Disengagement law repeal advances, EU and UK condemn

15 March 2023

Source: News websites

By Al Mayadeen English 

A new bill repealing the disengagement law passed in 2005 has passed in Knesset’s first reading.

Saleh Abu Diab, a Palestinian resident of Sheikh Jarrah, takes part in a protest against his possible eviction after an Israeli court accepted Jewish settler land claims, in his neighborhood in Al-Quds on June 11, 2021 (Reuters).

Several EU member states, as well as the UK, denounced the Knesset’s approval of a bill that will allow Israeli settlers to return to areas across the West Bank that were previously evacuated as part of the 2005 Israeli-known Disengagement Law, which represented the liberation of Gaza and the partial liberation of the West Bank.

The Palestinian foreign ministry denounced the Knesset’s decision and called on the international community to denounce the bill as well, and to pressure the Israeli government to back down from the decision.

“Proceeding with steps to enact this legislation is a dangerous escalation in the conflict and a belittling of the efforts exerted to reduce tension and achieve calm,” the Palestinian Foreign Ministry said.

On Monday, a joint statement by the UK, France, and other EU countries, urged “Israel” to refrain from “demolishing Palestinian houses in the occupied West Bank and East-al-Quds [Al-Quds] during the month of Ramadan,” as they referenced the forced evacuation of Palestinian families from the Silwan and Sheikh Jarrah.

The statement noted that the signatories found it “very worrying that Israeli authorities intend to continue” the domicide of Palestinians and declared their “strong opposition to Israel’s settlement expansion policy.” 

Read more: All Israeli settlements are illegal, they must stop: UN Chief

Disengagement law repeal

In February 2023, the Israeli occupation’s Ministerial Committee for Legislation approved a bill revoking clauses of the 2005 Disengagement Law, which had led to the dismantling of four illegal Israeli settlements in the northern West Bank, as well as all the settlements and military presence in the Gaza Strip.

At the time, The Times of “Israel” said that “the bill, which only relates to the parts of the law pertaining to the northern West Bank, is key to the current government’s goal of legalizing the illegal settlement outpost of Homesh.”

On Monday, the bill passed its first reading in the Knesset, and the introductory text of the repeal read: “There is no longer any justification to prevent Israelis from entering and staying in the evacuated territory in northern Samaria [West Bank], and therefore it is proposed to state that these sections [of the disengagement law] will no longer apply to the evacuated territory.”

Read more: Row over illegal West Bank settlement outpost splits Israeli cabinet

Related Stories

• IOF demolish mosque in occupied West Bank
• Palestinian resistance growing throughout West Bank: PIJ chief
• Israelis continue protesting Netanyahu’s plan for 10th week

Raisi: US Efforts to Impose Hegemony Have ‘Failed Miserably’

September 22, 2021

By Staff, Agencies

Iranian President Sayyed Ebrahim Raisi said the US efforts to impose hegemony on other countries have “failed miserably,” and that Washington’s hegemonic system lacks credibility.

Raisi made the remarks during the 76th session of the United Nations General Assembly via video conference on Tuesday night, in his first address to the main policy-making organ of the world body since taking office last month.

“This year, two scenes made history: one was on January 6 when the US congress was attacked by the people and, two, when the people of Afghanistan were dropped down from the US planes in August. From the Capitol to Kabul, one clear message was sent to the world: the US’ hegemonic system has no credibility, whether inside or outside the country,” Raisi told the UN General Assembly.

“What is seen in our region today proves that not only the hegemonist and the idea of hegemony, but also the project of imposing Westernized identity have failed miserably. The result of seeking hegemony has been blood-spilling and instability and, ultimately, defeat and escape. Today, the US does not get to exit Iraq and Afghanistan but is expelled,” he added.

The Iranian president further noted that Washington is using sanctions as a “new way of war” against other nations, stressing that the US sanctions against the Islamic Republic during the coronavirus pandemic are “crimes against humanity.”

“Sanctions are the US’ new way of war with the world countries. Sanctions against the Iranian nation started not with my country’s nuclear program; they even predate the Islamic Revolution and go back to the year 1951 when oil nationalization went underway in Iran,” Raisi said at the 76th session of the UN General Assembly.

“Despite the fact that the Islamic Republic was keen from the outset to purchase and import COVID-19 vaccines from reliable international sources, it faced inhumane medical sanctions. Sanctions, especially on medicine at the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, are crimes against humanity,” he noted.

Elsewhere in his remarks, the Iranian president stressed that Tehran has been adhering to its nuclear commitments under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action [JCPOA] while Washington violated the 2015 landmark accord‎, stressing that the US so-called maximum pressure campaign against Iran has failed.

“Today, the whole world, including the Americans themselves, have admitted that the project of countering the Iranian people, which manifested itself in the form of violating the JCPOA and was followed by the “maximum pressure” and arbitrary withdrawal from an internationally recognized agreement, has totally failed,” Raisi said.

“We want nothing more than what is rightfully ours. We demand the implementation of international rules. All parties must stay true to the nuclear deal and the UN Resolution in practice,” he added.

Raisi also said that Iran has “no trust in US promises,” and wants all anti-Tehran sanctions to be removed at once, noting that the Islamic Republic considers the nuclear talks useful only when their ultimate outcome is the lifting of all unilateral sanctions.

9/11 twenty years later and cheap & ubiquitous cellphones

September 11, 2021

by Andrei for the Saker blog

Twenty years have passed since 9/11, so where do we stand today?  I will give my short answers as bullet points and then let you post your own conclusions.  Here are mine:

1. Numerous engineers, architects, chemists, researchers and others have proven beyond a reasonable doubt that 9/11 was a controlled demolition.
2. There is very strong, albeit indirect, preponderance of evidence that the Israelis were deeply involved and that they had accomplices inside the USA.
3. From the two above I think that it is reasonable to assume that the Israelis were working with the US Neocons on a common project.
4. Al-Qaeda (which is a CIA creation in the first place!) had some parts of it activated by the US/Israeli deep states (which are trying run the Takfiris everywhere), but only to play the role of a patsy (there were a few Saudis and there were real aircraft, but they did not bring down any buildings in NY).
5. It remains unclear to me what really happened at the Pentagon, but I think that we can take the notion that the aircraft over DC and NY were remotely piloted as a pretty good working hypothesis (which still needs to be proven).
6. Directed energy weapons, Russian naval nuclear cruise missiles, mini-nukes and the like are crude disinformation responses to the 9/11 Truth movement by the US deep state.  These were only moderately effective and only convinced a, shall we say, specific type of “truthers” which are all rejected as idiots (at best) by the mainstream 9/11 movement.
7. The truth about 9/11 is now slowly getting “JFK status” which is “everybody either suspects/knows, but nobody really cares anymore”.  It’s old news, especially in a society with an attention span somewhere between 2 mins and 2 days.
8. The real goal of 9/11 was to create a “patriotic pretext” to launch the GWOT and change the entire Middle-East into a compliant entity à la Jordan.
9. The GWOT was a total failure and one of the worst military campaign in military history.
10. The plan to create a “new” Middle-East have totally failed and, if anything, created a stronger anti-Israeli environment than before 9/11.  The fact that GWOT medals are handed out by the ton means nothing: after the Grenada faceplant Uncle Shmuel gave out more medals than participants took place in the entire operation.
11. The AngloZionost Empire died on January 8th, 2020 and the USA, as we knew it, died on January 6th 2021 (see here for a detailed discussion of these dates and context), almost exactly one year later.
12. By being murdered by the USA, General Soleimani won the biggest victory in his life.
13. The US will have to leave both Iraq and Syria sooner rather than later.
14. The Zionist entity calling itself “Israel” is now in a major political and even existential crisis and is now on the ropes and desperate.  But they hide it a lot better than the US propagandists.  But the Palestinians “feel” that, as do quite a few Israelis too.
15. Both Biden and “Biden” are now fighting for their political lives not only due to “Kabul” but also due to the way Biden has just declared war on those who refuse vaccines.
16. Anti-vaxxers might be many things, but nobody can deny them the following qualities: they are very strongly driven, for them the entire issue is not medical, but one of self-image, of identity and resistance to tyranny.  Okay, some will quietly cave in, but many will not.  That is why I strongly believe that Biden’s “declaration of war” against the unvaccinated “deplorables” (he did not use the word, but his contempt and hate was obvious) is a huge mistake.  At least in the USA, I believe that there are plenty of anti-vaxxers who will rather die in a firefight than being vaxxed (which they sincerely believe will either chip them, or kill them in a couple of years).  In other words, I do not believe that “Biden” has the means to force 80M+ anti-vaxxers to get the jab, in fact, if anything, his entire speech was a highly divisive slap in the face of millions of US Americans.  Violence is almost inevitable by now.  First isolated incidents, but possibly something bigger too.
17. The US economy is not growing or recovery.  That is just playing with numbers or, “statistics” in Churchill’s sense of the word.  The truth is that the country is breaking apart and slowly going “3rd world” (okay, there are already plenty of “3rd world” areas of the USA, but these are now expanding).  The real Chinese economy is about 1.5 times larger than the real US one.  Point, set, game and match China.  By the way, the real Russian economy is comparable or bigger to the real German one, and the Russian economy has pretty much recovered from the COVID crisis (but it is not over, cases are still rising in some areas of Russia).
18. The US military has totally lost its ability to function as a real military.  Ditto for NATO.  They were publicly humiliated pretty much everywhere they set foot.  This process is now irreversible. Point, set, game and match Russia, China and Iran.
19. Internally, the USA losing its cohesion and that centrifugal process is being accelerated by the truly insane internal policies of “Biden” (just Woke and Covid are a declaration of war against millions of US Americans).  I am not at all confident that “Biden” can bring states like Florida or Texas to heel.  I won’t comment any further on the internal US situation, but that needed to be mentioned.

Conclusions:

1. As with all Neocon type policies, they initially look “brilliant” only to end up in an abject clusterbleep and the Neocons hated by pretty much everybody else.
2. The Taliban won the GWOT (even at its best, Uncle Shmuel “controlled” about 40% of the country, max!).
3. The entire Zone B and a big part of Zone A now realize that (whether they openly admit it or not).
4. There is a good chance that the very public disaster in Afghanistan will now force the Europeans to distance themselves from a clearly senile, demented and weak Big Brother.
5. The core Anglosphere (UK/CA/NZ/AUS) seems to be consolidating around the “Biden USA” which might put them on a collision course with the EU.  We are not quite there yet, but that’s were we are heading.
6. The COVID pandemic effectively “exploded” all the societies in Zone A which are now all in a low-level “brewing” pre-civil war condition.  I do not see what anybody could do to change that.
7. The COVID pandemic will only get worse, which will only trigger more attempts by Zone A government to try force their population to “obey” and that, in turn, will only further destabilize all, repeat, ALL the regimes in power in Zone A.

The bottom line is this: 9/11 and the GWOT were initial, very short lived, tactical successes which resulted in a strategic disaster or, better, in a strategic collapse of both the AngloZionist Empire and the USA.

And, finally, this.  I cannot prove it, but my reading of modern history and regime collapses brings me to believe the following:

I have always said that US policies, internal and external, are not really the result of careful planning as they are the result of various interests/entities using their influence and power to “pull” US policies in the way they want.  And since there are A LOT of various interests/entities, especially in important cases, what we see is not a “policy outcome” but only a “sum vector”, an “outcome” which is the sum of all the different pulling and the relative strength of the folks doing that pulling.

I believe that this process has only been magnified but by an order of magnitude.  What we see today in the US ruling elites is a huge “cover your ass”, “run for your life”, “protect yourself and your future” and even “grab it while you still can” and NOT, repeat, NOT “real” policies.  Those who believe in a grand conspiracy fail to realize that what happened in Kabul is not the exception, it is the rule!  Kabul was a giant spotlight which finally showed the true face of the US military to the entire planet: not the Tom Clancy kind of patriotic delusional hallucinations or Hollywood, but the “real reality” filmed “on the ground” on cheap but ubiquitous cellphones, by both Afghani and even US/NATO servicemen’s!

The problem for the delusional patriots is this: far from being “Putin agents” or anything like that, the million of folks out there who have cellphones with cameras (no matter how old or cheap) produce such a raw volume of data which makes it impossible to suppress.  The exact same goes for the Israelis, by the way, who have paid a huge price in terms of “losing the propaganda war” since the Palestinians (and quite a few Israelis too!!) now use their cellphones more effectively than any Palestinian rocket or suicide-bomber ever would.  That is also what really screwed up the recent US elections: ubiquitous cellphones (well, and CCTV cameras).

If we imagine the US/Israeli propaganda machine as a huge powerful animal (BILLIONS are invested into this) you can think of poor, oppressed people with cheapo cellphones as fire ants.  Let’s just conclude by saying that time is not on the side of the big powerful heavy animal, but on the fire ants’ side.

Andrei

PS: yes, I mentioned the POLITICAL aspects of the COVID pandemic.  I get to set the rules, since this is my blog.  The COVID topic remains banned on the entire Saker blog (Cafe included), EVEN if I get to mention it if/when it is part of my political analyses (I won’t touch the medicals aspects of COVID anymore, I have said all I have to say on this topic already anyway).  Do do NOT, repeat, NOT try to “sneak in” some COVID comments or you will be banned.  For the alternatively gifted: the article above is NOT about vaccines or the dangers of mRNA, it is about the political evaluation of 9/11 and the GWOT.  Stay on topic or else…

Two More US Police Officers Involved in Capitol Riot Response Die by Suicide

AUGUST 2, 2021

By Staff, Agencies

Two more police officers who responded to the Jan. 6 riot at the US Capitol have died by suicide, bringing to four the number of suicides by officers who guarded the building during the attack by Trump supporters.

Washington DC police Officer Gunther Hashida was found dead in his home, the District of Columbia’s police department said on Monday. He died on July 29, one week before his 44th birthday, according to his obituary.

Hashida joined the District of Columbia’s Metropolitan Police Department [MPD] in May 2003, according to media.

US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi hailed Hashida as a “hero” who “risked his life to save our Capitol, the Congressional community and our very Democracy” in a written statement.

Just hours after the MPD confirmed Hashida’s death, department spokesman Hugh Carew said in a statement that another Metropolitan Police Officer who responded to the Capitol riot, Kyle DeFreytag, was found dead on July 10.

DeFreytag’s cause of death was also suicide, Carew said. The suicide was not reported until Monday.

MPD chief Robert Contee wrote in a message to the department last month that, “I am writing to share tragic news that Officer Kyle DeFreytag of the 5^th District was found deceased last evening. This is incredibly hard news for us all, and for those that knew him best.”

MPD Officer Jeffrey Smith and US Capitol Police Officer Howard Liebengood also committed suicide in the days after the riot.

Hundreds of former president Donald President supporters stormed the Capitol building that day to stop Congress from certifying Democratic President Joe Biden’s election win.

Four people died on the day of the violence. More than 100 police officers were injured.

A Capitol Police officer, Brian Sicknick, who had been attacked by protesters, died the following day.

The Capitol riot led to Trump’s second impeachment trial. More than 500 people have been arrested for their roles in the violence.

Last week, four police officers told a House of Representatives special committee that they were beaten, threatened, taunted with racial insults, and thought they might die as they struggled to defend the Capitol against the mob.

Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy dismissed the investigation regarding the Jan.6 Capitol attack, insisting that “Republicans will not be party to their sham process and will instead pursue our own investigation of the facts.”

Trump also described the House investigation as “a fake and highly partisan” political move.

Trump has been accused by his critics of inciting his supporters to violence by peddling what they call “the big lie”, a baseless claim that Biden won the presidency through a stolen election.

Pelosi portrayed the violence, in which rioters clashed with police and sought to hunt down lawmakers, including Pelosi, as an attempt to “overthrow” the government.

The Democracy vs. Freedom Dispute

July 1, 2021 

by Lawrence Davidson

Part I—Democracy and Freedom

In the United States, there is a dispute over whether democracy and freedom are compatible. Some, such as Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, have questioned their compatibility, and even asserted that freedom, rather than democracy, is what the U.S. really stands for. These terms are often used out of context and the dispute often suffers from a lack of historical knowledge, but there is nothing surprising about that. 

Most of the men who put together the U.S. Constitution saw the world in class, racial and gender terms. While they wanted a more democratic government than that in England which, for propaganda purposes, they had portrayed as a tyranny, the new American democracy had to be carefully structured. Here is how this translated from theory into practice: the common man’s passions should be held in check by a system that kept the power to make policy in the hands of those white males who had “a material stake in society”—that is, the propertied class. For large segments of the population democracy was to be denied due to both gender and color. 

Only a relative few of these men were thinking about freedom per se. And those who did, certainly did not define it in open-ended libertarian terms. Indeed, in late 18th century America, freedom came in two flavors: (1) first and foremost, the freedom from “unreasonable” taxation. What is unreasonable in this sense, would be argued about incessantly right up into the present. (2) Protection against the abuse of government power. The notion of abuse was directly connected to a) examples of alleged British excesses leading up to the American Revolution and b) Federalist party practices (when in power) like the suppression of critical newspapers and pamphlets. It is to cover a host of these sorts of issues, collectively posited as the protection of individual rights or freedoms, that Jefferson and Madison insisted a bill of rights be added to the Constitution as its first set of amendments. Once this was accomplished (December 1791) America’s democracy and a constitutional list of protected rights/freedoms, became compatible. 

Part II—Getting Things Wrong 

Now we fast forward to the present and Republican Senator Rand Paul, who was recently quoted in the New York Times as follows: “The idea of democracy and majority rule really is what goes against our history and what the country stands for [which is freedom]. The Jim Crow laws came out of democracy. That’s what you get when a majority ignores the rights of others.” He goes on to connect Republican Party opposition to a bipartisan congressional investigation of the January 6 “protest” (it was really an attempted insurrection) with the right of the political minority to protect itself against the majority. All of this is ahistorical and illogical. 

When taking up Paul’s position there are several points to consider:

First: Historical accuracy. Paul seems confused about the status of majority and minority when it comes to freed slaves in the American South at the time Congress abandoned Reconstruction (March 1877). At this time, the Black population in large parts of the rural South constituted the numerical majority. So, the Jim Crow laws that quickly followed were the products of a local political/racial minority (southern Whites) seeking to suppress the newly won rights of their local majorities (southern Blacks). Thus, Paul has his facts backwards. He might have made this mistake because he thinks that the American Black population has been a minority at all times and in all places throughout the country’s history. Yet here we have an important exception—an exception that challenges the senator’s argument that discriminatory behavior principally has its source with oppressive majorities.

Today, if Senator Paul is looking for a minority in need of protection, he should focus on contemporary southern Blacks (who are now indeed a minority both in size and power.) They are now faced with a white Republican Party in control of state legislatures seeking to suppress the voting access of minorities.

Second. Paul seems not to take into consideration that the American majority has grown and diversified. In other words, when it comes to what the government (local, state and federal) cannot do to you (like suppress your voting rights)—the you have steadily grown larger. Theoretically this should bode ill for the rightwing state legislatures mentioned above. It is unclear how Senator Paul personally feels about this (such narrowing of the election laws has not taken place in his home state of Kentucky), but he is an active member of the Republican Party, and that is party playing fast and loose with the voting laws in a host of southern and mid-western states. Why is the Republican Party doing this? Because a growing and diversifying majority creates a growing number of voters and most come from Black and other non-white segments of the population. Exercising their participatory political rights, they tend to vote Democrat. 

