In April something was bugging me… a familiarity amid the COVID lock-down status & another time… I couldn’t quite put my finger on it until a dear friend reminded me.
Many U.S. states are acting like the early 1980’s and the imposition of Martial law in Poland to target the Solidarity movement. Subsequently I wrote about it on a Twitter thread, because the parallels were really quite remarkable.
Both Poland circa 1980 and the U.S. friction in 2020, center around fragile economic issues. Both were an outcome of state control; and the key connection is government targeting control over the workers.
In both examples the state took exclusive control of the economic and social state of the citizens, and the courts provided no option for redress. In both examples the state locked down the citizens and would not permit them to interact with each other.
In 1981 the government in Poland initiated Martial Law and citizens were forced to communicate underground. In 2020 a considerable number of U.S. state governments locked-down citizens in similar fashion and banned citizen assembly.
In 1981 in Poland the communist regime used economic psychological pressure, selecting workers permitted to earn wages. Those workers identified as “essential” to the state. In 2020 many State governors selected workers to earn an income by designating them “essential” to the state.
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In 1981 in Poland; communication amid the Solidarity Movement was forced underground. In 2020 many oppressive State governors demanded social media remove public content adverse to the interests of the Stay-at-Home confinement orders. Big Tech complied with the authoritarian dictate.
In 1981 Polish authorities arrested anyone organizing protests against the authoritarian state. In 2020 numerous authoritarian officials arrested citizens for non-compliance with unilateral dictates. From a New Jersey governor arresting a woman for organizing a protect; to an Idaho mother arrested for allowing her children to play at a park; to a Texas salon owner arrested for operating her business.
In 1981 Polish authorities had a program for citizens to report subversive activity against the state. Snitching. In 2020 New York City, LA and numerous state and local officials started programs for citizens to report non-compliant activity against the state. Similar snitching.
In both 1981 Poland and 2020 USA we also see media exclusively creating ideological content as propaganda for the interests of the authoritarian state (controlling citizens).
Interestingly, as we begin to see the American people saying “enough”, and openly defying the authoritarian state. There’s another parallel that is comparable, enlightening and quite remarkable.
Just before the authoritarian state in Poland collapsed there was a rapid movement for the citizens to take to the streets in defiance of state control. I remember watching with great enthusiasm as I saw a very determined pole shout on television:
…”we take to the streets and today we realize,
there are more of us than them”…
Fast forward more than thirty years later and those glorious voices are prescient. The power of the government comes from the people; or as we say in the U.S. “from the consent of the governed.” Thus the underlying principle behind our defiance.
If the people will lead, the politicians are forced to follow:
If one person refuses to comply, government can and as we have witnessed arrest them. However, if tens of thousands rebuke these unconstitutional decrees, there isn’t a damn thing government can do to stop it…. and they know it.
If one barber shop opens, the owner becomes a target. However, if every barber shop and beauty salon in town opens… there is absolutely nothing the government can do about it.
If one restaurant and/or bar opens, the state can target the owner. But if every bar and restaurant in town opens; and if everyone ignores and dispatches the silly dictates of the local, regional or state officials… there isn’t a damned thing they can do about it.
The power of the local, regional or state authority comes from the expressed consent of the people. As soon as the majority of people deny that consent, those officials and state authoritarians lose all of their power. Yes, it really is that simple.
Go live your best life.
You’re worth it.
.
.
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P.S. - Another similarity – ultimately the key control issue, the heart of the battle in Poland, came down to an election finally held in 1989. Likewise the key control issue, the heart of battle in the United States will come down to an election in November 2020.
Psychotherapist: Lockdown Zealots Are Behaving Like Cult Members
Published on 18 May, 2020Paul Joseph Watson
Psychotherapist Dr Hugh Willbourn says lockdown zealots are displaying all the classic signs of cult members by doubling down on their beliefs despite having been proven wrong.
In an article on his website, Willbourn highlights the work of respected social psychologist Leon Festinger, who analyzed the beliefs of a UFO cult in the 1950’s who believed that a flying saucer would rescue them from the apocalypse.
However, after the catastrophic earthquakes and floods they expected to hit the United States never arrived and their beliefs were totally disproved, “the cult members would become not less but more convinced of their beliefs.”
Festinger identified five conditions that needed to be met in order for the cult members to double down on their beliefs and avoid cognitive dissonance.
1. There must be conviction
2. There must be commitment to this conviction
3. The conviction must be amenable to unequivocal disconfirmation
4. Such unequivocal disconfirmation must occur
5. Social support must be available subsequent to the disconfirmation.
“Festinger’s five conditions and the behaviour of the cult believers correspond closely to the situation with Brexit, Climate Change and Covid-19: a prophecy is made, believers invest themselves, their time, money and prestige in it, the prophecy fails and the believers become more fervent,” writes Willbourn.
The doctor notes how terrifying predictions of how many people COVID-19 would kill have fallen massively short and the models that produced these numbers have been thoroughly debunked. Despite warnings that coronavirus would kill 500,000 in the UK alone, the disease has only claimed 318,000 worldwide.
