Friday, June 19, 2020

Another 8-year old ‘criminal mastermind’ arrested

ORIGINAL LINK

Guest Post by Simon Black

Are you ready for this week’s absurdity? Here’s our Friday roll-up of the most ridiculous stories from around the world that are threats to your liberty, risks to your prosperity… and on occasion, inspiring poetic justice.

Eight year old boy arrested for asking if he could buy candy with fake money

At a parade in Switzerland, fake money was thrown around for children to collect.

The obviously fake cash is called “spirit money.” Featuring Chinese symbols, it is meant as an offering to the dead so they can prosper in the afterlife.

An eight year old Swiss boy later asked a shop clerk if he could use the play money to buy candy. To be clear, the kid did not try to trick the shopkeeper, or pass off the money as real.

A normal person would laugh, and politely explain that only central banks are allowed to use fake money.

Instead, this shopkeeper opted to call the police.

Again, a reasonable officer could have stopped it all there.

Instead, the boy and his ten year old brother were taken to the police station. Police took their mugshots, but did not charge them with a crime.

Police did however search the family’s home, where police found some other play money.

These cops essentially confiscated Monopoly money, as if they were busting a counterfeiting operation.

Click here to read the full story.

Police called over BB-gun in background during virtual class

Due to Covid-19 lockdowns, plenty of schools have been holding virtual video classes.

In one class, someone on the call took a picture of an 11 year old boy’s screen. It showed him in his bedroom with a BB gun in the background.

This anonymous snitch told the Principal, who compared this to bringing a weapon to school.

Yeah that makes sense– because a Boy Scout with a BB gun in his room is totally the same thing as a school shooter.

Then the school administration became involved, and alerted the police department.

Police went to the family’s home to search for an unsecured weapon.

If there is any silver lining to this story it’s that police concluded no laws had been broken, and left.

Just a reminder to be wary who you might be inviting into your child’s bedroom.

And if you’re already a member of our premium service Sovereign Man: Confidential, this might be a good time to check out our recent alert about homeschooling.

Click here to read the full story.

Hertz admits its stock is worthless, as it planned to sell half a billion dollars of new shares

The rental car company Hertz is going through bankruptcy.

But Hertz announced Monday in an SEC filing that the company would sell an additional $500 million worth of new shares. And the bankruptcy judge in the case approved!

Hertz then openly admitted that the stock would almost certainly soon be worthless. That’s because as Hertz goes through bankruptcy, senior debt holders will be paid back before the common stockholders.

But that hasn’t stopped people from buying the worthless stock, apparently hoping to “buy the dip”.

But after the plan received a little too much attention– and questions from the SEC– Hertz decided to drop the plan.

Click here to read the full story.

US National debt increased by nearly $1 trillion in the last month

In the past 30 days, the United States national debt has increased by nearly $1 trillion– screaming past $26.2 trillion total, or 128% of GDP.

That means the US government is borrowing over $23 million per MINUTE.

But that’s just the last 30 days. The US government has gone nearly $3 trillion further into debt since March 1.

That is over $9,000 for every man, woman, and child living in the United States. And all you received was a $1200 check…

Now the “Save our Country Coalition” has penned a letter to Congress stating that the federal budget is dangerously close to $10 trillion this fiscal year.

On an inflation adjusted basis, that means the government will spend more fighting Covid than it spent fighting every single 20th century war– plus the 21st century Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan– COMBINED.

The cost of World War I, World War II, The Korean War, The Vietnam War, The Gulf War, The Iraq War, and the War in Afghanistan combined, does not add up to this fiscal year’s budget.

Click here to read the full story.



via IFTTT
InoreaderURL: SECONDARY LINK

Not the Bee: "Nooses" found in Oakland park are actually exercise aids put there by a black guy — but a hate crime investigation will proceed anyway



Welcome to another day in crazyland. The headline of this Not the Bee is not hyperbole. This literally happened.

ORIGINAL LINK

Facebook's 'fact-checking' partner unmasked

ORIGINAL LINK

120507zuckerberg2.jpg

(NATIONAL PULSE) Facebook’s “fact-checking” partner – an opaque outfit by the name of ‘Lead Stories’ – is rife with left-wing bias, including recurring staff donations to Democratic party candidates, using the Democrat Party-linked ActBlue donation portal.

On Wednesday, in a clear conflict of interest, Lead Stories flagged a viral National Pulse investigation into Black Lives Matter, Joe Biden, and Act Blue as “party false.”

The National Pulse stands by its reporting, and upon contacting Lead Stories’ Editor-in-Chief Alan Duke by telephone, were told he would not discuss the matter, and that the only way to appeal was by e-mail. No e-mail address was given.

Now, a National Pulse investigation reveals the dubious claims to neutrality from within Lead Stories, and raises the question as to why a partisan outfit is allowed to police news on social media?

Read the full story ›

The post Facebook's 'fact-checking' partner unmasked appeared first on WND.



via IFTTT
InoreaderURL: SECONDARY LINK

Thursday, June 18, 2020

The US Supreme Court is confused about ‘sex’

ORIGINAL LINK

In 2007 a fifth-generation family business in Michigan, Harris Funeral Homes, hired a “Mr Stephens” who went on to work for the company as a funeral director for six years. In 2013, Mr Stephens told his employer, Thomas Rost, that he identified as a woman and wanted to wear women’s clothing at work.

Mr Rost discussed the issue with Mr Stephens and decided that they should part ways. He felt that allowing him to wear female clothing would violate the funeral home’s dress code and the mission by which it was operating. This stated that:

Harris Funeral Homes recognize that its highest priority is to honour God in all that we do as a company and as individuals. With respect, dignity, and personal attention, our team of caring professionals strive to exceed expectations, offering options and assistance designed to facilitate healing and wholeness in serving the personal needs of family and friends as they experience a loss of life.

On this basis, Mr Rost wanted to ensure that families were able to focus on processing their grief and hence the sex-specific dress code and code of conduct which the fifth-generation funeral home operator asked his employees to abide by.

This case, along with, Bostock v Clayton County, in which an employee was fired for promoting a gay softball league, and Altitude Express Inc. v. Zarda, in which a gay skydiving instructor was fired for misconduct, was decided by the US Supreme Court this week.

In a 6-3 decision, SCOTUS affirmed LGBT employment rights by determining that discrimination on the grounds of gender identity and sexual orientation is “sex discrimination”. As Justice Neil Gorsuch explained: “employers are prohibited from firing employees on the basis of homosexuality or transgender status”

This was a landmark decision which was greeted with jubilation by the LGBT+ lobby. Gay rights are civil rights now, said the New York Times in an exultant editorial.

Surprisingly, and disappointingly, two conservative judges joined the majority: a Trump appointee, Justice Neil Gorsuch, and Chief Justice John Roberts.

The nub of the issue is the interpretation of the meaning of “sex” under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. This prohibits discrimination “because of” “race, colour, religion, sex, or national origin.”

The majority opinion written by Justice Gorsuch goes to extraordinary lengths to make a one-size fit-all test. It says: “If the employer intentionally relies in part on an individual employee’s sex when deciding to discharge the employee – put differently, if changing the employee’s sex would have yielded a different choice by the employer – a statutory violation has occurred”.

The Court has redefined sex from an empirical, scientifically verifiable reality based on anatomy to a subjective feeling:

“homosexuality and transgender status are inextricably bound up with sex. Not because homosexuality or transgender status are related to sex in some vague sense or because discrimination on these bases has some disparate impact on one sex or another, but because to discriminate on these grounds requires an employer to intentionally treat individual employees differently because of their sex.”

This stretches the word “sex” like a piece of bubble gum.

Justice Alito was scathing in his assessment of the majority opinion. He argues that the Court’s “duty is to interpret statutory terms to “mean what they conveyed to reasonable people at the time they were written.” And he points out that Congress has had ample opportunity over the years to include sexual orientation and gender identity in anti-discrimination legislation — but has consistently refused to do so.

“There is only one word for what the Court has done today: legislation. The document that the Court releases is in the form of a judicial opinion interpreting a statute, but that is deceptive… A more brazen abuse of our authority to interpret statutes is hard to recall.”