Third. The constitutionally protected rights or freedoms are not open-ended. Yet Paul seems to suggest that they are when he asserts that to protect the Republican minority in the Senate, the party can block a bipartisan investigation of the January 6 insurrection. On the one hand, it is quite true that the bill of rights was designed as, and remains, a necessary defense of individual rights from majority demands for political or cultural uniformity. On the other, one can ask, what is Paul and the Republicans trying to protect their party from? The bill of rights does not, and never was supposed to stifle investigation of criminal acts. The only thing the bill of rights does in this regard is to guard the individual against illegal evidence gathering procedures and other abusive practices on the part of law enforcement.

Part III—Misusing the Bill of Rights

Against this background, how are we to understand Paul’s specific application of minority rights? At the very least, we can understand it as a misinterpretation of the purpose and intent of the bill of rights and the protections it offers individual citizens. In other words, he is defending his party’s refusal to allow a bipartisan investigation of an apparent crime—a crime with potentially embarrassing trail of evidence.

The Republican Party and its conspiracy-spinning allies in the press and social media (whose speech is nonetheless protected) essentially created an alternate reality for millions of Americans that led some of them to insurrection. Despite many evidence-based demonstrations to the contrary, millions have bought into the myth that former President Donald Trump was cheated—and thus they, his supporters, were also cheated—out of victory in the 2020 presidential election. While both the Republicans and their supporters may believe the unbelievable—aver the demonstrably false—they have no right under the Constitution and its bill of rights to express such a delusion by going on a rampage, destroying public property, and attacking public officials. They have no protected right—no “freedom” to do this even if they claim, probably truthfully, that they believed the president told them to do it. 

Taking the next step, what is the real-world consequence of Paul’s defense? Well, given the likelihood that the investigation would connect elements of the Republican Party to the actions of the insurrectionists, this must be seen as self-serving obstruction of justice—itself a crime. For Paul, this is the “freedom” that—conveniently—supersedes democracy. 

Finally, the whole affair is a scary example of a paradox: The protection of speech, that is the right to free speech, can  degenerate into a campaign of lies and this can easily lead people to unprotected, that is criminal, actions. This is, admittedly, a downside of the bill of rights. An individual (and keep in mind that under U.S. law corporations are seen as individuals) has a protected right to lie to the public—to wit: broadcasted fantasies ranging from those of the National Inquirer to Fox TV and, lest we forget, Donald Trump.

Part IV—Conclusion

It is worth repeating that one of the positive things about the political evolution of the United States is that it has expanded the ranks of the participatory majority. In political terms, citizens of all genders and races now have both participatory rights and protected individual rights. Correspondingly, the minority—referring here specifically to those who object to this historical expansion—is slowly shrinking. While the latter’s rights to, say free speech, will remain protected, their ability to retain political and cultural power may well diminish over time. There is no doubt that the Republican leadership has a sense of this possibility, and this accounts for their increasingly fierce and frenzied attempts to turn back the clock. 

The shift of emphasis from an expanding democracy with protected individual rights/freedoms, to a dangerously ad hoc and sometimes illogical version of freedom, is part of that frenzied activity. Senator Paul and his friends, very short on historical facts and judgment, want all of us to believe in the absurd. That is, obstruction of justice in the name of minority rights is “what the country stands for.”

Top Rabbi: America is Collapsing, Israel must Step Up as new World Superpower

Rabbi Eliyahu

June 30, 2021

https://www.israel365news.com/164050/top-rabbi-america-is-collapsing-israel-must-step-up-as-new-world-superpower/

One of Israel’s most respected rabbis, Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, has released a statement on the status of America as a waning world superpower and a message of hope for Israel to fill the void. Rabbi Eliyahu is the Chief Rabbi of Safed and a member of the Chief Rabbinate Council

The big crisis that is currently happening in America

Regarding the outcome of the US elections, Rabbi Eliyahu explains that the schism is deeper than last week’s incident on Capitol Hill saying: “The big crisis that is currently happening in America didn’t start with the storming of Capitol Hill. It started with the Democratic party’s’ lack of confidence in Trump’s presidency expressed in fiery protests across the United States, and his being labeled in every possible derogatory manner.”

The rabbi added that the lack of Republican trust in America’s election process also contributes to the crisis.

“With tremendous sorrow we can recall this event as part of the process of the US descending from the stage of world history. It’s a sad moment, but it’s happening.”

Pharaoh fell too

Recalling the fall of ancient Egypt, the rabbi uses historic precedent to back up his claim saying: “This is not the first time a superpower fell because of a crisis of values and returns to being an ordinary country among other nations. That is what happened to Egypt and Rome in the old days. That is what happened to the Ottoman Empire approximately a century ago, all the way to the Russian Empire that collapsed 30 years ago, both of whom collapsed due to a failure of values that led to their demise as well as a decline in their great power as world leaders.”

Rabbi Eliyahu also recalled the collapse of France and Great Britain who were once “considered part of the four powers that rule the world,” He added that they collapsed just as Europe as a whole is collapsing because of values…or lack thereof.

Values of political correctness

“The values ​​of justice were replaced with those of political correctness. The family values have been replaced with those ​​of hedonism. The birthrate that fell below the red line caused European leaders to open the floodgates to mass Muslim migration that would fill the void, and Europe started to totally lose its character.”

Rabbi Eliyahu sees the developments unfolding as an opportunity for Israel to step up and take America’s place as the world superpower. He supports his proposition by calling Israel a world leader in family values saying: “We’ve been called upon to fill this vacuum. There are problems inside the State of Israel as well, but unlike Europe, Israel leads the world in the stability of family values. The average amount of children per Israeli woman is double the average of the Western world, and this is what propels Israel’s economy and creativity forward. Israel also leads the globe in the least amount of children from single mothers.”

Regarding a potential insurrection, Rabbi Eliyahu refers to the destruction of the second Temple as evidence that a similar situation cannot reoccur saying “As far as governmental stability is concerned, we are not similar in any way. There cannot be an antigovernmental revolution in Israel. With all the allegations we have regarding this and that corruption in the system of government, none of us have aspirations of a military revolt. We all recall the heavy price of the destruction of the 2nd Temple and it can’t be repeated.”

The rabbi also said that because Israel trails the western world in alcohol and drug consumption.

Not Pretentious, but Torah

Acknowledging that his proclamation could come across as condescending, the rabbi explains that it’s all part of God’s plan saying:  “Israel is stable and is called upon to take its place as a world leader in values. I realize that to many people this sounds very pretentious, but this is the template that G-d promised our forefather Abraham.”

And all the families of the earth Shall bless themselves by you (Genesis 12:3)

Reflecting on the Jewish people who he says don’t recognize the opportunity, the Rabbi notes: “The only ones who do not see this is us, and the time has come for us to recall our destiny. We need to prepare for it so that we can fulfill it with all the necessary responsibilities and not make the mistakes that they made.”

NEO – The Nasty Secrets behind Pentagon Treason and America’s Rogue Nuclear Threat

Roosevelt found the Army not just unfit, but a threat to democracy with an officer corps largely aligned with Adolf Hitler

April 28, 2021

by  Gordon Duff, Senior Editor … with New Eastern Outlook, Moscsow, 

We will begin with a short and painless history lesson. Just before the US entered World War II, General George C. Marshall, Chief of Staff for the US Army, was tasked with getting America ready for war.

To do so, he removed 30,000 incompetent officers, most of them West Point Graduates, from their positions with the Army and Reserve/National Guard Commands. Eventually, he ended up putting an obscure Lt. Colonel named Dwight Eisenhower in charge of all European operations.

From the 1972 hit song by the Scottish music group Steelers Wheels:

“Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right…Stuck in the Middle Again”

Roosevelt found the Army not just unfit but a threat to democracy with an officer corps largely aligned with Adolf Hitler.

Vietnam

Vietnam was worse but the problem was sloth and cowardice. Here the Pentagon set up luxury resorts as military bases for brass and visiting “dignitaries” while those fighting the war starved and died in numbers unseen since the darkest days of World War II.

In the North/I Corps we had 3MAF Headquarters, the “Puzzle Palace,” with top rated chefs and high-end brothels while in the South we had MACV Forward, the infamous Westmoreland Compound, originally set up by MSUG’s Wesley Fischel, architects of the corrupt Diem regime.

This author enjoyed a firsthand view of Vietnam as a Marine infantryman serving in units commanded by privates and lance corporals while commanders were never seen.

A true story, from 1970. This author was being released from active duty as a corporal in the Marine Corps, stationed at that time at LZ Rockcrusher at Dai La Pass outside Da Nang. I was called into Da Nang to meet with General Nickerson, then III MAF Commander and an officer selection board.

I was offered an immediate commission if I chose to remain in the Corps and a slot, at a later date, at Annapolis. I was told the Marine Corps was getting rid of the “dead wood,” and I was asked to stay on.

My response, you mean “combat vets?” General Nickerson’s response: “That’s exactly what we mean.” My attempt at irony either zoomed past him or he did not care.

I was a combat vet, but I must have been the “right kind” of combat vet, tall, blond, white and educated and, seemingly “compliant.” They might have been wrong about that. Today’s “Dancing boy village” at Kabul with its million-dollar condominiums puts both to shame and we do not want to discuss the Green Zone in Baghdad.

Today

Our point is this, the military gravitates toward proving the Peter Principle and is, in fact, the best possible example of the worst principles of management. From Wikipedia:

“The Peter Principle is a concept in management developed by Laurence J. Peter, which observes that people in a hierarchy tend to rise to their “level of incompetence”: employees are promoted based on their success in previous jobs until they reach a level at which they are no longer competent.”

The military now takes it to a whole new level with promotion based on servile gullibility and adherence to a blend of approved conspiracy theories, where Dispensationalism and Dominionism, both stressing the Pentagon’s role in bringing about nuclear Armageddon or the newest versions under Trump, Qanon, COVID denialism and a blend of Fascism and Hucksterism.

The Viper Academies and the January 6 Coup Attempt

This week, the director of the Air Force Academy, Lt. General Richard Clarke, director of the US Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs decided to comply with presidential orders to investigate right wing extremism and white supremacism, which has virtually drowned the American military, by blaming “both sides.”

Several of the leaders of the January 6, 2021 coup attempt were Air Force Academy graduates with high security clearances. Secretary of Defense Austin ordered all military commands, and especially the Air Force Academy, to investigate extremism in the ranks.

It is supposed to be a highest priority that as few paranoid schizophrenics as possible enter the highest levels of America’s nuclear command structure. If you feel this statement reflects sarcasm, it is obvious that you have been asleep for the last couple of decades or more.

Asleep or Complicit?

This is the same military that has overseen the export of hundreds of tons of processed heroin from its bases in Afghanistan, that watched ISIS steal millions of tons of oil from Iraq and Syria and is now directly involved in that process itself, at presidential order.

At one point in 2015, ISIS (banned in Russia) had 12,000 oil trucks lined up 4 abreast headed into Turkey, a convoy visible from the surface of the moon with the naked eye. Yet, America’s drones, satellites and surveillance aircraft saw nothing, not until Russian Aerospace Forces decided to intervene.

These are facts that prove that every American military commander was and is fully complicit in protecting the operational activities of named terror groups.

We can make the exact same statement about the world heroin trade as well. At one point, the US Air Force asserted that the Taliban (banned in Russia) was flying heroin out of Afghanistan secretly from American bases.

As American humorist Jim W. Dean so often says, “You just can’t make this stuff up.”

Bin Laden Again

There are issues that should never be forgotten or allowed to be pushed aside. One is Osama bin Laden, longtime CIA asset chosen as “patsy” for the fake War on Terror and the other 9/11, one of the world’s greatest false flag events.

Note that Trump appointee, Clarke, was the architect of the Bin Laden raid. This “made” Clarke as an American hero and moved him into a position where he could, potentially, be very useful to extremist elements.

In 2009, this author traveled to Pakistan and met with Imran Khan, currently Pakistan’s Prime Minister, then ISI Chief General Pasha and discussed bin Laden’s death. The group also included former Head of the Army General Aslem Beg, former ISI Head and VT Editor General Hamid Gul and Chairman of Pakistan’s JCOS, Admiral Sirohey, also a member of VT’s Advisory Board.

This author also reviewed classified files on bin Laden and interviewed one of the men who buried bin Laden in Afghanistan. According to records, including reports from Fox News and other sources, bin Laden died in December 2001. From Fox News:

“Usama bin Laden has died a peaceful death due to an untreated lung complication, the Pakistan Observer reported, citing a Taliban leader who allegedly attended the funeral of the Al Qaeda leader.

‘The Coalition troops are engaged in a mad search operation, but they would never be able to fulfill their cherished goal of getting Usama alive or dead,’ the source said.

Bin Laden, according to the source, was suffering from a serious lung complication and succumbed to the disease in mid-December, in the vicinity of the Tora Bora mountains. The source claimed that bin Laden was laid to rest honorably in his last abode and his grave was made as per his Wahabi belief.”

It gets much worse. In a further interview with White House intelligence coordinator Lee Wanta, I was told that bin Laden had been in the US on 9/11 receiving medical care at the Bethesda Naval Medical Center under the name Colonel Timothy Osman.

Wanta described his meetings in the US with bin Laden/Osman, which included Oliver North and other Bush officials, and of an earlier meeting with bin Laden in Peshawar, Pakistan, which included top CIA officials.

Wanta reported that Oxford educated bin Laden spoke better English than he did.

Yet, for years, SITE Intelligence, an Israeli run organization, provided videos of strange looking versions of bin Laden, followed by years of audio tapes as the world had apparently lost the ability to record or upload video in the interim, or we would supposedly be brought to believe.

Americans are still in Afghanistan hunting for the “dozens of vast underground fortresses” Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld spoke of when he ordered the hunt for long dead bin Laden, part of an American war that cost the lives of millions of innocents.

Every minute of it was fake and the Pentagon at it up like a dog at vomit.

Minot Barksdale and an Earlier Coup Attempt

The issue at the Air Force Academy began many years ago. This author was contacted by cadets (158) there back in 2008 who complained of religious persecution and a curriculum that promoted treason and extremism.

The root of the command meltdown within the US military is generally traced to the US Army Psychological Warfare Command at the Presidio, a base in San Francisco that is today a city park. At the time a strange Satanic child abuse scandal within the military had attempted to implicate commanders there including Colonel Michael Aquino, founder of the Temple of Set, a Satanic cult powerful within the Pentagon and the service academies.

Aquino was cleared but an investigation led to broad allegations of abuse through 15 major military commands including and especially the US Air Force Academy and the US Air Force nuclear command at Minot Air Force Base. From New Eastern Outlook (2014):

“During the Bush (43) administration, something far more serious happened. America’s nuclear command structure was compromised at every level, culminating in the theft of nuclear weapons from Minot Air Force Base in 2007, an undisclosed number of thermonuclear weapons loaded onto a B 52 which later landed — or more appropriately, was forced to land at Barksdale Air Force Base some hours later.

Immediately thereafter, Secretary of Defence Robert Gates ordered the Department of Defense to remove all oversight of nuclear weapons from the United States Air Force, placing an Army general in overall command of what had previously been Air Force weapons inventories.

Soon thereafter, 84 personnel in America’s largest nuclear command were removed, 12 permanently due to accidents and suicide. Since that time, over 200 members of that command have been forced out, and America’s entire nuclear command has been put under direct oversight.

Greater Israel

The real problem is twofold and involves a breakdown of command authority and discipline, as well as treason. Not long after Bush (43) took office, his backers in the extremist Christian evangelical community approached Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

They wanted to assure that all military command personnel would follow the tenets of the obscure religious sect Rumsfeld, Cheney, Bush and Ashcroft belonged to.

This sect seeks to bring about a nuclear apocalypse tied to the expansion of “Greater Israel” in order to bring about what they call the “rapture” and “end times.” Their religious beliefs are a mix of “Ufology,” belief in alien influence, satanic worship and that a select group will be called to rule the world at the side of an alien master race, while those “left behind” will die in misery.

Their religion is a mix of misinterpreted biblical prophecy, science fiction and the occult. In fact, many of those at the highest levels of US government retain no actual Christian beliefs at all, not by any conventional standard.”

Given Enough Rope…

Blindly cheerleading for the military is called “patriotism” but, often as not it is treason in its purest form. There is now and there has been in the past, time and time again, no bigger threat against freedom than the military and America’s military is among the worst.

There are no simple truths, but we will distill it down as much as possible. The Pentagon is a feeding ground for extremists, bottom-feeders and “mama’s boys” in uniform. It is all haircuts and fancy uniforms, of saluting, strutting and conspiracy.

The Pentagon lives on conspiracy and treason that is held in check only by a few decent and honorable leaders.

The problem, initially, was the revolving door that placed potentially traitorous military leaders, after retirement, at Fox News as commentators or moved them into White House advisory positions.

Some gravitated to think tanks like the infamous Atlantic Council or Heritage Foundation and almost all have, predictably, embraced Fascism in his many forms.

Conclusion

The current political climate in the US is extremely dangerous. The Supreme Court, stacked with extremists, is openly tossing the constitution aside as recently cited by Justice Sotomayor.

Extremists in Arizona have seized the ballots from the recent presidential election and are doctoring them, in an attempt to justify a military takeover of the government. Their stated goal is to set up a “whites only” ruling party that will oversee elections where only the “righteous” will be allowed to vote.

A recent investigation of the military’s role in the January 6 coup attempt by General Honore’ found widespread complicity between military commands in and around Washington DC and coup plotters.

Simply put, were the US to be evaluating another nation, a nuclear power, judging whether its nuclear arsenal was at risk or its command structure capable of overruling elected officials and unleashing a nuclear war, based on the “situation on the ground” in the US today, America would be considered a “highest threat.”

Gordon Duff is a Marine combat veteran of the Vietnam War that has worked on veterans and POW issues for decades and consulted with governments challenged by security issues. He’s a senior editor and chairman of the board of Veterans Today, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

BIOGRAPHY

Gordon Duff, Senior Editor

Senior Editor , VTGordon Duff is a Marine combat veteran of the Vietnam War. He is a disabled veteran and has worked on veterans and POW issues for decades. Gordon is an accredited diplomat and is generally accepted as one of the top global intelligence specialists. He manages the world’s largest private intelligence organization and regularly consults with governments challenged by security issues.

Duff has traveled extensively, is published around the world and is a regular guest on TV and radio in more than “several” countries. He is also a trained chef, wine enthusiast, avid motorcyclist and gunsmith specializing in historical weapons and restoration. Business experience and interests are in energy and defense technology.

Gordon’s Archives – 2008-2014gpduf@aol.com

Blockbuster/Exclusive: More Mossad Ties between ‘Bear Spray Killers’ , proof of Israel’s role in January 6

By VT Editors -March 16, 2021

January 6 was a last ditch attempt by Israel to save the Trump presidency and turn the US into a full-fledge colony of Israel.  How anti-Semitic does that sound?How true does it sound?VT Exclusive: We have been doing background on the January 6 killers of Officer Sicknick.  When Elie Khater was arrested getting off a plane from Israel and that was hidden, we knew there was something else.We then found this article from Newsweek, owned by former Congresswoman Jane Harmon, who was “busted” for trying to free Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard, who gave America’s NOC List to the Russians. This is the real story and why every top US intel official for 28 years demand he “burn in hell.”Now we find young Israeli “American’ Elie Khater, the alleged murder, was, with his mother, evacuated from Lebanon to save them from Hezbollah, in 2006, by the US military.Dad is never mentioned nor is why they were there serving in an unnamed intelligence capacity.  Fake people, fake restaurants, no murder charges…it keeps getting better and better…

Onscene: Pain, Joy, After Leaving Lebanon

BY NEWSWEEK STAFF ON 7/20/06 AT 8:00 PM EDT

Sitting aboard the USS Trenton as it leaves Lebanon, Elie Khater is crying. But unlike most Americans aboard this amphibious assault ship, her tears are not those of joy over escaping a country tumbling into war. The 43-year-old mother of four is sobbing because the clashes between Israel and Hizbullah have forced her out of her adopted home in Kherbert Kanafar, a small village where her husband’s family has a fruit orchard and where the New Jersey native has lived since 1994.

