown in other nations around the world.

You can read the full report here. We’re going to focus on the comorbidity stats. Here are the number of deaths where Covid19 was listed as the only cause, split by age:

  • Ages 0-19: 3

  • Ages 20-39: 32

  • Ages 40-59: 255

  • Ages 60-79: 551

  • Ages 80+: 477

These are across all of England and Wales since the beginning of the “pandemic”.

Simply put: Of the 27045 deaths with Covid19 in English hospitals (up to June 3rd), only 1318 had no pre-existing conditions. That’s less than 5%.

This mirrors, almost exactly, the statistics reported in Italy back in March.

Christopher Bowyer has made some great graphs for the figures at Hector Drummond Magazine, none more impactful than this this:

Those big green bars are all the people who died “with” Covid19 AND some other serious disease. The little yellow bars are the people who died with Covid19 and nothing else.

In fact, the 25,727 other cases were listed as having over 42,000 comorbidities. That’s almost 2 each (the report itself points out that many patients had multiple conditions). This, again, aligns completely with the Italian figures which said over 80% of fatalities had at least 2 comorbidities.

What are these comorbidities? We don’t know. Not entirely specifically. The report lists ischemic heart disease, chronic kidney disease, asthma and dementia among others. But it also lists nearly 19,000 “other” conditions, presumably including liver failure, emphysema, AIDS, ALL forms of cancers and literally potentially thousands of other diseases.

Implicit in this is the possibility that these diseases were the actual cause of death, and that Covid19 played no direct role at all.

Further, the PCR test for coronavirus can return false positives in up to 80% of cases, so it’s entirely possible the majority of these deaths never even had the virus.

This isn’t breaking news. We have covered this numerous times.

No matter how you switch them around the Covid numbers, as they currently stand, will never add up.



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Wednesday, June 10, 2020

Researchers Find At Least 7 Different Strains Of Coronavirus Circulated In California



The latest research published last night by the journal Science repudiated prior claims that early incidences of the virus in the US petered out, and instead found that at least seven different strains of the virus that have been circulating in California since the early days of the outbreak, sugges

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Black leader unleashes on media at White House: 'Quit lying' about Trump

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Raynard Jackson at a White House roundtable on race relations June 10, 2020 (screenshot)

At a roundtable Wednesday at the White House on race relations, a black leader addressed his remarks to media, accusing them of lying about Trump's accomplishents for blacks.

"I would like to say to all the media assembled here," began Raynard Jackson as he pointed his finger around the room then turned to the president.

"I wish they would quit lying about what you've done, specifically for the black community," said Jackson, the president and CEO of Raynard Jackson & Associates, a lobbying firm based in the nation's capital.

He referred to "liberal, radical journalists" such as MSNBC's Joy Reid, CNN's Don Lemon and Roland Martin.

Jackson said they're "putting more poison into the black community than any drug dealer."

He accused them of "spreading lies" about the economy, such as claiming the boom prior to the coronavirus lockdowns was a continuation of Barack Obama's policies

"I have a degree in accounting," said Jackson, who hosts an internet-based radio show on the U.S. Talk Network. "I keep up with the economy. They're lying."

Jackson asked Reid, Lemon and Martin why they're afraid to have black Republicans on their shows "who know what they hell they're talking about."

Trump touted his success on issues important to the black community such as criminal justice and prison reform, and opportunity zones for business. He frequently has pointed to the lowest unemployment rate and job growth ever recorded for blacks, prior to the coronavirus shutdown, along with record support of historically black colleges and education-choice initiatives.

Ben Carson, the secretary of Housing and Human Development, said they were there to talk about "some of the concerns in the black community" in the wake of the death of George Floyd "that have risen to the point that people all around the world are making their voices heard."

"This is an opportune time to do something about it," Carson said, "because this administration already has established a record of solving problems -- problems that people have just talked about for many years."

Carson said Trump "has made it a priority to solve this problem."

President Donald J. Trump and First Lady Melania Trump pose for a photo in front of the statue of Saint John Paul II before participating in a wreath laying ceremony Tuesday, June 2, 2020, at the Saint John Paul II National Shrine in Washington, D.C. (Official White House photo by Andrea Hanks)

"We're all going to be helping in that process, and there are many others out there, people of good will," Carson said.

