Hey everyone, I’m Mnar Adley, founder and director of MintPress News and editor of our video project “Behind the Headlines.”
This decade has felt like a whirlwind, watching in real time the crackdown on independent journalism and alternative voices.
In the last year alone, MintPress was banned from PayPal with our balance seized, blocking donations to our website –and as leaked emails reveal, this took place with possible involvement of British intelligence and the U.S. government.
At the same time, GoFundMe took down our fundraisers and banned us from their platform.
Our journalists have been detained, interrogated, surveilled, canceled and lobbied against by national security agencies and special interest groups, including directly by the Israel lobby. Our Wikipedia page has been written and managed by a mafia of pro-NATO editors and Israeli lobby groups. This, in addition to aggressive algorithmic blacklisting by Google’s Project Owl and Big Tech giants, shadowbanning from the likes of Twitter, Facebook & TikTok, all of whom we’ve exposed to have a deep relationship with the military-industrial complex to control your newsfeed and ensure a pro-war narrative is dominant.
We wear this as a badge of honor.
This is just a taste of what we’ve faced as an independent media outlet that has been at the forefront of exposing the profiteers of the permanent war state – holding the military class accountable, as every journalism outlet should be doing as protected by our first amendment.
Journalism is being criminalized.
This is why we’re turning to our readers and supporters to help us sustain our watchdog journalism. While Big Tech ramps up its efforts to make our journalism algorithmically disappear, we’re ramping up our efforts to circumvent this censorship and provide our readers with the most hard-hitting journalism that empowers ‘we the people.’
But to continue to do this and keep our investigative journalism free and accessible without a paywall, we’re appealing to our readers for their financial support. Suffice it to say big governments and corporations are not exactly banging down our door to support us.
We just launched our annual fundraiser to help sustain us, and I hope that you will join us as we continue to fight against the war machine in this information war.
MintPress is one of a handful of independent investigative news outlets left in the United States, featuring some of the most important journalists and activists of our time.
This includes investigative journalist, Ph.D. and author Alan MacLeod who co-hosts the “MintCast” podcast with me. His investigative work has exposed the deep relationship between NATO, weapons manufacturers and the national security state within Big Tech as well as U.S. regime change operation mechanisms against the global south.
Rapper and activist for Palestinian human rights Lowkey hosts “The Watchdog” podcast on MintPress. His research and journalism have exposed how the Israel lobby, its intelligence and military have inserted themselves into Big Tech and NGOs to surveil and target pro-Palestine and antiwar dissent.
Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist whose work explores the role of intelligence services in shaping politics, perceptions and war policies in the U.S., UK and across NATO member nations.
Jessica Buxbaum is an investigative journalist based in Jerusalem. She is our Palestine correspondent who has spent the last five years uncovering how Israel works with Big Tech and NGOs to surveil and target Palestinian resistance to apartheid.
MintPress also features regular columns by renowned documentary filmmaker and investigative journalist John Pilger, Israeli peace activist Miko Peled, and Palestinian academic Dr. Ramzy Baroud.
As for myself, Mnar Adley – the founder and director of MintPress News, I founded MintPress over ten years ago in an effort to revive the fourth estate in a post 9/11 world, when our first amendment was put on life support by the ever-growing military-industrial complex and its connections to the media. Since 2001, we saw major news outlets beat the drums of war to drive public support for the disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that left millions dead and millions more as refugees.
Having lived under Israeli occupation and apartheid as a teenager, I witnessed firsthand the horrifying human rights abuses no child should have to see. From the New York Times to the Washington Post to MSNBC and CNN, every major news outlet has for decades whitewashed Israeli crimes and apartheid under the banner of “democracy and shared values” while dehumanizing Palestinians as mere terrorists, the same way our media dehumanizes the victims of our disastrous wars. This, of course, continues to this day.
Whether it’s war in Palestine, Yemen, Sudan or Somalia, economic sanctions against Iran, Venezuela or Cuba or the U.S. proxy war with Russia in Ukraine– it is clear that corporate media act as PR for weapons manufacturers like Lockheed Martin and Raytheon to justify military adventurism and economic warfare to fuel the military-industrial complex that drives our war economy.
Thus MintPress was born out of this need to provide the public with investigative journalism that holds the ruling class and military accountable where corporate media has failed.
Our journalism gives a voice and spotlight to the people of the Global South ravaged by economic sanctions.
