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Skepticism and Pseudoscience > Who Rules America > Neoliberal Brainwashing
Even though I agreed with him, I warned that whenever someone tried to raise the issue, he or she was accused of fomenting class warfare. “There’s class warfare, all right, "Mr. Buffett said, “but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning." Make no mistake, the neo-Liberal fuckers are just as bad as the Stalinists May '68 and its Afterlives [Review] Neoliberal ideology acted as a smokescreen that enabled the financially powerful to rewrite the rules and place themselves beyond the law. Keynes gave the capitalist ruling class tools to extend its existence, the neo-liberals, contemptuously dismissed them as cowardly compromises -- "Real Men bust Unions" is the neo-liberal motto. Now the reckoning is coming and Keynes is suddenly looking very clever. And modern. bevin | May 26 2020 15:34 utc | 64 |
Due to the size the introduction was moved to a separate page: Neoliberalism: a primer
NOTE: Best articles on neoliberalism can be found at Neoliberalism 101: 12 best articles on neoliberalism
Oct 14, 2019, www.thenation.com )
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For the list of top articles see Recommended Links section
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Oct 24, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
Down South , Oct 22 2020 20:29 utc | 21
@2 @16
Although many details about the Great Reset won't be rolled out until the World Economic Forum meets in Davos in January 2021, the general principles of the plan are clear: The world needs massive new government programs and far-reaching policies comparable to those offered by American socialists such as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) in their Green New Deal plan.
Or, put another way, we need a form of socialism - a word the World Economic Forum has deliberately avoided using, all while calling for countless socialist and progressive plans.
"We need to design policies to align with investment in people and the environment," said the general secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation, Sharan Burrow. "But above all, the longer-term perspective is about rebalancing economies."
One of the main themes of the June meeting was that the coronavirus pandemic has created an important "opportunity" for many of the World Economic Forum's members to enact their radical transformation of capitalism, which they acknowledged would likely not have been made possible without the pandemic.
https://www.google.co.za/amp/s/thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/504499-introducing-the-great-reset-world-leaders-radical-plan-to%3famp
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Oct 24, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com
Rep. Gosar Calls To Defund NPR As Backlash Grows Over Biden Laptop Coverup
by Tyler Durden Fri, 10/23/2020 - 14:40 Twitter Facebook Reddit Email Print
Arizona Republican Rep. Paul Gosar has called for defunding National Public Radio after the outlet officially refused to cover the Hunter Biden laptop scandal (while happily peddling anti-Trump rumors for years) - calling it a ' waste of time. '
"It's time to defund @NPR. This is appalling. #DefundNPR," Gosar tweeted on Thursday.
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Gosar joins a growing chorus of conservative voices who are furious over the outlet's decision to censor perhaps the biggest political bombshell in decades .
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As Jack Phillips of the Epoch Times notes:
NPR public editor Kelly McBride published an inquiry on its website Thursday from a listener who did not understand why the outlet was ignoring the story.
"Someone please explain why NPR has apparently not reported on the Joe Biden, Hunter Biden story in the last week or so that Joe did know about Hunter's business connections in Europe that Joe had previously denied having knowledge?" listener Carolyn Abbott asked.
McBride responded in saying there are "many, many red flags" in an investigation carried out by the New York Post, which last week published reports that were sourced from the alleged laptop hard drive. NPR then went on to repeat claims that Russia is attempting to interfere in the election.
" Even if Russia can't be positively connected to this information, the story of how Trump associates Steve Bannon and Rudy Giuliani came into a copy of this computer hard drive has not been verified and seems suspect. And if that story could be verified, the NY Post did no forensic work to convince consumers that the emails and photos that are the basis for their report have not been altered," McBride said, adding: "But the biggest reason you haven't heard much on NPR about the Post story is that the assertions don't amount to much."
Her response included a statement from NPR managing editor Terence Samuel.
" We don't want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories , and we don't want to waste the listeners' and readers' time on stories that are just pure distractions. And quite frankly, that's where we ended up, this was a politically driven event and we decided to treat it that way," Samuel said.
The claims that the reports are part of a Russian disinformation plot were dismissed by Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe.
The FBI, meanwhile, did not dispute Ratcliffe's statements earlier this week.
FBI Assistant Director Jill C. Tyson sent a letter to Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, in response to Johnson's request for more information about the emails, reports around which have alleged that Hunter Biden tried to introduce a Ukrainian businessman to his father when he served as vice president in the Obama administration. The law enforcement agency said it has "nothing to add at this time" to Ratcliffe's statement.
A number of conservatives and allies of President Donald Trump criticized NPR following its decision to publish the inquiry .
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" Wow. Foreign corruption from a major party is not considered news for taxpayer-funded #fakenews NPR, " wrote the America First PAC on Twitter in response.
It came as Twitter and Facebook also announced they would either block or limit the reach of the NY Post's reports. White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany's account and a Trump campaign account were also blocked. The Senate Judiciary Committee, as a result, voted to issue subpoenas on Thursday to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to appear before the committee after raising concerns about censorship and election interference.
Biden's campaign has denied that he ever met with a Ukrainian gas company official, which was allegedly revealed in a trove of emails that purportedly were found on a laptop hard drive belonging to his son, Hunter, who sat on the company's board while his father was the vice president. The NY Post also obtained a hard drive containing the emails from former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Other allegations have surfaced in recent reports over the days, including from a former Hunter Biden associate who confirmed the legitimacy of an email.
"The Attorney General of Delaware's office indicated that the FBI has 'ongoing investigations regarding the veracity of this entire story.' And it would be unsurprising for an investigation of a disinformation action involving Rudy Giuliani and those assisting him to involve questions about money laundering, especially since there are other documented inquiries into his dealings," the campaign said.
TheFederalistPapers , 22 minutes agoJeremy Roenick , 22 minutes agoI work way too hard to fund these ****ers. NPR is owned by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) and sneak a peek at their Board of Directors https://www.cpb.org/aboutcpb/leadership/board
NPR = Tax payer funded propaganda
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Oct 24, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
c1ue , Oct 23 2020 15:31 utc | 120
@vk #110
You do realize that H1B is literal indentured servitude, right?
And that its purpose is nothing more than cheap(er) labor for the tech companies?
I know many people on H1B, as well as several people who specialize in H1B "hiring".
The good news: many of these people are smart and capable.
The bad news: they're stuck at the companies they start at for 7 years or more - and are paid significantly (20% to 50%) under "market". If they leave, their green card process starts anew even assuming they find another H1B sponsor.
More bad news: there are also a significant number of "body shops" who do nothing but enter the lottery for H1B visas, then auction off the "wins" to the tech companies. The H1B people in these situations are far worse off because they work for the "body shop", not the tech company.
Most importantly: H1B, even at its peak, brought in less than 200K people (188K by law).
In comparison: in 2017 - legal immigration was
Family and Immediate Relatives: 748,746
Employment: 137,855
Refugees and Asylees: 146,003
Diversity and Other: 94,563
Total Visas Issued: 1,127,167
Over 1.1 million people came in legally without the H1B.
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Oct 24, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
Down South , Oct 22 2020 19:39 utc | 15
https://m.facebook.com/wxyzdetroit/posts/10157530043341135
Full statement by Tony Bobulinski on his business dealings with Biden and the Chinese.
Down South , Oct 22 2020 19:52 utc | 17
This is big!
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Oct 23, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
kiwiklown , Oct 22 2020 9:05 utc | 7The Russians ( Putin / Lavrov) say ever so politely that the US is not agreement-capable.
I add that the US ( politicians, Wall Streeters, MSM, think tanks ) are:
- not truth-capable;
- not ethics-capable;
- not shame-capable;
- not honour-capable.
What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world, but loses his soul? He turns into a ghoul without a soul, says I, a devil without human-ness! How dare they call us deplorables when they are the despicables?
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Oct 23, 2020 | www.baldingsworld.com
play_arrow No_Pretzel_Logic 9 hours ago (Edited)
Don't know if this was already posted but it looks like a VERY GOOD read. The Biden/CCP set-up.
https://www.baldingsworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/KVBJHB.pdf
Might want to download that PDF....possible it won't be up for long.
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Oct 23, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com
johnny two shoes , 9 hours ago
junction , 9 hours agoDuring the years that Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. was helping the credit card industry win passage of a law making it harder for consumers to file for bankruptcy protection, his son had a consulting agreement that lasted five years with one of the largest companies pushing for the changes...
It was a savage piece of legislation, and Joe Biden even worked to block an amendment that would have offered bankruptcy protection to people with medical debt. The bill also blocked people from discharging private student loan debt under bankruptcy. Total student loan debt was under $400 billion in 2005; it surged in the wake of the law's passage and is now over $1.5 trillion.
The bank was MBNA. I know from personal experience that MBNA charged a late penalty on online payments for their credit card on the last day due, illegally calling the payment late even though the Federal Reserve Bank has a rule that if you make payment before the cut-off time on the last date due, your payment must be considered as processed that date. MBNA also kept funds that should have been transferred to the state's Abandoned Property Fund, to boost its bottom line while its criminal owners were trying to sell the bank to Bank of America.
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Oct 23, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com
9 play_arrowOccams_Razor_Trader , 11 hours ago
FreedomWriter , 10 hours agoIn Biden Family News:
The Good News: Media reports of Hunter Biden boffing his dead brother's wife
were media exaggerations ..........................
The Bad News: It appears that Hunter Biden was actually molesting his dead brother's 14 year old daughter
Well, at the risk of sounding tasteless, Joe always liked them young. Why should Hunter be any different?
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Oct 23, 2020 | www.baldingsworld.com
1. SUMMARY -3-
2. THE NEXUS OF CHINESE MONEY & INFLUENCE - 4 -
3. HUNTER RECEIVED CHINESE STATE MONEY - 7 -
2010 Hunter Courts Chinese State Money - 7 -
2012 Hunter's First China Deal - Wanxiang - 9 -
2012 - 2013 Hunter's Second China Deal - BHR -10 -
2013 Biden and Hunter visit China and meet BHR CEO LI -11 -
2015 Hunter's Third China Deal - Sino-Ocean -17 -
2012 Archer's China Deal - Sichuan Chemical -17 -
2019 Biden denies knowledge of Hunter's China Deals -18 -
4. HOW BIDEN WAS COMPROMISED BYTHE CPC -19-
Biden Family Compromised -19 -
The Approach -20-
TheStrawman -21-
The Intro - 22 -
Targeted by China's Foreign Influence Organizations - 24 -
Biden and Hunter Mix Business with Politics - 25 -
The Set-Up -26-
Lin Continues to Promote Chinese Culture - 28-
Hunter Cultivated by Chinese Intelligence (Updated) - 31 -
Biden Softens View on China - 32 -
5. THE PLAYERS -33-
HUNTER AND PARTNERS - 33 -
CHINA'S STATE CAPITAL - 34 -
US-CHINATOUCHPOINTS - 39 -
CHINA'S FOREIGN INFLUENCE ORGANIZATIONS - 40 -
6. DETAILED TIMELINE -44-
7. APPENDICES -57-
- 2 -
TYPHOON INVESTIGATIONS PROJECTTIME
l. Joe Biden's compromising partnership with the Communist Part}' of China runs
via Yang Jiechi (CPC's Central Foreign Affairs Commission). YANG met frequently
with BIDEN during his tenure at the Chinese embassy in Washington.2. Hunter Biden's 2013 Bohai Harvest Rosemont investment partnership was set-up
by Ministry' of Foreign Affairs institutions designed to garner influence with foreign
leaders during YANG's tenure as Foreign Minister.3. HUNTER has a direct line to the Politburo, according to SOURCE A, a senior
finance professional in China.4. Michael Lin brokered the BHR partnership and partners with MOFA foreign
influence organizations.5. LIN is a POI for his work on behalf of China, as confirmed by SOURCE В and
SOURCE С (at two separate national intelligence agencies).6. BHR is a state managed operation. Leading shareholder in BHR is a Bank of China
and BHR's partners are SOEs that funnel revenue/assets to BHR.7. HUNTER continues to hold 10% in BHR. He visited China in 2010 and met with
major Chinese government financial companies that would later back BHR.8. HUNTER's BHR stake (purchased for $400,000) is now likely be worth approx.
$50 million (fees and capital appreciation based on BHR's $6.5 billion AUM).9. HUNTER also did business with Chinese tycoons linked with the Chinese military
and against the interests of US national security.10. BIDEN's foreign policy stance towards China (formerly hawkish), has since turned
positive despite China's country's rising geopolitical assertiveness.
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Oct 23, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com
Former Hunter Biden business partner Tony Bobulinski has confirmed that an email published in the New York Post 's bombshell exposé is indeed genuine - something the Biden camp hasn't disputed, and that the "Big Guy" described in one of those emails is none other than Joe Biden himself . Bobulinski also says Joe Biden was lying when he said he and Hunter never discussed business dealings.
"My name is Tony Bobulinski. The facts set forth below are true and accurate; they are not any form of domestic or foreign disinformation. Any suggestion to the contrary is false and offensive. I am the recipient of the email published seven days ago by the New York Post, which showed a copy to Hunter Biden and Rob Walker. That email is genuine .' -New York Post
Bobulinski issued the statement late Wednesday, affirming that, contrary to Joe Biden's claims that he never discussed business dealings with Hunter, the former Veep actually profited from his son's dealings, which were undertaken with the full support of the Biden family.
Bobulinski claims cash and equity positions and 10% stakes in dealings were set aside for " the big guy ," - aka Joe Biden .
Bobulinski said: "I've seen Vice President Biden saying he never talked to Hunter about business" - "I've seen firsthand that that's not true."
" I've seen firsthand that that's not true, because it wasn't just Hunter's business, they said they were putting the Biden family name and its legacy on the line."
https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-0&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1319284479869898760&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fpolitical%2Fbehind-curtain-biden-biz-partner-confirms-joe-involved-hunters-huge-china-deal&siteScreenName=zerohedge&theme=light&widgetsVersion=ed20a2b%3A1601588405575&width=550px
What's more, Bobulinski was admonished at one point for mentioning Joe Biden in communications :
https://lockerdome.com/lad/13084989113709670?pubid=ld-dfp-ad-13084989113709670-0&pubo=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com&rid=www.zerohedge.com&width=890
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According to Bobulinski, he was the CEO of Sinohawk Holding, a holding company partnership between now-bankrupt CEFC China Energy Co. and the Biden family. He said the Chinese weren't in partnership for any kind of commercial purpose: they were there to pay for "influence" in the US.
"I realized the Chinese were not really focused on a healthy financial ROI. They were looking at this as a political or influence investment. Once I realized that Hunter wanted to use the company as his personal piggy bank by just taking money out of it as soon as it came from the Chinese, I took steps to prevent that from happening"
In the final weeks of the presidential campaign, Joe Biden has labeled Hunter Biden's emails as a "smear" campaign against him, and Democrats like Adam Schiff have accused these reports of being linked to a Russian intelligence operation, even though intelligence officials have said there's no evidence that this is true.
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Here is Bobulinski's statement in full ( emphasis ours ):
My name is Tony Bobulinski. The facts set forth below are true and accurate ; they are not any form of domestic or foreign disinformation. Any suggestion to the contrary is false and offensive. I am the recipient of the email published seven days ago by the New York Post which showed a copy to Hunter Biden and Rob Walker. That email is genuine .
This afternoon I received a request from the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs and the Senate Committee on Finance requesting all documents relating to my business affairs with the Biden family as well as various foreign entities and individuals. I have extensive relevant records and communications and I intend to produce those items to both Committees in the immediate future.
I am the grandson of a 37 year Army Intelligence officer, the son of a 20+ year career Naval Officer and the brother of a 28 year career Naval Flight Officer. I myself served our country for 4 years and left the Navy as LT Bobulinski. I held a high level security clearance and was an instructor and then CTO for Naval Nuclear Power Training Command. I take great pride in the time my family and I served this country. I am also not a political person. What few campaign contributions I have made in my life were to Democrats.
If the media and big tech companies had done their jobs over the past several weeks I would be irrelevant in this story . Given my long standing service and devotion to this great country, I could no longer allow my family's name to be associated or tied to Russian disinformation or implied lies and false narratives dominating the media right now.
After leaving the military I became an institutional investor investing extensively around the world and on every continent. I have traveled to over 50 countries. I believe, hands down, we live in the greatest country in the world.
What I am outlining is fact . I know it is fact because I lived it. I am the CEO of Sinohawk Holdings which was a partnership between the Chinese operating through CEFC/Chairman Ye and the Biden family . I was brought into the company to be the CEO by James Gilliar and Hunter Biden. The reference to "the Big Guy" in the much publicized May 13, 2017 email is in fact a reference to Joe Biden. The other "JB" referenced in that email is Jim Biden, Joe's brother.
Hunter Biden called his dad 'the Big Guy' or 'my Chairman,' and frequently referenced asking him for his sign-off or advice on various potential deals that we were discussing . I've seen Vice President Biden saying he never talked to Hunter about his business. I've seen firsthand that that's not true, because it wasn't just Hunter's business, they said they were putting the Biden family name and its legacy on the line.
I realized the Chinese were not really focused on a healthy financial ROI. They were looking at this as a political or influence investment. Once I realized that Hunter wanted to use the company as his personal piggy bank by just taking money out of it as soon as it came from the Chinese, I took steps to prevent that from happening.
The Johnson Report connected some dots in a way that shocked me -- it made me realize the Bidens had gone behind my back and gotten paid millions of dollars by the Chinese, even though they told me they hadn't and wouldn't do that to their partners.
I would ask the Biden family to address the American people and outline the facts so I can go back to being irrelevant -- and so I am not put in a position to have to answer those questions for them.
I don't have a political ax to grind; I just saw behind the Biden curtain and I grew concerned with what I saw. The Biden family aggressively leveraged the Biden family name to make millions of dollars from foreign entities even though some were from communist controlled China.
God Bless America!!!!
All of which will likely be "muted" in tonight's highly anticipated debate.
Truther , 2 hours ago
jumpnjon , 2 hours agoSo, a presidential candidate with 47 years of non-accomplishments, turns out to be a CCP minion...
FreeMoney , 2 hours agoAnd the amazing thing is they can't see how idiotic they are. Or they are just plain EVIL.
Deck , 1 hour agoIt is TDS or NPC "orange man bad."
No Democrat is voting FOR Biden. He is obviously corrupt and sun downing.
Trump is partially trying to wreck the existing system by eliminating regulation, and unwinding bad trade or military support deals. He shoots holes in just about every international organization that the lefties all love unconditionally, UN? WHO? NATO? WTO? while openly discussing tearing apart the lefties favorite charity of open boarders, unlimited welfare, and permanent communist voter block creation.
Democrats are voting against Trump.
Leroy Whitby , 1 hour agoThe blind delusion and hypocrisy of trumptards never ends.
Which one of you MAGA-bots want to talk about Ivanka getting sweet business deals in China when she flew there on your dime?
Which one of you wants to talk about trumps deals there, or Kushner's cushy job where he has influenced policy that has harmed your families and communities?
Which one of you wants to talk about Trump's Chinese dealing or the taxes he pays there, or that he sells EOs and state department favors at $250,000 a pop out of Mara Lago?
Non of you care about these things, because both sides do them. The only reason you're talking about this you want YOUR corrupt guy in there, but the reality is showing favoritism to kids is as old as time, in politics and in the private sector.
HellKitty , 1 hour agoIn the Biden family, they are both stupid and evil. They are nowhere near as smart as the Obamas or Clintons. The Clintons are just evil. They have heard right and wrong at church and otherwise, and chose to sell out their nation...
Stormtrooper , 53 minutes agoI am still having a hard time to understand why Biden Jr, left his MacBook (not only one, but 3!) at the repair shop and never picked them up. I wish some criminal psychologist stand up and explain that irrational behaviour.
AutoLode , 52 minutes agoHe was probably high on crack-cocaine when he dropped them off and couldn't remember where he took them
CallingDrFraudschi , 1 hour agoIf hunter is making millions upon millions can't he buy a new MacBook Pro or dozens of them if he's prone to spilling stuff on them
and none of his partners are smart enough to tell him to not let go of his hard drives ?
weird
BaNNeD oN THe RuN , 1 hour agoIn order to make an equivalent analogy, you'd have to figure out a way to become business partners with people in Ukraine and in China and make a personal profit from leveraging your political connections all the while selling away the livelihoods of the Americans you purport to support.
Whilst you may not like the way Trump files & "pays" taxes, it's all legal within the tax code framework here in the US. Selling out your country for millions to Ukraine & China however IS NOT.
That's treason and sedition!
DefinitelyNotAFed , 2 hours agoA WWE wrestling match. If you pretend it is anything else you are deluded.
Trump gets 4 more years, unless he demands more in exchange for putting up with the abuse that Deep State is prepared to pay. Hence the delay in releasing final election results. For now, it has to appear that it could go either way.
You think Deep State did not already know what the Bidens and the rest of the Obama crew were up to in 2008-16? Of course they did... the extra grift they collect is part of the reward system for doing as they are told.
Pandelis , 43 minutes agoThe Clintons are more corrupt than the Biden's. So far, there is no evidence of human trafficking of the kind the Clintons were/are involved in.
The Biden's real crime is being dumber and getting caught in their treasonous corruption.
Ex-Oligarch , 1 hour agoBobby Kennedy knew what he was up to and still continued on his fight. John might not have known the full extent of what he was up against, but Bobby certainly did because he saw what happened to his brother etc. It is a long subject it seems to me you are not as tuned in as you think you are... there is plenty out there to read and learn the truth from.
On trump's minions "communications logged, travel, meeting logged" ... for what?? anybody cares or able to check on them ... get real.
do they have a security clearance ... ever ask WHY was not able to obtain one?
without a security clearance and to have the power of the White House beyond you is really corrupt to me ... a bag of money is nothing, here we are talking billions and trillions
knightowl77 , 1 hour agoThere's nothing "dirty" about exposing your competitor's misdeeds.
It is "fighting dirty" to accuse your competitor of things he didn't actually do .
There doesn't seem to be much dispute that the emails are genuine.
Also, the media seems to be starting up a counter-narrative that Trump should be focusing on policy disputes rather than Biden's corruption. But Biden himself has been avoiding policy issues because his party is split between far-left extremists and moderates, and he can't afford to alienate either one. He has flip-flopped over and over trying to appease both constituencies. Instead, his strategy has been to present a choice of personalities, in the hope that the public is so fatigued from the constant hostility directed towards Trump and the president's rough style that they will opt for him instead, regardless of his policy positions.
FreedomWriter , 43 minutes agoExcept that the media was FINE with the Dems investigating Trump for 4 years for his Alleged misdeeds.....the misdeeds that were actually done by Klinton & Hiden.
They even impeached Trump for allegedly doing what Biden actually did in the Ukraine...This FARCE has gone on long enough, and It ALL must be exposed to the public Now!
For 4 years they have accused Trump of everything that they themselves have actually done. ENOUGH!
gordo , 59 minutes agoThat's a pretty weak strategy for Creepy Joe. Do you think it will stand up when his son is arrested for CP possession, sexual assault, corruption, and human trafficking?
But then again, we are talking about Dem voters here.
Hunter's laptop reveals
Joe Biden gets a 10-50% cut of the loot
Hunter banged his 14 year old niece Natalie while smoking his crack pipe and texted Joe about it.
Joe Biden gets a cut of the Burisma loot
Joe Biden gets a cut of the Chinese lootThe CCP has all the dirt on Joe that makes Epstein look like amateur hour.|
am I missing anything?
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Oct 22, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com
Mike K , 8 hours ago
ReadyForHillary , 8 hours agoHeadline:
"Chinese Energy Firm Gives Biden Crime Family $5 Million "Interest-Free" Loan Through Investment Vehicle Described as 'Consulting Fees' to Hunter Biden."
Enraged , 10 hours agoThat Hunter must be a brilliant guy! He's being paid a fortune to sit on boards and provide consulting to a number of institutions all over the world!
An email dated May 15, 2017 sent from Jim, Joe's brother, to Hunter and his team revealed the list of key domestic contacts for phase one target projects in the Biden family business: Harris, D-Calif.; Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.; Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn.; Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.; Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y.; New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo; NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio; former Virginia Gov. Terry McCauliffe.
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Oct 21, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com
3 play_arrowLucky Guesst , 2 hours ago
CheapBastard , 2 hours agoHunter Biden's current Wikipedia page.......
Biden served on the board of Burisma Holdings , a major Ukrainian natural gas producer, from 2014 to 2019. He and his father have been the subjects of debunked right-wing conspiracy theories pushed by Donald Trump and his allies concerning Biden business dealings and anti-corruption efforts in Ukraine. [1]
And wiki has the nerve to ask for donations.
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Oct 21, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com
J S Bach , 2 hours ago
HANGTHEOWL , 2 hours agoSo, Joe... all of those incriminating emails on your son's laptop aren't proof of "profiting off your family name", huh?
The lying never ceases with these wretches. It's all they know how to do.
Their father in hell awaits them all.
snatchpounder , 2 hours agoThey know to just keep lying,,the media will cover for them and so will the government,,,both sides will,,even though they will make it seem like they are doing something about it,,,,,
radical-extremist , 2 hours agoYes the Biden crime family has years of experience yet Boobus Americanus will dutifully line up and vote for the demented old crook.
Reaper , 3 hours agoBecause they know they're protected by the Democrat Media Complex.
Bay of Pigs , 2 hours agoHunter was his father's bagman.
markar , 1 hour agoJoe's denial isn't going to work. Why?
Evidence, that's why.
Hunter used daddie's name to bilk the poor Sioux tribe out of $60 mill in a fraudulent bond deal. His partner Cooney took the fall and is now in prison for it. He's spilling the beans. The other partner in the scam, Devon Archer lost his appeal and is going to prison in Jan for the same crime. Where's Hunter?
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Oct 21, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com
Teamtc321 , 2 hours ago
BOOM! Rudy Giuliani Drops a Bomb -- Joe Biden Broke the Law by NOT Notifying Officials of Hunter's Naked Crack Smoking and Sexual Abuse of Minors (VIDEO
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Oct 21, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com
Joe Biden Insists Son Never Profited Off Family Name; Except Hunter And Ex-President Of Poland Say He Did
by Tyler Durden Wed, 10/21/2020 - 12:25 Twitter Facebook Reddit Email Print
In a Tuesday interview, former Vice President Joe Biden claimed that there was no basis "whatsoever" to claims that his son, Hunter, profited off the family name .
When asked local Wisconsin TV station WISN if there was any legitimacy to comments by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) that Hunter " together with other Biden family members, profited off the Biden name ," the former Vice President replied " None whatsoever, " adding (without finishing the sentence) " This is the same garbage Rudy Giuliani, Trump's henchman... "
"It's the last ditch effort in this desperate campaign to smear me and my family."
https://www.youtube.com/embed/7NDwG-2UqvI?start=280
Except, Hunter admitted he profited off his family name!
"If your last name wasn't Biden, do you think you would've been asked to be on the board of Burisma?" asked ABC News ' Amy Robach in an October 15, 2019 interview.
"I don't know. I don't know. Probably not, in retrospect," said Hunter. " I don't think that there's a lot of things that would have happened in my life if my last name wasn't Biden ," he added, " because my dad was Vice President of the United States. "
"There's literally nothing, as a young man or as a full-grown adult that -- my father in some way hasn't had influence over."
https://www.youtube.com/embed/IFlZPnS0gKc?start=52
What's more, the former President of Poland and Burisma board member Aleksander Kwasniewski said last November that Hunter was picked to sit on the company's board because of his name .
"I understand that if someone asks me to be part of some project it's not only because I'm so good, it's also because I am Kwasniewski and I am a former president of Poland. ... Being Biden is not bad. It's a good name ," he said.
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Let's also not glaze over the fact that both Joe and Hunter said that Joe had 'no knowledge' of Hunter's international business dealings, while recently released emails from Hunter's laptop prove that Hunter 'introduced' Joe to a top Burisma executive - a meeting Biden's camp says never happened. Joe also met with a CCP-linked delegation of Chinese investors arranged by Hunter and his business partners, according to emails released by imprisoned ex-Hunter business associate, Bevan Cooney.
- Banana Republican , 3 hours ago
ALLLIVESSPLATTER , 3 hours agoI'll tell ya Joe -- it's not Hunter we're after. It's you.
And you're about to meet your well-deserved demise.Banana Republican , 3 hours agoIsn't that what they said about Hillary.
Awakened Saxon , 3 hours agoGood point. Then again, we don't hear much from her these days.
Joeman34 , 3 hours agoStill alive. Still rich. Still unpunished. Still out of prison.
She won.
BorisTheBlade , 2 hours agoBS, the fact that she never realized her ultimate dream of becoming President is proof she lost. Fine, she's rich and she's not in prison where she should be. At least history isn't tainted by another Clinton presidency. I still hold out hope her, and Bill's, day of reckoning will come. It's just taking a lot longer than it should.
Losing power for power-hungry people is a very punishment. She imagined herself first female president and got her desire crushed. That must've hurt quite a bit, not that I sympathize given how many people she crushed.
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Oct 21, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com
markar , 53 minutes ago
DefendYourBase4 , 51 minutes agoBiden's global pay for play schemes using his drug addict son as bagman spanned Ukraine, Romania, Poland, Kazakhstan, and the grand daddy of all, China makes him a national security risk. The fact he's this close to being president is a sad commentary on how far the country has fallen into the abyss.
markar , 1 hour agowhat is sad is the FBI do nothing. The FBI is a criminal organization as far as i am concerned, and they are not to be taken seriously. ive already had multiple visits with them and i laugh in their face
Joe Biden was the architect of a 1986 crime bill that specifically targeted Blacks with very stiff sentences for small amounts of crack cocaine. Biden is the spawn of the KKK and a long time racist. Look up his vile comments over the years including recently. That BLM supports this scumbag is proof they care little about the well being of Black people.
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Oct 21, 2020 | www.realclearpolitics.com
"Adam Schiff is seriously the most pathological liar in all of American politics that I've seen in all of my time covering politics and journalism," Greenwald said on 'Tucker Carlson Tonight.' "He just fabricates accusations at the drop of the hat at the other people change underwear. He's simply lying when he just asserts over and over that the Russians or the Kremlin are behind the story. He has no idea whether or not that is true. There is no evidence to support it."
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Oct 20, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com
Things just took a very dark turn in the Hunter Biden laptop scandal.
While the alleged crack, cronyism, corruption was enough to spark the biggest media suppression in history, and no denials whatsoever from the Biden camp, the bombshell that Rudy Giuliani just dropped, if true, is egregious to say the least (not just with regard Hunter Biden but the law enforcement authorities who have allegedly had this information since before Trump's impeachment but done nothing about it).
In an interview this evening with Newsmax TV, former NYC Mayor and current attorney to President Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani announces he has turned over Hunter Biden's laptop hard-drive to Delaware State Police due to pictures of underage girls and inappropriate text messages.
In one of the texts, Hunter Biden allegedly says to his sister-in-law (also his lover) that he face-timed a 14-year-old girl while naked and doing crack - "she told my therapist that I was sexually inappropriate."
Giuliani adds, "this would be with regard an unnamed 14 year old girl," adding that "this is supported by numerous pictures of underage girls."
Watch the full interview below (the above exchange begins around 5:20):
https://www.youtube.com/embed/coFx3ZDXWrg
Furthermore, JustTheNews' John Solomon reports that former New York Police Department commissioner Bernard Kerik joined him when he delivered photographs and text messages to the New Castle County Police Department.
https://lockerdome.com/lad/13084989113709670?pubid=ld-dfp-ad-13084989113709670-0&pubo=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com&rid=www.zerohedge.com&width=890
"I told them other details about what appears to be an inappropriate sexual relationship," he said in an interview. "They told me it would be investigated."
Law enforcement officials in Delaware told Just the News that Giuliani's concerns have been forwarded to the state Department of Justice.
"The FBI has had this for a long time," Giuliani said.
"No indication they did anything about this, so I went to the local police and said, 'What are you going to do about this?'"
Perhaps the most damning statement from Giuliani, with regard the election, was the former mayor alleging that:
"I will tell you the evidence I gave them states it was reported to Joe Biden. What did he do about it?"
Before this is wholly dismissed as yet more Russian disinformation or 'Giuliani' lies, we remind readers that we previously reported that Hunter Biden's alleged laptop contents included a curious piece of evidence - a photograph of an FBI subpoena which bears the signature of the agency's top child porn investigator, special agent Joshua Wilson.
FBI agent Wilson's identity was confirmed by both Western Journal and Business Insider , the latter of which compared his signature to a 2012 criminal complaint and concluded that it "clearly matches the unreversed signature on the subpoena published by the New York Post ."
As BI notes:
NEVER MISS THE NEWS THAT MATTERS MOSTIt's unclear whether the FBI employs more than one agent named Joshua Wilson. But the available evidence seems to show **the Joshua Wilson who signed the subpoena for Hunter Biden's laptop, and the Joshua Wilson who investigates child pornography for the FBI, are the same person**. This raises the possibility, not explored by the Post, that the FBI issued the subpoena for reasons unrelated to Hunter Biden's role in Ukraine and Burisma.
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So why is the FBI's top child porn lawyer involved in the Hunter Biden laptop case? OANN 's Chanel Rion says she's seen the contents of the hard drive, which includes "Drugs, underage obsessions, power deals," which make "Anthony Weiner's down under selfie addiction look normal . "
https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-0&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1316737387943395328&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fpolitical%2Frudy-giuliani-turns-over-alleged-photos-underage-girls-hunters-hard-drive-delaware-police&siteScreenName=zerohedge&theme=light&widgetsVersion=ed20a2b%3A1601588405575&width=550px
All of which now makes some sense, given Giuliani's alleged findings, and raises a stunning question: if there is/was incriminating child porn on Hunter's computer, what has the FBI been doing about it?
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Oct 21, 2020 | turcopolier.typepad.com
A Bidengate summary from the Daily Mail "Documents appear to show Hunter Biden's signature on $85 receipt for repair of laptops left at Delaware store at center of email scandal - while other paperwork reveals FBI's contact with owner
- A receipt from The Mac Shop in Wilmington, Delaware appears to show Hunter Biden's signature for work on three laptops for $85
- It has not been verified yet if that signature is actually Biden's
- FBI paperwork also shows that shop owner John Paul Mac Isaac received a subpoena to testify before the US District Court in Delaware in December 2019
- Last week the New York Post published a report saying e-mails obtained from the laptop show Joe Biden allegedly was in on his son Hunter's business deals
- House Intel chair Adam Schiff said the 'smear' on Biden 'comes from the Kremlin'
- DNI John Ratcliffe said the laptop is not a Russian disinformation campaign
- Biden's campaign says the Democratic nominee engaged in no wrongdoing "
-------------
Well, pilgrims, he sure looks comfy in the tub. I still wonder who took the pictures. Was it the gal in California who later sued him over paternity of her child/fetus, whatever.
Did he take the pictures himself? Interestingly, the Bidens have not denied the implicit charge of corruption, bribery, etc., etc. that is the mass of incriminating e-mail traffic on the hard drive. And then, there are the disgusting sex videos. Does anyone think that these were faked?
SWMBO says that the Bidens have set a new standard for depraved and addled stupidity. As usual, she is right. pl
Eric Newhill , 20 October 2020 at 12:17 PM
Deap , 20 October 2020 at 12:20 PMIt's interesting that Bidens, Epsteins, Clintons, Hollywood types, Weiners, et al engage in all of the sordid behaviors that they accused Trump of in the "Steele Dossier" (and then some).
I always thought the Steele Dossier was poor trade craft; way too over the top. An example being jumping around on a bed and urinating on multiple prostitutes. It puzzled me why they would tell such far out stories. Why stretch credulity?. SWMBO's response was that such behavior is so ubiquitous and frequent among democrat elites that they just assume everyone is doing it. To them it's not far out in the least, it's just a typical Saturday night. I begin to think that she is on to something.
turcopolier , 20 October 2020 at 12:24 PMBorgs for Biden - 50 former intel agents sign statement claiming this Hunter Biden thing is a Russian disinformation racket: https://www.redstate.com/bonchie/2020/10/20/50-former-intel-agents-flush-their-credibility-and-show-why-their-agency-should-be-blown-up/
Any familiar names here, any traps the unwary?
BillWade , 20 October 2020 at 01:42 PMDeap Brennan, Clapper, McLaughlin are all properly described as intelligence bureaucrats, not "agents."
TV , 20 October 2020 at 02:31 PMRudy Guiliani and Steve Bannon stated this morning that more information will be forthcoming within 24-48 hours. The Q folks are thinking that it will be released on Thurs morning for maximum effect at the later in the evening debate. The Admiral who oversaw the Bin Laden raid has endorsed Joe Biden in spite of being a pro life and 2nd amendment advocate. Things are getting interesting to say the least.
NancyK , 20 October 2020 at 02:51 PMAnother oxymoron, like "government worker" - "intelligence" officials.
Self important parasites....oh wait....selfless patriots who "risk their lives every day" for America.Keith Harbaugh , 20 October 2020 at 02:57 PMThe Bidens are not involved, one Biden is. Joe Biden is not responsible for his son's idiocy. I do believe he has massive addiction issues but I need a lot more proof that he took all 3 of his computers in for work and the bill was only $85.00. I need the name of that repair shop it is much more expensive where I live.
ancientarcher , 20 October 2020 at 03:40 PMHere is an account from the MSM documenting Biden Inc.'s practice of graft.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/08/02/joe-biden-investigation-hunter-brother-hedge-fund-money-2020-campaign-227407Quote:
"Don't worry about investors," [James Biden] said, according to the executive,
who spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing fear of retaliation.
"We've got people all around the world who want to invest in Joe Biden."End quote
Anybody claiming Politico is a Russian disinformation operation?
Thanks to Andrew McCarthy for the link.
https://mobile.twitter.com/AndrewCMcCarthy/status/1318595953893494785TV , 20 October 2020 at 04:10 PMColonel,
While I hope and pray for a Trump victory, I am not so sure that he will be able to overcome systematic rigging. What is your opinion on the level of rigging that is going on?
All sorts of worms from all over the place are crawling up and endorsing the slime ridden corrupt Bidens. Who knows what sort of pressure must have been put on them to do that. And if that is so, can you imagine the level of pressure the democrat machine must have put on those who are in charge of conducting the election? Look at the commission on presidential debates for God's sake. Absolutely, no hint of neutrality there!
The media is pulling the wool over everyone's eyes just like in the last election. The polls are all for democrats, again, just like the last election. Methinks the difference this time might just be the magnitude of vote rigging that the democrats will do. How much more will that be versus the last time? Enough to swing the election?
BillWade , 20 October 2020 at 04:56 PMBillWade:
That's the same (Obama) Admiral who said that Trump should be gone:
"......then it is time for a new person in the Oval Office -- Republican, Democrat or independent -- the sooner, the better."
Like the other retired brass and "intelligence" officials, just more swamp creatures wailing about an "outsider" disturbing their little world of endless losing wars and a foreign policy of bending over.ancientarcher , 20 October 2020 at 05:00 PMNancyK, Which is worse, voting for someone with dementia or voting for someone pretending to have dementia?
I haven't heard anything about Joe's brother or sister-in-law having a drug problem, have you? Maybe they just have a pay to play problem, any thoughts?
Hillary certainly looked wonderful in her Chinese cut clothing in the 2016 debates. Joe's got those nice 3 Red Flags going for him on his campaign poster, maybe he should wear a rice farmer's hat to the upcoming debate, no?
I decided to vote today instead of Nov 5th as you had recommended. Did I do the right thing?
james , 20 October 2020 at 05:56 PMNancyK,
You think Joe is innocent of all that has been done by his family? You think druggy Hunter deserved to get a senior vice president position at MBNA straight after graduating from college at $100k a year or that seat at Burisma at $50k a month? Do you think he deserved all of that not because of his dad's influence but because he was so smart and because he graduated from yale? If you believe all of that, you must be smoking some strong stuff.
Here is something you can read to improve your knowledge. This is not how a normal cv looks like, for sure.
Brats like Hunter don't get these amazing deals because they are smart or create value for their employers because of their work. He got these deals because it is a way of paying off his father, the guy who then bats for these employers in the senate or the white house.Deap , 20 October 2020 at 06:01 PM@ NancyK.. true - biden senior is not responsible for biden junior... however it seems junior got the gig thanks daddys connections and willingness to fire the prosecutor so that junior could continue to have the job! that is the part you appear to be turning a blind eye to.... senior has major dirt on him due all this.. either you think it is a made up russian propaganda set up, or you think it isn't... there is enough info at present to show that it isn't a set up, but that daddy was using his position as vp unscrupulously or criminal depending on how you want to filter it.. the fact the media want to push it under the carpet with whatever excuse they provide, doesn't change any of it..
turcopolier , 20 October 2020 at 06:52 PMVote rigging?
14 House seats in California GOP districts flipped a few weeks after the GOP "won" on election night. It took that long for all the third party "harvested votes" to go through the government employee union dominated election office verification procedures.
This election when the GOP turned tables and did their own "vote-harvesting" the Democrat AG and Secy of State cried foul, sent the GOP a cease and desist letter to stop or face fines and punishment. GOP said go pound sand. And the Dems had to back down since the law was too vague to even be enforced.
Unfortunately this means the Democrats in this state will only double down on their "vote harvesting". As if winning or losing California matters - except in the House. One guesses, after the 2020 census California will lose a few House seats anyway, due to the state's outflow of population and the reluctance of illegals to participate in the census in the first place.
Don't forget, it was "term limits" that led to this one-party, one agenda domination of this state. Never ever think "term limits" is an answer for anything.
Term limits only created a huge power vacuum, and in swooped the Democrat back public sector unions running a steady string of revolving door talking head flunkies out of the public sector union world, who immediately passed super-majority legislation that only solidified their permanent domination. It happened so fast since 2000, few in the state knew what hit them.
In 2016, they added "vote- harvesting" - allowing third parties to help fill out and collect mail-in ballots and drop them off by the car loads, which technically must be checked and verified, but in such volumes as to overwhelm the election offices - Cloward-Pivens on steroids- a favorite technique of Barry Soetoro.
james
You are mistaken. Under US law they, IMO, are a conspiracy under RICO.
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Oct 21, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com
"This Is Not A Russian Hoax": 'Nonpublic Information' Debunks Letter From '50 Former Intel Officials'
by Tyler Durden Tue, 10/20/2020 - 08:45 Twitter Facebook Reddit Email Print
Hours before Politico reported the existence of a letter signed by '50 former senior intelligence officials' who say the Hunter Biden laptop scandal "has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation" - providing "no new evidence," while they remain "deeply suspicious that the Russian government played a significant role in this case," Tucker Carlson obliterated their (literal) conspiracy theory .
According to the Fox News host, he's seen 'nonpublic information that proves it was Hunter's laptop ,' adding " No one but Hunter could've known about or replicated this information ."
" This is not a Russian hoax. We are not speculating ."
Watch:
https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-0&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1317255675320348673&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fpolitical%2Fnot-russian-hoax-tucker-carlson-has-seen-nonpublic-information-proving-laptop-was-hunter&siteScreenName=zerohedge&theme=light&widgetsVersion=ed20a2b%3A1601588405575&width=550px
TUCKER: "This afternoon, we received nonpublic information that proves it was Hunter's laptop. No one but Hunter could've known about or replicated this information. This is not a Russian hoax. We are not speculating." pic.twitter.com/cl2ktdmdVc
-- August Takala (@AugustTakala) October 17, 2020Meanwhile, the Delaware computer repair shop owner who believes Hunter dropped off three MacBook Pros for data recovery has a signed work order bearing Hunter's signature . When compared to the signature on a document in his paternity suit, while one looks more formal than the other, they are a match.
Going back to the '50 former senior intelligence officials' and their latest Russia fixation, one has to wonder - do they think Putin was able to compromise Biden's former business associate , Bevan Cooney, who gave investigative journalist Peter Schweizer his gmail password - revealing that Hunter and his partners were engaged in an influence-peddling operation for rich Chinese who wanted access to the Obama administration?
https://lockerdome.com/lad/13084989113709670?pubid=ld-dfp-ad-13084989113709670-0&pubo=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com&rid=www.zerohedge.com&width=890
Did Putin further hack Joe Biden in 2011 to make him take a meeting with a Chinese delegation with ties to the CCP - arranged by Hunter's group, two years they secured a massive investment of Chinese money?
The implications boggle the mind.
Here's the clarifying sentences from the '50 former senior intelligence officials' that exposes the utter farce of it all:
While the letter's signatories presented no new evidence , they said their national security experience had made them "deeply suspicious that the Russian government played a significant role in this case" and cited several elements of the story that suggested the Kremlin's hand at work.
"If we are right," they added, "this is Russia trying to influence how Americans vote in this election, and we believe strongly that Americans need to be aware of this."
It would appear these former intel officials are not aware of the current intel official views, confirmed by DNI Ratcliffe yesterday that:
"Hunter Biden's laptop is not part of some Russian disinformation campaign."
And then there's the fact that no one from the Biden campaign has yet to deny any of the 'facts' in the emails. lay_arrow jin187 , 2 hours ago
Roacheforque , 7 hours agoTotally ridiculous. This ******** beating around the bush for both sides pisses me off. Dump all the laptop contents on Wikileaks if it's real. Let the people sort it out. If you say it's not real, prove it. If Biden wants me to believe it's not real, then stand behind a podium, and say clear as day into a pile of cameras that's it's all a forgery, and that you've done nothing wrong.
Instead we have Giuliani swearing he has a smoking gun, but as far as I can tell he's just pointing his finger underneath his shirt. Biden on the other hand, keep using weasel words to imply it's fake, but never denies it outright. It's almost like he's trying to hedge his bet that no one will manage to prove it's real before he gets into office, and makes it disappear.
East Indian , 4 hours agoTo play the "Russian Card" yet again should be beyond embarrassing. An insult to the intelligence of anyone with an IQ over 80. And so it's harmful to the left wingnut derangeables. Like Assad's chemical weapons and Saddam's WMDs, it is now code for pure ********. Not even code, just more like a signal.
A signal that say's "guilty as charged - we got nothin' but lies and BS over here".
Kayman , 4 hours agoAn insult to the intelligence of anyone with an IQ over 80.
They know their supporters wont find this insulting.
Antedeluvian , 2 hours ago@vulvishka.
538 ? North Korea has better propaganda.
Don't forget to go all in, like you did with Hillary.
4DegreesOfSeparation , 6 hours agoUnfortunately, some very bright people are sucked into the conspiracy theory. I know one. Very bright lawyer. She says, "I still think there is substantive evidence of Russian collusion." I can point to a sky criss-crossed with chemtrails (when you see these "contrails" crossing at the same altitude, this is one sure clue these are not from regular passenger jet traffic) and she refuses to look up. She KNOWS I am an idiot (a PhD scientist idiot at that) because I get news and analysis on the web from sites that just want to sell me tee shirts and coffee mugs (well, she is partly right there!) whereas she gets her news from MSNBC, a venerable and trustworthy news source.
DescendantofthePatriots , 7 hours agoMore Than 50 Former Intel Officials Say Hunter Biden Smear Smells Like Russia
"If we are right," the group wrote in a letter, "this is Russia trying to influence how Americans vote."
strych10 , 8 hours agoThat ****, James Clapper, signed his name at the top of this list.
Known liar, saboteur, and sneak.
The cognitive dissonance in our country is astounding. The fact that they would take these people's opinion over hard fact is astounding.
No wonder why we're sliding down the steep, slippery slope.
Someone Else , 9 hours agoSo... let me get this straight.
50, that's 10 times five, fifty former intelligence officials are going with a convoluted narrative about a ludicrously complicated Russian Intelligence disinformation campaign involving planted laptops and at least half a dozen patsies when the two words "crack cocaine" explain the entire thing?