The Khaters decided to leave Lebanon after Israeli airstrikes hit nearby villages and roads, cutting off most escape routes. Their harrowing drive to Beirut on a bomb-damaged road was terrifying; now the prospect of going back to America breaks her heart. “Lebanon has become my country and it’s is horrible beyond words to be leaving behind my extended family, my friends, my life,” she weeps.

The Khaters were among the thousands of foreigners trapped in Lebanon when fighting broke out 10 days ago. On Friday, an estimated 4,000 Americans were scheduled to leave for Cyprus in what Brig. Gen. Carl Jensen, the U.S. Marine Corps officer commanding the operation, calls a “voluntary withdrawal.” A similar number have already been evacuated over the last two days, with the United States chartering ferry boats and rerouting seven naval ships to help Americans trying get out. Helicopters were also deployed to fly out humanitarian cases like the elderly and disabled.

Why aren’t they charged as cop killers?  Could it be because of reasons only VT will publish?  Arrested in the airport while exiting a plane from Tel Aviv…shouldn’t that fact be gotten out?  We think so…and hiding it tells us volumes…

VT: Julian Elie Khater was picked up today as he got off a plane from Tel Aviv at the Newark Airport. Both Khater and George Tanios are childhood friends who grew up in New Brunswick, New Jersey’s Jewish community, just outside Philadelphia.

Khater fled to Israel after the killing of Officer Sicknick during the January 6 coup attempt by Donald Trump.  Autopsy results have been withheld, particularly toxicology, but VT sources say Officer Sicknick died from a reaction to being soaked with powerful “Bear Spray”, listed as a “dangerous weapon.” 

Video exists showing both Khater and Tanios deploying bear spray against Officer Sicknick, but it also shows that both were coordinating deployment of chemical weapons with highly trained teams that were searching for members of Congress, teams allegedly in communication with GOP House members.

This is a separate FBI investigation. A House investigation has published 2000 pages of tweets from members of the House and Senate that were used, it is alleged, “in real time” to hunt Vice President Pence and his family and Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

We also found, with little effort, that Tanios’ restaurant, if you can call it that, is fake as well.

VT’s sources say both Khater and Tanios are former IDF intelligence and are Israeli citizens. We also learn that Tanio’s “restaurant” is not so much either, one review at Tripadvisor:

and from Yelp:

Every decent Mossad agent is taught to keep their cover and make money at their side business.  Certainly the Mossad’s highly paid journalists are proof of this.  Look at Hannity and Carlson…

WaPo: Federal authorities have arrested and charged two men with assaulting U.S. Capitol Police officer Brian D. Sicknick with bear spray during the Jan. 6 Capitol riot but have not determined whether the exposure caused his death.

Julian Elie Khater, 32, of Pennsylvania and George Pierre Tanios, 39 of Morgantown, W.Va., were arrested Sunday and are expected to appear in federal court Monday.

“Give me that bear s—,” Khater allegedly said to Tanios on video recorded at the Lower West Terrace of the Capitol at 2:14 p.m., where Sicknick and other officers were standing guard behind metal bicycle racks, arrest papers say.

About nine minutes later, after Khater said he had been hit with bear spray, Khater is seen on video discharging a canister into the face of Sicknick and two other officers, arrest papers allege.

Khater and Tanios are charged with nine counts including assaulting three officers with a deadly weapon — Sicknick, another U.S. Capitol Police officer identified as C. Edwards, and a D.C. police officer identified as B. Chapman. They are also charged with civil disorder and obstruction of a congressional proceeding. The charges are punishable by up to 20 years in prison.

Prosecutors filed charges after tipsters contacted the FBI allegedly identifying Khater and Tanios from wanted images released by the bureau from surveillance video and officer-worn body camera footage, the complaint said. It said the men grew up together in New Jersey, and that Khater had worked in State College, Pa., and Tanios owns a business in Morgantown.

*

Arrested at Newark Airport getting off a plane from Israel in an FBI sting, something censored by the Washington Post

Khater was arrested Sunday in Newark, N.J., according to an unsealed arrest warrant signed by a magistrate judge on March 6. Family for Khater could not be immediately reached.

Questions remain about whether anyone will be held criminally responsible in Sicknick’s death. Autopsy results for Sicknick were still pending as of Monday, according to a spokeswoman for the deputy mayor of public safety in D.C.

Without a cause of death, his case has not been established as a homicide, although charging papers allege that evidence of an assault on Sicknick is clear on video.

This is, officially, the longest autopsy ever.  It it isn’t a coincidental natural death, then it is a homicide.  Why the games.  Both impeachment docs and US Atty. Rosen stated Sicknick was murdered and did so many weeks ago.

An FBI agent alleged in charging papers that publicly available video showed that after Khater asked for the bear spray, Tanios replied, “Hold on, hold on, not yet, not yet … it’s still early.” The agent said the exchange showed that the two allegedly were “working in concert and had a plan to use the toxic spray against law enforcement.”

The agent asserted that the men “appeared to time the deployment of chemical substances to coincide with other rioters’ efforts to forcibly remove the bike rack barriers that were preventing the rioters from moving closer to the Capitol building,” using their hands, ropes and straps.

All three officers were temporarily blinded and incapacitated for more than 20 minutes, and Edwards sustained scarring beneath her eyes for several weeks, charging papers said.

Sicknick died at a hospital about 9:30 p.m. Jan. 7, one day after 139 police officers were reportedly assaulted by an angry mob of Trump supporters wielding sledge hammers, baseball bats, hockey sticks, crutches and flagpoles. At least 800 people entered the Capitol after a smaller number forced entry, police have testified, seeking to block Congress from confirming the November presidential election victory of Joe Biden.

FBI focuses on video of Capitol Police officer being sprayed with chemicals

Referring to Sicknick, a House-passed article of impeachment charged Trump with inciting insurrection, alleging that members of a crowd he addressed “injured and killed law enforcement personnel.” Trump was acquitted after 57 senators voted to convict him for inciting the attack, 10 short of the two-thirds majority needed.

Then-acting U.S. attorney general Jeffrey A. Rosen said in a statement shortly afterward that Sicknick died of “the injuries he suffered defending the U.S. Capitol,” echoing a statement by Capitol Police.

Investigators determined that he did not die of blunt force trauma, people familiar with the matter said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation. After more than two months, no autopsy or toxicology report has been made public.

This report, however, has been kept from the public.  Is it because every suspect arrested can be charged with full 1st Degree Murder, not simply trespass, as per well established legal precedent.

Officer Brian D. Sicknick recalled for his ‘shared humanity’The senator described Sicknick’s death as a “crime” that “demands the full attention of federal law enforcement.” He said “when white supremacists attacked our nation’s capital, they took the life of one of our officers. They spilled his blood, they took a son away from his parents. They took a sibling away from their brothers.”

Beaten, sprayed with mace and hit with stun guns: Police describe injuries to dozens of officers during assault on U.S. Capitol

---

https://file411.substack.com/p/julian-elie-khater-and-george-pierre?r=2i5gr&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email&utm_source=twitter

Julian Elie Khater and George Pierre Tanios – charged and arrested in the Death of US Capitol Police Officer Brian Siknick

Finally and yes it was captured on Body Worn Camera(s)

Both charged (these are incredibly serious charges);

18 U.S.C. §§ 111(a) and (b) – Assault on Federal Officer with Dangerous Weapon; 18 U.S.C. §§ 111(a) and (b) – Assault on Federal Officer with Dangerous Weapon; 18 U.S.C. §§ 111(a) and (b) – Assault on Federal Officer with Dangerous Weapon; 18 U.S.C. § 372 – Conspiracy to Injure an Officer; 18 U.S.C. § 231(a)(3) – Civil Disorder; 18 U.S.C. § 1512(c)(2) – Obstructing or Impeding Any Official Proceeding; 18 U.S.C. § 1752(a)(1), (2), (4), (b)(1)(A) and (b)(1)(B) – Physical violence on restricted grounds, while carrying dangerous weapon, and resulting in significant bodily injury; 40 U.S.C. § 5104(e)(2)(f) – Violent entry and disorderly conduct, act of physical violence on Capitol Grounds; and 18 U.S.C. § 2 – Aiding and Abetting.

As the affidavit reads:

“Officers Sicknick, Edwards and Chapman, who are standing within a few feet of KHATER, all react, one by one, to something striking them in the face. The officers immediately retreat from the line, bring their hands to their faces and rush to find water to wash out their eyes…

….defendants, JULIAN ELIE KHATER and GEORGE PIERRE TANIOS, working together to assault law enforcement officers with an unknown chemical substance by spraying officers directly in the face and eyes….”

Again I’ll never understand why the “fire extinguisher” took root – I repeatedly tried to tell my readers that was disinformation that the death was likely caused by the excessive deployment of a chemical irritant;

“KHATER continues to talk animatedly with TANIOS. At approximately 2:20 p.m., KHATER walks through the crowd to within a few steps of the bike rack barrier. KHATER is standing directly across from a line of law enforcement officers to include U.S. Capitol Police (“USCP”) Officers B. Sicknick and C. Edwards, and Metropolitan Police Department (“MPD”) Officer D. Chapman, who was equipped with a functioning body worn camera (“BWC”) device.

Officer Chapman’s BWC shows that at 2:23 p.m., the rioters begin pulling on a bike rack to Chapman’s left, using ropes and their hands to pull the rack away. Seconds later, KHATER is observed with his right arm up high in the air, appearing to be holding a canister in his right hand and aiming it in the officers’ direction while moving his right arm from side to side. Officer Chapman’s BWC confirms that KHATER was standing only five to eight feet away from the officers.

“Officers Sicknick, Edwards and Chapman, who are standing within a few feet of KHATER, all react, one by one, to something striking them in the face. The officers immediately retreat from the line, bring their hands to their faces and rush to find water to wash out their eyes, as described in further detail…

“KHATER is again observed raising his arm and continues to spray in the direction of law enforcement officers. MPD Lt. Bagshaw notices these actions and approaches KHATER. At 2:23 p.m., Lt. Bagshaw then sprays KHATER, as observed on both surveillance footage and Lt. Bagshaw’s BWC….”

“All three officers were incapacitated and unable to perform their duties for at least 20 minutes or longer while they recovered from the spray. Officer Edwards reported lasting injuries underneath her eyes, including scabbing that remained on her face for weeks…”

“Defendant KHATER was listed as subject number 190. Defendant TANIOS was listed as subject number 254. A tipster to the FBI provided information that TANIOS and KHATER knew each other and grew up together in New Jersey…”

So investigators received several tips and subsequently reviewed the defendant’s LinkedIn account and other social media accounts

It came down to the “Sandwich University” sweatshirt and a keen eye by both a former coworker and the investigators …

“kingofthefatsandwich.” no really that’s in the affidavit …

Redacted Affiliation Found here. According to the DOJ-OPA:

“…arrested on Sunday in connection with a complaint filed in federal court in Washington, D.C., charging them with conspiring to injure officers and assaulting federal officers, among other charges, on Jan. 6.  Khater was arrested as he disembarked from an airplane at Newark Airport in New Jersey.  Tanios was arrested at his residence in West Virginia.

Motion for Detention filed by USA as to Defendant Tanios:

https://ecf.wvnd.uscourts.gov/doc1/19903090082

Or via my public drive https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xwceNNp-gLcaVKJte87Ds6ViR76Er1av/view?usp=drivesdk

Sorry more files incoming – paperless Minute Order WVDC- Defendant Tanios

United States v. 2012 White Jeep Grand Cherokee with West Virginia License Tag 53T507, VIN 1C4RJFAT2CC204303 (1:21-mj-00024) ECF

-and it is well worth reading the 65+page affidavit in support of the search warrant – I uploaded it to my public drive, found here. I literally have <27 minutes before I have to jump on a Teams Call – so I’m speedy racing through the Court Documents

United States v. 708 Beechurst Avenue, Morgantown, WV 26505 (1:21-mj-00025)

Seized)(mh) (copy USA, Agent) (Entered: 03/14/2021)

Document Number:1 Attachment Description Affidavit Agent – Attachment A – Property to be Searched and Attachment B – Description of Property to be Seized

United States v. 205 Blue Ridge Lane, Morgantown, WV 26508 (1:21-mj-00026) ECF

ABOUT VT EDITORS

VT EditorsVeterans Today

VT Editors is a General Posting account managed by Jim W. Dean and Gordon Duff. All content herein is owned and copyrighted by Jim W. Dean and Gordon Duffe

ditors@veteranstoday.com

The Post-American World; Crooke, Escobar, Blumenthal and Marandi lay it all out

Via The Saker

February 17, 2021

Thirty years ago, the United States dominated the world politically, economically, and scientifically. But today?

Watch this in-depth discussion with distinguished guests:
Alastair Crooke – Former British Diplomat, the Founder, and Director of the Conflicts Form
Pepe Escobar – Brazilian Political Analyst and Author
Max Blumenthal – American Journalist and Author from Grayzone
Chaired by Dr. Mohammad Marandi – Professor at University of Tehran

USA Sitrep – President’s Day in a Divided Nation

February 15, 2021

by John Lockwood for the Saker Blog

February 15th is Presidents’ Day.

America has two Presidents on this day, besides Washington and Lincoln.
One half of the country believes Trump rightfully won.

Yet the events of Jan. 6th still hang like a cloud over Washington.
Critics fault his claims of a stolen election for provoking the protests.

But what if the Democrats really did steal the election? Wouldn’t the fault be theirs?
And how can we know whether they really stole it?
Claims of “Massive fraud” on one side vs. “No sign of fraud” on the other — who is right?

One thing is crystal clear:
Unconstitutional, illegal changes to voting laws generated millions of irregular ballots — a hundred times greater than the margin between the candidates, in some swing states. If the balloting is illegal, there is no way the count can be correct.

An unconstitutional vote can only produce an unconstitutional result. Everything that followed — the certification of the popular vote, the electoral college vote, and the inauguration — none of these steps had any legal foundation.
Bad data makes bad decisions. Since Nov. 3, our machinery of government has been spinning off course on erroneous, unlawful inputs.

The only solution in such cases is to correct the error.
Until runoff elections are held in conformity with the law, we will still have two Presidents.
Only one of them can be the rightful one.

US House: Trump Singularly Responsible for Capitol Assault, Should Be Convicted

By Staff, Agencies

The House of Representatives impeachment managers have filed a lengthy pretrial brief, saying former President Donald Trump was “singularly responsible” for the assault on the Capitol last month and that he should be convicted.

The House impeached the ex-president over his role in the invasion on January 6 that left five people dead, including a member of law enforcement.

Trump was blamed for inciting an insurrection when the lawmakers were busy certifying the victory of Joe Biden in the November 3 election.

The House introduced an article of impeachment to the Senate late last month.

In an 80-page brief filed on Tuesday, the impeachment managers – nine House Democrats led by Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin –  outlined the arguments they planned to make when the Senate trial opens next week, arguing that Trump should be barred from holding public office.

“President Trump incited a violent mob to attack the United States Capitol during the Joint Session, thus impeding Congress’s confirmation of Joseph R. Biden, Jr. as the winner of the presidential election,” the House brief reads.

“The framers of the Constitution feared a president who would corrupt his office by sparing ‘no efforts or means whatever to get himself re-elected,’” wrote the nine House Democrats, quoting directly from the 1787 debate in Philadelphia.

“If provoking an insurrectionary riot against a joint session of Congress after losing an election is not an impeachable offense, it is hard to imagine what would be.”

Meanwhile, Trump’s legal team responded to the charges against him, arguing that the Senate “lacks jurisdiction” to try a former president.

“The Senate of the United States lacks jurisdiction over the 45th president because he holds no public office from which he can be removed, rendering the article of impeachment moot and a non-justiciable question,” the lawyers, Bruce L. Castor Jr. and David Schoen, wrote in their 14-page response.

The lawyers also asserted that Trump believed he “won it by a landslide,” and, thus, was within his First Amendment rights to “express his belief that the election results were suspect.”

Trump had told his supporters, “If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.” His lawyers, however, said such remarks were not meant as a call to violent action, but were “about the need to fight for election security in general.”

Trump’s assertions about the election results could not be disproved, the lawyers added, because there was “insufficient evidence.”

Related

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American Prospect

Via The Saker

January 27, 2021

by Sushi for the Saker Blog

If you wish to understand the concerns of those who attended the 1/6 Save America rally, you can learn much by watching the first three minutes of this video . If you wish to understand the issues that lie at the heart of the Nancy Pelosi – Never-Trump response, you can do no better than watching the same three minutes. Three minutes is not a long time. Maybe it saves the Republic. Perhaps not.

I recognize many of the locations shown; it was in Seattle that I met my first wife and my memory of the city is tainted by the youthful hormones associated with love and romantic attachment. Dispense with those gemütlich thoughts, strip all the romance away, and the video remains a searing reintroduction to an America in decline.

The Articles of Impeachment cite Trump for the remark,” ‘if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.’ He said those words because he believed them to be true. His supporters believed them to be true. The founders of this country believed them to be true. The ghosts of Concord, Omaha, Antietam, Betio, and a thousand other forgotten battles, laid down their lives to consecrate those words. America is drenched in blood. Is it worth asking who spilt it and why?

At the end of President Regan’s term in office, America was the greatest exporter of manufactured goods, the world’s largest creditor nation, the world’s largest importer of raw materials. Each year, America created the greatest value added in the history of the world. Today all these numbers are reversed. America is the world’s greatest debtor nation, America imports almost all its manufactured goods, and the main source of value added is found in the FIRE sector.

In an earlier era, America hired people to add value to raw materials and sell the finished products. People had good jobs. They lived the American dream. Today, they live the American nightmare. Today the route to wealth is found in the creation of SPACs and CDOs and other pieces of paper backed by little more than a promise. Or it is found in creating a new virtual universe composed entirely of electrons. The plungers have bid up the market to incredible heights of fantasy, interest rates border on the negative, and Biden is in the process of adding a few trillion more dollars to the top of an already teetering matchstick pyre. As the great sage of America once said: “What, me worry?”

In the years since President Regan, middle America has been in constant decline. Republicans came into office, made a lot of promises, and when they left office the majority of America was worse off than before. The Democrats came into office, promised hope and change, and when the Democrats left office the majority of America was worse off than before. The Red Hatters suspect the emergence of a pattern.

There have been 16 years of Republican presidents: Bush 41, Bush 43, Trump 45, and 16 years of Democrat presidents Clinton and Obama. Trump’s supporters have learned, much to their chagrin, and at great personal expense, that it does not matter who you vote into office, the outcome is always the same. The average American is yearly worse off, their savings erode, their debt explodes as increased debt is the only way to keep their head above water, send their children to school, pay their bills. On the coasts, and in Washington, live the elites who get richer and richer every year. The banks collapse and wipe out the savings of ordinary Americans? No problem. We bail out the culprits with trillions of dollars and the bank executives, the ones who created the funny money in the first place, they give themselves multi-million-dollar bonuses. For what? For crashing the world economy and coming out on top? Nice work if you can get it. And the ordinary folk? They lose their job, their savings, possibly their home. Some get the bonus of a cardboard mansion.

When Enron collapsed, people went to jail. When the savings and loans collapsed people went to jail. In the financial crisis fat paychecks and get out of jail cards went to a small segment of the population. None of them wore Red Hats. The systemic causes were never addressed, except as a band-aid solution, which implies they remain as a hidden set of weaknesses ready to rip open at the next great signs of stress.