We’re continuously covering regime change operations, military coups and wars imposed by the US military, NATO and their proxies. Policies that line the pockets of the executives at Lockheed Martin and Raytheon.
We’ve been amplifying the voices of those who are silenced by the media, like government whistleblowers and publishers like Julian Assange and Daniel Hale.
This is exactly why we’ve been targeted and why we can’t take MintPress to the next level without your support.
With the conflict raging in Ukraine, we’ve entered wartime and are living in an intellectual no-fly zone where online censorship of dissenting journalism has become the new norm and the sanctions regime has come to target independent journalists – but it’s up to us to change that reality.
We’re proud to have broken through this censorship over the years, but it has only been possible through your continued support.
No matter the war waged against us, we refuse to be backed into a corner and bullied by tech giants who have a deep relationship with weapons manufacturers who work hand in hand with NATO to profit off of the blood of millions of people around the world.
The only way forward is for us all to unite on a broader front of non-partisanship and help fund our own media. There are no governments or corporations who will move in to save us. We are completely dependent on you.
Join us in reviving the fourth estate and protecting our First Amendment. Join our campaign today – LIVE on Indiegogo.
Mnar Adley is founder and director of MintPress News and Behind The Headlines and is also a producer and host for both platforms.
This day, 43 years ago, I was detained atop the Statue of Liberty in New York for taking part in a peaceful protest against the Jimmy Carter administration for hosting Mohammad Reza Pahlavi after the popular Islamic Revolution toppled the West-backed monarch.
The entire Liberty Island housing the France-gifted colossal neoclassical sculpture was immediately evacuated.
Six of us protesting against the US government’s decision chained ourselves to the statue while holding huge banners condemning Washington’s continued support for the ruthless despot.
We were soon arrested, strip-searched, handcuffed behind the back, and held in detention for over eight hours before being transferred to a jail in Manhattan.
The inhumane treatment meted out to us by the American police and the country’s legal system following the protest action, which coincided with the takeover of the US Embassy in Tehran, reinforced my belief that the exaggerated Western claims of upholding human rights were hollow.
I came to realize that the right to free speech and other so-called “liberties” outlined in the First Amendment were baseless publicity tools to advance the US military-industrial complex’s inhumane, discriminatory, and hegemonic ambitions across the globe.
The students who took over the US Embassy in Tehran – which later came to be known in Iran as the ‘Den of Espionage’ – exposed through classified documents found there that the sprawling compound located in the heart of the Iranian capital was used to orchestrate vicious coup plots to overthrow the nascent Islamic Republic.
The students later published the damning documents in the form of multi-volume books to reveal the sinister agenda of American “diplomats” stationed in Iran, but the incriminating documents were never allowed to be published in the United States.
After the evacuation of the island housing the Statue of Liberty, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other US security and intelligence agencies tried to get us to unchain ourselves from the statue promising to set us free without charges.
We did comply, only to be firmly handcuffed and detained and held without food or water until being transferred in the evening to the Manhattan jail, where we decided to go on hunger strike in protest against the inhumane treatment meted out to us. We were placed in a dingy cell, where jail guards deliberately staged mocking moves to break our will by obnoxiously eating in front of us.
Eventually, we appeared in court and gave a bond to reappear for sentencing about a month later. We were slapped with a $50 fine and 6-month probation, which meant that we had to report to a police authority every month to prove we were behaving well.
Shortly after my return to Chicago — a major mid-western city where I lived and attended college – I found out that its City Council had submitted a proposal for deporting all Iranian students enrolled in colleges and universities across the city at the time.
I was asked by a group of fellow Iranian students to represent them at a hearing deliberating on the passage of the racist legislation. When I attended the sham hearing I was shocked to witness an American student-activist testifying against the proposal being harshly taunted by city aldermen (council members) with unbelievably obscene language and then brutally beaten and dragged out of the hearing room by police officers.
As I was awaiting my turn to testify and wondering about my fate after testifying, I simply started smiling at the mean-looking lawmakers, only to be cussed at angrily and asked “what the F— are you laughing at?”
I then decided to walk out of the room after reminding the city legislators that there was no point in testifying since their minds were already fixed on something.
I later learned that the draft proposal never became law because it defied every basic right outlined in the US Constitution under the preamble, “We the People”.
Today Iranians annually observe November 4 as the National Day Against Global Arrogance by taking part in demonstrations from the compound that formerly housed the US embassy in Tehran to recall what took place on this day back in 1979.