“The Court’s opinion is like a pirate ship. It sails under a textualist flag, but what it actually represents is a theory of statutory interpretation that Justice Scalia excoriated––the theory that courts should ‘update’ old statutes so that they better reflect the current values of society.”

His comments are worth studying.

First of all, he consults dictionaries – but finds no comfort there. “Determined searching has not found a single dictionary from that time that defined ‘sex’ to mean sexual orientation, gender identity, or ‘transgender status’.” Sex was always defined with anatomical markers. Perhaps, Justice Alito suggests acidly, the Supreme Court believes “the Members [of Congress] were not ‘smart enough to realize’ what its language means”.

He discovers, too, a contradiction. The majority opinion is that discrimination because of sexual orientation or gender identity necessarily entails discrimination “because of sex”. However, during oral questioning, a lawyer for the plaintiffs was asked whether an employer who refused to hire gays, lesbians, or transgender individuals implemented this policy without knowing the biological sex of job applicants would be discriminating “because of sex”. No, she replied, that would not constitute sex discrimination. “And she was right,” writes Justice Alito.

How about the baneful consequences of the decision? The majority brushed these aside. “Irresponsible”, says Justice Alito.

Bathrooms and locker rooms. “The Court may wish to avoid this subject, but it is a matter of concern to many people who are reticent about disrobing or using toilet facilities in the presence of individuals whom they regard as members of the opposite sex. For some, this may simply be a question of modesty, but for others, there is more at stake. For women who have been victimized by sexual assault or abuse, the experience of seeing an unclothed person with the anatomy of a male in a con-fined and sensitive location such as a bathroom or locker room can cause serious psychological harm.”

Women’s sport. “The effect of the Court’s reasoning may be to force young women to compete against students who have a very significant biological advantage, including students who have the size and strength of a male but identify as female and students who are taking male hormones in order to transition from female to male.”

This is already being seen in Connecticut where three school-girls have sued the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference for allowing males to compete and thus deprive the girls of scholarship opportunities. The SCOTUS decision this week places their case in serious jeopardy.

Housing. Students may be forced to room with transgender students of the opposite biological sex.

Employment by religious organisations. These entities need employees whose lives are consistent with the tenets of their faith. “Compelling a religious organization to employ individuals whose conduct flouts the tenets of the organization’s faith forces the group to communicate an objectionable message. This problem is perhaps most acute when it comes to the employment of teachers.”

Healthcare. Health insurers may be forced to cover expensive sex-reassignment surgery.

What will affect everyone, as Justice Alito points out, is freedom of speech. “After today’s decision, plaintiffs may claim that the failure to use their preferred pronoun violates one of the federal laws prohibiting sex discrimination.” And what about negative opinions about same-sex marriage? “Employers are already imposing such [speech] restrictions voluntarily,” he observes, “and after today’s decisions employers will fear that allowing employees to express their religious views on these subjects may give rise to Title VII harassment claims.”

The United States is a nation of laws made by Congress, not by the Supreme Court. As Justice Alito concludes in his dissent:

The updating desire to which the Court succumbs no doubt arises from humane and generous impulses. Today, many Americans know individuals who are gay, lesbian, or transgender and want them to be treated with the dignity, consideration, and fairness that everyone deserves. But the authority of this Court is limited to saying what the law is.

Apart from playing the part of a represented body, the decision has placed the justice system squarely in the path of a litigation landslide. Watch this space.

The post The US Supreme Court is confused about ‘sex’ appeared first on MercatorNet.



via IFTTT
InoreaderURL: SECONDARY LINK

White Saviors Need to Leave the Room

ORIGINAL LINK

VZLeEA.jpeg

She called herself Kalamity, though that’s not her real name. She’s the white woman who called me a racist for noting that Indigenous children who live in communities where parents own their homes tend to have a higher standard of living and care than those who live in reserve communities where property is owned communally. This was the day after she schooled me, a Desi, together with a Kenyan woman—the only two non-white individuals in our class—on the proper use of people-of-colour nomenclature.

“I’m not sure I like that phrase,” said the Kenyan woman.

I agreed. Of all the ways to describe oneself, why would I self-define as not white.

“Women of colour chose it,” Kalamity informed us. By this, I learned, she meant black intersectional feminists.

This wasn’t the first or last time that Kalamity treated us like elementary-school children in catechism class. I didn’t like this feeling.

Kalamity also called me out as racist for disagreeing with her pronouncement that those Charlie Hebdo cartoons from 2015 were racist. That Kalamity could not read French and was unfamiliar with both Charlie Hebdo and the French satirical tradition made no difference to her. Kalamity was acting like a good white person because she was saying the things that good white people are supposed to say.

One might call it White Saviourism. It nourishes the idea that those who have little melanin must adopt a heroic pose in regard to those who have much. So women like me require saving, regardless of whether we consent to it or not. Melanin people must know their low place in society, since the conceit of the white saviour depends on the existence of someone in peril. Otherwise, there’s no demand for white saviours to come charging in heroically on their white horses. Why does this remind me of some surreal form of colonization?

For all the talk about “people of colour,” I’ve noticed that East and South Asians lately have been having trouble getting their woke parking stubs validated. The socioeconomic data make the narrative harder to sustain, and you hear a lot about people like me “internalizing” white supremacy. That’s the thing about “whiteness,” we’re told. It can be spread, like a disease.

As a Desi—a person of South Asian ancestry living abroad—I feel like the custard filling in a culture-war mille-feuille, with alt-right xenophobes on one side and Kalamity’s Wokus Pokus acolytes on the other. More and more, this latter group is migrating to new terminology that more explicitly sets out the intersectional status hierarchy, such as with “BIPOC”—“black, Indigenous and people of color.” The old adage among activists was all about a sense of solidarity spanning all people of color. Now, things are more complicated. In early June, the president of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) recently got called out by anti-racist activists for not explicitly name-checking anti-black racism in her denunciation of racism more generally. So she had to publish a whole new, and more specific, denunciation of racism.

The kind of supremacy we hear about is white supremacy. But history shows that, when given the chance, everyone likes lording it over everyone else. I think of Guyana, my dad’s South American homeland, a place devastated by racial strife. Europeans in Guyana depended on slave labor until it was abolished in 1838. To run their plantations, colonialists then brought in indentured workers from India. When their descendants speak of the coolie trade, some are reminded that it wasn’t true slavery—and that it’s a form of anti-black racism to compare the two. Taken to its extreme, as it often is, this kind of denial of historical nuance can become a form of collective gaslighting.

In the aftermath of George Floyd’s killing by a Minneapolis police officer, America’s conflicts have spilled into Canada, where I live. We have our own issues north of the border. But I wonder how much of the recent social panic here is just an opportunistic outpouring of pre-existing ideological grievances.

When it comes to the treatment of Canada’s Indigenous population, “reconciliation” has been the watchword for years now. But it’s a collectively told lie, a polite euphemism for coerced public confessions. We are being instructed to validate the oppression experienced by others. Predictably, this sort of exercise becomes a competitive game, since every group has something to complain about. There is never any honest attempt to understand the real human condition we all inhabit.

Just a few years ago, the attention of Canada was focused on Attawapiskat, a tiny Cree community in northern Ontario that had fallen into crisis. Adrian Sutherland, a singer from Attawapiskat, recently told the media that the old problems are still around—undrinkable water, poverty, degraded infrastructure. All those land acknowledgements we love to be seen reciting don’t seem to have helped Attawapiskat much. June is National Indigenous History Month in Canada. But you wouldn’t know it from reading Canadian social media, which is all about Black Lives Matter, the cause de jour.

Last year, a report came out that accused the Canadian government of perpetuating an ongoing genocide against Indigenous women. A few months later, Justin Trudeau was telling the world that Canada deserves a seat on the UN Security Council. Genocide? That was so 2019. It’s all about optics and letting people know how woke you are—as with CBC journalist Piya Chattopadhyay, who instructed her Twitter followers to “diversify your friend group by race, class and gender,” like stocks in a portfolio. As always, buy low, sell high. Black Lives Matter is hot right now, so it might be a good time to invest in Central Asian, working-class, and gay.

A term we hear a lot today is “structural racism,” often called “institutional racism.” The idea here is that some kinds of racism are invisible forces embedded within organizations, laws, or even whole political systems. It’s not a crazy idea. But what the Kalamitys of the world like about it most is that, since structural racism is invisible to lay people, the masses require the priestly guidance of anti-racist experts so they know what to denounce. This week, it’s one thing. Next week, it’ll be another. Check Twitter daily for instructions.