The Democrats want you to believe that 1/6 was a coup, a rebellion, a putsch, an overthrow of a legitimate government. It is unclear how you claim to be a legitimate government, of the people, by the people, for the people, when each year the elites get more and more wealthy and ordinary folk are driven into poverty and then laughed at. Called Deplorables. Despicables. Traitors. Insurrectionists. Domestic Terrorists. Refused airline travel because of their political views. Refused legal counsel because of their political views. Have their employment threatened because of their political views. Have their insurance contracts revoked because of their political views. Have their communications media cancelled because of their political views. Put on watch lists because of their political views. Labelled as American ISIS for their political views. Al Qaeda in America. Bin Laden’s corpse is adrift in the Arabian Sea but he is winning.

Two observations. The first is that the Red Hatters have legitimate grounds for grievance. The elites that populate the coasts and inhabit the Capitol appear greatly unwilling to acknowledge that fact. In fact, the response of the Washington and coastal elites appears dedicated to the destruction of any form of political unorthodoxy. The Red Hatters strike me as empiricists. They experience the fact of reduced opportunity, reduced paychecks, a decline in their standard of living. These are the people who staff small business, the fire stations, the police stations, who are shipped overseas to combat the war on error. Those who send them overseas, who seek assistance from the fire stations, the police stations, are ideologues. And the ideologues are disconnected from reality and therefore indifferent to the plight of their fellow citizens. They hold the belief that the physical and financial distress the Red Hatters claim to experience is all in their head. If they removed the hat all would be fine. And what they really require is ostracization. A period of re-education and indoctrination. A few years in the Gulag. Ship them out to the Xinjiang re-education camps. Store them in Gitmo. It’s the American way.

The Ideologues have it all. And they want even more. Their appetites are immense and unyielding. Any form of challenge, appeal, or protest, is to be crushed. Legitimate grievance will be labelled Al Qaeda in America and destroyed. The orange man who appears to have provoked the uprising; he too will be destroyed. None can be allowed to remain standing because the sheer fact of their presence threatens the Ideologues beatific view of a world in which they have absolute mastery. Political mastery, commercial, and military.

The second observation is that history has gone out of fashion. It is an outdated subject well past its best before date. America’s history of rebellion and revolution is outmoded and inapplicable. Not pints, but gallons, hundred of gallons, VLCCs brimming with blood, all of it spilt, and none of it matters. Because this time its different. Those history guys in their funny hats, weird britches, and leggings, they did not have computers. They knew nothing of social media. If any remain alive today, they are dodos, too stupid to know they went extinct years ago. The problem is exacerbated by a Fourth Estate which is of the belief that “goebbels” is a noise made by turkeys, or the description of a rushed and greedy eater. People who do not know history are forever condemned to repeat it. That includes 1929 as well as 1776.

I remain confident of one thing. Joe Biden will unify the country.

The truth of this is found in his first initiatives. His imposition of a $15 minimum wage, his approval of increased immigration, his grant of amnesty to those present in the country illegally, his increase in corporate taxes, and his termination of the XL pipeline, coupled with the termination of drilling on Federal lands, will increase the cost of energy which will act as a regressive tax on those who can least afford it. These initiatives will have negative impact on Blacks, Latinos, hard hats, and Red Hats. All will have a negative impact on jobs and employment.

Biden’s single greatest achievement is the executive order stipulating that those males who self-identify as a woman are to be free to participate in women’s sports. For any impoverished youth seeking a higher education the best means to a scholarship is now to self-attest to female identity and win a post-secondary sports scholarship.

By this initiative alone, Biden will add fifty percent of the population to the group of persons already united against him. He only needs another 15% to 20% and he will have achieved 100% of his inaugural goals. I think he can do it.

There has been some feedback from persons who attended the Save America rally on 1/6. They dispute my estimate of crowd size which was based on the only aerial photograph I was able to locate. I have since found other imagery which confirms a new estimate of close to 500,000. It was standing room only in the ellipse and there was a multitude on the West end of the mall and to the East of the George Washington Monument.

When the British burned the Capitol, they came with a small brigade of 4,500 men. That small force burned the Capitol, the White House, the US Treasury, and the War Department. Then they blew up Fort McNair. That was achieved by 4,500 men.

Does anyone honestly believe there would be much of Washington left standing if a force of 500,000 had been incited to attack?

The current public estimate is of 800 people having entered the Capitol (I believe this to be high. The available imagery does not support such a high number. The F.B.I. presently has case files on 200 persons). If the full size of the crowd was 500,000 then the entrants are 0.0016 of the total participants. The Democrats and the press are gleefully slandering large numbers of people possibly creating grounds for a class action suit. The litigants would have grounds for damages based on loss of employment and loss of reputation.

Second, Incitement requires that people attacking the Capitol, heard what Trump had to say, listened to it as instruction, command, or direction, and acted as they did because of what he said. Press reports show the first attacks commenced at 12:50 and Trump did not complete his remarks until 13:13. The alleged incitement did not occur until the end of his speech. In addition, the significant size of the crowd completely swamped the available cell towers. Many Save America attendees reported no cell phone reception.

Third, incitement requires that those persons allegedly incited are in fact guilty of some crime. Marching to the Capitol is not a crime. Thousands of tourists do it every day. The words: ‘if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore’ is language not found in the criminal statutes. It is used as a legitimate form of grievance and has been used throughout history for exactly that purpose. Trump never incited burglary. He never told anyone “steal Pelosi’s lectern” In fact, it is unclear what exactly it is presumed he incited.

Fourth, there may still exist in this country a legal tradition known as the presumption of innocence. All of those charged by the state for alleged criminal activity are innocent of that criminal charge until such time as the legal process pronounces them guilty. Madame Pelosi and her compatriots in the House have put the cart before the horse. What if every alleged criminal is found innocent? What then is Trump to be found guilty of inciting? An Antifa conspiracy? Was Trump a secret BLM plotter?

Fifth, the evidence suggests that there were multiple independent groups at the Capitol on 1/6. This citizen report by a person with some knowledge of special forces activity claims there were at least four different groups present: 1) Plainclothes militants; 2) Agents-provocateurs; 3) Fake Trump protesters; 4) Disciplined, uniformed column of attackers. This citizen account confirms details found in The Defense of Mr. Trump: there was a relatively minor observed police presence, there was limited, or no, cell phone reception, the majority of the crowd was jovial and friendly, and included people of all ages, and races, including parents with children. There was minimal sense of threat.

Sixth, this new account supports the fact that among the Save America participants there were persons who were not Trump supporters but who sought to appear to be Trump supporters. Some were dressed in militant gear. The exact numbers of these militants, and their pollical affiliation, will not be known until the police complete their investigation (if the police complete an investigation) and have obtained statements. Trump cannot be accused of inciting people who were part of a pre-existing disciplined and militant cadre, persons who conspired to disrupt the Save America rally, and attack the Capitol, weeks before Trump made his remarks. The fact that some of those charged are alleged conspirators suggests the police are aware the violence was pre-meditated well in advance of Trumps remarks at the Save America rally.

Seventh, it is well known that in the summer of 2020 there were riots across the United States and these riots were led by groups known as Antifa and BLM. These riots and violence were described as “peaceful” by both the press and political leaders. In the summer of 2020, a group of violent militants had been permitted to raise havoc. There was no condemnation of this rioting and violence. It was applauded. The Vice-President worked to provide bail for those arrested. These rioters were not Trump supporters. Trump condemned this violent action. If Antifa and BLM agitators were present on 1/6, as it appears that they were, if they conspired to stir up a peaceful protest (as it appears that they did), if they ordered Save America participants forward into the attack (as it is reported that they did), if they sought to prevent peaceful participants from departing the scene (as it is reported that they did), then those individuals are guilty of incitement. If they are found guilty of conspiracy and incitement, then why the impeachment of Trump?

Eighth, by not condemning the violence occurring in the summer of 2020, the political leaders communicated to the citizens that violent protest was acceptable. That to burn buildings was acceptable. To proclaim an independent state was acceptable, That police defunding and disbanding was acceptable. The press, and the political leadership who failed to condemn activity that put lives at risk, condoned unlawful deaths, and caused over 1 billion in property damage. Certain groups known to have led the 2020 violence are reported to be complicit in the events of 1/6. The political leaders and the press, by virtue of their lack of condemnation, gave notice to Antifa and BLM that their actions would be tolerated, that there would be no legal sanctions, that the police would not arrest them, and the state would not prosecute them. They sent entirely the wrong message to the hoodlums. Did sending this inaccurate message lay the foundation for the riots at the Capitol? Was it misleading to claim Antifa to be just an idea? The press reporting during this period, and in prior periods, also gave endorsement to Antifa. Support for Antifa was seen as a means to undermine a sitting President. Does such conduct rise to the level of sedition? Is it possible the wrong president is being impeached? If you can impeach an out of office president, should others also be held to account for their conduct?

I do not have the answer to these questions. But I think the following sums up the situation:

The president-elect’s demeanor and furor certainly were not compatible with his media image as the supposedly angelic uniter of the country. Within 24 hours he had gone from blasting the police authorities as racists to the old reductio ad Hitlerum trope of comparing a few Republican senators to Nazi propogandist Joseph Goebbels, in a hysterical rant that descended into incoherent numerology about the bombing of Dresden. I’m sure Xi Jinping and Ayatollah Khamenei were impressed by his historical recollections. (see American Greatness)

Lastly, if disputing an election result is an impeachable offense what does this say about the Democrats who have disputed election results multiple times in the past? What does it say about the Speaker of the House, the person who bears ultimate responsibility for the security of the Capitol and appears to have been negligent in the discharge of her duties? On 1/6 did she fail to properly execute her responsibilities toward Congress? Is this the reason for her attack on legitimate assembly and grievance? To reassign blame for her own failure? Should Pelosi be subject to impeachment?

Part One of this series: On Democracy

Part Two of this series: What is to be Done?

Part Three of this series: The Defense of Mr. Trump

Democrats’ ‘divide and conquer’ Senate show trial may jeopardize duopoly

Chairman Roger Wicker, R-Miss., right, and Senator Roy Blunt, R-Mo., confer during the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee confirmation hearing for Gina Raimondo, nominee for Secretary of Commerce, in Russell Senate Office Building in Washington, DC on January 26, 2021. / AFP / POOL / Tom Williams

(Ramin Mazaheri (@RaminMazaheri2) is currently covering the US election. He is the chief correspondent in Paris for Press TV and has lived in France since 2009. He has been a daily newspaper reporter in the US, and has reported from Iran, Cuba, Egypt, Tunisia, South Korea, and elsewhere. He is the author of ‘Socialism’s Ignored Success: Iranian Islamic Socialism’ as well as ‘I’ll Ruin Everything You Are: Ending Western Propaganda on Red China,’ which is also available in simplified and traditional Chinese.)

Tuesday, 26 January 2021 10:40 PM  [ Last Update: Tuesday, 26 January 2021 10:44 PM ]

Press TV and The Saker

By Ramin Mazaheri

Much ink could be spilled about the upcoming, and second, Senate impeachment trial of Donald Trump, but that would be a waste of ink – the trial has nothing to do with social justice or patriotism and everything to do with aggravating political divisions for elites’ gain.

We could say it’s just “politics as usual”, but only if: the “True Rate of Unemployment” wasn’t pushing 30%, even per Politico; 2020 didn’t witness the biggest annual rise in the US poverty rate since the 1960s; America didn’t just have its most disputed election in anyone’s memory; there weren’t armed soldiers protecting politicians nationwide, or, according to nearly 40% of the country, there weren’t armed soldiers making sure politicians are illegitimately installed in the White House. In the US right now politics are not usual, whatsoever.

It is incredibly bad journalism the way the US Mainstream Media endlessly overplays the number of Republican defectors against Trump – they get way, way too much press, and of course it’s because they don’t want to admit Trump has any grassroots support (which is not from neo-Nazis). One might have easily imagined that scores of House Republicans were about to vote in favor of Trump’s impeachment, yet only 10 out of 211 did (5%). To give one mainstream example, it was totally misleading of the Los Angeles Times to write that a “bipartisan House majority voted to charge him” after the House’s January 13 vote, and in their lede paragraph, no less, and to even mention the 10 Republicans in their headline. Trump remains the most popular Republican by leaps and bounds – there is no way 17 of 50 Republican senators will end their re-election chances just to appease a Never Trumper movement which only won the general election by a 51-47 margin. Trump’s first Senate trial was a landslide – by supermajority standards – for “not guilty”: 52-48 in favor of Trump.

Given the assurance of acquittal (again) we should ask who benefits from this second trial, and who does not benefit?

Obviously, the enormous mass of everyday Americans will see no benefit from the trial, and I listed just a few of the once-in-a-century reasons why they have more pressing concerns. It is never declared in the US media that the US public has no real appetite for the Senate trial – they need and want the governors of the nation to govern, and right now.

The only way Americans could possibly be convinced that the nation needs to shut down Congress for weeks with a trial whose conclusion is not in doubt is via constant Mainstream Media talking heads shrieking about its necessity, and with the very same fervor that they were shrieking that Russia stole the 2016 election. This is fake-news, too, and it certainly takes airtime away from discussing things like the “True Rate of Unemployment”.

Trump conveys threats to Senate Republicans ahead of his impeachment trial
Former US President Donald Trump has conveyed messages to Senate Republicans, indirectly warning them not to vote in favor of impeachment.

The only people among average Americans who insist that seeing ex-president Trump in the dock is more pressing than resolving the multiple areas of socioeconomic disaster are the most bloodthirsty and rabid of the Never Trumpers. How can one easily switch off four years of demonization? Answer: many simply are psychologically unable to move on, and even though they got what they want – Trump is out of the White House. But while these people – generally upper- and upper-middle class persons who are not very touched by the economic crisis – are loudly obnoxious they are not in actual control of the levers of power.

It’s primarily the nation’s elite-level politicians who really want to make America’s Marianas Trench-depth cultural-political divide even deeper, but not for the reasons one may think.

Many Congressional Democrats are no doubt embarrassed and vengeful over having been turned into cowering, world’s fanciest gas mask-wearing deserters on January 6 – these people control the legislative docket and they want Trump to look afraid now. That would be a self-centered and over-emotional reaction, but why should we ascribe self-sacrifice for the well-being of the nation among the virtues of Congressional Democrats?

The Capitol Hill protest did make many Democrats even more dead-set on getting Trump out: Despite being elected president once and narrowly winning re-election – or rather, precisely because of this electoral success – Democrats want to try and ensure that Trump cannot run in 2024, and a Senate conviction would bar Trump from ever holding public office again. Again, they are deluded by endless MSM spin if they think they have a realistic chance of turning so many Republicans.

Those are two plausible motivations for the Senate trial, but they are not sufficiently convincing.

Which nation will US Democrats try to destroy in the next 4 years?
Joe Biden is about to take the reins of foreign policy, and a bigger creation of the totally anti-internationalist, fake-leftist Democratic establishment could not be found. History shows we need to be prepared, so it’s worthwhile to look at the countries which Biden is likely to try and destroy. After all, Democrat presidents always try to destroy somebody.

How elite Democrats gain from a trial, but America loses (unless a 3rd party truly sprouts)

There seem to be so many tiny groups which gain in the many instances where one reads “but America loses”? Thirty million Americans file for unemployment in 2020 – the S&P 500 gains $14 trillion in value over the same timeframe (up 16% annually). Four hundred thousand Americans die from coronavirus – the first vaccine announced only two days after Joe Biden prematurely declares victory, allowing Biden to change the media focus from his divisive and promise-backtracking early declaration.

By forcing a trial in the Senate Democrats seem to think they can win big by playing “divide and conquer” or even just “divide and divide”.

In the latter scenario Democrats certainly gain by forcing Congressional Republicans to openly divide themselves into pro- and anti-Trump factions, which will necessarily be revealed during the Senate vote on the 2nd impeachment. That vote will be like the 2003 Iraq War vote for Democrats (but only if we falsely imagine today’s Democrats to actually be an anti-war party anymore). If nothing else is gained for elite Democrats – who happily watched households crumble and workers go hungry until after Biden’s election to finally become willing to negotiate a second, paltry household stimulus – a Republican Party distracted by squabbles, and thus open to being bought into defection on certain key votes, is enough reason to waste everyone’s time with a Senate show trial.

The “divide and conquer” scenario is more worrying for national health, because the pro-War Democratic Party does like to conquer human beings: There are incredibly shocking efforts to blacklist, censor and seemingly criminalize Trump supporters. By forcing Trump’s Congressional supporters into the open Democrats will know exactly where to set their stigmatizing sights. I cannot believe that Democrats are going to lead a multi-month, much less multi-year, “Trumperphobia” campaign, but I also couldn’t believe the 2016 Russophobia campaign lasted until even after the 2019 Mueller Report’s exoneration of Russia. Is it possible that Democrats are going to persist in their anti-Trumper cultural pogrom for years rather than honestly discuss America’s decline?

Trump blackmails GOP to avoid conviction in the Senate: Analyst
Trump’s threat of creating his own political party is meant to blackmail the Republican Party to avoid conviction in the Senate, according to Myles Hoenig.

But the main question is: How deep is the American duopoly? Answer: the deepest and oldest in the world.

What if Democrats are actually trying to create a Republican Party division into two parties, with the Trumper faction defecting to a new “Patriot” or “America First” party? That would end the need for Democratic legislative majorities – all they’d need is a plurality (as in every other modern democracy).

Is it possible that Trump will actually undo America’s awful legislative duopoly and bring in a multi-party system? Like most good things Trump has done, this boon would be an unintended consequence of Trump’s actual political agenda.

Are Democrats looking to end the two-party system by giving Trumpers a clear indication that they can either organize, drop out or get persecuted by the US system? Are anti-Trump Republicans daft enough to think that the Republican Party will stay Reaganite forever, even after Reaganites allowed the Great Financial Crisis to mushroom into the Great Recession for so many of their voters?

I would say that – in the end – Democrats are not looking to end the duopoly, in which they are the party which is paid no matter what: they are paid to make sure actual leftist ideas lose, by combining them with fake-leftists idea such as identity politics, and they are paid to make sure leftist gains are truly, truly minimal when they do occasionally have power.

But Democrats are US politicians, after all – they cannot think long-term, and they openly admit they spend 2/3rds of their working hours focused on getting campaign money for their re-election – and so they really don’t know what they are doing, or even care about the medium- and long-term consequences of their actions. The Senate trial of Trump is useless theater, but who knows what these professional actors really feel or if they even feel anything at all? If they feel anything it is for their supporters and “work family”, which can be found on Wall Street and not Main Street.

Just as the January 6th protest was improvised and not the start of a long-term “Occupy Capitol Hill” movement – it had none of the determination and planning of Egypt’s Tahrir Square” (in a nod to this week’s 10th anniversary of that wonderful progressive movement, which was repeatedly sabotaged by Washington and Tel Aviv and their Egyptian compradors). Democrats are now improvising a way to keep inflicting opprobrium, censorship and maybe even criminal convictions on the odious – yet quite popular and taboo-breaking – Trump. Just like in 2016: anything to keep from discussing the real roots of any sort of “drain the Swamp” political feeling and America’s undeniable decline. 

Elite Democrats don’t have Russia to kick around anymore, let’s remember – all they have is Trump and his 74 million supporters. Kick them too much and Democrats might break their own precious duopoly.

(The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of Press TV.)

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The Defense of Mr. Trump

January 21, 2021

By Sushi for the Saker Blog

The header picture shows the rotunda dome of the People’s House as first seen by me in a video captured on 1/6. I had been to Washington years before. I had viewed the Jefferson Memorial through the cherry blossoms, attempted to enter the Washington Monument (the stairs were accessible, but the elevator was broken), explored the Smithsonian, stood in President’s Park and gawked at the White house before following the route of the deplorables to the Capitol grounds.