“To put this figure into perspective, the number of people who have died of, or with, Covid-19 in about four and half months is the same as the number who die in five days from cardiovascular disease,” writes Willbourn.
The doctor notes how “experts” are still doubling down anyway, warning of mass death if lockdown is lifted too early and a second wave of infections.
In reality, research suggests that the lockdowns had a minimal impact on infection numbers, and Sweden’s per capita death toll is lower than the UK’s and numerous other countries despite the Scandinavian country having imposed no hard lockdown.
“Don’t expect an apology from our Government, or any other Government, any time soon,” writes Willbourn. “The Festinger effect is far, far more prevalent than a clear-sighted view of reality and the tragedy is all the greater.”
“Is this starting to sound familiar?” asks Toby Young. “As Willbourn points out, the sequence that Festinger wrote about more than 50 years ago is eerily reminiscent of what’s happening today: an apocalyptic prophecy was delivered from on high (“the science”), those who believed it radically altered their behaviour, the prophecy turned out not to be true, but instead of abandoning their doom-mongering the believers have become even more fervent, attacking anyone who points out the gap between fantasy and reality as dangerous heretics (“fake news”, “misinformation”, “conspiracy theories”, etc).”
“The difference, of course, is that Festinger’s UFO cult had a few dozen members, whereas the Covid cult seems to have infected half the world. If Festinger’s right, the bad news is we won’t be able to persuade people to stop social distancing if we prove that the danger posed by COVID-19 has been dramatically overstated. On the contrary, people’s opposition to returning to normal will intensify rather than diminish as the evidence mounts they were wrong.”
Meanwhile, Karens all over the world don’t show any signs of giving up on something that legitimizes their favorite thing in the world; Lecturing other people about their behavior.
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President Trump revealed to reporters on Monday he’s taking hydroxychloroquine in an effort to prevent getting coronavirus, saying he’s been taking a pill every day for about a week and a half.
Attorney General Bill Barr made some comments on the Russian
investigation during a press conference about the Russia probe
investigation.
A lot of what he has to say shows why he’s the
right person for the job. He’s a constitutionalist committed to the rule
of law. After eight years of Barack Obama and an impaired AG with Jeff
Sessions, it’s great to finally have someone committed to that.
Now he said some things today that were both good and disappointing, so it’s important to parse them.
Jeff Carlson of The Epoch Times broke them down in a tweet transcript.
First
he chastised the prior use of the justice system and the DOJ to go
after political opponents. Read that the Obama Administration. Barr said
under him that wasn’t going to happen (responding to accusations by the
left).
The law enforcement and intelligence apparatus of this country were involved in advancing a false and utterly baseless Russian collusion narrative against the president."
“What happened to the president in 2016 election and throughout the
first two years of his administration was abhorrent,” Barr said.
“It was
a grave injustice and it was unprecedented. The law enforcement and
intelligence apparatus of this country were involved in advancing a
false and utterly baseless Russia collusion narrative against the
President.”
He went on to say he and the DOJ were not going to
engage in a “tit for tat” exercise and do what the Obama administration
because that’s not what it’s supposed to be about.
#BREAKING: AG Barr: "As to President Obama and Vice President Obama, whatever their level of involvement, based on the information I have today, I don't expect Mr. Durham's work will lead to a criminal investigation of either man." pic.twitter.com/JFT0aPCMmG
So what does that mean? It’s great that there’s someone in charge who
finally gets how unprecedented this all was and isn’t afraid to lay it
out there and call it unprecedented in history.
But many are
disappointed with him saying that he doesn’t expect there to be a
criminal investigation of Barack Obama and Joe Biden as part of Durham’s
investigation.
Several things to note. I don’t think too many
were thinking that there would ever be an investigation of Obama and/or
Biden, as much as one might have hope for it for this. But saying
“doesn’t expect” means exactly that. At this point. He doesn’t want to
be political like the Obama officials and that commits him to nothing.
At the same time, it also lets them believe that they aren’t going to be
looked into and I think that’s an incorrect conclusion. I think he’s
looking at everything right now, weighing the question.
The most
important takeaway is that they do see crimes and they do see folks that
they are focusing on. And I want to go back to this phrase because I
think it’s illustrative of where they may be at: “The law enforcement
and intelligence apparatus of this country were involved in advancing a
false and utterly baseless Russia collusion narrative against the
President.” I don’t know about anyone else but reading that as well as
noting the other recent reports and this screams John Brennan.
For
anyone to take seriously that they mean it and want to stop this from
happening again, it can’t just be a nothing charge against a lowly
functionary after saying everything Barr has said about what occurred.
The word is Durham will be done by the end of the summer, so hopefully will have a better sense then.
The crux of Dr. Specht’s 35-tweet thread was that the rapid doubling of COVID-19 cases would lead to about 1 million cases by May 5, 4 million by May 11, and so forth. Under this scenario, with a 10% hospitalization rate, we would expect approximately 400,000 hospitalizations by mid-May, which would more than overwhelm the estimated 330,000 available hospital beds in the country. This would combine with a lack of protective equipment for health care workers and lead to them “dropping from the workforce for weeks at a time,” to shortages of saline drips and so forth. Half the world would be infected by the summer, and we were implicitly advised to buy dry goods and to prepare not to leave the house.