I struggle with the cognitive dissonance that has come to define Canada—a country with a real history of colonial cruelty in regard to Indigenous people, while also becoming (by international standards) a bastion of tolerance and multiculturalism. Which one is my Canada—the one where Indigenous people can’t drink the tap water, or the one that settles tens of thousands of refugees every year? Sometimes, we’re expected to wave the flag and announce our patriotism. At other times, it becomes a thoughtcrime to speak of Canada as anything but a hive of bigotry. As a victim of domestic abuse who sometimes reads these political manias as allegories for the gaslighting I endured at home, I find it hard to divide the personal from the political. It all reminds me of Flowers in the Attic.

Race doesn’t matter: Wasn’t that the whole idea we’d been fighting for in the first place? How has this non-existent category become something that none of us can stop talking about? That’s one of the questions I was looking to answer at Kalamity’s course, which was supposed to help people like me run our own workshops. But after she branded me a racist, I never went back. It upset me, actually. At the time, and for a long time afterwards, I didn’t really understand why. Now I understand that she was gaslighting me, trying to make me believe that I was the crazy one, the racist. Who knows how many other “women of colour” have left her course feeling the same way.

We need to have a discussion about racism—including a discussion about what that word means. I don’t know what that discussion will look like. But I know it will be different from the one we’re having now, with more nuance and fewer accusations. All those white saviors are welcome to attend. But first, they’ll have to dismount from their steeds and take a chair, just like everybody else.

 

Rukhsana Sukhan tweets at @RukhsanaSukhan.

The post White Saviors Need to Leave the Room appeared first on Quillette.



via IFTTT
InoreaderURL: SECONDARY LINK

Wednesday, June 17, 2020

Google censors websites over right-wing views



Google allegedly threatened demonetization of two right-wing websites, The Federalist and Zero Hedge, because of their views. What does this mean for internet freedom of expression? “Boom Bust” co-host Ben Swann and attorney and media analyst Lionel discuss. #QuestionMore #RTAmerica #InQuest

ORIGINAL LINK

Why Policing Is Broken

ORIGINAL LINK

taibbi-policing.jpg

Years of research on brutality cases shows that bad incentives in politics and city bureaucracies are major drivers of police violence

via IFTTT
InoreaderURL: SECONDARY LINK

YouTube Bans Mercola Videos



Disclaimer: The entire contents of this website are based upon the opinions of Dr. Mercola, unless otherwise noted. Individual articles are based upon the opinions of the respective author, who retains copyright as marked.

ORIGINAL LINK

Tuesday, June 16, 2020

Veteran CIA Analyst: How An Internet 'Persona' Helped Birth Russiagate

ORIGINAL LINK
Veteran CIA Analyst: How An Internet 'Persona' Helped Birth Russiagate Tyler Durden Tue, 06/16/2020 - 19:25

Authored by Ray McGovern via ConsortiumNews.com,

Four years ago on June 15, 2016, a shadowy Internet persona calling itself “Guccifer 2.0” appeared out of nowhere to claim credit for hacking emails from the Democratic National Committee on behalf of WikiLeaks and implicate Russia by dropping “telltale” but synthetically produced Russian “breadcrumbs” in his metadata.

Thanks largely to the corporate media, the highly damaging story actually found in those DNC emails – namely, that the DNC had stacked the cards against Bernie Sanders in the party’s 2016 primary – was successfully obscured.

The media was the message; and the message was that Russia had used G-2.0 to hack into the DNC, interfering in the November 2016 election to help Donald Trump win.

Almost everybody still “knows” that – from the man or woman in the street to the forlorn super sleuth, Special Counsel Robert Swan Mueller III, who actually based indictments of Russian intelligence officers on Guccifer 2.0.

Blaming Russia was a magnificent distraction from the start and quickly became the vogue.

The soil had already been cultivated for “Russiagate” by Democratic PR gems like Donald Trump “kissing up” to former KGB officer Vladimir Putin and their “bromance” (bromides that former President Barack Obama is still using). Four years ago today, “Russian meddling” was off and running – on steroids – acquiring far more faux-reality than the evanescent Guccifer 2.0 persona is likely to get.

Here’s how it went down:

  • June 12: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange announced he had “emails related to Hillary Clinton which are pending publication.”
  • June 14: DNC contractor CrowdStrike tells the media that malware has been found on the DNC server and claims there is evidence it was injected by Russians.
  • June 15: Guccifer 2.0 arises from nowhere; affirms the DNC/CrowdStrike allegations of the day before; claims responsibility for hacking the DNC; claims to be a WikiLeaks source; and posts a document that forensic examination shows was deliberately tainted with “Russian fingerprints.” This to “corroborate” claims made by CrowdStrike executives the day before.

Adding to other signs of fakery, there is hard evidence that G-2.0 was operating mostly in U.S. time zones and with local settings peculiar to a device configured for use within the US, as Tim Leonard reports here and here.)

Leonard is a software developer who started to catalog and archive evidence related to Guccifer 2.0 in 2017 and has issued detailed reports on digital forensic discoveries made by various independent researchers – as well as his own – over the past three years. Leonard points out that WikiLeaks said it did not use any of the emails G2.0 sent it, though it later published similar emails, opening the possibility that whoever created G2.0 knew what WikiLeaks had and sent it duplicates with the Russian fingerprints.

As Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) told President Trump in a memorandum of July 24, 2017, titled “Was the ‘Russian Hack’ an Inside Job?”:

“We do not think that the June 12, 14, & 15 timing was pure coincidence. Rather, it suggests the start of a pre-emptive move to associate Russia with anything WikiLeaks might have been ready to publish and to ‘show’ that it came from a Russian hack.”

We added this about Guccifer 2.0 at the time:

“The recent forensic studies fill in a critical gap. Why the FBI neglected to perform any independent forensics on the original ‘Guccifer 2.0’ material remains a mystery – as does the lack of any sign that the ‘hand-picked analysts’ from the FBI, CIA, and NSA, who wrote the misnomered ‘Intelligence Community’ Assessment dated January 6, 2017, gave any attention to forensics.”

Guccifer 2.0 Seen As a Fraud

In our July 24, 2017 memorandum we also told President Trump that independent cyber investigators and VIPs had determined “that the purported ‘hack’ of the DNC by Guccifer 2.0 was not a hack, by Russia or anyone else. Rather it originated with a copy (onto an external storage device – a thumb drive, for example) by an insider. Information was leaked to implicate Russia. We do not know who or what the murky Guccifer 2.0 is. You may wish to ask the FBI. [Emphasis added.].

Right. Ask the FBI. At this stage, President Trump might have better luck asking Attorney General William Barr, to whom the FBI is accountable – at least in theory. As for Barr, VIPs informed him in a June 5, 2020 memorandum that the head of CrowdStrike had admitted under oath on Dec. 5, 2017 that CrowdStrike has no concrete evidence that the DNC emails published by WikiLeaks on July 22, 2016 were hacked – by Russia or by anyone else. [Emphasis added.] This important revelation has so far escaped attention in the Russia-Russia-Russia “mainstream” media (surprise, surprise, surprise!).

Back to the Birth of G-2

It boggles the mind that so few Americans could see Russiagate for the farce it was. Most of the blame, I suppose, rests on a thoroughly complicit Establishment media. Recall: Assange’s announcement on June 12, 2016 that he had Hillary Clinton-related emails came just six weeks before the Democratic convention. I could almost hear the cry go up from the DNC: Houston, We Have a Problem!

Here’s how bad the problem for the Democrats was. The DNC emails eventually published by WikiLeaks on July 22, 2016, just three days before the Democratic convention, had been stolen on May 23 and 25. This would have given the DNC time to learn that the stolen material included documents showing how the DNC and Clinton campaign had manipulated the primaries and created a host of other indignities, such that Sanders’ chances of winning the nomination amounted to those of a snowball’s chance in the netherworld.

Clinton at the 2016 convention, via Wikimedia Commons.