"There are some that just wait for anything to criticize," he said. "But there are actually some people who actually want to see a solution, and I've had a chance to talk to many of them."

He wants solutions that will get people out of poverty.

Carson said the fundamentals of the economy that provided the boom that benefited the black community are still in place as states emerge from the coronavirus lockdown.

Trump's policy has been "a rising tide floats all boats," Carson said, which is why he doesn't "spend a lot of time with identity politics."

"We want everybody to be successful," he said.

Pastor Darrell Scott, co-founder of the New Spirit Revival Center in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, said that during the coronavirus shutdown "we've pressed pause."

"But we're ready to push play now and continue in the positive initiatives regarding the black community," he said.

Only choice is 'left and further left

Sonnie Johnson, a writer and talk-radio host, said "the black community is not doing OK."

She began by praising Trump for removing regulations and taxation that had "prevented our communities from being able to see sustainable growth ... to get us out of generational poverty."

Blaming progressive policies, she said blacks are "not OK when it comes to things like education."

"All of these things have been under Democratic control for 60 years, and they are not going to change until we have a Republican Party that is willing to go into these communities and actually offer a choice, about how we can do things differently," she said.

Johnson said that on the local level, the only choice blacks have had is "left and further left."

However, she said, her generation has begun to "change the negative dynamics" on the critical issue of marriage and family.

Ja'Ron Smith, who has been an assistant to Trump for domestic policy since April 2019, emphasized that "it's about results."

"It's not just about us talking here, it's about what we're going to produce out of this meeting," he said.

'Don't think that you are alone'

Wayne DuPree, who hosts a podcast and serves as a board member of the National Diversity Coalition for Donald Trump, said he hears from many black callers to his program and "people who are on boards" who support the president.

"They know what happened in the Obama administration. They know what you're doing. They also see what the media is doing to you," he said to Trump.

"So, don't think that you are alone. It's just that they need to hear more from you," DuPree said.

Trump agreed.

"It's the only way you get through the media, because the media is almost 100% negative," the president said.

Last Friday, Rasmussen's daily tracking poll of likely voters showed a remarkable 41% of blacks approve of Trump's performance.

See the White House roundtable:

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"One For The Ages..."

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"One For The Ages..." Tyler Durden Wed, 06/10/2020 - 17:40

Authored by Jesse Felder via TheFelderReport.com,

I do a good deal of reading every day and I share the best of what I find on Twitter. The purpose of this reading is not so much to find out what’s really going on as it is to try to understand how people feel about what is going on. What are the trends and narratives that are important to market participants and where are they in their life cycle.

One trend I’ve been following for a while now is the growing participation in the financial markets on the part of young individuals. Since most brokers went commission-free, following in Robinhood’s footsteps, the interest in trading has gone through the roof. This week feels like the narrative is reaching a crescendo.

Total user positions at Robinhood was 16.41m on Feb 19, the SPX high.

It surged to 21.48m on Mar 23, the day of the low. This was a 31% increase as stocks declined 34% in six weeks.

From the low through yesterday, total user positions have soared to 37.13m, up 73%.

(1/2) pic.twitter.com/7ahRW21TBD

— Jim Bianco (@biancoresearch) June 9, 2020

So I thought it might be important to immortalize some of the stories in my recent Twitter feed in a blog post here. During the dotcom mania, my friend Bill Fleckenstein tracked the bubble in what he called, “The Mania Chronicles.” Consider this my very limited version of the same.

Google search trends for "call options" and "day trading" is pretty telling: pic.twitter.com/C3mjoAOEv1

— Jesse Felder (@jessefelder) June 10, 2020

The stock market has set many records this year. After putting in the fastest 10% decline from a new high, it then put in the fastest 20% and 30% declines. Since then, however, it’s now put in the fastest recovery from a crash in history.

'The fastest stock market collapse on record has been followed by the fastest recovery. In the context of such an enormous gush of liquidity it is clear at an intellectual level that there was immense pressure on share prices to rise.' https://t.co/mvtdL6hVO2 pic.twitter.com/O7PeA3VnPj

— Jesse Felder (@jessefelder) June 9, 2020

An unprecedented boom in money printing for the explicit purpose of supporting asset prices is certainly part of the reason for the recovery but it is also important to note what that money printing has inspired: an unprecedented boom in financial market speculation by retail traders.