On 1/6 an insurrectionist, a domestic terrorist, gave me my first glimpse of the Capitol’s interior. He had entered the Capitol by a broken window, creating a running video as he did so, complete with voice commentary. He navigated the confusion of the interior hallways until he arrived in the rotunda. There his feet stopped; his commentary reduced to an incredulous gasp as he encountered the immensity above. I shared his experience of that instant. My heart skipped a beat, I felt an identical rush of breath as the camera lifted towards the dome. We were both in awe of the architecture and ornament, the majesty of this space limned with light, the incomparable human-crafted heaven of the dome. For an instant I was at one with the insurrectionist, both of us transfixed with humility as our minds processed the incredible beauty around and above us.

This is the first item in the defense of Mr. Trump. It is most facile and inconsequential from a legal point of view. But from a human perspective, 1/6 was the first opportunity granted many Americans to gaze upon this space, to behold the wonder of this place of work, the gilded factory of democracy. The Court will not care a whit for these sights. The inadvertent presentation of them to the American people will be deemed irrelevant; the Court will be unimpressed by Mr. Trump’s role in this presentation. All these things are true. But the American people may come to thank Trump for causing their first introduction to the sacred space of this political temple.

I now caution the reader that she or he may wish to cease his / her reading of this essay. What follows is an attempt to set out the truth of 1/6 and the defense of Mr. Trump. It may be a grisly truth, an uncomfortable truth. It may be a warped truth, a biased truth, a sad truth, a revelatory truth. Whatever form of truth you may find it to be, it is as honest and uncompromising as I am able to make it. If you, dear reader, are easily offended, or made uncomfortable by an expression of truth, then you should turn away from these pages. Contemplate your own memorial, your own ceiling, your own cherry blossoms. Or plan a pilgrimage to this shrine to opulence, the great cathedral of capitalism built of stone quarried by slave labor in Maryland.

Generations from now, ordinary citizens will come to gaze on the same sights that froze the insurrectionist and myself. Tour visitors will shuffle like slow penitents through the halls of the Capitol. Arrived in the magnificence of the rotunda, the great dome of mammon, they will be fixed in awe as both the insurrectionist and I were fixed in awe. And, after some minutes of silence, perhaps one of them will inform the tour guide that his great grandmother entered this space when she was 33 years old. That on her first encounter she too was overcome with awe just as I and the insurrectionist domestic terrorist were overcome.

The old man will go on to say she too took a video, but it was confiscated as evidence on her arrest and, when finally released, it became impossible to view because of all the changes in digital formats over so many years. That the only remaining record of her experience were some faded legal papers, a discharge certificate, something else which recorded her jail time. There was a family diary that spoke of the difficulty his grandfather had in the years without her.

And the tour guide will lean in close and thank him. For 1/6 had entered the historical record and was now recognized not as the ending of the great tyranny, but as that moment in time when the great tyranny was first pulled into focus, when it first became visible to the American people. The guide will ask to shake the old man’s hand. And then he will turn to the other tour group members and explain, and they too will thank the old man and speak well of his great grandmother. Others will disclose they too have come because of the stories passed down through the generations, because of the Hollywood movie, having listened to the family history, reviewed faded records, old notebooks, pieces of glass from a broken window collected by a family member as a souvenir of that fateful day.

Outside the Speaker’s Lobby there will be a wall plaque which records that in this place Ashli Babbit was felled by a single gunshot. The weapon was a 9mm automatic and the range was less than 5 feet. The bullet had a muzzle velocity of 1,180 feet per second and was through and through, grazing Ms. Babbit’s spine before it exited the back of her neck, continuing its upward trajectory until it embedded itself in the wall of the Capitol high over the head of all the subsequent visitors to this space.

An insurrectionist had filmed the gunshot, filmed Ms. Babbit’s collapse, filmed the last twitch of her body, filmed the attempted resuscitation, filmed the fruitless attempt to restore life to her body. The bullet remains embedded in the wall, the film remains embedded in the mind of each viewer, embedded in the consciousness of peoples around the globe, embedded in the history of humankind’s struggle for freedom. The original recording is embedded in the National Archives along with the Zapruder film and the Bobby Kennedy film and the Martin Luther King film and the Regan film and the 9/11 film, and all the other films maintained by a once great state attempting to preserve some record of its people and their times of great distress. None of this has any application to the defense of Mr. Trump. But it was during his second term that he ordered the preservation of various records and artefacts and caused the Architect of the Capitol to uncover the original hole in the wall and remove the coverup plaster and paint ordered by Speaker Pelosi. He also ordered the plaque which was affixed to the wall beneath the restored bullet hole.

This is the second defense of Mr. Trump. It will not by accepted by the Court as the law forever looks backwards. The Court imposes the rule of the past upon the present. That is the intent of the law – to create stability, continuity, to avoid the fevers of the mob and the intolerant. To examine the facts of a case with care and honesty and give full respect to the law and its precedent. The era of the quick lynching died out years ago. Or so some people claim. The absence of precedent was ignored on the date the Congress arrogated to itself the right to convict a political opponent who was now a private citizen. This action set a new precedent in American law. This was the start of the “troubles,” so called because it was unsafe to speak of them due to the danger of summary conviction. But historians generally agree that the moment the Congress assumed the power to try political opponents for offenses under the Jefferson Truth and Reconciliation Act marked the onset of the “troubles.”

The third defense of Mr. Trump was ruled to be fake news and therefore inadmissible. When It became known that a Republican representative advocated the rounding up all Trump supporters and confining them in Guantanamo, the Bidenists applauded this suggestion. It conformed with the dictates of Biden’s inauguration speech on the importance of unity of the American people, and American political parties. The initiative hit a small snag when it was realized Gitmo lacked the capacity to accept 78 million Insurrectionist Domestic Terrorists. Then the new government of United Afghanistan offered space in Abu Ghraib on a contract basis. This was followed by similar negotiations with the Government of Independent United Iraq to accept the Insurrectionist Domestic Terrorists as indentured labor to clean the DU – 38 from the sands of Iraq.

This was celebrated by the BPA (Blue People of America, the name adopted by the United political party composed of former Dems and Repubs and inspired by the films of James Cameron) as it solved a variety of problems: First, it addressed the horrible problems inflicted on these two countries by earlier Trumpist adminstrations. It was thought only fair that those who caused the problem should be forced to clean it up and accept the personal risk of DU-38 contamination.

Second, it created lebensraum within the continental United Peoples of All Races Creeds Sexual Identities Belief Systems and Blue Loyalists (this was the later shortened form of the renamed Bidenist united state. The original name had included all the TGLGBHRXUBCY rainbow acronyms and the great diversity of personal pronouns (numbering in the hundreds and too many to fully document here). When the BPA introduced the Free United Bidenist Androgynous Recognition (the FUBAR medal, the highest honor in the new state) it was realized that a medal alone was insufficient recognition for the heroes who had led the peaceful protests which erupted across North America in the summer of 2020. More honor was needed. More recognition. It was quickly realized that once the convicted Insurrectionist Domestic Terrorists entered into indentured service with the Government of Independent United Iraq, they would be forced to abandon their houses and property (following the Bidenist precept that it was inhumane to separate a child from his, her, or its, parents it was decreed that the entire family of any Insurrectionist Domestic Terrorist should be sent to Iraq to atone for the great damage they had caused there. This created surplus housing stock throughout the nation and FUBAR recipients were granted first choice of this housing).

Third, the adoption of the FUBAR housing rewards scheme created vacancies in some of the most desirable homeless encampments across the BPA. All the vacant tents, rusted out recreational vehicles, and cardboard mansions, were now available to accommodate the surge of new immigrants who flooded the BPA in search of the BPA dream. They could not be disappointed. Each immigrant was assigned its own tent, vehicle, or mansion. If they were unsatisfied in any way, they were immediately found in violation of the Insurrectionist Domestic Irredentism Overseas Terrorist Act. Referred to in secret as the IDIOT Act, this was used to convict those persons who refused to accept the united policies of the BPA which were strictly enforced to ensure no further social upheavals such as had occurred during the extremist assault on 1/6. The Cubans objected but were quickly convicted and exported.

Fourth, many of the enlightened regimes in the United Middle East had changed their names so as to repel the B-52s, the big drones, the mini drones, the wasp drones, the F-39s, the F-57 [all 57 varieties were equally lethal and equally invisible] and the Tomahawks regularly conducting freedom of air navigation operations in all the disunited regions. These newly united countries had also suffered great harm from the past decades conduct of prior Trumpist administrations. They too began to contract for Insurrectionist Domestic Terrorists as cheap labor to deploy as servants, grounds keepers, household pets, houseboys, second and third wives, and a great many other utilitarian purposes. Even this demand was insufficient to exhaust the excess supply. This was especially true once the United Muslim Countries of Europe began to apply the lessons learned from the BPA for the purpose of uniting their own populations. So great was the surplus labor that it was decided to employ it to clean the DU-38 from the sands of the Sahara and then to go on and scrub the melting icecaps of Greenland and Antarctica before any residual trace of DU-38 found its way into the sea. Once the icecaps were scrubbed, the next herculean task was the cleansing and reforestation of the Amazon basin. The Bidenists were hailed round the globe as a force for good by peoples of all the major 52 sexual identities and the 643 minor identities.

The Fifth Defense of Mr. Trump was based on the argument that he could not have incited the Insurrectionist Domestic Terrorists as the assault on the Capitol commenced while his supporters were still in President’s Park nodding off to his speech which eventually ended at 13:13 pm. Trump sought to introduce images obtained from Google which showed that it took 33 minutes to walk the 1.6 miles from the site of the Save America rally to the place of insurrection. Google objected to this use of their intellectual property and this evidence was refused.

Trump then sought to introduce press reports which showed the assault on the Capitol commenced while he was still speaking 33 minutes away. He claimed it was not possible for him to incite an activity that was 1.6 miles distant and beyond earshot of him. The Articles of Impeachment made specific reference at Page 4, Lines 7 and 8, to a phrase uttered at the end of his speech; by then the assault had been underway for over 20 minutes and therefore could not have been incited by Trump. This evidence was dismissed as conjectural.

Trump then attempted to introduce a series of screen captures from a blog. These described the day’s events from a supporter’s perspective and were contained on a series of slides. Unfortunately for Trump, his manacles made it difficult to operate the projector (Trump had been refused all counsel because of his of political views. Giuliani was in a holding cell three down from Trump and the guards continually played the excretable songs from the inauguration to prevent the two either sleeping or communicating).

Senator McConnell then asked Trump if he was trying to make a mockery of the proceedings. Trump said no, he was making a beautiful defense, really beautiful, and then claimed all the slides had been in perfect order before he was placed on suicide watch (the attending Doctors were unable to determine if the cause was Brooks, Lopez, or Gaga. Trump claimed it was all gaga and the physicians ordered the music to be dialed down to 11). Senator Harris then asked Trump if he thought this was a Kangaroo court. Trump gave a puzzled look and before he could answer Senator Saunders rose on a point of order and informed the assembly that Kangaroos enjoy protected legal status and that was not the case in this proceeding. After much discussion it was decided it would be unwise to accord marsupial rights, or any rights at all, to the defendant. The Chief Justice appeared to nod his head in approval. Others claimed he was just having a nap.

Trump drew attention to the fact the first of his supporters to reach the Capitol found the assault well underway. He presented video which showed a man smashing a Capitol window while the surrounding black clad cloud chanted “Antifa, Antifa, Antifa” in an endless cycle. Then a red hatted Trump supporter entered the frame from the left and pulled down the man smashing the window before he was himself battered down by the black clad mob. Trump asserted there were two groups at the Capitol on 1/6. The first, early group, did not wear red hats and commenced the assault. This crowd of organized active assault teams prevented the later, second group, of Save America attendees from immediately getting close to the Capitol. Most did not climb to the west terrace but remained on the expanse of lawn before the Mall.

Trump also claimed there was emerging evidence of preplanning and organization. Trump stated that over the past four years the chief complaint against him has been that lacked any competence in these two areas. Press reports disclosed the F.B.I. had advanced knowledge of the attacks. Trump asserted that throughout his time in office, the F.B.I. leaked intelligence to the press but rarely informed him. Trump was forced to rely on the fake news to find out what was happening in his administration. The fake news contained multiple accounts by government office holders proudly stating they were secretly doing all they could to undermine government policy and direction. Some of these proud persons were alleged to be senior officers of the F.B.I. and other senior department heads.

When Trump paused, the Chief Justice asked him if the defense wanted to rest and Trump replied “No, please. No rest. I would rather stay here. I don’t want to face the music.”

“In that case may I examine you?” asked the Chief Justice.

“You can do anything if it stops the music.” Trump looked fearfully around the chamber as if searching for hidden loudspeakers.

“As I understand your theory of events, your defense, if you want to call it that, rests on two key assertions. The first is that you were down in President’s Park putting your followers into a deep hypnotic sleep until 13:13 pm. Is that correct.?

“It wasn’t just them. I had to go back to the house for a beautiful nap.”

“I understand. While your followers snoozed in the Park, 30 minutes from the Capitol, at approximately 12:50 pm, group of dark, radically black clad leftist insurgents were initiating a concerted pre-planned Domestic Terrorist attack on the Capitol. And it is therefore impossible for these insurgents to have been incited by the remarks cited in the Articles of Impeachment, which remarks came toward the end of your speech near to 13:13 pm.. In fact, the attack had commenced some 20 minutes before,” the Chief Justice placed great emphasis on the word before, “you uttered the alleged words of incitement. That is your second key assertion. Am I correct?”

“You said it beautifully. Completely beautiful. Very, very nice. Thank you. All my supporters thank you for making that clear.”

The tone of the Chief Justice’s voice had changed. It was deeper, more resonant, a sound of concern. “Mr. Trump, do you possess any knowledge of these leftist radical extremists having the support of agencies affiliated with either of the Chinese or Russian states?”

“Oh, your honor.” Trump sounded greatly relieved as the true culprits hove into view. “You have it beautifully. It is bad. Very bad. Much worse. It affects my supporters, everyone.”

The Chief Justice had by now snapped fully awake and fixed Trump with an intense stare. “And who do you think was the dark force behind this attack on our cherished democratic freedoms?”

“Pelosi. She controls everything up here. None of this could have taken place unless she was co-ordinating it. She is a master of the dark arts. The only other person is Brennan. He does this stuff all the time. He even does it on air. Comey too. They write books about it! Then there are the love bird weasels and . . .”

The Chief Justice immediately smashed his gavel down with a sound like a thunderclap, drowning out the loud murmurs racing around the chamber. “At this moment we are adjourned for an early lunch of two hours duration. This hearing will resume at noon o’clock.”

Everyone filed out of the Chamber. Trump was led away in his manacles and such an overly large orange jumpsuit it looked like a misappropriated circus costume. Everyone forgot about the slide projector which had been startled into life by the resounding thwack of the gavel. The projector appeared to be stuck, or being operated by some occult force. It flashed an image on screen for 3 short repetitions, then flashed up the same image for three long repetitions, immediately followed by a further three short repetitions before it allowed five seconds of darkness and then repeated the cycle. As it continued flashing, the projector seemed to speed up, continually flashing the identical sequence but at ever more urgent intervals. The image itself slowly dissolved. Before the hearing reconvened, it had almost completely melted away.

Part One of this series: On Democracy

Part Two of this series: What is to be Done?

The Impeachment Hearing will be reconvened in Part Four

The Atlantic: The Secret Service Is Bracing for Dangerous Times “ذي أتلانتيك”: جهاز الأمن الرئاسي يستعد لأوقات خطيرة

Source

The Secret Service Is Bracing for Dangerous Times

Any chance of a normal security environment for the president-elect evaporated during the Capitol siege.

MARC AMBINDER

JANUARY 19, 2021

MARK MAKELA / GETTY

For the first time in modern American history, the possibility of a peaceful transfer of power is in doubt. Extremists swarmed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, and at least some of them intended to hunt down and kill elected officials. During their riot, they left bloodstains on the inauguration grandstands.

Now, in the final hours of the Trump presidency, security forces have turned Washington, D.C., into a fortified encampment in an attempt to prevent further violence. The transformation of the U.S. Capitol into a Baghdad-style Green Zone is unlike anything Washington has seen since 9/11. Joe Biden, already physically isolated by COVID-19, will be further distanced from the American people, who have traditionally crowded onto the National Mall by the hundreds of thousands to witness a presidential swearing-in.

The Secret Service is facing a challenge the likes of which it has never experienced.

More than 130 staffers tested positive for COVID-19 after agents on its protective details were forced to attend Trump rallies and put themselves in the splash zone of a highly infectious president. During the Capitol siege, Secret Service officers rushed Pence—the target of would-be assassins, according to prosecutors—to his office near the Senate floor, just steps ahead of the mob. Now the service must adjust to a world where white-supremacist or restorationist violence is expected, where mobs can suddenly breach perimeters, where drone technology is cheap and therefore easily available, and where members of the military and law enforcement are potential insider threats.

Any possibility of normalcy evaporated during the Capitol siege. “That went out the window, based on the current threat environment,” Chuck Marino, a former Secret Service supervisory special agent who retired in 2015, told me. “The domestic threat, violent extremism, and what we saw on [January 6]—you’re seeing, in this case, the Secret Service adapt.” he said. The agency could do more to make sure that extremism in its ranks is detected and neutralized, six former members of presidential protective details told me. (The Secret Service did not respond to a request for comment.)

One of the things the Secret Service is adapting to is the previously unimaginable fact that the president of the United States is the one inciting political violence. “You do need to take the president into the threat environment,” Marino said.  “It’s not normal that we need to take the language of a commander in chief into account in the threat assessment. But here you needed to.”

On the day insurgents attacked the Capitol, Donald J. Mihalek, a former Secret Service agent and the executive director of the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, worried about his brother, Daniel, assigned to guard one of the doors to the complex for the Capitol Police. After learning that Daniel was safe, he wrote on LinkedIn that “a reckoning [for] these radical extremist[s] must occur.”

Read: Inside the Secret Service

This is a touchy subject. The Secret Service, which guards foreign dictators with the same vigilance as it guards U.S. presidents, maintains that its nonpolitical stance is a rigorously enforced foundational value. “Violence is violence,” Stephen P. Monteiro, a member of President Bill Clinton’s detail, told me. “There is violence on the left and violence on the right. We don’t differentiate between the origins of violence.”

Some violent movements tend to differentiate themselves, as some are more salient than others: The U.S. does not now face a threat from, for example, anarchists (a radical named Leon Czolgosz killed President William McKinley in 1901) or Puerto Rican nationalists (several launched an assault on President Harry Truman in 1950).  

Getting into the service requires intensive panel interviews and a polygraph. Usually, agents are reexamined for character deficiencies or suspect affiliations once every five to seven years. But radicalization, especially online, can happen far more quickly than that. A “continuous evaluation process” is required, J. J. Hensley, who worked in the agency’s personnel-and-recruitment and protective-intelligence divisions, told me. “A lot can happen in five years,” he said. Social-media posts have already landed at least one officer in the uniformed division under investigation since the siege; according to The Washington Post, the officer urged “patriots” to go on the “offense” to secure victory for Donald Trump.

Protective advance trips need to change, too. The Hollywood version of Secret Service advance work shows agents looking at a watchlist and keeping tabs on people known to have threatened a protectee. In real life, Hensley said, preparing a city for a protectee’s visit is far more challenging—and will become even harder in the future. “You go there maybe a week … ahead of the president or vice president. Now you’re going to be looking at social media and seeing what’s out there on open source. You have to rely on local counterparts because maybe they may have a lot more information than you do just coming off the plane, especially coming out of Washington, D.C., and you land in Joplin, Missouri—you’re not going to know everything about it.”