Interestingly, this thread was wrong not because we managed to bend the curve and stave off the apocalypse; for starters, Dr. Specht described the cancellation of large events and workplace closures as something that would shift things by only days or weeks.
Instead, this thread was wrong because it dramatically overstated our knowledge of the way the virus worked; it fell prey to the problem, common among experts, of failing to address adequately the uncertainty surrounding its point estimates. It did so in two opposing ways. First, it dramatically understated the rate of spread. If serological tests are to be remotely believed, we likely hit the apocalyptic milestone of 2 million cases quite some time ago. Not in the United States, mind you, but in New York City, where 20% of residents showed positive COVID-19 antibodies on April 23. Fourteen percent of state residents showed antibodies, suggesting 2.5 million cases in the Empire State alone; since antibodies take a while to develop, this was likely the state of affairs in mid-April or earlier.
But in addition to being wrong about the rate of spread, the thread was also very wrong about the rate of hospitalization. While New York City found its hospital system stretched, it avoided catastrophic failure, despite having within its borders the entire number of cases predicted for the country as a whole, a month earlier than predicted. Other areas of the United States found themselves with empty hospital beds and unused emergency capacity.
One would think that, given the amount of attention this was given in mainstream sources, there would be some sort of revisiting of the prediction. Of course, nothing of the sort occurred. This thread has been absolutely memory-holed, along with countless other threads and Medium articles from February and March. We might forgive such forays on sites like Twitter and Medium, but feeding frenzies from mainstream sources are also passed over without the media ever revisiting to see how things turned out.
Consider Florida. Gov. Ron DeSantis was castigated for failing to close the beaches during spring break, and critics suggested that the state might be the next New York. I’ve written about this at length elsewhere, but Florida’s new cases peaked in early April, at which point it was a middling state in terms of infections per capita. The virus hasn’t gone away, of course, but the five-day rolling average of daily cases in Florida is roughly where it was in late March, notwithstanding the fact that testing has increased substantially. Taking increased testing into account, the positive test rate has gradually declined since late March as well, falling from a peak of 11.8% on April 1 to a low of 3.6% on May 12.
Notwithstanding this, the Washington Post continues to press stories of public health officials begging state officials to close beaches (a more interesting angle at this point might be why these health officials were so wrong), while the New York Times noted a few days ago (misleadingly, and grossly so) that “Florida had a huge spike in cases around Miami after spring break revelry,” without providing the crucial context that the caseload mimicked increases in other states that did not play host to spring break. Again, perhaps the real story is that spring breakers passed COVID-19 among themselves and seeded it when they got home. I am sure some of this occurred, but it seems exceedingly unlikely that they would have spread it widely among themselves and not also spread it widely to bartenders, wait staff, hotel staff, and the like in Florida.
Florida was also one of the first states to experiment with reopening. Duval County (Jacksonville) reopened its beaches on April 19 to much national skepticism. Yet daily cases are lower today than they were they day that it reopened; there was a recent spike in cases associated with increased testing, but it is now receding.
Or consider Georgia, which one prominent national magazine claimed was engaging in “human sacrifice” by reopening. Yet, after nearly a month, a five-day average of Georgia’s daily cases looks like this:
What about Wisconsin, which was heavily criticized for holding in-person voting? It has had an increased caseload, but that is largely due to increased testing (up almost six-fold since early April) and an idiosyncratic outbreak in its meatpacking plants. The latter is tragic, but it is not related to the election; in fact, a Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel investigation failed to link any cases to the election; this has largely been ignored outside of conservative media sites such as National Review.
We could go on – after being panned for refusing to issue a stay-at-home order, South Dakota indeed suffered an outbreak (once again, in its meatpacking plants), but deaths there have consistently averaged less than three per day, to little fanfare – but the point is made. Some “feeding frenzies” have panned out, but many have failed to do so; rather than acknowledging this failure, the press typically moves on.
This is an unwelcome development, for a few reasons. First, not everyone follows this pandemic closely, and so a failure to follow up on how feeding frenzies end up means that many people likely don’t update their views as often as they should. You’d probably be forgiven if you suspected hundreds of cases and deaths followed the Wisconsin election.
Second, we obviously need to get policy right here, and to be sure, reporting bad news is important for producing informed public opinion. But reporting good news is equally as important. Third, there are dangers to forecasting with incredible certitude, especially with a virus that was detected less than six months ago. There really is a lot we still don’t know, and people should be reminded of this. Finally, among people who do remember things like this, a failure to acknowledge errors foments cynicism and further distrust of experts. The damage done to this trust is dangerous, for at this time we desperately need quality expert opinions and news reporting that we can rely upon.
American exceptionalism is confronting its greatest test in modern times. In less than two months, unemployment has hit Great Depression-era levels. The federal government has injected trillions of dollars into the economy, causing US debt as a percentage of GDP to exceed debt undertaken during World War II. The future of entire industries hangs in the balance, schools and universities are shut down, and everything from weddings to baseball seasons are postponed.