Speculative Fervor in U.S. Stocks Surges to ‘Stunning’ Levels https://t.co/xv9G5zdSSA pic.twitter.com/GbsLObPuWP

— Jesse Felder (@jessefelder) June 9, 2020

Combine massive money printing with mass speculation and record low liquidity (in futures and almost every other market) and you get the fastest 50-day rise in the stock market on record.

Stock market futures liquidity: https://t.co/gUB6CKrSgP via @SoberLook pic.twitter.com/DgyNEbLIWP

— Jesse Felder (@jessefelder) June 9, 2020

As a result, we now have an army of traders who believe they are the second coming of Warren Buffett. While the Oracle of Omaha now looks foolish for selling his airline stocks, those who bought them up over the past few months are gloating like you rarely see in this game.

I’m sure Warren Buffett is a great guy but when it comes to stocks he’s washed up. I’m the captain now. #DDTG pic.twitter.com/WqMR89c7kt

— Dave Portnoy (@stoolpresidente) June 9, 2020

Like Mark Cuban said, “everybody is a genius in a bull market,” and the largest 50-day gain in history is minting a ton of geniuses right now.

"If you're a day trader and you can walk and chew gum, you're making money right now. And so what are you doing? You're doing the same thing they did in the late-90's. Everybody is a genius in a bull market." -@mcuban https://t.co/gk7obCRuLg

— Jesse Felder (@jessefelder) June 9, 2020

To get a sense of the mindset of many of these traders, the Wall Street Journal spoke to a few of them and they make no bones about gambling with the funds the government sent them as part of the CARES Act, trying to double or triple it in just a day’s time.

"It was basically free money, so, you know, I decided to play around with it. You might lose some, you might win some. It’s like a gambling game."

"I’m happy with doubling my savings overnight. Where else are you gonna find that?" https://t.co/4XUFv5dfVw

— Jesse Felder (@jessefelder) June 9, 2020

In 1999 and 2000, day traders went for the hottest internet stocks of the day in trying to make outsized returns; eventually many went bankrupt. Today, they’re looking for outsized returns in the stocks that have already filed for bankruptcy protection!

"Something we really never think we’d see but we saw yesterday — Buying hundreds of billions of shares of bankrupt companies, sending their shares 300%. It’s sort of this speculative behavior that we saw at the end of 1999 and the beginning of 2020." https://t.co/2veHGijQXk

— Jesse Felder (@jessefelder) June 9, 2020

But if there’s a lesson from that earlier period, it’s this:

"A mania first carries out those that bet against it, and then those that bet with it."

--Jim Rogers

— La nuit sera calme (@NuitSeraCalme) June 9, 2020

This rally has humbled not only Warren Buffett but also Stan Druckenmiller, Sam Zell, Carl Icahn, Paul Singer, Jim Rogers and a host of other true geniuses of the industry whom have bet against it. It seems like it may soon be time for it to carry out those betting with it.



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New Jersey orders schools to teach 8th graders about 'pregnancy options,' including abortion

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GettyImages-900228108.jpg?h=119335f7&ito

The information is 'most essential' for 'health and physical literacy,' the state says.

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UCLA Prof Suspended, Under Police Protection After Refusing To Exempt Black Students From Final Exam

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UCLA Prof Suspended, Under Police Protection After Refusing To Exempt Black Students From Final Exam Tyler Durden Wed, 06/10/2020 - 19:10

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

Gordon Klein, an accounting professor in the Anderson School of Business has taught at University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) for almost 40 years. 

He is now suspended and under police protection in his home. 

The reason?

Klein refused to exempt black students from his final exam and sent a pointed rebuttal to students asking for the “no harm” exam. Parts of the response was certainly mocking in tone, more so than I would have considered appropriate.  The school has launched a formal discrimination investigation.

However, the suspension, investigation, and death threats against Klein reinforce the fear of many in the academy of a rising orthodoxy on campus and a lack of support for faculty involved in controversies.