I'm not sure what's more terrifying; That these people think everyone else is dumb enough to believe this or that they're actually retired intelligence officials .
Who the actual **** is running this ****show? The bastard child of Barney Fife and Inspector Clouseau?
Seriously, "Pink Panther Disinformation Operation" is more believable at this point.
moneybots , 8 hours agoThis needs to get out, because a FAVORITE method of the Deep State, Democrats and the media (but I repeat myself) is to parade some sort of a stupid letter with a bunch of signature hoping to look impressive but that really don't mean a damn thing.
Notre Dame graduates against the Supreme Court nominee, Intelligence agents alleging collusion, former State Department operatives against Trump. Its grandstanding that has been overdone.
otschelnik , 8 hours agoThe letter by 50 former intelligence officials is itself, disinformation.
enough of this , 8 hours agoRemember when Weiner's attorney turned over Huma's home laptop to SDNY/FBI with all of Shillary's emails, and the FBI sat on it for a month and then Comey deep sixed them without even looking at them?
So now the FBI subpeona'd Hunter's laptop and burried it? Deja vu all over again.
Cobra Commander , 7 hours agoThe FBI and DOJ constantly hide behind self-serving excuses to refuse the release of documents and, when forced to do so, they release heavily redacted files. They offer up the usual pretexts to fend off public disclosure such as: the information you seek cannot be disclosed because it involves an ongoing investigation, or the information you seek involves national security, or our methods and sources will be jeopardized if the information you seek is divulged to the public. But it seems the ones who would be most harmed by public disclosure are the corrupt FBI and DOJ officials themselves
The Fonz...before shark jump , 5 hours agoA short 4 years ago the FBI and CIA were all concerned about "Kompromat" the Ruskies might have on Candidate Trump; concerned enough to spy on his campaign and open a counter-intelligence operation.
There are troves of Kompromat material, actual emails and video, on Joe, Hunter, and the whole Biden family; not made-up DNC-funded dossiers claiming a Russian consulate in Miami.
Now when it's Candidate Biden, everyone be all like, "Meh."
Cobra!
Occams_Razor_Trader_Part_Deux , 7 hours agowe gotta listen to the 50 former intelligence agents...you know the ones that had lone superpower status in the early 90s and then pissed it all away with 9/11 and infinity wars in middle east hahahahah ok buddy lol... histories D students....
Signed by James Clapper and John Brennan;
You mean, the 2 Bozos who under the threat of perjury said there was NO evidence of Russian Collusion and the Trump campaign................. and 2 hours later called Trump 'Putin's puppet' on CNN.............
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Oct 19, 2020 | news.antiwar.com
Ratcliffe responded to comments made by Rep. Adam SchiffDave DeCamp Posted on October 19, 2020 Categories News Tags Biden , Russiagate , Ukraine
Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe said on Monday that the information published by The New York Post that allegedly came from Hunter Biden's laptop is not part of a "Russian disinformation campaign."
Ratcliffe's comments came after Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), the House Intelligence Committee chairman, said the scandal surrounding the Bidens and a Ukrainian gas company is a "smear" coming "from the Kremlin."
"Hunter Biden's laptop is not part of some Russian disinformation campaign," Ratcliffe said in an interview with Fox Business . "Let me be clear: The intelligence community doesn't believe that because there is no intelligence that supports that. And we have shared no intelligence with Adam Schiff, or any member of Congress."
Ratcliffe said the FBI is now in possession of the laptop. He said the FBI's investigation is "not centered around Russian disinformation."
Issues have been raised concerning the chain of custody of the laptop since two allies of President Trump were involved, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, and former White House strategist Steve Bannon. But besides speculation from Schiff and the media, nothing ties the laptop to Moscow.
The first email published by the Post last week purports Hunter Biden introduced his father, then-Vice President Joe Biden, to a top executive of the Ukrainian company Burisma Holdings in 2015. Joe Biden has previously said that he never spoke with Hunter about his overseas business dealings.
Hunter Biden landed a high-paying job with Burisma Holdings after the Obama administration orchestrated a coup in Ukraine . Joe Biden has been accused of leveraging a US loan to Kyiv to pressure Ukrainian officials to fire a prosecutor investigating corruption at the company.
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Oct 21, 2020 | www.realclearpolitics.com
Posted By Ian Schwartz
On Date October 20, 2020Rudy Giuliani talks about "sensitive" material on the laptop of Hunter Biden including "numerous pictures" of underage girls and an alleged text message exchange he had with his father where he admits to a relationship with a 14-year-old girl and creating an unsafe environment for his children. https://www.youtube.com/embed/coFx3ZDXWrg?start=265&enablejsapi=1&origin=https:%2F%2Fwww.realclearpolitics.com
The former New York City mayor said he turned the laptop over to police in Delaware with Bernard Kerik because he felt "uncomfortable" with it in his possession in an interview Monday with Newsmax TV's Greg Kelly.
Giuliani narrated the text message in which Hunter talks about his former sister-in-law and lover with the elder Biden:
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/distroscale-public/vplayer-parallel/20200902_2348/ima_html5/index.html
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- Victor Davis Hanson: Will Our Next Revolution Be French, Russian, Maoist, Or American?
- Glenn Greenwald: Media and Intel Community Working Together To Manipulate The American People
- Trump Rips Coronavirus Coverage: "People Aren't Buying It CNN, You Dumb Bastards"
She told my therapist that I was sexually inappropriate. (Giuliani: This would be with an unnamed 14-year-old girl.)When she says that I Facetime naked with [the unnamed 14-year-old girl] and the reason I can't have her out to see me is because I walk around naked smoking crack talking... girls on face time. When she was pressed she said that [the unnamed 14-year-old girl] never said anything like that but the bottom line is that I created and caused a very unsafe environment for the kids.
"This is supported by numerous pictures of underage girls," Giuliani said after reading the message.
"Bernie Kerik and I turned it over to the Delaware State Police because I'm very uncomfortable with this. And I'm very uncomfortable with the fact that these underage girls were not protected," he said.
Giuliani later said that this is not about Hunter Biden but exposing Joe Biden as incompetent. "This is not about Hunter," Giuliani said, but about what a criminal and "horrible father" Joe Biden is. Related Videos
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Oct 21, 2020 | www.theblaze.com
When Bevan Cooney -- the former "junior" business partner to Hunter Biden and Devon Archer -- went to jail in 2019, investigative reporter and New York Times bestselling author Peter Schweizer thought he'd never gain access to the damning emails Cooney had promised. That all changed three weeks ago when Schweizer was given complete access to Cooney's gmail account. POLL: Did you watch any of the 2020 Presidential Town Halls last night?Schweizer joined Glenn Beck on the radio program Tuesday to describe just some of the business deals revealed within these emails -- like Hunter working with an alleged Russian criminal and with Chinese communists to secure their assets, or to secure one-on-one time with his dad, then-Vice President Joe Biden. And all of this new information is completely separate from the emails allegedly discovered on Hunter Biden's laptop recently reported by the New York Post.
"So, I want to make this clear. This [Cooney's emails] has nothing to do with what's on the laptop It didn't come from [Rudy] Giuliani. It didn't come from anybody else, right?" Glenn asked Schweizer.
That's absolutely correct," Schweizer confirmed.
He briefly explained how Cooney, a former Los Angeles nightclub owner, is currently serving a prison sentence for his involvement in a fraudulent business bond scheme with Biden and Archer. From prison, Cooney gave Schweizer written permission to access his Gmail account.
"This is really important," he noted. "We're not looking at printouts. Not looking at PDFs. We're actually in his Gmail accounts themselves, sifting through these emails. And there's a shocking amount of information about deals involving China, involving Russia, involving all sorts of things they were trying to pull off ."
Watch the video below to catch more of the conversation:
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Oct 21, 2020 | www.realclearpolitics.com
Posted By Tim Hains
On Date October 18, 2020Peter Schweizer: We Will Prove Hunter Biden Laundered Russian Oligarch's Money Government Accountability Institute President Peter Schweizer told FNC's Sean Hannity on Friday that evidence will be released before the election proving that Hunter Biden and Russian oligarch Elena Baturina have more of a relationship than previously admitted.https://imasdk.googleapis.com/js/core/bridge3.417.2_en.html#goog_2104145000
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- Victor Davis Hanson: Will Our Next Revolution Be French, Russian, Maoist, Or American?
- Glenn Greenwald: Media and Intel Community Working Together To Manipulate The American People
- Trump Rips Coronavirus Coverage: "People Aren't Buying It CNN, You Dumb Bastards"
HANNITY: All right. So, we can bifurcate for people. This is all separate from what The New York Post was reporting this week. This is separate from what we knew earlier, and it's separate from Ron Johnson and Chuck Grassley's report that they put out, 87 pages, which talked about, well, Russian oligarchs, Kazakh oligarchs, the $3.5 million payment with the former first lady of Moscow, Chinese nationals, $100,000 shopping spree, Russian nationals, Kazakhs nationals, Ukrainian nationals.How much money are we talking about here, and were all three of them involved in all of these endeavors?
SCHWEIZER: Well, it kind of jumps around, but let me just make clear, these are all separate emails from The New York Post and what the Senate did, but they all reinforce the same.
I mean, to take, for example, Ms. Baturina, the Russian oligarch links to organized crime that the Senate sent $3.5 million based on Treasury Department documents, we will be rolling out a story in a couple of days demonstrating that their relationship, meaning Hunter and Devon Archer's relationship with Elena Baturina goes way back and they were performing a number of banking and other financial services for her, services that they had trouble doing, by the way, because several banks did not want to work with her because the money was seen as dirty.
HANNITY: So, literally, these nationals were allowed access to Biden inside the White House according to these emails. I guess my next question is if both of Hunter's business partners are convicted, how did he go scot-free?
SCHWEIZER: Well, that's the question, Sean. There was a trial in 2016, and we actually, I've gone through the notes of that trial, and what it demonstrates is that Hunter Biden's fingerprints are all over this. He has named repeatedly in the court trials, but he was never charged by the prosecutors in New York.
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Oct 21, 2020 | gellerreport.com
A top Republican senator acknowledged the possibility that the FBI investigated whether there was child pornography on a laptop and hard drive that allegedly belonged to Hunter Biden.
by Daniel Chaitin, Washington Editor | October 18, 2020 12:50 PM
Journalist Maria Bartiromo asked Sen. Ron Johnson, the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, about a Business Insider report that described faint handwriting on a subpoena served last year to a Delaware business that was given a water-damaged MacBook Pro to repair but was never retrieved and a hard drive with its contents. The hardware purportedly contained data about foreign business dealings and other matters related to the son of former Vice President Joe Biden.
The subpoena appeared to show the FBI agent who served it was someone named "Joshua Wilson." There was a Joshua Wilson, according to a Star-Ledger report published last year , who was an FBI agent based in New Jersey who spent nearly five years investigating child pornography, but it remains unclear if this is the same Wilson and what exactly the bureau was investigating.https://lockerdome.com/lad/10331214863375206?pubid=ld-7556-5090&pubo=https%3A%2F%2Fgellerreport.com&rid=www.bing.com&width=782
Bartiromo twice asked Johnson, a lead congressional investigator, if he knows of any connection on her Fox News program, Sunday Morning Futures .
"I think you just made the connection. Again, this is what the FBI, I think, has to come clean about," the Wisconsin Republican said in his first reply. Johnson was alluding to his letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray about the laptop sent last week.
Pressed a second time after his initial response, the senator said he could not comment any further.
"I don't want to speculate, other than to say that -- what I said publicly before. Our report uncovered so many troubling connections, so many things that need to be investigated, that I really think we're just scratching the surface," Johnson said. "And, yes, I have heard all kinds of things that I think will probably be revealed over the next few days."
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Republicans, including President Trump, have repeatedly raised the younger Biden's foreign business ventures as being ripe for corruption that could stem all the way to his father, who is now running for president. Joe Biden called the reporting on the emails and photos that purportedly come from his son's laptop, a story that was broken by the New York Post last week , a "smear campaign." Still, neither Hunter Biden nor the Biden campaign have disputed the validity of the data that has generated a wave of headlines in recent days.
John Paul Mac Isaac, the computer store owner in Delaware who claims he copied the hard drive of the laptop that he later gave to former Mayor Rudy Giuliani's lawyer, Robert Costello, told reporters last week he "did not see" child pornography on the hardware.
Asked about the burgeoning controversy, an FBI spokesperson told the Washington Examiner last week that the bureau declines to comment "keeping with our standard practice of not confirming or denying the existence of an investigation." The Associated Press reported the FBI is now investigating whether Russia was involved in the release of emails tied to Hunter Biden.
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Oct 21, 2020 | www.globalresearch.ca
The Biden Campaign and China's Oligarchs By Nauman Sadiq Global Research, October 19, 2020 Region: Asia , Europe , USA Theme: Intelligence In-depth Report: U.S. Elections
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In two bombshell reports, Emma-Jo Morris and Gabrielle Fonrouge of the New York Post have leveled damning allegations of Hunter Biden' s murky financial dealings with Ukrainian and Chinese oligarchs. As expected, $50,000 remuneration paid by Burisma Holdings of Ukraine annually for Hunter's "consultancy job" was only the tip of the iceberg. Hunter was paid millions of dollars bribes that sustained his "rockstar lifestyle" over the years.
Although it was the first report [1] published on Thursday, October 14, and titled "Smoking-gun email reveals how Hunter Biden introduced Ukrainian businessman to VP dad" that gained most attention on the mainstream media, it was the second report [2] published on Friday, October 15, in which the authors have furnished documentary evidence of Hunter Biden's dealings, amounting to millions of dollars and stakes in equities and profits of a private Chinese oil company doing business in Africa, with a Chinese billionaire Ye Jianming that raises serious questions whether the loyalty of the Biden campaign to the American electorate has been compromised due to Hunter Biden's illicit financial transactions with the representatives of the Chinese government.
Image on the right: CEFC's founder Ye Jianming. Photo: SCMP/Handout
It's noteworthy that the name of Ye Jianming came up in the Johnson-Grassley report released last month, too.
"The Suspicious Activity Reports of the Treasury Department flagged millions of dollars in transactions from the Ukrainian gas company Burisma Holdings, a Russian oligarch named Yelena Baturina, and a Chinese businessmen with ties to Beijing's communist government," the Senate report said.
The Johnson-Grassley report further alleged:
"Hunter Biden had business associations with Ye Jianming, Gongwen, and other Chinese nationals linked to the communist government and the People's Liberation Army. Those associations resulted in millions of dollars in cash flow."
Corroborating the Senate investigation, Emma-Jo Morris and Gabrielle Fonrouge noted in the second report of the New York Post:
"Another email -- sent by Biden as part of an Aug. 2, 2017, chain -- involved a deal he struck with the since-vanished chairman of CEFC, Ye Jianming, for half-ownership of a holding company that was expected to provide Biden with more than $10 million a year 'for introductions alone.'
"'The chairman changed that deal after we me[t] in MIAMI TO A MUCH MORE LASTING AND LUCRATIVE ARRANGEMENT to create a holding company 50% percent [sic] owned by ME and 50% owned by him,' Biden wrote.
"A photo dated Aug. 1, 2017, shows a handwritten flowchart of the ownership of 'Hudson West' split 50/50 between two entities ultimately controlled by Hunter Biden and someone identified as 'Chairman.'
"According to a report on Biden's overseas business dealings released last month by Sens. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), a company called Hudson West III opened a line of credit in September 2017.
"Biden's email was sent to Gongwen Dong, whom the Wall Street Journal in October 2018 tied to the purchase by Ye-linked companies of two luxury Manhattan apartments that cost a total on $83 million.
"The documents obtained by The Post also include an 'Attorney Engagement Letter' executed in September 2017 in which one of Ye's top lieutenants, former Hong Kong government official Chi Ping Patrick Ho, agreed to pay Biden a $1 million retainer for 'Counsel to matters related to US law and advice pertaining to the hiring and legal analysis of any US Law Firm or Lawyer.'
"In December 2018, a Manhattan federal jury convicted Ho in two schemes to pay $3 million in bribes to high-ranking government officials in Africa for oil rights in Chad and lucrative business deals in Uganda. Ho served a three-year prison sentence and was deported to Hong Kong in June."
According to a Washington Post report [3] in September:
"Ye Jianming had made inroads with Joe Biden's brother James Biden, as well as Hunter Biden, as the Chinese tycoon sought to build influence in the United States. In early 2018, Hunter Biden was paid $1 million to represent Ye's aide while he was facing the federal bribery charges in the United States.
"In August 2017, a subsidiary of Ye's company wired $5 million into the bank account of a US company called Hudson West III, which over the next 13 months sent $4.79 million marked as consulting fees to Hunter Biden's firm, the report said. Over the same period, Hunter Biden's firm wired some $1.4 million to a firm associated with his uncle and aunt, James and Sara Biden."
Ironically, it was the mainstream media that first broke the story of the illicit financial transactions between the Biden family and Chinese billionaire Ye Jianming in December 2018, though that was a year before Joe Biden was chosen as the Democratic presidential candidate in April.
Giving a detailed biographical account of Ye Jianming from his rapid ascent to a sudden fall from grace in 2017, as the FBI closed in on the Chinese billionaire's company and aides, a December 2018 New York Times report [4] revealed:
"Ye Jianming, a fast-rising Chinese oil tycoon, ventured to places only the most politically connected Chinese companies dared to go. But what he wanted was access to the corridors of power in Washington -- and he set out to get it.
"Soon, he was meeting with the family of Joseph R. Biden Jr., who was then the vice president. He dined with R. James Woolsey Jr., a former Central Intelligence Agency director and later a senior adviser to President Trump. He bestowed lavish funding on universities and think tanks with direct access to top Washington leaders, looking for the benefits access can bring.
"'This is a guy who courted and maintained networks with the People's Liberation Army and took the strategy of 'friends in high places,' said Jude Blanchette, a senior adviser and China head at Crumpton Group, a business intelligence firm.
"He seemed to have the blessings of Beijing. State banks offered CEFC billions of dollars in loans. The company also hired a large number of former military officers, whom Mr. Ye told visitors he prized for their organizational skills. He was deputy secretary of a Chinese military organization from 2003 to 2005 that congressional researchers called a front for the People's Liberation Army unit that has 'dual roles of intelligence collection and conducting People's Republic of China propaganda.'
"From 2009 to 2017, CEFC's revenue jumped from $48 million to $37 billion. [a time period incidentally coinciding with Joe Biden's vice presidency.]
"'It's been clear for some time that this is not just a Chinese commercial company, that they had some intelligence ties,' Mr. Martin Hala, an academic based in Prague, said. 'People from the U.S. intelligence agencies should have known something was going on.'
"Five years ago, CEFC approached Bobby Ray Inman, a retired admiral and national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter, about setting up a joint venture, Mr. Inman said in an interview. The company promised it would pay him $1 million a year, without specifying what business they would go into. He turned down the offer.
"On a 2015 trip to the United States Ye met with Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve chairman, to discuss the economy, according to CEFC.
"CEFC also donated at least $350,000 to the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, a politically connected think tank, according to court testimony. The think tank counts Robert C. McFarlane, the Reagan-era national security adviser, as its president and Mr. Woolsey, a Clinton-era C.I.A. director, as its co-chairman.
"Mr. Ye also further loosened CEFC's purse strings, donating as much as $100,000 to the Clinton Foundation. Outside the Beltway, a CEFC foundation donated at least $500,000 to a Columbia University research center.
"CEFC also organized forums in Hong Kong and Washington that brought together retired American and Chinese military officers, among other events.
"By 2015, Mr. Ye had begun working on perhaps his most politically connected quarry yet: the family of Mr. Biden, the vice president.
"An aide to Mr. Ye met the vice president's second son, Hunter Biden, in Washington. Mr. Ye then met privately with Hunter Biden at a hotel in Miami in May 2017. Mr. Ye proposed a partnership to invest in American infrastructure and energy deals.
"During this period, the vice president's son was managing Rosemont Seneca Partners, an investment firm he formed with Chris Heinz, the stepson of John Kerry, the former secretary of state.
"The trial and conviction in New York in December 2018 of one of his top lieutenants, Patrick Ho, showed that company officials used bribery to win oil and energy contracts in Africa.
"In 2017, as American authorities closed in on Mr. Ye's company, the first call made by one of his emissaries in custody was to Mr. Biden's brother.
"James Biden, a financier and brother of the former vice president, was in a hotel lobby in November 2017 when he got a surprise call on his cellphone. The call was from Patrick Ho, Mr. Ye's lieutenant. Mr. Ho, 69, was in trouble.
"In a brief interview, James Biden said he had been surprised by Mr. Ho's call. He said he believed it had been meant for Hunter Biden, the former vice president's son. James Biden said he had passed on his nephew's contact information.
"'There is nothing else I have to say,' James Biden said. 'I don't want to be dragged into this anymore.'
"Federal agents who had monitored CEFC's rise since at least the summer of 2016 had sprung into action, arresting Mr. Ho in New York on allegations that he had bribed African officials in Chad and Uganda.
"Mr. Ye, meanwhile, has disappeared into the custody of the Chinese authorities. He was last seen in February, 2018, when his private jet touched down in the Chinese city of Hangzhou. CEFC is struggling under $15 billion in debt, and was dissolved early this year."
After reading all this revelatory information regarding suspicious financial transactions between prominent former officials of the US government and the "disappeared" Chinese billionaire, it becomes abundantly clear that Ye Jianming, most likely a pseudonym, was a frontman for the Chinese government who was sent on a clandestine mission to nurture business relations with the Beltway elites, and later made to disappear after his cover was blown once his aides were charged with criminal offenses in the US courts.
China is known to follow the economic model of "state capitalism," in which although small and medium enterprises are permitted to operate freely by common citizens, large industrial and extraction companies, especially a multi-billion dollar corporation the size of CEFC, are run by the Communist Party stalwarts masquerading as business executives.
In addition, China is alleged to practice "debt-trap diplomacy" for buying entire governments through extending financial grants and loans, and what better way to buy the rival government of the United States than by financing the Biden campaign through bestowing financial largesse on the profligate son of the former vice president and current presidential candidate.
Image below: Guo Wengui (Source: Wikimedia Commons)
Notwithstanding, in a tit-for-tat response to the New York Post's explosive report alleging Hunter Biden introduced a top executive at a Ukrainian energy firm he was working for to his vice president dad, the Daily Beast came up with a scoop [5] on Friday, October 16, that the hard disks in which Hunter's emails were found were provided to Rudy Giuliani by a Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui on behalf of dissident members of the Chinese Communist Party.
According to the report,
"Weeks before the New York Post began publishing what it claimed were the contents of Hunter Biden's hard drive, a Sept. 25 segment on a YouTube channel run by a Chinese dissident streamer, who is linked to billionaire and Steve Bannon-backer Guo Wengui, broadcast a bizarre conspiracy theory.
"According to the streamer, Chinese politburo officials had 'sent three hard disks of evidence' to the Justice Department and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi containing damaging information about Joe Biden as well as the origins of the coronavirus in a bid to undermine the rule of Chinese President Xi Jinping
"While Guo's ties to Steve Bannon have long been known -- Bannon was arrested for defrauding donors in August on a 152-foot-long yacht reportedly owned by Guo -- the billionaire appears to have also joined forces with Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani in the former New York mayor's relentless anti-Biden dirt-digging crusade."
Besides posting pictures of Rudy Giuliani and Guo Wengui "cavorting and smoking cigars together" and leveling unsubstantiated allegations that Giuliani has stakes in Guo's fashion lineup, the Daily Beast hasn't challenged the authenticity of Hunter's emails but only questioned the source of origin of hard disks containing irrefutable evidence of the Biden family's murky financial dealings and made a paradoxical claim that dissident members of Chinese Communist Party are trying to sabotage Joe Biden's electoral campaign on Trump's behalf.
Nevertheless, the report raises startling questions that why Chinese dissidents would form "a government-in-exile" in the United States and allegedly support the Trump campaign against Joe Biden's bid for the presidency unless the Biden campaign had received financial support from the government of People's Republic of China whom the Chinese dissidents want to subvert.
The report further alleges:
"Guo Wengui has been in the Trumpworld orbit pretty much from the beginning, paying the $200,000 initiation fee to become a member of the president's Florida golf resort Mar-a-Lago, which Trump has dubbed the 'Southern White House.' But Guo's membership soon became a headache for the administration in the run-up to Trump's first summit meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2017, due to Guo's fugitive status in China.
"At one point, Trump had reportedly considered deporting Guo after the Chinese government called for his extradition in a letter delivered to Trump by casino mogul Steve Wynn in 2017. After presenting the letter during a policy meeting, the president reportedly said, 'We need to get this criminal out of the country,' only for aides to remind him that Guo was a Mar-a-Lago member, eventually talking him out of the decision and ensuring the deportation was scuttled
"Guo has framed himself as a stalwart critic of the CCP and China's corrupt elite, but his efforts have divided China's exile community. Guo has enthusiastically attacked other critics of Beijing as jealous poseurs, including most recently a Texas Christian pastor and Tiananmen protester named Bob Fu -- who was imprisoned in China for his faith before escaping to the U.S. -- whom Guo accuses of being a secret agent for the CCP. Fu has lobbed the same charge back at Guo and his followers."
Instead of debunking Trump's witty remarks following the publishing of Hunter Biden's emails that "the Biden family treated the vice presidency as a for-profit corporation," the information contained in the Daily Beast article lends further credence to the investigative reporting by Emma-Jo Morris and Gabrielle Fonrouge for the New York Post exposing Hunter Biden's sleazy financial dealings with Ukrainian and Chinese oligarchs.
In an exclusive report [6] for the Breitbart New on Friday, October 16, Peter Schweizer and Seamus Bruner allege that newly obtained emails from a former business associate of Hunter Biden's inner-circle reveal that Hunter and his colleagues used their access to the Obama administration to peddle influence to potential Chinese clients and investors -- including securing a private, off-the-books meeting with the former vice president.
The never-before-revealed emails, unconnected to the Hunter Biden emails being released by the New York Post, were provided to Schweizer by Bevan Cooney, a one-time Hunter Biden and Devon Archer business associate. Cooney is currently in prison serving a sentence for his involvement in a 2016 bond fraud investment scheme.
Cooney believes he was the "fall guy" for an investment scheme in which Hunter and business associate Devon Archer avoided responsibility. He reached out to Schweizer after the journalist published a book "Secret Empires" in 2018. Archer was initially spared jail and handed a second trial, however, a federal appeals court reinstated Archer's fraud conviction in the case last week.
The report notes:
"On November 5, 2011, one of Archer's business contacts forwarded him an email teasing an opportunity to gain 'potentially outstanding new clients' by helping to arrange White House meetings for a group of Chinese executives and government officials.
"The group was the China Entrepreneur Club (CEC) and the delegation included Chinese billionaires, Chinese Communist Party loyalists, and at least one 'respected diplomat' from Beijing. Despite its benign name, CEC has been called 'a second foreign ministry' for the People's Republic of China -- a communist government that closely controls most businesses in its country. CEC was established in 2006 by a group of businessmen and Chinese government diplomats.
"CEC's leadership boasts numerous senior members of the Chinese Communist Party, including Wang Zhongyu (vice chairman of the 10th CPPCC National Committee and deputy secretary of the Party group), Ma Weihua (director of multiple Chinese Communist Party offices), and Jiang Xipei (member of the Chinese Communist Party and representative of the 16th National Congress), among others.
"'I know it is political season and people are hesitant but a group like this does not come along every day,' an intermediary named Mohamed A. Khashoggi wrote on behalf of the CEC to an associate of Hunter Biden and Devon Archer. 'A tour of the white house and a meeting with a member of the chief of staff's office and John Kerry would be great.'
"The email boasted of CEC's wealthy membership: CEC's current membership includes 50 preeminent figures such as: Liu Chuanzhi, Chairman of the CEC, Legend Holdings and Lenovo Group; Wu Jinglian, Zhang Weiying, and Zhou Qiren, China's esteemed economists; Wu Jianmin, respected diplomat; Long Yongtu, representative of China's globalization; Wang Shi (Vanke); Ma Weihua (China Merchants Bank); Jack Ma (Alibaba Group); Guo Guangchang (Fosun Group); Wang Jianlin, (Wanda Group); Niu Gensheng (LAONIU Foundation); Li Shufu (Geely); Li Dongsheng (TCL Corporation); Feng Lun (Vantone) and etc.
"The gross income of the CEC members' companies allegedly 'totaled more than RMB 1.5 trillion, together accounting for roughly 4% of China's GDP.' The overture to Hunter Biden's associates described the Chinese CEC members variously as
'industrial elites,' 'highly influential,' and among 'the most important private sector individuals in China today,' dubbed as the China Inc.
"Hunter Biden and Devon Archer apparently delivered for the Chinese Communist Party-connected industrial elites within ten days The Obama-Biden Administration archives reveal that this Chinese delegation did indeed visit the White House on November 14, 2011, and enjoyed high-level access.
"The visitor logs list Jeff Zients, the deputy director of Obama's Office of Management and Budget (OMB), as the host of the CEC delegation. Obama had tasked Zients with restructuring and ultimately consolidating the various export-import agencies under the Commerce Department -- an effort in which the Chinese delegation would have a keen interest.
"Curiously, the Obama-Biden visitor logs do not mention any meeting with Vice President Joe Biden. But the Vice President's off-the-books meeting was revealed by one of the core founders of the CEC. In an obscure document listing the CEC members' biographies, CEC Secretary General Maggie Cheng alleges that she facilitated the CEC delegation meetings in Washington in 2011 and boasts of the Washington establishment figures that CEC met with. The first name she dropped was that of Vice President Joe Biden."
Schweizer suggests that the meeting may have opened the door for Hunter and Devon Archer down the road -- as just two years later they formed the Chinese government-funded Bohai Harvest RST (BHR) investment fund which saw Chinese money pour into it for investments in CEC-linked businesses.
According to the report,
"One of BHR's first major portfolio investments was a ride-sharing company like Uber called Didi Dache -- now called Didi Chuxing Technology Co. That company is closely connected to Liu Chuanzhi, the chairman of the China Entrepreneur Club (CEC) and the founder of Legend Holdings -- the parent company of Lenovo, one of the world's largest computer companies. Liu is a former Chinese Communist Party delegate and was a leader of the 2011 CEC delegation to the White House. His daughter was the President of Didi."
The report adds:
"Liu has long been involved in CCP politics, including serving as a representative to the 9th, 10th, and 11th sessions of the National People's Congress of the PRC and as a representative to the 16th and 17th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party. Liu was the Vice Chairman of the 8th and 9th Executive Committee of All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce (ACFIC), an organization known to be affiliated with the Chinese United Front."
After reading the names of these high-profile Chinese business and political elites visiting the White House and cultivating personal friendships and commercial relationships in the highest echelons of the Obama-Biden administration, one wonders whether the latter devised trade and economic policies serving the interests of the American masses or took care of financial stakes of global power elites.
With his anti-globalist and protectionist agenda, Trump represents a paradigm shift in the global economic order. Trump withdrawing the United States from multilateral treaties, restructuring trade agreements and initiating a trade war against China are a revolution against globalization and free trade of which China is the new beneficiary with its strong manufacturing base and massive export potential.
Thus, it's only natural for the Chinese government to be "anti-Trump", while supporting his neoliberal Democratic rivals, who favor globalization and free trade, in the upcoming US presidential elections.
*
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Nauman Sadiq is an Islamabad-based attorney, columnist and geopolitical analyst focused on the politics of Af-Pak and Middle East regions, neocolonialism and petro-imperialism. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
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Oct 20, 2020 | www.rt.com
The $100-plus million blitz includes at least $22 million from Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, according to an exclusive report from Recode, a subdivision of Vox. Another Democratic megadonor involved is former Google and Alphabet CEO Eric Schmidt, currently advising the Pentagon on technology innovation. Home USA News Big Tech goes all in: Silicon Valley launches $100 million anti-Trump ad blitz – report 20 Oct, 2020 20:08 Get short URL
FILE PHOTO © AFP / Getty Images ; SCOTT OLSON 121 3 Follow RT on
A super PAC bankrolled by Silicon Valley moguls is preparing a massive TV advertising campaign to help boost Democratic candidate Joe Biden against President Donald Trump in the final days before the 2020 US election.
The $100-plus million blitz includes at least $22 million from Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, according to an exclusive report from Recode, a subdivision of Vox. Another Democratic megadonor involved is former Google and Alphabet CEO Eric Schmidt, currently advising the Pentagon on technology innovation.
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Called Future Forward, the super PAC has filed federal paperwork on Tuesday disclosing that it has raised $66 million between September 1 and October 15. It has contracted for $106 million of TV ads between September 29 and November 3, according to media tracking firm Advertising Analytics. This makes it the largest Biden booster outside the Democrats' campaign itself, already a fundraising juggernaut.
Recode also reported that Future Forward "has been recommended in private communications by the team of Reid Hoffman." He is the LinkedIn co-founder and Democratic megadonor previously caught funding a disinformation campaign during the 2017 special Senate election in Alabama, in which a company called New Knowledge created a Twitter army of 'Russian bots' pretending to back the Republican candidate. It was unclear from the Recode story whether Hoffman had contributed any funding to Moskovitz's super PAC.
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Oct 15, 2020 | www.newswars.com
Originally from: Kelen McBreen | INFOWARS.COM
A tweet published by One America News Network's Chief White House Correspondent Chanel Rion claims the hard drive from Hunter Biden's laptop contained "underage obsessions."
"Just saw for myself a behind the scenes look at the Hunter Biden hard drive: Drugs, underage obsessions, power deals " she wrote "Druggie Hunter makes Anthony Weiner's down under selfie addiction look normal. Biden Crime Family has a lot of apologizing to do. So does Big Tech."
Perhaps also referring to "underage" content, Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani told Steve Bannon on the War Room Pandemic podcast on Wednesday that the hard drive contains "sensitive stuff."
"What we're in possession of contains 1,000, maybe more, photographs that are highly, highly – anywhere from inappropriate to illegal – and have to be possessed by the Chinese government," Giuliani said.
Only a portion of the data in the hard drive has been released so far, so an even bigger October Surprise could be awaiting the Democrat Party.
If there is "underage" material on the hard drive allegedly belonging to Hunter, the FBI will have to answer some questions as well.
According to the computer repairman who obtained the laptop, "The FBI first made a forensic copy of the laptop, then returned a few weeks later with a subpoena and confiscated it."
However, the agency did not know the repairman also made a copy in case anything suspicious took place.
ZeroHedge reports , "After he stopped hearing back from the FBI, Isaac said he contacted several members of Congress, who did not respond, at which point his intermediary reached out to Rudy Giuliani's attorney, Robert Costello."
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Oct 20, 2020 | www.realclearpolitics.com
TUCKER CARLSON, FOX NEWS: If you flipped the channel during our show Thursday night, you may have seen the president and his challenger making their respective cases to voters. But President Trump and Joe Biden weren't debating each other. That would have been too risky. There's a massive public health crisis underway, you may have heard.
So to avoid what doomsday hobbyists on Twitter like to call a "superspreader event," Trump and Biden held separate indoor town halls surrounded by people. They talked to partisan moderators instead of each other. That might seem like a loss to the country three weeks before a presidential election. But unfortunately, the science on this question is clear: Nothing could be more dangerous to America than a televised in-person debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump.
So the so-called debate commission made certain a debate couldn't happen. Who benefitted from that decision? Well, not voters. America has held regularly scheduled presidential debates for decades and we have them for a reason. The more information voters can get directly from the candidates rather than the media, the better our democracy functions, not that anyone's interested in democracy anymore.
Joe Biden doesn't care either way. He just didn't want to talk about Burisma. That's the scandal that vividly illustrates how, as vice president, Biden subverted this country's foreign policy in order to enrich his own family. The good news for Biden Thursday night was that he didn't have to talk about it. No one from ABC News asked him about that scandal for the entire 90 minutes.
As we've been telling you this week, the New York Post and a few other news outlets, including "Tucker Carlson Tonight," have published e-mails taken from Hunter Biden's personal laptop. They show that Hunter Biden was paid by foreign actors to change American foreign policy using access to his father, then the vice president. This is a big story. It is also a real story.
Friday afternoon, we received nonpublic information that proves conclusively this was indeed Hunter Biden's laptop. There are materials on the hard drive of that computer that no one but Hunter Biden could have known about or have replicated. This is not a Russian hoax. Again, we're saying this definitively. We're not speculating. The laptop in question is real. It belonged to Hunter Biden. So there is no excuse for not asking about it.
But they didn't ask about it. It was a cover-up in real time. No matter what happens in the election next month, the American media will never be the same after this. It cannot continue this way. It is too dishonest.
Nevertheless, we did learn a few things Thursday night. (It's hard not to learn when you watch Joe Biden try to speak for 90 minutes.) At one point, an activist told Joe Biden that she has an eight-year-old transgender daughter. She asked Joe Biden what he thought about that. Here's how he responded:
BIDEN: The idea that an eight-year-old child or a 10-year-old child decides, 'You know, I've decided I want to be transgender. That's what I think. I'd like to be a -- make my life a lot easier.' There should be zero discrimination. What's happening is too many transgender women of color are being murdered. They're being murdered. I mean, I think it's up to now 17, don't hold me to that number.
So if an eight-year-old biological boy decides one day that he's really a girl, that's final and you'd have to be a bigot to pause and say, "Wait a minute, you're eight years old, you're a small child. Maybe let's think about this for a minute." That's what a normal person who has kids would say. People with kids know that children grow and change. They change their minds about a lot of things, including themselves. That's the reality of it.
But if you're a crazed ideologue, you don't care about reality. So you would tell the rest of us that an eight-year-old is entitled to hormone therapy on demand and permanent, life-altering surgery. That's what Biden is telling us.
It doesn't matter how fashionable talk like this is right now, and it is very fashionable, it is crazy and it's destructive and it's having a profound effect. No one wants to say it, but it's true. We know that between 2016 and 2017, the number of gender surgeries for biological females in this country quadrupled. We also know that many people who get those surgeries regret them later, deeply regret them. We'd have a lot more data on that, but universities are actively punishing researchers who follow that line of inquiry. So much for science.
In the end, mania like this will end. The left is at war with nature. Inevitably, they will lose that war, because nature always prevails. But in the meantime, many children are being hurt irreparably. Biden doesn't care. It's the new thing, and so he's for it. In fact, Biden is now busy rewriting his entire life story to pretend that he has been woke for 60 years. Thursday night, he told us he became a gay rights supporter during the Kennedy administration, sometime around 1962, when he and his father saw two gay men kissing.
When asked about police brutality, the former vice president speculated that maybe people like George Floyd would be alive today if the police had just shot him in the leg a few times.
BIDEN: There's a lot of things we've learned and it takes time. But we can do this. You can ban chokeholds ... But beyond that, you have to teach people how to deescalate circumstances, deescalate. So instead of anybody coming at you and the first thing you do shoot to kill, shoot him in the leg.
How much would you have to know about firearms or human biology to wonder if maybe there could be some unintended consequences there? People do have arteries in their legs, after all, and sometimes bullets do miss their targets. So why did no one point out how demented Biden's answer was?
Well, we have some clarity on the question of why no one pointed it out. It turns out George Stephanopoulos, the moderator of last night's ABC town hall, was not the only political operative in the room. One supposedly uncommitted voter was, in fact, a former Obama administration speechwriter called Nathan Osburn. Osburn repeated Biden campaign talking points to the letter, at one point referring to court-packing as a safeguard "that'll help ensure more long-term balance and stability" on the Supreme Court.
BIDEN: I have not been a fan of court-packing because I think it just generates, what will happen ... Whoever wins, it just keeps moving in a way that is inconsistent with what is going to be manageable.
STEPHANOPOULOS: So you're still not a fan?
BIDEN: Well, I'm not a fan ... It depends on how this turns out, not how he wins, but how it's handled, how it's handled. But there's a number of things that are going to be coming up and there's going to be a lot of discussion about other alternatives as well.
So we did learn something new last night: Joe Biden isn't a fan of court-packing. Court-packing has had a few off years, and Joe Biden started to lose his faith in it, even sold his "Court-Packing" jersey. But at the end of the day, Joe Biden is still open to court-packing and can get back on the court-packing bandwagon depending on how things are "handled." Got it?
Biden was allowed to answer non-questions like this because he was surrounded by sycophants and former employees of his party. Over at NBC, by contrast, the sitting president didn't have that luxury, to put it mildly. (By the way, it's not good for you to be sucked up to too much. It's good to get smacked around a little bit. It makes you sharper.)
During the president's one-hour event, moderator Savannah Guthrie asked him dozens more questions than the voters in the room got to ask. And when Trump began speaking, Guthrie interrupted him over and over again. Joe Biden wasn't there, so the moderator played stand-in for Joe Biden.
The good news about all of this is it's so bad and so transparent that it can't continue. All their stupid little morning shows and their dumb Sunday shows and their even dumber cable shows -- all of that's going away when the smoke clears from this election. There will be a massive realignment in the media no matter who wins, because they've showed who they are and it's so unappealing, so far from journalism, that it can't continue.
Meanwhile, back on ABC, Joe Biden skated on answering any questions of substance about his son or Antifa or BLM. On NBC, Guthrie pushed Donald Trump to condemn QAnon and White supremacy, and he did it dutifully. But it wasn't enough. The point of demanding performative disavowals isn't to get the disavowal, it's to smear the person you're asking to disavow the group by association with the group.
GUTHRIE: You were asked point-blank to denounce White supremacy [at the first debate]. In the moment, you didn't ... A couple of days later on a different show, you denounce White supremacy --
TRUMP: You always do this. You've done this line -- I denounce White supremacy, OK?
GUTHRIE: You did two days later.
TRUMP: I've denounced White supremacy for years. But you always do, you always start off with the question. You didn't ask Joe Biden whether or not he denounces Antifa ... Are you listening? I denounce White supremacy. What's your next question?
NBC was under a lot of pressure from Democrats to make Thursday night's town hall look like this, and just like Facebook and Twitter delivered earlier this week, NBC delivered, too.
whatmeworry? 1 day ago The only difference between the "news" media today, and, say a decade ago, is that they no longer try to conceal their bias. They've dropped the cloak of objectivity and come out as democrat activists. It's sort of refreshing. We no longer have to waste time and energy arguing about the fairness of the media. Scotty2Hotty 1 1 day ago Liberals are more an enemy of the free press than Donald Trump is--we know that for sure after the NY Post incident. For all the times Trump has trashed the press, he has never shut them down (he can't), but the liberals at Facebook and Twitter did just that to the New York Post, because they didn't like a story of theirs. The story should never have been banned anywhere. In a free society, bogus stories are debunked by other free speech outlets and press agencies. They are not banned. Trump is not a friend of the press, but liberals are a worse enemy than he is, to press freedom. Leftists have a strong totalitarian streak, and they continually work to create environments where only one viewpoint is permitted, whether in academia, television, the press or elsewhere. Liberals believe more in shutting down dissent than in discrediting it, through argument. Gadsden_1968 2.0 1 day ago 90% of the media is now formally known as the Democratic Party propaganda ministry. Arm yourselves, it appears the majority of people are 100% controlled by the Democratic Party's propaganda ministry. If Biden wins, his propaganda ministry will make Pravda look like a high school news paper. Architech 1 day ago Why is the crackhead Hunter Biden a taboo subject? Nobody mentions that Hunter is The Train Wreck of the Century. Even on right wing news they don't tell you what a drop dead irresponsible loser low life that Hunter is. He sleeps with his dying brothers wife while he is still alive. Red flag. Plenty of other girls, but no, your sister in law. But that is nothing. Nada. Kicked out of the Navy for drug use. Banged 1000 strippers in Wash DC, knocked one up, denied the child, was proven he was the dad, denied child support and was forced to pay. Nice. Dead beat dad deluxe. There are about 100 things like that. Too long to list. And nobody mentions is. They act like Hunter is just another guy.... Calling out the Loser of the Century is not off limits in my book. Calling out stupidity, no self control, no personal responsibility, corruption, unethical behavior, outright crimes....not off limits. It's actually illegal to be a crack addict did you know that?
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Oct 20, 2020 | www.realclearpolitics.com
Glenn Greenwald: Media and Intel Community Working Together To Manipulate The American People Posted By Ian Schwartz
On Date October 19, 2020Glenn Greenwald: Media and Intel Community Working Together To Manipulate The American People Glenn Greenwald appeared on Tucker Carlson's FOX News show Monday night to criticize the media for its lack of response to the Hunter Biden laptop story. Greenwald also criticized intel community activity in domestic elections and posed the question that even if Russians are behind the story it just requires journalistic investigation in case Biden is compromised.https://imasdk.googleapis.com/js/core/bridge3.417.2_en.html#goog_590212220
"Adam Schiff is seriously the most pathological liar in all of American politics that I've seen in all of my time covering politics and journalism," Greenwald said on 'Tucker Carlson Tonight.' "He just fabricates accusations at the drop of the hat at the other people change underwear. He's simply lying when he just asserts over and over that the Russians or the Kremlin are behind the story. He has no idea whether or not that is true. There is no evidence to support it."
"And what makes it so much worse is that the reason that the Bidens aren't answering basic questions about the story," Greenwald said. "Basic questions like did Hunter Biden drop that laptop off of the repair shop? Are the emails authentic? Do you know denied that they are. Do you claim that any have been altered or are any of them fabricated? Did you in fact meet with Barisma executives? The reason they don't answer the questions is because the media has signaled that they don't have to. That journalists will be attacked and vilified simply for asking."
- Victor Davis Hanson: Will Our Next Revolution Be French, Russian, Maoist, Or American?
- Glenn Greenwald: Media and Intel Community Working Together To Manipulate The American People
- Trump Rips Coronavirus Coverage: "People Aren't Buying It CNN, You Dumb Bastards"
"The whole point of the Intelligence Community since the end of World War II was that whatever propaganda the CIA produces, whatever disinformation campaigns they engaged were never supposed to be directed domestically," he said. "That was the point of the NSA, the CIA, and all those intelligence communities."
"What we have seen since 2016 going back to the 2016 campaign is incessant involvement in U.S. domestic politics. Working with journalists to disseminate purely for partisan ends. If you want to talk about things like violating norms, and dangers to democracy, what's more dangerous than allowing the CIA constantly to be manipulating our politics by making cover for the Biden campaign by claiming anonymously that the Russians are behind the story and therefore you disregard it. Even if the Russians why does that alleviate the responsibility of journalists to evaluate the emails and to examine whether or not Joe Biden actually engaged in misconduct?" Greenwald asked.
"The much bigger point is the way that the information is being disseminated," he said. "It is a union of journalists who have decided that their only goal is to defend Joe Biden and election him president of the United States working with the FBI, CIA, NSA not to manipulate our adversaries or foreign governments, but to manipulate the American people for their own ends. It's been going on for four straight years now and there's no sign of it stopping anytime soon." Related Videos
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Oct 20, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com
Update (1930ET) : In yet another death blow to Adam Schiff and the '50 former senior intelligence officers' "Russia, Russia, Russia" claims, the FBI and DOJ have told a Fox News producer that they do not believe that Hunter Biden's laptop and its contents are part of a Russian disinformation campaign , confirming that the 'current' intelligence community agrees with DNI Ratcliffe's comments yesterday.
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Additionally, a Federal Law Enforcement Official also confirmed to Fox News' Martha MacCallum that the emails are "authentic".
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All of which leaves on big gaping unanswered question (that we all know the answer to)...