It’s still relevant as the US continues to interfere in the internal affairs of other nations, including Iran.
This year, the countrywide demonstrations drew a much larger crowd than in previous years with people from all walks of life denouncing the Western regimes for instigating deadly riots in the country through media and political campaigns to bring about a “regime change” in the Islamic Republic.
Iranians appear ever more determined to resist and rigorously campaign against all US-led ploys to meddle not only in their nation but the world over.
Mohsen Badakhsh is an educator and freelance journalist.
(The views expressed in this article are author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of Press TV.)
Press TV’s website can also be accessed at the following alternate addresses:
With the war in Ukraine raging on and corporate media outlets pushing a pro-NATO agenda – we’ve entered war time and having access to alternative information is crucial to preventing escalation.
I’m Mnar Adley, founder, and editor-in-chief of MintPress News and director of our new video project “Behind the Headlines.”
I have an urgent appeal to make to everyone who cares not only for our first amendment but for the future of our planet. Independent, watchdog journalism that holds the military class accountable is under threat.
With the war in Ukraine raging on and corporate media outlets pushing a pro-NATO agenda – we’ve entered war time and having access to alternative information to the war machine is crucial to preventing escalation. We are now facing the very real threat of nuclear war.
We’re experiencing censorship unlike anything we’ve faced before, and MintPress and other antiwar media have been facing 5 years of algorithmic shadowbanning by Big Tech.
In the last month alone, independent antiwar journalists have been targeted in organized smear campaigns, de-platformed, given “state affiliated” labels on their accounts, and even outright purged off of social media platforms. Youtube has deleted hundreds of thousands of historical videos from prominent antiwar journalists and activists including Abby Martin, Chris Hedges, and Lee Camp, and is demonetizing political content everywhere in an effort to defund antiwar efforts. Our very own Gofundme fundraisers were taken down without reason or an opportunity to appeal.
What this amounts to is little more than a modern-day book burning. The work of the most important dissenting voices of our time is being discredited. Division is being sowed and any information that challenges the corporate and military establishment’s agenda is censored. Meanwhile, the bank accounts of executives at Raytheon and Lockheed Martin are being filled at a record pace.
For the last several years, MintPress has been at the forefront of sounding the alarm about the deep state working with silicon valley tech giants like Google, Facebook, and Twitter to control your news feed and ensure that any alternative narrative is algorithmically disappeared. But we’re not backing down because the future of our planet and the prosperity of peace and justice depends on our reporting.
This is why I consulted with anti-censorship, pro-free press, and human rights experts on our nonprofit board– including Mickey Huff, president of the Media Freedom Foundation and the director of Project Censored; FBI whistleblower, Coleen Rowley; and international human rights attorney, Todd Pierce– to create a new video reporting project called Behind The Headlines. To help us build this project we will need your support.
We need to raise $400,000 in the next year, so we’re creating our first phase fundraiser to be stated for $200,000.
Our goal is to create a video platform that is a 100% people-funded non-profit with the most important dissenting names in independent media that have felt the brunt of this censorship campaign.
We’re working with Political Comedian Lee Camp and filmmaker and investigative journalist Dan Cohen.
In addition to the Behind the Headlines board, we also have an esteemed board of advisors, including John Pilger, Abby Martin, Miko Peled, Ollie Vargas, and Dr. Ramzy Baroud.
Lee Camp follows a long line of political comedians from George Carlin to Bill Hicks ……. We’re giving him a platform with full editorial freedom to write and produce his own political comedy show.
Lee Camp’s shows are like a form of investigative comedy. They give the audience something to think about regarding key issues of the day that are often either distorted in the establishment press or ignored altogether. Given the many challenges we face from the climate crisis to war and the global pandemic, it’s important to laugh when and how we can, otherwise, we’d just have to wail and cry. Lee blends wit and dark humor with quality reporting that is truly a call to action.
Dan Cohen is a jack of all trades. He’s an investigative journalist based in Washington DC reporting from the belly of the beast. He’s currently working on several guerilla-style documentaries where he traveled to the heart of conflicts targeted by U.S. imperialism and corporate pillaging– the first is a three-part series about a revolution in formation in Haiti. Another is about the failures of the peace accord in Colombia.