“They still have the old threats, and now they have the new threats: We’re worried about everything from a switchblade to a drone, which could have explosives on it.”

Vic Erevia was the special agent in charge of President Barack Obama’s detail from 2011 through 2013. He oversaw the hundreds of people involved in the president’s security operation during his second inauguration and white-knuckle foreign trips to Indonesia, Afghanistan, Myanmar, and Israel and the West Bank. Erevia was also in charge of the detail when more than a dozen agents were sent home because they’d patronized prostitutes in Cartagena, Colombia. None was a member of the presidential protective detail itself, and Obama’s personal security was never compromised, but that was small comfort. The service had deeply embarrassed the president.

I asked Erevia about how the agency was responding to COVID-19, Trump, and the insurrection.

“The culture is rigidly hierarchical and unforgiving, with every aspect of an agent’s performance scrutinized with no margin for error,” he said. “I worry, frankly … how the last four years may have impacted that culture. My hope is that that has not changed. This current period feels distinctly more dangerous than at any time during my lifetime. I believe the challenges it presents will persist. Travel will bring new tests for the protective details as they deal with emboldened actors armed to the teeth. You can’t launch the National Guard every time the president goes somewhere, and this will result in greater demands on local partners.”  

A security plan, Erevia and several other agents told me, is only as strong as its outermost perimeter. And although local police have been sufficient in the past, they might not be today. “You didn’t have the emotional content in the environment that you do now,”  Erevia said.  

Read: The Secret Service Disaster: A Timeline

“Distance is your friend in security,” he said, meaning it’s best to stay far away from threats. “One of the most immediate things I can envision happening is I can see the travel of the president potentially limited more than what we’ve seen in the past.”

Monteiro predicted a change in the “push and pull” balance between presidential staffers on the one side, who want to make sure the president sees and touches—and is seen seeing and touching—as many people as possible and the service on the other side, which would envelop the president in an armored-glass box if it could. That balance, he said, will likely tip in favor of caution. “Now I don’t think you’re going to see the staff even want to do any of this … They’ve seen our political leaders accosted. So I think it’s going to be a natural occurrence where we’re going to be pulling back from the type of exposure [to risk] that we’ve had in this country.”

Monteiro was on Clinton’s detail in 1996, when Lew Merletti, then the special agent in charge, got into a shouting match with the president about rerouting a motorcade in Manila, in the Philippines, according to author Lewis Gormley. The National Security Agency’s embassy-based surveillance had picked up chatter about a bomb plot, but Clinton did not want to change his plans. Merletti won the argument and the day: Police later found explosives underneath a bridge on the original motorcade route. In 2005, President George W. Bush was nearly killed in Tbilisi, Georgia, because he insisted on attending an event where the outer perimeter had been breached. A would-be assassin smuggled a grenade into the crowd and threw it at the platform Bush was on. It landed close enough to potentially kill the president, but it did not detonate.

Trust between Biden and the agents protecting him should be easy to come by. His detail leaders are familiar to him, according to a report in The Washington Post, and the new special agent in charge, David Cho, is highly regarded in the Secret Service. Former agents believe that the current director, James Murray, will retire once the transfer of power is complete. The leading candidate to replace him is Leonza “Leon” Newsome III, who was Biden’s detail chief during the Obama administration.

During “National Special Security Events” such as inaugurations and State of the Union addresses, the Secret Service sets up a multi-agency command center in downtown Washington. I visited the MACC during an international nuclear-security summit when Obama was president. In a room I could not access, detailees from the CIA, the FBI, and the NSA processed intelligence streams in real time. I visited the tactical-operations center and looked at a map showing the location of dozens of armed tactical teams staged around the city. The smallest incident—such as when a lapel pin identifying a security agent goes missing — is cause for alarm and analysis.

During peacetime, there are numerous command centers in Washington—for the Secret Service, the FBI, the Capitol Police, and the Metropolitan Police Department. But the federal law-enforcement forces are largely siloed. Commanders and senior officers from different agencies can talk with one another, but the flow of intelligence and situational awareness is not constant. Erevia suggests that a single command center, operating 24/7, with a mission of preventing and responding to events across the region, might solve some of the communication problems that hampered the response to the Capitol siege. “The only way you’re able to really manage this stuff is if everybody’s on the same sheet of music,” he told me, “and that really only happens when everyone is in the same place.”

The MACC offers a blueprint for how this could work. However, it is temporary, and once an event is over, it becomes a regular conference room again. After the inauguration ceremony tomorrow, federal law enforcement will return to its traditional posture: Individual agencies will vet information they receive and then determine whether it should be distributed, and to whom. “There are dozens of law-enforcement agencies in and around the immediate vicinity of the capital region. We have to be sure they all have the same intelligence and standing agreements of mutual support that can be activated with a single phone call,” Erevia said.

The White House complex has been fortified considerably since the 9/11 attacks. An integrated air-defense system tracks airborne threats, and the Secret Service’s Special Operations Division is experimenting  with a variety of anti-drone lasers. As of 2019, multiple batteries were set up around the area, one of which was armed with Stinger missiles. During Obama’s presidency, the General Services Administration began work on a new shelter-in-place facility close to the West Wing. Its existence is a barely concealed secret, but at a cost of more than $350 million, it is designed to withstand a lengthy siege and accommodate the president, his family, other protectees, and numerous senior White House officials. Counterassault teams carry a variety of weapons, including a device that can shoot multiple electrified darts at would-be attackers simultaneously. If a mob tried to vault over the improved White House fence— a response to intrusions in 2014—it would be met by numerous tactical units, vicious Belgian Malinois K9s, snipers with permission to kill, and, within a short while, SWAT teams from the FBI and other police agencies. The service completed a costly radio upgrade, allowing agents and officers to be in instant and secure communication with other agencies in the region. Motorcade vehicles have been up-armored, and the electronic countermeasure trucks that trail the presidential limousine are soon to be upgraded with technology that creates a virtual fence around presidential trip sites.

The agents I spoke with insist with pride, and some history to back them up, that if the Secret Service had been in charge at the Capitol on January 6, the insurrection would have been stopped much more quickly.  The verification of the Electoral College vote should have been a National Special Security Event, Marino told me.

After the inauguration, the fortress of Washington will open up again, and the National Guard troops who have descended on the city will return to their home states. Biden has not yet said when or where he will travel next.MARC AMBINDER is a senior fellow at the USC Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership and Policy.

“ذي أتلانتيك”: جهاز الأمن الرئاسي يستعد لأوقات خطيرة

الكاتب: مارك أمبيندر

المصدر: ذي أتلانتيك

20 كانون الثاني 15:58

تبخرت كل فرصة لبيئة أمنية عادية للرئيس المنتخب بعد حصار الكابيتول ووجود تهديدات من داخل أجهزة الأمن.

كتب مارك أمبيندر مقالة في مجلة “ذي أتلانتيك” الأميركية تناول فيها التهديدات الأمنية للرئيس الأميركي جو بايدن ونائبته وأعضاء الكونغرس بعد هجوم المتطرفين اليمينيين على مبنى الكونغرس في 6 كانون الثاني / يناير الجاري.

وقال الكاتب: لأول مرة في التاريخ الأميركي الحديث، أصبحت إمكانية الانتقال السلمي للسلطة موضع شك، بعدما اجتاح المتطرفون مبنى الكونغرس الأميركي في 6 كانون الثاني / يناير، وكان البعض منهم على الأقل يعتزم تعقب وقتل المسؤولين المنتخبين. وخلال أعمال الشغب، تركوا بقع الدماء على منصات التنصيب.

الآن، في الساعات الأخيرة من ولاية الرئيس دونالد ترامب، حولت قوات الأمن واشنطن العاصمة إلى معسكر محصن في محاولة لمنع المزيد من العنف. إن تحول مبنى الكابيتول إلى منطقة خضراء، أي معزولة أمنياً، على غرار المنطقة الخضراء في بغداد لا يشبه أي شيء شهدته واشنطن منذ هجمات 11 أيلول / سبتمبر 2001. سيكون جو بايدن، المعزول جسدياً بالفعل بسبب وباء كورونا، بعيداً عن الشعب الأميركي، الذي احتشد تقليديًا بمئات الآلاف في النصب التذكاري ليشهدوا أداء اليمين الرئاسي.

تواجه الخدمة السرية تحدياً لم تشهده من قبل. فقد ثبتت إصابة أكثر من 130 موظفاً بـفيروس “كوفيد -19” بعد أن أُجبر العملاء على تفاصيل الحماية الخاصة به على حضور تجمعات ترامب ووضع أنفسهم في المقدمة لرئيس شديد العدوى. أثناء حصار الكابيتول، هرع ضباط الخدمة السرية لنائب الرئيس مايك بنس الذي كان هدفاً للقتلة المحتملين، وفقًا للمدعين – إلى مكتبه بالقرب من طابق مجلس الشيوخ، على بعد خطوات فقط من الغوغاء. الآن يجب أن تتكيف الخدمة مع عالم يُتوقع فيه عنف التفوق الأبيض، حيث يمكن للغوغاء فجأة اختراق المحيط، حيث تكون تكنولوجيا الطائرات بدون طيار رخيصة وبالتالي متاحة بسهولة، وحيث يشكل بعض أفراد الجيش وقوات إنفاذ القانون تهديدات محتملة من الداخل.

لقد تبخرت أي إمكانية لعودة الحياة الطبيعية خلال حصار الكابيتول. قال تشاك مارينو، العميل الخاص المشرف السابق في الخدمة السرية والذي تقاعد في عام 2015، “بناءً على بيئة التهديد الحالية، فإن التهديد الداخلي، والتطرف العنيف، وما رأيناه في [6 كانون الثاني / يناير] – في هذه الحالة، جهاز الخدمة السرية يتكيف”. 

ويمكن للوكالة أن تفعل المزيد للتأكد من الكشف عن التطرف في صفوفها وتحييده، كما أخبر الكاتب ستة أعضاء سابقين في الحماية الرئاسية. (لم ترد الخدمة السرية على طلب للتعليق للمجلة).

أحد الأشياء التي تتكيف معها الخدمة السرية هي الحقيقة التي لم يكن من الممكن تصورها سابقاً وهي أن رئيس الولايات المتحدة هو الشخص الذي يحرّض على العنف السياسي. قال مارينو: “أنت بحاجة إلى أخذ الرئيس إلى بيئة التهديد. ليس من الطبيعي أن نحتاج إلى أخذ لغة القائد الأعلى في الاعتبار في تقييم التهديد. ولكن هنا تحتاج إلى ذلك”.

في اليوم الذي هاجم فيه المتمردون مبنى الكابيتول، كان دونالد جيه ميهالك، وهو عميل سابق في الخدمة السرية والمدير التنفيذي لجمعية ضباط إنفاذ القانون الفيدرالية، قلقاً بشأن شقيقه، دانيال، المكلف بحراسة أحد أبواب مجمع مبنى الكابيتول. بعد أن علم أن دانيال كان آمناً، كتب على موقع “لينكد إن” LinkedIn أنه “يجب أن يحساب [هؤلاء] المتطرفون”.

هذا موضوع حساس. تؤكد الخدمة السرية، التي تحرس رؤساء الولايات المتحدة، أن موقفها غير السياسي يمثل قيمة تأسيسية مطبقة بصرامة. وقال ستيفن ب. مونتيرو، أحد أعضاء حماية الرئيس السابق بيل كلينتون: “العنف هو عنف. هناك عنف على اليسار وعنف على اليمين. نحن لا نفرق بين أصول العنف”.

تميل بعض الحركات العنيفة إلى تمييز نفسها، لأن بعضها أكثر بروزاً من البعض الآخر: لا تواجه الولايات المتحدة الآن تهديداً، على سبيل المثال، من الفوضويين (متطرف يدعى ليون كولغوش قتل الرئيس ويليام ماكينلي في عام 1901) أو القوميين البورتوريكيين (هاجم العديد منهم الرئيس هاري ترومان عام 1950).

يتطلب الدخول في الخدمة السرية مقابلات مكثفة مع لجنة واختبار كشف الكذب. عادة، يتم إعادة فحص العملاء بحثاً عن أوجه قصور في الشخصية أو الانتماءات المشبوهة مرة كل خمس إلى سبع سنوات. لكن التطرف، وخاصة عبر الإنترنت، يمكن أن يحدث بسرعة أكبر من ذلك بكثير. 

قال جيه جيه هينسلي، الذي عمل في قسم الأفراد والتجنيد والاستخبارات الوقائية، إن “عملية التقييم المستمر” مطلوبة. وأوضح: “يمكن أن يحدث الكثير في غضون خمس سنوات”. 

ونشرت منشورات على مواقع التواصل الاجتماعي بالفعل أظهرت ضابطاً واحداً على الأقل في الفرقة النظامية قيد التحقيق؛ وفقاً لصحيفة “واشنطن بوست”، إذ حض الضابط المشاغبين المتطرفين على الاستمرار في “الهجوم” على الكونغرس لضمان انتصار دونالد ترامب.

يجب تغيير الرحلات الوقائية المسبقة أيضاً. قال هينسلي إنه في الحياة الواقعية، يعد تحضير مدينة لزيارة أحد الرؤساء أمراً أكثر صعوبة وسيصبح أكثر صعوبة في المستقبل. “تذهب إلى هناك ربما أسبوع … قبل الرئيس أو نائب الرئيس. أنت الآن بصدد إلقاء نظرة على وسائل التواصل الاجتماعي ورؤية ما هو موجود على المصدر المفتوح. عليك الاعتماد على النظراء المحليين لأنه ربما يكون لديهم الكثير من المعلومات أكثر مما تفعله بمجرد نزولك من الطائرة، خاصة عند الخروج من واشنطن العاصمة، وهبطت في جوبلين، ميسوري – لن تعرف كل شيء عن ذلك”. وأضاف: “لا تزال لديهم التهديدات القديمة، والآن لديهم التهديدات الجديدة: نحن قلقون بشأن كل شيء من صاعق كهربائي إلى طائرة بدون طيار، والتي يمكن أن تحتوي على متفجرات”.

كان فيك إريفيا، العميل الخاص المسؤول عن حماية الرئيس باراك أوباما من عام 2011 حتى عام 2013. وقد أشرف على مئات الأشخاص المشاركين في العملية الأمنية للرئيس خلال حفل تنصيبه الثاني ورحلاته الخارجية إلى إندونيسيا وأفغانستان وميانمار و”إسرائيل”. كان إيريفيا كذلك مسؤولاً عن الحماية عندما تم إرسال أكثر من عشرة عملاء إلى بلادهم لأنهم كانوا يترددون على العاهرات في كارتاخينا، كولومبيا. لم يكن أي منهم عضواً في جهاز الحماية الرئاسي نفسه، ولم يتم المساس بأمن أوباما الشخصي أبداً، لكن ذلك كان بمثابة راحة صغيرة، وقد أحرجوا الرئيس بشدة.

وعن كيفية استجابة الوكالة لـلوباء وترامب والتمرد، قال إريفيا: “إن الثقافة هرمية بشكل صارم ولا ترحم، مع فحص كل جانب من جوانب أداء العميل من دون هامش للخطأ. بصراحة أشعر بالقلق … كيف أثّرت السنوات الأربع الماضية على تلك الثقافة. آمل أن هذا لم يتغير. تبدو هذه الفترة الحالية أكثر خطورة بشكل واضح من أي وقت خلال حياتي. أعتقد أن التحديات التي تطرحها ستستمر. سيجري اختبارات جديدة لمفرزة الحماية.. لا يمكنك إطلاق الحرس الوطني في كل مرة يذهب فيها الرئيس إلى مكان ما، وهذا سيؤدي إلى مطالب أكبر من الشركاء المحليين”.

أخبر إريفيا وعدد من العملاء الآخرين الكاتب أن الشرطة المحلية كانت كافية في الماضي، لكنها قد لا تكون كذلك اليوم. وقال: “لم يكن لديك المحتوى العاطفي في البيئة كما هو الحال الآن. المسافة صديقك في الأمن”، مما يعني أنه من الأفضل الابتعاد عن التهديدات. وأضاف: “أحد الأشياء الأكثر إلحاحاً التي يمكنني تصور حدوثها هو أنني أرى أن سفر الرئيس من المحتمل أن يكون محدوداً أكثر مما رأيناه في الماضي”.

كان مونتيرو على علم بمفرزة حماية كلينتون في عام 1996، عندما دخل لو ميرليتي، العميل الخاص المسؤول آنذاك، في صراخ مع الرئيس حول تغيير مسار موكب في مانيلا بالفلبين، وفقاً للمؤلف لويس جورملي. التقطت أجهزة المراقبة التابعة لوكالة الأمن القومي في السفارة الأحاديث حول مؤامرة تفجير، لكن كلينتون لم يرغب في تغيير خططه. فاز ميرليتي بالجدل وعثرت الشرطة في وقت لاحق على متفجرات تحت جسر على طريق موكب السيارات الأصلي. 

في عام 2005، كاد الرئيس جورج دبليو بوش أن يُقتل في تبليسي، جورجيا، لأنه أصر على حضور حدث تم فيه اختراق المحيط الخارجي. قام قاتل محتمل بتهريب قنبلة يدوية إلى الحشد وألقى بها على المنصة التي كان بوش عليها. لقد هبطت على مقربة كافية لقتل الرئيس، لكنها لم تنفجر.

يجب أن يكون من السهل الحصول على الثقة بين بايدن والعملاء الذين يقومون بحمايته. فقادة الحماية الخاصة به مألوفون له، وفقاً لتقرير نشر في صحيفة “واشنطن بوست”، ويحظى العميل الخاص الجديد المسؤول، ديفيد تشو، بتقدير كبير في الخدمة السرية. 

ويعتقد العملاء السابقون أن المسؤول الأمني الحالي، جيمس موراي، سيتقاعد بمجرد اكتمال نقل السلطة، والمرشح الرئيسي ليحل محله هو ليونزا “ليون” نيوسوم الثالث، الذي كان رئيس حماية بايدن خلال إدارة أوباما.

وخلال “الأحداث الأمنية الوطنية الخاصة” مثل خطابات حالة الاتحاد، تنشئ الخدمة السرية مركز قيادة متعدد الوكالات في وسط مدينة واشنطن. وقد زار الكاتب مركز تنسيق مكافحة غسل الأموال خلال قمة دولية للأمن النووي عندما كان أوباما رئيساً. في غرفة خاصة، عالج أفراد من وكالة الاستخبارات المركزية ومكتب التحقيقات الفيدرالي ووكالة الأمن القومي تدفقات استخباراتية في الوقت الفعلي. كما زار الكاتب مركز العمليات التكتيكية وأطلع على خريطة توضح مواقع العشرات من الفرق التكتيكية المسلحة المنتشرة حول المدينة. فأصغر حادثة – على سبيل المثال عندما يختفي دبوس السترة الذي يحدد عميل الأمن – هي سبب للقلق والتحليل.