To say this was an embarrassment would be the understatement of 2016. Worse still, given the documentary nature of the emails and WikiLeaks’ enviable track record for accuracy, there would be no way to challenge their authenticity. Nevertheless, with the media in full support of the DNC and Clinton, however, it turned out to be a piece of cake to divert attention from the content of the emails to the “act of war” (per John McCain) that the Russian “cyber attack” was said to represent.

The outcome speaks as much to the lack of sophistication on the part of American TV watchers, as it does to the sophistication of the Democrats-media complicity and cover-up. How come so few could figure out what was going down?

It was not hard for some experienced observers to sniff a rat. Among the first to speak out was fellow Consortium News columnist Patrick Lawrence, who immediately saw through the Magnificent Diversion. I do not know if he fancies duck hunting, but he shot the Russiagate canard quite dead – well before the Democratic convention was over.

Magnificent Diversion

In late July 2016, Lawrence was sickened, as he watched what he immediately recognized as a well planned, highly significant deflection. The Clinton-friendly media was excoriating Russia for “hacking” DNC emails and was glossing over what the emails showed; namely, that the Clinton Dems had pretty much stolen the nomination from Sanders.

It was already clear even then that the Democrats, with invaluable help from intelligence leaks and other prepping to the media, had made good use of those six weeks between Assange’s announcement that he had emails “related to Hillary Clinton” and the opening of the convention.

The media was primed to castigate the Russians for “hacking,” while taking a prime role in the deflection. It was a liminal event of historic significance, as we now know. The “Magnificent Diversion” worked like a charm – and then it grew like Topsy.

Lawrence said he had “fire in the belly” on the morning of July 25 as the Democratic convention began and wrote what follows pretty much “in one long, furious exhale” within 12 hours of when the media started really pushing the “the Russians-did-it” narrative.

Patrick Lawrence

Below is a slightly shortened text of his article:

“Now wait a minute, all you upper-case “D” Democrats. A flood light suddenly shines on your party apparatus, revealing its grossly corrupt machinations to fix the primary process and sink the Sanders campaign, and within a day you are on about the evil Russians having hacked into your computers to sabotage our elections …

Is this a joke? Are you kidding? Is nothing beneath your dignity? Is this how lowly you rate the intelligence of American voters? …

Clowns. Subversives. Do you know who you remind me of? I will tell you: Nixon, in his famously red-baiting campaign – a disgusting episode – … during his first run for the Senate, in 1950. Your political tricks are as transparent and anti-democratic as his, it is perfectly fair to say.

I confess to a heated reaction to events since last Friday [July 22] among the Democrats, specifically in the Democratic National Committee. I should briefly explain …

The Sanders people have long charged that the DNC has had its fingers on the scale, as one of them put it the other day, in favor of Hillary Clinton’s nomination. The prints were everywhere – many those of Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who has repeatedly been accused of anti-Sanders bias. Schultz, do not forget, co-chaired Clinton’s 2008 campaign against Barack Obama. That would be enough to disqualify her as the DNC’s chair in any society that takes ethics seriously, but it is not enough in our great country. Chairwoman she has been for the past five years.

Last Friday WikiLeaks published nearly 20,000 DNC email messages providing abundant proof that Sanders and his staff were right all along. The worst of these, involving senior DNC officers, proposed Nixon-esque smears having to do with everything from ineptitude within the Sanders campaign to Sanders as a Jew in name only and an atheist by conviction.

Wasserman fell from grace on Monday. Other than this, Democrats from President Obama to Clinton and numerous others atop the party’s power structure have had nothing to say, as in nothing, about this unforgivable breach. They have, rather, been full of praise for Wasserman Schultz. Brad Marshall, the D.N.C.’s chief financial officer, now tries to deny that his Jew-baiting remark referred to Sanders. Good luck, Brad: Bernie is the only Jew in the room.

The caker came on Sunday, when Robby Mook, Clinton’s campaign manager, appeared on ABC’s “This Week” and … CNN’s “State of the Union” to assert that the D.N.C.’s mail was hacked “by the Russians for the purpose of helping Donald Trump.” He knows this – knows it in a matter of 24 hours – because “experts” – experts he will never name – have told him so. …

What’s disturbing to us is that experts are telling us that Russian state actors broke into the DNC, stole these emails, and other experts are now saying that Russians are releasing these emails for the purpose of helping Donald Trump.

Is that what disturbs you, Robby? Interesting. Unsubstantiated hocus-pocus, not the implications of these events for the integrity of Democratic nominations and the American political process? The latter is the more pressing topic, Robby. You are far too long on anonymous experts for my taste, Robby. And what kind of expert, now that I think of it, is able to report to you as to the intentions of Russian hackers – assuming for a sec that this concocted narrative has substance?

Making lemonade out of a lemon, the Clinton campaign now goes for a twofer. Watch as it advances the Russians-did-it thesis on the basis of nothing, then shoots the messenger, then associates Trump with its own mess – and, finally, gets to ignore the nature of its transgression (which any paying-attention person must consider grave).

Preposterous, readers. Join me, please, in having absolutely none of it. There is no “Russian actor” at the bottom of this swamp, to put my position bluntly. You will never, ever be offered persuasive evidence otherwise.

Reluctantly, I credit the Clinton campaign and the DNC with reading American paranoia well enough such that they may make this junk stick. In a clear sign the entire crowd-control machine is up and running, The New York Times had a long, unprofessional piece about Russian culprits in its Monday editions. It followed Mook’s lead faithfully: not one properly supported fact, not one identified “expert,” and more conditional verbs than you’ve had hot dinners – everything cast as “could,” “might,” “appears,” “would,” “seems,” “may.” Nothing, once again, as to the very serious implications of this affair for the American political process.

Now comes the law. The FBI just announced that it will investigate – no, not the DNC’s fraudulent practices (which surely breach statutes), but “those who pose a threat in cyberspace.” … it is the invocation of the Russians that sends me over the edge. My bones grow weary …

We must take the last few days’ events as a signal of what Clinton’s policy toward Russia will look like should she prevail in November. … Turning her party’s latest disgrace into an occasion for another round of Russophobia is mere preface, but in it you can read her commitment to the new crusade.

Trump, to make this work, must be blamed for his willingness to negotiate with Moscow. This is now among his sins. Got that? Anyone who says he will talk to the Russians has transgressed the American code. … Does this not make Hillary Clinton more than a touch Nixonian?

I am developing nitrogen bends from watching the American political spectacle. One can hardly tell up from down. Which way for a breath of air?”

A year later Lawrence interviewed several of us VIPs, including our two former NSA technical directors and on Aug. 9, 2017 published an article for The Nation titled, “A New Report Raises Big Questions About Last Year’s DNC Hack.”

Lawrence wrote, “Former NSA experts, now members of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPs), say it wasn’t a hack at all, but a leak – an inside job by someone with access to the DNC’s system.”

And so it was. But, sadly, that cut across the grain of the acceptable Russia-gate narrative at The Nation at the time. Its staff, seriously struck by the HWHW (Hillary Would Have Won) virus, rose up in rebellion. A short time later, there was no more room at The Nation for his independent-minded writing.



via IFTTT
InoreaderURL: SECONDARY LINK

Google Demonetizes Zero Hedge

ORIGINAL LINK
Google Demonetizes Zero Hedge Tyler Durden Tue, 06/16/2020 - 17:41

As you may have read on NBC, Google has decided to suspend ad hosting on the "far-right" Zero Hedge (which apparently can be anything from "batshit insane Austrian school blog" to Russian propaganda or framed in any other way that serves the agenda of those who disagree with our views - which apparently these days is a lot of people) along with The Federalist, a decision that would have a materially adverse impact for both websites. The reason presented to us for this decision is far more mundane than what has been disclosed by NBC: we are currently appealing it, and expect to remedy it.

That said, we were surprised by the framing of the suspension by the NBC article, which disturbingly appears to be another attempt at activist targeting of inconvenient media outlets, especially since the core argument presented by the NBC employee is different than what Google actually has said. In fact, half the NBC article just happens to be dead wrong.

The Federalist was never demonetized.

— Google Communications (@Google_Comms) June 16, 2020

It is also notable, the two articles that are referenced in the NBC article - which in turn is based on a complaint by some self-appointed arbiter of free speech, the UK-based liberal Center for Countering Digital Hate  - were not ours, but were contributor articles op-eds by third parties (here and here) one of which is from 2016. Do we now live in a time when ad platforms will suspend, say, the New York Times for publishing highly controversial Op-Eds?