Another covers the resistance movement in Gaza and Israel’s temple movement and plans to destroy al-Aqsa Mosque as part of an end of times prophecy. All of these issues can be traced in some manner back to U.S. empire and efforts to create and maintain instability around the world. In addition to documentaries and written investigations, Dan is also leading our video investigative series called Behind The Headlines. He has already exposed the murky connections between corporate media, the Pentagon, the Biden administration, and much more.
For far too long, some of America’s most talented journalists have been forced to turn to foreign state media to produce watchdog journalism after being ousted and ostracized from U.S. mainstream media outlets. Those outlets have utterly failed the public and specialize in producing fast food news that is sensationalized, divisive, and wor as a mouthpiece for the two-party duopoly, weapons manufacturers like Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, and hawkish think NATO-funded think tanks.
We don’t have watchdog media anymore, we have extremist corporate media lapdogs beating the drums of war and acting as stenographers for the government.
We can’t rely on the legacy media in our own countries to tell us what’s really happening at home and around the world, and we shouldn’t have to rely on foreign state media outlets to fill in those holes. Instead, we must create our own.
The truth is we can’t continue to wait for the oligarchy to give us a media that represents “we the people.” It’s time that we unite on a broader front of non-partisanship that holds the elite accountable – in the spirit that journalism was intended by our First Amendment – to revive the fourth estate and create our very own media that goes Behind The Headlines.
It’s time that we put our money where our mouth is because our First Amendment and its free press, and free speech principles are on life support.
But to help us build this project we will need your support. We need to raise $400,000 in the next year, so we’re creating our first phase fundraiser to be stated for $200,000. This two-month campaign will support:
Lee Camp’s new weekly political comedy show ‘The Most Censored News with Lee Camp’
Production of four documentaries by Dan Cohen:
Endgame Apocalypse: Inside Israel’s Temple Mount movement and its plans to destroy al-Aqsa Mosque [Trailer coming soon]
Israel’s May 2021 assault on Gaza and the armed resistance that won the war [Trailer coming soon]
Inside Colombia’s narco-state and plot between the DEA and the Colombian government to plunge the country into a state of civil war
A three-part series on Haiti’s rising resistance movement against neoliberalism and occupation and how the U.S. is trying to quash it
A monthly Behind The Headlines Report, an investigative video project with Dan Cohen covering the military-industrial complex, how propaganda works and much more.
Weekly Video Podcast interview series with Mnar Adley
The funds for this campaign will help us cover all the production and editing costs, social media, and travel costs associated with creating high-quality video content and documentaries. In addition to this, the funds will help us cover the costs of launching our website. I hope you’ll join us today on Indiegogo!
Mnar Adley
Director of Behind The Headlines and MintPress News
A protest in solidarity with the Palestinian people. (Photo: Socialist Appeal, via Wikimedia Commons)
A United States federal court has blocked the state of Texas from enforcing its anti-boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) law against a Palestinian-American contractor who refused to sign a pledge not to boycott Israel, the official Palestinian news agency WAFA reported on Sunday.
Rasmy Hassouna, an engineer and executive vice president of the Palestinian-owned A&R Engineering and Testing Inc, filed the lawsuit in November challenging a Texas law that bars the state from doing business with companies participating in the BDS movement against Israel.
A United States federal court has blocked the state of Texas from enforcing its anti-boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) law against Palestinian-American contractor Rasmy Hassouna, who refused to sign a pledge not to boycott 'Israel'. pic.twitter.com/lbYNxpmDJ1
The firm said in its complaint filed in a Houston federal court that the law violates its First Amendment right to participate in economic boycotts as a form of protest.
“Texas’s ban on contracting with any boycotter of Israel constitutes viewpoint discrimination that chills constitutionally protected political advocacy in support of Palestine,” A&R Engineering attorneys wrote in the initial complaint, as quoted by Axios.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (Cair), which Hassouna worked with to file the suit, hailed the court ruling as “a major victory of the First Amendment against Texas’s repeated attempts to suppress speech in support of Palestine”.
“These regressive attempts to create a Palestine-exception to the First Amendment betray the central role boycotts have played in our history,” said Gadeir Abbas, Cair’s senior litigation lawyer.
This news comes after another federal judge said in a May ruling that Georgia’s anti-BDS law violated the First Amendment.
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.”
An academic conference on media censorship and the dangers of free speech infringements online has, ironically, been censored by YouTube.
The Google-owned video platform decided to pull all videos from the Critical Media Literacy Conference of the Americas 2020 for violating its “community standards,” which include never saying anything bad about censorship.