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We look forward to the reporting from other mainstream media news agencies now that federal law enforcement has confirmed this is not a 'hoax' and we assume that the NYPost will once again be allowed to tweet since this is now as 'factual' as anything thrown at Trump for the last five years.
y_arrow Fizzy Head , 9 hours agoHan Cholo , 8 hours agoExcuse me, but Who cares what these "former" senior officials think? I want names and party affiliations, that will tell the tale.
and furthermore, if these former guys can muster up a letter why can't the real officials muster up something, anything? They've known for months!! This is growing more ridiculous as time goes by.
"former" -- Meaning they are mostly looking from the outside in and have no clue.
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Oct 20, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com
Treason In America: An Overview Of The FBI, CIA, And Matters Of "National Security"
by Tyler Durden Mon, 10/19/2020 - 23:40 Twitter Facebook Reddit Email Print
Authored by Cynthia Chung via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
"Treason doth never prosper; what is the reason? Why, if it prosper, none dare call it treason."
– Sir John Harrington.
As Shakespeare would state in his play Hamlet , " Something is rotten in the state of Denmark ," like a fish that rots from head to tail, so do corrupt government systems rot from top to bottom.
This is a reference to the ruling system of Denmark and not just the foul murder that King Claudius has committed against his brother, Hamlet's father. This is showcased in the play by reference to the economy of Denmark being in a state of shambles and that the Danish people are ready to revolt since they are on the verge of starving. King Claudius has only been king for a couple of months, and thus this state of affairs, though he inflames, did not originate with him.
Thus, during our time of great upheaval we should ask ourselves; what constitutes the persisting "ruling system," of the United States, and where do the injustices in its state of affairs truly originate from?
The tragedy of Hamlet does not just lie in the action (or lack of action) of one man, but rather, it is contained in the choices and actions of all its main characters. Each character fails to see the longer term consequences of their own actions, which leads not only to their ruin but towards the ultimate collapse of Denmark. The characters are so caught up in their antagonism against one another that they fail to foresee that their very own destruction is intertwined with the other.
This is a reflection of a failing system.
A system that, though it believes itself to be fighting tooth and nail for its very survival, is only digging a deeper grave. A system that is incapable of generating any real solutions to the problems it faces.
The only way out of this is to address that very fact. The most important issue that will decide the fate of the country is what sort of changes are going to occur in the political and intelligence apparatus, such that a continuation of this tyrannical treason is finally stopped in its tracks and unable to sow further discord and chaos.
When the Matter of "Truth" Becomes a Threat to "National Security"When the matter of truth is depicted as a possible threat to those that govern a country, you no longer have a democratic state. True, not everything can be disclosed to the public in real time, but we are sitting on a mountain of classified intelligence material that goes back more than 60 years.
How much time needs to elapse before the American people have the right to know the truth behind what their government agencies have been doing within their own country and abroad in the name of the "free" world?
From this recognition, the whole matter of declassifying material around the Russigate scandal in real time , and not highly redacted 50 years from now, is essential to addressing this festering putrefaction that has been bubbling over since the heinous assassination of President Kennedy on Nov. 22nd, 1963 and to which we are still waiting for full disclosure of classified papers 57 years later.
If the American people really want to finally see who is standing behind that curtain in Oz, now is the time .
These intelligence bureaus need to be reviewed for what kind of method and standard they are upholding in collecting their "intelligence," that has supposedly justified the Mueller investigation and the never-ending Flynn investigation which have provided zero conclusive evidence to back up their allegations and which have massively infringed on the elected government's ability to make the changes that they had committed to the American people.
Just like the Iraq and Libya war that was based off of cooked British intelligence (refer here and here ), Russiagate appears to have also had its impetus from our friends over at MI6 as well. It is no surprise that Sir Richard Dearlove, who was then MI6 chief (1999-2004) and who oversaw and stood by the fraudulent intelligence on Iraq stating they bought uranium from Niger to build a nuclear weapon, is the very same Sir Richard Dearlove who promoted the Christopher Steele dossier as something "credible" to American intelligence.
In other words, the same man who is largely responsible for encouraging the illegal invasion of Iraq, which set off the never-ending wars on "terror," that was justified with cooked British intelligence is also responsible for encouraging the Russian spook witch-hunt that has been occurring within the U.S. for the last four years over more cooked British intelligence, and the FBI and CIA are knowingly complicit in this.
Neither the American people, nor the world as a whole, can afford to suffer any more of the so-called "mistaken" intelligence bumblings. It is time that these intelligence bureaus are held accountable for at best criminal negligence, at worst, treason against their own country.
When Great Figures of Hope Are Targeted as Threats to "National Security"The Family Jewels report , which was an investigation conducted by the CIA to investigate itself , was spurred by the Watergate Scandal and the CIA's unconstitutional role in the whole affair. This investigation by the CIA reviewed its own conduct from the 1950s to mid-1970s.
The Family Jewels report was only partially declassified in June 25, 2007 (30 years later). Along with the release of the redacted report included a six-page summary with the following introduction:
" The Central Intelligence Agency violated its charter for 25 years until revelations of illegal wiretapping, domestic surveillance, assassination plots , and human experimentation led to official investigations and reforms in the 1970s. " [emphasis added]
Despite this acknowledged violation of its charter for 25 years, which is pretty much since its inception, the details of this information were kept classified for 30 years from not just the public but major governmental bodies and it was left to the agency itself to judge how best to "reform" its ways.
On Dec. 22, 1974, The New York Times published an article by Seymour Hersh exposing illegal operations conducted by the CIA, dubbed the "family jewels". This included, covert action programs involving assassination attempts on foreign leaders and covert attempts to subvert foreign governments, which were reported for the first time . In addition, the article discussed efforts by intelligence agencies to collect information on the political activities of U.S. citizens.
Largely as a reaction to Hersh's findings, the creation of the Church Committee was approved on January 27, 1975, by a vote of 82 to 4 in the Senate.
The Church Committee's final report was published in April 1976, including seven volumes of Church Committee hearings in the Senate.
The Church Committee also published an interim report titled "Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders", which investigated alleged attempts to assassinate foreign leaders, including Patrice Lumumba of Zaire, Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic, Ngo Dinh Diem of Vietnam, Gen. René Schneider of Chile and Fidel Castro of Cuba. President Ford attempted to withhold the report from the public, but failed and reluctantly issued Executive Order 11905 after pressure from the public and the Church Committee.
Executive Order 11905 is a United States Presidential Executive Order signed on February 18, 1976, by a very reluctant President Ford in an attempt to reform the United States Intelligence Community, improve oversight on foreign intelligence activities, and ban political assassination.
The attempt is now regarded as a failure and was largely undone by President Reagan who issued Executive Order 12333 , which extended the powers and responsibilities of U.S. intelligence agencies and directed leaders of the U.S. federal agencies to co-operate fully with the CIA, which was the original arrangement that CIA have full authority over clandestine operations (for more information on this refer to my papers here and here ).
In addition, the Church Committee produced seven case studies on covert operations, but only the one on Chile was released, titled " Covert Action in Chile: 1963–1973 ". The rest were kept secret at the CIA's request.
Among the most shocking revelation of the Church Committee was the discovery of Operation SHAMROCK , in which the major telecommunications companies shared their traffic with the NSA from 1945 to the early 1970s. The information gathered in this operation fed directly into the NSA Watch List. It was found out during the committee investigations that Senator Frank Church, who was overseeing the committee, was among the prominent names under surveillance on this NSA Watch List.
In 1975, the Church Committee decided to unilaterally declassify the particulars of this operation, against the objections of President Ford's administration (refer here and here for more information).
The Church Committee's reports constitute the most extensive review of intelligence activities ever made available to the public. Much of the contents were classified, but over 50,000 pages were declassified under the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992.
President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas on Nov. 22nd, 1963. Two days before his assassination a hate-Kennedy handbill (see picture) was circulated in Dallas accusing the president of treasonous activities including being a communist sympathizer.
On March 1st, 1967 New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison arrested and charged Clay Shaw with conspiring to assassinate President Kennedy, with the help of David Ferrie and others. After a little over a one month long trial, Shaw was found not guilty on March 1st, 1969.
David Ferrie, a controller of Lee Harvey Oswald, was going to be a key witness and would have provided the "smoking gun" evidence linking himself to Clay Shaw, was likely murdered on Feb. 22nd, 1967, less than a week after news of Garrison's investigation broke in the media.
According to Garrison's team findings, there was reason to believe that the CIA was involved in the orchestrations of President Kennedy's assassination but access to classified material (which was nearly everything concerning the case) was necessary to continue such an investigation.
Though Garrison's team lacked direct evidence, they were able to collect an immense amount of circumstantial evidence, which should have given the justification for access to classified material for further investigation. Instead the case was thrown out of court prematurely and is now treated as if it were a circus. [Refer to Garrison's book for further details and Oliver Stone's excellently researched movie JFK ]
To date, it is the only trial to be brought forward concerning the assassination of President Kennedy.
The Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) was created in 1994 by the Congress enacted President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, which mandated that all assassination-related material be housed in a single collection within the National Archives and Records Administration. In July 1998, a staff report released by the ARRB emphasized shortcomings in the original autopsy.
The ARRB wrote , "One of the many tragedies of the assassination of President Kennedy has been the incompleteness of the autopsy record and the suspicion caused by the shroud of secrecy that has surrounded the records that do exist." [emphasis added]
The staff report for the Assassinations Records Review Board contended that brain photographs in the Kennedy records are not of Kennedy's brain and show much less damage than Kennedy sustained.
The Washington Post reported :
" Asked about the lunchroom episode [where he was overheard stating his notes of the autopsy went missing] in a May 1996 deposition, Finck said he did not remember it. He was also vague about how many notes he took during the autopsy but confirmed that "after the autopsy I also wrote notes" and that he turned over whatever notes he had to the chief autopsy physician, James J. Humes.
It has long been known that Humes destroyed some original autopsy papers in a fireplace at his home on Nov. 24, 1963. He told the Warren Commission that what he burned was an original draft of his autopsy report. Under persistent questioning at a February 1996 deposition by the Review Board, Humes said he destroyed the draft and his "original notes."
Shown official autopsy photographs of Kennedy from the National Archives, [Saundra K.] Spencer [who worked in "the White House lab"] said they were not the ones she helped process and were printed on different paper. She said "there was no blood or opening cavities" and the wounds were much smaller in the pictures [than what she had] worked on
John T. Stringer, who said he was the only one to take photos during the autopsy itself, said some of those were missing as well. He said that pictures he took of Kennedy's brain at a "supplementary autopsy" were different from the official set that was shown to him. " [emphasis added]
This not only shows that evidence tampering did indeed occur, as even the Warren Commission acknowledges, but this puts into question the reliability of the entire assassination record of John F. Kennedy and to what degree evidence tampering and forgery have occurred in these records.
We would also do well to remember the numerous crimes that the FBI and CIA have been guilty of committing upon the American people such as during the period of McCarthyism. That the FBI's COINTELPRO has been implicated in covert operations against members of the civil rights movement, including Martin Luther King Jr. during the 1960s. That FBI director J. Edgar Hoover made no secret of his hostility towards Dr. King and his ludicrous belief that King was influenced by communists, despite having no evidence to that effect.
King was assassinated on April 4th, 1968 and the civil rights movement took a major blow.
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In November 1975, as the Church Committee was completing its investigation, the Department of Justice formed a Task Force to examine the FBI's program of harassment directed at Dr. King, including the FBI's security investigations of him, his assassination and the FBI conducted criminal investigation that followed. One aspect of the Task force study was to determine "whether any action taken in relation to Dr. King by the FBI before the assassination had, or might have had, an effect, direct or indirect, on that event."
In its report , the Task Force criticized the FBI not for the opening, but for the protracted continuation of, its security investigation of Dr. King:
" We think the security investigation which included both physical and technical surveillance, should have been terminated in 1963. That it was intensified and augmented by a COINTELPRO type campaign against Dr. King was unwarranted; the COINTELPRO type campaign, moreover, was ultra vires and very probably felonious. "
In 1999, King Family v. Jowers civil suit in Memphis, Tennessee occurred, the full transcript of the trial can be found here . The jury found that Lloyd Jowers and unnamed others, including those in high ranking positions within government agencies, participated in a conspiracy to assassinate Dr. King.
During the four week trial, it was pointed out that the rifle allegedly used to assassinate King did not have a scope that was sighted, which meant you could not have hit the broad side of a barn with that rifle, thus it could not have been the murder weapon .
This was only remarked on over 30 years after King was murdered and showed the level of incompetence, or more likely, evidence tampering that was committed from previous investigations conducted by the FBI.
The case of JFK and MLK are among the highest profile assassination cases in American history, and it has been shown in both cases that evidence tampering has indeed occurred, despite being in the center of the public eye. What are we then to expect as the standard of investigation for all the other cases of malfeasance? What expectation can we have that justice is ever upheld?
With a history of such blatant misconduct, it is clear that the present demand to declassify the Russiagate papers now, and not 50 years later, needs to occur if we are to address the level of criminality that is going on behind the scenes and which will determine the fate of the country.
The American People Deserve to KnowToday we see the continuation of the over seven decades' long ruse, the targeting of individuals as Russian agents without any basis, in order to remove them from the political arena. The present effort to declassify the Russiagate papers and exonerate Michael Flynn, so that he may freely speak of the intelligence he knows, is not a threat to national security, it is a threat to those who have committed treason against their country .
On Oct. 6th, 2020, President Trump ordered the declassification of the Russia Probe documents along with the classified documents on the findings concerning the Hillary Clinton emails. The release of these documents threatens to expose the entrapment of the Trump campaign by the Clinton campaign with help of the U.S. intelligence agencies.
The Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe released some of these documents recently, including former CIA Director John Brennan's handwritten notes for a meeting with former President Obama, the notes revealing that Hillary Clinton approved a plan to "vilify Donald Trump by stirring up scandal claiming interference by the Russian security service."
Trey Gowdy, who was Chair of the House Oversight Committee from June 13th, 2017 – Jan. 3rd, 2019, has stated in an interview on Oct. 7th, 2020 that he has never seen these documents. Devin Nunes, who was Chair of the House Intelligence Committee from Jan. 3rd, 2015 – Jan. 3rd, 2019, has also said in a recent interview that he has never seen these documents.
And yet, both the FBI and CIA were aware and had access to these documents and sat on them for four years, withholding their release from several government-led investigations that were looking into the Russiagate scandal and who were requesting relevant material that was in the possession of both intelligence bureaus. Do these intelligence bureaus sound like they are working for the "national security" of the American people?
The truth must finally be brought to light, or the country will rot from its head to tail.
play_arrow FreemonSandlewould , 22 minutes ago
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Miffed Microbiologist , 27 minutes agoProblem here is when you suggest that killing a president is justified you eliminate any possibility of democracy / republic whatever you name it. You are installing being ruled at the wrong end of a barrel.
Duke6 , 13 minutes agoI have to agree with you. My mother was an investigative reporter who worked for Pierre Salinger. She told me some pretty interesting things that were going on in the White House during Camelot which the press shielded from the public. However to be fair, I honestly think this was nothing unusual. Truth and politics rarely go together.
Miffed
MrBoompi , 27 minutes agoLOL. Compared to the globalist animals running the country after his death , the above is poor at attempt at deflection.
USGrant , 3 minutes agoIf JFK flopped it was because he was taken out. He was also too promiscuous for his own good. He really pissed some people off, which is the reason behind the gruesome public assassination.
"Some people" was the MIC. His reluctance to fight a war in Vietnam and the firing of Allen Dulles in the spring of 1962 set the stage. Johnson OKed it and the first full day as president had a meeting with the military chiefs to ramp up the war. The red seal ones and fives issued directly by the Treasury with no debt backing may have gotten the old money in Europe involved as well.
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Oct 20, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com
Hunter Biden Is Not The Problem, The Problem Is His Dad
by Tyler Durden Mon, 10/19/2020 - 19:00 Twitter Facebook Reddit Email Print
Authored by Bruce Wilds via Advancing Time blog,
It seems in our complicated world many murky relationships develop that come across as inappropriate. Over the years, growing crony capitalism has become the bane of modern society and added greatly to inequality. This is why, when we look at Hunter Biden and how he benefited from his father's role as Vice President an investigation is in order. Even before we get to what happened in Ukraine, the ties between China and the Biden family are too many and too large to ignore. President Trump has received a lot of criticism related to how he gained his wealth, however, almost all of what Trump has done he did as an outsider and not as part of the ruling political class.
Before going deeper into this subject it is very important to look at how the "Biden revelations" are being handled by the media. The way media has handled these allegations reveal a flaw or bias in both mainstream media and social media to the point where even censorship is being deployed. A good example of the spin being put on this red flag of corruption can be seen in an article that appeared under trending stories on my city's main news outlet. Here in the conservation heartland of America, the media published a piece titled; "Biden email episode illustrates risk to Trump from Giuliani"
The Associated Press piece written by Eric Tucker shines the spotlight on Rudy Giuliani portraying him as the messenger of Russian contrived information aimed at damaging Biden and influencing the election. It starts off referring to "a New York tabloid's puzzling account about how it acquired emails purportedly from Joe Biden's son has raised some red flags." Then claims that during Giuliani's travels abroad looking for dirt on the Bidens he developed relationships with some rather questionable figures. These include a Ukrainian lawmaker who U.S. officials have described as a Russian agent and part of a broader Russian effort to denigrate the Democratic presidential nominee.
The piece then moves on to the area of how the FBI seems more interested in the emails as part of a foreign influence operation than wrongdoing by Hunter or his father. The people reading this article are informed how this is just another latest episode involving Giuliani that "underscores the risk he poses to the White House" which has spent years dealing with a federal investigation into whether Trump associates had coordinated with Russia.
The part of the article that got my goat was when it referred to how " The Washington Post reported Thursday that intelligence agencies had warned the White House last year that Giuliani was the target of a Russian influence operation." Sighting the Washington Post as an authority and bastion of truth is a common tactic used by journalists to add validity to their bias and lazy reporting. Tucker forgot to mention The Washington Post is the propaganda mouthpiece of Amazon and owned by its CEO Jeff Bezos the richest man in the world which has had several run-ins with the President.
The effort to denigrate Giuliani rather than focus on Biden wrongdoings cites both "former officials' and statements made by a person "who was not authorized to discuss an ongoing investigation and spoke on condition of anonymity to AP," and of course, the exact scope of what was being investigated was not clear. Claiming that many people in the West Wing have been concerned about Giuliani's actions or saying the president has expressed private dismay at Giuliani's scattershot style does not make it true.
Thinking a case can be made that Hunter enriched himself by selling access to his father but claiming Giuliani's lack of credibility will cause the allegations to implode is a bit of a reach. This fact much of what appears to be bribe-taking at the highest levels of government has been overlooked for so long is in its self is a problem. The appointment of an unqualified Hunter Biden to the board of a Ukrainian energy company with a reported compensation package worth some $50,000 per month led the Wall Street Journal, to publish a scathing article, on May 13, 2014. bringing the issue before the public.
At criminal.findlaw.com, FindLaw's team of legal writers and editors detail what constitutes bribery. It is offering or accepting anything of value in exchange to influence a government/public official or employee. Bribes can take many forms of gifts or payments of money in exchange for favorable treatment, such as awards of government contracts. Other forms of bribes may include property, various goods, privileges, services, and favors. Bribes are always intended to influence or alter the action of various individuals and are linked to both political and public corruption. In most situations, both the person offering the bribe and the person accepting can be charged.
Was Influence Peddled Or Bribes Taken?
Both giving and receiving bribes is usually a felony with significant legal ramifications. Influence peddling, the illegal practice of using one's influence in government or connections with persons in authority to obtain favors or preferential treatment falls into this category. One thing is clear, whenever we are talking about the involvement of huge sums of money, foreign players, officials holding high public office, or family members of politicians a few eyebrows should get raised. With this in mind, the Biden problem extends well past Hunter but also into how other family members have profited from Joe's time as Vice President such as his brother's involvement in a huge government contract in Iraq.
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The issue of Hunter Biden receiving money from Russia, Ukraine, and China surfaced during the first Presidential debate and Biden claimed it was a story already discredited by authorities. This narrative was destroyed when the Washington Times acknowledged the Treasury Department records confirm Hunter Biden received a wire transfer for $3.5 million from the Mayor of Moscow's wife. It is difficult to find anyone that holds Hunter in high esteem and the fact the United States suspects the woman sending him this money built much of her wealth through corruption does little to improve his standing. For those of us cynical of all the so-called public servants that seem to line their pockets and hold the attitude they are above the law this is a big red flag.
If the veil of secrecy surrounding Hunter's career is lifted we will most likely find Hunter's dad did share in the spoils bestowed upon not only his son but others in the Biden family. I contend Joe Biden's cozy relationship with corruption is why former President Obama did not rush to endorse Biden when he announced he planned to run. To be clear, we are talking about, millions, and hundreds of millions of dollars or more. For us cynics, we see this as what may be only the tip of the spear when it comes to public officials throwing the American people under the bus for fun and profit. As a voter, this dovetails with my concern about Biden's relationship and attitude towards China which I consider a major issue. Jan_Michael_Vincent007 , 4 hours ago
Jan_Michael_Vincent007 , 4 hours agoThe [neoliberal] political class is the problem. ******* all of them. Biden just got caught.
RedDog1 , 4 hours agoThe political class is the problem. ******* all of them. Biden just got caught.
philipat , 2 hours agoHighly recommend reading Peter Schweitzer's book Secret Empires. It's business as usual to launder bribes through family members and associates.
Rural Hermit , 2 hours agoYes agreed, the problem here is actually that the entire US political (and economic) system is completely corrupt and broken. Why has no action been taken against those responsible for a proven attempted coup? Or against a MSM and SillyCon Valley that is censoring everything the average American (rightlly or wrongly) actually reads and which is stifling the very democracy and free speech upon which the country was founded?
The answer? Follow the money.
I do disagree with the author about the specific Biden situation because "The Biden Crime Family" would be a better description. They are ALL responsible. It is obvious from the Hunter laptop that payments were being made to "The Big Man" and other family members also, so this is NOT a Hunter-specific problem. The game was for Hunter to serve as a proxy for "The Big Man" and receive the "commissions" (better described as influence peddling payments and extortion - something the Dems are very good at; The Clinton Foundation Model!!) for onward distribution to the family, visibly or invisibly. In this way, "The Big Man" would not have anything to report and could appear to be "clean". Pretty obvious to anyone who can fog a mirror?
And yet still they vote for him. Does that mean a public acceptance of the sleaze and corruption which is the US today? I certainly hope not.
gregga777 , 3 hours agoWhy do you think Obama picked Biden to be his VP? He knows how to shakedown everyone. Obama's tutor. I do think that the student has surpassed the teacher though. When the rest of this shakes out, the Kenyan will be in chains.
HoodRatKing , 1 hour agoIf the truth ever comes out, it will probably show that, among other things, Hunter Biden was / is probably connected to human trafficking networks, and most likely Eastern European, most likely involving The Russian Mafia. It's not a stretch to speculate that it also included children.
gregga777 , 4 hours agoThe problem is at all levels , not just the top...
Rusty Shorts , 3 hours agoIf the United States of America had a functioning [sic] Intelligence Community and [Ha, ha, ha] national law enforcement the Silicon Valley tech giants and others like Amazon wouldn't be heavily infiltrated by People's Republic of China Ministry of State Security operatives. Consequently, the massive extent of political corruption would be common knowledge, especially specifics regarding names, dates, places and amounts. Right Paul Ryan and Willard Romney?
Leguran , 4 hours agoThe hits just keep coming.
"Pelosi's Son Now Involved In Ukraine Scandal, Democrat Party In Shambles"
Stackers , 4 hours agoSeriously, does anyone think a Democrat controlled Congress will investigate Biden and all his cronies, to include Obama? The whole DC swamp is set up to allow selling out of the American people. DC is not just a threat to national security it is steeped in Treason.
No sense ranting as it does nothing. The only consolation is that stupid people who vote Biden/Harris will get the crime and corruption they voted into office.
told_ya_so , 4 hours agoIn Roman times when someone was caught bribing a public official they would cut off his nose, sew him in a bag with a wild animal, and throw that bag in the river
Merica101 , 4 hours agoThe problem with all this is that it is extremely well documented going back a number of years of Hunter Jnr's shopping trips with his father and nothing has been done about it all. Just search on Biden and China, Romania or Ukraine and then you see the "deals" that Hunter gets every time.
Every f\/cking place that Biden turned up, Hunter was right behind with his hand out, like some sort of mob shakedown. Did Biden senior tell Hunter what to do and who to meet because junior doesn't seem that clever enough to come up with this on his own? That way, the money also flows to junior who then funnels it to dad later on (which the laptop seems to show).
Washington insiders know the f\/cking truth and are desperate to keep the gravy train going. That is why they hate Trump. That is why Barr and co have no interest in getting to the truth because they are all implicated. The swamp is very deep.
Fuster-cluck , 3 hours agoHuman nature is swampy - that's why the Founding Fathers tried to design a system that limited the "swampiness'. Unfortunately, they couldn't even begin to imagine the depravity and games that are now being played. Pray.
Smilygladhands , 3 hours agoI have worked for a number of large multi-national corporations. In each, employees must take an annual ethics course. The only approved amount you can spend on a client is $0. I mean, no golf, no lunches, no tee shirts, no hunting weekends, zippo, nothing. If anyone in your family is connected to government, it is automatically assumed to be a conflict of interest, and you must remove yourself from any part of the dealings. These policies have been implemented because of the intense fear of the unlimited penalties that may be applied by goverment sponsored prosecutorial abuse.
So tell me, have those same standards been applied here? Ha. Ha. Ha.
TahoeBilly2012 , 3 hours agoi think we must implement a no fraternization rule between DC politicians and staff and the media. too many personal relationships going on up there
Lucius Septimius Pertinax , 3 hours agoTards have finally been caught out, no way back.
Look man, I never would have voted for HILLARY OR JEB, no f'ing way! I am a Ron Paul Libertarian and I rolled the dice with Trump.
You Tards are all a gang of freaks. The fact you even halfway support Biden (or Hillary) is pathetic. The only way you get change is sticking to your guns or having a Trump come along and hope he is for the people and not a Satanic criminal, like the Biden's, the Bush's and the Clinton's. What exactly is it that you freaks don't get and while Bernie may have been somewhat more "authentic" than the rest, he's a friggin Bolshevik Commy, in his own way, worse than them all, likely not as corrupt.
There's nothing left to the Dem Party, zero, zilch, it's a stinking rotting corpse relying on Corporate Media lie after lie to try to compete with Trump. Hell, every Neocon has left Trump and joined up with y'all. Geez, the stench!
Pathetic, disgusting, sick.
sirnzee , 3 hours agoWhat bothers me about all this is the reaction of Democrats in general. They don't seem to care what the Biden's have done, as long as they defeat Donald Trump. We seen this on a smaller scale with the impeachment of Bill Clinton, it's all about sex manta. But in this case we have what appears to be at least for now, almost a watertight case against Joe Biden. And still no moral outrage at what Biden's family is up to? Guess I should not have been amazed, but still hope their are a few thinkers left on the left that can still see the truth when it bites them.
I expected the CNN's of the left to react this way. Further when their "the Russians" excuse for everything, is exhausted, they will need someone else to blame, cause they know Biden and son are as pure as the driven snow. Or at least the owners of all these so called media news companies decide that Joe cannot win and flush the comode on him.
Merica101 , 3 hours agoThe media has done a terrific job of brainwashing half of America. So sad to be a part of this. Who is to blame? The media, or the people who allowed their minds to be controlled the way they are?
Fugly
12Doberman , 4 hours agoMost of the MSM have their own agenda - a globalist agenda where the US is not their priority.
chiquita , 3 hours agoSome deny the Biden's got the money which is absurd since the Senate report details the wire transfers. Denial of facts seems to be a democrat trait.
Oracle of Kypseli , 1 hour agoThis is the Democrat philosophy--one of the best movie scenes ever.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mC9Op0vI-70&ab_channel=mjbandes
sbin , 4 hours agoTry This also
CogitoMan , 3 hours agoBiden has used his family as bag men for graft since he was shaking down banks that incorporated in Delaware for tax purposes.
He was MBNA Joe long before he became dementia Joe.
Totally vile corrupt dullard on his best day.
That is why the DNC wants him.
12Doberman , 3 hours agoAny person who has knowledge of Biden family crimes and still votes for him is beyond deplorable.
Even demonrats that hate Trump IF they have at least minimum token of decency should abstain from voting.
But alas, most of dumbocrats will vote for Biden even if he raped their daughters and shot their wives.
This country with such moral attitude has no chance of survival, especially when tough times come.
Sad, very sad.
Md4 , 4 hours agoTrump learned quickly that without powerful allies in powerful positions in the executive agencies, within congress, and in the courts he's essentially powerless against this corruption. Pelosi is involved in Ukraine...McConnell is up to his eyeballs in Chinese graft.
Hotspice2020 , 4 hours ago"Hunter Biden Is Not The Problem, The Problem Is His Dad"
Pops has been demonstrably crooked for years.
But... Hunter is not a child.
He's a grown man... with a law degree.
His problems are now...his own.
He can begin to recover...when he accepts responsibility for them...
tyberious , 5 hours agoStop treating mainstream media as "independent, objective, unbiased" they are "captured media", and vassal servants to a hidden hand ruling elite ... as are the Bidens and K. Harris. The Clintons were vassals before as was slamma Obama. The media will say whatever their master tell them to say. Thus, when a Hard Drive with pedo, crack, bribery is found, the masters say...blame it on the Russians. When Trump wants to bring Hunters double dealing to light...the masters say.. Impeach Trump. What is needed is for a bright light to shine on the owners of the media...e.g., Bezos Rag (Wash. Post) and Laurene Powell Jobs (mistress to Steve) owns the Atlantic. Once you keep focusing on the fact that the media has owners that make every story fit their narrative and you shine a light on them, then you can solve the problem.
zerozerosevenhedgeBow1 , 4 hours agoTerm limits
Full income disclosures while in office
No benefit for any legislation co-authored after leaving office
moneybots , 3 hours agoNo honor, integrity or honesty in politics anymore. Why would there be any, when apart for a little public shaming, corruption pays and pays big. The Clinton foundation raked in hundreds of millions, altered policy and maybe even caused death of the impoverished, i.e., Haiti and other places. Sold out national and global security with Uranium One and other controversies. The end result?... They got to keep all the money. When that happens, everyone in and running for office gets the message and sees dollar signs.
You need serious recourse like some sort of treason charges when you put money over country. Audit all family members and colleagues. Then do not let lobbying jobs before or after office.
Merica101 , 4 hours ago"The Associated Press piece written by Eric Tucker shines the spotlight on Rudy Giuliani portraying him as the messenger of Russian contrived information aimed at damaging Biden and influencing the election. It starts off referring to "a New York tabloid's puzzling account about how it acquired emails purportedly from Joe Biden's son has raised some red flags.""
Yes, it raises Red Flags about the integrity of the Associated Press, considering the story is a propaganda piece.
toady , 4 hours agoJoe and Hunter Biden (and the Biden family) aren't the ONLY ONES....there are many others.
TheLastMan , 3 hours agoThe questions that simply are not being asked/answered....
I have not heard that any Biden has been asked about any of this... apparently they thought they could just have CNN and the other talking heads say it was all "debunked" and the brain dead general population would nod and say "okay".
And they were right, the demonrats are all just doing the Alfred E Numan "who, me, worry?"
It's simple. The "17 intelligence agencies" need to be all over this, starting 15 years ago.
But they aren't. And they won't. And the US will not recover.
Smilygladhands , 3 hours agoperspective:
1. you work 50 hours a week
2. .gov takes 22% for income tax
3. joe biden (and the rest) take your tax $$$ and provides $$$ foreign aid to country X
4. hunter biden makes business connection to country x
5. country x takes your foreign aid tax dollars (edit) and pays hunter biden $$ for his services
6. hunter biden pays joe biden $$ for (his service to your country) edit - servicing your country
7. repeat step 1
Md4 , 4 hours agothe biggest problem that must be addressed is our dishonest, biased DNC propaganda arm also known as main stream media.
they've allowed biden to get away with not answering the SCOTUS packing question and now actively running cover for him. we cannot allow this to continue
HailAtlantis , 4 hours ago" Both giving and receiving bribes is usually a felony with significant legal ramifications. Influence peddling, the illegal practice of using one's influence in government or connections with persons in authority to obtain favors or preferential treatment falls into this category."
When it involves a mortal adversary... we call it something else...
johnny two shoes , 2 hours agoAlways lots of fun this time of year taking Anti-Money Laundering etc continuing education courses and reading about high level scandals in finance and governments in current news (it's just gotten progressively more insidious every year).. Scrutinizing little 'guys' while making billions at the top.
vasilievich , 4 hours agoCan't forget old Swiftboat Kerry...
At the time, Hunter Biden, now 49, and Christopher Heinz, the stepson of then-Secretary of State John Kerry, co-owned Rosemont Seneca Partners, a $2.4 billion private equity firm. Heinz's college roommate, Devon Archer, was managing partner in the firm. In the spring of 2014, Biden and Archer joined the board of Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian gas company that was at the center of a U.K. money laundering probe. Over the next year, Burisma reportedly paid Biden and Archer's companies over $3 million.
vasilievich , 4 hours agoElecting a President is electing someone in formal command of enough power to kill most of the people on the planet - perhaps three times over. Including you and me. This is not the mayor of Minneapolis we're talking about.
12Doberman , 4 hours agoTo use biologists' terminology the species may not be adaptive. To be clever at graft does *not* assure survival in the long run. It may assure extinction.
chiquita , 4 hours agoBiden wasn't clever. Hillary was a bit clever using a Foundation and a 'charity' to launder her graft. Cost her 15% or so but she had the facade of the charity. Biden put his crackhead son in charge of laundering the graft...needless to say it was careless in the extreme...and the DNC knew all about this before they selected Biden. Stunning level of arrogance.
SurfingUSA , 4 hours agoNobody ever said Biden was a smart guy. He knew how to plagerize as in words (speeches), but he didn't know how to copy as in ideas (charitable foundations)
coelacanth10 , 3 hours agoPer someone on this forum who has met Biden, he is stupid not just by politician standards but by everyday people standards.
chiquita , 4 hours agoBill gets credit for using the Foundation, base on a undergraduate course at Georgetown on non-profits and foundations.
Obama had to know what was going on, if not a party to it. There was a clear distance between the two of them--Obama did not show a great love for Biden and you have to wonder what that was all about. He tried to tell Joe "he didn't have to do it" relative to running, which leaves a lot open to interpretation. Trump keeps saying that Biden was not a bright guy and that's pretty obvious in a lot of Biden's stories and his overall history. Obama knew Biden wasn't the smartest guy too. Was Obama trying to tell Joe to leave well enough alone and not run for the presidency, which would surely expose all this stuff? There was a good chance Biden wasn't going to get this far, but now see what has happened. You have to wonder what is at play with this--why didn't they shut Biden down before it got this far?
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Oct 20, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com
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JGResearch , 21 minutes ago
BAMCIS , 37 minutes agoAdd this to the list:
BREAKING NEWS: Here's Why the Mayor of Moscow's Wife Paid Hunter Biden $3.5 Million And Likely More!
According to US treasury documents provided by the Senate Finance and Homeland Security Committees, Hunter Biden was paid $3.5 million from the Mayor of Moscow's wife.
The report by the Senate Finance and Homeland Security Committees was released last month and it was devastating.
Hunter Biden received a $3.5 million wire transfer from Yelena Baturina, the wife of the former mayor of Moscow.
Until today we didn't know why Yelena Baturina paid Hunter millions of dollars.
According to emails and documents, Yelena Baturina laundered funds into the US in avoidance of sanctions, Devon Archer claimed the firm received $200 million.
Emails provided by Matthew Tyrmand come directly from Hunter associate's Gmail account. They are still hosted on Google's servers. Bevan Cooney flipped and gave his login info.
Sources:
ps:// twitter.com/JackPosobiec?ref_src=twsrc ^tfw|twcamp^tweetembed|twterm^1318292666681995264|twgr^share_3%2Ccontainerclick_0&ref_url=https%3A%2F% 2Fwww.thegatewaypundit.com %2F2020%2F10%2Fbreaking-news-mayor-moscows-wife-paid-hunter-biden-3-5-million-likely%2F
truth or go home , 26 minutes agoThe sky is blue, water is wet and women have secrets.
Might as well add: " Politicians are dishonest." That is not an "October Surprise". More like ....duuuuuh.
Not sure where the moral contest lies between Biden and Trump. Perhaps that Trump wears his corruption on his sleeve?
HarryKallahan , 4 minutes agoAnyone who was paying attention knew all about this at least 5 years ago. It's not an October surprise.
Biden has been successfully playing the political game for almost 50 years. He should know better than to put his hand in the cookie jar for his son over and over, and yet he did it. It shows you all you need to know about his character.
But you already knew that too. The fact that he is even in the position to run for President at his age and with clear mental decline beginning to show means he is fully beholden to the deep state. He is and will be a total puppet of the machine.
The election is down to this: Do you want a nice guy who is a sellout and a puppet and will do and say whatever the money masters want him to? or do you want a complete ******* who tells the truth, but gets shut down at every turn?
captain-nemo , 16 minutes agoLooks like Hunter's job has always been being the 'bag man'.
Collecting payoff money for daddy Joe Biden.
That's how Joe has lived in that big mansion on a senator's salary.
Atlas_Shrugged , 8 minutes agoBreaking news
Holy ****. The Biden's received 3.5 million dollars in a wire transfer from Yelena Baturina, the wife of the former mayor of Moscow , to launder Russian funds into the US in order to avoid US sanctions. The fund that was laundered this way was 200 million dollars, and for this job, the Biden's was compensated with the net sum of 3.5 million dollars. If this is not a crime , what is?
That was cheap. The fees should have atleast been 10%
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Oct 20, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com
Sperry Exposes The Complete History Of Hunter Biden's Crony-Connected Jobs
by Tyler Durden Mon, 10/19/2020 - 23:00 Twitter Facebook Reddit Email Print
Authored by Paul Sperry via RealClearInvestigations.com,
Hunter Biden profited from his father's political connections long before he struck questionable deals in countries where Joe Biden was undertaking diplomatic missions as vice president. In fact, virtually all the jobs listed on his resume going back to his first position out of college, which paid a six-figure salary, came courtesy of the former six-term senator's donors, lobbyists and allies , a RealClearInvestigations examination has found.
Hunter Biden: Through a lawyer, he maintained he and his father dutifully avoided "conflicts of interest." Democratic National Convention/YouTube
One document reviewed by RCI reveals that a Biden associate admitted "finding employment" for Hunter Biden specifically as a special favor to his father, then a Senate leader running for president. He secured a $1.2 million gig on Wall Street for his young son, even though it was understood he had no experience in high finance. Many of his generous patrons, in turn, ended up with legislation and policies favorable to their businesses or investments, an RCI review of lobbying records and legislative actions taken by the elder Biden confirms.
That the 50-year-old Hunter has been trading on his Democratic father's political influence his entire adult life raises legal questions about possible influence-peddling, government watchdogs and former federal investigators say. In addition, the more than two-decades-long pattern of nepotism casts fresh doubt on Joe Biden's recent statements that he "never discussed" business with his son, and that his activities posed "no conflicts of interest."
No fewer than three committees in the Republican-controlled Senate have opened probes into potential Biden family conflicts. Investigators are also poring over Treasury Department records that have flagged suspicious activities involving Hunter's banking transactions and business deals that may be connected to his father's political influence.
U.S. ethics rules require all government officials to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest in taking official actions. The Bidens have denied any wrongdoing.
While most of the attention on Hunter has focused on his dealings in Ukraine and China when his father was in the White House, he also cashed in on cushy jobs and sweetheart deals throughout his dad's long Senate career, records reveal.
"Hunter Biden's Ukraine-China connections are just one element of the Biden corruption story," said Tom Fitton, president of the Washington-based watchdog group Judicial Watch, who contends Biden used both the Office of the Vice President and the Senate to advance his son's personal interests.
In each case, Hunter Biden appeared under-qualified for the positions he obtained. All the while, he was a chronic abuser of alcohol and drugs, including crack cocaine, and has cycled in and out of no fewer than six drug-rehab treatment programs, according to published reports. He's also been the subject of at least two drug-related investigations by police, one in 1988 and another in 2016, according to federal records and reports. A third drug investigation resulted in his discharge from the U.S. Navy Reserve in 2014.
This comprehensive account of Hunter Biden's "unique career trajectory," as one former family friend gently put it, was pieced together through interviews with more than a dozen people, several of whom insisted on anonymity to describe private conversations, and after an in-depth examination of public records, including Securities and Exchange Commission filings, court papers, campaign filings, federal lobbying disclosures, and congressional documents.
Hunter Biden's resume begins 24 years ago. Here is a rundown of the plum positions he has managed to land since 1996, thanks to his politically connected father and his boosters:
1996-1998: MBNA Corp.Fresh out of college, credit-card giant MBNA put him on its payroll as "senior vice president" earning more than $100,000 a year, plus an undisclosed signing bonus. Delaware-based MBNA at the time was Biden's largest donor and lobbying the Delaware senator for bankruptcy reforms that would make it harder for consumers to declare bankruptcy and write off credit-card debt.
When Tom Brokaw asked Biden in 2008 about whether his son's job was a conflict of interest, he snapped "Absolutely not." It was an answer he'd repeat many times in the future. NBC News/YouTube
Besides a job for Hunter, bank executives and employees gave generously to Joe Biden's campaigns – $214,000 total, federal records show – and one top executive even bought Biden's Wilmington, Del., home for more than $200,000 above the market value, real estate records show. The exec paid top dollar – $1.2 million – for the old house even though it lacked central air conditioning. MBNA also flew Biden and his wife to events and covered their travel costs, disclosure forms show.
Sen. Biden eventually came through for MBNA by sponsoring and whipping votes in the Senate to pass the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention Act.
When NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw asked Biden during the 2008 presidential campaign whether it was wrong "for someone like you in the middle of all this to have your son collecting money from this big credit-card company while you were on the (Senate) floor protecting its interests," Biden gave an answer he would repeat many times in the future: "Absolutely not," he snapped, arguing it was completely appropriate and that Hunter deserved the position and generous salary because he graduated from Yale.
1998-2001: Commerce DepartmentHunter also capitalized on the family name in 1998 when he joined President Clinton's agency. In spite of having no experience in the dot-com industry, he was appointed "executive director of e-commerce policy coordination," pulling down another six-figure salary plus bonuses.
He landed the job after his father's longtime campaign manager and lawyer William Oldaker called then-Commerce Secretary William Daley, who'd also worked on Biden's campaigns, and put in a good word for his son, according to public records.
2001-2009: Oldaker, Biden & BelairAfter Republican President George W. Bush took over the Commerce Department, Hunter left the government and joined Oldaker to open a lobbying shop in Washington, just blocks from Congress, where he gained access to exclusive business and political deals.
Robert Skomorucha: Hunter had "a very strong last name that really paid off in terms of our lobbying efforts." LinkedIn
Federal disclosure forms show Hunter Biden and his firm billed millions of dollars while lobbying on behalf of a host of hospitals and private colleges and universities, among other clients. In a 2006 disclosure statement submitted to the Senate, Hunter said his clients were "seeking federal appropriations dollars."
Hunter won the contract to represent St. Joseph's University from an old Biden family friend who worked in government relations at the university and proposed he solicit earmarks for one of its programs in Philadelphia. The friend, Robert Skomorucha, remarked in a press interview that Hunter had "a very strong last name that really paid off in terms of our lobbying efforts."
These clients, like MBNA, also favored bankruptcy reforms to make it harder for patients and students to discharge debt in bankruptcy filings. At the same time Hunter was operating as a Beltway lobbyist, he was receiving "consulting payments" from his old employer MBNA, which was still courting his father over the bankruptcy reforms.
In 2007, Hunter also dined with a private prison lobbyist who had business before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee Joe Biden chaired, according to published reports. Senate rules bar members or their staff from having contact with family members who are lobbyists seeking to influence legislation.
William Oldaker: Did not just make Hunter a rich lobbyist, but secured him a $1 million loan that went sour. ldaker & Willison
Hunter's lawyer-lobbyist firm was embroiled in a conflict-of-interest controversy in 2006 when it was criticized for representing a lobbyist under investigation by the House ethics committee. The lobbyist was still taking payments from his old K street firm while working as a top aide on the House Appropriations Committee. Hunter at the time was lobbying that same committee for earmarks for his clients.
William Oldaker did not just make Hunter a rich lobbyist. Oldaker also secured a $1 million loan for him through a bank he co-founded, WashingtonFirst, that Hunter sought for an investment scheme, which later went sour.
Joe Biden deposited hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign and political action committee donations at WashingtonFirst, while funneling hundreds of thousands in campaign and PAC expenditures to Oldaker, Biden & Belair. Joe Biden's payments to Hunter's lobbying firm, including more than $143,000 in 2007 alone, were listed as "legal services" in Federal Election Commission filings.
Oldaker did not respond to a request for comment left at his office.
National Group: Hunter won earmarks for the University of Delaware and other Biden constituents. thenationalgroup.net
2003-2005: National Group LLPWhile serving as a partner at Oldaker, Biden & Belair, Hunter also registered as a lobbyist for National Group, a lobbying-only subsidiary which shared offices with OB&B and specialized in targeted spending items inserted into legislation known as "earmarks."
Hunter represented his father's alma mater, the University of Delaware, and other Biden constituents and submitted requests to Biden's office for earmarks benefiting these clients in appropriations bills.
2006-2007: Paradigm Companies LLCIn 2005, when Joe Biden was thinking about making another run at the White House, after a 1987 bid that ended in plagiarism charges, his lobbyist son was looking for a new line of work too.
In early 2006, Wall Street executive and Biden family friend Anthony Lotito said, Biden's younger brother, Jim, phoned him on behalf of the senator. He said Biden wanted his youngest son – whom he still called "Honey" – to get out of the lobbying business to avoid allegations of conflicts of interest that might dog Biden's presidential bid.
"Biden was concerned with the impact that Hunter's lobbying activities might have on his expected campaign [and asked his brother to] seek Lotito's assistance in finding employment for Hunter in a non-lobbying capacity," according to a January 2007 complaint that Lotito filed in New York state court against Hunter over alleged breach of contract in a related venture. (Jim and Hunter Biden denied such a phone call took place as described.)
Lotito told the court he agreed to help Hunter as a favor to the senator, who had served on the powerful banking committee. He figured "the financial community might be a good starting place in which to seek out employment on Hunter's behalf," the court documents state. But he quickly found that Wall Street had "no interest" in hiring Biden.
So the Bidens hatched a scheme to buy a hedge fund, "whereby Hunter would then assume a senior executive position with the company." And Lotito helped broker the deal. Despite having no Wall Street experience, Biden was appointed interim CEO and president of the Paradigm investment fund and given a $1.2 million salary, according to SEC filings . Lotito joined the enterprise as a partner, and agreed to shepherd Hunter, still in his mid-thirties, through his new role in high-finance.
"Given Hunter Biden's inexperience in the securities industry," the complaint states, it was agreed that Lotito would maintain an office at the new holding company's New York headquarters "in order to assist Biden in discharging his duties as president."
After the venture failed, Lotito sued the Bidens for fraud. The Bidens countersued and the two parties settled in 2008.
2006-2009: AmtrakDuring this same period, Hunter was appointed vice chairman of the taxpayer-subsidized rail line, thanks to the sponsorship of powerful Democratic Sen. Harry Reid, a political ally of his father.
Joe Biden: The "senator from Amtrak" had a son from Amtrak too. Michael Perez/AP for Siemens
In a 2006 statement submitted to the Senate during his confirmation, Hunter asserted that he was qualified for the Amtrak board because "as a frequent commuter and Amtrak customer for over 30 years, I have literally logged thousands of miles on Amtrak."