According to Inside Higher Ed, a group of students asked Klein for a “no-harm” final exam that could only benefit students’ grades as well as shortened exams and extended deadlines.  They cited recent “traumas, we have been placed in a position where we much choose between actively supporting our black classmates or focusing on finishing up our spring quarter . . . We believe that remaining neutral in times of injustice brings power to the oppressor and therefore staying silent is not an option.”  They specifically noted that this was not “a joint effort to get finals canceled for non-black students”  “but rather an ask that you exercise compassion and leniency with black students in our major.”

Klein wrote back to one student that he was being asked to make a distinction that he could not possibly make. This is the entirety of the message:

Thanks for your suggestion in your email below that I give black students special treatment, given the tragedy in Minnesota.

Do you know the names of the classmates that are black? How can I identify them since we’ve been having online classes only? Are there any students that may be of mixed parentage, such as half black-half Asian? What do you suggest I do with respect to them? A full concession or just half? Also, do you have any idea if any students are from Minneapolis?

I assume that they probably are especially devastated as well.

I am thinking that a white student from there might be possibly even more devastated by this, especially because some might think that they’re racist even if they are not.

My TA is from Minneapolis, so if you don’t know, I can probably ask her. Can you guide me on how you think I should achieve a “no-harm” outcome since our sole course grade is from a final exam only? One last thing strikes me:

Remember that MLK famously said that people should not be evaluated based on the “color of their skin.” Do you think that your request would run afoul of MLK’s admonition?

Thanks, G. Klein

The controversy led to immediate demands for the professor to be fired. 

Thousands have signed a petition that declares Klein must be fired for his “extremely insensitive, dismissive, and woefully racist response” and “blatant lack of empathy and unwillingness to accommodate his students.”

UCLA has launched an investigation that could lead to such termination and issued a statement that “We apologize to the student who received it and to all those who have been as upset and offended by it as we are ourselves.” 

It has also agreed to extend all exams, presumably for all students.  I think that the extension of the time was a good idea for the school as a whole and I can certainly understand the school objecting to the tone of the response at a time of great unrest and trauma in our society.  However, the email was a poorly crafted effort by Klein to object to what he viewed as an unworkable, race-based system of accommodation.  One can certainly disagree with those objections, but the principle of academic freedom is to allow such views to be stated without fear of termination.

UCLA is also dealing with another demand for termination after Political science lecturer W. Ajax Peris, read aloud MLK’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” which includes the n-word. He also showed a documentary to the class in which lynching was discussed.  This might have been inappropriate in Klein’s accounting case but Peris was teaching the history of racism.  Students demanded that he stop the discussion but he apologized for any discomfort and continued his lecture.

The Political Science Department condemned Peris and  referred Peris to UCLA’s Discrimination Prevention Office for an investigation. UCLA will host a town hall for students in Peris’ classes to discuss the “controversy.” While Peris has apologized in a writing and video, students are demanding his firing.

Such actions are applauded by many faculty who have supported the increasing limits on free speech and academic freedom on campus. There has been a startling erosion of such protections for those with opposing views at universities and colleges.  Many faculty are intimidated by the response in these controversies and fear that supporting academic freedom or free speech will result in their being labeled racist or lacking of empathy. In three decades of teaching, I have never seen the level of intolerance for free speech that we are seeing across the country.  As I noted, there are valid objections to raise in these incidents, but the response of universities is clearly designed to send a message to other academics that they cannot expect the protections of the universities in such controversies.



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Prof refuses to postpone final exam for protests, and guess what happens

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By Mary Margaret Olohan
Daily Caller News Foundation

  • The University of California, Los Angeles placed a lecturer on leave last week after he reportedly said in a email that he would not “give black students special treatment.”
  • Accounting lecturer Gordon Klein’s classes “have been reassigned to other faculty,” the UCLA Anderson School of Management said in a statement.
  • It is unclear what was requested of Klein, but a petition on Change.org claims a student asked Klein for accommodation in the wake of George Floyd’s death.

The University of California, Los Angeles placed a lecturer on leave last week after he allegedly refused “give black students special treatment” and postpone a final exam.

Accounting lecturer Gordon Klein’s classes “have been reassigned to other faculty” as the school reviews his conduct, the UCLA Anderson School of Management said in a statement according to NBC News.

Klein was apparently responding to a request to make accommodations for black students in the wake of the death of George Floyd, who died in Minneapolis May 5 after an officer knelt on his neck for more than 8 minutes, video of the incident showed.