A threat that only entered our consciousness late last year has claimed tens of thousands of lives, leaving fear and uncertainty in its wake.
But it’s precisely because America is exceptional that many of COVID-19’s most pressing challenges are being met. It is American exceptionalism that will lead us out of crisis and onto the road to recovery. Now more than ever, we must preserve, protect and strengthen it.
America has always stood apart. Alexis de Tocqueville, observing our fledgling democracy in the early 19th century, wrote, “The situation of the Americans is therefore quite exceptional, and it may be believed that no democratic people will ever be placed in a similar one.” President Lincoln believed that a nation “conceived in liberty” was worth the heavy toll of civil war.
Still, the concept of exceptionalism continues to be debated among scholars and politicians.
At The Bradley Foundation, we believe American exceptionalism is a set of ideals upon which our country was founded. It’s our political framework, which upholds individual liberty, limited government and the rule of law. It’s our economic system, which values the dignity of work, encourages innovation and embraces the pursuit of opportunity. And it’s our commitment to civil society—voluntary groups, schools, neighborhoods and churches—that leads to flourishing communities across the country.
The principles and institutions that characterize American exceptionalism have made us the freest and most prosperous country on Earth. They have also been resilient during this crisis.
At no other time have the tenets of federalism been so fully on display. From the coronavirus pandemic’s onset, governors galvanized in ways they believed were best for their states. While critics say this created a patchwork of policies, that’s precisely what the Founding Fathers intended. Policies that work in California may not work in South Dakota. In cases where a state’s authority has been challenged, courts are weighing in, thanks to our system of checks and balances.
The economy has been devastated, but private enterprise is adapting through innovation. Restaurants are offering curbside service; distilleries have turned into sanitizer factories; clothing companies are churning out face masks; automakers are producing ventilators; online learning tools have proliferated to help educate the legion of homeschoolers. The ingenuity and initiative of the private sector, even when hamstrung, are rising up to meet the needs of the crisis.
Despite social distancing, civil society has filled voids in ways that government simply cannot. Voluntary groups have organized food collections; churches have provided drive-up services; neighbors have deployed as errand runners for the elderly; arts groups have found virtual ways for people to enjoy music, dance and theater.
These efforts epitomize American exceptionalism and will serve as the catalyst for the nation’s recovery.
Our constitutional framework provides the latitude to balance human safety with civil liberties. The debate on both sides will continue to be messy. Yet, the ability to voice different perspectives is itself a freedom and puts pressure on elected officials at all levels to make sound decisions. Months from now, we’ll have the opportunity to evaluate their performance through our votes. In the meantime, states will continue to adapt, implement and modify recovery blueprints.
Because of our free-market system, biotech companies are in a race to create a COVID-19 vaccine, in the same way that private efforts supported the development of the polio vaccine, kidney transplants, advances in the fight against cancer and numerous other medical breakthroughs. The tech sector, too, will play a critical role as we increasingly look at new ways to work, educate and connect.
Our public officials should trust and empower civil society to find solutions to the unique problems within communities. Those efforts have already been bolstered by the incredible generosity of American philanthropy. According to The Economist, American foundations, corporations and individuals have donated at least $5.3 billion to more than 1,200 organizations around the world in response to the crisis.
Yes, the response has been far from perfect and there will be plenty of time to assess the mistakes. But if we lose sight of what makes America exceptional and what it means to be a citizen of this great country, we will have lost our way. Going forward, let our renewed appreciation of freedom be an opportunity to strengthen the ideals upon which America was founded.
The American electorate are wide-eyed and well aware of how President Obama and Vice-President Biden were co-enablers to Chinese duplicity on a wide range of aspects including theft of U.S. intellectual property, economic espionage and exfiltration of U.S. wealth.
Against that backdrop; and understanding the political risk inherent within the policy of the former administration; ABC News’ George Stephopoulos enters with his rehearsed narrative to cloud the truth. However, White House China-hawk and policy advisor Peter Navarro easily and righteously smacks down the Biden/Obama political defenses fabricated by a combative Stephanopoulos with the atomic sledgehammer of truth.
When Stephanopoulos tries to use the Rick Bright whistle-blower narrative; Navarro squished Stephanopoulos into a puddle of political mush…
Representative Doug Collins of Georgia appears for an interview with Maria Bartiromo to discuss holding China accountable and the ongoing revelations surrounding the Obama administration targeting of Michael Flynn and President Trump.
In North Carolina, Gov. Roy Cooper has adopted the policy premise that anything done in the name of safety from the coronavirus trumps all other interests, including economic, religious, or other health considerations. Despite comparatively low numbers in the Tar Heel state, the ninth most populous state in the United States, and with no evidence of the healthcare system being overwhelmed, North Carolina has been in full lockdown for over a month.
It matters not if you live in the mountains or on the coast—rural or urban—all residents are required to shelter in place. Despite the crippling effect COVID-19 has had on the $25 billion tourism industry, the devastation to the small business community, and over a million job losses, “thou shalt not work” unless the good governor has deemed you “essential.”