Amtrak has been a major supporter of Joe Biden, donating to both his Senate and presidential campaigns and even naming a train station after him in Wilmington. In return, Biden has supported taxpayer subsidies for the government railroad throughout his political career.
In his testimony, Hunter denied his Amtrak appointment pushed conflict-of-interest boundaries.
2009- : Rosemont Seneca Partners LLCHunter co-founded the investment firm five months after his father moved into the White House and incorporated it in his father's home state of Delaware, which has strict corporate secrecy rules.
At the time, Obama had tapped Vice President Biden to oversee the recovery from the financial crisis. Three weeks after Rosemont was incorporated, Hunter and his partners set up a subsidiary called Rosemont TALF and got $24 million in loans from the federal program known as the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility. TALF was designed to help bail out banks and auto lenders hit by the crisis.
Within months, Rosemont had secured a total of $130 million from the program. Some of the government cash was then funneled into an investment fund incorporated in the Cayman Islands, SEC records show. Such offshore accounts are commonly used to evade taxes.
The move raised ethical flags with government watchdogs who suspected the bailout cash was used to benefit a well-connected insider.
Other records reveal that another subsidiary created years later – Rosemont Realty – touted to its investors that board adviser Hunter was politically connected. It highlighted in a company prospectus that he was the "son of Vice President Biden."
2009-2012: Eudora GlobalOn his resume, Hunter also lists himself as "founder" of yet another investment firm. But Eudora's articles of incorporation show it was actually set up by a major Biden donor, Jeffrey Cooper, who put Hunter on his board after his father became vice president.
A self-described "friend of the Biden family," Cooper also happened to run one of the largest asbestos-litigation firms in the country -- SimmonsCooper LLC -- and had courted Biden to make it easier to file asbestos lawsuits by defeating tort reforms. As a leader on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Biden had blocked reform of asbestos litigation every time bills reached the Senate floor.
Cooper's law firm, which directly lobbied the Delaware senator's office to kill such bills, donated more than $200,000 to Biden's campaigns over the years, as well as his Unite Our States PAC, FEC records show. In fact, SimmonsCooper was one of Biden's biggest donors during his failed 2007-2008 run for president, pumping $53,000 into his campaign.
The firm also put up $1 million in investment capital to help his son buy out the Paradigm hedge fund as part of the arrangement brokered by another Biden family friend, Lotito, to find non-lobbying work for Hunter.. Thanks in large part to Biden's effort to kill bills reining in asbestos trial lawyers, SimmonsCooper has hauled in more than $1 billion for alleged asbestos victims.
Attempts to reach Cooper for comment were unsuccessful.
2009-2016: Boies Schiller Flexner LLPWhen Joe Biden became Vice President, Hunter landed a high-paying, no-show job at the New York-based law firm, a Democrat shop long tied to the Clintons. Another major Biden donor, the firm gave him the title "of counsel."
Boies Schiller Flexner: Got Fraud charges against Hunter Biden dismissed, then brought him aboard. Boies Schiller Flexner
Boies Schiller brought Hunter aboard in 2009 after the Bidens hired the firm to defend Hunter against charges he defrauded partners in the Paradigm investment venture. Boies Schiller managed to get the case dismissed .
In 2014, a corrupt Ukrainian oligarch, who was under investigation and looking to repair his reputation to attract Western investors, started sending large payments to Boies to support Hunter for unspecified work. It's unclear what Hunter did for the oligarch, who ran the gas giant Burisma, but $283,000 showed up at the same time his father was tapped by Obama to play a central role in overseeing U.S. energy policy in Ukraine.
Boies Schiller has pumped more than $50,000 into Biden's campaigns, Federal Election Commission records show.
2013-2019: BHR PartnersAfter Obama named Biden his point man on China policy, Rosemont Seneca set up a joint venture worth $1 billion with the Bank of China called BHR – and Hunter was named vice-chairman and director of the new concern.
BHR Partners: Hunter arranged for one of his Chinese partners to shake hands with his father, the vice president. Beijing approved a business license shortly afterward. BHR Partners
Following in the shadow of his father's political trajectory, Hunter's new venture won the first-of-its-kind investment deal with the Chinese government at the same time Biden was jetting to Beijing to meet with top communist leaders. Secret Service records reveal Hunter flew to China on Air Force Two with his father while brokering the December 2013 deal. He arranged for one of his Chinese partners to shake hands with the vice president. BHR was registered 12 days later. Beijing OK'd a business license shortly afterward.
"No one else had such an arrangement in China," said Peter Schweizer, president of the Government Accountability Institute.
Hunter resigned from the board of the Beijing-backed equity firm earlier this year as his father faced growing criticism on the campaign trail over what critics called a glaring conflict of interest. He did not, however, divest his 10% equity stake in the Chinese fund, which is estimated to be worth tens of millions of dollars.
Schweizer, whose books include "Profiles in Corruption: Abuse of Power by America's Progressive Elites," said Biden went "soft" on the Chinese communists so his son could "cash in" on China business deals. Biden insists he did not discuss the venture with his son before, during or after his official visit to Beijing. But others see obvious hypocrisy at play in the Biden family's self-dealing in notoriously corrupt China.
"Biden was one of the most vocal champions of anti-corruption efforts in the Obama administration. So when this same Biden takes his son with him to China aboard Air Force Two, and within days Hunter joins the board of an investment advisory firm with stakes in China, it does not matter what father and son discussed," said Sarah Chayes, author of "Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens National Security." "Joe Biden has enabled this brand of practice."
2013-2014: U.S. Navy ReserveHunter was selected for a direct commission as a public affairs officer in a Virginia reserve unit.
He clearly received special treatment in securing the part-time post. Officers had to issue him two waivers – one for his age and one for a previous drug offense.
His vice president father swore him in at the White House in a small, private ceremony.
Barely a year later, authorities booted Hunter from the Navy for cocaine use after he tested positive from a urine test. The reason for his discharge was withheld from the press for several months.
2014-2019: Burisma HoldingsThe Ukrainian gas giant added Hunter to its board soon after Obama named his father his point man on Ukraine policy, focusing on energy. The company paid his son as much as $83,000 a month, even though he had no energy experience to bring to the table and was required to attend just one board meeting a year.
Golf buddies: White House visitor logs show that Joe Biden met with Hunter's business partner Devon Archer, far left, on April 16, 2014. Burisma put Archer on its board shortly thereafter, followed by Hunter, far right, the next month. Fox News
At the time, the vice president was steering U.S. aid to Kiev to help develop its gas fields, which stood to benefit Burisma as the holder of permits to develop natural gas in three of Ukraine's most lucrative fields. Biden promised Ukrainian officials the US would pump more than $1 billion into their energy industry and economy during a visit to Kiev in late April 2014. He urged leaders to increase the country's gas supply and to rely on Americans to help them. Less than three weeks later, Burisma appointed his son to the board, after already retaining him for undisclosed services through Boies Schiller.
Burisma was run by an oligarch, Mykola Zlochevsky, who was under investigation at the time and seeking Western protection from prosecution. In a move observers suspect was intended to send a message to prosecutors, the company sent out a news release in May 2014 claiming, falsely, that Hunter would be in charge of its "legal unit." Burisma also trumpeted the fact that Hunter was "the son of the current U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden."
Biden's office was aware Burisma was under investigation. The administration had tried to partner with the gas company through U.S. aid programs, but the outreach project was blocked over corruption concerns lodged by career diplomats.
Viktor Shokin, ex-Ukraine prosecutor: "The truth is that I was forced out because I was leading a wide-ranging corruption probe into Burisma, and Joe Biden's son was a member of the board," he said in a recent sworn affidavit prepared for a European court. AP Photo/Sergei Chuzavkov, File
In early 2016, Biden threatened to withhold $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees if Ukraine did not dismiss the country's top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, who was investigating Burisma. "If the prosecutor is not fired," Biden recalled telling Ukraine's leader, "you're not getting the money."
Biden's muscling worked: Shokin was sacked in March 2016.
The former vice president says he was carrying out official U.S. policy that sought to remove an ineffective prosecutor. But Shokin had raided the home of Burisma's owner and seized his property.
In addition, Shokin said that as part of his probe he was making plans to interview Hunter about millions of dollars in fees he and his partners had received from Burisma. He insists he was fired because he refused to close the investigation.
"The truth is that I was forced out because I was leading a wide-ranging corruption probe into Burisma, and Joe Biden's son was a member of the board," Shokin said in a recent sworn affidavit prepared for a European court. "I assume Burisma had the support of Joe Biden because his son was on the board." He added that the vice president himself had "significant interests" in Burisma.
The prosecutor who replaced Shokin shut down the Burisma probe within 10 months. Burisma's founder was also taken off a U.S. government visa ban list.
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Burisma/Wikimedia
Biden claims he only learned of his son joining the Burisma board from the news media. But there is evidence Biden had been consulted in advance. White House visitor logs show that Biden met with Hunter's business partner Devon Archer on April 16, 2014. Burisma put Archer on its board shortly thereafter, followed by Hunter the next month. (Both Archer and Hunter maintain Burisma never came up during the private visit in Biden's office, which lasted late into the night.)
The day after Joe Biden's meeting with Hunter's partner in the White House, Burisma executive Vadym Pozharskyi reportedly emailed Hunter to thank him for inviting him to Washington and "giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent[sic] some time together." The Biden campaign asserts it cannot find a meeting with Pozharskyi on the former vice president's "schedule," though it did not deny such a meeting could have taken place. The Ukrainian official mentioned going out for coffee with Hunter on April 17, 2014, which indicated he was physically in D.C. at the time. RCI has not confirmed the authenticity of the April 17 email document, first disclosed by the New York Post after obtaining it from a hard drive allegedly copied from a laptop of Hunter Biden left at a computer repair shop in Wilmington, Del. Pozharskyi did not respond to emails seeking comment.
Hunter stepped down from Burisma's board in April 2019, a month before his father announced his White House bid and after critics made an issue of the conflicts his sinecure posed. He has since kept a very low profile. Unlike Trump's children, Biden's son is not out on the trail campaigning for him.
1,850 Boxes Sealed Until After Election"Hunter Biden had no experience in the field, but he did have a notable connection to the vice president, who publicly has bragged about making clear to the Ukrainians that he alone controlled U.S. aid to the country," noted Jonathan Turley, a public-interest law professor at George Washington University.
Retired FBI official I.C. Smith, who led public corruption investigations in Washington and Little Rock, Ark., said both father and son should have known joining Burisma was a bad idea, adding that it gives at least the appearance he was leveraging his name for payoffs from shady clients abroad.
I.C. Smith, ex-FBI official: "I would think, given Hunter's past, the father would have asked more questions." icsmith.com
"Clearly he's led a troubled life and would be the sort of person susceptible to becoming engaged in this sort of rather sordid deal," Smith said of Hunter.
"When he said his father asked if the deal was on the up and up and was assured it was, I would think, given Hunter's past, the father would have asked more questions," he added.
Hunter acknowledged in an ABC News interview last year that he lacked experience in both energy and Ukraine, but maintained that Burisma was impressed by other things on his resume.
"Ironically, Hunter highlighted his work at MBNA and his work on the board of Amtrak as evidence of his qualifications for the Burisma gig," said Fitton of Judicial Watch. "But both the MBNA and Amtrak jobs, under any sensible analysis, were obvious favors for Joe Biden."
Fitton argued that Biden's claim he never discussed his son's jobs and business deals rings hollow against the lengthy record of something-for-nothing nepotism.
"That's campaign spin," he said. "Hunter has already admitted to having at least one conversation on the Ukraine issue with Vice President Biden."
Biden defenders argue that many relatives of politicians are often involved in government and politics. Ivanka Trump and Don Trump Jr., for instance, have cozy relationships with, or financial stakes in, companies that may benefit from those decisions. They also point out that, while they may look bad, there's nothing illegal about such arrangements.
Fitton isn't so sure. He said Judicial Watch is demanding Obama administration documents related to Hunter's Ukraine and China deals, as well as other business arrangements potentially monetizing Biden's political power.
"We can't be sure if the arrangements were legal," he said. "If any payments or jobs were neither ordinary nor customary, there may be legal issues."
It's a federal crime to provide a government benefit or favorable change in policy in exchange for something of personal value. At a minimum, argued former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy, Biden "had a conflict of interest with the position his son had" on the Burisma board, noting that at the time, Biden was pushing energy policies that favored the gas giant.
The Biden School, part of the University of Delaware, which is keeping a lid on Biden records. Biden School of Public Policy and Administration
Not all of Hunter Biden's critics are coming from the right, either.
"It's hard to avoid the conclusion that Hunter's foreign employers and partners were seeking to leverage Hunter's relationship with Joe, either by seeking improper influence or to project access to him," said Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen, a liberal watchdog group based in Washington.
The Biden Institute: Maggie Haberman, New York Times White House correspondent, was a featured speaker in 2018, according to its website . The University of Delaware holds more than 1,850 boxes of Biden records under seal . Biden Institute/University of Delaware
While Joe Biden insists "there's been no indication of any conflict of interest from Ukraine or anywhere else," Senate investigators are seeking a number of related emails and memos generated during the Obama administration, as well as his 36-year Senate career. That period, spanning from 1973 to 2009, coincides with a large chunk of his son's resume.
However, Biden has sealed the bulk of the records at the University of Delaware Library, which refuses to release any of his papers until after the election. It maintains more than 1,850 boxes of Biden records, including his speeches, voting records, position papers and notes from confidential interviews he's conducted with foreign leaders, among other documents. The papers the university is keeping a lid on could shed light on Biden's thinking behind foreign policies and controversial bills he sponsored.
A spokeswoman said the library will not release any of Biden's papers to the public until they are "properly processed and archived." Until then, "access is only available with Vice President Biden's express consent," she said, while declining to answer whether the university would comply if the Senate subpoenaed documents as part of its investigation of the Bidens.
The university houses the Biden Institute, which is part of the Joseph R. Biden, Jr. School of Public Policy and Administration.
Through a lawyer, Hunter maintained he and his father dutifully avoided "conflicts of interest" -- or even "the appearance of such conflicts." In every business pursuit, he asserted, they acted "appropriately and in good faith."
However, in a moment of candor during a recent ABC News interview, Hunter confessed: "I don't think that there's a lot of things that would have happened in my life if my last name wasn't Biden," before adding, "There's literally nothing my father in some way hasn't had influence over."
Still, the elder Biden argues it's the Trump family who has the nepotism problem. In a recent CBS "60 Minutes" interview, he slammed the president for letting his daughter and son-in-law "sit in on Cabinet meetings."
"It's just simply improper because you should make it clear to the American public that everything you're doing is for them," he intoned. "For them."
play_arrow _triplesix_ , 10 minutes ago
Crickets from the MSM on the biggest political scandal in history. They can't refute it, so they simply refuse to cover it.
I'm afraid the American Experiment is over either way, but if Biden and the Dems are successful in stealing the election, we are destined to be the next Venezuela.
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Oct 17, 2020 | www.rt.com
In Greek mythology, men used to fear the stony gaze of the snake-haired Gorgon. Today, men once again feel such fear – but, ironically, no campaign has done more to impair women's opportunities either.
A seven-foot statue of Medusa holding a man's severed head was unveiled in New York this week. For six months, this sculpture, made by the Argentinian-Italian artist Luciano Garbati, will be situated facing the Manhattan Supreme Court, where Harvey Weinstein was prosecuted and convicted of sex crimes against actresses and female film-production staff.
The statue is being used in this position as a symbol of justice enacted against male rapists. However, it more accurately – and unintentionally – symbolises the difference between the public triumphalism of the #MeToo movement and its negative repercussions for women in the United States.
The most famous painting of Medusa – a female character from Greek mythology who had a hair of snakes and could turn men to stone if they met her gaze directly – was painted by Caravaggio in 1596. He was inspired by Vasari's account of a lost painting by Leonardo da Vinci. It has been a common subject for artists since. Garbati's statue was made in 2008 and adopted by the #MeToo movement subsequently. From moral outrage to financial advantage
The #MeToo movement hit prominence in 2017 and was initially primarily concerned with incidents, and allegations, of sexual abuse in Hollywood. It quickly grew to include cases of sexual impropriety in many fields, mainly in the US. However, as it expanded, it encompassed rape, sexual abuse, inappropriate sexual contact, unwanted advances, and transactional sex.
By refusing to draw distinctions between actual crimes, ethical/professional infractions, and consensual (but regretted) sex, the movement became diffusely broad. Allegations of sexual abuse led to the accused losing contracts, jobs, and marriages; in some cases, it contributed to suicide. In the ensuing storm of moral panic, actual rape was conflated with Ben Affleck's groping of an actress in a video interview , a woman complaining about a date with Aziz Ansari and Louis CK exposing himself to colleagues (with their consent).
By failing to distinguish between levels of seriousness, the movement lost what moral credibility it had and became a means of gaining revenge and exacting extortion. If crimes have been committed, then they should be reported to the police, not aired in a public forum. The accused need anonymity just as the victims do, until justice can be served.
Sexual accusations have long been weaponized in American pop culture. It has already been proven that a whisper network of female comic-book professionals has targeted male colleagues with – alongside actual crimes – unfounded accusations, in order to provide more opportunities for female creators. This is not a male/female problem; using deceit and exaggeration to advance oneself is as old as language itself.
In American television and film production, #MeToo gained control of productions via Time's Up, enforcing quotas of women and extracting payments. It became a grab to secure lucrative work for women, relying on goodwill from the public and the fear of executives. The Time's Up movement is co-led by Katie McGrath, who runs production company Bad Robot Productions with her husband J.J. Abrams. Bad Robot has a history of presenting itself as a pro-social-justice company. This summer, at a time when rioters were burning shops and destroying historic monuments, Bad Robot made an infamous announcement that there had been " Enough polite conversation. Enough white comfort. "
ALSO ON RT.COM Rose McGowan's new #MeToo rape claim puts the Left in difficulty. No prizes for guessing what they'll do – they'll dump on her Unintended consequencesBy presenting a company as an ethical, socially conscious body, that company is an ideal position to benefit from major firms being pressured into making decisions not based on competence but politics. Individuals and companies have seen how they can manipulate public sympathy about sexual abuse to their own advantage. But firms are now realizing this danger.
No event has done more to impair women's opportunities in the workplace than the #MeToo/Time's Up movement. Production companies – even those led by women – now see female colleagues as a source of potential extortion and compensation claims. As a result, they now avoid hiring women in order to avert the possibility of costly legal claims and reputation-impairing social-media campaigns. Following decades-long attempts to persuade male-dominated industries that hiring women brought advantages and an expansion of the talent pool, the moral panic of #MeToo has served only to reveal the disadvantages of employing women.
When male executives see women today, they fear them, just as heroes in Greek mythology feared the gaze of Medusa. Ironically, rather than celebrating female power, Garbati's statue is instead a fitting symbol of the way a campaign that began well has, once again, made men mistrust women.
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Alexander Adamsis an artist, art critic and author. His book 'Iconoclasm, Identity Politics and the Erasure of History' is published by Societas. Follow him on Twitter @AdamsArtist
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
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Oct 19, 2020 | www.rt.com
How COVID-19 may help IMF to reshape global economy (Full show) 16 Oct, 2020 20:42 17 Follow RT on
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is offering loans to the world's poorest 81 countries to help them rebuild their devastated economies, still reeling from the COVID-19 pandemic. But accepting such loans paves the way for increased austerity, privatization, and greater income inequality. RT America's Alex Mihailovich explains. Then former UK MP George Galloway joins RT America's Faran Fronczak (in for Rick Sanchez) to weigh in. RT's Peter Oliver examines the skyrocketing number of COVID-19 cases across Europe and the reimposition of harsh restrictions to stymie its spread. Legal and media analyst Lionel and civil rights attorney Robert Patillo debate proposals aimed at mitigating the perceived influence of the Federalist Society in US courts. RT America's Trinity Chavez reports on the recent flyby of Venus where the BepiColombo probe captured amazing new images of the planet. Plus, RT America's Steve Christakos joins for "Jock Talk."
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Oct 19, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com
It appears the "Russia, Russia, Russia" cries from Adam Schiff and his dutiful media peons is dead (we can only hope) as Director of National Intel John Ratcliffe just confirmed to Foxx Business' Maria Bartiromo that:
"Hunter Biden's laptop is not part of some Russian disinformation campaign."
As Politico's Quint Forgey details (@QuintForgey) , DNI Ratcliffe is asked directly whether accusations leveled against the Bidens in recent days are part of a Russian disinformation effort.
He says no:
"Let me be clear. The intelligence community doesn't believe that because there is no intelligence that supports that."
" We have shared no intelligence with Chairman Schiff or any other member of Congress that Hunter Biden's laptop is part of some Russian disinformation campaign. It's simply not true. "
"And this is exactly what I said would I stop when I became the director of national intelligence, and that's people using the intelligence community to leverage some political narrative."
"And in this case, apparently Chairman Schiff wants anything against his preferred political candidate to be deemed as not real and as using the intelligence community or attempting to use the intelligence community to say there's nothing to see here."
"Don't drag the intelligence community into this. Hunter Biden's laptop is not part of some Russian disinformation campaign. And I think it's clear that the American people know that."
Of course, this 'fact' from 'intelligence' is unlikely to stop the "emails are Russian" narrative growing ever louder as MSM attempt to distract from the actual content of the emails. As Caitlin Johnstone noted:
So "the emails are Russian" narrative serves the interests of political convenience, partisan media ratings, and the national security state's pre-planned agenda to continue escalating against Russia as part of its slow motion third world war against nations which refuse to bow to US dictates, and you've got essentially no critical mainstream news coverage putting the brakes on any of it. This means this narrative is going to become mainstream orthodoxy and treated as an established fact, despite the fact that there is no actual, tangible evidence for it.
Joe Biden could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and the mainstream press would crucify any journalist who so much as tweeted about it. Very little journalism is going into vetting and challenging him, and a great deal of the energy that would normally be doing so is going into ensuring that he slides right into the White House.
If the mainstream news really existed to tell you the truth about what's going on, everyone would know about every questionable decision that Joe Biden has ever made, Russiagate would never have happened, we'd all be acutely aware of the fact that powerful forces are pushing us into increasingly aggressive confrontations with two nuclear-armed nations, and Trump would be grilled about Yemen in every press conference.
But the mainstream news does not exist to tell you the truth about the world. The mainstream news exists to advance the interests of its wealthy owners and the status quo upon which they have built their kingdoms. That's why it's so very, very important that we find ways to break away from it and share information with each other that isn't tainted by corrupt and powerful interests.
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As we detailed previously, as the Hunter Biden laptop scandal threatens to throw the 2020 election into chaos with what appears to be solid, undisputed evidence of high-level corruption by former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter, the same crowd which peddled the Trump-Russia hoax is now suggesting that Russia is behind it all .
To wit, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, who swore on National television that he had evidence Trump was colluding with Russia - now says that President Trump is handing the Kremlin a "propaganda coup from Vladimir Putin."
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Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) has gone full tin-foil , suggesting that Giuliani was a 'key target' of 'Kremlin constructed anti-Biden propaganda.'
2/ Russia knew it had to play a different game than 2016. So it built an operation to cull virulently pro-Trump Americans as pseudo-assets, so blind in their allegiance to Trump that they'll willingly launder Kremlin constructed anti-Biden propaganda.
Guiliani was a key target.
-- Chris Murphy (@ChrisMurphyCT) October 17, 2020Headlines in major publications are perhaps even more conspiratorial:
And of course, propagandists are doing their thing...
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Yet, if one looks at the actual facts of the case - in particular, that Hunter Biden appears to have dropped his own laptops off at a computer repair shop, signed a service ticket , and the shop owner approached the FBI first and Rudy Giuliani last after Biden failed to pick them up, the left's latest Russia conspiracy theory is quickly debunked .
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Authored by Larry C Johnson via Sic Semper Tyrannis (emphasis ours)
This is the story of an American patriot, an honorable man, John Paul Mac Issac, who tried to do the right thing and is now being unfairly and maliciously slandered as an agent of foreign intelligence, specifically Russia. He is not an agent or spy for anyone. He is his own man. How do I know? I have known his dad for more than 20 years. I've known John Paul's dad as Mac. Mac is a decorated Vietnam Veteran, who flew gunships in Vietnam. And he continued his military service with an impeccable record until he retired as an Air Force Colonel. The crews of those gunships have an annual reunion and Mac usually takes John Paul along, who volunteers his computer and video skills to record and compile the stories of those brave men who served their country in a difficult war.
This story is very simple – Hunter Biden dropped off three computers with liquid damage at a repair shop in Wilmington, Delaware on April 12, 2019. The owner, John Mac Issac, examined the three and determined that one was beyond recovery, one was okay and the data on the harddrive of the third could be recovered. Hunter signed the service ticket and John Paul Mac Issac repaired the hard drive and down loaded the data . During this process he saw some disturbing images and a number of emails that concerned Ukraine, Burisma, China and other issues . With the work completed, Mr. Mac Issac prepared an invoice, sent it to Hunter Biden and notified him that the computer was ready to be retrieved. H unter did not respond . In the ensuing four months (May, June, July and August), Mr. Mac Issac made repeated efforts to contact Hunter Biden. Biden never answered and never responded. More importantly, Biden stiffed John Paul Mac Issac–i.e., he did not pay the bill.
When the manufactured Ukraine crisis surfaced in August 2019, John Paul realized he was sitting on radioactive material that might be relevant to the investigation. After conferring with his father, Mac and John Paul decided that Mac would take the information to the FBI office in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Mac walked into the Albuquerque FBI office and spoke with an agent who refused to give his name. Mac explained the material he had, but was rebuffed by the FBI. He was told basically, get lost . This was mid-September 2019.
Two months passed and then, out of the blue, the FBI contacted John Paul Mac Issac. Two FBI agents from the Wilmington FBI office–Joshua Williams and Mike Dzielak–came to John Paul's business . He offered immediately to give them the hard drive, no strings attached. Agents Williams and Dzielak declined to take the device .
Two weeks later, the intrepid agents called and asked to come and image the hard drive. John Paul agreed but, instead of taking the hard drive or imaging the drive, they gave him a subpoena. It was part of a grand jury proceeding but neither agent said anything about the purpose of the grand jury. John Paul complied with the subpoena and turned over the hard drive and the computer.
In the ensuing months, starting with the impeachment trial of President Trump, he heard nothing from the FBI and knew that none of the evidence from the hard drive had been shared with President Trump's defense team.
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The lack of action and communication with the FBI led John Paul to make the fateful decision to contact Rudy Giuliani's office and offer a copy of the drive to the former mayor. We now know that Rudy accepted John Paul's offer and that Rudy's team shared the information with the New York Post.
John Paul Mac Issac is not responsible for the emails, images and videos recovered from Hunter Biden's computer. He was hired to do a job, he did the job and submitted an invoice for the work. Hunter Biden, for some unexplained reason, never responded and never asked for the computer. But that changed last Tuesday, October 13, 2020. A person claiming to be Hunter Biden's lawyer called John Paul Mac Issac and asked for the computer to be returned. Too late. That horse had left the barn and was with the FBI.
John Paul, acting under Delaware law, understood that Hunter's computer became the property of his business 90 days after it had been abandoned.
At no time did John Paul approach any media outlet or tabloid offering to sell salacious material . A person of lesser character might have tried to profit. But that is not the essence of John Paul Mac Issac. He had information in his possession that he learned, thanks to events subsequent to receiving the computer for a repair job, was relevant to the security of our nation. He did what any clear thinking American would do–he, through his father, contacted the FBI. When the FBI finally responded to his call for help, John cooperated fully and turned over all material requested .
The failure here is not John Paul's . He did his job. The FBI dropped the ball and, by extension, the Department of Justice. Sadly, this is becoming a disturbing, repeating theme–the FBI through incompetence or malfeasance is not doing its job.
Any news outlet that is publishing the damnable lie that John Paul is part of some subversive effort to interfere in the United States Presidential election is on notice. That is slander and defamation. Fortunately, the evidence from Hunter Biden's computer is in the hands of the FBI and Rudy Giuliani and, I suspect, the U.S. Senate. Those with the power to do something must act. John Paul Mac Issac's honor is intact. We cannot say the same for those government officials who have a duty to deal with this information.
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Oct 19, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com
Why Is The FBI's Top Child Porn Lawyer Involved In Hunter Biden Laptop Case?
by Tyler Durden Fri, 10/16/2020 - 17:54 Twitter Facebook Reddit Email Print
The recent New York Post bombshell reports on Hunter Biden's alleged laptop contents included a curious piece of evidence - a photograph of an FBI subpoena which bears the signature of the agency's top child porn investigator, special agent Joshua Wilson .
According to the Post , a laptop was dropped off at a Delaware computer repair shop by a man believed by the owner, John Paul Mac Isaac, to be Hunter Biden . The shop owner made a copy of the hard drive before turning it over to the FBI, which includes incriminating emails detailing alleged Biden family corruption in Ukraine and China, as well as a 'raunchy, 12-minute video that appears to show Hunter smoking crack while engaged in a sex act with an unidentified woman,' as well as ' numerous other sexually explicit images .'
FBI agent Wilson's identity was confirmed by both Western Journal and Business Insider , the latter of which compared his signature to a 2012 criminal complaint and concluded that it "clearly matches the unreversed signature on the subpoena published by the New York Post ."
As BI notes:
It's unclear whether the FBI employs more than one agent named Joshua Wilson. But the available evidence seems to show **the Joshua Wilson who signed the subpoena for Hunter Biden's laptop, and the Joshua Wilson who investigates child pornography for the FBI, are the same person**. This raises the possibility, not explored by the Post, that the FBI issued the subpoena for reasons unrelated to Hunter Biden's role in Ukraine and Burisma.
So why is the FBI's top child porn lawyer involved in the Hunter Biden laptop case? OANN 's Chanel Rion says she's seen the contents of the hard drive, which includes "Drugs, underage obsessions, power deals," which make "Anthony Weiner's down under selfie addiction look normal . "
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Meanwhile, if there is incriminating child porn on Hunter's computer, what has the FBI done about it?
IP freely , 1 hour agoSpurius Lartius , 1 hour agoOh good....the FBI is involved. should go no where.
Montana Cowboy , 1 hour agoCorruption and the FBI go together like hookers and blow. Or Lindsey Graham and little boys.
SmokeyBlonde , 1 hour agoProject Veritas has produced more evidence than the corrupt Boy Scouts at the FBI.
CrookedHillieLies , 1 hour agoPeople really need to get over the notion that the FBI is a law enforcement agency. They have proven time and again that they only act on behalf of the deep state, oligarchs, kleptocrats, and pederasts at the expense of the rest of us.
Cash Is King , 1 hour agoThe FBI has been led by Prancing Gay Sissies, Crossdressers and Pedophiles since their inception. Crack and Hooker Hunter Biden will never be convicted of child **** - he will claim it was "planted" on his computer. The emails are a different problem and hopefully they will cause him some problems with the IRS. What a dumbazz. I can't believe the DemonRATS nominated his father to be their choice for President. Landslide for Trump / Pence / Senate / House / Supreme Court / MAGA / KAG 2020! Let's Roll.
Spurius Lartius , 1 hour agoWhat's that old adage about apples & trees?
OCnStiggs , 22 minutes agoYou could prolly hang anyone who has been in DC for >10 years and be sure you were doing God's work.
Kan , 1 hour agoWhy Is The FBI's Top Child **** Lawyer Involved In Hunter Biden Laptop Case?
Because the FBI has been covering like mad for the criminality in D.C. and they want Biden to win.
Just sayin'.
quanttech , 30 minutes agoBecause he is working to hide any real evidence of any of it, please see weiners laptop that had ALL the clinton emails and all the BIDEN corruption emails. ...
Gardentoolnumber5 , 1 hour agoTim Nolan, former judge & chairman of Donald Trump's presidential campaign in Kentucky, pled guilty to 19 counts of child sex trafficking and on February 11, 2018, he was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Republican Ralph Shortey, former state senator & chairman of Donald Trump's presidential campaign in Oklahoma was indicted on 4 counts of child sex trafficking and child *********** and on September 17, 2018, he was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
Republican Dennis Hastert, former Speaker of the House from 1999 to 2007 & congressman of Illinois, was indicted on federal charges of molesting 4 young boys and on April 27, 2016, he was sentenced to 15 months in prison.
I could go on, but suffice to say that anyone who thinks it's just Dems or just Repubs that are the problem... are wrong.
dogismycopilot , 1 hour agoAgain, the FBI is on the case! Whoa hahahahahaha! And how long have they had a copy of the hard drive and under Wray's FBI buried it. Ya know... can't interfere in an election 6-8 months out. Abolish the FBI. Pass those who honor their oath over into the Marshals office.
chiswickcat , 1 hour agoThe Russians and Chinese would have set him up with underage Moldovan, Ukrainian or Romanian trafficked girls.
100% so they could blackmail his dad when president.
CheapBastard , 1 hour agoA Political family involved in sex with minors, drugs and corruption? I'm shocked. Shocked I tell you.
OpenEyes , 39 minutes agoOdd the Epstain Island flight logs handed over to the FBi have mysteriously disappeared.
IronForge , 1 hour agoAs disgusting as child **** is, somehow it seems like when they put Capone away for tax evasion.
First of all, the FBI has had this laptop since last December and done absolutely nothing about it. But, with Rudy turning it over to the New York Post and making it public they have to at least appear to be doing something. (something other than investigating Russia's part in this, which nobody with an IQ above room temperature actually believes)
My guess is that they decided "we can get him for having child *********** on his computer and everybody will forget about that other stuff."
chiquita , 1 hour agoLooks like Hunter is Jail-bound.
Pop would have Pardoned Hunter, and Harris would have Pardoned Pop.
However, since someone who saw the laptop content mentioned the "UnderAged" matl on TWTR, it's safe to presume that Hunter had access to or participated in Patronizing "UnderAged Paedo" Photos, Site Memberships, Prostitutes, Hookups, or Trafficking Arrangements.
His Strip Club Posse probably had an UnderAged Member.
Hard to Pardon Paedophiles before the BodyPolitic.
Mayor Giuliani might have several Silver Bullets here. He'll need 24/7 Escorting now since DNC/Bidens/Obama/RED_QUEEN may be Highlighted. He might as well send a Copy to Wikileaks just in case he gets Nailed by Bidens' Owners.
RICO+Drug+NatSec Charges would have been enough; but we are obligated as a Society to Deal With, Due Process, and Prosecute Allegations of Paedophilia/Child Abuse/Trafficking.
Most importantly, we will bring those Girls Out of Hunters' Alleged Patronage and into Protective Custody.
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What a Mess. I understand some Young Girls are attracted to and want to be Married/InRelationship/Mating with those in Fame/Power/Money quickly; but once the Male is Out Of HS, any new "relationship" he gets involved with needs to be with Dames 18+ and Out of HS.
lennysrv , 1 hour ago"Leave my son outta this! He has a drug problem."
HaywoodYaBlowMe , 29 minutes agoThat Biden clan, what a wonderful familial role model for the rest of the nation. Further, I'm amazed at how productive li'l Hunter is; from making mega-deals with the Chinese and Ukrainians to banging his dead brother's widow to knocking up a stripper to being a deadbeat dad to smoking crack and engaging in sex acts on video.
Joe Biden has to be so very proud of the family he has created. What a model Democrat/Liberal.
Leguran , 1 hour agoThere are rumors, that the horrific atrocities, on the anthony weiner tape are too horrid for the public to find out. I call bulls**t! Release the kraken. To quote Louis Brandeis: "Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants." Let the "people" be made aware of the offensive behavior, perpetrated, and perpetuated by the dregs of our society. Our society needs a good flushing. We have many turds who need to be flushed from our system. It's been said that hardened NYPD officers, who have seen it all, were vomiting and having nightmares, upon viewing what was on weiner's laptop. Deputy Chief Steven Silks, of the NYPD, was found dead in his car of what was reported to be a suicide gun shot wound to his head. In fact, 9 of the 12 NYPD officials, who viewed what was on the lap top, have been found dead of supposed suicide. This info needs to be revealed to the public.
z tranche , 1 hour agoFBI again!!! Hunter is involved....good grief, get that to the top immediately! Now, start the Kabuki Circus SHOW. Tarrah see, it we sent it right to the top in order to show the complaint will be taken seriously. Meanwhile, all future information goes to the same guy at the top and nowhere else. The job is to keep the lid on and under "investigation" so nothing leaks. Well, Josh, I hope you do not mind me calling you Josh, where are the files and where is the action? And, since you told the CIA Director, we can see the the present CIA Director is involved as well.
I just do not see how the FBI can become more corrupt. Yep it is a culture of corruption.
rockstone , 1 hour agoTime to interview Ghislaine Maxwell and review the Epstein flight logs.
Lou Saynis , 1 hour agoWhy? You think they were the only two people in the under age sex business catering to Washington elites??
DickStoneVan , 36 minutes agoI think the only Washington elites who were engaging in underage sex are democrats. Maybe I'm being biased but It's just a feeling.
Lil Stevie , 1 hour agoJohn Dennis Hastert. Longest running Republican Speaker of the house in history. A federal judge referred to him as a "serial child molester" and sentenced him to a mere 15 months in prison.
fnsnook , 1 hour agoIf there ever was a reason for TERM LIMITS this is it.
chiquita , 1 hour agobiden has ruling class qualified immunity. you must have missed that chapter of the constitution.
Rhal , 1 hour agoHunter doesn't
Ecclesia Militans , 2 hours agoThis still mild compared to what was on Anthony Wieners laptop -labeled "life insurance". Yet no arrests were made there. I mean I get that Trump had to replace hundreds of judges(literally) before justice could prevail, but we're still at peak corruption!. Indictments plz.
MadameDeficit , 10 minutes agoThe Swamp isn't going to let Joe off the hook, it's going to hold this over his head like a Sword of Damocles to keep him at his desk for his full term, in line and compliant.
BugMan , 43 minutes agoIf that computer repairman hadn't made a copy and gone to a lawyer, we never would have heard about this.
On a similar note, it's very telling what the NY Post said about the contents - what (aside from child p0rn) would be illegal for them to publish?
noguano , 48 minutes agoHunter and Joe Biden Scandal Takes a Dark Turn -- FBI's Top Lawyer on Child **** Involved in Case
PC kills us all , 49 minutes agoSo he can cover it up?
Invert This MM , 1 hour agoWray, that Deep State swamp creature, probably had the FBI remove the child **** from the computer at Joe Biden's request. Thankfully, the computer repair agent is a super patriot that copied the hard drive before it was seized by the FBI. Trump and Guiliani need to hide the repair shop owner, and hire reliable protection for him, in order to protect him from Deep State assassins.
chiquita , 1 hour agoYeah, poor little Joey. He just Quid Pro Quoed his whole carrier and got away with it until that mean new boss came to town.
Brazillionaire , 1 hour agoWhat rock do you live under? Joe has been a horrible human being his whole adult life--corrupt, lying, and cheating from the time he was in college. There's nothing redeemable about him--don't ever think he "is not a terrible man"--he is and this new information just opens up the final chapter that sheds light on a man who would use his son for decades--going back into the early 1980s--to enrich himself and his family through corruption that goes so deep, it's beyond criminal.
Al Capone , 1 hour agoNo. Biden is a pos. He's one of the main reasons so many Americans are in credit card debt up to their eyeballs at ridiculous interest rates. And that's the legal stuff. He's corrupt as hell. Maybe they all are. But he sure is.
Goldencrapshoot , 1 hour agoYou forgot the /sarc.
Made in Occupied America , 1 hour agoAnyone remember what happened to Nikolae Ceausescu?
FBI = Friends of Biden Incorporated (in Delaware, of course)
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Oct 19, 2020 | turcopolier.typepad.com
Does anyone care? I do."In this episode of Common Sense, Rudy Giuliani, who was the trailblazer for RICO prosecutions in the 1980s, demonstrates how the thirty years of the Biden Family selling public office, and many other crimes, makes a perfect RICO case." RICO case
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Rudy has a u-tube show. pl
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LuSpHJNPe0&feature=youtu.be
Eric Newhill , 19 October 2020 at 11:53 AM
Fred , 19 October 2020 at 02:01 PMRudy lays out a solid case in the video. I'd say damning. I like the cigar ad too!
Biden has gone silent for four days. He apparently won't re-emerge until the debate Thursday. That's what they say anyhow. How weird for this point in the election cycle! IMO, he will probably dodge the debate because he knows Trump will hit him hard with this material. I even think that at least one Biden will be leaving us, permanently, in the near future.
Just when I thought the media couldn't defile themselves any further, they will sink to the bottom of the abyss of unethical behavior to try to save the Democrats. They must either accept defeat or go full on dictatorship, with all that implies. We are standing at the crossroads.
blue peacock , 19 October 2020 at 02:23 PMThe movement to discredit/disqualify any commentary on this story is intesifying. Biden's cowering in the bunker and Obama's bringing what's left of his reputation to Philly. Lord knows who'll attend that speech in person unless Covid, like in all the George Floyd events, is declared risk free for his appearance. The real polling numbers must be horrendously bad for the left.
Col. Lang,
What is your confidence that a second term Trump administration will bring those at the highest levels of government to account unlike the current Trump administration?
What do you believe will change in a second Trump administration? Will Trump hire once again the same types of people like Rosenstein, Wray, Kelley, Mattis, Bolton, Barr, et al?
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Oct 19, 2020 | www.unz.com
WAYNE ALLENSWORTH OCTOBER 17, 2020Our country seems headed for a political crisis, with the enemies of Deplorable America making noises suggesting they are planning a post-election " Color Revolution "-type coup against Trump. As a long-time Russia-watcher, I suggest that the failed Soviet coup of 1991, and the collapse that it spurred on, is instructive.
The Soviet State Committee on the State of Emergency, August, 1991The key point that year came when Soviet military and security units refused to move against Boris Yeltsin and his defenders. Could something like that happen here, with Trump playing the Yeltsin role?
What yours truly has dubbed the globalist Blob has been signaling for some time that it has no intention of yielding to Trump come election day. Hillary Clinton, in her guise as the post-American Madam Defarge of the present Cultural Revolution, h as even stated publicly that Joe Biden should not concede the election to Trump " under any circumstances." [ Morning Greatness: Hillary Clinton Says Biden Should Not Concede 'Under Any Circumstances' , by Liz Steele, AmGreatness.com, August 26, 2020]
Meanwhile, the Democrats, with help from rabid Never Trumpers like Bill Kristol and David Frum, have been " wargaming " scenarios for preventing Trump from taking office should he win, developing a plan for what Trump has correctly described as "an insurrection." [ The Billionaire Backers of the 'Insurrection' , by Julie Kelly, AmGreatness.com, Sep 14, 2020] The plan is to claim that Trump has stolen, or attempted to steal, the election. "As far as our enemies are concerned," as I wrote here last month, "they are on the right side of history, and neither election law nor the Constitution or any antiquated notions about fair play will stop them." [ Revolution and Resistance: How can elections continue? , American Remnant, September 4, 2020]
The mail-in balloting plan plays into the Blob's wargaming. If the Democrats can't swing the election their way by hook or crook, then the lengthy process of accounting for all the mail-in ballots could be used as a means to sow confusion and chaos, giving them room to maneuver in the aftermath of Election Day.
The Blob's minions have been signaling their intention to drag out the vote count. Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer , for example, declared on Face the Nation that her state would not be held to any "artificial deadlines" for reporting election results. [ MI Gov. Whitmer: No 'Artificial Deadlines' for Announcing Election Results , by Jeff Poor, Breitbart, October 11, 2020] In an example of the psychological projection characteristic of Democrats, Whitmer further claimed that those who might want to expedite the vote count had "political agendas."
Meanwhile, the Blob's militant wing has been circulating a plan for post-election disruption. [ READ: Left-wing Radicals Post Online Guide to 'Disrupting' the Country if Election is Close , by Joel Pollak, Breitbart, October 12, 2020] A Leftist group calling itself ShutDownDC [ Tweet them ] plans to prevent a Trump "coup" -- more projection there -- by shutting down the country and forcing Trump out if the vote is too close to call. The plan calls for "sustained disruptive movements all over the country." The militants also state that they intend to demand that "no winner be announced until every vote is counted."
ShutDownDC further proclaims that it has no intention of allowing the country to return to normal. The goal is to "dismantle" what it calls "interlocking systems of oppression."
This isn't just about an election -- it's a blueprint for completing the Left's anti-American Cultural Revolution.
In the chaos that appears increasingly likely after Election Day, we may not even have a clear idea of what happened–-and, indeed, that may be part of the Blob's design.
In a recent segment on "Critical Race Theory" gaining traction at the Pentagon, Tucker Carlson wondered just why the Left was so intent on capturing the military.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/_q4dYLC_rtw?feature=oembed
My answer: the Blob was contemplating the possibility of using the military as part of an attempt to block a second Trump term.
It's quite clear that the top military brass has been subject to "the Great Awokening" and Trump Derangement Syndrome as much as the rest of the federal bureaucracy. The military Establishment has steadfastly resisted Trump's inclination to disengage from foreign interventions. Moreover, the Pentagon has also resisted Trump's order to stop indoctrinating its personnel in "Critical Race Theory." [ Trump's Anti-Critical Race Theory Order is Necessary But Insufficient , By Timon Cline, AmGreatness.com, October 5, 2020]
In his book Rage , Bob Woodward reports that former Defense Secretary and retired Marine General James Mattis once commented to then Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats that "There may come a time when we have to take collective action" against Trump, since Mattis deemed the president "dangerous" and "unfit." [ Mattis told Coats Trump is 'dangerous,' 'unfit': Woodward book , by Tal Axelrod, The Hill, September 9, 2020]
It's likely that General Mattis's view of Trump is widely shared among top level military officers.
So how might the military figure into the Blob's wargaming plans? Peter van Buren has contemplated a post-election scenario in which a "temporary" military government might be pitched as the only way to break an electoral deadlock and end post-election disorder. [ What if Trump Won't Leave The White House? The fearmongers are at it again, this time with their mantle-holder Biden, warning of the coming dictatorship. , American Conservative, June 30, 2020] Van Buren reminded us that Trump's opponents have never accepted his legitimacy, that "RussiaGate" was good practice for them -- good practice for a coup, that is -- and that they are gearing up for an all-out effort to dislodge him from the White House.
Obama, Comey And Eric Holder In The White HouseVan Buren further noted that Joe Biden, who has claimed that it is Trump who "is going to try and steal this election," has also stated quite plainly that if Trump refuses to leave the White House, he is "absolutely convinced" that the military would "escort him from the White House with great dispatch." [ Biden: Military Will Remove Trump From the White House if He Refuses to Leave, by Julie Ross, Daily Beast, June 11, 2020]
It's worth mentioning that van Buren is not a Trump supporter, was a career foreign service officer, and is an honest man, an Iraq war whistleblower who wrote an excellent book, We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People , on his experiences in that country. I reviewed it here ). He does not believe that a Pentagon-backed coup is merely "paperback thriller material." It's a plausible scenario.
Nevertheless, an attempt to use the military to block Trump's re-election could result in the coup plotters stepping into a trap of their own making.
This is what happened in the failed 1991 coup attempt in the Soviet Union.
On August 18, 1991, with Mikhail Gorbachev preparing to sign a treaty that would have decentralized the Soviet Union, his hardline political opponents in the Soviet leadership arrested the father of perestroika at his Crimean dacha, proclaiming that the Soviet State Committee on the State of Emergency was in charge.