“At first I thought it was a joke,” said Mickey Huff of Diablo Valley College in California, as quoted by MintPress.
“My initial reaction was ‘that’s absurd;’ there must have been a mistake or an accident or it must have gotten swept under somehow. There is no violation, there was no reasoning, there was no warning, there was not an explanation, there was no nothing. The entire channel was just gone.”
The two-day event featured a number of esteemed speakers and panel discussions about Big Tech censorship and online violations of the First Amendment. So naturally it had to be pulled in its entirety in order to keep We the People from hearing the truth.
“Each video was a different panel and every panel had different people from the other ones, so it is not like there was one theme or person or copyrighted content in all of our videos,” added Nolan Higdon of California State University, East Bay, who was one of the event’s organizers.
“This seems to be an attack on the conference, not on a singular video.”
Big Tech needs to be broken up and publicly run so everyone has a voice
Higdon and his colleagues actually went out of their way to ensure that there was no copyright infringement in any of the talks or panels. Many of them were conducted in lecture format similar to a Zoom call, and included some of the best-known names in media studies.
“This wasn’t a keg party with Parler users: It was an academic conference,” Huff explained, noting that the event was sponsored by reputable schools like Stanford University and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
“These are pioneering figures in critical media literacy scholarship. It’s mind-numbing that all of this was just disappeared from YouTube. The irony is writ large … This is part of a potentially algorithmic way of getting rid of more radical positions that criticize establishment media systems, including journalism.”
Google reportedly told MintPress that it has no idea where the missing videos went, and claims they were never even uploaded to YouTube. The company found only one video in its archives and reinstated it.
This explanation does not cut it for Huff or Higdon, though, as the two seem to recognize that corporations like Google and YouTube have become digital tyrants that forcibly control the free-flow of information online to the degree that free speech no longer even exists.
“I don’t think they should have achieved this kind of power over our communication systems in the first place, and these should be publicly run platforms regulated the same way our government regulates and enforces the First Amendment,” Huff commented.
Higdon had much the same to say about the situation, warning that the tech giants have amassed so much power that they are now blatantly trampling the constitutional rights of millions of Americans without consequence.
“By empowering these tech companies to decide what is and is not appropriate, they are going to look out for their vested interests, and people who are critical of their business model and practices are going to be targets,” Higdon says.
“These lefties right now who are advocating for censorship … the outcome of this is going to be on them.”
More related news about Big Tech censorship can be found at Censorship.news.
Posted on January 15, 2021 by uprootedpalestinians
January 14, 2021
“It’s untidy, and freedom’s untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things,” Rumsfeld said. “They’re also free to live their lives and do wonderful things, and that’s what’s going to happen here.”
I suspect most people, and the majority of Trumpists, would agree Trump is an imperfect political vehicle and that Trumpism, as political movement, is under-defined, inconclusive, and inchoate. The best that can be said about Trumpism is that it does not represent the tenets of contemporary Republicanism, or Democratic Bidenism. Trumpism is a startling new ism. That America, a staid state known to reject all forms of novelty and innovation, should seek to exorcise an unknown cancerous ism making sudden appearance within the body politic is perfectly understandable. But what exactly is being rejected, cast out, exorcized? What is the modus operandi of Trumpism? How do we know it?
As best as can be determined, there has been no clear articulation of Trumpism apart from the fact it includes the wearing of a red baseball cap. Donning such an accoutrement today will likely result in the wearer being placed on a no-fly list, suspected of political crimes, disciplined by loss of employment, denied the protections of the First Amendment, refused counsel, labelled as a deplorable, racist, riotous, misogynist, insurrectionist, white supremacist, fascist, terrorist, being actively shunned as one among 78 million other outcasts, publicly derided before being immediately convicted in advance of indictment and then punished to the full extent of the law. America will never tolerate mob rule.
During the entirety of the January 6th, 2021 two- and one-half hour “seizure” of the Capitol no reported fires were set. Unlike the Washington events of June 2020, neither the Capitol, nor the capital, were so much as singed. There was no declaration of independence, no assertion of the Capitol as a satellite province of CHAZ, no manifesto calling for the abolition of the police, the armed forces, and prisons, no demand for full legal immunity, no spray painting of slogans, epithets, or any other attempt at violent redecoration, no attempt to raise a foreign flag, or to alter existing accepted forms governance. There was no degree of looting apart from one lectern. The participants, apart from a half-naked vegetarian dressed in furs and horns and carrying a spear adorned with the stars and stripes, looked much like your average deplorable. There were no signs of rebellion derived from a Monty Python sketch; Monty Python was entirely absent. There were no reports of a dead parrot.