خلال أوقات السلم، هناك العديد من مراكز القيادة في واشنطن: الخدمة السرية، ومكتب التحقيقات الفيدرالي، وشرطة الكابيتول، وإدارة شرطة العاصمة. لكن قوات إنفاذ القانون الفيدرالية معزولة إلى حد كبير. يمكن للقادة وكبار الضباط من مختلف الأجهزة التحدث مع بعضهم البعض، لكن تدفق المعلومات الاستخبارية والوعي بالموقف ليس ثابتاً. يقترح إيريفيا أن إنشاء مركز قيادة واحد، يعمل على مدار الساعة طوال أيام الأسبوع، مع مهمة منع الأحداث والاستجابة لها في جميع أنحاء المنطقة، قد يحل بعض مشكلات الاتصال التي أعاقت الاستجابة لحصار الكابيتول. وقال للكاتب: “الطريقة الوحيدة التي يمكنك من خلالها إدارة هذه الأشياء حقاً هي إذا كان الجميع على نفس النوتة الموسيقية، وهذا يحدث حقاً فقط عندما يكون الجميع في نفس المكان”.

ترجمة بتصرف: هيثم مزاحم

Pompeo’s Last Stand

Ph.D., Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest.

Source

Philip Giraldi

January 21, 2021

The neocons and the media demand tough talk and even tougher action from their candidate and Pompeo is already running hard to oblige them.

© Photo: REUTERS/POOL New

It is finally over. Joe Biden has been inaugurated President of the United States while his predecessor Donald Trump has retired to Florida. Trump intends to remain the driving force in the Republican Party but there are many in the GOP who would like to see him gone completely and the national media is obliging by depriving him of a “voice,” cutting him off from his preferred social media. The Democratic Party’s top “megadonor” Israeli film producer Haim Saban goes one step farther, recommending that all the media stop reporting on Trump and his activities, thereby taking away his platform and making him disappear politically speaking.

Prior to the inauguration, which proceeded protected by an unprecedented display of military and police, there had been so much going on in and around Washington that other serious developments worldwide were not getting the attention that they merited. President Donald Trump was impeached for “high crimes and misdemeanors” relating to his alleged encouragement of the January 6^th rioting at the U.S. Capitol building, but to my mind the recent travels and meetings involving Secretary of State Mike Pompeo could turn out to be far more damaging to America’s long-term interests. One wonders why Pompeo was engaging in frenetic activity with the Administration that he represented being about to vanish in a few days, but the answer is perhaps obvious. Trump and Pompeo want to lay a foreign policy mine field for the Joe Biden White House, locking the new administration into policies that will prove difficult to untangle.

Pompeo has been most active in four areas: Iran, China, Cuba and Yemen. Iran, as has often been the case with the Trump Israeli-driven policy in the Middle East, has been the principal focus. The Trump Administration has consistently responded to Israeli and also Saudi perceptions of the threat from Iran to the entire region, even though those claims were generally based on self-interests and deliberately falsified intelligence. Washington has withdrawn from the nuclear agreement with Iran signed in 2015 and has been waging incrementally expanded economic warfare against the Iranians for the past three years. It has collaborated with the Israelis on assassinations and air attacks on primarily civilian targets in Syria and Lebanon.

During Trump’s last two weeks in power there was much talk about the possibility of a U.S. attack on Iran. The Israeli military was on alert and there was a surge in attacks on Syria, frequently using Lebanese airspace. One incident in particular on January 6^th used U.S. intelligence to enable multiple bombing attacks on targets inside Syria, killing 57. Pompeo reportedly dined publicly in a well-known Washington restaurant Café Milano on the day after the carnage to discuss the “success” with Israel’s head of Mossad Yossi Cohen.

The public meeting with Cohen was a sign from the Trump Administration that the U.S. supports Israel’s bombing campaign against claimed Iranian targets in Syria. If Biden wishes to change that, he will have to do so publicly, earning the ire of Israel’s friends in the Democratic Party and media. And more was to come. Last Tuesday, Pompeo gave a speech in which he accused al-Qaeda and the Iranian government of being “partners in terror” , constituting an “axis” of terrorism. He further claimed that al-Qaeda has a “new home base” and a “new operational headquarters” built for it in Tehran, an assertion that ran counter to the intelligence collected by U.S. counterterrorism officials, who said there was no evidence to support such a claim. In fact, the Intelligence Community has long asserted that al-Qaeda is fundamentally hostile to Shi’ite Iran and that the Iranians return the favor. In other words, Pompeo is either lying or making something up that will be an impediment if Biden tries to improve relations with Tehran. Pompeo also went so far as to declare that Iran is the “new Afghanistan” for al-Qaeda, which is meant to imply that Iran is now its home base and safe haven. There is also no evidence to support that claim.

The Trump Administration has also included Cuba on the list of state sponsors of terrorism, based on nothing whatsoever, apparently as something of a throw away item to shore up support from the rabid Cuban exile community in Florida. So too the decision to designate the Houthis of Yemen as terrorists to give a parting gift to the Saudis and the UAE. Yemen is suffering from famine and the terror designation will have a drastic impact on imports of food and medicine, condemning many Yemenis to death. Daniel Larison opines that the “Houthi designation is by far the worst thing that Pompeo has done as Secretary of State, because if it is not quickly reversed it will lead directly to the deaths of tens and possibly even hundreds of thousands of people. It takes severe cruelty to look at a war-torn, famine-stricken country that depends heavily on outside aid and imports and then choose to suffocate the survivors with additional economic warfare. That is what Pompeo has done, we shouldn’t forget that.”

And, incidentally, the United States gains absolutely nothing from killing thousands of people in Yemen, but that is not all. Pompeo has also opened the door to new problems with China. His easing of the longstanding restrictions on contacts between American diplomats and Taiwanese has been described by the State Department as a strong gesture of support for the democratic government and “ally” in Taipei. It overturns more than forty years of “strategic ambiguity” which has prevailed since Richard Nixon traveled to Beijing and recognized the communist People’s Republic of China as China’s only legitimate government, to include over Taiwan by implication. The so-called “One China” principle states that Taiwan and China are part of the same China with the U.S. recognizing, though not necessarily endorsing, that the PRC has a historic claim to sovereignty over Taiwan.

Apart from locking in policies that Biden will find hard to shift, Pompeo also has a secondary motive. It is widely believed that he would like to run for president in 2024. He will need the support of the Israelis and their powerful domestic lobby as well as the Cubans in Florida and it does not hurt to show him playing hardball in the Middle East and against an increasingly vilified China. The so-called neocons, who have again become influential in the Republican Party and the media, demand tough talk and even tougher action from their candidate and Pompeo is already running hard to oblige them.

Trump’s Opponents Succeeded With Their Government Coup (Ruslan Ostashko)

January 20, 2021

Translated and subtitled by Leo.

A successful coup was staged by opponents of Donald Trump in Washington on January 6. Of course, Joe Biden’s inauguration has not yet taken place, but at the moment the incumbent head of the United States looks broken and surrendered, and the Democratic Party is triumphant.

I greet you, our respectable subscribers of PolitRussia and once again congratulate you on the New Year 2021 and the Nativity of Christ. While we were calmly and peacefully celebrating these remarkable holidays, in the USA, there was a dramatic event for Donald Trump supporters. I was asked to speak out and and post daily by many subscribers on the geopolitical results of last year’s events. And so in December, I voiced an assumption that the head of the White House might try to keep the Democratic Party from taking power, by using extraordinary methods.

Right now, with the first 10 days of January passing, I have to admit that this option is not allowed to become reality, and the chance of it happening is close to 0%. The reason for this deplorable position for Trump is because of betrayal from the vice president’s side, Mike Pence and the further failed attempt to protest inside the Congress about the electoral votes going in favor of Biden. The move of protesting could have changed the outcome, but the misfortune with Trump is that this move was easy to foretell. And the Democrats cut short the session in Congress to arrange the so-called “capture of Capitol Hill by Trump supporters on January 6th.” The logical version of what happened in the capital of the USA was outlined by publicist Alexander Rogers.

Alexander Rogers: “While Trump supporters were peacefully rallying in front of the Capitol Hill, a group of unknown people, among which some of them were identified as BLM and Antifa activists, broke several windows in the back portion of the building, and got inside. Notice how they did it without firearms. Under the pretext that the building was under threat of seizure, the session in Congress gets interrupted exactly in the moment where Republicans protested the acceptance of the electoral votes from one of the disputed states – Arizona. It was very convenient for Democrats if they were worried that they would not be able to push the much needed decision.”

The so-called “seizure of Capitol Hill” was a staged provocation comparable to the Nazis igniting the Reichstag on fire, is evidenced by many facts, which came out after the events. For example, people who portrayed themselves as leaders of the Trump supporters, everyone turned out to be mummers or crisis actors and activists hired by Democrats operating under what’s called a ‘false flag’.

Aleksandr Aksenov (Telegram social media): “The [horned] shaman turned out to be actor Jake Angel, and was the so-called decoy ‘gatekeeper’ who was called upon to provoke the supporters of Trump. Here he is with Nancy Pelosi’s son-in-law, Michael Voss. It really does look like the Reichstag fire setup.”

Vatnik (Telegram): *Picture of two ‘Trump supporters’ who resemble two members of phillyantifa.org* “Listen, but were there any actual Trump supporters there? It turns out that the whole vanguard were made up of BLM-Antifa-Demo Leftists, from decoy ducks to goat provocateurs. And if there were any Republicans there, then they stupidly ran towards them.”

Real backers of Trump of course were there too, and they were shot at. Even to death, like [14 year] veteran of the US Air Force, 35 year old, Ashli Babbitt. Killed inside of the Capitol Hill building. But first of all, they were allowed inside the regime’s building without any resistance by the police.

*Video plays* – 3:35

Alexander Rogers: “The video where it’s seen that police are themselves allowing the protesters to get inside the Capitol. The tactic is simple: Dress Antifa members up as Trump supporters and disrupt the presentation of evidence [of election fraud] in Congress. Now Trump is the enemy, and they are working on various options of how to get him out of the way, deprive him of power and attempts to get a second term. Too easy and too suspicious. The leftovers of democracy in the USA are over.”

*Video ends* – 3:59

All of this was arranged for the sake of creating a media image meant to intimidate Republican congressmen. And the maneuver succeeded.

Alexander Rogers: “’Terrorists’ and ‘insurrectionists’ (such a friendly manner in which the democratic medias have called them) are given 30 minutes to fool around and make funny photos with Nancy Pelosi’s stand from the congressional hall. Seriously, tens of unarmed idiots, which didn’t do anything, besides taking pictures in the seat of the congressional speaker, were labelled as a universal evil, terrorists and ‘threats to democracy.’ And all of the media, all the journalists and a bunch of officials and congressmen with the most pompous looking faces are calling them a ‘scary threat to our way of life and our values.’ After which, calmly without a fight or gunshots or even an intervention by Bruce Willis and Gerard Butler, these horrible terrorists are removed from the building. On the sly, Pence bypassed the president and made a decision to deploy the National Guard to the capital. What is it called? Right, a governmental overthrow. Or in English, a coup. Oh yeah, Trump’s Twitter was blocked for 12 hours, and his address to the protesters to peacefully disperse was deleted by Facebook. This is exactly how a coup happens.”

The head of the USA trivially had his mouth shut, and couldn’t do anything at all since he was in the information space that is fully controlled by Democratic Party. And his opponents frolicked through all of it. Here we have someone’s ears stick out for half a meter. The main Maidanite [supporter of color revolutions] on the planet, Henri Lévy, quickly dumped the method he typically uses.

Bernard-Henri Lévy: “Terrible image of vandals in hunting hats assaulting the seats of Jefferson and Roosevelt at the Capitol. Thousands of women and men gave their lives for this Republic. Millions dreamt of it. And billions watch it besieged by grotesque fascists.”

Vatnik (Telegram): “The great argument of calling you Hitler: ‘What point is there to talk to you if you’re like Hitler.’ Oh God, oh God. And a lying discourse to go with it: ‘Either you’re fully for democracy in our way, or you’re a fascist!’ Arguments at full length.”

For that reason they needed the hired clowns and the depicted caricature rednecks. But a serious man and woman during that time were sharpening their political steel, not walking away from the high tribune.

Alexander Rogers: “Here, Pence and Pelosi show up and declare that the meeting will be continued. A portion of the Republicans are demoralized, they declare that they no longer support the demand of a serious investigation in falsification of the election. Which the conspirators had wanted to hear. Looking at the objections of the rest of the states is removed from the agenda. Very convenient, what else is needed? The congressional meeting continues, and the duty clowns read text from already prepared papers about condemning the ‘horrible terrorists’, they intensely imitate a hearing (even though everybody says the same thing.) After which, the Capitol Hill Police outside is given an order to disperse the crowd by using tear gas and special equipment. The extras are no longer needed, the picture of ‘terrorists’ has already been drawn.”

Trump clearly was not prepared for such a vile provocation, it became a blow under his hook. But the opponents didn’t let them come to their senses and quickly unloaded their flywheel of repression. Trump was banned from everywhere [with social platforms] he possibly could. (Image shows he got banned from Facebook, Twitter, Google, Spotify, Snapchat, Instagram, Shopify, Reddit, Twitch, YouTube, Tik Tok and Pinterest.) His supporters that participated in the rally started to get pressed. Including those who just attended, but didn’t follow the provocateurs to Capitol Hill. The hidden hand of the market presses them. For those who did follow them, the democratic American media went after those people.

Maria Butina (Previous victim of US foreign agent claims and smear campaign. Her Telegram account): “Washington DC police published a list on January 7 of 736 people being indicted in connection to the protests and the infiltration of the Capitol. Citizens are accused of organizing a riot and a call for disorder, violence towards police officers, non-observance of curfew, violation of police fencing lines, penetration into private territory, possession of unregistered firearms, threats of violence, damage to property, robbery or attempted robbery, obscene acts, urination or bowel movements in a public place, threats of kidnapping, infliction of harm to the person and many other things.”

Sanctions under these articles are up to 10 years of imprisonment. And you don’t need to be a genius to understand that the detained Trump supporters will be condemned to their maximum sentences to scare the rest.

Chinese Threat (Telegram): “If the United States saw what the United States is doing inside the United States, the United States would have invaded the United States to liberate the United States from the tyranny of the United States.”

I congratulate all the storytellers who for decades sang to us about how fertile the state system of the USA is. It’s only a shame that these storytellers mostly live not in the creepy progressive United States, but rather in our lovable Russia. Where the provocateurs like Navalny for years are advocating for a violent change in state structures, yet walk free. Maybe it’s time for our so-called horrible totalitarian regime to take an example from the Democratic Party and tighten the screws? What do you think? Well at least for now, the information agents of foreign influence have not tried to attempt a coup here.

What is to be Done?

January 19, 2021

By Sushi for the Saker Blog

Above is the sole extant image which conveys the attendance at the Save America rally held in President’s Park on January 6^th, 2021. It appears to have been taken from a position high in the Mayflower Hotel. No American news media were troubled to attend. No official estimates of crowd size have been published. If it were not for one curious journalist affiliated with an Asian publication, no one would ever know the Save America rally had ever taken place.

A people ignored by their government have legitimate grounds for complaint. That is true of the Revolution of Dignity which arose in the Maidan Nezalezhnosti; It is equally true of Republic Square, Tahrir Square, Tiananmen Square, ثورة الكرامة (Thawrat al-Karāmah), Wenceslas Square, Place de la Bastille, and the Old South Meeting House. If there is any thread of truth to be found running through the fabric of human history, it is this: A government committing Intolerable Acts against its own people may expect to reap the ripe fruits of its ignorance.

Ignoring the plaint of your citizens is one such intolerable act.

It was precisely this plaint that caused between 150,000 and 300,000 (other ground imagery shows the crowd to extend out the bottom of the frame and to left and right out of frame with large numbers to the left in the area between the Washington Monument and 15^th St. NW) American citizens to assemble in President’s Park in support of their elected president and his attempt, to the best of his ability, to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. This multitude acted as representatives of the 78 million other Americans who will have no elected representatives after January 20^th, 2021.

Let there exist no doubt in the minds of the freedom loving peoples of the world. America stands on the cusp of an historic moment, one equal in magnitude and effect to December 7th, 1941, to the events of 3 p.m. Friday July 3^rd, 1863, or the early minutes of April 19^th, 1775 as the sun rose slowly into the dawn sky. Today, in the world of freedom, the proudest boast is “Ich bin ein Berliner!” Kein Amerikaner.

To know what is to be done, we must examine the present. What do we find? A succinct impeachment of the state may be found in the essay “I am Done” an essay far more eloquent than anything I might hope to write.

The one man who heard this plaint, understood it, and sought to act on it, will be removed from office on January 20^th, 2021 and then, as a private citizen, he will be impeached for the sole purpose of ensuring he is prevented from holding future office. Such state action against a private citizen does itself constitute high crime and misdemeanor. This is particularly true given the President was, on January 6^th, 2021, the sole office holder of the US government acting to uphold the Constitution of the United States of America. (see On Democracy for the detailed argument).

When Trump departs office, one half the American electorate will cease to have legitimate representation. The other half will have equally illegitimate representation. The elites of America take delight in this fact. A sleepy and indifferent elite, as dully incompetent as the powdered and bewigged members of the Ancien Régime, numb to the distress of their fellow citizens, unbelieving of the clamp of the lunette, of the sound of the déclic, until they catch one final momentary glimpse of a rotating heaven and earth as their heads roll away from their bodies.

The competence of the American elite may be judged by their inability to comprehend the preamble to the Declaration of Independence. It may also be judged by their equal inability to understand the requirements imposed upon them by the Constitution.

There is much contemporary talk of a “deep state.” The elite deny its existence and laugh at the witless déplorables for their authentic peasant belief in such a mythic fairy tale. Like the fish unable to see the water in which it swims, the elites look around for the deep state and are unable to anywhere find its workings. For the elite, life is a well-crafted, smoothly operating mechanism which delivers to them their just rewards; they know this is true for they have accumulated an abundance of wealth and they cherish the belief that such accumulation is a marker of superior intellect, a reward for their station in life, their great achievement. Their just desert for doing God’s work. The author of “I am Done” voiced an alternate opinion but no one cared to listen. Except for the one man publicly scorned as the orange ass-clown.

Any person with a smidgeon of history knows the “deep state” exists. The nation’s founders were keenly aware of its shackles. They confronted it daily in its most malevolent form: great Imperial tentacles which not only sought to bind them in subservience, but also demanded the witless, uneducated, colonial peasants pay the cost of their own chains. It was precisely this experience of the deep state, and the pernicious effects it wrought upon the welfare of the polity, that caused the Framers to exert great care and deliberation in writing the key documents intended to govern the independent colonies. The Framers were aware of the pernicious elixir to be found in raw power, to have command over other men, to place them in service. They knew the great temptations of status and rank and its capacity to overcome even those of the best character. Knowing the foibles of all men, the Framers sought to craft and impose a new set of chains, bonds that served only the interests of a free people, united and equal before God.

The strictures they enacted were such that any person who inspects the mechanism of American power will discover it is hopelessly weak, a mode of governance that has puzzled the world ever since. For the American system of governance was designed to hamper and occlude, to ensure that every party was equally weak and balanced by the weight of the other. They succeeded in their attempt to the degree that no outside observer can understand how, or why, it works. The outsider can only marvel at its effects over the past 245 years. Let the strongest man come into office and he will be chained down and held like Gulliver in Lilliput. Allow a free people to engage in free enterprise and they will generate an endless cornucopia.

American governance is like a game of chess or, better yet, go. The rules are simple, the pieces are few, but the level of complexity is extremely high. Success in American politics requires years of learning and a subtle and cunning intellect. And then the unsubtle Mr. Trump came to Washington and overthrew the entire donkey cart, left the place in a shambles, and threatened to break a great many rice bowls. How did he do it, this orange buffoon? How did a bombastic péquenaud from Queens upstage the power elite of the nation? Simple. He spoke to the author of I am Done and every similarly afflicted citizen of America, all 78 million of them. He was able to speak to them because he listened to them. Because he understood them. Because he committed to represent them. Committed to create a voice for them in the steamy swamplands of the capital. To make their case heard. To defend their plaint.