We were also surprised that the NBC journalist activist who wrote the inaccurate article, Adele-Momoko Fraser, deleted a tweet in which she admits to actively collaborating with "Stop Funding Fake News" and the Center for Countering Digital hate.

The NBC reporter hardly seems objective! This was just deleted but I took a screenshot. pic.twitter.com/LcB4dprR5s

— Robby Soave (@robbysoave) June 16, 2020

After deleting her original tweet, Fraser retweeted it without the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag. Why?

It is also notable that the reactions so far have been a near-unanimous condemnation of a journalist using her platform (the same one which killed Ronan Farrow's Harvey Weinstein scoop) to silence competitors she and/or her employer disagrees with.

This isn't journalism.

— Amber Athey (@amber_athey) June 16, 2020

I’d like to buy a vowel.... pic.twitter.com/TuW9xZDXOr

— Brutus Maximus (@BRVTVSMAXIMVS) June 16, 2020

This isn't journalism. This is activism. But you know that. You're the latter and not the former.

When you can't win the battle of ideas it's easier for totalitarians like you to try and censor wrong think.

You're not helping.

— Major_Major_Major_Major (@Chris85837420) June 16, 2020

Even more disturbing, shortly after publishing its rushed hitpiece, NBC proceeded to do stealth edits based on actual feedback from Google, with the result a mess.

wtf is this update? No correction, the offending quotes aren’t even removed. Their story now has active contradictions pic.twitter.com/VqFa2TpdoB

— Grant Addison (@jgrantaddison) June 16, 2020

In any case, we hope to resolve this matter and continue doing what we do best: presenting you, our readers, with the truth no matter how inconvenient it may be.



via IFTTT
InoreaderURL: SECONDARY LINK

Monday, June 15, 2020

College chief aims at 'hate speech,' hits First Amendment

ORIGINAL LINK

 

A college president is being called out for violating the First Amendment in his effort to combat "hate speech."

Jay Clune of Nicholls State University recently sent an email to students and faculty affirming the school's "solidarity with our Black community."

"Nicholls will not tolerate any form of hate speech," he said. "Free speech does not protect hate speech."

The problem with that statement, points out the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, is that it's not true.

"It’s a common refrain – that the First Amendment doesn’t protect hate speech," said Adam Steinbaugh, who wrote to Nicholls in behalf of FIRE. "The problem is, that’s wrong. Some hateful expression is not protected because it falls into one of the other exceptions to the First Amendment, but there is no categorical ‘hate speech’ exception. Everybody has their own definition of ‘hate speech,’ and a university president should not mislead students and faculty about what the Constitution permits him to do."

Clune threatened "the swiftest, harshest action allowed by law if any member of our campus community is found acting or communicating in a manner that does not support our values."

He condemned "racist, hateful, and hurtful language."

Fire told Clune that his email actually is "a roadmap to violating the well-established First Amendment rights of Nicholls State students and faculty."

"It has long been settled law that the First Amendment is binding on public colleges like Nicholls State," the letter explained. The university's actions "must be consistent with the First Amendment."

The Supreme Court has determined that speech cannot be banned "simply because it offends others, on- or off-campus."

"This core First Amendment principle is why the authorities cannot prohibit the burning of the American flag – or, for that matter, the Confederate flag."

FIRE commented: "While Nicholls State is free to 'encourage the expression of free thoughts and ideas,' the First Amendment forbids it from drawing a line between speech it views as acceptable ('thoughts and ideas') and expression 'contrary to the values' of university administrators."

The First Amendment allows restrictions on "true threats" and "fighting words," but "the Supreme Court has repeatedly held that expression does not lose First Amendment protection solely because some, or even many, deem it to be hateful."

"If the state could punish expression it deems to be hateful, it would imperil a broad range of political speech, and would unquestionably be used against those a 'hate speech' exception would be intended to protect," the letter said.

FIRE warned, "Your assertion that the First Amendment does not protect 'hate speech' is wrong, and it will have an unconstitutional chilling effect on protected expression, particularly given that you coupled that erroneous assertion with a promise to enforce it to the 'harshest' extent."

wnd-donation-graphic-2-2019

The post College chief aims at 'hate speech,' hits First Amendment appeared first on WND.



via IFTTT
InoreaderURL: SECONDARY LINK

Redefining 'sex' expected to hit sports, schools, health care, speech

ORIGINAL LINK

 

Redefining the word "sex" in the Civil Rights Act, as the Supreme Court did Monday, will have "far-reaching consequences" regarding bathrooms, schools, women's sports and much more, wrote Associate Justice Samuel Alito in dissent.

The 6-3 majority opinion, written by Neil Gorsuch, said, "An employer who fires an individual merely for being gay or transgender violates Title VII."

Critics, including Mat Staver of Liberty Counsel, argued the opinion "departs from the clear language of Title VII and is no less than legislation from the bench."

Alito pointed out that more than 100 federal laws prohibit discrimination because of sex.

Now, men who say they are women have a legal basis to demand permission to use restrooms, lockers and shower rooms designated for women.

"For some, this may simply be a question of modesty, but for others, there is more at stake. For women who have been victimized by sexual assault or abuse, the experience of seeing an unclothed person with the anatomy of a male in a confined and sensitive location such as a bathroom or locker room can cause serious psychological harm," he said.

Further, female athletes may be forced to compete against students "who have a very significant biological advantage, including students who have the size and strength of a male but identify as female."

In housing, colleges could be sued if they refuse to assign students of the opposite biological sex as roommates.

Religious groups are not necessarily protected, either, he said.

"If a religious school teaches that sex outside marriage and sex reassignment procedures are immoral, the message may be lost if the school employs a teacher who is in a same-sex relationship," Staver said.

In health care, "transgender employees have brought suit … to challenge employer-provided health insurance plans that do not cover costly sex reassignment surgery."

And regarding freedom of speech, it now could be a "punishable offense" for someone not to use someone's "preferred pronoun."

There's even a threat to

"By equating discrimination because of sexual orientation or gender identity with discrimination because of sex, the court's decision will be cited as a ground for subjecting all three forms of discrimination to the same exacting standard of review," he wrote.

The opinion addressed three cases before the court brought by people alleging they were dismissed because they were gay or transgender.

The majority opinion acknowledge that "homosexuality and transgender status are distinct concepts from sex."

But it concluded it didn't matter that the original law didn't mention them.

Alito noted Congress repeatedly has considered adding sexual orientation and gender identity protections to the law but has refused each time.

Writing a separate dissent, Justice Brent Kavanaugh, wrote: "Like many cases in this court, this case boils down to one fundamental question: Who decides? Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits employment discrimination 'because of ' an individual's 'race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.' The question here is whether Title VII should be expanded to prohibit employment discrimination because of sexual orientation. Under the Constitution’s separation of powers, the responsibility to amend Title VII belongs to Congress and the president in the legislative process, not to this court."

He charged that other judges were usurping the role of Congress.

"The best way for judges to demonstrate that we are deciding cases based on the ordinary meaning of the law is to walk the walk, even in the hard cases when we might prefer a different policy outcome," he said.

"A plain reading of federal employment law is clear that it refers to biological male and female. The implications of today’s opinion could be far reaching, particularly with regard to ‘gender identity’ in sports and public accommodations," Staver said. "The original intent and meaning of the law is clear, and the common sense reading of ‘sex’ as male and female is made even more obvious by Congress repeatedly refusing to amend the law. When Congress refuses to amend its own law, courts have no authority to rewrite the law. Yet, that is what the majority of the Supreme Court did today."

Diane Gramley, president of the American Family Association of Pennsylvania, said: "Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits employment discrimination on any of five specified grounds: 'race, color, religion, sex, national origin.' In 1964 everyone knew, as anyone with any common sense today knows, there are only two sexes -- male and female and a Supreme Court decision will never change that. In 1964 the supporters of Title VII never intended for sexual orientation and gender identity -- both relatively new terms -- to be included. These six are not lawmakers, yet they have taken on that role. They have unconstitutionally redefined the language of a decades old law."