In Mississippi, Gov. Tate Reeves has operated under an alternative premise: that medical safety is a major consideration, but so is allowing people to protest, or to fish, or to earn a living. The governor in the Magnolia State has taken a lot of heat for being slow to slam the economy shut and quick to discuss reopening it. He has also caught a lot of flak for allowing counties and cities to determine what works best in their own communities and for refusing to tell Mississippi churches how to conduct their affairs. Like North Carolina, Mississippi has relatively low numbers of COVID-19 deaths and no apparent strain on the healthcare system, despite having a very high rate of citizens with obesity, heart disease, and diabetes.
Small businesses are on life support across both states. Jobless claims have risen to historic levels in the state of the Dogwood and in the state of the Magnolia—now higher than during the financial crisis. Medical advisers in both states are giving warnings and covering all their bases at daily briefings as they stand beside their respective governors. There is no question that both governors have taken this disease seriously and offered intelligent advice about how we should protect ourselves. So, how do you explain the vastly different approach to the pandemic from two red states with similarly low coronavirus impact?
The difference is in the tone, in the language, and in the viewpoint of how best to mitigate risks and protect citizens. Cooper’s instincts are to restrict the personal freedoms of his citizens; Reeves’ instincts are to protect the personal freedoms of his. Cooper believes shutting down businesses won’t lead to shortages of food and paper products and that denying the constitutional rights of his residents won’t lead to a citizen uprising. (Note citizens are staging weekly protests at the state capital and the governor’s mansion in Raleigh.) By contrast, Reeves has moved to open retail shops, acknowledged the rights of protestors to peacefully assemble at the Capitol, and refused to accept the premise that we must choose between prudent healthcare measures and protecting our economy.
In the state of Michael Jordan, hospitals are losing revenue and laying off personnel because the governor won’t allow the treatment of non-coronavirus patients. In the state of Archie Manning, elective procedures have begun again because the governor recognizes cancer surgeries are pretty “essential” to the patient.
History will judge how these two governors, and the other 48, managed this pandemic. But as data comes in, it’s looking like the quarantines will not prevent us from getting sick. It appears we’re basically delaying the inevitable infection rate. As these long days go by, the models continue to indicate initial predictions were vastly overstated. However, the data on the destruction of our economies and on the hopes and dreams of our citizens may be far worse than ever imagined.
The American economy is the greatest in the world because of all of the interconnected and voluntary exchanges that take place every day, in every community. It remains to be seen if this economic miracle of free enterprise can survive the kind of body blows delivered by the heavy hand of government—especially by the kind of authoritarian governors who seem hellbent on taking a sledgehammer to our economies when a scalpel would have been more useful.
A visibly angered President Trump told Maria Bartiromo he “doesn’t want to talk to China right now” and expresses a more open opinion that we should just decouple from all economic attachment to China. This is a seismic shift in tone toward Beijing.
All administration policy and economic influence is now targeted to remove Chinese manufacturing from the U.S. supply chain. President Trump and white house officials openly discussing a U.S. effort to decouple from China is a significant shift.
President Trump has been creating a dual position for several years; this is very unique because it is the same strategy used by China. By expressing a panda face, yet concealing the underlying dragon, President Trump’s policy to China is a mirror of themselves.
Historic Chinese geopolitical policy, vis-a-vis their totalitarian control over political sentiment (action) and diplomacy through silence, is evident in the strategic use of the space between carefully chosen words, not just the words themselves.
Each time China takes aggressive action (red dragon) China projects a panda face through silence and non-response to opinion of that action;…. and the action continues. The red dragon has a tendency to say one necessary thing publicly, while manipulating another necessary thing privately. The Art of War.
President Trump is the first U.S. President to understand how the red dragon hides behind the panda mask.
First he got their attention with tariffs. Then… On one hand President Trump has engaged in very public and friendly trade negotiations with China (panda approach); yet on the other hand, long before the Wuhan virus, Trump fractured their global supply chains, influenced the movement of industrial goods to alternate nations, and incentivized an exodus of manufacturing (dragon result).
It is specifically because he understands that Panda is a mask that President Trump messages warmth toward the Chinese people, and pours vociferous praise upon Xi Jinping, while simultaneously confronting the geopolitical doctrine of the Xi regime.
In essence Trump has mirrored the behavior of China while confronting their economic duplicity.
There is no doubt in my mind that President Trump has a very well thought out long-term strategy regarding China. In the background of his action there has always been a duality in position; in my opinion Trump was always preparing to fully disconnect from China.
As part of the careful withdrawal President Trump used strategic messaging toward the people of china very importantly. Trump has, very publicly, complimented the friendship he feels toward President Xi Jinping; and praised Chairman Xi for his character, strength and purposeful leadership.
To build upon that projected and strategic message – President Trump seeded the background by appointing Ambassador Terry Branstad, a 30-year personal friend of President Xi Jinping.
To enhance and amplify the message – and broadcast cultural respect – President Trump used Mar-a-Lago as the venue for their first visit, not the White House. And President Trump’s beautiful granddaughter, Arabella, sweetly serenaded the Chinese First Family twice in Mandarin Chinese song showing the utmost respect for the guests and later for the hosts.