Klein has said that he was following his direct supervisor’s orders when he refused a request to postpone the exam, NBC reported. An email obtained by the Washington Free Beacon purports to show that UCLA Anderson School of Management diversity committee chairman Professor Judson Caskey pushed professors to refrain from changing final exam plans.

“If students ask for accommodations such as assignment delays or exam cancellations, I strongly encourage you to follow the normal procedures (accommodations from the [Center for Accessible Education] office, death/illness in the family, religious observance, etc.),” Caskey wrote in a June 1 email, the publication reported.

A Change.org petition, reportedly organized by students, called for Klein to be removed from his position and cited an email allegedly sent by the lecturer.

Klein did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation as to whether he wrote the email, but he did not challenge the veracity of the email to NBC.

“Thanks for your suggestion in your email below that I give black students special treatment, given the tragedy in Minnesota,” the email attributed to Klein says, according to the petition and a screenshot from a Twitter user.

“Do you know the names of the classmates that are black? How can I identify them since we’ve been having online classes only? Are there any students that may be of mixed parentage, such as half black-half Asian? What do you suggest I do with respect to them? A full concession or just half? Also, do you have any idea if any students are from Minneapolis?”

The email continued: “I assume that they probably are especially devastated as well. I am thinking that a white student from there might be possibly even more devastated by this, especially because some might think that they’re racist even if they are not.”

“My TA is from Minneapolis, so if you don’t know, I can probably ask her,” the email allegedly adds. “Can you guide me on how you think I should achieve a ‘no-harm’ outcome since our sole course grade is from a final exam only?”

“One last thing strikes me,” the email concludes. “Remember that MLK famously said that people should not be evaluated based on the ‘color of their skin.’ Do you think that your request would run afoul of MLK’s admonition? Thanks, G. Klein.”

The petition against Klein lists a variety of emails for faculty at UCLA, pushing those who sign the petition to also email these faculty members and demand that Klein be fired.

The petition, which had garnered over 20,000 signatures as of Wednesday morning, also called for “your support in having Professor Klein’s professorship terminated for his extremely insensitive, dismissive, and woefully racist response to his students’ request for empathy and compassion during a time of civil unrest.”

“The killing of George Floyd displayed a brutality that was so casual and so cruel, it reflected an utter dehumanization of Black life. It is understandable, then, that students nationwide – especially Black students – are struggling to focus on their educations when there is massive sociopolitical unrest that concerns both them and the future of their plight in this country,” the petition said.

UCLA did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the DCNF.

This story originally was published by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

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Forced apologies and public shaming for doctrinal deviation sweep American culture



It’s never been more complicated to say “I’m sorry” in the town square. Teammate Malcolm Jenkins issued a fiery response. And he was far from alone.

ORIGINAL LINK

Tuesday, June 9, 2020

Harvard prof indicted for lying over links to Wuhan university

ORIGINAL LINK

Harvard University

A former head of Harvard University's chemistry and chemical biology department has been indicted for allegedly lying to authorities about his links to Wuhan university in China and the nation's Thousand Talents Program.

That's the program through which China recruits scientific talents and often rewards individuals for "stealing proprietary information."

Accused by federal prosecutors was Charles Lieber, 61.

According to the Department of Justice: "Under the terms of Lieber’s three-year Thousand Talents contract, WUT allegedly paid Lieber a salary of up to $50,000 USD per month, living expenses of up to 1 million Chinese Yuan (approximately $158,000 USD at the time) and awarded him more than $1.5 million to establish a research lab at WUT. In return, Lieber was obligated to work for WUT 'not less than nine months a year' by 'declaring international cooperation projects, cultivating young teachers and Ph.D. students, organizing international conference[s], applying for patents and publishing articles in the name of [WUT].'"

The DOJ said Lieber "lied to federal authorities about his involvement in the Thousand Talents Plan and his affiliation with WUT."

"On or about April 24, 2018, during an interview with federal investigators, it is alleged that Lieber falsely stated that he was never asked to participate in the Thousand Talents Program, but that he 'wasn’t sure' how China categorized him. In November 2018, NIH inquired of Harvard about whether Lieber had failed to disclose his then-suspected relationship with WUT and China’s Thousand Talents Plan. Lieber allegedly caused Harvard to falsely tell NIH that Lieber 'had no formal association with WUT' after 2012, that 'WUT continued to falsely exaggerate' his involvement with WUT in subsequent years."