Penny Nance, CEO of Concerned Women for America Legislative Action Committee, said: "The majority of the court has effectively destabilized protections for women in federal law with this ruling. Today they invite federal lawsuits in every other area of federal law where the word ‘sex’ appears. Women will need to redouble their efforts to retain the protections that have cost us so much throughout the years. And that is exactly what we will do.

"The protections based on ‘sex’ in federal law were specifically enacted to protect women and strengthen justice, not threaten it because of the beautiful differences between males and females. But today, the court erases that and envisions a world where fundamental truths can be twisted to mean whatever the ‘woke’ culture of the times dictates.

"Worse, the court majority diminishes what it means to be a woman and the status and dignity of being female. This is not a left or right issue. Concerned Women for America rallied in front of the Supreme Court alongside radical feminists who boldly stood to ask the court to stand strong for women and not deviate from the truthful application of the word ‘sex’ in federal law.”

Family Research Council President Tony Perkins said: "The core issue before the court in this case was whether it is within the legitimate power of judges to suddenly redefine the meaning of words and rewrite a 55-year-old statute. Sadly, the court answered in the affirmative.

"Allowing judges to rewrite the Civil Rights Act to add gender identity and sexual orientation as protected classes poses a grave threat to religious liberty. We've already witnessed in recent years how courts have used the redefinition of words as a battering ram to crush faith-based businesses and organizations," concluded Perkins.

Peter Sprigg, FRC's senior fellow for policy studies, said, "When Congress prohibited employment discrimination based on 'sex' in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, both their intention and the plain meaning of the word indicated that they were prohibiting discrimination against an individual because the person is biologically male or biologically female.

"We are disappointed the Supreme Court chose to radically re-write the statute by expanding its meaning to cover 'gender identity' and 'sexual orientation.' The failure of LGBT activists to achieve their goals through the democratic process is no excuse to simply bypass that process and obtain their goal by judicial fiat instead," said Sprigg.

wnd-donation-graphic-2-2019

The post Redefining 'sex' expected to hit sports, schools, health care, speech appeared first on WND.



via IFTTT
InoreaderURL: SECONDARY LINK

Chinese Scientist Escorted Out Of Canadian Biolab Sent Deadly Viruses To Wuhan



"We have a researcher who was removed by the RCMP from the highest security laboratory that Canada has for reasons that government is unwilling to disclose. The intelligence remains secret.

ORIGINAL LINK

Interview Most Foul



Imagine this: A so-called presidential historian for a major television network publishes an interview in the most famous newspaper in the world with the most famous singer/songwriter in the world, who has recently written an explosive song accusing the U.S.

ORIGINAL LINK

‘I Am Really Scared’: Seattle Resident Living on the Border of CHAZ Speaks Out

ORIGINAL LINK

A Seattle resident who lives next to the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ) spoke with the Daily Caller in an exclusive interview about life on the edges of the commune.

The man, pseudonymously called “Brandon” had his face blurred-out and his voice disguised. He says he’s been terrified since the protests began, with violent armed protesters outside his home every night. He says his “own government”, who he supported and voted for has abandoned its constituents.

“I’m scared,” he said. “I’ve been scared every day since Sunday, and I haven’t gotten a lot of sleep. For the first time in my life in Capitol Hill, I hear gunshots every single night. I’ve heard people screaming every single night outside. And they’re not protest screams…I’ve also heard screams of terror.”

He describes a coordinated battle that raged on all night long in front of his house between protesters and police and how one protester with a megaphone was telling the cops to commit suicide over and over again, sounding like “the Devil”.

Last Monday, the Seattle Police union had published an open letter online, saying they’d been given instructions to guard the police precinct but that they were not allowed the use of weapons and were being forced to flee their station.

Brandon says he was so “torn-up” by that letter that he called the office of Washington State Governor Jay Inslee and was greeted by a pre-recorded message that ran for several minutes, telling him “how to report non-essential businesses, like hair salons for being open.”

Finally getting through to a staffer, he noticed that the local Antifa leader had just tweeted that the cops were “gone” and “It’s gonna be fun!” Brandon asked the staffer, “What if this was your home and your neighborhood?” and the staffer replied, “Don’t make it personal.”

Brandon says that the national media has not been portraying the situation accurately. He says that when the TV crews come in and tour the CHAZ, “like it’s a music festival and they look at the snack carts and the street art and they tell me it’s ‘calm’.

“How privileged could you be? Because you’re not here with no first responders, you’re not here seeing graffiti, saying ‘666’ everywhere. You’re not here, with 50 shops boarded-up and gone forever.”

He describes how a friend of his has been banned from a local bar, accused of being “racist” with no explanation and called police for him to be ejected.

The interviewer asks Brandon, “So, they called the police – but don’t they not want police?” and he replies, “I don’t know…I just don’t understand anymore, because they did call the police on him and they took his photos off of social media and sent it to other bars around here. When we tried to go to another bar, the same thing happened. They already knew about him.

“They’re cross-banning you and nobody will tell you why…If you ask, ‘What did I say that was racist?’ they won’t tell you. If you ask, ‘What did I do that was wrong?’ they won’t tell you.”

After posting pictures of his neighborhood’s ravaged businesses to social media, he received messages from Antifa that he was “very bold” and that his posts could be perceived as a “shot across the bow”.

So, he doesn’t feel safe and he has to leave. “But I don’t feel safe to move now because they’re right outside my door!”

The protesters are exercising their free speech but they don’t want to let him exercise his. “I am peaceful and I peacefully protested for George Floyd because he was killed and it’s wrong and I was out there. This is different.

“What I would say to Mayor Durkan is, ‘Please tear down these barricades and let people protest peacefully. Let us have our first responders back…we want to be able to get cars through here. We want to be able to go to the pharmacy. We want these businesses to be able to open again. They don’t know how to pay rent. They don’t know how to get paychecks around here…

“It will never go back to normal. This is not civil unrest. This is some anarchist homegrown movement and they get bold when the mayor tells them it’s ‘The Summer of Love.’ Why would it ever be different?

“…What I want to say to the media is… ‘Come here and I will walk you through here at night and you can see it for yourself. You can see that we don’t have the right to vote for stuff here, anymore. You can see the demands, where they say they want the pensions taken away from every police officer in Seattle.

“We have snack carts and we have art. And people watch Netflix and they eat dinner – but they took our rights away and that’s not OK.”

Alexandra Bruce

Contributed by Alexandra Bruce

Contact



via IFTTT
InoreaderURL: SECONDARY LINK

Memories of eugenics president erased from USC campus

ORIGINAL LINK

The past week has seen statues and monuments whose subjects were linked to racism defaced or destroyed in the UK, UK and Australia. The memory cleansing movement also reached the University of Southern California (USC), with a slightly different twist.

The USC President, Carol Folt, swiftly removed the name and bust of her one of her predecessors, Rufus Von KleinSmid, from a prominent historic building on the campus. She was responding to years of agitation to expunge memorials to Von KleinSmid.

In his day, Von KleinSmid was a prominent figure in the United States. He began his career as a professor of education and psychology. In 1914 he became president of the University of Arizona, and moved from there to USC in 1921. He was president of USC for 25 years until 1947.

On his watch, USC experienced a huge expansion and slowly became the major university that it is today. Von KleinSmid was awarded a National Institute of Social Sciences Gold Medal in 1942 and was honoured by 20 national governments for his achievements.  

Unfortunately, USC’s president was also an ardent eugenicist. He co-founded the Human Betterment Foundation in 1928, a Pasadena-based think-tank which promoted compulsory sterilization for the improvement of the species. Dr Folt described him as “an active supporter of eugenics [whose] writings on the subject are at direct odds with USC’s multicultural community and our mission of diversity and inclusion.”

There’s no doubt that Von KleinSmid’s views are not acceptable in polite company nowadays. A brief glance at a pamphlet which he wrote in 1913 yields such gems as:

We must all agree that those who, in the nature of the case, can do little else than pass on to their offsprings the defects which make themselves burdens to society, have no ethical right to parenthood. To deny them this privilege is, in the language of John Harris, “no infringement of liberty, it is a curtailment of unbridled license which is a disgrace to our civilization (?) and to our vaunted Christianity. ”

Or

The average worth of the individual to society is constantly lowered because of both the lack of productiveness among the worthy, and the fecundity of the defective. There can be no question of the outcome of the tragedy when society must depend finally upon an average ability too feeble to stand upon its own feet. It is estimated that one million of our population are incarcerated in public institutions, while three times that many, through their own incapability, pull a dead weight against society’s progress.