The conspiracy against Gorbachev had been organized by KGB Chairman Vladimir Kryuchkov, Defense Minister Dmitry Yazov and six other top level political and security officials. They were alarmed by Gorbachev's reforms, which had already loosed centrifugal forces in the USSR that threatened the power of the Communist party and the Soviet apparatus.
But within three days, the coup attempt collapsed.
Boris Yeltsin at the Russian White House, August 19, 1991.The coup collapsed because of resistance by then-Russian Federation President Boris Yeltsin and his supporters, and the refusal of elite military and security units to move against them.
On August 19, Muscovites gathered at the Russian "White House," the seat of Russia's parliament in central Moscow, and erected barriers around it. Boris Yeltsin climbed atop a tank to address the crowd. Yeltsin condemned the State Emergency Committee as an unlawful gang of coup plotters and called for military and security forces not to support the "Gang Of Eight."
Major Sergey Yevdokimov, a battalion commander in the Tamanskaya Division, had already declared his loyalty to Yeltsin (hence the tank on which Yeltsin made his historic stand). Yevdokimov later said that early on he had decided that he would not fire on any Russian citizens. As his battalion approached the "White House," one of Yeltsin's supporters climbed on Yevdokimov's tank and asked him to come over to their side. The major made his historically-significant choice, setting in motion events that would help thwart the coup.
KGB special forces units never appeared at the scene. When the planned assault on the Russian "White House" ("Operation Thunder") failed to materialize after a brief skirmish, it was clear that the coup was over. This was quickly followed by the collapse of the Communist party and the Soviet administrative apparatus; and the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
That was an enormous surprise to the majority of Western Kremlinologists at the time.
Of course, the situation in the U.S. today is not exactly analogous. For starters, Trump is operating in a hostile environment ("the Swamp") dominated and controlled by his enemies. The generals are not on his side. It seems unlikely that a large group of citizens from the DC area would quickly materialize to support Trump against some sort of military-backed coup.
It's possible, however, that Trump may not even be in Washington when a coup is set in motion. This would leave him an opportunity to do what he does best -- hold mass rallies to fire up his support base in "Deplorable" areas of the country.
Both "red" and "blue" areas across the country are already effectively separating , threatening secession from the United States and practicing nullification. The as yet inchoate Middle American resistance has shown it is capable of fighting back. [ Organizing Middle American Resistance: Who Will Take the Next Step? , American Remnant, July 31, 2020]
If general disorder and a deadlock over the elections acts as a cover to deploy military units, it raises the same question Soviet officers and men were faced with in August 1991: Would the "boots on the ground" obey orders?
Trump may be disliked by top-level officers. But my sense is that he is popular with the rank-and-file. What if a significant number of them refused to obey a clearly illegal order? It may take only one Major Yevdokimov refusing unlawful orders for the whole plot to unravel.
The Deplorables have good reason to think the Blob will rig or otherwise reverse the election results. The past four years have already taught them that. And the Blob's Main Stream Media arm has been hard at it selling the Narrative of Trump stealing the election. The Democrats' base appears to be ready and willing to accept drastic measures against Trump and the Middle Americans they loathe.
The potential for a seismic political crisis is clear.
What we are witnessing is what I've called " the end of politics ." [ Chronicles , May 2019] American elections are becoming more like the zero-sum games they are in the undeveloped world -- and were to some extent in pre-modern Britain . A post-election crisis, especially a force majeure situation precipitated by military intervention, would accelerate the centrifugal forces already at work in the United States.
The failure of a coup attempt could do to the Democrats' "Coalition of the Fringes" what the failure of the August coup did to the Communists in the USSR -- opening up room to maneuver for what I call the American Remnant and VDARE.com calls the Historic American Nation.
Given the circumstances, with the demographic ring closing in, that may be a providential outcome.
Wayne Allensworth is a Corresponding Editor of Chronicles magazine. He is the author of The Russian Question: Nationalism, Modernization, and Post-Communist Russia , and a novel, Field of Blood . He writes at American Remnant .
Alden , says: October 19, 2020 at 3:25 am GMT
I'm not as optimistic as Allensworth. Only one escort of the elites moved against Gorbachev in 1991. Most of the rest held back. That allowed elite sector 2 to help Yeltsin resist. Plus, the Jew Wolves of Wall Street swarmed in. So there's that.
The military the rank and file is heavily black, especially the career sergeants petty officers who really carry out the officers orders. I think the Hispanic and White tank and file will stay loyal. But follow orders from the anti White officer corps and black sergeants
Consider the French Revolution. It didn't start till most of the officer corps were revolutionary masons. The National Guards were revolutionary and so were the judges and lawyers.
Every elite sector from the clergy through academia media professions and occupations education both unions and employers Chamber of Commerce Association of manufacturers nurses teachers Drs. Engineers construction probably big Agricultural which is all that matters any more. Every organized group is against Trump
All Trump has is us individuals maybe half the adult population but just unorganized individuals The Republican Party is organized but just as anti Trump and anti White as the most hysterical liberals and Democrats.
Vindemann Jew immigrant colonel inserted into a position where he could get General Flynn charged wit crime and the elected president impeached. There's Millions of Vindemanns in tactical and strategic positions all over the country in every sector. The anti Trump anti White revolutionaries already own media and communications
I hope I'm wrong. But what's been happening in America for the last 56 years and the acceleration since 2016 fits the pattern of every successful revolution in the last 500 years.
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Oct 19, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
Dao Gen ,
Dao Gen , Oct 17 2020 18:05 utc | 19
The neocon/NATO aggressive expansionism has many purposes, but one is surely domestic repression: to gaslight and cause fear-the-foreign-bogeyman trauma among the American and British people as a whole and make most of them become docile and lose their critical thinking skills and their ability to analyze their own societies.One of the best ways to lobotomize the publics of the US and UK is to very gradually impose martial law in the name of protecting national security and ensuring peace and harmony at home.
After several color revolutions succeeded, the Russiagate/Spygate op was carried out in the US, with British assistance. This op has been largely successful, though there has been limited resistance against its whole fake edifice as well as with the logic of Cold War2.0. Nevertheless, Spygate has shocked many tens of millions of Dems into a stupor, while millions more are dazed and manipulated by the Chinese bogeyman being manufactured by Trump.
The most dangerous result of the martial law lite mentality caused by Spygate and its MSM purveyors is the growing support for censorship of free speech coming mostly from the Dems, such as Schiff and Warner. The danger inherent in this trend became very clear when FaceBook and Twitter engaged in massive and unprecedented arbitrary censorship of the New York Post and of various Trump-related accounts.
This is the kind of thing you do during Stage 1 of a coup. Surely it was at least in part an experiment to see how various power points in the US would respond. Even though Twitter ended the censorship later, it was probably a successful experiment designed to gauge reactions and areas of resistance.
In November, there could be further, more serious experiments/ops. If so, the current expansionist movements being made and planned by the US and NATO may well be integral parts of a new non-democratic model of "American-style democracy" -- not constitution-based but "rules-based."
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Oct 18, 2020 | www.rt.com
Another 'hack' job? Censorship of the Hunter Biden story shows Twitter & Facebook have a big dog in the US political fight
Robert Bridge
Robert Bridge is an American writer and journalist. He is the author of 'Midnight in the American Empire,' How Corporations and Their Political Servants are Destroying the American Dream. @Robert_Bridge 16 Oct, 2020 16:26 / Updated 1 day ago Get short URL
FILE PHOTO: Hunter Biden introduces his father Vice President Joe Biden during the World Food Program USA's 2016 McGovern-Dole Leadership Award Ceremony at the Organization of American States on April 12, 2016 in Washington, DC. © Getty Images / Kris Connor/WireImage 270 Follow RT on
This week, the New York Post dropped a veritable bombshell smack in the middle of the 2020 presidential battlefield with a story so explosive it should have reverberated from sea to shining sea for many weeks. Instead, the news was duly squashed under the jackboot of Twitter and Facebook. The effort to smother the news backfired, though, instead kicking up a discussion of the social media giants having too much control over the spread of information that could be of interest to millions.
As most readers probably know by now, the Post reported this week that Hunter Biden had introduced his father, Joe Biden, the current Democratic presidential contender, to the head of Burisma, the Ukrainian energy firm where Hunter was a paid board member. What makes this revelation so significant is that not only was Joe serving as vice president at the time of the alleged introduction, but he has gone on record as saying he knew nothing about his prodigal son's overseas business dealings.
https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?creatorScreenName=RT_com&dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-0&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1316737387943395328&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.rt.com%2Fop-ed%2F503734-hack-censorship-twitter-hunter-biden%2F&siteScreenName=RT_com&theme=light&widgetsVersion=ed20a2b%3A1601588405575&width=550px
The rabbit hole travels much deeper, however, considering that Joe Biden publicly bragged about withholding one billion dollars from the Ukrainian government unless it removed a prosecutor who was investigating Burisma at the time. And deeper still when it is remembered that Donald Trump was impeached for simply asking the Ukrainian president to investigate Joe Biden's activities in the country.
Had the social media monsters had no political 'dog in the fight,' so to speak, the Post story would have lit up Twitter and Facebook like Saturday night at the amusement arcade. Instead, both platforms quickly yanked the plug on the story, preventing even the Post from tweeting it out. Twitter explained its decision by saying the article had violated its policy with regard to "hacked material."
https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?creatorScreenName=RT_com&dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-1&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1316752394793955331&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.rt.com%2Fop-ed%2F503734-hack-censorship-twitter-hunter-biden%2F&siteScreenName=RT_com&theme=light&widgetsVersion=ed20a2b%3A1601588405575&width=550px
That excuse does not hold a drop of water. According to the Post, Hunter Biden's emails were found in a laptop delivered to a computer repair shop in Delaware back in April 2019 – allegedly by Hunter Biden himself. When the laptop was never retrieved, however, the shop owner assumed legal ownership of the device as was his right. In other words, there was no illegal hacking of the device, as suggested by Twitter. In fact, the computer repairman was sufficiently concerned with what he had found on the laptop that he promptly handed the device over to the FBI, also providing a copy of the hard drive to Rudy Giuliani, a member of Trump's legal team.
If Twitter was genuinely concerned about the origins of the Biden email story, going so far as to block even the government's ability to retweet the Post story, then how does one explain the company's decision not to interfere with the New York Times and its exposé on Donald Trump's tax status? After all, the Times never mentioned who provided the US president's financial documents, which have still not seen the light of day. Think about that. The Post story was censored over documents it can actually produce, while the Times story was put on the fast lane to public consumption with zero physical evidence to support its claims.
ALSO ON RT.COM Caitlin Johnstone: Imagine if MSM consistently applied the evidentiary standards it's applying to Hunter Biden's emailsWhy was Twitter not suspicious that the New York Times had received hacked material, as very well could have been the case? It would be very difficult to explain that as anything other than naked political interference and meddling, which Silicon Valley and the Democratic Party, by the way, would have us believe is the sole purview of Russia.
Should Twitter and Facebook lose Section 230 immunity?
Needless to say, the Republicans, forever whining that they have been unfairly targeted by Big Tech, have called on Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to appear before the Senate as early as next week. But we've been down this dead-end road before. Every several months, the Silicon Valley CEOs make their star-studded photo-ops in Washington, swearing up and down before Congress that they are detached, apolitical animals, with the end result being that absolutely nothing changes. Maybe this time around, concerned Republicans (and Democrats) should finally do what they've been promising for so long, and that is to deprive Big Tech of its immunity by rescinding Section 230 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996.
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For the uninitiated, Section 230 grants social media companies such as Twitter and Facebook immunity from legal action taken as a result of bad information posted to its platforms. This frees Big Tech from having to perform the grueling fact-checking demanded of regular publishers; rather, they are simply supposed to serve as a free flow of information.
Yet ever since the defeat of Hillary Clinton in the 2016 elections, and the concomitant rise of Russiagate, Big Tech went against the spirit of Section 230, creating algorithms in its alleged battle against 'fake news' as a back door to creating its desired narrative. At the same time, it outsourced fact-checking to third-party organizations, among them ABC News, Snopes, Associated Press, and the Atlantic Council, each of which naturally has its own political ax to grind. With unsettling frequency, however, the ax has an uncanny way of dropping on the right-leaning creators.
In fact, back in May, Twitter even marked one of Donald Trump's tweets as potentially misleading. And now it seems that more than just the Republicans have noticed.
https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?creatorScreenName=RT_com&dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-3&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1265255835124539392&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.rt.com%2Fop-ed%2F503734-hack-censorship-twitter-hunter-biden%2F&siteScreenName=RT_com&theme=light&widgetsVersion=ed20a2b%3A1601588405575&width=550px
This week, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai promised to "move forward with a rulemaking to clarify" the meaning of Section 230.
Judging by Pai's past record, this may signal a new dawn for social media, in which people are granted access to platforms that do not censor their content based on political considerations, as the First Amendment demands. Instead of taking away Big Tech's immunity from legal responsibility, however, it would be best to keep it intact, on condition there would be no more monkey business with users' accounts. Nothing less than total free speech. Is this a dream too far? Possibly.
https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?creatorScreenName=RT_com&dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-4&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1316808733805236226&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.rt.com%2Fop-ed%2F503734-hack-censorship-twitter-hunter-biden%2F&siteScreenName=RT_com&theme=light&widgetsVersion=ed20a2b%3A1601588405575&width=550px
In any case, it would be poetic justice if the outcome of the 2020 presidential race between Trump and Biden ultimately comes down to the actions of a Delaware computer repairman, for repairs are certainly in order at this critical stage in US political history, dependent as it now is on Big Tech.
Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
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Oct 18, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com
FBI 'Has To Come Clean' About Corruption Evidence, Potential Child Porn On Hunter Biden's Laptop: Sen. Johnson
by Tyler Durden Sun, 10/18/2020 - 16:35 Twitter Facebook Reddit Email Print
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) is calling on the FBI to 'come clean' over the agency's involvement with Hunter Biden's laptop , after refusing to 'confirm or deny' certain details contained in a whistleblower complaint by a Delaware computer shop owner.
" The FBI has a duty to inform us . If they believe this was maybe Russian disinformation, they should give us a defensive briefing," Johnson told Fox News ' "Sunday Morning Futures."
"If, for example, they also believe that what information this whistleblower gave us is fraudulent, that would also be a crime, and FBI should tell us that."
Host Maria Bartiromo brought up a salient point - that the FBI was allegedly in possession of Hunter Biden's laptop which contains apparent evidence of pay-for-play corruption in Ukraine, at the same time Congressional Democrats were impeaching President Trump for asking Ukraine to investigate exactly that.
"If the FBI was in possession of these emails from Hunter Biden's computer indicating all of these payouts, why did they not make this public, as President Trump was being impeached in the Senate about Ukraine?"
Johnson replied: "the larger question really is; if they had this information - and these are genuine emails which would probably reveal all kinds of things that would have been very relevant to the impeachment case, why did they sit out? Are they covering up because Hunter Biden might be engaged in things that also maybe should have been investigated and possibly prosecuted? Dow we have two systems of justice? One for Democrats, one for Republicans, one for the well connected, vs. one for the rest of the Americans."
https://www.youtube.com/embed/UONQiPT0Mks?start=233
Child porn?
Bartiromo then steered the conversation to national security risks - noting that the signature of the FBI's top child porn lawyer appeared on the subpoena for Hunter's laptop.
"The subpoena was served by an FBI agent whose name is Joshua Wilson, and over the last five years he has been working on child pornography issues. Connect the dots - if an FBI agent is working on child pornography issues for five years, why is he subpoenaing the laptop of Hunter Biden? Is there a connection here? Should this suggest that there's a child pornography issue here on that laptop?"
"Well, I think you just made the connection ," Johnson replied. "This is what the FBI has to come clean about . This isn't a standard investigation... this is something that, as we were talking about, relates to national security. And if there's criminal activity involved that can be tied to Hunter Biden or his business associates, or even possibly tied back to members of the Biden family - well some of these emails indicate that Joe Biden is fully aware of this ."
As we noted on Friday, FBI agent Wilson's identity was confirmed by both Western Journal and Business Insider , the latter of which compared his signature to a 2012 criminal complaint and concluded that it "clearly matches the unreversed signature on the subpoena published by the New York Post ."
play_arrow 2 AlaricBalth , 8 hours agoUrfa Man , 4 hours agoHunter Biden has most likely been compromised by tapes of him with young girls while he was in China. When I was traveling back and forth to China a few years ago, I was told by our Chinese attorney to be very cautious because Americans were always recorded in their hotel rooms.
It was the policy of the Chinese government. Privacy laws are non existent. All Americans were taped in the event that any American could be utilized for the benefit of the CCP in the future.
Also, there are many high end "Karaoke" parlors in China where horizontal refreshment can be procured. Many Americans frequent these establishments. The girls are beautiful. The places have cameras everywhere.
Dogbreath15 , 1 hour agoThanks for mentioning the Chicoms, TBT. None of the tabloid-level sex stuff counts nearly as much as the fact that Joe Biden's secret payoffs from the Chinese (via Ye Jianming, Biden's Chinese paymaster). The sneaky Chinese money for Biden makes this election a dangerous national security crisis.
Joe Biden couldn't get a security clearance for even a low level government job now, let alone C in C of the US armed forces.
St. TwinkleToes , 6 hours ago"It's not physically possible to shame a Democrat."
The Elite Democrats WANT to sell out the country, they welcome dragging the USA through the sewer (and then blame the opposition!)
DeathMerchant , 5 hours agoMakes you wonder how many of those Asian/Chinese massage parlors are spying and collecting operations for the CCP, filming compromising acts to be used against you when the time comes arrives.
optimator , 5 hours agoIt's referred to as the Epstein Protocol.
Warthog777 , 4 hours agoCredit where it's due. Cheaper to run a few massage parlors than running an expensive island operation.
_arrowvovishka.2018 , 6 hours agoChinese whistleblower provided 3 hard drives of damning info from the ccp on the Biden family, biological weapons etc. , to the DOJ, Pelowsi, and eventually Trump.
Compromised!
https://www.citizenfreepress.com/breaking/chinese-whistleblower-testimony-on-biden/
fpdguy , 5 hours agoBiden Derangement Syndrome ..
@Dragonlord. - The TrumpTard that has gone completely out of his mind. The TrumpTard wants to blame the Biden family for the corruption, perversion, the violence & destruction of the moral fabric in the US - LOL
The TrumpTard believes that Trump is going to solve the corruption, the political and racial divide in Yankeelandia - LOL
Corruption is Legal in America
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tu32CCA_Ig&ab_channel=RepresentUsFor yr entertainment: "Dueling Town Halls Cold Open - SNL"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UFfD0HIhv4&ab_channel=SaturdayNightLive2banana , 8 hours agoSydney Powell should be near the top of the list for candidates to replace Wray. She's familiar with a fair amount of the chain of corruption while dealing with the Flynn railroading. She's seen what lengths they are willing to go to and would be less apt to think she needs to play nice once appointed.
FUG , 8 hours agoBut yet a "noose" in a NASCAR garage gets 15 FBI agents.
Ex-NYPD Commissioner: I've Seen Hunter's Hard Drive; the Bidens 'Belong in Handcuffs'
SDShack , 7 hours agoHe'll be another NYPD officer to "commit suicide" as others who saw Weiner's laptop.
KnightOfSwords , 7 hours agoand Pizzagate is just a conspiracy...yep...right.
Calibabe , 8 hours agoPizzagate is anything but a "conspiracy theory" These people are sick, evil, degenerates. Take a real good look at John Podesta and Hillary Clinton.
Robert De Zero , 6 hours agoWhat is contained on Hunter Biden's laptop is enough to put anyone on this site in prison for a long, long, long time. Yet, he remains free, walking around, not a worry in the world. I wonder how his "wife" and the stripper who had his child feel about him now? This guy is a major creeper. The bigger question however isn't so much what the CCP has on Hunter, but what does the CCP have on ole Joe? You can bet that file they have is thick and probably just as bad.
Robert De Zero , 6 hours agoSay what you will about Rudy Giuliani. None of this would be happening right now without him. He's truly the best friend President Trump could have. He helped get him through 4 years of hell with the fake Russia hoax and then hits a home run in the last inning leading up to Election Day.
Now Rudy is taking massive flak from the corrupt liar media.
Rudy, my hat is off to you sir. You deserve medals.
indaknow , 8 hours agoThe tired and failed "Russia is behind everything" trope never gets old for you guys or the fake news. Get some new material, yawn.
lester1 , 8 hours agoNot sure how the left can spin this as Russian disinformation when Hunter's own lawyer just last week contacted the shop owner asking for the laptop back.
dibiase , 8 hours agoChris Wray is a deep state swamp creature. Did anyone actually expect him, or the FBI to do the right thing and indict Biden for corruption? They have been sitting on this laptop evidence for almost a year!!
Fishthatlived , 8 hours agoThose q guys were telling us to trust him just a year or so back
SDShack , 7 hours ago"Us?"
mc888 , 6 hours agoThe timing of all this is what connects the dots. 3 Laptops were dropped off in early 2019 to the computer repair shop. Work was done and technician tried to get paid for 3-4 months and have the laptops picked up. This is now fall 2019. Then the Russian Mueller Hoax Impeachment hits the news, and the technician realizes he is holding dynamite with a lit fuse, so he contacts the FBI. The coverup begins by December 2019.
NOTE - this is when the Dem Primary Season is kicking off. Bernie is the leader, but no establishment demorat can stop him and are winnowed out, especially the big donor favorite Kamalho early on. When Bernie is feared to be the nominee, a full court press for Senile Joe is made by the establishment to stop him. Pretty obvious now that the establishment was being extorted by the Chicoms with the original information on these hard drives. Who would be video taping a PASSED OUT HUNTER, and sex romps by Hunter with chinese girls, other then the CCP? The message was install compromised Joe...or we take down your party. And Lordy...look what happened...Senile Joe steamrolled Bernie, and Kamalho became the fallback position. I could never figure out the reason for the demorats to rig the system for Senile Joe, who was clearly one of the weakest candidates. It all makes sense when you realize HE was the CCP Favorite.
They thought the only people that had the blackmail info was the CCP and the demorat establishment and swamp. The fix was in. They never figured on an idiot crackhead giving the hard drive evidence to a 3rd party. That wrinkle is now beyond their control and is going to blow up DC. The Mutual Assured Destruction card has just been played. The ***-puckering on all sides has to be reaching nuclear levels.
Southern_Boy , 4 hours agoI could never figure out the reason for the demorats to rig the system for Senile Joe
Remember Obama stating he wanted a "continuation" of his administration?
Tseg , 4 hours agoSo where is Seth Rich's case in all of this?
Mister Delicious , 4 hours agoWith the Kennedy Assassination redactions.
fxrxexexdxoxmx2 , 4 hours agothe reason they STILL wont release all the Kennedy assassination files is Israel and the Jewish/Zionist International Mafia is implicated.
https://wikispooks.com/wiki/File:Final_Judgment.pdf
https://www.unz.com/article/did-israel-kill-the-kennedies/
Just like 9/11.
4Y_LURKER , 3 hours agoUnsolved homicide. And nothing will come of it since no investigation by any law enforcement agency is happening.
ponchoramic , 6 hours agoUnbelievably, it's all connected!
William Dorritt , 6 hours agoSeriously, this is sick as f and the implications for blackmail 'were/ are' huge.
Think about what Trump has said, over and over.
If Biden wins, China will own America.
I will add, and Joe Biden.
Goldenfoxx , 5 hours agoIs this another reason the FBI hid the Hunter Biden Laptop?
By Selwyn Duke
It didn't surprise the informed, and understandably a bit cynical, to hear that the FBI sat on Hunter Biden's laptop instead of seeking justice. The bureau was previously involved in an illegal plot to take down Donald Trump, after all, and its Deep State elements would assuredly love to see Joe Biden succeed him in January. So why would they reveal damning information on their establishment hope? Yet suppressing Huntergate perhaps provided a secondary benefit:
The information could be used against Biden once he was in office.
This wouldn't be anything new. It's believed that longtime, legendary FBI director J. Edgar Hoover used "dirt files" on politicians for leverage; for one thing, it's said, this enabled him to remain bureau head for as long as he wished. William Sullivan, once the number three official under Hoover, put it this way: From the moment the director got damning information on a senator, the man would be "right in his pocket."
So not only could suppressing Huntergate get Biden in office, but then maybe it's, "Nice presidency you've got there, Mr. Biden -- I'd hate to see anything happen to it."
NumbNuts , 4 hours agoDidn't Guiliani tell the FBI that they had a copy of Humper's hard drive - or the owner of the computer business? It all sounds so convenient. No wonder Biden went into hiding, his son probably told dad what he did and that 50% of the take was too much. Humper maybe gave dad an ultimatum. Drug addicts are like that "you bring me down, you go down lower." Blackmail can be a bitch.
@therealOrangeBuffoon , 4 hours agoCan they come clean on:
1) JFK assassination
2) WTC 93' bombing set up
3) OKC bombing set up
4) MLK death
5) Waco
6) Just about all other domestic terrorism activitiesNumbNuts , 4 hours agoConspiracy theorists have no intention of believing anything provable. It's about chasing rainbows.
Stu Pedassle , 4 hours agoThen we should believe what they have to tell us about the Russian Collusion and all things Biden? Naive, are we?
NumbNuts , 4 hours agoI can prove that Building 7 fell uniformly on it's own footprint in what appears to be a controlled demolition - does that count?
Stu Pedassle , 4 hours agoAccording to @therealOrangeBuffoon , you have to go with what NIST told us, before they changed their story, thanks to AE911truth.org .
Truth is treason in an empire of lies - Ron Paul
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Oct 07, 2020 | failedevolution.blogspot.com
globinfo freexchange
As we explained previously, what we see now in the United States with Trump, is a counter-attack by the part of the American capital against the globalist faction. The faction that is primarily consisted by the liberal plutocracy. Therefore, as the capitalist class splits, the capitalists around Trump are now taking with them the most conservative part of the American society, as they need electoral power. They have the money and their own media network. Their first big victory was Trump in the US presidency and this explains why the liberal media attack him so hard and so frequently.The COVID-19 pandemic added more chaos in the ongoing civil war between capitalists and (as always), the working class is paying the price for the additional mess.
The DNC establishment fought hard, one more time, to get rid of Bernie Sanders in order to impose its own - fully controllable and fully dedicated to the neoliberal status quo - Joe Biden/Kamala Harris duo. Obviously, this was an attempt by the corporate Democrats to challenge and beat Trump without harming neoliberal order through a Socialist like Sanders in the leadership of the Democratic Party. Still, the DNC establishment couldn't take full control of the whole situation as the most popular progressives, like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, renewed their position in the party through big victories in the 2020 primaries. Furthermore, the progressive army came out stronger through significant additional victories like Cori Bush's.Corporate Democrats' anxiety and fear that they could lose control over the party became quite evident during latest party convention, as they tried hard to "bury" their own progressives while gave plenty of time to neoliberal Republicans and war criminals to speak.
And, actually, this is the main reason that the corporate Democrats want so desperately to beat Trump in November's election.
With a potential Biden victory the corporate Dems will re-establish their position in the party against progressives, as they will be able to play the Trump-scare card for four more years.During that time, they will get all the help they want from the liberal media to bury forever the most popular Socialist policies. Simply by claiming that the Trump nightmare could return in 2024. Therefore, they will demand "unity" from all party members under their own terms, in short, under full restoration of the neoliberal status quo. Under these circumstances, corporate Democrats will have plenty of time to assist the liberal plutocrats to take over directly the party in 2024.
On the contrary, with a potential Trump victory the Trump-scare card will be burned for good and corporate Democrats won't be able to use it as Trump won't be able to have another term in 2024.
In that case, corporate Democrats will receive additional pressure from the progressive wing and progressive voters, as these will demand radical changes inside the party towards popular policies. The liberal capitalist faction will face the serious threat to be left without political power, which by 2024, will be restricted to some moderate Republicans who are dedicated to the neoliberal doctrine. The dream of the liberal plutocrats to take over political power directly will die forever.
And this could be proved decisive for the outcome of the endo-capitalist war between the liberal plutocrats and the Trump-affiliated capitalists.
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Oct 16, 2020 | turcopolier.typepad.com
"more interesting to me and my family ..." NY Post
"Hunter Biden pursued lucrative deals involving China's largest private energy company -- including one that he said would be "interesting for me and my family," emails obtained by The Post show .
One email sent to Biden on May 13, 2017, with the subject line "Expectations," included details of "remuneration packages" for six people involved in an unspecified business venture.
Biden was identified as "Chair / Vice Chair depending on agreement with CEFC," an apparent reference to the former Shanghai-based conglomerate CEFC China Energy Co.
His pay was pegged at "850 " and the email also noted that "Hunter has some office expectations he will elaborate."
In addition, the email outlined a "provisional agreement" under which 80 percent of the "equity," or shares in the new company, would be split equally among four people whose initials correspond to the sender and three recipients, with "H" apparently referring to Biden ."
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Well, you can see why the Chinese wanted and needed Hunter's expertise. He had demonstrated his worth with the Ukrainian companies.
And who is the "big guy" for whom Hunter is said to be holding 1o M? pl
https://nypost.com/2020/10/15/emails-reveal-how-hunter-biden-tried-to-cash-in-big-with-chinese-firm/
Bobo , 16 October 2020 at 05:40 PM
Fred , 16 October 2020 at 06:09 PMWell I expect by the end of next week all them Biden voters via mail will be running to their Supervisor of Elections offices to retract their votes. Hopefully they are allowed to, if not, run to the courts.
As to the "Big Guy" It's Pop, you know the one who gets 50% of everything. I read that in one of Hunters texts to his daughter that Rudy is holding.The not so widely read Breitbart has a doozy out about Hunter's early business associate Devon Archer, one going back to 2011. If true it's another on-target salvo to the Biden family reputation.
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Oct 16, 2020 | turcopolier.typepad.com
...You have undoubtablely heard about the Weineresque hard drive discovery involving Hunter Biden and his emails. You probably didn't see it on Twitter or Facebook.
In a quite open effort to suppress news, restrain the trade of news organizations in competition with them, these two firms have actively 'shadow banned' the story and locked out a number organizations and people from their accounts, starting with:
The NY Post, one of the largest news organizations in the US and publisher of the story .Censor the press? Why yes, that's exactly what was done here. Questions from other competitors in the press? Well those aren't banned; however, it sure looks like the Biden campaign supplies those to the fake news reporters. Let me suggest one.
Continue reading "Banned by Biden! A Digital Iron Curtain Descends Upon America. By Fred" "
Posted at 09:45 AM in As The Borg Turns , China , Current Affairs , Fred , gove
longarch , 16 October 2020 at 10:32 AM
Diana L Croissant , 16 October 2020 at 11:32 AMTor, IPFS, and I2P are still available for the moment. If a serious Iron Curtain descends, uninformed Americans can ask their friends who pirate Internet content to teach them how to use basic anonymity and pseudonymity tech. That should work for a while, at least. Eventually, if any hardcore privacy tech attracts mainstream users, we can expect that every nosy private detective and her cat will have exploits to defeat it, so the march of software development is never-ending.
However, we are not at the stage where we must teach our neighbors how to use 8kun.top. (If you want to learn, you're welcome to join us, but honestly it has a learning curve and it is not optimal for the present situation.)
Currently clearnet sites are summarizing anonymous research. You can reach out to convenient new sites such as:
to get user-friendly summaries of the news that the lamestream media doesn't want you to see. You will note that many of the stories at that site come from user-friendly news sites that you might already know about, such as:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/
Deap , 16 October 2020 at 12:19 PM
Perhaps it's time for people to get back to simpler lives and just quit finding any reason to use any of the services of the "Digital Iron Curtain" establishments.You would be surprised how much more pleasant your life will become without them. Become a "Luddite" for our time.
I've learned that it's easy not to use the services or products of companies that have become too political.
Artemesia , 16 October 2020 at 12:29 PMAll good points and a very timely reminder. How does this Biden total media blackout control comport with Democrat claims Trump is a dictator, that we will lose America if Trump is re-elected and we must all end Trump's reign of authoritarian control?
So glad I never signed up for Twitter, do not have a Facebook account and don't even own a cell phone. Yet the Biden "news" still broke through the high-tech censorship Wall. Democrats are patently schizophrenic about "open borders".
Fred , 16 October 2020 at 12:43 PM
regarding C-Span: " In related news C-SPAN suspends political editor Steve Scully. Yes, he was going to be the presidential debate moderator at the second debate; now he admits he lied about his Twitter feed being hacked. Blue, check."I watch C Span online; have done so for years. I think C Span is one of the more insidious of the media outlets, precisely because people think it is so "fair and balanced," "not like Fox or CNN" that have an obvious bias.
C Span's unobvious bias is what you don't hear -- never, ever hear, and that is any word that disparages ADL, AIPAC, or the narratives they and their myriad associated organizations hold dear.
Steve Scully has been one of the fiercest defenders of that invisible protective barrier, their Golden Boy for most of his career and most of C Span's existence. Maybe Scully is becoming too expensive: C Span has begun posting advertisements before granting access to live stream programs.Or perhaps he's aging out. The people who ensure the above-mentioned policies prevail are unabashed about their practice of hand-picking people like Scully: Irish, Catholic, innocent choir-boy appearance.
As Plaintiff's Exhibit #1 I offer statements from Anita Weiner's Expanding Historical Consciousness: The Development of the Holocaust Education Foundation https://tinyurl.com/y5q7eg5v
a book describing how, in the late-1980s and early 1990s Zvi Weiss proceeded step-by-step to include "holocaust education" first at Northwestern University, where Weiss selected Irish Catholic scholar of German history Peter Francis Hayes, spent $3000 for a substitute teacher for Hayes's classes while he spent the semester in Israel being prepped to spearhead Weiss's agenda. Weiss's success at Northwestern propelled him next to Notre Dame, then to universities across the country, and then to US military academies. In 2013 a department of holocaust studies became fully integrated into Northwestern University; it's reasonable to assume Northwestern is not alone in this.Bill H , 16 October 2020 at 02:03 PMArtemesia,
CSPAN suspended political editor Steve Scully for lying. Other news organizations covering the election did not.
http://static.c-spanvideo.org/files/pressCenter/C-SPAN+statement+on+Steve+Scully+October+15%2C+2020.pdf
I don't think CSPAN is a 'media outlet" as that term is generally understood. However, for your other complaints, you should take them up with CSPAN management.
https://www.c-span.org/about/mission/Peter VE , 16 October 2020 at 02:05 PMWith respect to this hard drive, the Washington Post has an article saying that the White House was warned last year that Rudy Giuliani was "the target of an influence operation by Russian intelligence." The source of that information is, of course, "sources who demanded anonymity to discuss sensitive information" and some "intercepted communications."
So from that we are to assume that the Hunter Biden hard drive is not real, but is a subterfuge created by the FSB, or the GRU, or perhaps by Putin himself.
Fred , 16 October 2020 at 02:44 PMThe absolutely dumbest part of it all was that, by banning the Post, Twitler and Faceplant have created more interest in the story than had they ignored it. Even NPR had to cover the reaction to the ban, whilst curiously omitting mention of the details of the EMails.
akaPatience , 16 October 2020 at 03:15 PMBill H,
With respect to the reporters, did anyone call the referenced person in Ukraine? Did anyone call the local FBI and ask what happened? Did anyone ask any of the Bidens? With respect to discrediting anyone associated with Trump, including Guliani, where have you been since 2016?
Fred , 16 October 2020 at 03:20 PMIRON CURTAIN - what an apt reference for these times of shameless, reckless, ruinous, fascist-like censorship, intellectual dishonesty, and utter hypocrisy.
Eric Newhill , 16 October 2020 at 04:38 PMArtemesia,
I wrote a blog post on censorship, your second resonse about events 15 years ago is almost as long as what I wrote and is also irrelevant to what big tech is doing with the Hunter Biden story. Take your axe and animus against CSPAN elsewhere.
Fred , 16 October 2020 at 06:06 PMFred,
Apparently, in believing there is something to the Hunter Biden email story, you are the victim of yet another Russian misinformation operation designed to help their good friend Donald Trump. That was what I'm picking up from the MSM. The FBI is even about to confirm...er uh...I mean investigate, Russian involvement. You should be more careful! Thankfully, socially media continues to do their job of protecting you from the forces of evil! Can I get an "amen"?Eric Newhill , 16 October 2020 at 07:03 PMEric,
Amen and don't you dare read that article about Hunter's "business associate" over on Breitbart, they've already been discredited.
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/10/16/exclusive-this-is-china-inc-emails-reveal-hunter-bidens-associates-helped-communist-aligned-chinese-elites-secure-white-house-meetings/Artemesia , 16 October 2020 at 07:39 PMFred,
Too late. I read it earlier today. But I swear I only so because I was just curious as to what kind of sinister misinformation those dastardly Ruskies are putting out there to defame noble Joe Biden and interfere with our system of government. And, to be clear, I only read Breitbart to see what Russia aligned far-right terrorist white supremacists are plotting. Have to be informed to be properly on guard, you know.And if I was ever seen in a strip club, that wasn't me, but if it was, I was only there for the music.
No need to put me on a list, to deactivate my internet access or contact my employer to let HR know they have an employee wandering down the crooked path to the Wrong Side of History.
Fred , 16 October 2020 at 07:49 PMFred, I don't understand the "Field" photo.
What is burning?
nb. Ironic that you censored my comment that detailed the way that groups given a platform by C Span are using the US legal system to **censor** people who legitimately sought to speak out against the proposed, and now effected, removal of the statue of Robert E Lee in Charlottesville.
Artemesia,
When you live in a concrete jungle and the building burn down you are left with a field of concrete dreams.
This is a private blog, not a commercial enterprise, to which I have been granted the privelege of writing commentary. I deleted you 600+ words, as I felt them to be nothing more than irrelevant trolling. Long and irreleven commentary being one of the halmarks of trolling. But since you are requesting politely I'll post them in their entirety over on an open thread, and perhaps our host will publish them.
You can complain to C-SPAN about their actions from 15 years ago here:
https://www.c-span.org/about/contactUs/
Good luck.
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Oct 15, 2020 | www.rt.com
Northern 'Working Class' Brits need to lose the chip on their shoulder and stop expecting other people to solve their problems
Chris Sweeney
Chris Sweeney is an author and columnist who has written for newspapers such as The Times, Daily Express, The Sun and Daily Record, along with several international-selling magazines. Follow him on Twitter @Writes_Sweeney 14 Oct, 2020 14:18 / Updated 14 hours ago Get short URL
© Getty Images/Peter Byrne/PA Images 26 Follow RT on
Britain is riddled by a class system. This is largely down to the exaggeration of those who self-identify as "working class".
A snapshot is the cliché thrown around that to be Prime Minister, you have to attend either Oxford or Cambridge. For those outside of the UK, the insinuation is that you come from an affluent background, can afford private education which enabled you to enter one of the two famous universities. Boris Johnson is the poster child for this privileged group of blue bloods.
READ MOREBritain has always been unfair, unequal and divided – Covid-19 has only served to show this in even more stark relief
But James Callaghan was Prime Minster before Margaret Thatcher took over in 1979, and couldn't afford to go to university so never went. Neither did her successor, John Major. Gordon Brown who followed Tony Blair, attended the University of Edinburgh and is well-regarded as the most intellectual of recent PMs.
There's no denying the political system has a bias towards Oxbridge alumni, but people have smashed the glass ceiling and, in fact, even of the PMs who did attend Oxford or Cambridge between 1964 and 1997, Wilson, Heath and Thatcher, none were privately educated.
Why this is pertinent now, is because of the hysteria sweeping Britain's North complaining of playing with a loaded deck. The gripe is that London and the wealthier pockets of society are being allowed more attention and flexibility during Covid.
The South of England is the spiritual home of The Conservatives, the land of the millionaire stockbroker and art history scholar. The North, Wales and Scotland have traditionally been enemy territory, due to their cities being built on manufacturing, coal mining and industry. In our current scenario, this Northern population are being driven by a chip on their shoulders.
London dominates commerce and business, it's a global financial centre. Even so, some of the capital city's inhabitants are under the misapprehension that Northerners dream of a "London life". They don't.
The two pillars of British culture; football and music are defined far more successfully outside of London, than they ever have been inside.
The same discombobulation happens in the other direction and because the Northern towns are more parochial, they impact on a bigger scale.
ALSO ON RT.COM 'No peasants, please': BoJo's love-in with Bill Gates on Twitter shows just how broken UK democracy really isOver the last few days, the British government has tightened restrictions particularly in the North, across the three tiers - they are the only region in the most severe tranche. But chancellor Rishi Sunak has announced a new scheme to pay two-thirds of any employees' wages, if their place of work is forced to shut.
Large firms who close can claim grants up to £3,000 per month and smaller businesses are entitled to £1,300. That's on top of the Job Support Scheme, which kicks-in for anyone working at least a third of their normal hours. The government will subsidise the remaining two-thirds (up to £2,100).
This follows furlough, which has been paying 80 percent of salaries (up to £2,500 per month) of 12 percent of Britain's workforce. Sunak said : "The primary goal of our economic policy remains unchanged - to support people's jobs...I cannot save every business, I cannot save every job."
Northern politicians have been quick to dog whistle.
Mayor of Greater Manchester , Andy Burnham complained: "They're trying to pressurise people into tier three, even though it will do certain harm to those economies, often quite fragile economies in the north."
Liverpool's mayor Steve Rotheram felt he wasn't consulted enough and said: "it was made clear to us that government would be doing this regardless of if we engaged with them or not."
Whipping up a frenzy ahead of the new rules, Frank McKenna, chief executive of lobby group Downtown in Business , ranted: "I cannot overstate the devastation that this will cause to Liverpool and other parts on northern England if these plans are adopted."
ALSO ON RT.COM I've gone from pro-lockdown to NO lockdown. Here's why people must take over from inept governments and learn to live with CovidCovid is slitting the wrists of our economy. Unemployment has risen to 4.5 percent . But the pain is everywhere.
National debt stands at £2 trillion and will remain at over 100 percent of GDP, until 2025 at least. New research shows Aberdeen has the highest remaining income (£1,487.82), after monthly costs are deducted from average salaries.
Liverpool, Sheffield, Hull, Leeds, Glasgow, Manchester and Newcastle all rate above London on the same scale. The residents of the capital are left with £260.97.
London has a glut of millionaires and average figures are distorting. But that's the crux - statistics and points of view can be massaged.
This antipathy from the North is driven by rose-tinted spectacles. Those in the world of financial services earn more than their blue-collar counterparts.
That's because fewer people are capable of these jobs and they generate significantly more wealth than a manual or semi-skilled worker. This is not a criticism of manual workers, just a fact of life. Parity would be neither fair nor achievable. Living standards are determined by income, those working in commerce are also able to continue unabated, due to technology and video conferencing.
ALSO ON RT.COM Boris Johnson 'forcing' pubs in the North of England to close is a cultural car crash bound to cause more trouble than it curesThe arrival of Covid wasn't Britain's doing and Boris Johnson has handled it appallingly, for everyone. But even so there has been a herculean level of financial assistance, with The Treasury opening the cheque book like never before. Along with the other schemes, they've just handed £257 million to arts organisations across England.
Some elements of the Westminster machine are working for us all, the complaining masses in the North need to respect that. Moaning about being left dangling by the upper classes is just jealously at not having what others do.
Life isn't fair but the government's Covid assistance has been, so stop the self-pity.
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The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
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Oct 15, 2020 | www.unz.com
Hugo Silva , says: October 13, 2020 at 6:30 pm GMT
@GhaliTRM , says: October 13, 2020 at 7:41 pm GMTAt this point American politics is a dispute among two Jewish factions, Trump is a pawn of the Zionist faction and was targeted for destruction by the Cosmopolitan faction. Whoever wins, we loose!
@Ghali ary. The Israeli/Zionist elites care about their constituents opinions about as much as the elites in any group. ZERO. There's a big club and we ain't in it.The Israeli/Zionist elites wanted war with Iran or slapping them back economically to the middle ages. Hillary was going to leave the Iran deal in place and Trump was going to tear it up.
Trump paid for his re-election by murdering Solemani. Trump felt he couldn't start a war in his first term so offered that up to get their support. He will be re-elected in big part because he solidified his position with them as the anti-Iran candidate.
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Oct 15, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com
Submitted by Nauman Sadiq,
Former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney released an extraordinary statement on Tuesday, decrying a political scene he said "has moved away from spirited debate to a vile, vituperative, hate-filled morass, that is unbecoming of any free nation." "The world is watching America with abject horror," he added.
Romney tweeted his statement under the title "My thoughts on the current state of our politics." "I have stayed quiet," he said, "with the approach of the election." "But I'm troubled by our politics," the sole Republican to vote to impeach Trump added in his statement.
"The president calls the Democratic vice-presidential candidate 'a monster'. He repeatedly labels the Speaker of the House 'crazy.' He calls for the justice department to put the prior president in jail. He attacks the governor of Michigan on the very day a plot is discovered to kidnap her. Democrats launch blistering attacks of their own, though their presidential nominee refuses to stoop as low as others," Romney, a Utah senator who was the 2012 Republican nominee for president, complained in the statement.
Though superficially trying to appear "fair and balanced" in the didactic sermon patronizingly delivered by the only adult in the room full of political upstarts, Romney's perceptible bias in the polemical diatribe was hard not to be noticed.
It defies explanation if he didn't watch the presidential debate or consciously elided over the sordid episode where the Democratic presidential nominee contemptuously sneered at his political rival with derogatory epithets such as "a clown, a racist and Putin's puppy."
I'm not sure if Biden was high on meth during the debate, as Trump had repeatedly been insinuating, or he lacks basic etiquette to act like a dignified statesman, but only amphetamines could make a person take leave of his senses and insolently yell at the president of the US, "Will you shut up, man," while ironically complaining, "This is so unpresidential."
Though a longtime Republican senator, Mitt Romney's loyalty to the GOP was compromised due to a personal spat with Trump. In the Republican primaries of the 2016 US presidential elections, Romney severely castigated Trump, calling him "a phony and a fraud."
After Trump was elected president, he dangled the carrot of the secretary of state appointment to Romney, invited him to a dinner in a swanky New York restaurant, made him eat his words and fawn all over Trump like a servile toady. But later, he gave one of the most coveted appointments in the US bureaucratic hierarchy to oil executive Rex Tillerson.
Romney felt humiliated to the extent that in Trump's vulnerable moment, after impeachment proceedings were initiated against him in the Senate in February, Romney became the only US senator in the American political history who voted against his own Republican Party president.
https://lockerdome.com/lad/13084989113709670?pubid=ld-dfp-ad-13084989113709670-0&pubo=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com&rid=www.zerohedge.com&width=890
Though lacking intellect and often ridiculed for frequent spelling errors on his Twitter timeline, such as "unpresidented" and "covfefe," implying he gets his news feed from television talk shows and rarely reads book and articles, Donald Trump is street smart and his anti-globalization agenda and down-to-earth attitude appeal to the American working classes.
Nevertheless, it's quite easy for the neuroscientists on the payroll of the national security establishment to manipulate the minds of such impressionable politicians and lead them by the nose to toe the line of the deep state, particularly on foreign policy matters. No wonder national security shills disparagingly sneer at the president as the "toddler-in-chief."
In 2017, a couple of caricatures went viral on social media. In one of those caricatures, Donald Trump was depicted as a child sitting on a chair and Vladimir Putin was shown whispering something into Trump's ears from behind. In the other, Trump was portrayed sitting in Steve Bannon's lap and the latter was shown mumbling into Trump's ears, "Who is the big boy now?" And Trump was shown replying, "I am the big boy."