The federal prosecutors believe Lieber became a "strategic scientist" in Wuhan and later joined the Thousand Talents Program.

Lieber was accused of two counts of making false statements.

The court documents in the case explain Lieber served as the principal investigator of the Lieber Research Group at Harvard University, specializing in the area of nanoscience. Lieber’s research at the Lieber Research Group has been funded by more than $15 million in research grants from the National Institutes of Health and Department of Defense.

The DOJ said the problem developed because the grants required the disclosure of all sources of research support, potential financial conflicts of interest and all foreign collaboration.

The DOJ said the communist nation uses the program to "attract, recruit, and cultivate high-level scientific talent" to support its economy and security.

The charge of making false statements provides for a sentence of up to five years in prison, three years of supervised release and a fine of $250,000.

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THIS DAY IN HISTORY – “Have you no sense of decency?” Sen. Joseph McCarthy is asked in hearing – 1954

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Via History.com

In a dramatic confrontation, Joseph Welch, special counsel for the U.S. Army, lashes out at Senator Joseph McCarthy during hearings on whether communism has infiltrated the U.S. armed forces. Welch’s verbal assault marked the end of McCarthy’s power during the anticommunist hysteria of the Red Scare in America.

Senator McCarthy (R-Wisconsin) experienced a meteoric rise to fame and power in the U.S. Senate when he charged in February 1950 that “hundreds” of “known communists” were in the Department of State. In the years that followed, McCarthy became the acknowledged leader of the so-called Red Scare, a time when millions of Americans became convinced that communists had infiltrated every aspect of American life. Behind closed-door hearings, McCarthy bullied, lied, and smeared his way to power, destroying many careers and lives in the process. Prior to 1953, the Republican Party tolerated his antics because his attacks were directed against the Democratic administration of Harry S. Truman.

When Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower entered the White House in 1953, however, McCarthy’s recklessness and increasingly erratic behavior became unacceptable and the senator saw his clout slowly ebbing away. In a last-ditch effort to revitalize his anticommunist crusade, McCarthy made a crucial mistake. He charged in early 1954 that the U.S. Army was “soft” on communism. As Chairman of the Senate Government Operations Committee, McCarthy opened hearings into the Army.

Joseph N. Welch, a soft-spoken lawyer with an incisive wit and intelligence, represented the Army. During the course of weeks of hearings, Welch blunted every one of McCarthy’s charges. The senator, in turn, became increasingly enraged, bellowing “point of order, point of order,” screaming at witnesses, and declaring that one highly decorated general was a “disgrace” to his uniform. On June 9, 1954, McCarthy again became agitated at Welch’s steady destruction of each of his arguments and witnesses. In response, McCarthy charged that Frederick G. Fisher, a young associate in Welch’s law firm, had been a long-time member of an organization that was a “legal arm of the Communist Party.” Welch was stunned. As he struggled to maintain his composure, he looked at McCarthy and declared, “Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness.” It was then McCarthy’s turn to be stunned into silence, as Welch asked, “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?” The audience of citizens and newspaper and television reporters burst into wild applause. Just a week later, the hearings into the Army came to a close. McCarthy, exposed as a reckless bully, was officially condemned by the U.S. Senate for contempt against his colleagues in December 1954. During the next two-and-a-half years McCarthy spiraled into alcoholism. Still in office, he died in 1957.



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2 Million Arab Lives Don’t Matter

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The hypocrisy of the Black Lives Matter movement is astounding. BLM and its followers shout down those who insist all lives matter, regardless of race. In the BLM universe, skin pigmentation is the determinate, as it is for all racists. 

While BLM and identity activists dwell in OCD fashion on racist cops and “white privilege,” they completely ignore the organized mass murder of black- and brown-skinned people by a government that now “takes a knee” for a former criminal, beatified as a saint by the state and its propaganda media. Those responsible for the murder of George Floyd will undoubtedly spend years behind bars, as they should, but this will not quell the outrage and violence committed in his name. 

So lopsided and blinkered is the current identity-obsessed movement, it fails to address a far more deadly and vicious adversary—the neoliberal state. 