So there’s no point in denying that Von KleinSmid was a eugenicist, although he could argue in his defense that progressive American intellectuals before World War II shared his views — people like birth control activist Margaret Sanger, African-American rights activist W. E. B. Du Bois, inventor Alexander Graham Bell, botanist Luther Burbank, President Theodore Roosevelt, Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr and others too numerous to list here.

This is just a small incident in the wider movement to purge the US of racism. But it raises a few questions. Von KleinSmid’s sentiments are echoed every day by gynaecologists advising pregnant mothers to abort their Down syndrome child. In fact, a discrete investigation at the USC Keck School of Medicine might be in order if the university wants to purge itself of eugenics.

Isn’t it better to ask how eugenics has evolved rather than to expunge it from the public record? And damnatio memoriae (the Roman habit of rubbing out inscriptions and beheading statues) seems an odd way to obliterate interest in eugenics, which actually seems to be growing by leaps and bounds.

As we all have heard many times, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”.

Interestingly, this is the best-known maxim of the Spanish-American philosopher, novelist and Harvard professor George Santayana – who was — yes, you guessed it — a eugenicist! “Some races are obviously superior to others,” he wrote in his highly praised five-volume 1906 book The Life of Reason. It figures: all that remembering-the-past stuff had fried his brain.

So what do we do now?

Here’s a suggestion. Forget it; forget everything. Just make it up as we go along. That way, when we do end up repeating the atrocities of the past, no one will notice.

The post Memories of eugenics president erased from USC campus appeared first on MercatorNet.



via IFTTT
InoreaderURL: SECONDARY LINK

An Insight Into How Globalists Think, Courtesy Of The Trilateral Commission



When the term ‘globalist‘ is used by alternative analysts, it usually encourages the mainstream press to denounce it as an anti-semitic trope which is concentrated on the belief that a select group of the jewish presuasion – dubbed ‘the elite‘ – control the world from the shadows.

ORIGINAL LINK

An Insight Into How Globalists Think, Courtesy Of The Trilateral Commission

ORIGINAL LINK
An Insight Into How Globalists Think, Courtesy Of The Trilateral Commission Tyler Durden Mon, 06/15/2020 - 02:00

Authored by Steven Guinness,

When the term ‘globalist‘ is used by alternative analysts, it usually encourages the mainstream press to denounce it as an anti-semitic trope which is concentrated on the belief that a select group of the jewish presuasion – dubbed ‘the elite‘ – control the world from the shadows. Failing that, the media will pigeonhole it as an abstract expression that has no defined definition.

The truth is that the reason the media does not want to engage with the concept of globalism is precisely because it can be defined to both institutions and the individuals that inhabit them.

To illustrate this, let’s use the Trilateral Commission as a specific example.

I last wrote about the Trilateral Commission in February when I discussed how the organisation was in the process of reforming itself. Back in the summer of 2019, they published a brochure called ‘Democracies Under Stress: Recreating the Trilateral Commission to Revitalize Our Democracies to Uphold the Rules-Based International Order‘. Within the brochure they spoke about ‘rediscovering their roots‘, ‘sharpening‘ their mission, and the need for ‘rejuvenating‘ their membership. All of this was predicated on a goal of upholding the ‘rules based global order‘ and meeting the ‘challenges‘ of the 21st century.

It was around this time that the Trilateral Commission held its 2019 Plenary Meeting in Paris in the middle of June. During this event the North American Chairman of the Commission, Meghan O’Sullivan (who is also on the board of the Council on Foreign Relations), spent a few minutes talking about the institution and the role it intends to play from here on in.

Here is a direct quote from O’Sullivan’s monologue, which can be viewed on the Trilateral Commission’s Youtube channel:

We’re an organisation of people who have close ties to national governments, and often the ideas we debate in private inform our own perspectives and inform our discussions and deliberations and conversations with people in positions of power. That will still be true, but today we need to think about having an impact on the broader debate. We no longer live in a world where governments are the only ones that can influence the future. In fact, increasingly, we have to think about other entities as being the real engines of change, and be that corporations or universities or even individuals. We need to think about how to shape the conversation, how to bring those groups in, to have investment in and commitment to solutions.

O’Sullivan concluded by saying:

And we need to move ahead, whether or not we’re able to get our governments to agree with our prescriptions and recommendations.

This is in concurrence with what the United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres said at the World Economic Forum in January 2020. When talking about his belief that global problems must be met with global solutions, Guterres commented:

Sometimes we manage, sometimes we fail, but one thing you can be absolutely sure – we will not sit quietly expecting a consensus of the international community to solve the problems we have been discussing.

The implication of O’Sullivan’s and Guterres’s words primarily suggest one thing, and that is that the organisations they represent are not going to wait forever for national legislatures to implement solutions for global crises. What they appear to be saying is that if government’s cannot be galvanised into action by ratifying into law initiatives like the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (also known as ‘The Green New Deal‘), then the only other option is to set about doing it ourselves.

O’Sullivan muses that governments are no longer the only bodies that can ‘influence the future‘, and now is the moment where consideration must be given to ‘other entities as being the real engines of change‘. According to her this could be a mix of corporations, universities and individuals.

For starters, corporations and universities are not accountable to the electorate. But institutions like the Trilateral Commission are heavily populated by figureheads from multi nationals and the education sector.

Behind the scenes they are helping to formulate policies with the aim of them being carried through to national administrations for implementation. For an overview of how the Commission operates, I would recommend reading a copy of ‘Trilaterals Over Washington‘, a two volume book written in the late 1970s by researchers Antony Sutton and Patrick Wood. Here, the authors describe the composition of the commission and break down the power structure into three parts: The Operators, The Propagandists and Technicians, and the Power Holders. I briefly described each process in an article published back in 2018 (Order Out of Chaos: A Look at the Trilateral Commission).

O’Sullivan clearly states that the Trilateral Commission has ‘close ties‘ to national governments, and that private debate within the Commission is informing their own perspectives as well as informing ‘our discussions and deliberations and conversations with people in positions of power‘. This will continue, but it is no longer enough. Now they want to start having a bigger impact on the ‘broader debate‘.

By ‘broader debate‘, I would argue that O’Sullivan means you and I. The next logical step if you are the Trilateral Commission is to try and gain majority consent on the reforms they want to see enacted.

How can they begin to do that? Let’s be clear that membership of the Commission is not permitted for politicians who are in government. When co-founder of the institution Zbigniew Brzezinski entered Jimmy Carter’s administration in 1977, he renounced his direct affiliation with the Commission. But that did not mean Brzezinski was no longer in broad agreement with the objectives of the group. Indeed, after Brzezinski left official office, he returned to the folds of the Commission.

As I have pointed out before, the current leader of the opposition Labour Party in the UK, Keir Starmer, is an active member according to the June 2020 membership roster. This is a fact that is not mentioned on Starmer’s own website, his official parliamentary web page or in the national media.

When he was campaigning to be Labour leader in February 2020, Starmer’s connection to the Commission was kept suppressed. Evidence of this came in mid February when his campaign team was forced to deny that they had illegally accessed Labour party membership data. The matter was raised on a live BBC leadership debate show hosted by Victoria Derbyshire, where one member of the studio audience suggested that the reason Starmer was not facing an official investigation was because of his membership of the Trilateral Commission. Starmer very quickly brushed off the claim, and Derbyshire just as quickly moved on to another member of the audience.

This was an ideal opportunity to question Starmer on his involvement in the Commission – to ask what it is and how it may or may not influence his political beliefs and motivations. Instead, the BBC chose to ignore the issue.

Starmer may be in opposition, but his membership is relevant because the Commission is informing debate and is seeking to influence national administrations to adopt globally devised initiatives. Starmer is part of that process.

And it should be stressed again – out of 650 members of parliament, Starmer is the only one who was invited into the Commission (membership is by invitation only). Perhaps this is because of his legal prowess, as from 2008 to 2013 he was the Director of Public Prosecutions, the third most senior prosecutor for England and Wales.