All of this activity mirrors the duplicity of China. However, from the November 2017 tour of Asia to the January 2020 China phase-1 trade deal, President Trump has been positioning, for an economic decoupling and a complete realignment of global trade and manufacturing.
After years of careful positioning while unwinding the economic dependency; and while warning U.S. multinationals to prepare themselves financially for a significant shift in position toward China; President Trump has now fully triggered the decoupling phase.
COVID-19 is the perfect global justification needed for the financial markets to remain stable and understand what comes next…
BLOOMBERG – Five months and a global pandemic later, Lighthizer isn’t using words like integrated anymore about China. In an opinion piece in the New York Times late Monday, he casts new doubt about whether such economic symbiosis is actually the end the Trump administration is now seeking.
In the article, China isn’’t his only villain. The USTR likened the American capitalists who sought cheaper ways of production in places like China, Vietnam and Indonesia to a mass migration of rodents. Over the past few decades, those who weren’t egged on by Wall Street analysts and management consultants were “simply swept up by the herd mentality of their peers” — all to benefit shareholders rather than workers, he said.
“The era of reflexive offshoring is over, and with it the old overzealous emphasis on efficiency and the concomitant lack of concern for the jobs that were lost,” Lighthizer wrote. “After we have defeated this disease and reopened our economy, we cannot forget the hard lessons learned from this misguided experiment.”
What Lighthizer says matters, of course, because he’s the top trade policy voice in a Trump administration where some officials want to leverage the outbreak to go harder on China.
But perhaps even more important is the timing of Lighthizer’s pronouncement. His boss is unhappy with China for the damage the coronavirus is causing to the U.S. economy. (read more)
Anonymous Hacker Is Fighting ISIS By Flooding Their Social Media Accounts With Gay Porn
15/05/2017 @ Esquire
As perhaps one of the less tolerant groups out there, ISIS and its supporters aren't particularly keen on being labelled anything other than god-fearing heterosexuals.
Which is exactly why one hacker has decided to continuously highjack their social media accounts with pro-gay messages and imagery.
WauchulaGhost, a hacker who is associated with Anonymous, first targeted ISIS in the wake of the Orlando nightclub attack, which saw Omar Mateen murder 49 people - an atrocity that ISIS tried to claim credit for.
In an interview with CNN, he said: "We started to take over their accounts with porn and gay pride images basically just to troll them. We thought that putting the naked images would offend them."
He also revealed some of the backlash from the group and its supporters, saying: "I get beheading images… death threats. 'We're going to kill you' and that's good because if they are focusing on me they are not doing anything else.
As perhaps one of the less tolerant groups out there, ISIS and its supporters aren't particularly keen on being labelled anything other than god-fearing heterosexuals.
Which is exactly why one hacker has decided to continuously highjack their social media accounts with pro-gay messages and imagery.
WauchulaGhost, a hacker who is associated with Anonymous, first targeted ISIS in the wake of the Orlando nightclub attack, which saw Omar Mateen murder 49 people - an atrocity that ISIS tried to claim credit for.
In an interview with CNN, he said: "We started to take over their accounts with porn and gay pride images basically just to troll them. We thought that putting the naked images would offend them."
He also revealed some of the backlash from the group and its supporters, saying: "I get beheading images… death threats. 'We're going to kill you' and that's good because if they are focusing on me they are not doing anything else.
This content is imported from Third party. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.
"If the social media people like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram would stand up and do something it would help.
"Sometimes you have to stand up and make a change for the good."
Going on, he says that ISIS supporters generally don't have very strong security measures, and that it takes around 60 seconds for him to hack each account.
"Daesh [ISIS] have been spreading and praising the attack, so I thought I would defend those that were lost. The taking of innocent lives will not be tolerated," he said of the Orlando shooting.
"One thing I do want to say is we aren't using graphic porn and our purpose is not to offend Muslims.
"Our actions are directed at Jihadist extremists. Many of our own [group of hackers] are Muslim and we respect all religions that do not take innocent lives."
More than a week after CBS first constructed their editorial narrative they finally released the full interview between Catherine Herridge and AG Bill Barr. Many people read the transcript; however, thankfully Michael Sheridanexcerpts a portion of the video that doesn’t come across in the transcript.
When the attorney general is questioned about “still having confidence” in FBI Director Christopher Wray, a newly articulated hesitancy is visible that doesn’t come across in the transcript. WATCH:
Since February 2019 Bill Barr has been a staunch and very public defender of Chris Wray. However, with new revelations about recent FBI efforts to block the release of information as it relates to Michael Flynn, it now appears the AG has less confidence.
This shift is important because as the public have a renewed focused on the question of who illegally leaked Flynn’s communication with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, there has always been a rather curious contrast issue with the known classified intelligence leaking of James Wolfe. If finding Flynn’s leaker is important then why didn’t the DOJ/FBI take action when they found a classified intelligence leaker in 2018?
The position of Bill Barr today is a direct result of decisions made by the DOJ and FBI in the Fall of 2017 & Summer of 2018. The events surrounding the leaking of the FISA warrant used against U.S. person Carter Page, and the 2018 DOJ decision not to prosecute SSCI Security Director James Wolfe for those leaks.