The organized murder of more than two million Arabs in Iraq, Syria, and Libya—more than a million in Iraq, 600,000 in Syria, and 30,000 in Libya—does not even register on the BLM and identity ideological radar.

Barack Obama suffocated the antiwar movement that had coalesced around the Bush neocon invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, thus revealing that much of the political activism was predicated along partisan establishment political lines. Antiwar activists of the Vietnam War era called out both Republicans and Democrats for war crimes. Eisenhower, JFK, Johnson, Nixon—both Democrats and Republicans—are responsible for the murder of more than 3 million Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians. 

Obama and his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, are directly responsible for arming murderous jihadi mercenaries in Syria and their counterparts in Libya. The latter resulted in vicious racism by Arab Libyans against black African migrant workers and refugees. 

In Syria, Obama’s CIA funded and armed mercenaries in an effort to topple the government of Bashar al-Assad. The illegal effort by the US military to defeat the Islamic State in Syria—a psywar operation birthed by the Pentagon in occupied Iraq—resulted in further destabilizing Syria and killed tens of thousands of innocent civilians. 

Additionally, BLM and the supposed left in America have not pointed out the obvious—psychopathic cops are trained, armed (with tanks and other weapons of mass destruction), and enabled by the Pentagon. Why isn’t the Pentagon a site of protest, like it was during the Vietnam War? 

The neoliberal elite is obsessed with overturning and destroying nations resisting IMF and World Bank domination and the “structural adjustment” schemes bankster and globalist organizations push (the strip mining and privatization of public services).

Identity is not a consideration or precursor—all who resist, regardless of skin color and ethnicity, are to be hunted down and brutally murdered, as Muammar Gaddafi was for the crime of announcing he planned to quit selling oil in US dollars and establish an African gold dinar. 

Iraq’s dictator, Saddam Hussein, wasn’t deposed and executed for threatening the US with weapons of mass destruction, as the ludicrous machinations of the Bush neocons claim. Saddam, a former CIA operative in a plot to assassinate Gen. Abd al-Karim Qasim in 1959, was a trusted asset until he stepped out of bounds, as did another CIA asset, Panama’s Manuel Noriega. 

The Israelis, holding considerable political sway over Congress and the White House, also demanded Saddam Hussein be taken down, primarily for his support of the Palestinians, but also because a nation with a pan-Arabist at the helm was unacceptable. 

Likewise Syria. The hereditary regime of the al-Assad family and the Ba’ath party long touted a pan-Arab worldview and this was unacceptable to Israel and the United States. 

The covert and illegal war by the US and Israel in Syria has nothing to do with human rights, as espoused. The objective is to destroy any resistance to Israeli expansionism, turn pan-Arabism into an Islamic movement that can be more easily radicalized and thus vilified, and balkanize the Middle East along ethnic and religious lines, thus realizing Zbigniew Brzezinski’s “three grand imperatives of imperial geostrategy… to prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and protected, and to keep the barbarians from coming together.”

Only politically expedient and exploitable “barbarians” (as they are considered by the ruling elite, never mind the disingenuous rhetoric) will be allowed to protest and demand justice. BLM racism, the absurd demand white people go prostrate in racial submission, and the criminal looting and burning of cities in the name of George Floyd have not set off alarm bells at the Council of Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, the Federal Reserve, and the institutional thank tanks. These should be the focus of protest, not police departments militarized by the federal government. The Milwaukee Police Department is not the hydra-head. The federal government and its corporate and bankster overseers are the true purveyors of violent conflict and political polarization.  

The BLM represents the forefront of an effort to divide Americans along racial and political lines, thus keeping race and identity-based barbarians safely away from more critical issues of importance to the elite, most crucially a free hand to plunder and ransack natural resources, minerals, crude oil, and impoverish billions of people whom the ruling elite consider unproductive useless eaters and a hindrance to the drive to dominate, steal, and murder. 

The murder of millions in the Middle East, Asia, South and Central America over the last few decades by a psychopathic elite and its corporate mercenaries does not figure in the equation. 

It is an irrelevant historical footnote, if that, to an identity movement that does not threaten the elite and its political class. It is sad to say BLM serves the elite by ignoring or remaining ignorant of the main problem—boundless predation by a neoliberal criminal project that considers all—black, white, yellow, brown—as expliotable and dispensable serfs.

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