The meaning conveyed by those cunningly crafted caricatures was to illustrate that Trump lacks the intelligence to think for himself and that he was being manipulated and played around by Putin and Bannon. Those caricatures must have affronted the vanity of Donald Trump to an extent that after the publication of those caricatures, he became ill-disposed toward Putin and sacked Bannon from his job as the White House Chief Strategist in August 2017, only seven months into the first year of the Trump presidency.
Bannon was the principal ideologue of the American alt-right movement. Though the alt-right agenda of the Trump presidency has been scuttled by the deep state, Trump's views regarding global politics and economics are starkly different from the establishment Democrats and Republicans pursuing neocolonial world order masqueraded as globalization and free trade.
Besides the Trump supporters in the United States, the far-right populist leaders in Europe are also exploiting popular resentment against free trade and globalization. The Brexiteers in the United Kingdom, the Yellow Vest protesters in France and the far-right movements in Germany and across Europe are a manifestation of a paradigm shift in the global economic order in which nationalist and protectionist slogans have replaced the free trade and globalization mantra of the nineties.
Donald Trump withdrawing the United States from multilateral treaties, restructuring trade agreements and initiating a trade war against China are meant to redress, at least cosmetically, the legitimate grievances of the American working classes against the wealth disparity created by laissez-faire capitalism and market fundamentalism.
Michael Crowley reported for the New York Times last month that American allies and former US Officials fear Trump could seek NATO exit in a second term. According to the report, "This summer, Mr. Trump's former national security adviser John R. Bolton published a book that described the president as repeatedly saying he wanted to quit the NATO alliance. Last month, Mr. Bolton speculated to a Spanish newspaper that Mr. Trump might even spring an 'October surprise' shortly before the election by declaring his intention to leave the alliance in a second term."
The report notes, "In a book published this week, Michael S. Schmidt, a New York Times reporter, wrote that Mr. Trump's former chief of staff John F. Kelly, a retired four-star Marine general, told others that 'one of the most difficult tasks he faced with Trump was trying to stop him from pulling out of NATO.' One person who has heard Mr. Kelly speak in private settings confirmed that he had made such remarks."
Crowley adds, "Donald Trump now relies on 'a team of inexperienced bureaucrats' and has grown more confident and assertive, as he has already sacked seasoned national security advisers, including John F. Kelly; Jim Mattis, another retired four-star Marine general and Trump's first defense secretary; and H.R. McMaster, a retired three-star Army general and Trump's former national security adviser."
In fact, the Trump administration announced plans in July to withdraw 12,000 American troops from Germany and sought to cut funding for the Pentagon's European Deterrence Initiative. About half of the troops withdrawn from Germany were re-deployed in Europe, mainly in Italy and Poland, and the rest returned to the US.
Similarly, although full withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan was originally scheduled for April next year, according to terms of peace deal reached with the Taliban on February 29, President Trump hastened the withdrawal process by making an electoral pledge this week that all troops should be "home by Christmas." "We should have the small remaining number of our BRAVE Men and Women serving in Afghanistan home by Christmas," he tweeted last week.
Even the arch-foes of the US in Afghanistan effusively praised President Trump's peace overtures. Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told CBS News in a phone interview last week, "We hope he will win the election and wind up US military presence in Afghanistan."
The militant group also expressed concern about President Trump's bout with the coronavirus. "When we heard about Trump being COVID-19 positive, we got worried for his health, but it seems he is getting better," another Taliban senior leader confided to reporter Sami Yousafzai.
Moreover, Iran-backed militias recently announced "conditional" cease-fire against the US forces in Iraq on the condition that Washington present a timetable for the withdrawal of its troops. The US-led coalition has already departed from smaller bases across Iraq and promised to reduce its troop presence from 5,200 to 3,000 in the next couple of months, though Iraq's parliament passed a resolution urging the full withdrawal of US troops in January.
There is no denying the fact that the four years of the Trump presidency have been unusually tumultuous in the American political history, but if one takes a cursory look at the list of all the Trump aides who resigned or were otherwise sacked, almost all of them were national security officials.
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In fact, scores of former Republican national security officials recently made their preference public that they would vote in the upcoming US presidential elections for Democrat Joe Biden instead of Republican Donald Trump against party lines.
What does that imply? It is an incontrovertible proof that the latent conflict between the deep state and the elected representatives of the American people has come to a head during the Trump presidency.
Although far from being a vocal critic of the deep state himself, the working-class constituency that Trump represents has had enough with the global domination agenda of the national security establishment. The American electorate wants the US troops returned home, and wants to focus on national economy and redress wealth disparity instead of acting as global police waging "endless wars" thousands of miles away from the US territorial borders.
Addressing a convention of conservatives last year, Trump publicly castigated his own generals, much to the dismay of neoliberal chauvinists upholding American exceptionalism and militarism, by revealing: "I learn more sometimes from soldiers what's going on, than I do from generals. I do. I hate to say it. I tell the generals all the time."
At another occasion, he ruffled more feathers by telling the reporters: "I'm not saying the military's in love with me. The soldiers are. The top people in the Pentagon probably aren't because they want to do nothing but fight wars so all of those wonderful companies that make the bombs and make the planes and make everything else stay happy."
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Oct 14, 2020 | www.rt.com
The Vatican's calculated snub of Mike Pompeo exposes the limits of his evangelical, ideological, China-hating foreign policy 30 Sep, 2020 16:19 Get short URL
FILE PHOTO: U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo © Getty Images / Alex Wong 182 1 Follow RT on
Tom Fowdy is a British writer and analyst of politics and international relations with a primary focus on East Asia.
His Holiness declining to meet the US secretary of state when he visited the Vatican on his European tour further proves that his misguided America-first chauvinism is alienating more nations than it's winning as friends.
Pompeo, everyone's favourite Cold Warrior and American chauvinist, is on a European tour . Visiting Greece, Italy, Croatia, and notably, the Vatican, the secretary of state is on a roll to win support for American security and energy interests across the region. But he wasn't welcomed by all. Attending the Holy See today, the US' 'top diplomat' found himself snubbed by the Pope as he rolled into town peddling his vitriolic anti-China agenda, and demanding the Church take on Beijing and refuse to renew a deal that gives it a say in the appointment of bishops within that country. Pope Francis wasn't too impressed and refused to meet him accordingly.
The snub is significant, because it reflects more broadly how Pompeo's highly aggressive and evangelical foreign policy agenda is being received around the world. In short, it's a shambles. Rather than respectfully and constructively engage with the interests of other countries, on his watch, the State Department does nothing but pressure other nations. And it does this while parroting the clichéd talking points of American exceptionalism, hysterical anti-Communism, and a refusal to take into account the interests and practicalities faced by its partners. The Vatican has its differences with Beijing, but how would embarking on a collision course help it or the cause of Catholics in China? It wouldn't.
ALSO ON RT.COM US' failure to recognize Cuba's medical efforts during Covid is due to an innate fear of linking socialism with anything positivePompeo is repeatedly described by major US newspapers, the Washington Post among them, as " the worst secretary of state in American history," and it's no surprise why. Diplomacy requires the skills of understanding, prudence, compromise, calibration, and negotiation. The current man in charge of America's relations with the rest of the world has none of those in his armoury – only a one-sided diatribe about how every nation Washington holds a grudge against is evil and a threat to the world, and the US' own political system is far superior (as demonstrated by last night's presidential debate, perhaps ?). Pompeo repeatedly positions himself as speaking on behalf of other nations' people against their governments, while pushing a policy that amounts to little more than bullying.
A look at Pompeo and the State Department's Twitter feed shows it to be a unilateral, repetitive loop of the following topics: 'The Chinese Communist Party is evil and a threat to the world', 'Iran is an evil terrorist state', American values are the best', 'We stand with the people of X', and so on, ad nauseam. To describe it as hubris would be generous, and, of course, it does nothing to support the equally inadequate foreign policy of the United States in practice. This is further distorted by the unilateralist and anti-global governance politics of Donald Trump, which place emphasis only on the projection of power to force other countries into capitulating to American demands.
Against such a backdrop, it's no surprise that a toxic mixture of foreign policymaking has led to other countries not being willing to take notice of Washington. It's winning neither hearts nor minds, and it's this that has set the stage for not only the Vatican snub, but the largely fruitless outcomes of his European adventures. Pompeo's visit to Greece produced no meaningful agreements or outcomes of note , and he failed to get Athens to publicly commit to any anti-China measures or even statements. A similar non-result was achieved from his visit to the Czech Republic a month or so ago – the Czech prime minister even came out and played down Pompeo's comments , after he engaged in a spree of anti-Beijing vitriol.
So, what's at stake for the Vatican? Undoubtedly, religion is a sensitive topic in mainland China. The Chinese state sees unfettered religion as a threat to social stability, or as a potential vehicle for imperialism against the country, and thus has aimed to strongly regulate it under terms and conditions set by the state.
ALSO ON RT.COM Oxford University's 'scholarly' RT hit piece has no room for the mundane reality of how the world's news organisations workThis has caused tensions with the Roman Catholic Church, which maintains a strict ecclesiastical hierarchy, answering to the Vatican and not national governments. With China being the world's most populous country, having among its vast population nine million Catholics, this means the Church has had to negotiate and compromise with the Beijing government to maintain its influence and control, and to secure the rights of its members to worship. This has resulted in a 'deal' whereby the Vatican can have a say in the appointment of its bishops in China, rather than the Church being completely subordinate to the government.
But Pompeo doesn't care about these sensitivities – he wants one thing: Cold War. He wants unbridled, unrestrained, and evangelical condemnation of China and, as noted above, is utilizing his 'diplomatic visits' to push that demand. However, building a foreign policy on preaching America First unilateralism, chauvinism, and zero compromise not surprisingly has its limitations. As a result, Pompeo is finding himself isolated and ignored in more than a few areas. Thus it was that, rather than completely squandering the Vatican's interests in diplomacy with China, Pope Francis simply refused to meet him. For someone as fanatically religious and pious as Pompeo, that's a pretty damning indictment of the incompetence within the US State Department right now.
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Oct 06, 2020 | turcopolier.typepad.com
"Joe Biden's 'war economy' policies are a radical break with the status quo." Telegraph
"Bidenomics is a heady brew. The Democrats' $7.9 trillion blast of extra spending is a step beyond Roosevelt's New Deal. It mimics the Keynesian expansion of the Second World War and consciously aims to run the economy at red-hot speeds of growth.
If enacted in full, it is large enough to lift the US economy out of the zero-rate deflationary trap of the last decade and entirely reshape the social and financial landscape.
The stimulus will be corralled inside the closed US economy by Joe Biden's protectionist "Buy America" policies, his industrial strategy, and his carbon border tax (i.e. disguised tariffs against China). This limits leakage.
It is a laboratory of sorts for a post-globalisation experiment in what used to be called "reflation in one country" – before the free flow of goods and capital emasculated sovereign governments.
"It's quite likely that, just as in World War II, when we push down on the economic accelerator, we will find that we have been running on one cylinder up until no w," said the Roosevelt Institute, now advisors to the Biden campaign .
This is why Moody's Analytics estimates that Bidenomics accompanied by a Democrat clean sweep of Congress would lift American GDP by an extra 4.8pc, add an extra seven million jobs, and raise per capita income by an extra $4,800 over the next four years , compared to a clean sweep by Donald Trump. Economic growth would rocket to 7.7pc in 2022." Telegraph ------------- Evans-Pritchard, the author of this piece baldly declares that the Trump tax cut failed to stimulate economic growth and that a clean sweep by the Democrats in November would lead to massive GDP growth and a reduction in present economic inequalities in American society. I will be very interested in your comments. pl
Fred , 06 October 2020 at 12:19 PM
GEORGE CHAMBERLAIN , 06 October 2020 at 12:20 PMThat's a fine read Col. Thank goodness that after 47 years as a politician, including 8 years as VP - during which TARP did what? - Biden finally has a plan to Tax and Spend that beats all the Tax and Spend plans that went before this one.
Just what is this getting spent on - the same things Obama-Biden promised, "green" (the color of money) energy, solar charging stations and 1.5 million energy efficient homes (didn't the Housing bubble cause a little economic problem?), 'educaiton'! I wonder if that includes teaching us all critical race theory? and "infrastructure". And here I thought broken records were out of style.
Where's the money coming from? According to Oxfordeconomics, which the Guardian links to, Biden's raising taxes, but it won't lower consumer spending:
".... we estimate an overall multiplier of 0.25 for the individual provisions in Biden's tax package. So, for every dollar of tax increase, households would reduce their spending by 25 cents. As such, while the proposal would generate a substantial revenue inflow, we don'tbelieve it would significantly constrain consumer spending."So what is the decline in corporate spending if you raise corporate taxes? The economists at Oxfordeconomics conveniently left that out, nor did they eplicitly tell you that a decade of tax revenue will still leave you with 60 years of tax burden from Joe's spending.
"On the corporate tax front, the most significant revenue raisers are:•A 7ppt increase in the statutory corporate tax rate to 28%, which would raise $1.3tn over 10years.•An increase in taxes on foreign earnings.•A 15% minimum tax on global book income.•The elimination of several real estate investment tax preferences." (Oooh look, Trump's screwed! Yeah! I wonder how all those REITs look with that?)
Another unasked question: Who is going to do all that economy stimulating work if there is a national lockdown due to Covid?
Leith , 06 October 2020 at 12:23 PMwhat's new?
"LaRouche's comments were prompted by an article published in the Telegraph on May 19 by British intelligence stringer Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, whose experience in orchestrating U.S. impeachment drives for the British goes back to his attacks on President Bill Clinton. Evans-Pritchard, on the eve of Trump's first trip abroad as President, is spreading the black propaganda line that Trump might already be incapacitated, in much the same way as President Richard Nixon was incapacitated by then-Defense Secretary James Schlesinger, who "instructed U.S. military officials to ignore any order from the Oval Office to use nuclear weapons."
Evans-Pritchard asserts that the key to overthrowing Trump is to pull Republican support away from him, which he admits is still strong. But what happens next? He quotes Sir Jeremy Greenstock, former British UN ambassador and now chairman at Gatehouse Advisory Partners: "America can be very powerful if it decides to act hard. Xi Jinping and Putin will probably wait and see whether Trump self-destructs." Evans-Pritchard then raises the question: How will Trump behave "when the special prosecutor [Robert Mueller] starts to let rip with a volley of subpoenas."
Stag Deflated , 06 October 2020 at 12:40 PMI like the idea of a Carbon Border Tax. Or at least the one proposed by the EU, as I have not seen Biden's proposal. It has never made sense to me that we import from countries with low environmental standards when our own manufacturers are handicapped.
But unless Biden can carry Democratic Senatorial challengers against GOP incumbents it ain't gonna happen. It will be stalled in the Senate. There is no way McConnell will even allow it on the Senate floor.
Veg , 06 October 2020 at 12:48 PMThis thinking has been wrong, repeatedly so, for the last 10 years. The idea that there is just one more pedal to push down to jumpstart the economy belies the truth that we have experienced the most accommodative and expansive monetary policy on a global level in modern times.
Aside from the lack of efficacy, which I may look to discuss at length later on, there is another striking thing about this plan, and that is how it will be paid for. The reason is not the traditional "where will the money come from" I know where it will come from, cheap US debt, but it tells us two key things. The first is that the functional ideas of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) that you can basically just issue debt and have your central bank both monetize it and keep the interest payments low and use that to fund largely unlimited government spending have for the most part been endorsed by those on the left as a mechanism to deliver on their grand plans. The second thing that is striking though is what they want to spend the money on, which is military spending and infrastructure and not healthcare and a green new deal. This calls into question what alignment there is on the cadres of the left or the possibility that starting with infrastructure is a way to run cover to expand these fantasy economics to social projects without reorienting the economy towards their achievement.
Deap , 06 October 2020 at 12:51 PMEvans-Pritchard's talents are wasted on economic commentary. He writes well, but in the breathless tones of a failed thriller writer. His entire worldview is based on the notion that it is always two minutes to midnight. It's a shame that they put all of his stuff behind a paywall.
Maybe if Biden's plan is approved we will finally see the inflation that Wall Street and its media minions have been whining about for the past forty years.
I have no doubt that the collapsing pocket that is Conservative Inc will luxuriate back on the familiar loser's ground of "fiscal responsibility."
Biden's plan, such as it is, simply marries the essence of Trump's nationalist policies with Great Society spending levels. Like so much of his platform, it is designed to keep the progressives on the plantation until Nov 3 and not one minute beyond.
j. casey , 06 October 2020 at 01:10 PMSure it will. The devil is in the details. When has any Democrat economic plan ever produced intended results. First they have to confess what went wrong with their trillion dollar "War on Poverty" that now requires another trillion to pretend to clean up that grotesquely distorted mess.
Until they confess to their sins of the past, they are doomed to repeat them. How are they going to remedy their decades of teacher union K1-2 fail turning out entire generations of dysfunctional illiterates who are somehow going to be absorbed into this dynamite economy.
They are sitting in the back room smoking dope and spinning tales. What I hear is wealth confiscation and/or turning on the printing presses. Time for a good recap of Obama's initial "Green Jobs Revolution" from his first term - who did those promise work out and why are we having to undo the piles of excrement Biden First Term left behind.
I have a bad case of deja vu When in fact the Trump Tweaking was paying long term dividends, until the deep state hijacked covid to destroy any possible Trump bragging rights. Never forget Nancy Pelosi tearing up Trump's SOTU address and declaring they were all lies -- and then carrying out her covid porn agenda to make sure she was proven correct.
Remember the three generation rule - all revolutionary and planned economies always fail by the third generation. Soviet Union, Margaret Thatcher's warning, Cuba, etc ......if all the wealth in the world was redistributed, it would be back in similar hands three generations later. Societies always stratify, even since the Sumerians.
America is unique primarily because of the mobility it offers between the strata by its relatively free market system. Don't mess with it. Democrat's heavy handed planned utopia is a nightmare.
A. Pols , 06 October 2020 at 01:14 PM"Bidenomics" is comedy gold, man. Here's another one: President "Printing Press" Harris.
Diana Croissant , 06 October 2020 at 01:17 PMYup, and I've got some ocean front property in Arizona for sale. Sounds very hopey changey to me.
blue peacock , 06 October 2020 at 01:27 PMI am no economist. However, I am not in debt. I am not wealthy, but I have all I need and want. I've worked very hard during my life and enjoyed my jobs because they were suited to my training and kislls. My retirement funds keep me comfortable. My two sons are doing well in our current economy. That's, of course, a self-centered view of the situation.
But, with that in mind, I say this: "beware of Greeks bearing gifts." (I know Biden is not Greek, but I hope you get my point.)
I am also remembering the Obama administration. I may receive only an Obama phone and an EBT card.
LondonBob , 06 October 2020 at 01:46 PMAmbrose Evans-Pritchard is generally a very astute writer. However, on economics and national fiscal policies and central banking he has bought into the Davos sophistry that defies common sense for over a decade.
An example of this sophistry is this line from the passage in your post - "..lift the US economy out of the zero-rate deflationary trap of the last decade...". Ask an average American if they've seen any price deflation in their rents or house prices, their kid's tuition, their health care premiums, their cost of pharmaceuticals, the cost of tacos at their neighborhood taqueria, the cost of getting their shirt cleaned, over the past decade and they'll laugh at you. The cost of living of average Americans have risen and that is the real living experience. But of course if you're Ben Bernanke or Mario Draghi or Jerome Powell or Ms. Lagarde then we are in a "deflationary trap" and they should print more and more money that gets shipped first to their friends on Wall St. The Party of Davos as Jack called it.
Under the government enforced lockdown, how many trillions has the US federal government under the Trump administration borrowed from future generations in the first and now the second stimulus waiting for approval? How many trillions did Jerome Powell print up and send to his friends at Blackrock and Citadel?
GDP is a useless indicator IMO. Digging trenches and filling them up will raise GDP. A very important indicator however is productivity growth. That has been lagging for many years. Another are median household income & wealth, which has also been lagging. What we've seen in the US is a dramatic increase in wealth inequality between the top 0.1% vs the bottom 80% over the past 50 years and this curve continues to accelerate - second order derivative!! The second is the level of systemic debt across all sectors - individuals, corporate and government at all levels that has continuously risen over 50 years increasing systemic leverage to a point larger than during the civil war and WW II. This has occurred under both parties and the Trump presidency has actually increased it despite the rhetoric. Compare the Balance of Trade relative to the soundbites.
A systematic restructuring of our economy away from financialization, away from bailouts of the oligarchy, away from unprecedented market concentration, away from untrammeled credit expansion to back previous credit losses and having a monetary authority with a singular focus on sound money is what's necessary. But that's not gonna happen under either Trump or Biden as it will gore the ox of the Party of Davos whose interests is what both sides primarily cater to. More debt-fueled government spending always ends up as socialism for the oligarchy which is exactly what we've had for decades. It is an economic truism that as productivity of debt continually declines, economic productivity also declines. That's the trap we are in!
BillWade , 06 October 2020 at 01:57 PMBeen very happy with my gold investments these past two years and will stick with them thanks, Biden would supercharge them.
Longer term I am looking to have most of my money in Asia, Russian oil companies also seem to like drilling for oil, rather than desperately trying to be anything else than producing oil like BP and the rest. Demographics are dire for most of the West and the US is likely to continue transitioning in to a Latin American style country. People have been well conditioned in to not talking about such things but no point talking about the increasing economic dysfunction without talking about the underlying cause. A massive increase in immigration will lead to a surge in inequality, anemic economic growth, fiscal deficits and a decline in gdp per capita.
Time to start think about investments the way a well to do Latin would.
Oilman2 , 06 October 2020 at 02:10 PMWell, Biden has to get elected first, we'll see. Carbon taxes, hmmm - another way to destroy the middle-class?
Something to think about is the European Central Bank, they are a meeting late this month with "experts" to determine if they will go to a digital currency. The ECB might then decide the "experts" are right and go full digital on Jan 1st, 2021. We might see a whole lot of Euro money coming into the USA, hope so. However, the Federal Reserve has not been printing any new bank notes so you'll have trouble finding crisp bills for Christmas gifts.
tedrichard , 06 October 2020 at 02:32 PMIMO, based on the debt current and future we are loading on the backs of our children, it matters not a whit which of the paths are chosen. Both will end in destruction of said debt by some method - because you can only load so much on horseback and still ride. As we stand now, we are walking alongside a swaybacked packhorse already. Closing off the country, where the only growth has been in the services sector for decades, makes sense in what universe?
Raise taxes? They have only ever increased in my lifetime, my fathers and his. At what point does the Boston Tea Party repeat? From where I sit, everything either party does is only adding fuel to a coming conflagration, as nothing is actually paid for - a ledger entry is aggregated and we march on. The piper will get paid, as he has the children...
Deap , 06 October 2020 at 04:22 PM1.socialism and keynesian economics as a viable theory dead dead right now....today and politicians know it
2. central banks are trapped at zero bound interest rates with no way under heretofore main stream economic theories to stimulate their respective economies
3. politicians are largely dumb as a bag of hammers with not a shred of understanding what to do other than to listen to think tanks warmed over rehashed ideas that have not worked in the past and won't now.
4. what biden is proposing is MMT with communist thomas piketty theory disguised as classical keynesian nonsense being sold to a public almost as dumb as those doing the selling
5. in order to make this works they will have to institute guranteed basic income for the umpteen millions of people who will NEVER work again under this policy of bullshit
6. and lastly to ensure NO ONE can escape this trap which will evolve into an UGLY neo feudalism for 99% of the populace this team of genuinely EVIL people will have to CANCEL ALL paper money FORCING everyone to have a bank account for using digital money THE ONLY money that can exist if this comes to pass. banks loves this as it gives them a cut of all the action
7.as a result taxes will be anything they want and YOU have no escape or recourse whatsoever
8. say the wrong thing, think the wrong thing and your economic life under digital money will be cancelled placing you into destitution and death
9. this is a recipe for slavery on a gigantic scale ensuring the 1/10 of 1% can rule without disturbance forever
10 revolution will be the only option at that point and since the police and military will continue to be paid by the state it will be bloodylet see you pl print this
Deap , 06 October 2020 at 04:27 PMOn the other hand, if this scheme promises to bring back the Jimmy Carter 14% interest rates on CD's for us retired folks, I say bring it on. Everyone else will just have to deal with the economic rubble later on their own.
I just need another good 15 years or so myself. In other words, never believe old people when it comes to managing the US economy- our goals are selfish and very short term. So like, what's in this for meeeeeee?
Bobo , 06 October 2020 at 05:04 PMBiden must have listened to AOC for this fiscal policy advice. Bring back chicken coops and victory gardens, and turn in your scrap metal because we are WAR.
Les Priest , 06 October 2020 at 05:05 PMWhat in God's name is Biden having a Brit pushing his economic plan. We all know they embellish everything which then falls apart into pieces. Yes, Fred I remember those +14% interest rates I paid on my mortgage and still kick myself for not taking the 100k down payment and putting it into a 14% 30 year CD and renting. But then we all have those memories. Sure would not want my grandchildren paying those rates on a 500k mortgage as it would kill the real estate business and this country.
Sleepy Joe will be ready for the assisted living center by year two and we would be stuck with Checkbook Harris, UGH. Vote for the Bullcrapper that gets things done.English Outsider , 06 October 2020 at 06:46 PMAhem; This has been done before: After Hitler was elected in 1933; He slammed the borders shut to money transfer, then started building the autobahn. It worked, Germany came out of the slump. Of course, Hitler then moved on to building planes & tanks. Also, Modern Monetary theory says you can run the printing presses & print money like mad, as long as that paper is going into a real, working economy, it gets recycled. That does not describe the current 'developed world' economy; the FIRE economy (finance, insurance, real estate) has eaten it's own tail. When all the other assets have jacked up half way to the moon, there will be another gold rush (same as 1930s) & my shack in northern BC will shake with all the helicopters flying around to work up new gold mines.
Candidate Donald Trump's 2016 programme was clear. Bring industry back home. Ditto the troops. Ensure an adequate defence. Drain the swamp.
Looked good. I hadn't realised that his main achievement would be somewhat simpler. Stay functioning in office in the face of the most dangerous series of attacks on an American President that can have been seen since the early nineteenth century.
So clearly he's going to need another term in office to get on with all the things he should have been able to get on with in the first.
Candidate Joe Biden was, I thought at first, stealing part of the Trump 2016 programme. Bring industry back home. Turns out not - as far as I can see America will remain the most heavily industrialised country going. But, as in my own country, much of the industry will still be abroad. With the jobs.As with my own country Biden's America will be environmentally virtuous. It'll hit some good targets. It'll not use as much fossil fuel. Yesterday's heavy polluters - the coal mines and steel mills - won't pollute any more.
Fake. Again as with my own country the dirty industries we still rely on will still be roaring full steam ahead. Coal will still be mined. Steel will still be produced. But elsewhere.
So Candidate Joe Biden will not be the man to put that part of the Trump 2016 programme into action. He'll be the man who continues with the fake environmentalism we've already seen so much of. Naturally, if the heavy industry is outsourced so is our pollution. Doesn't look that clever a trick to me, even if it fools the eco-warriors.
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Oct 06, 2020 | www.rt.com
In backing Biden, the leftist 'resistance' to Trump is perpetuating illegal US invasions & wars, & handing victory to the neocons
Michael Rectenwald
is an author of ten books, including the most recent, Beyond Woke . He was Professor of Liberal Arts at NYU from 2008 through 2019. Follow him on Twitter @TheAntiPCProf 6 Oct, 2020 17:17 Get short URL
A supporter of Democratic U.S. presidential nominee Joe Biden wears a Captain America costume during a gathering outside Perez Art Museum before his arrival for a town hall event in Miami, Florida, U.S., October 5, 2020 © REUTERS / Marco Bello 31 Follow RT on
In a recent op-ed on RT, I outlined the puzzling and ironic configuration that is the anti-Trump 'resistance.' But I didn't explore one important 'interest group' within a 'deep state' intent on destroying Trump's presidency at all costs -- namely, the neocon hawks of both major political parties and the military and intelligence establishments that defy strict party affiliation.
This contingent includes members of top military brass and intelligence officers , of course, but also military and intelligence contractors, including those employed by the permanent bureaucracy to foil Trump's first run for the presidency by attempting to tie him to "Russian collusion ."
Condemn Trump all you want. It's quite fashionable and facile to do so. The penchant has long since leaked across the Atlantic via the US and international media establishments. But critics must be either uninformed or disingenuous to liken Trump to Hitler . Hitler was, after all, a fascist strong man and supremacist intent on militarism and world expansionism. And Trump is nothing of the sort.
READ MOREJoe Biden isn't a foreign policy guru. He's a Stepford wife repeating 'War Party' talking points The Trump Doctrine
Quite the contrary, Trump wants no part of expansionism. He has insisted that he deplores the endless wars in the Middle East and Afghanistan . Trump has been removing troops from both regions since his presidency began. And he's reportedly been foiled in efforts for a complete withdrawal by his generals . But now he may be prepared to flout their prerogatives and take matters into his own hands, if given a second term.
While Trump touts a strengthened military , the Trump Doctrine involves a particular brand of populist American nationalism . This includes a foreign policy stemming from 19th-century Republican politics . Those who have subscribed to this political position have been traditionally non-interventionist, while demanding that a premium be laid on national self-determination, the protection of national sovereignty via strong borders, and the promotion of national self-interest over international or global entanglements.
Trump has suggested that the military brass wants to start wars to enrich military contractors.
The hue and cry coming from the political establishment over Trump's foreign military policy is a thin scrim to cover for the interests of the military industrial complex. And the interests of the military industrial complex are for its own expansion and the profits that derive from it.
ALSO ON RT.COM The Rock may back Biden, but most celebrity endorsements are career opportunism which is why they NEVER come out for Republicans Why the hawks want BidenTrump's foreign policy on the limited use of military force runs counter to those of the Bush-Cheney and Obama-Biden administrations. Both of these followed the orders of neocon hawks. Shocking his left-wing base, Obama retained many of Bush's top cabinet members, including war hawk Defense Secretary Robert Gates. And, of course, then-Senator Joe Biden (D-DE) voted in favor of and championed the invasion of Iraq in 2002.
The Obama administration not only continued the Bush campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, it extended them with record-breaking bombings in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Somalia, Yemen, Pakistan, and Libya. Recall that it was Obama who murdered, via a drone bomb, sixteen-year-old US citizen Abdulrahman al-Awlaki. Abdulrahman was the son of alleged al-Qaeda fighter (and American citizen) Anwar Awlaki, who Obama had bombed two weeks earlier, in Yemen. In fairness it must be noted that a US raid in Yemen resulted in the death of Abdulrahman's 8-year-old sister in 2017. But it was Obama who exploded the conflict in Yemen.
READ MORETrump-Biden debate put US democracy on display – we're now little more than the world's laughing stock armed with nukes
The Obama-Biden international adventurism extended to the invasion of Libya and the assassination of Muammar Gaddafi, an escapade that destabilized that country and led directly to the arming of jihadists. Under Obama, the Pentagon and CIA directly armed and trained Syrian "rebels" fighting Bashar Assad, many of whom then grew into the ISIS caliphate. A 2016 iconic headline in the Los Angeles Times said it all: "In Syria, militias armed by the Pentagon fight those armed by the CIA ." It is interesting to note that it was Trump who ended the CIA's training of the so-called "moderate" Syrian rebels whose intent was the toppling Assad's government.
Obama was elected in 2008 on his promise to end Bush's war in Iraq, a conflict he said he opposed from the outset . Instead, Obama and his war hawks expanded this war and added several others. And all of this after Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize (for no apparent reason) in 2009.
The military escalation under Obama-Biden surely explains the deep state's preference for Biden over Trump. But what about the voters? In opposing Trump and favouring Biden, the leftist 'resistance' is supporting the continuation of dodgy and illegal US invasions and endless wars. An achievement to be proud of. On the other hand, voters who support non-intervention and troop withdrawal favour the Republican, Donald Trump.
So, tell me again: who's 'left' and who's 'right' in this US presidential election?
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The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
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Oct 06, 2020 | www.unz.com
How an "Act of God" Pandemic Is Destroying the West The U.S. is Saving the Financial Sector, not the Economy MICHAEL HUDSON AUGUST 28, 2020 4,400 WORDS 142 COMMENTS REPLY Tweet Reddit 5 Share Share 3 Email Print More 8 SHARES
Before juxtaposing the U.S. and alternative responses to the corona virus's economic effects, [1] I would like to step back in time to show how the pandemic has revealed a deep underlying problem. We are seeing the consequences of Western societies painting themselves into a debt corner by their creditor-oriented philosophy of law. Neoliberal anti-government (or more accurately, anti-democratic) ideology has centralized social planning and state power in "the market," meaning specifically the financial market on Wall Street and in other financial centers.
At issue is who will lose when employment and business activity are disrupted. Will it be creditors and landlords at the top of the economic scale, or debtors and renters at the bottom? This age-old confrontation over how to deal with the unpaid rents, mortgages and other debt service is at the heart of today's virus pandemic as large and small businesses, farms, restaurants and neighborhood stores have fallen into arrears, leaving businesses and households – along with their employees who have no wage income to pay these carrying charges that accrue each month.
This is an age-old problem. It was solved in the ancient Near East simply by annulling these debt and rent charges. But the West, shaped as it still is by the legacy of the Roman Empire, has left itself prone to the massive unemployment, business closedowns and resulting arrears for these basic costs of living and doing business.
Western civilization distinguishes itself from its Near Eastern predecessors in the way it has responded to "acts of God" that disrupt the means of support and leave debts in their wake. The United States has taken the lead in rejecting the path by which China, and even social democratic European nations have prevented the corona virus from causing widespread insolvency and polarizing their economies. The U.S. corona virus lockdown is turning rent and debt arrears into an opportunity to impoverish the indebted economy and transfer mortgaged property and its income to creditors.
There is no inherent material need for this fate to occur. But it seems so natural and even inevitable that, as Margaret Thatcher would say, There Is No Alternative.
But of course there is, and always has been. However, resilience in the face of economic disruption always has required a central authority to override "market forces" to restore economic balance from "above."
Individualistic economies cannot do that. To the extent that they have a strong state, they are not democratic but oligarchic, controlled by the financial sector in its own interest, in tandem with its symbiotic real estate sector and monopolized infrastructure. That is why every successful society since the Bronze Age has been a mixed economy. The determining factor in whether or not an economic disruption leaves a crippled economy in its wake turns out to be whether its financial sector is a public utility or is privatized from the debt-strapped public domain as a means to enrich bankers and money-lenders at the expense of debtors and overall economic balance.
China is using an age-old policy common ever since Hammurabi and other Bronze Age rulers promoted economic resilience in the face of "acts of God." Unless personal debts, rents and taxes that cannot be paid are annulled, the result will be widespread bankruptcy, impoverishment and homelessness. In contrast to America's financialized economy, China has shown how natural it is for society simply to acknowledge that debts, rents, taxes and other carrying charges of living and doing business cannot resume until economic normalcy is able to resume.
Near Eastern protection of economic resilience in the face of Acts of God
Ancient societies had a different logic from those of modern capitalist economies. Their logic – and the Jewish Mosaic Law of Leviticus 25, as well as classical Greek and Roman advocates of democratic reform – was similar to modern socialism. The basic principle at work was to subordinate market relations to the needs of society at large, not to enrich a financial rentier class of creditors and absentee landowners. More specifically, the basic principle was to cancel debts that could not normally be paid, and prevent creditors from foreclosing on the land of debtors.
All economies operate on credit. In modern economies bills for basic expenses are paid monthly or quarterly. Ancient economies operated on credit during the crop year, with payment falling due when the harvest was in – typically on the threshing floor. This cycle normally provided a flow of crops and corvée labor to the palace, and covered the cultivator's spending during the crop year. Interest typically was owed only when payment was late.
But bad harvests, military conflict or simply the normal hardships of life frequently prevented this buildup of debt from being paid. Mesopotamian palaces had to decide who would bear the loss when drought, flooding, infestation, disease or military attack prevented the payment of debts, rents and taxes. Seeing that this was an unavoidable fact of life, rulers proclaimed amnesties for taxes and these various obligations incurred during the crop year. That saved smallholders from having to work off their debts in personal bondage to their creditors and ultimately to lose their land.
For these palatial economies, resilience meant stabilization of fiscal revenue. Letting private creditors (often officials in the palace's own bureaucracy) demand payment out of future production threatened to deprive rulers of crop surpluses and other taxes, and corvée labor or even service in the military. But for thousands of years, Near Eastern rulers restored fiscal viability for their economies by writing down debts, not only in emergencies but more or less regularly to relieve the normal creeping backlog of debts.
These Clean Slates extended from Sumer and Babylonia in the 3 rd millennium BC to classical antiquity, including the neo-Assyrian, neo-Babylonian and Persian Empires. They restored normal economic relations by rolling back the consequences of debts personal and agrarian debts – bondage to creditors, and loss of land and its crop yield. From the palace's point of view as tax collector and seller of many key goods and services, the alternative would have been for debtors to owe their crops, labor and even liberty to their creditors, not to the palace. So cancelling debts to restore normalcy was simply pragmatic, not utopian idealism as was once thought.
The pedigree for "act-of-God" rules specifying what obligations need not be paid when serious disruptions occur goes back to the laws of Hammurabi c. 1750 BC. Their aim was to restore economic normalcy after major disruptions. §48 of Hammurabi's laws proclaim a debt and tax amnesty for cultivators if Adad the Storm God has flooded their fields, or if their crops fail as a result of pests or drought. Crops owed as rent or fiscal payments were freed from having to be paid. So were consumer debts run up during the crop year, including tabs at the local ale house and advances or loans from individual creditors. The ale woman likewise was freed from having to pay for the ale she had received from palace or temples for sale during the crop year.
Whoever leased an animal that died by an act of god was freed from liability to its owner (§266). A typical such amnesty occurred if the lamb, ox or ass was eaten by a lion, or if an epidemic broke out. Likewise, traveling merchants who were robbed while on commercial business were cleared of liability if they swore an oath that they were not responsible for the loss (§103).
It was realized that hardship was so inevitable that debts tended to accrue even under normal conditions. Every ruler of Hammurabi's dynasty proclaimed a Clean Slate cancelling personal agrarian debts (but left normal commercial business loans intact) upon taking the throne, and when military or other disruptions occurred during their reign. Hammurabi did this on four occasions. 2
Bronze Age rulers could not afford to let such bondage and concentration of property and wealth to become chronic. Labor was the scarcest resource, so a precondition for survival was to prevent creditors from using debt leverage to obtain the labor of debtors and appropriate their land. Rulers therefore acted to prevent creditors from becoming a wealthy class seeking gains by impoverishing debtors and taking crop yields and land for themselves.
By rejecting such alleviations of debts resulting from economic disruption, the U.S. economy is subjecting itself to depression, homelessness and economic polarization. It is saving stockholders and bondholders instead of the economy at large. That is because today's rentier interests take the economic surplus in the form of debt service, holding labor and also corporate industry in bondage. Mortgage debt is the price of obtaining a home of one's own. Student debt is the price of getting an education to get a job. Automobile debt is needed to buy a car to drive to the job, and credit-card debt must be run up to pay for living costs beyond what one is able to earn. This deep indebtedness makes workers afraid to go on strike or even to protect working conditions, because being fired is to lose the ability to pay debts and rents. So the rising debt overhead serves the business and financial sector by lowering wage levels while extracting more interest, financial fees, rent and insurance out of their take-home pay.
Debt deflation and the transition from finance capitalism to an Austerity Economy
By injecting $10 trillion into the financial markets (when Federal Reserve credit is added to U.S. Treasury allocation), the CARES act enabled the stock market to recover all of its 34 percent drop (as measured by the S&P 500 stocks) by June 9, even as the economy's GDP was still plunging. The government's new money creation was not spent to revive the real economy of production and consumption, but at least the financial One Percent was saved from loss. It was as if prosperity and living standards would somehow return to normal in a V-shaped recovery.
But what is "normal" these days? For 95 percent of the population, their share of GDP already had been falling ever since the Obama Depression began with the bank bailout in 2009, leaving an enormous bad-debt overhead in place. The economy's long upswing since World War II was already grinding to an end as it struggled to carry its debt burden, rising housing costs, health care and related monthly "nut." 3
This is not what was expected 75 years ago. World War II ended with families and businesses rife with savings and with little debt, as there had been little to buy during the wartime years. But ever since, each business cycle recovery has started with a higher ratio of debt to income, diverting more revenue from business, households and governments to pay banks and bondholders. This debt burden raises the economy's cost of living and doing business, while leaving less wage income and profit to be spent on goods and services.
The virus pandemic has merely acted as a catalyst ending of the long postwar boom. Yet even as the U.S. and other Western economies begin to buckle under their debt overhead, little thought has been given to how to extricate them from the debts and defaults that have accelerated as a result of the broad economic disruption.
The "business as usual" approach is to let creditors foreclose and draw all the income and wealth over subsistence needs into their own hands. Economies have reached the point where debts can be paid only by shrinking production and consumption, leaving them as strapped as Greece has been since 2015. Rejecting debt writedowns to restore social balance was implanted at the outset of modern Western civilization. Ever since Roman times it has become normal for creditors to use social misfortune as an opportunity to gain property and income at the expense of families falling into debt. Blocking the emergence of democratic civic regimes empowered to protect debtors, creditor interests have promoted laws that force debtors to lose their land or other means of livelihood to foreclosing creditors or sell it under distress conditions and have to work off their debts.
In times of a general economic disruption, giving priority to creditor claims leads to widespread bankruptcy. Yet it violates most peoples' ideas of fairness and distributive justice to evict debtors from their homes and take whatever property they have if they cannot pay their rent arrears and other charges that have accrued through no fault of their own. Bankruptcy proceedings will force many businesses and farms to forfeit what they have invested to much wealthier buyers. Many small businesses, especially in urban minority neighborhoods, will see yeas of saving and investment wiped out. The lockdown also forces U.S. cities and states to cope with plunging sales- and income-tax revenue by slashing social services and depleting their pension funds savings to pay bondholders. Balancing their budgets by privatizing hitherto public services will create monopoly rents and new corporate empires
These outcomes are not necessary. They also are inequitable, and instead of being a survival of the fittest and most efficient economic solutions, they are a victory for the most successfully predatory. Yet such results are the product of a long-pedigreed legal and financial philosophy promoted by banks and bondholders, landlords and insurance companies reject economy-wide debt relief. They depict writing down debts and rents owed to them as unthinkable. Banks claim that forgiving personal and business rents would lead absentee landlords to default on their mortgages, threatening bank solvency. Insurance companies claim that to make their policy holders whole would bankrupt them. 4 So something has to give: either the population's broad economic interests, or the vested interests insisting that labor, industry and the government must bear the cost of arrears that have built up during the economic shutdown.
As in oligarchic Rome, financial interests in today's world have gained control of governments and captured the political and regulatory agencies, leaving democratic reformers powerless to suspend debt service, rent arrears, evictions and depression. The West is becoming a highly centrally planned economy, but its planning center is Wall Street, not Washington or state and local governments.
Rising real estate arrears prompt a mortgage bailout
Canada and many European governments are subsidizing businesses to pay up to 80 percent of employee wages even though many must stay home. But for the 40 million Americans who haven't been employed during the closedown, the prospect is for homelessness and desperation. Already before the crisis about half of Americans reported that they were living paycheck to paycheck and could not raise $400 in an emergency. When the paychecks stopped, rents could not be paid, nor could other normal monthly living expenses.
America is seeing the end of the home ownership boom that endowed its middle class with property steadily rising in price. For buyers, the price was rising mortgage debt, as bank credit was the major factor in raising property prices. (A home is worth however much a bank will lend against it.) For non-whites, to be sure, neighborhoods were redlined against racial minorities. By the early 2000s, banks began to make loans to black and Hispanic buyers, but usually at extortionately high interest rates and stiffer debt terms. America's white home buyers now face a fate similar to that which they have long imposed on minorities: Debt-inflated purchase prices for homes so high that they leave buyers strapped by mortgage and compulsory insurance payments, with declining public services in their neighborhoods.
When mortgages can't be paid, foreclosures follow. That causes declines in the proportion of Americans that own their own homes. That home ownership rate already had dropped from about 58 percent in 2008 to about 51 percent at the start of 2020. Since the 2008 mortgage-fraud crisis and President Obama's mass foreclosure program that hit minorities and low-income buyers especially hard, a more landlord-ridden economy has emerged as a result of foreclosed properties and companies bought by speculators and vast absentee-owner companies like Blackstone.
Many businesses that closed down did not pay the landlords. Realizing that if they are held responsible for paying full rents that accrued during the shutdown, it would take them over a year to make up the payment, leaving no net earnings for their efforts. That was especially the case for restaurants with compulsory limited "distance" seating and other stores obliged to restrict the density of their customers. Many restaurants and other neighborhood stores decided to go out of business. For hotels standing largely empty, some 19 percent of mortgage loans had fallen into arrears already by May, along with about 10 percent of retail stores. 5
The commercial real estate sector owes $2.4 trillion in mortgage debt. About 40 percent of tenants did not pay their rents for March, April and May, from restaurants and storefronts to large national retail markets. A moratorium on evictions put them off until August or September 2020. But in the interim, quarterly state and local property taxes were due in June, which also was when the annual federal income-tax payment was owed for the year 2019, having been postponed from April in the face of the shutdown.
The prospective break in the chain of payments of landlords to their banks may be bailed out by the Federal Reserve, but nobody can come up with a scenario whereby the debts owed by non-elites can be paid out of their own resources, any more than they were rescued from the junk-mortgage frauds that left over-mortgaged homes (mainly for low-income victims) in the wake of Obama's decision to support the banks and mortgage brokers instead of their victims. In fact, it takes a radical scenario to see how state and local debt can be paid as public budgets are thrown into limbo by the virus pandemic.
The fiscal squeeze forces governments to privatize public services and assets
Since 1945, the normal Keynesian response to an economic slowdown has been for governments to run budget deficits to revive the economy and employment. But that can't happen in the wake of the 2020 pandemic. For one thing, tax revenue is falling. Governments can create domestic money, of course, but the U.S. government quickly ran up a $2 trillion deficit by June 2020 simply to support Wall Street's financial and corporate markets, leaving a fiscal squeeze when it came to public spending into the real economy. Many U.S. states and cities have laws obliging them to balance their budgets. So public spending into the real economy (instead of just into the financial and corporate markets) had to be cut back.
Sales taxes from restaurants and hotels, income taxes, and property taxes from landlords not receiving rents. U.S. states and localities are having a huge tax shortfall that is forcing them to cut back basic social services and infrastructure. New York City mayor de Blasio has warned that schools, the police and public transportation may have to be cut back unless the city is given $7 billion. The CARES act passed by the Democratic Party in control of the House of Representatives made no attempt to allocate a single dollar to make up the widening fiscal gap. As for the Trump administration, it was unwilling to give money to states voting Democratic in the presidential or governorship elections.
The irony is that just at the time when a pandemic calls for public health care, political pressure for that abruptly stopped. Logically, it might have been expected the virus to have become a major catalyst for single-payer public health care, not least to prevent a wave of personal bankruptcy resulting from high medical bills. But hopes were dashed when the leading torch bearer for socialized medicine, Senator Bernie Sanders, threw his support behind Joe Biden and other opponents for the presidential nomination instead of focusing the primary elections on what the future of the Democratic Party would be. It decided to focus the 2020 U.S. election merely on the personality of which candidate would impose neoliberal policy: Republican Donald Trump, or his opponent running simply on a platform of "I am not Trump."