Spend 49 years cooking in the steamy bottomlands of the Potomac and your ears fill with mud, your skin toughens from the endless leach and mosquito bites, and your eyes sting if not shielded from the bright disinfectant of sunlight. You become a creature of the Animal Farm that is the swamp, and the revolution is betrayed.

Sometimes the simplest of things are the hardest to observe and understand. It may take years to unravel the motive and intent of the orange man. His purpose arose from these three words: “We the People.” The author of “I am Done” has been excluded from America, so alienated that she has elected to divorce America entirely. Seventy-Eight million others may do the same thing. They no longer believe themselves encompassed by the phrase “We the people.” They find themselves cast adrift. Abandoned. Outcast. Left in desperate straits they may decide the revolution has been betrayed and seek succor in the words of the Declaration of Independence and the protections of the Second Amendment. It has been forever thus throughout human history. Even among peoples who lack the security of words on parchment.

A great communicator once said “Almost all the world’s constitutions are documents in which governments tell the people what their privileges are. Our Constitution is a document in which “We the People” tell the Government what it is allowed to do.”

That is promise of the Constitution. The betrayal of this promise caused the 45th President of the United States to convene the Save America rally. The identical betrayal caused free citizens of America, the rejected deplorables, the outcasts written off as “Insurrectionists,” and “Domestic Traitors,” to travel to President’s Park to support not Trump, but to support a great idea, an idea that will never die because it lives on the breath of every living human being, it rings out with each heartbeat, an idea that was scratched on parchment 245 years ago, an idea that inspired the march on the Capitol of January 6^th, 2021.

The great communicator knew that ideas, great ideas, never die. Because he understood this, the great communicator never died. Each day at dawn he looks from of his bedroom out toward President’s Park, past the Jefferson Memorial, to the misted waters of the Potomac on which floats a small wooden boat sculled by a freedom man. And then he raises his eyes and looks beyond that small wooden boat, past the mists of the Potomac, toward a shining city on the hill.

Were he to have been in his house on January 6^th, 2021, the great communicator would have gone downstairs and walked over to President’s Park to help save America. Thomas Jefferson would have left his memorial and strolled across the mall to join him, accompanied by the Committee of Five. Lincoln, with his lanky legs, would have quickly joined them and Washington would have descended his monument to lead the group onto The Ellipse.

There they would have been joined by John Jay, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, the fifty-five Framers and a multitude of others including a sorry group of wet and bedraggled young men who looked as if they had just pulled themselves from the sands of Bloody Omaha, some older men arisen from the cornfields of Antietam, still others from the bright sands of Tarawa and the misery of the Bois de la Brigade de Marine.

All these freedom men will attend a Save America rally to be held on January 20^th, 2021. At some point on that day the entire congregation will march from President’s Park along the route of the deplorables toward the Capitol and the sounds of inauguration. And once arrived in the vicinity of a Capitol still scented with spicy bromoacetone, the group will be halted before great walls and barricades guarded by armed troops, weapons at the ready.

Observing this defensive complex, the group will be unsure if it has been built to keep the elites in, or to keep the citizens out. As they puzzle over the prison camp architecture surrounding the peoples house, the great communicator will walk up until he is face to face with the massive barrier. There he will halt for a moment, head bowed, as if he is uncertain as to what his eyes are telling him. After a long moment of silence, he will lift his head and solemnly command: “Mr. Biden. Tear down these walls.”

This essay is titled What is to be Done? To those persons who voted for Donald Trump, I have three suggestions.

The first thing to be done is to recognize that while injustice may darken the nation, it will never prevail. That is another key lesson to be drawn from the warp and woof of human history.

Persons who are alienated and cast out, those who feel they have nothing more to lose, frequently act out of despair. Should they do so, they may cause great harm to themselves, and to others.

The truth of January 6^th, 2021 is that what the media claim was a putsch was not led by Trump supporters but by the violent affiliates of other organizations. The affidavits, and charge sheets, against them make this fact clear. They expressed motive and intent to debase President Trump and his supporters. Details of this are to be included in the third essay of this series.

Despite the revelations found in any indictment, the alleged perpetrators remain innocent until proven guilty. Such an outcome will take time. We must have patience and allow the truth to emerge. Time is on our side.

The Trump supporters who marched on the Capitol had no malign intent. They had legitimate grievance. That too will be demonstrated in this series of essays. Citizens engaged in the lawful exercise of their First Amendment rights are being painted by the Bidenists as guilty of serious crimes. The Bidenists have also abused their powers and falsely accused the President. The media celebrate this injustice.

The best response you can make at this point is to distribute this essay as far and wide as possible. The Bidenists and the deep state are real. They are powerful. They will stop at nothing. They seek to crush you to dust, rewrite the Constitution, and remake America as a permanent one-party blue state. They will not achieve their goals. This you must know. You should communicate this fact to any person contemplating an act of violence today, or on any other day. The Bidenists seek to destroy America. The best means to avoid that outcome is to refuse them the ammunition with which to destroy us.

The second thing to be done is to talk to your neighbors. It is entirely possible your neighbor is the author of “I am Done.” It is possible your neighbor experiences an even greater sense of injustice and alienation. Speak with them. Powerful corporate entities have acted to terminate the freedom of speech of the President. If they can do that to the President, then what about you, me, or your neighbor? Ask your neighbor about this. How do they feel? What are their views? Where do they sit on the political spectrum? You may be surprised to find they also voted for Trump. You may even learn they are registered Democrats who can no longer stomach the party of which they once were a part. This topic is further addressed in a future essay.

The third thing to be done is to contact your elected representative. If she or he is a Republican advise him or her that you support President Trump and you will continue to support President Trump even if your representative does not. As Trump stated in one of his pre-election rallies, “I will always speak for you.” This is the precise reason the Bidenists seek to destroy him. The Bidenists also want to co-opt and undermine any resistance.

If you wish, give your representative a copy of this essay, or send the link by email. A few thousand such emails will cause any turncoat to contemplate their political future. Let your representative know President Trump may have had the wind taken out of his sails, but he has not yet begun to fight. He is not defeated. He grew up Queens. They build them tough over there.

While President Trump is not defeated, I suspect he may be disheartened by his recent experience. It will help him bounce back if he knows you stand with him. If we stand together, we remain a powerful force for good. One that can never be defeated.

---

Part 1 – http://thesaker.is/on-democracy/

Part 3 of this series is in draft and will appear first on The Saker blog site.

NATO Supremacists New Round of Frenzied War Crimes in Syria

MIRI WOOD JANUARY 18, 2021

NATO supremacists illegally in Syria have gone into a frenzy of increased war crimes against the Levantine republic, on 17 January: The lame duck Trump forces continue to empty silos in the al Jazeera region of grain; Madman Erdogan forces have again turned off water to one million Syrians living in al Hasakah; Trump cannon fodder SDF terrorists have kidnapped more young Syrian men from al Susa and Hajin, Deir Ezzor countryside.

Featured image above, shows thousands of Syrians demanding their water rights, again turned off by Madman Erdogan’s illegal troops occupying the Allouk water station. Video below is a glimpse of the demonstration.

While the transatlantic stenographers do their belly-bumping phony piety in lamentations over the 6 January invasion of the US Capitol by Trump supporters and various undercovers, and fake rend their clothing over 25,000 National Guard soldiers (to protect 1,435 senators and congress members) they remain arrogantly mute over the ongoing kidnappings, murders, bombings, water deprivation and destruction of essential infrastructure in the Arabic, Muslim-majority country of Syria.

The twenty convoy trucks that smuggled more stolen Syrian grain into Iraq were protected by illegal, armored, US vehicles. NATO supremacy means stealing other people’s foods. This massive theft was a follow up to the massive Syrian barley theft of 10 January, which also had the NATO stenographer supremacists on mute.

Trump forces loot and smuggle Syrian grains to Iraq

Depriving a civilian population of their water is also a war crime. In October 2019, NATO Madman Erdogan bombed the electrical grid at the Alouk station. The Syrian electricity army repairs it, after which Erdogan bombed it again, after which it was again repaired, after which Erdogan’s forces invaded and occupied the water plant. NATO supremacy also means trying to crush other people’s countries by stealing their water.

The demonic SDF separatists were originally created under the NATO supremacist Obama regime, which collected international wetworkers to teach the subsequent cannon fodder how to terrorize the Syrian population. During the Obama years, atrocities against Syria were perpetrated ‘by accident,’ as when he meant to war criminally bomb ISIS but accidentally slaughtered 83 Syrian soldiers defending their homeland.

 

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  Mass funeral for 83 Syrian soldiers massacred by US war criminal bombings was unreported in western media.

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The Trump regime expanded on Obama’s war crimes, intentionally bombed Syrian soldiers for al Qaeda, and set up criminal military bases in Syria (whereas Obama only sent in ‘spec operatives.’ See “Cue the Illegal Orangettes,” here.).

Today, a “weapons shop” run under Madman Erdogan’s al Qaeda forces in Idlib, blew up. It was located in a crowded market, near to a school. Western propagandists have remained silent on this atrocity, also. Imagine such a scene in Paris, London, Berlin, Philly, or Los Angeles being normalized:

Since the “deadly siege” on the US Capitol, 6 January, western supremacists have been aghast, horrified by a small fraction of what those western supremacists do to non-western countries, with impunity, on daily basis. Our unindicted war criminals that drop NATO weapons into the hands of savage beasts in Syria, call the psychopaths “freedom fighters” and cheer the horrors they perpetrate on the Syrian people, in the name of the imperial paraphilia, “democracy.”

Here are some examples of our glorious freedom and democracy, in DC, today, as inauguration day approaches; it does give the appearance of a military occupation, the type of which our terrified politicians in the Capitol on the first Wednesday of the first month of the new year, have imposed on mostly brown-skinned and/or Muslim majority countries for decades.

 

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  These US soldiers stationed in the Capitol have finally been given cots.

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Some of the detritus, hysteria, and shame/lessness of DC may eventually be put into a box labeled “Trump,” and we shall probably return to our collective criminal work as imperial NATO supremacists, entitled to tying up those tedious loose ends of uppity countries refusing to be crushed by western humanitarian democracy.

When that time comes, may we watch Syria’s President Bashar al Assad, walking freely and safely among his fellow countrymen and women, and may we honestly denounce the supremacists among us.

— Miri Wood

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US post-Capitol: Armed, hysterical, depressed & yet out for blood

January 14, 2021

by Ramin Mazaheri (@RaminMazaheri2) for the Saker Blog

The FBI says armed protests are being planned in all 50 states from January 16 until Joe Biden’s inauguration day on January 20.

It’s a living nightmare in the US right now – what else can be said?

“Hysteria” is the one word which described the United States in 2020, but in 2021 we are witnessing what happens when a hysterical sprinter just can’t stop sprinting – it is ugly.

I can objectively report that since the Electoral College decided the presidency – following the end of the Capitol Hill protest – seemingly everybody here is depressed and unhappy. The US cannot handle what is going on and everyone feels things are spinning out of control. What’s worse is that they cannot even help themselves from contributing to the spinning: The solution of those who opposed the armed protests is to antagonise the potential armed protesters?

It is ugly.

This is a pretty ambitious column, if “ambitious column” isn’t a journalistic oxymoron: I think all of the upcoming paragraphs can be turned into stand-alone columns because the US is, sadly, in such a hideously twisted shape.

It’s totally absurd to compare 9/11 to “1/6”, but that is what The New York Times did today – it only shows how inoculated modern Americans are from war on their own soil. Do Americans realise that the Capitol Hill protests are exactly what Washington has encouraged in Hong Kong, Venezuela, Syria, Ukraine, Iran, etc.? And that’s just in your recent memory banks – go back to World War II and the’ve done this in half the world. I can report absolutely nobody in the Mainstream Media here is making that connection. Well, America, the sight of a bloody and brewing civil war is pretty terrible, isn’t it? Like I wrote this is a whole column, but the US has hit what is a comparatively tiny bump in the road – when compared to what they have so gleefully fomented for so very long and with such self-righteousness – and Americans are absolutely falling to pieces.

Do Americans realise that the worst thing to do right now is to spend much time consulting their corporate-dominated media? The Capitol Hill protest was spectacular for ratings, and this country – which totally lacks a sizeable, patriotic and neutral government media – wants to make big bucks until at least inauguration day by hyping what should not be hyped. Do not tune into the news during this time of hysteria – you will thank me for it.

I also have encouraged people to not tune into social media. It’s not that the average person doesn’t know what he or she is talking about – I always insist that the “person on the street” interviews I do often provide me with better insights than interviews with degreed experts – it’s that there simply is no filter. Trump is toxic on his social media because that’s what American social media is – toxic. Western, uncensored social media is seemingly designed to provide a direct counterweight to the Asian cultural model of “saving” and “giving” face. I would guess that the overwhelming majority of Americans – after this roughly 15-year experiment with it – would say that social media has been a societal and personal disappointment.

On the macro level of social media: the US has created a monster, as there simply is no way to regulate Big Tech. They are clearly a monopoly power which can shut down political speech, like with the app Parler, and yet it is their “legal right” to do so because they are a business and not a press – i.e., they have no social responsibilities, but do have all the human rights America insanely grants to corporations. This, of course, enrages an American populace which (falsely) believes their country is a global leader in defending the human right to free press. Facebook took down PressTV’s page for a few hours – of course: If they will ban President Trump on Twitter why would they hesitate much longer for Iran? We are only just comprehending what “social media” can really do to a society, but the negative case study is: the US 2020 election.

Joe Biden is being tasked with healing the whole country even though he also spent the last four years demonising half the country. That is perhaps the best way to gauge what the upcoming chances are for “reconciliation” in America. I just don’t find the idea that the United States will rally around a hugely discredited and wilfully, remorselessly divisive Democratic Party even remotely credible.

Biden has just picked his head of the CIA – it was a person who was also a top candidate for the Secretary of State (foreign minister) post. That the nation’s top spy and top diplomat are interchangeable – and that this goes uncommented upon – says a lot about the United States. Washington does not try to persuade anyone – they just apply pressure, spy on them and make sure the national needs of their allies are subverted to the national needs of the US. Angela Merkel denounced Trump’s Twitter ban, just as she denounced Obama spying on her calls. The US has no allies, and while they will blame Trump for losing all their “international standing” the reality is they had none and want none.

Today’s impeachment of Trump is a spectacularly foolish errand: they will never get the Senate supermajority to actually impeach Trump; he’s leaving in seven days; Trump is correct that it will – of course – cause “tremendous anger”; it is clearly designed to sabotage Trump’s 2024 election chances, at whatever cost to national unity; 40% of the country already feels like their presidential vote was disenfranchised – now you want to impeach their leader (which comes after the censorship of him and before the prosecution of him)? It’s just useless theatre – the US election circus continues.

Is it possible that I was wrong to say that a violent right-wing movement – something comparable in determination (though not at all comparable in aims) to what the US saw last summer in response to never-ending police brutality – cannot ever grow strong enough in the US to “Occupy Capitol Hill”, or something similar? I still don’t think I am wrong and that once this final week passes so will these protests. American conservatives are too status-quo loving, too law and order-worshipping and too jingoistic to really try and change America.

I think the Capitol Hill protest was a one-time act of civil disobedience which spontaneously grew beyond the intentions of the mass majority of protesters – I have seen that happen countless times in person as a journalist. It obviously never morphed into an “Occupy Capitol Hill” multi-day protest because it was obviously never intended to (and for the same reason above). The people at the front lines of such protests are always a different breed; always run the range of political views from right to left; always have a range of motivations, from being mere adrenaline-seekers to genuine political integrity. I have also seen the video footage – captured by a left-wing Black Lives Matter member (because there is always this range of values) – of a Capitol cop, whose life was not threatened, shoot and kill female protester Ashlii Babbitt. I’m appalled there’s not more MSM discussion about that, because the footage is so clear that this was police brutality, but any such discussion radically changes how the protest has to be covered by the MSM: it means taking a break from demonising the protesters, and the US corporate media does not want that.

It was totally clear in the week since Capitol Hill: It’s not enough that Biden won – the US anti-Trump elite wants blood. They want Twitter and Facebook to ban Trump, so they can censor and others (as they just did with Iranian Supreme Leader Khamenei and Iranian state media PressTV). They want to imprison the Capitol Hill protesters, so they can prevent any anti-Biden political protests in the next four years. They want to impeach and jail Trump, so they can prevent Trumpism from growing beyond their idiotic, “how did I get here” leader into something which could upend the world’s oldest duopoly.

These are all columns because they are all huge issues which cannot be resolved in a few sentences – only summed up. I’m only stopping because I have word limits – feel free to point out which issues weren’t included.

The bottom line on the Democrat side is: Many Americans have spent four years hysterically demonising Trump supporters – they can’t turn it off: Winning the Electoral College obviously wasn’t enough. They want animals put in cages whom they can go poke; they want to fabricate a moral high ground which they believe is so high that it exonerates them from open debate; they want compound interest on the four years they wasted on the perennial US political circus.

The other bottom line on the Republican side is: Trump supporters are in shock that they lost – every one I talked with was so very certain of his victory. Then many of them were certain the Donald would pull it out, but what the Donald did was pass up every opportunity to take a courageous stand and to essentially say, “I’ve been using you supporters all this time.” Trump supporters now see this atrocious past week as if the US elite is presenting them with only two choices: either return to being mainstream Republicans or leave politics altogether. Many will choose the latter. Many Americans will not miss them. They will still be here, I point out to the victors.

I also point out to the victors: Trump losing the election did not solve all this country’s problems, as it was long promised. America in 2021 has way too many problems for such a simple solution.

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Dispatches from the United States after the presidential election

Results are in: Americans lose, duopoly wins, Trumpism not merely a cult (1/2) – November 5, 2020

Results are in: Americans lose, duopoly wins, Trumpism not merely a cult (2/2) – November 6, 2020

4 years of anti-Trumpism shaping MSM vote coverage, but expect long fight – November 7, 2020

US partitioned by 2 presidents: worst-case election scenario realized – November 9, 2020

A 2nd term is his if he really wants it, but how deep is Trump’s ‘Trumpism’? – November 10, 2020

CNN’s Jake Tapper: The overseer keeping all journalists in line (1/2) – November 13, 2020

‘Bidenism’ domestically: no free press, no lawyer, one-party state? (2/2) – November 15, 2020

Where’s Donald? When 40% of voters cry ‘fraud’ you’ve got a big problem – November 17, 2020

The 4-year (neoliberal) radicalisation of US media & Bidenites’ ‘unradical radicalism’ – November 22, 2020

80% of US partisan losers think the last 2 elections were stolen – December 3, 2020

Trump declares civil war for voter integrity in breaking (or broken) USA – December 5, 2020

Mess with Texas via mail-in ballot? States secede from presidential vote – December 8, 2020

Biden won? 2016-2020 showed what the US does to even mild reformers – Dec 18, 2020

Alleged Nashville bomber not Muslim: Western media disappointed – January 2, 2020

This week in the US: The ‘model nation’ for no nation anymore – January 7, 2020

Biggest threat to global leftism returns to power: US fake-leftism (1/2) – January 8, 2021

Ramin Mazaheri is currently covering the US elections. He is the chief correspondent in Paris for Press TV and has lived in France since 2009. He has been a daily newspaper reporter in the US, and has reported from Iran, Cuba, Egypt, Tunisia, South Korea and elsewhere. He is the author of ‘Socialism’s Ignored Success: Iranian Islamic Socialism’ as well as ‘I’ll Ruin Everything You Are: Ending Western Propaganda on Red China’, which is also available in simplified and traditional Chinese.