Should Starmer ever make it as far as Prime Minister, he will vacate his position at the Trilateral Commission. What he likely won’t relinquish is his loyalty to the Trilateral cause.

At this point, a fair question to ask is what authority does the Trilateral Commission possess that allows them to believe that they could bypass national governments in pursuit of global objectives? After all, this is a commission that is not elected but has within its ranks men and women who are elected at the national level. It is a commission that is dominated by corporate interests and is privately funded. At a special event in 1998 to mark 25 years of the Trilateral Commission, a list of financial supporters from 1973 to 1998 was published to show names such as Exxon Corporation, AT&T Foundation, The Coca-Cola Company, The First National Bank of Chicago, Morgan Stanley & Co and Goldman Sachs. A list for the present day is not readily available.

From analysing the Commission’s communications, my concern is that the language has now shifted from an emphasis on national administrations to implement reforms to the global institutions seeking to do it themselves. This is global governance in all but name.

With the onset of Covid-19, the rhetoric has intensified substantially on the necessity for governments to rally behind initiatives like the Sustainable Development Goals and enforce them into national law. And if they don’t? Well, we will seek to do it without you is the message. As Meghan O’Sullivan admits, ‘we need to move ahead, whether or not we’re able to get our governments to agree with our prescriptions and recommendations.



via IFTTT
InoreaderURL: SECONDARY LINK

Sunday, June 14, 2020

Making Sense Of An Increasingly Insensible World

ORIGINAL LINK
Making Sense Of An Increasingly Insensible World Tyler Durden Sun, 06/14/2020 - 09:20

Authored by Chris Martenson via PeakProsperity.com,

Creating purpose and fulfillment within a failing system...

What the heck is going on?

I hear this a lot these days. Developments are happening too quickly to process for many folks, creating a persisting cloud of confusion.

Even focusing down on any particular single event often gets nowhere because so much of what’s going on simply makes so sense

Take for example, the W.H.O. which as recently as two weeks ago recommended that only sick people should wear masks.  What? We’ve known for months that people can spread Covid-19 when they are asymptomatic.  How can a ‘sick person’ wear a mask if they are sick but even they don’t know that? It just makes no sense.  What is even going on?

Or take Jerome Powell, Chair of the Federal Reserve, who defiantly declared that the Federal Reserve “absolutely does not” contribute to the wealth inequality gap:

(Source)

Say what?

The Fed is busy buying distressed financial assets for far more than they are worth from the largest and wealthiest of stock and bondholders.  That absolutely contributes to inequality.

So does juicing the stock market, or ““market”” as I like to term it (because it’s so distorted it needs two sets of quote marks).

So does appointing Blackrock – the world’s largest private asset manager – to select which private assets should be bought with the freshly-invented currency emanating from the Fed’s electronic printing presses.  Should we really be shocked to learn that Blackrock chose their own distressed assets, like the junk bond fund JNK, for the Fed to buy first?

It’s a bald-faced lie for Jay Powell to claim anything other than the Fed is the #1 contributor to inequality.  And that’s by a country mile.

So does Powell even think he can state such an obvious untruth and be taken seriously? And why does no one in the media seriously challenge him on this?

What the heck is going on?

The US government is supposed to be an open-book affair.  The public has both an interest and a right to know what’s going on with its money.

Yet somehow, US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin believes that $500 billion in recent bailout funds shoveled out the door to US corporations both can be and needs to be kept secret:

How is this even possible?  How can anybody, let alone a sitting US Treasury Secretary think that it’s okay to keep $500 billion in fund disbursements a secret to the public? What the heck is going on?

At least this hasn’t entirely escaped everyone’s notice:

But ask the average person on the street? 99 out of 100 won’t have a clue this is going on.

Look, in the US alone, 44 million people have applied for jobless claims over the past 12 weeks.  Over that same time period, thanks to the efforts of Jay Powell and the Federal Reserve, the Nasdaq 100 powered to brand new all-time highs:

The economy as measured by GDP is thought to have plunged anywhere from 15% to 50% during the quarter…and stocks were not just stable, but positively euphoric over those same 12 weeks, as if gleefully celebrating the largest loss of jobs in US history.

What the heck is going on?

What Comes Next

These and dozens of other weird, backwards, and truly unnatural acts are piling up; each difficult to understand on its own. But taken together, they reveal a current era of great uncertainty and upheaval.

There’s really no other explanation other than something has broken and it scares The Powers That Be to the point that they are wildly flailing about with increasing desperate policies, lies, and extreme actions that would have been unthinkable just a few months ago.

So, here we are.

The important question to ask yourself at this time is: What am I going to do about it?

For my part, I think that this current shock to the world economic system is too great to simply paper over.  The loss of economic activity as measured by the demand destruction for oil, which remains down some -20% to -25%, suggests very large future disruptions the economy and, more generally, our way of life.  Supply chains will run short of critical supplies and suddenly-blocked money conduits in the financial system imply a cascade of defaults are yet to come.

Nobody is smart enough to figure out in detail what any of that means. It’s just too huge and too complex.

So, what to do about it?  You become more resilient.  If you’re unsure if your paycheck is secure, you save money, begin thinking about ways to trim expenses, and fire up alternative income streams.  Just in case.

If you can’t be certain that the stores will always be stocked with food, you build up a deep pantry and start a garden.  Just in case.

If you doubt the ability of the Federal Reserve and Congress to ‘get it right’ you buy gold, invest in your home, and develop a buy list to execute if or when ‘they’ dial up the deficits, debt levels and money printing to even more ludicrous levels.  Just in case.

If you’ve been relatively isolated but want a community to enrich your life in good times and support you in bad ones, you dedicate more of your waking hours to doing things with and for your neighbors to strengthen those social bridges.  Just in case.

Here’s the thing: nobody knows what’s going to happen next.  Our economy, our machinery of state, and our global supply chains are all interconnected complex systems.   Such systems have two features:

  1. they are inherently completely unpredictable, and
  2. they have emergent behaviors

An emergent behavior is something that arises out of the conditions of the system.  Because humans are complex systems, we can use them as an example.

Put one set of humans in a desert with scant resources on and you’ll get one set of languages, culture, art, technology, and beliefs.

Pick up those same humans, drop them onto a lush and moist prairie and eventually you’ll get an entirely different set of languages, culture, art, technology, and belief systems.  The complexity of the ecology and the human species will yield different results under different circumstances.

Even though you know everything there is to know about humans, you cannot possibly predict what will emerge.  You can only observe these things as they emerge.

Similarly, our economy and its key derivatives — such as technology and systems of production and distribution — have emerged from the combined actions of billions of people using immense amounts of fossil fuel energy.

What can we expect from our new reality now that tens of millions of formerly-productive people aren’t working? Nobody knows because it’s unpredictable.  At the same time oil consumption, our primary energy input, is down by a shocking -20%.  What does that mean in terms of changes in behaviors and goods produced? Nobody knows.  We can only observe what emergent activity happens (or ceases to happen) next.

Here’s another thing to know about complex systems – perhaps the most important feature: they owe their complexity to the flows of energy through them.  More energy and they can become more complex.  Less energy and they become less complex, they simplify.

In economic terms, a reduction in energy throughput might manifest as a far simpler arrangement of fewer people working at fewer types of jobs.  Or it might mean fewer sorts of goods being produced and reduced services to choose among.  Again, we can’t know the future details; but the broad strokes can be defined — and ‘simpler’ is one of those broad strokes that comes along with a -20% drop in oil consumption.

Which is why because I cannot predict the outcome, I prepare.

As I’ve mentioned numerous times before, driven by a growing internal anxiety of the increasingly insensible developments around us, I purchased a 182-acre property earlier this year. One I’ve been hard at work restoring into a productive and highly-sustainable family homestead.

It’s time to reveal what I’ve been up to.

In Part 2: Building The Foundations Of  A Resilient Life, I give you a tour of the specific projects and installations my fiancee Evie and I have been busy with this hectic spring. An important goal of mine as we work to fully activate this property’s potential is to produce a body of “how to” content to help guide you and anyone else interested in making their home more resilient.

It’s the only way I know how to make sense out of today’s increasingly insensible world.

Click here to read Part 2 of this report (free executive summary, enrollment required for full access).



via IFTTT
InoreaderURL: SECONDARY LINK