The Summer of 2018 was the fork in the road for the DOJ and FBI.
Attorney General Jeff Session was recused, Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein was in charge and the Mueller investigation was ongoing. That was when the DOJ made a decision not to prosecute Wolfe for leaking classified information. DC U.S. Attorney Jessie Liu signed-off on a plea deal where Wolfe plead guilty to only a single count of lying to the FBI.
If the DOJ had pursued the case against Wolfe for leaking the FISA application, everything would have been different. The American electorate would have seen evidence of what was taking place in the background effort to remove President Trump. We would be in an entirely different place today if that prosecution or trial had taken place.
Three 2018 events revealed the Wolfe issue:
EVENT ONE – On February 9th, 2018, the media reported on text messages from 2017 between Senate Intelligence Committee Vice-Chairman Mark Warner and Chris Steele’s lawyer, a lobbyist named Adam Waldman.
EVENT TWO – Four months after the Mark Warner texts were made public, on June 8th, 2018, another headline story surfaced. An indictment for Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Security Director James Wolfe was unsealedon June 7th, 2018.
EVENT THREE – Slightly less than two months after release of the Wolfe indictment, another headline story. On July 21st, 2018, the DOJ/FBI declassified and publicly released the FISA application(s) used against former Trump campaign advisor Carter Page.
♦ Later on December 14th 2018 a fourth albeit buried public release confirmed everything. The FBI filed a sentencing recommendation proving it was the Carter Page FISA that was leaked by Wolfe:
A prosecution of Wolfe would have exposed a complicit conspiracy between corrupt U.S. intelligence actors and the United States senate (SSCI). Two branches of government essentially working on one objective; the removal of a sitting president. The DOJ decision not to prosecute Wolfe for leaking the classified FISA application protected multiple U.S. agencies and congress.
In 2018 DAG Rod Rosenstein could not prosecute James Wolfe without exposing ‘seditious‘ activity within the U.S. government itself. Not pretend sedition or theoretical sedition, but an actual pre-planned subversive operation with forethought and malice.
The 2018 decision in the Wolfe case is critical. That’s the fork in the road. If the Wolfe prosecution had continued it would have undoubtedly surfaced that key government officials and politicians were working together (executive and legislative).
Additionally, amid a series of documents released by the Senate Judiciary Committee [SEE HERE] there is a rather alarming letter from the DOJ to the FISA Court in July 2018 that points toward another institutional cover-up. [Link to Letter]
In the cover letter for this specific release to the Senate Judiciary and Senate Intelligence committees, the DOJ cites the January 7, 2020, FISA court order:
Keep in mind that prior to this release only the FISA court had seen this letter from the DOJ-National Security Division (DOJ-NSD). As we walk through the alarming content of this letter I think you’ll identify the motive behind the FISC order to release it.
First, the letter in question was sent by the DOJ-NSD to the FISA Court on July 12, 2018. It is critical to keep the date of the letter in mind as we review the content.
Aside from the date the important part of the first page is the motive for sending it. The DOJ is telling the court in July 2018: based on what they know the FISA application still contains “sufficient predication for the Court to have found probable cause” to approve the application. The DOJ is defending the Carter Page FISA application as still valid.
However, it is within the justification of the application that alarm bells are found. On page six the letter identifies the primary participants behind the FISA redactions:
As you can see: Christopher Steele is noted as “Source #1”. Glenn Simpson of Fusion-GPS is noted as “identified U.S. person” or “business associate”; and Perkins Coie is the “U.S-based law firm.”
Now things get very interesting.
On page #8 when discussing Christopher Steele’s sub-source, the DOJ notes the FBI found him to be truthful and cooperative.
This is an incredibly misleading statement to the FISA court because what the letter doesn’t say is that 18-months earlier the sub-source, also known in the IG report as the “primary sub-source”, informed the FBI that the material attributed to him in the dossier was essentially junk.
Let’s look at how the IG report frames the primary sub-source, and specifically notice the FBI contact and questioning took place in January 2017 (we now know that date to be January 12, 2017):
Those interviews with Steele’s primary sub-source took place in January, March and May of 2017; and clearly the sub-source debunked the content of the dossier itself.
Those interviews were 18-months, 16-months and 14-months ahead of the July 2018 DOJ letter to the FISC. The DOJ-NSD says the sub-source was “truthful and cooperative” but the DOJ doesn’t tell the court the content of the truthfulness and cooperation. Why?
Keep in mind this letter to the court was written by AAG John Demers in July 2018. Jeff Sessions was Attorney General, Rod Rosenstein was Deputy AG; Christopher Wray was FBI Director, David Bowditch is Deputy, and Dana Boente is FBI chief-legal-counsel.
Why would the DOJ-NSD not be forthcoming with the FISA court about the primary sub-source? This level of disingenuous withholding of information speaks to an institutional motive.
By July 2018 the DOJ clearly knew the dossier was full of fabrications, yet they withheld that information from the court and said the predicate was still valid. Why?
It doesn’t take a deep-weeds-walker to identify the DOJ motive.