Both candidates – and indeed, both parties behind them –sought to downsize government and privatize as much of the public sector as possible, leaving administration to financial managers. Past government policy would have restored prosperity by public spending programs to to rebuild the roads and bridges, trains and subways that have fallen apart. But the fiscal squeeze caused by the economic shutdown has created pressure to Thatcherize America's crumbling transportation and urban infrastructure – and also to sell off land and public enterprises, basic urban health, schools – and at the national level, the post office. Fiscal budgets are to be balanced by selling off this infrastructure, in lucrative Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) with financial firms.
The neoliberal rent-extractive plan is for private capital to buy monopoly rights to repair the nation's bridges by turning them into toll bridges, to repair the nation's roads and highways by making the toll roads, to repair sewer systems by privatizing them. Schools, prisons, hospitals and other traditionally public functions. Even the police are to be privately owned security-guard agencies and managed for profit – on terms that will provide interest and capital gains for the financial sector. It is a New Enclosures movement seeking monopoly rent much as landlords extract land rent.
Having given $10 trillion dollars to support financial and mortgage markets, neoliberals in both the Republican and Democratic parties announced that the government had created so large a budget deficit as a result of bailing out the banking and landlord class that it lacked any more room for money creation for actual social spending programs. Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell advised states to solve their budget squeeze by raiding their pension funds to pay their bondholders.
For many decades, public employees accepted low wage growth in exchange for pensions. Their patient choice was to defer demands for wage increases in order to secure good pensions for their retirement. But now that they have worked at stagnant wages for many years, the money ostensibly saved for their pensions is to be given to bondholders. Likewise at the federal level, pressure was renewed by both parties to cut back Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, with Obama's 2010 Simpson-Bowles Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform to reduce the deficit at the expense of retirees and the poor.
In sum, money is being created to fuel the financial sector and its stock and bond markets, not to increase the economy's solvency, employment and living standards. The corona virus pandemic did not create this shift, but it catalyzed and accelerated the power grab, not least by pushing public-sector budgets into crisis.
It doesn't have to be this way
Every successful economy has been a mixed public/private economy with checks on the financial sector's power to indebt society in ways that impoverish it. Always at issue, however, is who will control the government. As American and European industry becomes more debt ridden, will they be oligarchic or democratic?
A socialist government such as China's can keep its industry going simply by simply writing down debts when they can't be paid without forcing a closedown and bankruptcy and loss of assets and employment. The world thus has two options: a basically productive public financial system in China, or a predatory financial system in the United States.
China can recover financially and fiscally from the virus disruption because most debts ultimately are owned to the government-based banking system. Money can be created to finance the material economy, labor and industry, construction and agriculture. When a company is unable to pay its bills and rent, the government doesn't stand by and let it be closed down and sold at a distressed price to a vulture investor.
China has an option that Western economies do not: It is in a position to do what Hammurabi and other ancient Near Eastern palatial economies did for thousands of years: write down debts so as to keep the economy resilient and functioning. It can suspend scheduled debt service, taxes, rents and public fees from having to be paid by troubled areas of its economy, because China's government is the ultimate creditor. It need not contend with politically powerful bankers who insist that the economy at large must lose, not themselves. The government can write down the debt to keep companies in business, and also their employees. That's what socialist governments do.
The underlying problem is finance capitalism. Its roots lie at the heart of Western civilization itself, rejecting the "circular time" permitting economic renewal by Clean Slates in favor of "linear time" in which debts are permanent and irreversible, without public oversight to manage finance and credit in the economy's overall long-term interest.
It often is easier to get rich in such times of disaster and need than in times of normal prosperity. While the U.S. economy polarizes between creditors and debtors, the stock market anticipates fortunes being made quickly from the insolvency of business with assets and property to be grabbed. Coupled with the Federal Reserve's credit creation to support the financial and real estate markets, asset prices are soaring (as of June 2020) for companies that expect to get even richer from the widespread distress to come in autumn 2020 when evictions and foreclosures ae scheduled to begin again.
In that respect, the corona virus's effect has been to help defeat the financial sector's enemy, governments strong enough to regulate it. The fiscal squeeze resulting from widespread unemployment, business closedowns, rent and tax arrears is being seized upon as a means of dismantling and privatizing government at the federal, state and local levels, at the expense of the citizenry at large.
Notes
[1] WHEN CHINA SNEEZES: From the Coronavirus Lockdown to the Global Politico-Economic Implications , Edited by Cynthia McKinney, Chapter 9, Economic Impact.
[2] I provide a detailed history of Clean Slate acts from the Bronze Age down through Biblical times and the Byzantine Empire in " and forgive them their debts" (ISLET 2018).
[3] I provide the details in Killing the Host: How Financial Parasites and Debt Destroy the Global Economy ((SLET, 2015).
[4] Lawsuits are exploding over the role of insurance companies supposed to protect business from such interruptions. See Julia Jacobs, "Arts Groups Fight Their Insurers Over Coverage on Virus Losses," The New York Times , May 6, 2020, reports that "insurance companies have issued a torrent of denials, prompting lawsuits across the country and legislative efforts on the state and federal levels to force insurers to make payments. The insurance industry has argued that fulfilling all of these requests would bankrupt the industry."
[5] Conor Dougherty and Peter Eavis, "In Commercial Real Estate, the Domino Effect Escalates," The New York Times , June 9, 2020.
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suzan , Oct 5 2020 0:48 utc | 79
Posted by: bevin | Oct 4 2020 23:17 utc | 65
Hey bevin
Since you mentioned the pope, here's a link to the encyclical letter he just released, "FRATELLI TUTTI"
(OF THE HOLY FATHER FRANCIS ON THE FRATERNITY AND SOCIAL FRIENDSHIP),
http://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20201003_enciclica-fratelli-tutti.htmlAs (an agnostic) buddhist I find this pope's words needed in this world now. He refused to see Pompeo last week and then releases this letter. Take heed.
psychohistorian , Oct 5 2020 2:19 utc | 81
Jackrabbit , Oct 5 2020 2:46 utc | 82@ suzan | Oct 5 2020 0:48 utc | 79 with the link to the latest encyclical by the Catholic pope
I skimmed the link to the pope's latest and the following are a few quoted paragraphs from the more than 287 in the whole thing.
"
15. The best way to dominate and gain control over people is to spread despair and discouragement, even under the guise of defending certain values. Today, in many countries, hyperbole, extremism and polarization have become political tools. Employing a strategy of ridicule, suspicion and relentless criticism, in a variety of ways one denies the right of others to exist or to have an opinion. Their share of the truth and their values are rejected and, as a result, the life of society is impoverished and subjected to the hubris of the powerful. Political life no longer has to do with healthy debates about long-term plans to improve people's lives and to advance the common good, but only with slick marketing techniques primarily aimed at discrediting others. In this craven exchange of charges and counter-charges, debate degenerates into a permanent state of disagreement and confrontation.
16. Amid the fray of conflicting interests, where victory consists in eliminating one's opponents, how is it possible to raise our sights to recognize our neighbours or to help those who have fallen along the way? A plan that would set great goals for the development of our entire human family nowadays sounds like madness. We are growing ever more distant from one another, while the slow and demanding march towards an increasingly united and just world is suffering a new and dramatic setback.
25. War, terrorist attacks, racial or religious persecution, and many other affronts to human dignity are judged differently, depending on how convenient it proves for certain, primarily economic, interests. What is true as long as it is convenient for someone in power stops being true once it becomes inconvenient. These situations of violence, sad to say, "have become so common as to constitute a real 'third world war' fought piecemeal".
28. The loneliness, fear and insecurity experienced by those who feel abandoned by the system creates a fertile terrain for various "mafias". These flourish because they claim to be defenders of the forgotten, often by providing various forms of assistance even as they pursue their criminal interests. There also exists a typically "mafioso" pedagogy that, by appealing to a false communitarian mystique, creates bonds of dependency and fealty from which it is very difficult to break free.
44. Even as individuals maintain their comfortable consumerist isolation, they can choose a form of constant and febrile bonding that encourages remarkable hostility, insults, abuse, defamation and verbal violence destructive of others, and this with a lack of restraint that could not exist in physical contact without tearing us all apart. Social aggression has found unparalleled room for expansion through computers and mobile devices.
45. This has now given free rein to ideologies. Things that until a few years ago could not be said by anyone without risking the loss of universal respect can now be said with impunity, and in the crudest of terms, even by some political figures. Nor should we forget that "there are huge economic interests operating in the digital world, capable of exercising forms of control as subtle as they are invasive, creating mechanisms for the manipulation of consciences and of the democratic process. The way many platforms work often ends up favouring encounter between persons who think alike, shielding them from debate. These closed circuits facilitate the spread of fake news and false information, fomenting prejudice and hate".[47]
46. We should also recognize that destructive forms of fanaticism are at times found among religious believers, including Christians; they too "can be caught up in networks of verbal violence through the internet and the various forums of digital communication. Even in Catholic media, limits can be overstepped, defamation and slander can become commonplace, and all ethical standards and respect for the good name of others can be abandoned".[48] How can this contribute to the fraternity that our common Father asks of us?
170. I would once more observe that "the financial crisis of 2007-08 provided an opportunity to develop a new economy, more attentive to ethical principles, and new ways of regulating speculative financial practices and virtual wealth. But the response to the crisis did not include rethinking the outdated criteria which continue to rule the world".[147] Indeed, it appears that the actual strategies developed worldwide in the wake of the crisis fostered greater individualism, less integration and increased freedom for the truly powerful, who always find a way to escape unscathed.
172. The twenty-first century "is witnessing a weakening of the power of nation states, chiefly because the economic and financial sectors, being transnational, tend to prevail over the political. Given this situation, it is essential to devise stronger and more efficiently organized international institutions, with functionaries who are appointed fairly by agreement among national governments, and empowered to impose sanctions".[149] When we talk about the possibility of some form of world authority regulated by law,[150] we need not necessarily think of a personal authority. Still, such an authority ought at least to promote more effective world organizations, equipped with the power to provide for the global common good, the elimination of hunger and poverty and the sure defence of fundamental human rights.
173. In this regard, I would also note the need for a reform of "the United Nations Organization, and likewise of economic institutions and international finance, so that the concept of the family of nations can acquire real teeth".[151] Needless to say, this calls for clear legal limits to avoid power being co-opted only by a few countries and to prevent cultural impositions or a restriction of the basic freedoms of weaker nations on the basis of ideological differences. For "the international community is a juridical community founded on the sovereignty of each member state, without bonds of subordination that deny or limit its independence".[152] At the same time, "the work of the United Nations, according to the principles set forth in the Preamble and the first Articles of its founding Charter, can be seen as the development and promotion of the rule of law, based on the realization that justice is an essential condition for achieving the ideal of universal fraternity There is a need to ensure the uncontested rule of law and tireless recourse to negotiation, mediation and arbitration, as proposed by the Charter of the United Nations, which constitutes truly a fundamental juridical norm".[153] There is need to prevent this Organization from being delegitimized, since its problems and shortcomings are capable of being jointly addressed and resolved.
177. Here I would once more observe that "politics must not be subject to the economy, nor should the economy be subject to the dictates of an efficiency-driven paradigm of technocracy".[158] Although misuse of power, corruption, disregard for law and inefficiency must clearly be rejected, "economics without politics cannot be justified, since this would make it impossible to favour other ways of handling the various aspects of the present crisis".[159] Instead, "what is needed is a politics which is far-sighted and capable of a new, integral and interdisciplinary approach to handling the different aspects of the crisis".[160] In other words, a "healthy politics capable of reforming and coordinating institutions, promoting best practices and overcoming undue pressure and bureaucratic inertia".[161] We cannot expect economics to do this, nor can we allow economics to take over the real power of the state.
"
Nice words but Pope Francis is still pulling punches. He knows exactly how global private finance works because before the Enlightenment the religious folk in the West ran the money system for a while. Pope Francis knows that finance is private in the West but not in China. The problem Pope Francis has with China is that the China government is the religion in China and governance is otherwise totally secular. In the West, monotheistic religions are given lots more than the lip service they are suppose to get in governance.....in the US there is suppose to be separation of church and state, correct? Do the financial holdings of the Catholic church make Pope Francis one of the elite that own global private finance in the West that I keep writing about?...I wouldn't be surprised
Pope's EncyclicalTom , Oct 5 2020 3:49 utc | 90I have to agree with psychohistorian on this.
The words "oligarchy" and "plutocracy" do not appear in the Pope's Encyclical. The Pope argues a moral case for feeding the poor and even calls for directing money spent on arms to the third world but he steers clear of any concern about class inequity in an age of record wealth inequality.
In this way, he "pulls punches" (as psychohistorian notes) as much as any Western politician. Many of the evils that the Pope rails against - including his remarks regarding populism vs popular government - have their origin in the extreme wealth of a small number of people.
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Capitalism vs. Socialism is a red herring. The real problem is oligarch capitalism which leads to neoliberalism (a sort of fascism) and supremacist thinking of neoconservativism (a sort of aristocracy) and zionism (a sort of colonialism).
!!
psychohistorian , Oct 5 2020 4:01 utc | 92Posted by: suzan | Oct 5 2020 0:48 utc | 79
Thanks for the link to the latest encyclical by the Catholic pope
Some of the WOKE crowd take offence to Pope Francis encyclical. Pathetic.
"Pope slams capitalism & injustices in WOKE view on post-Covid world but gets heat for insufficiently inclusive letter"
"Although the encyclical was woke-friendly in many respects, its title, "Fratelli Tutti," translates to "Brothers All" in English – connoting male dominance to some. The Vatican said the title was taken from the words of St. Francis of Assisi, the pope's namesake, and couldn't be changed. And in any case, an encyclical is inherently addressed to the whole world, and the Italian word "Fratelli" means brothers but can be used to mean brothers and sisters."
https://www.rt.com/news/502540-pope-francis-fratelli-tutti-capitalism/
@ uncle tungsten | Oct 5 2020 3:28 utc | 89 who I think meant "..no one is being prosecuted in the courts."
uncle tungsten also wrote
"
So the head of the Roman Catholic Church is expressing compassion.
"
That compassion, if you read the screed, is coming from Saint Francis who was showing all this compassion to folks during the time of the Crusades......The anglican church is a front for the faith based belief that global finance leaders are doing God's work.
.............
The commenters here making fun of the visceral fear associated with potential impending death have never faced such themselves it is clear. I am not excusing Trump's actions but Trump is having to face his mortality in a way he has not had to before and he doesn't want to give up the reins of power so he has to look like still in control. I don't think Trump is out of the woods yet and may be setting himself up for a bigger crash given all the drugs he has crammed into his body in the past 72 hours.
I was taught in my Christian youth that my body was just a vessel in the here and now but what is more important than ones body is their soul. I blame that stupidity for much of the obesity in the US....and I blame genius Trump for that stupidity as well...
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vato , Oct 5 2020 9:03 utc | 104
Michael Hudson's newest interview on the Macro N Cheese Podcast either as a transcript or via audio is all about the coming debt deflation and what he calls the Neofeudal Empire.
If you haven't already known, Hudson reminds you that:Who is the dumbest economic Nobel Prize winner? [Paul Krugman?] Paul Krugman. That's right. He was given a Nobel Prize for not understanding what money was. If he would have understood it, that would've excluded him from getting the Nobel Prize.
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Don Bacon , Oct 4 2020 13:55 utc | 3
The new buzz-phrase "tensions rising" is in full news-play as seen here .
librul , Oct 4 2020 14:19 utc | 5
Good one Don B. @3
A buzz-phrase I keep noticing is the use of "without evidence". For example, when Trump, or anyone the MSM wants to target, makes an accusation and the MSM has to discuss that accusation it is unsurprising to encounter the phrase "without evidence"
as seen hereIf only the anonymous "US intelligence sources" (here)
that the Mouthpiece Media echo so frequently were qualified with "without evidence".I tried combining the two phrases and instead of receiving thousands of results I received
three .
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Oct 05, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
Richard Steven Hack , Oct 5 2020 4:25 utc | 96
Posted by: snake | Oct 5 2020 4:02 utc | 93 430,000,000 virgin Americans
Thought the population as of this year was 331 million? Typo?
True, dissatisfaction with states appears to be on the rise world-wide. The problem is that people still are still thoroughly brainwashed into believing the problem is *their* state, not "state" in the abstract. And because of that, *any* change they make is likely to be for the worse, a la National Socialism. The likelihood of some form of "Chinese Communism" in this country is next to zero - not that I would welcome that, either, but some here would. France might swing toward some form of "council socialism", given their previous history with left revolutions, but I don't see that spreading anywhere else; maybe Spain given their anarchism history. No, I don't see any evidence that the state itself is under any significant threat anywhere. States may collapse, even in the US, but they will reform almost immediately. Any positive changes will be unlikely and even if implemented will quickly be eroded.
The *only* solution is extermination of the ruling class. "The world will only be free when the last politician is strangled with the guts of the last priest." And even then, without some kind of "re-education" of everyone else, it won't last. A new ruling class will simply arise.
Just looked up that Ben Franklin quote:
First reported by James McHenry, a Maryland delegate to the Constitutional Convention. This is what he wrote: "A lady asked Dr. Franklin Well Doctor what have we got a republic or a monarchy. A republic replied the Doctor if you can keep it." Another of his famous quotes from that era comes just after Washington had been elected the first president. "The first man put at the helm will be a good one. Nobody knows what sort may come afterwards," he said. But that isn't the full quote. He continued, "The executive will be always increasing here, as elsewhere, till it ends in a monarchy."
Well, here we are. We didn't keep it. And here we are: a lunatic in office who thinks he's King George.
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Oct 05, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com
Financialization & The Road To Zero, Part 2: From Capitalism To Financialization
by Tyler Durden Sun, 10/04/2020 - 22:55 Twitter Facebook Reddit Email Print
Authored by 'ICE-9' via The Burning Platform blog,
This is Part 2 of a 4-part series.
...but 4,500 years of mercantilism were not going down without a fight. Fractional reserve banking had been steadily growing since the 14th century but was exclusively a private business affair unrelated to the state. These early fractional reserve "banks" began as safe stores for gold and silver but it did not take long for their unscrupulous owners to start speculating with their customers' deposits, thus the nascent fractional reserve nature of these deposits where redemption coupons in circulation outnumbered physical gold and silver held in "trust". After many rounds of speculative losses with other people's gold and silver, "banks" crashed, losses accumulated, and the Renaissance city states ultimately stepped in to ban this fractional reserve practice and re-enforce the Catholic prohibitions against usury. As a result, the early 16th century mercantile "banking" industry evolved into a transparent and audited business based upon fees received for the facilitation of foreign coin exchange, notary services, and the provision of letters of account credibility. With usury removed, the business of transparent and audited mercantile banking spread from Northern Italy throughout Western Europe and control of the banking industry transferred to Catholic and later, Protestant businessmen. So from 1585 to 1650 the golden age of transparent and audited mercantile banking laid the groundwork for the rise and exploitation of the Dutch and English colonial empires, and the success of mercantile banking also sowed the seeds for its eventual corruption by unscrupulous players in usury friendly Protestant England.
With the resurrection of the European super-state after centuries of dormancy, the various crowns found it increasingly difficult to secure funding to fight their continental wars of ego, secure their growing colonial empires, and fund their increasing opulence at home, so sovereigns began to form nascent "central banks" within their court administrations. These nascent "central banks" served the crown and the crown alone and existed as polite shake-down operations as wealthy subjects placed themselves in peril if they refused to lend their gold and silver despite high probability the sovereign would default as was his divine right. So after depleting the royal treasury during the Second Anglo-Dutch War, the English crown initiated a shakedown of the goldsmith bankers when Parliament passed The Great Stop of the Exchequer in 1672 which repudiated all outstanding loans and all but destroyed the English mercantile banking system. What gold and silver was left to the Exchequer immediately went to use in prosecuting both the Third Anglo-Dutch War and the Franco-Dutch War, which by 1678 left the Exchequer in such dire financial circumstances that it put national security at serious risk. A funding void followed where loans to the crown in gold and silver were nearly impossible to secure, so a first attempt at pure fiat money promoted as "legal tender" followed without success. Then in 1685 Charles II died and the Catholic James II ascended the throne putting usury and national finances at risk of eliminating any recourse at replenishing the depleted Exchequer. So under cover of religion, the Catholic king's authority was nullified, his Protestant daughter ascended the throne, usury was preserved, and Parliament with its powers to raise funds acquired legal supremacy over the crown.
With a weakened monarchy, new relative strength in Parliament, and a depleted Exchequer, Parliament pulled itself together and got to work and, once lingering legal succession issues surrounding James II were resolved, it passed the Bank of England Act of 1694. The overt exigencies in this act were related to funding the new war with France and controlling rebellion in Ireland. But the act also replaced the old rarely used pure fiat money of Charles II with bills redeemable in gold which also paid interest to their holders. Thus usury was legally preserved by an act of Parliament which a weakened future potentially Catholic monarch could not overturn. These bills backed with gold gained in popularity and filled the Exchequer's immediate funding gap and allowed England to continue prosecuting its wars against the Dutch. For a brief eleven years, from 1696-1707, England had returned to sound mercantile banking practice and acceptance of these interest bearing bills spread, filling the Exchequer with physical gold and silver.
But then enter one Sir William Paterson. This same Sir William – chief organizer of the ill-fated Darien Scheme where investors lost everything and 1,200 Panamanian colonists perished – in 1694 was the primary promoter behind the joint stock incorporation and charter of the privately owned Bank of England. A major conflict of interest – not recognized by divine right – arose here whereby King William III was himself a major shareholder in this newly chartered bank. But this bank was merely one of many banks chartered at the time operating under the ruinous fractional reserve practice, and nearly all these banks eventually failed save one – the Bank of England. What made this bank charter special was its inside connection to the House of Stuart and its location inside the untouchable City of London Corporation – that one square mile of sovereign within a sovereign ceded in 1067 by William the Conqueror to the inhabitants of London. And, this special Bank of England had discovered the magic formula that transformed Parliament into a perpetual debtor, turned the bank's liabilities into assets, and as the money they created had zero cost, afforded the owners of this special Bank of England an infinite rate of return on fiat issuance. Not since the Pharaohs convinced the Egyptians they were Gods had such an elaborate fraud been perpetrated upon mankind.
To coincide with the Union of England and Scotland in 1707, this special Bank of England – one of many chartered banks at the time – was awarded responsibility for managing the issue and redemption of the popular interest bearing bills of what was now the Exchequer of Great Britain. Given the enticement of near infinite rates of return, it did not take the Bank of England long to begin issuing its own fiat money for use by Parliament and to retire the old interest bearing bills with redemptions. The magic formula was set – the Bank of England had figured out not how to receive interest from lending its own money, but how to receive interest by creating new money. And the opaque nature of the magic formula with its unknown gold and silver reserves held in "trust", together with pomp and trappings, gave the fiat money financial process the appearance of authority and legitimacy. Parliament got its means to fund a new round of wars of attrition with France, the people got taxed at a slower rate of increase, and the House of Stuart and their banker friends got wealthy beyond belief. And to the holders of accumulated fiat money, they discovered a way how to transfer the bulk of a society's real wealth – land, gold, labor, and raw materials – into their own possession for free, using this fiat money of no inherit value to purchase things having real intrinsic value. Therefore, at its most fundamental level, capitalism became the mechanism by which one trades the family cow for a bag of magic beans.
This special relationship between Parliament and its wars of attrition and the House of Stuart and its banker friends had solved the riddle of Exchequer funding so Great Britain could now focus on its primary 18th century endeavor – war with France. From 1701 to the final defeat of Napoleon in 1815, Great Britain prosecuted eighteen officially declared wars against France. The stakes were serious now as France and its livre had wrested control of the world's reserve currency from the mercantile banking Dutch after their late 17th century wars with both England and France had exhausted the Dutch treasury and the Dutch, with their mercantile banking model, could not print their way back from defeat. The House of Stuart and its banker friends now saw defeating France and appropriating the world reserve currency to their Bank of England as the overriding collective purpose of Great Britain, and Parliament was ready and eager to assist for the "Glory of Britannia". But neither France's nor Great Britain's empires contained large quantities of gold or silver, so privateers on both sides played a large role in wartime funding but this stolen loot was especially important to the French corsairs and their mercantile banking system. Thus the inherent empire self-destruct mechanism latent in all physical money based commercial models – depleting the crown treasury – would play a major strategy in the prosecution of Great Britain's prolonged wars of attrition with France. Thus 18th century Europe pitted infinite paper fiat money versus limited physical gold and silver to the death in winner-take-all stakes for control of the world reserve currency.
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The first Industrial Revolution from 1760–1820 did not create a large "virtuous cycle" for British fiat money, and given the fractured nature of the British chartered banking system, this early land empire was not yet conducive to establishing a fiat money empire. For an idea of the imbalance in economic scale versus land size existing within the 18th century British colonies, at the cusp of the 1755 tobacco price crash the tiny Caribbean island of Barbados brought in more customs and excise income to the crown than all American colonies combined. And, economic depressions in the colonies caused by events in and taxes imposed by the home country were common which prompted early colonialists to build up a high degree of productive diversification and self-sufficiency. However, after more than 100 years of war against France and the final defeat of Napoleon, the mantle of world reserve currency passed to the House of Hanover and its banker enablers, so Parliament's favorite charter bank began in earnest to churn out incredible amounts of bank notes that were now no longer needed to fund wars of attrition. Other charter banks knew well of this special relationship between Parliament and the Bank of England so these banks began accumulating the Bank of England fiat money to use as their "reserves" held in "trust". The inflation caused by this round of excessive money printing, combined with little to no increase in wages, reached the point of starvation in the London streets, and Parliament's disastrous Corn Act of 1815 drove grain prices even higher resulting in food riots and complete economic stagnation. Thus to this point first the House of Stuart and their banking friends, then the House of Hanover and its banker enablers, through the magic formula of fiat money, had brought the United Kingdom 121 years of near continuous war, recurring national bankruptcies, and now open starvation. Something had to be done.
So Parliament set about to save its favorite banking charter. Six years after the London food riots, it required the Bank of England to maintain a minimum reserve held in "trust" and to facilitate conversion of its fiat money into gold. So the House of Hanover and its banker enablers discovered the new magic trick of borrowing gold to fulfil this new inconvenience, and promptly went back to churning out more fiat money and by 1825 had precipitated a collapse of the United Kingdom banking system that effectively eliminated nearly all competing charter banks. For their disastrous actions, in 1833 the Bank of England was again rewarded by Parliament with the Bank of England Act granting its fiat money monopoly status as "legal tender" for a "limited period" under "certain conditions", which over time became unlimited and unconditional as no certain conditions were ever enumerated. Thus the act wiped out all competing charter banks and forced every person and entity in the British empire to either use or pay exchange fees to use the Bank of England's fiat money. And on top of all this, the House of Hanover and its banker enablers, ensconced within the untouchable City of London Corporation, from the safety of this "anachronism gifted by the Normans", found even more profitable ventures than fraudulent banking and war funding in the forms of the slave and opium trades. So by 1833 the same people behind slavery and opium were handed gratis sole control over the fiat money that would soon engulf 26% of the world's land surface. What could possibly go wrong?
The Bank of England itself, that's what went wrong. Another major financial crisis initiated by the House of Hanover and its banker enablers' boom-bust magic formula was "solved" by Parliament's Bank Act of 1844 that set a fictional amount of imaginary gold as a fabricated "reserve" held in opaque "trust" and thereby "limited" the amount of fake fiat money the Bank of England could issue out of thin air against its imaginary gold reserves, but excluded loans to the public whose losses bothered no one in the House of Lords. The Bank Act worked so well that by 1847 the Bank of England itself teetered on the brink of insolvency, so to retain their special relationship, Parliament repealed the Bank Act of 1844 and now the Bank of England was legally free again to print as much fiat money as it wanted. And so economic crises and near collapse followed again from 1857-8, 1867-9, and 1873-96, each time fixed by Parliament with a tweak here, and act there, and a new unenforced regulation or two. Thus following the 1833 grant of "legal tender" status, during their 67 years of 19th century money monopoly the House of Hanover and its banker enablers gave the United Kingdom 32 years of recession, depression, bankruptcy, and financial collapse. But despite its delivery record its special relationship with Parliament continued into the 20th century where it once again found its raison d'être – war funding.
One side benefit inadvertently derived from the never ending 19th century financial crises precipitated by Bank of England fiat money mis-managers was Parliament spent so much time dealing with economic problems at home and unrest in the colonies abroad that it had little time to prosecute new European wars of attrition. With the Crimean War excepted, a sort of Pax Decoctur gripped the United Kingdom's European aspirations as it focused on its Second Industrial Revolution at home and small scale conflicts abroad to secure far flung provinces against both people that mostly didn't use money and people that mostly did use opium. This "Peace through Insolvency" enabled the United Kingdom to continuously reduce its national debt without exception from a level of about 265% of GDP in 1820, down to around 40% of GDP at the start of the 20th century. As a result, the House of Hanover and its banker enablers were able to finally develop the "virtuous cycle" necessary for the proper function of a true fiat money empire – the colonies ship raw materials to the home country and receive fiat money in payment, the home country took those raw materials and produces value added manufactured goods, then exported those manufactured goods back to the colonies that paid for these value added goods with fiat money received from the sale of raw materials. All value added activities remained in the home country, and with European populations increasing across the colonies, this "virtuous cycle" generated economic "growth" and "profit" across the United Kingdom's industrialized areas. However, these cheap raw materials from abroad also sealed the demise of domestic producers, promoting urbanization at home that stagnated factory wages and led to large scale emigration to the colonies abroad, both phenomena adding to the "virtuous cycle" and increasing "value add" to those with access to capital and ownership of the means of production.
A key component to this British "virtuous cycle" was the House of Hanover and its banker enablers were able to capture the bulk of world raw material sales and thus expand its fiat money empire outside the colonies by the process of commoditization. Large brokerage houses, often controlled by subsidiaries of the Bank of England, bought and sold such huge quantities of these raw materials on forward contracts that they were able to manipulate their prices. These hedge purchases and sales not only provided trading income, but also ensured all contracts were settled in Bank of England fiat money regardless of point of sale or purchase. To squeeze even more profit from this "value chain", other Bank of England subsidiaries expanded into corporate plantation holdings throughout the colonies, especially in India following the 1862 Cotton Famine. This practice then spread to mining tenements following the discovery of huge gold deposits throughout Australia and the annexation of the Transvaal. Thus the vast majority of the "virtuous cycle" was captured and maximum "value" squeezed out the entire "value chain" and into the hands of the House of Hanover and its banker enablers. And so began a new line of exploitation for capitalism – the manipulation of commodity prices via the coordinated bulk purchase and sale of these commodities in concert with the manipulation of the "value" of fiat currency. Entire sectors of commodity production around the world were sent into financial ruin by a coordinated attack from both the brokerages and Bank of England monetary policy, these sectors bought nearly en toto for a shilling on the pound, then pumped and dumped using the same coordinated mechanism but in the opposite directions. Large swaths of entire industries like cotton, land, oil, wheat, coal, iron ore, et cetera regularly passed into and out of the hands of the House of Hanover and its banker enablers generating tremendous profits for them and debilitating losses for others.
At the dawn of the 20th century, capitalism had fully matured, sound money mercantile banking no longer existed, and the magic formula had made the United Kingdom the most powerful financial, economic, and political empire ever assembled. The covert secret formula however was it had fought only one major European war – The Crimean War – since the defeat of Napoleon, and since then the Exchequer had reduced its outstanding budget deficit relative to GDP a full 85%. And for the first time in the fiat empire's history, it began delivering large amounts of gold into the City of London Corporation. The sun never set on Britannia, it ruled the waves, it had commoditized every basic raw material important to the Second Industrial Revolution, and it had subjugated nearly every primary producer on the planet to its service through price manipulated contracts denominated in Bank of England fiat money. The United Kingdom was in a commanding position but had not yet proven itself as undisputed world military power, and the German Empire was beginning to accumulate victories and influence on the Continent. So it was inevitable that the egos in Parliament would go back to their old bad habits of 100 years ago and start looking for a major fight to revive the "Glory of Britannia". And thus began a 50 year effort to destroy the rising European star of Germany, with its formidable military, efficient and technologically advanced industry, growing colonial empire, and Hegelian guiding principles of "objectivity, truth, and ethical life" which now threatened to not only swallow up and assimilate all the Germanic peoples of Europe, but to swallow up and eliminate their privately owned central banks as well. The City of London Corporation would tolerate no fiat money rival and Germany could not continue to grow unchecked in influence – nigh, could not continue to exist – and put at risk ownership of the Bank of England's magic money formula.
This is where the banking story of the United States merges with that of the House of Hanover and its banker enablers. To its great credit, the United States had three times in its early history repelled the external imposition of a privately owned central bank. After Andrew Jackson allowed the Federal charter for the den of vipers – aka Second Bank of the United States – to expire in 1837, the existing network of disunited state chartered banks grew across the young country with the addition of every new state, each charter issuing its own semi-fiat money backed by reserve requirements dictated by each state. Fiat money from the states varied in exchange value and bank failures were common, but the distributed and discretized nature of this Free Banking Era localized the crises and generally did not lead to national economic disasters as did the regular and recurring management failures of the Bank of England. It was during this laisse-faire period that the United States experienced incredible growth of territory, population, political clout, and economic output, and the Federal Treasury had financially strengthened to the point where the country had the temerity to negotiate for territory, wage its own wars of conquest, and purchase new territories without serious economic repercussion. With regards to banking it seemed the United States had found the magic money formula by not finding the magic money formula and had instead wandered into a kind of balanced budget quasi-capitalism where state charter banks issued local fiat money that few wanted as it had to compete with the gold and silver specie put in circulation by the Federal Treasury. But then every balanced budget just begs for a good war of attrition and that's exactly what came next.
At the cusp of the American Civil War, the Bank of England had coopted the South into its commoditized fiat empire as most of their raw cotton exports went to British textile mills. Thus the Bank of England's fiat empire had crept quietly into America when the London financiers gave full support to Confederate war funding by purchasing its heavily subscribed and sterling denominated Cotton Bonds. To facilitate war funding at home, both the Union and Confederacy resorted to fiat money issue, with the Confederacy printing greybacks and the Union printing greenbacks. To enforce these new greenbacks as Union fiat money, Congress passed the National Banking Act of 1863 establishing a system and network of national banks using a uniform fiat money with a stipulated uniform fractional reserve requirement mandating these banks purchase and hold US Treasury bills as "reserves". Both sides struggled with inflation, but the Confederacy, if not defeated in battle, would likely have succumbed eventually to inflation that by war's end ran at 9,000% of prewar levels rendering the greybacks effectively worthless. But the old magic money formula of turning liabilities into assets worked just well enough for the Union and with this National Banking Act their greenbacks replaced the former hocus pocus uncoordinated sideshows from state charter bank fiat issue antics commonly backed with no more than borrowed gold. Ironically, counterfeiting during the Civil War was a persistent problem, so the National Banking Act not only removed gold convertibility and gold and silver reserve requirements, but also established the United States Secret Service to ensure the Union's new fake paper money was not fake fake paper money. And just like the creation of its progenitor the Bank of England, greenbacks were only to be in circulation for a limited time, which in 1878 became legally unlimited time but with the re-imposition of convertibility into gold. America had officially entered into the world of capitalism, and for the first time had a uniform national banking system under the control of the US Treasury using a single fiat currency convertible into gold with a fractional reserve requirement. But the greenback was finding itself more and more controlled by Wall Street proxies of the City of London Corporation, Wall Street's influence was growing immensely within the US Congress, and the bankers of the City of London Corporation had set their sights on gaining control of the levers of America's new magic formula.
But full control of that magic formula would take some time to acquire as the American people proved more intractable than the pliant Dickensian subjects of the City of London Corporation. The weakened post bellum United States with its new national bank network, huge Federal budget deficit, new fiat money empire throughout the defeated Confederate States, and fast expanding Northern modern industrial base presented the City of London Corporation bankers with proverbial low hanging fruit. After both sides weathered the depression caused by the Panic of 1873, the City of London Corporation bankers' first salvo at usurping the American money creation mechanism was the financially engineered Panic of 1893 where a coordinated commodity price crash was timed with a run on the US Treasury gold holdings that nearly drew down the country's entire gold reserve and sent the United States into prolonged depression. But there's no depression a good war can't fix, so the politically popular 1898 Spanish-American War was prosecuted and with a quick victory the US spirits and economy sprang back to life. The City of London Corporation bankers' initial crude efforts was thwarted, so a second better organized salvo was launched in 1907, this time at the undertaking of Wall Street proxies, complete with a ready-made plan to fix everything and paid agents ready in Congress to promote the benevolence and virtue of the Money Trust. And to show the American people their selfless good intentions, both J. P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller magnanimously gifted their own money to acquire and "save" insolvent banks after the US Secretary of the Treasury secretly pledged taxpayer bailout money should Morgan's and Rockefeller's bank investments fail. Wall Street began its marketing campaign through Congress for the privatization of both the national currency issue and monetary policy, promising America that once control of these powers passed into secret hands all these recurring depressions caused by these very same secret hands would immediately cease. But not all members of Congress were yet paid agents of Wall Street, and in 1913 the Pujo Committee released the results of its scathing Money Trust investigations. The American public was in no mood to submit their sovereignty to the Wall Street Money Trust on behalf of the City of London Corporation bankers, and time was running out for the bankers to get America ensnared into their plans to deal with the new, powerful Continental upstart that threatened the Bank of England's fiat empire gravy train – Germany.
The second half of the European 20th century following the brutal wars of unification saw the Prussian state and its German coalition fiefdoms start to grind out military victories over first Denmark and next Austria, but it wasn't until the German Empire coalesced after its decisive and highly efficient defeat of world power France in 1871 that alarms began ringing in the City of London Corporation. The German people, united under one state and the Hegelian principles of "objectivity, truth, and ethical life", was one thing, but this Hegelian destiny to unite all Germanic peoples under that state – including Germanic peoples living in states with privately owned central banks – was another thing entirely. But the German Empire with its sound monetary policy, advanced high tech ground based military capability, and expanding colonial empire presented a formidable adversary, one that guaranteed mutually assured destruction if challenged alone. Initial efforts to destabilize the German Empire from within using communist agitators all fell flat as the German government enacted liberal labor and social reforms blunting each new call for a general strike. Against this rising German Empire stood a United Kingdom that had won just one major war in 85 years, was crawling out of the 20 years Long Depression, and whose banks and investment houses were clear culprits in ever recurring financial panic, one after the other, that had disastrously rippled throughout the global economy. The limits of growth had been reached with the industrial-colonial model of the British Empire, the system was devolving into stasis, and the Exchequer's budget deficit had been reduced to the point where a new major war of attrition could now be prosecuted.
On the American home front the Jekyll Island conspiracy between the Wall Street proxies for the City of London Corporation bankers and the US Congress had been in play since 1910. Its success was a crucial step for the Exchequer to gain a reliable overseas source of credit and for the Ministry of Defense to establish a supply chain prior to prosecuting its coming war of attrition against the German Empire. It is likely these conspirators knew full well their plans would commit the United States to not only massive war funding to Great Britain, but also pit the Americans as enemy against whatever countries Parliament might declare war upon for the "Glory of Britannia". So in practice, when Congress passed the Federal Reserve Act in August 1913 despite the Pujo Committee findings, it not only robbed the American people of control over its monetary policy, but to a large extent robbed it of control over much of its foreign policy as well. Thus this fateful act of betrayal to both American citizens and British subjects joined the eventual downfall of the British fiat empire with an American commitment to Endless Wars in defense of its coming fiat empire. This was a master stroke for the City of London Corporation bankers that brought the Federal Reserve System into its cross ownership nexus that now facilitated trans-continental coordination of both monetary and foreign policies that assured aggregate coordinated outcomes always resulted in a net gain to the City of London Corporation bankers, regardless of which side of the Atlantic experienced victory or defeat. And this new Federal Reserve System was isolated from all direct European land based military threats and had the ability to create huge quantities of fiat money adsorbed by a brand new tax base within the expanding American industrial economy which was now inescapably locked into ever growing Federal debt by the XVI Amendment. Thus not since the fall of Troy had a free and independent people willingly invited such unseen dangers into their midst, and by subterfuge the Federal Reserve Act ended 137 years of fierce American independence with a single unconscionable law and just 30 words contained in a new constitutional amendment.
Within four years of the Federal Reserve Act's passage, the City of London Corporation bankers were victorious, the German Empire crushed absolutely, and the flame of "objectivity, truth, and ethical life" extinguished. There would be no consolidation of the Germanic peoples under a single state controlled central bank, and no challenge to the Bank of England's control over its fiat empire. The costs were staggering – 20 million dead, 21 million injured, 1.2 million Queen's subjects killed, USD $3.2 trillion. Despite these losses, the combined ownership nexus of the Bank of England and the Federal Reserve System saw the City of London Corporation bankers in an even more powerful position that before the war, and for the first time since wresting control of the world reserve currency from France in 1815, the Bank of England began to share this status with the United States dollars it also controlled. And to ensure the permanent dominance of the Federal Reserve System and avoid any resurrection of populist economic policy threats like the Free Silver Movement, or for that matter, to forever eliminate serious economic policy discussion from public debate, in 1920 Congress ratified the XIX Amendment. Accumulated post-WWI budget deficits on both sides of the Atlantic ballooned – the Exchequer's climbed from a prewar 20% of GDP to 180%, and the Treasury's increased from 10% to 40% of GDP, with both countries finding themselves in the usual post-war recessions. Time to fire up the post-war printing presses – but this time, only on the other side of the Atlantic as the City of London Corporation had grand plans for its new American vassal.
And for all that post-war M2 fiat money now flooding into America – from a total of $18 billion circulating in 1915 to $47 billion in 1929 – the United States got things like flappers, guys going over waterfalls in barrels, jazz clubs, ultra-rich organized crime families, a mass entertainment industry, and through that cultural miasma somehow managed to build thousands of factories, make millions of cars, pave thousands of miles of roads, erect skyscrapers, and electrify cities. But the average Queen's subject didn't even get so much as an extra helping of pudding. What were the Roaring 20s in America, where industrial and service jobs abounded with the flood of fiat money created out of thin air, were more like the Boring 20s in the United Kingdom, where the printing presses remained idle and recession and mass unemployment were the order of the decade. But then under orders from the City of London Corporation bankers the Federal Reserve System raised interest rates from 4% to 6%, and suddenly the jazz music stopped, the flappers quit flapping, and the bills for all that art deco came due in October 1929. We all know the story of what happened next.
One side benefit of the Great Depression in the United States was so many people were unemployed that few paid income taxes, so Congress could not immediately start a new war of attrition to right the ship of finance at Wall Street's behest. Learned advisors first had to resort to their old bag of tricks with a tweak here, a Congressional rider there, a new regulation or two, and even introduced the new academic driven massive Keynesian make-work stimulus programs. Nothing worked no matter how rarefied or how many respected monetary scientists offered lofty solutions, so with the Federal Reserve insolvent and out of gold, President Roosevelt resorted to the old goldsmith shakedown tactic and issued Executive Order 6102 in April 1933, followed by Congress and its Gold Reserve Act of January 1934. The EO effectively confiscated all gold in the United States, gave it to the privately owned Federal Reserve System at $20.67 per troy ounce, removed the gold standard again, then raised the gold price to $35 a troy ounce and began printing massive amounts of pure fiat money. That gave the appearance of working, and industrial output slowly rose to greater than 1929 pre-crash gold standard levels entirely on the back of the inflation unleashed by pure fiat issuance until everything collapsed again in 1937. It began to look more and more like the fog of war was the only solution to pull America out of this depression and unbeknownst to most, the country had been rearming itself since early 1940, nearly two years before the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
The United Kingdom was in serious economic trouble too, having spent the entirety of the 1920s in deep recession and now hopelessly mired in a depression it could not shake. The old 18th century playbook would have to be dusted off, but at a great cost – financial destruction of the British Empire and sacrifice of the Bank of England for the greater good of the City of London Corporation's central bank cross ownership nexus. Starting in the early 1920s, the City of London Corporation bankers had recalled their communists to kick in the teeth and pick whatever flesh was remaining from the bones of the Weimar Republic, and the now worthless Reichsbank was put to work printing up never before seen hyper-inflation. These actions not only plunged Germany into the economic stone ages, but deprived nexus owned Bank of France of war reparations desperately needed to modernize its industrial base. Such was the threat posed by even the remains of a German Empire that such actions were deemed acceptable losses so long as "objectivity, truth, and ethical life" were sent to the unequivocal dustbin of history. Now, on its knees before the world's creditors and on the brink of devolving into a failed state, Germany was needed once again by these same creditors – and needed fast by Great Britain. Despite having few natural resources within its borders, Germany's military machine would be resurrected from the dead and come roaring back with a vengeance on a mission to once again unite all Germanic peoples under the banner of a revisionist version of "objectivity, truth, and ethical life", and it could only do that through the magic formula of central banking foreign credit.
Within six years of Hitler's ascension to the German Chancellery, Wall Street and the City of London Corporation bankers had financed the greatest mechanized military ever assembled – the Wehrmacht. The Dawes plan of 1924 had initiated the linkage between German industry and Wall Street finance for which the American banker Charles G. Dawes shared the 1925 Nobel Peace Prize. Under the Dawes Plan, prior to the 1929 crash, the Weimar Republic had paid its war reparations not to France or England, but to a consortium of Wall Street investment banks. This Dawes Plan gave Germany a life-sustaining infusion of US dollar credit that would in theory produce trade that would hypothetically generate customs and excise taxes that were surmised to eventually go towards war reparations to England and France. But then Hitler repudiated the Versailles Treaty, and the Gold Reserve Act allowed millions more pure fiat US dollars to flow out of Wall Street to their agents in "neutral" Stockholm and into the Nazi controlled Deutsche Reichsbank. Wall Street and the City of London Corporation loved Hitler and the House of Windsor openly saluted him. Nazism was to be a great boon to the trans-Atlantic financiers as Hitler would devoured the expendable and unprofitable Slavic peoples and ensured a never ending stream of new revenue with every eastern conquest. It was a foolproof plan – the Atlantic Ocean was wide, the Kriegsmarine small, the Luftwaffe would run out of gas before it arrived over New York City, and the communist martyrs installed in Russia would put up a fierce and expensive fight until Lebensraum ran out of room. But what Wall Street had not figured into its equations was that Hitler would sign an Anti-Comintern Pact, a Phony War would transform into a hot war, and another go at uniting all the Germanic peoples of Europe would commence under the new banner of Blut und Boden. The City of London Corporation bankers would have to fix this Wall Street mess themselves and call up the blue blooded true believers, those who existed for one purpose and one purpose only – the "Glory of Britannia".
We all know the story of what happened next and how WWII dragged in the entire central bank cross ownership nexus to secure victory for the "Glory of Churchill". But for all the tens of thousands of pages published in the learned journal tomes, there is not one observation made how the Federal Reserve System failed to deliver the expectations sold to America that it would end the boom-bust cycles inherent under post bellum 19th century quasi-capitalism. There was not one erudite call to re-examine the "special relationship" now cemented between Congress and the Federal Reserve System, and not one monetary scientist noticed the Federal Reserve System cross ownership nexus came out of the Great Depression – the depression it created – more powerful than when it entered. Instead, the world got lofty excuses like The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money proclaiming that more of the same failures would make everything indubitably jolly good. Not one political scientist noticed the Great Depression was used to eliminate banks not in favor with the elite ownership hierarchy within the trans-Atlantic central bank cross ownership nexus. And, not one scholarly paragraph examined how depressions are, and have always been, financially engineered mechanisms to destroy competitor banks and consolidate increasing power into a handful of fewer banks owned by a shrinking secret ownership pool.
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With the conclusion of WWII, the Exchequer was broke as it had issued such an immense quantity of debt to finance the war that it could never be repaid without resorting to harsh austerity measures at home that would threaten social unrest during a period of national weakness. But with the Bank of England in control of monetary policy, any semblance of economic recovery would be impossible, so after 252 years of their "special relationship", Parliament made the only logical choice available to it and in 1946 the Bank of England was nationalized and played no further dominant role in world capitalism. But the central bank cross ownership nexus made out just fine as the Bank of England wiggled out of holding the bag on all those unpayable war debts as the nationalization dumped them onto the backs of the Queen's subjects in another miraculous "heads they win, tails you lose" event. Thus 1946 begins the British period of state controlled capitalism that was in effect a transition period into de-industrialization where large segments of its economy were nationalized to ensure they were not revived through modernization and thus would never be placed into competition with industry in the United States or other European countries that were using their post-WWII rebuilding programs to modernize their industries.
After both the Bank of England and Bank of France were lost to nationalizations, Wall Street tool the pre-eminent role within the central bank cross ownership nexus and got straight to work on elevating the US dollar to the status of undisputed world reserve currency, thus ending the 130 year run of the pound sterling.
And a modern world reserve currency needed a colonial fiat empire, so the United States started with Western Europe via the Anglo-American Loan Agreement of 1946 and later the Marshall Plan of 1948 to kick off its "virtuous cycle". The Russian financial system remained unchanged, and it absorbed Eastern Europe into its new expanded fiat empire. Thus, the true winners at the cessation of hostilities from a purely financial perspective were the United States and the Soviet Union.
In 1951 during the fog of the Korean War and with the Secretary of the Treasury in the hospital, the Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury – not Congress – handed the power to set interest rates independently of government economic policy entirely to the Federal Reserve System. Like the original Federal Reserve Act, this additional power grab was sold to the American people on the premise the privately owned Federal Reserve System would "tame inflation" and "foster economic stability without responding to short-term political pressure". This single act by an adjutant set the stage for the Federal Reserve System to wield incredible power over government policy and essentially hold Congress to ransom, where although the US Treasury was responsible for raising government money, the privately owned Federal Reserve System was now responsible for setting that money's price paid to it for creating it out of thin air. So the Federal Reserve System now had the power to create or destroy national wealth by reducing or raising interest rates and there was no legal stipulation for whom their policies should benefit. Thus unbeknownst to the American people, this unnecessary power relinquishment was, in effect, the crucial piece that would set the stage for enabling the financialization of the America economy.
Post-WWII capitalism under the American fiat leadership functioned much like it did prior to the war except where the fiat empire was concerned. Instead of conquest and physical occupation of resource rich lands and filling these lands up with colonists, the United States resorted to a proxy conquest model where it initiated coup d'états, assassinations, foreign espionage, fraudulent elections, and foreign propaganda campaigns to install pliable dictators and friendly juntas. These leaders were amicable to pursuing "growth" policies, allowed American military bases on their soil, and had no qualms about crushing dissent at home or piling billions of US dollar denominated debt onto the heads of their citizenry. In exchange for their compliance, these dictators and juntas were kept in power with generous foreign aid packages, and they in turn doled out lucrative resource development concessions, purchased US made military hardware, and awarded contracts to US corporations for industrial, civil, and defense projects. In a new twist on colonization, many of these American proxy conquests created large numbers of emigres into the United States and provided a mechanism to ensure the consumer base at home continued to grow and devour excess production capacity as American living standards rose and native born birth rates declined. A new "virtuous cycle" evolved whereby industry in the conquered fiat empire eventually began to generate export income sold into the US dollar denominated commodity markets, and those US dollars returned to the United States to purchase US value added exports and services. And to secure this new "virtuous cycle", in 1947 the Central Intelligence Agency was born out of the National Security Act, and it quickly evolved into its main directive of waging clandestine foreign hybrid wars to consolidate and grow the American fiat empire, install and keep friendly governments investing in US exports – especially military equipment – and defeat the competing Soviet fiat money empire. Thus with its responsibility of maintaining its new global fiat empire, the United States entered into its historical phase of Endless War.
The United Kingdom on the other hand could no longer afford control over its fiat empire as it had no viable value added export capability at war's end and thus its "virtuous cycle" stopped functioning. It instead resorted to de-colonialization, but only in terms of physical land holdings. The City of London Corporation bankers either kept effective control over these former colonies' new central banking systems or was its primary beneficiary, and in either case it retained the majority of financial profits derived from these newly created banking systems. This "de-colonized" banking model was similar to the false "independence" of the Federal Reserve System, but here the City of London Corporation bankers retained control through majority stock ownership of the member banks that comprised the new banking systems. In the English speaking constitutional monarchies where the serious financial profits were generated, an additional failsafe was guaranteed by the Queen's appointment of Governor Generals who could – and once did in Australia – sack recalcitrant duly elected governments that did not put the City of London Corporation's interests above those of their own people.
One post-WWII change with huge repercussions to American capitalism was the US dollar denomination takeover of global commodities trade from the pound sterling. As world population and industrialization increased and Western Europe crept back into consumer manufacturing, the volume of forward contracts traded in dollars grew in step. However, all that American ingenuity put into its fiat empire's "virtuous cycle" began to work too well in the Middle East and North African oil sectors. By 1965 the combined dollar revenues received from new oil exports, taken together with all Western European dollar revenue streams, were greater than what the US domestic export capacity could absorb through its "virtuous cycle". Instead of buying US value added exports, these surplus overseas dollars went searching for investments and with limited low risk opportunities available, they eventually found the US Treasury Gold Window. The 1934 Gold Reserve Act had ended domestic dollar convertibility into physical gold but not international convertibility, which was retained as per the Bretton Woods agreement, and during the second half of the 1960s these foreign dollars began to drain the US Treasury of its gold reserves. Despite the gold rush, the US Treasury held its official exchange price constant at $35 an ounce – the same price set after the depression era Gold Reserve Act. When the House of Rothschild finally raised the gold price in 1968, it signaled US gold reserves were in decline and prompted frenzied buying from Western Europe up until the day that American capitalism ended.
RKKA , 2 hours agoHoodRatKing , 1 hour agoWestern society is extremely destructive and self-destructive. At a time when humanity abandoned matriarchy even before the new era, feminism is flourishing in the West. Homosexuality was the cause of the fall of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome, but in the West it is believed that after 2 thousand years it is still supposedly fashionable. Back at the beginning of the 6th century BC. e.
Solon decreed to punish any adult male found in the premises of a school where young boys and girls studied. However, in the West, pedophilia still flourishes and the Lolita Express runs.
Western decrepit pedophile elites deserve a replacement and a kick in the ***! The West will fall just like the depraved, pedophilic, homosexual Ancient Rome fell. No huge amount of money and no huge army will save the West. Why do you need to save yourself? What would be the next generation of soulless and godless pedophiles, homosexuals and money-gamblers? Why do you need money if you sold your soul?
Ben A Drill , 2 hours agoI believe the 3rd world doesn't need a constitution to shoot weapons at the bankers... Some are quite good at it too!
HoodRatKing , 1 hour agoEveryone was born naked and broke.
sir lozalot , 2 hours agoNo, we were born covered and full of life... The broke are those who have no life & are swimming naked in a tank full of gangster sharks.
Dying-Of-The-Light , 1 hour agolol
Krinkle Sach , 3 hours agoTalk about a cut and paste Job. This article has so many inaccuracies that I would need to write a book to refute them. Unlike CHS I don't write endlessy to flog eBooks on line while begging for donations to constantly advertise myself. I don't want to bore anyone with an endless monologue to counter some of the huge errors in this article. I am just stunned he can chuck this out when it is truly shoddy.
The guy is very bright and he usually writes very well, but this article from him is an utter mess.
Buster Cherry , 2 hours agoThis generation
Rules the nation
With versionMusic happen to be the food of love
Sounds to really make you rub and scrub
I sayPass the dutchie 'pon the left hand side (I say)
Pass the dutchie 'pon the left hand side
It a go bun, give me music, make me jump and prance
It a go dung, give me the music, make me rockin' at the dance (Jah know!)It was a cool and lonely breezy afternoon
(How does it feel when you got no food?)
You could feel it 'cause it was the month of June
(How does it feel when you got no food?)
So I left my gate and went out for a walk
(How does it feel when you got no food?)
As I pass the dreadlocks' camp I heard them say
(How does it feel when you got no food?)Pass the dutchie 'pon the left hand side (I say)
Pass the dutchie 'pon the left hand side
It a go bun, give me music, make me jump and prance
It a go dung, give me the music, make me rockin' at the dance (Jah know!)So I stopped to find out what was going on
(How does it feel when you got no food?)
'Cause the spirit of Jah, you know he leads you on
(How does it feel when you got no food?)
There was a ring of dreads and a session was there in swing
(How does it feel when you got no food?)
You could feel the chill as I seen and heard them say
(How does it feel when you got no food?)Pass the dutchie 'pon the left hand side (I say)
Pass the dutchie 'pon the left hand side
It a go bun, give me music, make me jump and prance
It a go dung, give me the music, make me rockin' at the dance (Jah know!)'Cause me say listen to the drummer, me say listen to the bass
Give me little music make me wind up me waist
Me say listen to the drummer, me say listen to the bass
Give me little music make me wind up me waist, I sayPass the dutchie 'pon the left hand side (I say)
Pass the dutchie 'pon the left hand side
It a go bun, give me music, make me jump and prance
It a go dung, give me the music, make me rockin' at the dance (Jah know!)You play it on the radio
And so me say, we a go hear it on the stereo
And so me know you a go play it on the disco
And so me say we a go hear it on the stereo (bow!)Pass the dutchie 'pon the left hand side (I say)
Pass the dutchie 'pon the left hand side
It a go bun, give me music, make me jump and prance
It a go dung, give me the music, make me rockin' at the dance (Jah know!)On the left hand side (I say)
On the left hand side (I say)
On the left hand side
(We meet) On the left hand side (say man)
On the left hand sideMe say east, say west, say north and south (on the left hand side)
This is gonna really make us jump and shout (on the left hand side)
Me say east, say west, say north and south (on the left hand side)Zhaupka , 12 minutes agoKnow your limits:
conraddobler , 1 hour agoNot sure if this passes ZH / United States Censors:
Those who studied recent-Ancient History - Plato or Socrates - shall understand Athens.
Athens ( Greece ) domination over 200 plus city states. Athens was the center where the Wealthiest Families of Planet Earth resided at the time. Athens is where the 200 plus city states paid their tribute (taxes) for Military Protection and maintenance of basic civil human-to-human peaceful exchanges. Athens Wealthy fed and protected the 200 plus city states.
The elites in Italy, the Medici's provided food, clothing, housing and other to the general populations - all this easily understood including the Medici Parties for the entire town for free!
Those of yester years did not: take the wealth they dug from Planet Earth, put it in their pockets, then later put the wealth back into Planet Earth, that wealth is here today.
Plus new wealth is created.
FIRST LIST - UPPER CLASS
Here is a brief Modern List of "The Elites" "The Globalists" "The Powers That Be (TPTB)" that feed, clothe, house, and entertain the populations encased this larger Western World Superstructure:
* Rothschild Family of Paris
* Warburg Family of Hamburg
* Lazard Family of Paris
* Israel Moses Seif Family of Rome
* Goldman / Sachs Family
* Rockefeller Family
* Lehman Family
* Kuhn Loeb Family of New YorkThese families similar to the ultra-wealthy families in Athens give everyone food, clothing, shelter, cities, education, and everything one has or knows others have.
These are the New Athens Families of the Western World on Planet Earth.
The reader has a very difficult time enjoying the fact the reader is a Common Ordinary Pedestrian Modern Peasant whose existence is sustained by the Super Ultra Wealthy as in the days of Athens where nameless faceless common folk depended on similar Super Ultra Wealthy to merely survive day-to-day.
Without these Super Ultra Wealthy Families - "The Elites" or "The Globalists" or "The Powers That Be (TPTB)" - on the afore list, dominating other Human Populations on Planet Earth, most reading would be starving To Death existing during a pitiless life in less than abject poverty.
2020: 178 Nation-States use the New Families of the Western World on Planet Earth "Reserve" Currency to pay Tribute for Military Protection and Trade and Simple Sustenance - fed and protected. Whole cities would cease to exist, the electricity, gas, and tap water would stop flowing immediately.
The mass illusions provided by the Athens-like Super Ultra Wealthy Western World Families' Personal Servants are imaginative and entertaining.
Common ZH Readers would have a very, very difficult time conceiving through the Haze the reader is nothing more than a Dependent Common Ordinary Pedestrian Modern Peasant because of the Haze.
Lessee - remove the Haze of the Super Ultra Wealthy Western World Families and see their Servants:
SECOND LIST - MIDDLE CLASS
United States Government(s) / Economy is Infected and Infested with Middle Eastern Arabs:
Finance. Military. Law. Medical. Political. Business.
United States Federal Reserve Branch: BERNANKE, YELEN, ROSENGREN, GREENSPAN, et al.
United States Military Branch: WOLFOWITZ, WILLIAM "BILL" KRISTOL, ROBERT KAGAN, RICHARD "****" N. PERLE, VICTORIA NULAND, ELLIOTT ABRAMS, ELIOT A. COHEN, AARON FRIEDBERG, I. LEWIS SCOOTER LIBBY, NORMAN PODHORETZ, PETER W. RODMAN, STEPHEN P. ROSEN, MARK GERSON, RANDY SCHEUNEMANN, et al.
United States Judicial Branch: MUELLER, ROSENSTEIN, WASSERMAN, HOROWITZ, BADER, GOLDMAN, WEISMAN et al.
United States National Medical:
Deputy Attorney General ROD ROSENSTEIN's SISTER: The United States Center For Disease Control (CDC), Atlanta, Georgia, United States, Dr. Nancy Messonnier (Nanc married a white) et al.United States Political (in ur face):
BLOOMBERG, SANDERS, STEYER, et al.Add Commercial Real Estate: SAM ZELL, COOPERMAN, SILVERSTEIN Properties, and Middle-Men.
The afore are all from the Middle East.
Middle Eastern Arabs are J's by a different name - same.
Now there is clearer focus for the Dependent Common Ordinary Pedestrian Modern Peasant ZH Reader. Less Haze.
THIRD LIST - LOWER CLASS
The Second List afore controls these Democrats and Republican Party Gang Member Servants.
Party Member Servants: "vote" to appear to control the United States Federal, State, County, City, Town, Village Governments. For example:
United States House of Representatives,
United States Senate,
United States Judicial,
United States Executive,
- Democrats and Republicans -
all signed the papers to transfer
United States Intellectual Property,
United States Agriculture,
United States Financial Services,
United States Technology Transfer (Patents, Software Code, Aero/Astro -nautical, et al.),
United States Currency and Foreign Exchange, and Other
to China.FOURTH LIST - PEASANT CLASS
* Lifetime Debt - give me house, gimme car, gimme food, gimme water, gimme clothes.
Wherefore art thou u?
Thomas Paine you rascal!
HoodRatKing , 1 hour agoWhat's going on is painfully obvious. It has been for decades, nothing is done except to continue taking it up another notch. When it all collapses those who set the fire will show up to sell fire insurance.
Nothing will ever change.
People will breathlessly bow down before those who caused the mess, anything to get some access to more debt at low rates.
You can buy an entire world this way.
Great article, I've included a link in my latest blog post!
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Oct 05, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com
DHS Grants Millions To Groups Fighting 'Right-Wing Extremism' by Tyler Durden Sun, 10/04/2020 - 19:30 Twitter Facebook Reddit Email PrintSince the largest threat facing the country is white supremacists, according to FBI Director Chris Wray and Homeland Security acting chief Tom Wolf , the Department of Homeland Security has agreed to provide $10 million in grants to organizations which combat 'far-right extremism and white supremacy , ' according to the Wall Street Journal .
The department's Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention program will fund groups such as Life After Hate - founded by reformed white supremacists, which helps people trying to do the same. Another group, the School of Communication at American University, will develop a strategy to combat disinformation 'circulated by the far right online,' and others. Life After Hate was awarded nearly $750,000, while the School of Communication received a $500,000 grant.
One of the largest grants, nearly $750,000, went to Life After Hate, which was founded by former white supremacists and neo-Nazis and works with people trying to leave violent far-right movements. The group was first awarded funding under the Obama-era program but had its grant rescinded soon after Mr. Trump took office. - Wall Street Journal
Life After Hate says they will use the funding for its ExitUSA initiative. Executive director Sammy Rangel says their work "has never been more important," adding "This project follows years of innovation in a space that was largely uncharted."
Another group, the Counter Extremism Project, was awarded $277,755 to collaborate with Parallel Networks, which works with inmates at a San Diego County correctional facility who adhere to both white supremacist of jihadi ideology .
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Sep 30, 2020 | www.rt.com
Robert Bridge is an American writer and journalist. He is the author of 'Midnight in the American Empire,' How Corporations and Their Political Servants are Destroying the American Dream. @Robert_Bridge Get short URL
FILE PHOTO: Participants of the LGBT parade in Kiev. © Sputnik / Stringer 73 Follow RT on
When we hear discussions today about imperial 'conquests' and 'takeovers,' the natural assumption is that some form of military aggression is being alluded to. Yet that's not always the case. In fact, attacks on national traditions are occurring every single day on the social and cultural fronts, and it should come as no surprise that America is the driving force behind this juggernaut.
READ MORECalifornia Gov. Newsom signs law allowing trans inmates to be locked up with men or women based on their gender identity
Presently, the US is undergoing a radical transformation the likes of which the world has never seen. Across the country, liberal progressives, captivated by the allure of 'wokeness' and extreme social justice, are overturning the 'natural order of things' by placing minorities and their controversial movements to the front of the serving line. This can be witnessed, for example, by the almost fanatical promotion of the LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer) community, which has its own flag, gratuitous corporate sponsorship, and even the entire month of June set aside in its honor.
Perhaps the most provocative part of this movement, however, involves the idea of transgender, which postulates that the sex of a biological male or female is not determined by its genitalia, but rather by what each individual person feels. Personally, I have no problem with any adult who accepts such beliefs, even if they wish to submit to a sex-change operation. The problem, however, is when the wants and desires of a miniscule segment of the population begin to adversely affect those of the majority. It seems we have reached that point.
Just this week, for example, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a law requiring authorities to house transgender inmates based on their gender identity. The law forbids the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation from denying such requests solely based on the inmates' anatomy, sexual orientation or "a factor present" (i.e. female inmates) at the facility. This echoes legislation put forward by former president Barack Obama in 2016 that threatened to cut funding to any public school that refused to let transgender students use the bathrooms matching their chosen gender identity. Upon entering office in 2017, Donald Trump, taking a cue from the social warriors' playbook, ' canceled ' the legislation.
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The controversy surrounding this one US cultural issue, as well as numerous others, is meant to illustrate a point: if the American people themselves cannot agree on such radical concepts, why are Americans slowly but surely forcing them on the world?
ALSO ON RT.COM Wait, what? Eric Trump says he is 'part of the LGBT community,' sowing confusion online US-made woke exports – accept them or elseThanks to America's undying belief in its 'exceptional' character, it has deemed itself the arbiter as to what values the world should hold dear, democracy be damned. Last year, for example, in a bid to curry favor with the radical leftists inside of the Democratic Party, Joe Biden, who could end up being the next US president, said he would "curtail foreign assistance to countries" who do not uphold the values of the LGBTQ community, and regardless if they clash with the traditions and beliefs of the country in question. The former vice president was also quoted as saying he would establish an office in the State Department with the job of promoting LGBTQ rights around the world .
This sort of sex-based foreign policy, however, is not solely the domain of the Democratic Party. In April, Richard Grenell, the former acting director of national intelligence in the Trump government, said the US would consider the possibility of not sharing intelligence with countries that discriminate against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender lifestyles. Not only is that an obscene amount of meddling in the affairs of foreign states, which borders on blackmail, it could throw an potentially dangerous monkey wrench into the world of espionage.
READ MORE'Unfortunate' views on homosexuality must DISQUALIFY Christians, Muslims & Orthodox Jews from SCOTUS, Biden campaign staffer says
Maybe if Uncle Sam would spend less time policing the world's bedrooms, it would discover that not every nation agrees with its homegrown cultural experiments.
Consider the issue of homosexuality and same-sex marriages, for example. A recent survey by Pew showed that the world continues to remain very much divided on the matter. While many countries in the western hemisphere show a high acceptance of such lifestyles, the more conservative countries in the East generally do not share those sentiments. For example, 72 percent of the US population said they accept homosexuality, whereas in distant Ukraine just 14 percent agreed.
Such polls, however, can be very misleading. In Russia, for example, which also shows 14 percent acceptance rates, there is no legislation on the books outlawing homosexuality, as has been recklessly reported in the Western media. Instead, Russia passed a law in 2013 ( "For the Purpose of Protecting Children from Information Advocating for a Denial of Traditional Family Values" ) that works to prevent the "propaganda of non-traditional sexual relationships" among minors. In other words, let's wait until children are 18 to begin such heavy conversations. All things considered, this seems to be a very reasonable idea, and one that conforms to Russian traditions. Yet the US establishment simply wrote it off as "anti-gay."
Meanwhile, back in the gold-paved streets of America, many children are learning about alternative sexual lifestyles in grade school, occasionally with the help of 'drag queen story time' at the local library. At the same time, an increasing number of adolescents, with the full support of the psychiatric community, are being allowed to start 'gender-transitioning' operations – which many of these youngsters live to regret later, and there is little chance of 'turning back.'
ALSO ON RT.COM When promoting Christian family values & querying LGBT lessons gets you fired, it's clear the Bible is woke militia's new targetThe main point, however, is that although other countries may have severe reservations over such radical new practices, ultimately it comes down to the choice of the American people whether to continue with them or not. After all, that's what democracy is all about – respecting those ideas, however strange they may seem to outsiders, that a people hold dear. The US, however, does not seem ready to play by such rules as it continuously pushes its version of the 'new world order.'
Just like the American people, the emotion-fueled woke train is bearing down not only on the United States, but the entire world. And with the crackdown on open democratic debate, as witnessed at the most unlikely of places – from US college campuses to the increasingly totalitarian world of social media – many people will be powerless to stop the onslaught. After all, if the United States forbids its own people from questioning the wisdom of the brave new woke world, foreign countries should not expect any special favors either.
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The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
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Oct 01, 2020 | www.rt.com
Used as the journalism Bible by most English-language media, the AP Stylebook has updated its guidance for employing the word 'riot,' citing the need to avoid "stigmatizing" groups protesting "for racial justice."While acknowledging the dictionary definition of riot as a "wild or violent disturbance of the peace," AP said the word somehow "suggests uncontrolled chaos and pandemonium."
Worse yet, "Focusing on rioting and property destruction rather than underlying grievance has been used in the past to stigmatize broad swaths of people protesting against lynching, police brutality or for racial justice " the Stylebook account tweeted on Wednesday.
The claim that something has been used in the past in a racist way has already led to banishing many English terms to the Orwellian "memory hole." It certainly appears the AP is trying to do the same with "riot" now.
Instead of promoting precision, the Stylebook is urging reporters to use euphemisms such as "protest" or "demonstration." It advises "revolt" and "uprising" if the violence is directed "against powerful groups or governing systems," in an alarming shift in focus from what is being done towards who is doing it to whom .
READ MORE: CBS News whitewashes Kenosha destruction as mostly 'peaceful protests' as city smolders in aftermathThere is even a helpful suggestion to use "unrest" because it's "a vaguer, milder and less emotional term for a condition of angry discontent and protest verging on revolt."
Translated to plain English, this means a lot more mentions of "unrest" and almost no references to "riot," in media coverage going forward, regardless of how much actual rioting is happening.
Mainstream media across the US have already gone out of their way to avoid labeling what has unfolded since the death of George Floyd in May as "riots." Though protests in Minneapolis, Minnesota turned violent within 48 hours, before spreading to other cities across the US – and even internationally – the media continued calling them "peaceful" and "protests for racial justice."
Yet in just the first two weeks of the riots, 20 people have been killed and the property damage has exceeded $2 billion , according to insurance estimates – the highest in US history.
AP is no stranger to changing the language to better comport to 'proper' political sensitivities. At the height of the riots in June, the Stylebook decided to capitalize "Black" and "Indigenous" in a "racial, ethnic or cultural sense."
We're in a sinister new era of totalitarianism, where PC combat units use social media to destroy anyone who disagrees with themA month later, the expected decision to leave "white" in lowercase was justified by saying that "White people in general have much less shared history and culture, and don't have the experience of being discriminated against because of skin color."
Moreover, "Capitalizing the term 'white,' as is done by white supremacists, risks subtly conveying legitimacy to such beliefs," wrote AP's vice-president for standards John Daniszewski.
The Associated Press Stylebook and Briefing on Media Law, as its full name goes, has effectively dictated the tone of English-language outlets around the world since it first appeared in 1953. It is also required reference material in journalism schools.
So when it embraces vagueness over precision and worrying about "suggestions" and "subtly conveying" things over plain meaning, that rings especially Orwellian – in both the '1984' sense of censoring speech and thought and regarding the corruption of language the author lamented in his famous 1946 essay 'Politics and the English language.'
AP is hardly the Ministry of Truth, dictating Newspeak under the penalty of torture. As it turns out, it doesn't have to be. A bit of updated style – and thought – guidance announced on Twitter from time to time will do.
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The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
Nebojsa Malic is a Serbian-American journalist, blogger and translator, who wrote a regular column for Antiwar.com from 2000 to 2015, and is now senior writer at RT. Follow him on Twitter @NebojsaMalic
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Oct 01, 2020 | www.theamericanconservative.com
L RNY • 11 hours agoCollin Reid • 10 hours agoThe one thing I see in Maoist China, Nazi Germany and Czarist Russia/Soviet Union is that "freedom was curtailed" and the government cracked down on "law and order." If you look at the intimidation tactics of individuals, couples, families at restaurants and the assassinations of Police Officers, the violent riots, arson and looting in american cities you can see the justification for the government to "crack down on freedoms" and restore "law and order" similar to Maoist China and Pre-War Germany but for different reasons and justifications. If you look at the lefts handling of the Chinese biological weapon of terrorism COVID19 and the resulting lock down of the economy and the enforced government closing of churches, synagogues and mosques then you can see similarities in Maoist China, Nazi Germany and Bolshevik/Stalinist Soviet Union (and its satellites) but for different reasons and different justifications.
-The radical elements pushing for civil war and revolution in the US arent reacting to hunger or the economy as they did in Germany or Russia.
-The radical elements pushing for civil war and revolution in the US are fundamentally Marxist and are using feminism to pit men and women against one another, to destroy marriage and family to abort children. Marxists are using Gay Rights to pit sexual orientation of gays against sexual orientation of straights. Marxists are using the prejudice of minorities against the whites. Marxists are again pitting poor against rich. Marxists fracture society into entitled and embittered tribes. Radical elements are pushing for reparations and re-indoctrination as well as civil war and revolution. This is very close to the tactics of Maoist China and it has been proven that George Soros and Peoples Republic of China are financing Antifa and Black Lives Matters..China was too weak to fight the Maoist Communists so many fled to Taiwan. Russians were bribed to revolt against the Czar and put the Bolsheviks into power. Germans were desperate and the Pre-Nazi government was to weak to restore the economy. Americans aren't desperate. Americans are rich fat entitled and ridden with guilt for their blessings to the point where they are self destructive so Americans dont have motivational similarities to the Germans or the Russians for revolution.
Strong Correlation to today
Todays indoctrination youth with their rabid faces and penchant for violence remind me much more of indoctrinated Maoists destroying Chinese culture, attacking Chinese business owners and property owners to enforce a Cultural Revolution.
FL Transplant Collin Reid • an hour agoA Society That Values Loyalty More Than Expertise
I know people LOVE stating Ronald Reagan and 1980s was era of loyalty but I really don't see it.
1) The height of Americans moving across statelines was 1980s so everybody found new places to live all decade.
2) The 1980s Corporations moved towards primary goal of maximizing profit over worker relations
3) Weekly Church going would rise from 1975 - 1986 but began to fall after 1986 through 1995. Nobody has explained why this happened.
4) Being Gen X and entering career workforce in jobless recovery, there was clearly local institutions then.
phreethink • 10 hours ago • editedThere was a fairly large economic diaspora during the Reagan years, as the heavy manufacturing (steel) and assembly (auto) factories in what became know as the Rust Belt closed down and people moved South and West for better opportunities. (One of the results of that diaspora s the nationwide popularity of the Pittsburgh Steelers, as thousands upon thousands of fans left western PA and moved elsewhere but maintained their loyalty.)
Augustine • 10 hours agoHannah Arendt also said:
"The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist."
Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism
Now, is it the right or left that is more anti-science and anti-fact? Who lies to us more, the right or left? Check PolitiFact or any other reasonably balanced fact checker before you answer (No, Media Matters doesn't count). Which party's leader said: "Just remember, what you are seeing and what you are reading is not what's happening,"
I mean neither have a clean slate here, they are human and are politicians, too. But Trump's avalanche of lies and unsupported claims in Tuesday's "debate" makes it ridiculous to argue that Trump is on the side of fact, truth, and evidence.
Kiyoshi01 Augustine • 9 hours ago"Among the social and intellectual elite, sexual adventurism, celebrations of perversion, and all manner of sensuality was common."
The typical Joe six pack, or even the run of the mill not religious conservative, is the social and intellectual elite now?
Rossbach • 9 hours agoBingo. I live in an overwhelmingly liberal suburb of NYC. This place is sleepier than Mayberry. My wallet (with over $200 inside) slipped out of my pocket while I was riding my bike. The police had called me to pick it up before I even realized that it was missing.
Last week a two motorized skateboards were stolen, and someone shoplifted 5 cigars from the local tobacconist.
There is little sexual adventurism, no visible celebrations of perversion, and sexuality is largely a private matter. If you told an off-color sexual joke at the local bar, you'd likely be asked to leave.
For a guy who cautions against living by lies, Rod would do well to engage some social and intellectual elites on a regular basis. Visit places like Potomac, Maryland, or Princeton, New Jersey, or Swampscott, Massachusetts. The reality is that it's out in "Christian America" that all of this stuff is running rampant.
Fletcher Rossbach • 5 hours ago"Democratic norms are under strain in many industrialized nations, with the support for mainstream parties of left and right in decline."
The reason that the "mainstream" parties are in decline is that they are no longer willing to represent the interests of ordinary people. Both are the captives of special interest groups (ethnic minorities and the radical Left in the case of the Dems, and corporations and wealthy individuals in the case of the GOP). Middle America no longer has any place to go.
a Texas libertarian • 8 hours agoAn excellent point and a glaring flaw in the article.
a Texas libertarian • 8 hours agoThanks for this overview of Hannah Arendt's thought and its relation to current circumstances. Very insightful. I've been wanting to read her book for a while now but have not yet done so.
"who today talks about totalitarianism?"Political libertarians and social conservatives have for over 100 years been warning us of this coming totalitarianism. One was even so astute as to see past the absolute dictatorships of the 20th century to what we have at our doorstep today.
"Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications and to watch over their fate. That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood: it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing. For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness; it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances: what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living? Thus it every day renders the exercise of the free agency of man less useful and less frequent; it circumscribes the will within a narrower range and gradually robs a man of all the uses of himself. The principle of equality has prepared men for these things;it has predisposed men to endure them and often to look on them as benefits. After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd." - Alexis de TocquevilleEddie • 8 hours agoAnother Tocquevillian quote that commands attention today:
"What good does it do me, after all, if an ever-watchful authority keeps an eye out to ensure that my pleasures will be tranquil and races ahead of me to ward off all danger, sparing me the need even to think about such things, if that authority, even as it removes the smallest thorns from my path, is also absolute master of my liberty and my life; if it monopolizes vitality and existence to such a degree that when it languishes, everything around it must also languish; when it sleeps, everything must also sleep; and when it dies, everything must also perish? There are some nations in Europe whose inhabitants think of themselves in a sense as colonists, indifferent to the fate of the place they live in. The greatest changes occur in their country without their cooperation. They are not even aware of precisely what has taken place. They suspect it; they have heard of the event by chance. More than that, they are unconcerned with the fortunes of their village, the safety of their streets, the fate of their church and its vestry. They think that such things have nothing to do with them, that they belong to a powerful stranger called "the government." They enjoy these goods as tenants, without a sense of ownership, and never give a thought to how they might be improved. They are so divorced from their own interests that even when their own security and that of their children is finally compromised, they do not seek to avert the danger themselves but cross their arms and wait for the nation as a whole to come to their aid. Yet as utterly as they sacrifice their own free will, they are no fonder of obedience than anyone else. They submit, it is true, to the whims of a clerk, but no sooner is force removed than they are glad to defy the law as a defeated enemy. Thus one finds them ever wavering between servitude and license. When a nation has reached this point, it must either change its laws and mores or perish, for the well of public virtue has run dry: in such a place one no longer finds citizens but only subjects."Fletcher Eddie • 5 hours agoYou know, I'm a full Republican conservative, but in a way, I kinda think that maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea to have a similar economy like what's in Venezuela, Cuba, Haiti, Iran, North Korea, etc, etc, etc, so that idiots that think that kind of life style is good. THEN when they find out what it's like living in a WORKER'S PARADISE, they'll know.
Mark Thomason • 8 hours agoYeah but I don't really wish to be dragged along with that.
dbriz • 8 hours ago • editedWhat I see happening seems to me to be less explained by Hannah Arendt than by Eric Hoffer in his book The True Believer.
We are surrounded by the extreme emotions of people feeling desperate. They are grasping at whatever is on offer, and equally likely to grasp at anything else offered.
They are not accepting an evil, just banality of evil that goes unrecognized as evil for its very banality. They see the extremes, and as Hoffer wrote they are drawn by that extreme; that is the very appeal of it, not just something they excuse as if banal.
The emotions are running to such extremes that politics breaks up longstanding friendships, and even families, as we saw in the American Civil War. That did not happen in Germany's banal acceptance of evil and power.
Steveb • 7 hours agoControl requires widening the net, which requires expanding the parameters of government, which requires centralizing government power, which when done in boiling frog manner, can take a couple of centuries or so. Yet here we have arrived.
It took a long time to get from there to here and getting from here to there will require tough duty.
Sensible people might opt for a modernized Articles of Confederation with reasonable limited taxation privileges and a modified defense arrangement but of course sensible people are in low demand.
Richard Parker • 6 hours agoImpressive to see Godwin reach 1 so soon. I think projection should be added as a dependent variable that catalyzes Godwin logarithmically.
"For example, many who didn't really accept Marx's revisionist take on history -- that it is a manifestation of class struggle -- "
It is, partially.
Traditional Libertarian-Conservative here, but in my classes, I always said that Marx was a better historian than he was an economist.
cdugga Karen Richardson • 5 hours ago
totheleftofcentre Karen Richardson • 4 hours agoShould quoting you include that perhaps as many as 5 million Russian POW's also perished in the holocaust, and that it was a good thing? I am saving this RD article much more for the commentary than what rod said. Anti-fascists and the radical left? Yeah, right. Okay folks, show of hands. How many out there, identifying themselves as left or right, wish that world war 2 had lasted longer? Bone spur patriotism seems to be on full display here.
Charles Cosimano • 4 hours agoOne rarely sees evil so blatantly on display as in your comment.
Gerald Arcuri • 4 hours agoYour book arrived today. When I think of Soft Totalitarianism I think of the Hayes Office.
"At universities within the University of California system, for example, teachers who want to apply for tenure-track positions have to affirm their commitment to "equity, diversity, and inclusion" -- and to have demonstrated it, even if it has nothing to do with their field."
It isn't just the U.C. schools. Here in Thousand Oaks, California, sits the campus of California Lutheran University - a private institution ( though no longer "Lutheran" or indeed "Christian" in any meaningful sense of those words ). The faculty and staff are undergoing frank re-education, in preparation for the loyalty oath. And, those who dare resist ( sadly, there are few ) are simply shown the door. Any dissent is labelled "racist", "homophobic", etc., etc. The jackboots are echoing even in the quiet streets of suburbia...
And the so-called California Ethnic Studies Curriculum ( based on critical race will soon be introduced as a mandatory high school class. No class, no graduation. It's utterly chilling.
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Jul 24, 2020 | www.youtube.com
Fox News 5.73M subscribersFox News SUBSCRIBE White employees were informed that their so-called 'white' qualities were offensive and unacceptable. #FoxNews #Tucker
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Oct 01, 2020 | www.theamericanconservative.com
n 1951, six years after the end of World War II, the political philosopher Hannah Arendt published The Origins of Totalitarianism , in an attempt to understand how such radical ideologies of both left and right had seized the minds of so many in the 20th century. Arendt's book used to be a staple in college history and political theory courses. With the end of the Cold War 30 years behind us, who today talks about totalitarianism? Almost no one -- and if they do, it's about Nazism, not communism.
Unsurprisingly, young Americans suffer from profound ignorance of what communism was, and is. The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, a nonprofit educational and research organization established by the U.S. Congress, carries out an annual survey of Americans to determine their attitudes toward communism, socialism, and Marxism in general. In 2019, the survey found that a startling number of Americans of the post-Cold War generations have favorable views of left-wing radicalism, and only 57 percent of Millennials believe that the Declaration of Independence offers a better guarantee of "freedom and equality" than The Communist Manifesto .
Some émigrés who grew up in Soviet-dominated societies are sounding the alarm about the West's dangerous drift into conditions like they once escaped. They feel it in their bones. Reading Arendt in the shadow of the extraordinary rise of identity-politics leftism and the broader crisis of liberal democracy is to confront a deeply unsettling truth: that these refugees from communism may be right.
What does contemporary America have in common with pre-Nazi Germany and pre-Soviet Russia? Arendt's analysis found a number of social, political, and cultural conditions that tilled the ground for those nations to welcome poisonous ideas.
Loneliness and Social Atomization
Totalitarian movements, said Arendt, are "mass organizations of atomized, isolated individuals." She continues:
What prepares men for totalitarian domination in the non-totalitarian world, is the fact that loneliness, once a borderline experience usually suffered in certain marginal social conditions like old age, has become an everyday experience of the ever-growing masses of our century.
The political theorist wrote those words in the 1950s, a period we look back on as a golden age of community cohesion. Today, loneliness is widely recognized by scientists as a critical social and even medical problem. In the year 2000, Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam published Bowling Alone , an acclaimed study documenting the steep decline of civil society since midcentury and the resulting atomization of America.
Since Putnam's book, we have experienced the rise of social media networks offering a facsimile of "connection." Yet we grow ever lonelier and more isolated. It is no coincidence that Millennials and members of Generation Z register much higher rates of loneliness than older Americans, as well as significantly greater support for socialism. It's as if they aspire to a politics that can replace the community they wish they had.
Sooner or later, loneliness and isolation are bound to have political effects. The masses supporting totalitarian movements, says Arendt, grew "out of the fragments of a highly atomized society whose competitive structure and concomitant loneliness of the individual had been held in check only through membership in a class."
A polity filled with alienated individuals who share little sense of community and purpose, and who lack civic trust, are prime targets for totalitarian ideologies and leaders who promise solidarity and meaning.
Losing Faith in Hierarchies and Institutions
Surveying the political scene in Germany during the 1920s, Arendt noted a "terrifying negative solidarity" among people from diverse classes, united in their belief that all political parties were populated by fools. Likewise, in late imperial Russia, Marxist radicals finally gained traction with the middle class when the Tsarist government failed miserably to deal with a catastrophic 1891-92 famine.
Are we today really so different? According to Gallup, Americans' confidence in their institutions -- political, media, religious, legal, medical, corporate -- is at historic lows across the board. Only the military, the police, and small businesses retain the strong confidence of over 50 percent. Democratic norms are under strain in many industrialized nations, with the support for mainstream parties of left and right in decline.
In Europe of the 1920s, says Arendt, the first indication of the coming totalitarianism was the failure of established parties to attract younger members, and the willingness of the passive masses to consider radical alternatives to discredited establishment parties.
A loss of faith in democratic politics is a sign of a deeper and broader instability. As radical individualism has become more pervasive in our consumerist-driven culture, people have ceased to look outside themselves to religion or other traditional sources of authoritative meaning.
But this imposes a terrible psychological burden on the individual. Many of them may seek deliverance as the alienated masses of pre-totalitarian Germany and Russia did: in the certainties and solidarity offered by totalitarian movements.
The Desire to Transgress and Destroy
The post-World War I generation of writers and artists were marked by their embrace and celebration of anti-cultural philosophies and acts as a way of demonstrating contempt for established hierarchies, institutions, and ways of thinking. Arendt said of some writers who glorified the will to power, "They read not Darwin but the Marquis de Sade."
Her point was that these authors did not avail themselves of respectable intellectual theories to justify their transgressiveness. They immersed themselves in what is basest in human nature and regarded doing so as acts of liberation. Arendt's judgment of the postwar elites who recklessly thumbed their noses at respectability could easily apply to those of our own day who shove aside liberal principles like fair play, race neutrality, free speech, and free association as obstacles to equality. Arendt wrote:
The members of the elite did not object at all to paying a price, the destruction of civilization, for the fun of seeing how those who had been excluded unjustly in the past forced their way into it.
One thinks of the university presidents and news media executives of our time who have abandoned professional standards and old-fashioned liberal values to embrace "antiracism" and other trendy left-wing causes. Some left-wing politicians and other progressive elites either cheered for the George Floyd race riots, or, like New York mayor Bill De Blasio, stood idly by as thuggish mobs looted and burned stores in the name of social justice.
Regarding transgressive sexuality as a social good was not an innovation of the sexual revolution. Like the contemporary West, late imperial Russia was also awash in what historian James Billington called "a preoccupation with sex that is quite without parallel in earlier Russian culture." Among the social and intellectual elite, sexual adventurism, celebrations of perversion, and all manner of sensuality was common. And not just among the elites: the laboring masses, alone in the city, with no church to bind their consciences with guilt, or village gossips to shame them, found comfort in sex.
The end of official censorship after the 1905 uprising opened the floodgates to erotic literature, a prefiguration of our century's technology-driven pornographic revolution. "The sensualism of the age was in a very intimate sense demonic," Billington writes, detailing how the figure of Satan became a Romantic hero for artists and musicians. They admired the diabolic willingness to stop at nothing to satisfy one's desires and to exercise one's will.
Propaganda and the Willingness to Believe Useful Lies
Heda Margolius Kovály, a disillusioned Czech communist whose husband was executed after a 1952 show trial, reflects on the willingness of people to turn their backs on the truth for the sake of an ideological cause: It is not hard for a totalitarian regime to keep people ignorant. Once you relinquish your freedom for the sake of "understood necessity," for Party discipline, for conformity with the regime, for the greatness and glory of the Fatherland, or for any of the substitutes that are so convincingly offered, you cede your claim to the truth. Slowly, drop by drop, your life begins to ooze away just as surely as if you had slashed your wrists; you have voluntarily condemned yourself to helplessness.
You can surrender your moral responsibility to be honest out of misplaced idealism. You can also surrender it by hating others more than you love truth. In pre-totalitarian states, Arendt writes, hating "respectable society" was so narcotic, that elites were willing to accept "monstrous forgeries in historiography" for the sake of striking back at those who, in their view, had "excluded the underprivileged and oppressed from the memory of mankind."
For example, many who didn't really accept Marx's revisionist take on history -- that it is a manifestation of class struggle -- were willing to affirm it because it was a useful tool to punish those they despised. Consider the lavish praise with which elites have welcomed The New York Times 's "1619 Project," a vigorously revisionist attempt to make slavery the central fact of the American founding.
Despite the project's core claim (that the patriots fought the American Revolution to preserve slavery) having been thoroughly debunked, journalism's elite saw fit to award the project's director a Pulitzer Prize for her contribution.
Along those lines, propaganda helps change the world by creating a false impression of the way the world is. Writes Arendt, "The force possessed by totalitarian propaganda lies in its ability to shut the masses off from the real world."
In 2019, Zach Goldberg, a political science PhD student at Georgia Tech, found that over a nine-year period, the rate of news stories using progressive jargon associated with left-wing critical theory and social justice concepts shot into the stratosphere. The mainstream media is framing the general public's understanding of news and events according to what was until very recently a radical ideology confined to left-wing intellectual elites.
A Mania for Ideology
Why are people so willing to believe demonstrable lies? The desperation alienated people have for a story that helps them make sense of their lives and tells them what to do explains it. For a man desperate to believe, totalitarian ideology is more precious than life itself. "He may even be willing to help in his own prosecution and frame his own death sentence if only his status as a member of the movement is not touched," Arendt wrote. Indeed, the files of the 1930s Stalinist show trials are full of false confessions by devout communists who were prepared to die rather than admit that communism was a lie.
Similarly, under the guise of antiracism training, U.S. corporations, institutions, and even churches are frog-marching their employees through courses in which whites and other ideologically disfavored people are compelled to confess their "privilege." Some do, eagerly.
One of contemporary progressivism's commonly used phrases -- the personal is political -- captures the totalitarian spirit, which seeks to infuse all aspects of life with political consciousness. Indeed, the Left today pushes its ideology ever deeper into the private realm, leaving fewer and fewer areas of daily life uncontested. This, warned Arendt, is a sign that a society is ripening for totalitarianism, because that is what totalitarianism essentially is: the politicization of everything.
Early in the Stalin era, N. V. Krylenko, a Soviet commissar (political officer), steamrolled over chess players who wanted to keep politics out of the game.
"We must finish once and for all with the neutrality of chess," he said. "We must condemn once and for all the formula 'chess for the sake of chess,' like the formula 'art for art's sake.' We must organize shockbrigades of chess-players, and begin immediate realization of a Five-Year Plan for chess."
A Society That Values Loyalty More Than Expertise
"Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intellect and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty," wrote Arendt.
All politicians prize loyalty, but few would regard it as the most important quality in government, and even fewer would admit it. But President Donald Trump is a rule-breaker in many ways. He once said, "I value loyalty above everything else -- more than brains, more than drive, and more than energy."
Trump's exaltation of personal loyalty over expertise is discreditable and corrupting. But how can liberals complain? Loyalty to the group or the tribe is at the core of leftist identity politics. This is at the root of "cancel culture," in which transgressors, however minor their infractions, find themselves cast into outer darkness.
Beyond cancel culture, which is reactive, institutions are embedding within their systems ideological tests to weed out dissenters. At universities within the University of California system, for example, teachers who want to apply for tenure-track positions have to affirm their commitment to "equity, diversity, and inclusion" -- and to have demonstrated it, even if it has nothing to do with their field.
De facto loyalty tests to diversity ideology are common in corporate America, and have now found their way into STEM faculties and publications, as well as into medical science.
A Soviet-born U.S. physician told me -- after I agreed not to use his name -- that social justice ideology is forcing physicians like him to ignore their medical training and judgment when it comes to transgender health. He said it is not permissible within his institution to advise gender dysphoric patients against treatments they desire, even when a physician believes it is not in that particular patient's health interest.
Intellectuals Are the Revolutionary Class
In our populist era, politicians and talk-radio polemicists can rile up a crowd by denouncing elites. Nevertheless, in most societies, intellectual and cultural elites determine its long-term direction.
"[T]he key actor in history is not individual genius but rather the network and the new institutions that are created out of those networks," writes sociologist James Davison Hunter. Though a revolutionary idea might emerge from the masses, says Hunter, "it does not gain traction until it is embraced and propagated by elites" working through their "well-developed networks and powerful institutions."
This is why it is critically important to keep an eye on intellectual discourse. Arendt warns that the twentieth-century totalitarian experience shows how a determined and skillful minority can come to rule over an indifferent and disengaged majority. In our time, most people regard the politically correct insanity of campus radicals as not worthy of attention. They mock them as "snowflakes" and "social justice warriors."
This is a ser