In July 2018 Robert Mueller’s investigation was at its apex.
This letter justifying the application and claiming the current information would still be a valid predicate therein, speaks to the 2018 DOJ needing to retain the validity of the FISA warrant…. My research suspicion is that the DOJ needed to protect evidence Mueller had already extracted from the fraudulent FISA authority. That’s the motive.
In July 2018 if the DOJ-NSD had admitted the FISA application and all renewals were fatally flawed Robert Mueller would have needed to withdraw any evidence gathered as a result of its exploitation. The DOJ in 2018 was protecting Mueller’s poisoned fruit.
If the DOJ had been honest with the court, there’s a strong possibility some, perhaps much, of Mueller evidence gathering would have been invalidated… and cases were pending. The solution: mislead the court and claim the predication was still valid.
This is not simply a hunch, because that motive also speaks to why the FISC would order the current DOJ to release the letter.
Remember, in December the FISC received the IG Horowitz report; and they would have immediately noted the disparity between what IG Horowitz outlined about the FBI investigating Steele’s sub-source, as contrast against what the DOJ told them in July 2018.
The DOJ letter is a transparent misrepresentation when compared to the information in the Horowitz report. Hence, the court orders the DOJ to release the July letter so that everyone, including congressional oversight and the public can see the misrepresentation.
The court was misled; now everyone can see it.
The content of that DOJ-NSD letter, and the subsequent disparity, points to an institutional decision in 2018; and as a consequence the FISC ordered the DOJ to begin an immediate sequestration effort in January 2020 to find all the evidence from the fraudulent FISA application. The proverbial fruit from the poisonous tree…. And yes, that is ongoing.
Thus ample reason for Attorney General Bill Barr to reevaluate any confidence in FBI Director Christopher Wray.
Two more big misstatements within the July 2018 letter appear on page #9. The first is the DOJ claiming that only after the application was filed did they become aware of Christopher Steele working for Fusion-GPS and knowing his intent was to create opposition research for the Hillary Clinton campaign. See the top of the page.
According to the DOJ-NSD claim the number four ranking official in the DOJ, Bruce Ohr, never told them he was acting as a conduit for Christopher Steele to the FBI.
While that claim is hard to believe, in essence what the DOJ-NSD is saying in that paragraph is that the FBI hoodwinked the DOJ-NSD by not telling them where the information for the FISA application was coming from. The DOJ, via John Demers, is blaming the FBI.
The second statement, equally as incredulous, is at the bottom of page nine where the DOJ claims they had no idea Bruce Ohr was talking to the FBI throughout the entire time any of the FISA applications were being submitted. October 2016 through June 2017.
In essence the claim there is that Bruce Ohr was working with the FBI and never told anyone in the DOJ throughout 2016 and all the way past June 29th of 2017. That denial seems rather unlikely; however, once again the DOJ-NSD is putting the FBI in the crosshairs and claiming they knew nothing about the information pipeline.
Bruce Ohr, whose wife was working for Fusion-GPS and assisting Christopher Steele with information, was interviewed by the FBI over a dozen times as he communicated with Steele and fed his information to the FBI. Yet the DOJ claims they knew nothing about it.
Again, just keep in mind this claim by the DOJ-NSD is being made in July 2018, six months after Bruce Ohr was demoted twice (December 2017 and January 2018). If what the DOJ is saying is true, well, the FBI was completely off-the-rails and rogue.
Neither option speaks well about the integrity of either institution; and quite frankly I don’t buy the DOJ-NSD spin. Why? The reason is simple, the DOJ is claiming in the letter the predication was still valid… if the DOJ-NSD genuinely didn’t know about the FBI manipulation, they would be informing the court in 2018 the DOJ no longer supported the FISA application due to new information. They did not do that. Instead, in July 2018, they specifically told the court the predicate was valid, yet the DOJ-NSD knew it was not.
The last point about the July 2018 letter is perhaps the most jarring. Again, keep in mind when it was written Chris Wray is FBI Director, David Bowditch is Deputy and Dana Boente is FBI chief legal counsel.
Their own FBI reports, by three different INSD and IG investigations; had turned up seriously alarming evidence going back to the early 2017 time-frame; the results of which ultimately led to the DC FBI office losing all of their top officials; and knowing the letter itself was full of misleading and false information about FBI knowledge in/around Christopher Steele; this particular sentence is alarming:
“The FBI has reviewed this letter and confirmed its factual accuracy?”
Really?
As we have just shared, the July 2018 letter itself is filled with factual inaccuracies, misstatements and intentional omissions. So who exactly did the “reviewing”?
This declassification release raised more questions than any other in recent memory.
As we said at the time of the release, perhaps AG Bill Barr will now start asking some rather hard questions to FBI Director Christopher Wray.
In 1981 Polish authorities arrested anyone organizing protests against the authoritarian state. In 2020 numerous authoritarian officials arrested citizens for non-compliance with unilateral dictates. From a New Jersey governor arresting a woman for organizing a protect; to an Idaho mother arrested for allowing her children to play at a park; to a Texas salon owner arrested for operating her business.
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