On June 23rd, 2020 President Trump declared “There will never be an ‘Autonomous Zone’ in Washington, D.C., as long as I’m your President. If they try, they will be met with serious force!” This declaration was deleted by Twitter on the grounds it violated the company’s policy against abusive behavior: “specifically the presence of a threat of harm against an identifiable group.” Twitter did not identify this group and Trump did not elaborate.
I am no lawyer. But I think there exists an outside chance the 70 odd Trumpists presently facing criminal sanction for their conduct between 1:30 p.m. and 4 p.m. on January 6th, 2021 may eventually have their day in court. Before they are shipped to the Gulag for re-education, their counsel may wish to plead the following:
That in the months preceding January 6th, 2021 America experienced an outburst of mob violence, a destructive pyromania which levelled entire city blocks. This was coupled with extensive looting, multiple shootings and unlawful deaths, the destruction of $1 to 2 billion in insured property nationally—the highest recorded damage from civil disorder in U.S. history—and clear evidence of insurrection as is to be found in declarations of political independence and demands to abolish the police, the armed forces, and the prisons.
Counsel will likely seek to demonstrate that despite this violent unrest occurring in a number of major cities, minimal legal action was taken, and that the violence, intimidation, insurrection, looting, burning, and associated billions in property damage, was publicly reported as being a benign “peaceful demonstration.” Counsel will then ask how their clients can now be found guilty of what Biden labelled as “Insurrectionists. Domestic terrorists” when on January 6th, 2021 there was no looting (the lectern excepted), no arson, no use of lethal weapons, no coherent political demand or manifesto, and no attempt to subvert or replace the existing political order. Evidence to be presented will show the defendants walked into a public building known as the “people’s house,” (both the Rotunda and Statuary Hall are acknowledged public spaces), entered through open doors, that the police removed barricades and ushered them forward, that the defendants took selfies with obliging police officers, and that defendants were standing in the company of police officers when an unidentified agent of the state executed one of their number with a single shot to the head, with no form of warning, for the misdemeanor of trespass. When at 4 p.m. everyone began to get an emergency text message from D.C. Mayor Bowser saying a curfew would be in effect from 6:00pm, the crowd proceeded to vacate the premises.
At this point in the proceedings, Counsel will state that his clients were present in the Capitol for the sole express purpose of affirming the Constitution of the United States of America.
Counsel will then draw the attention of the jury to Article II Section 1 clause 2 of the Constitution which states as follows:
Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.
Counsel will demonstrate that this Constitutional document was formally ratified and therefore has present application to each state in the union without limit or exception to include the states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Georgia.
That the public record demonstrates that in each of these states the executive bypassed the legislature and, over the objections of the legislature, did unilaterally act to usurp the legislature’s sole prerogative to “direct” the manner in which the state shall appoint its allotted electors and in so doing did act in express violation of the provisions found in Article II Section 1 clause 2 of the Constitution of the United States of America.
Each of the enumerated states therefore acted without lawful authority with the express intent to manipulate and ignore statute law duly enacted by the state legislature which statutes explicitly directed the manner of voting required to lawfully appoint that states electors.
In each of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Georgia, the executive acted in defiance of the will of the elected representatives of the citizens. In plain language, the executive violated both state law and the Federal constitution. They acted out of arbitrary self-interest. Such conduct may represent an element “of the most extensive and inclusive voter fraud organization in the history of American politics.”
That the state executive was under Democratic control, and the objecting state legislature was under Republican control, does not excuse such abridgement of the Constitutional rights afforded the citizens. You have either a written constitution and an applied, well respected body of law, or you have mob rule. When it comes to the law you cannot be half pregnant.
Further, Counsel for the defense is likely to produce for the jury the protections found in the First Amendment notably the right to assembly and the right to petition the Government for a redress of grievance.
Counsel will then suggest that any citizen of a federation bound by the Constitution who gains knowledge that members of that same federation have knowingly acted in violation of the law to further their own political ends, that such knowledge constitutes significant ground for public grievance. The citizen is potentially disenfranchised by such Constitutional violations.
This public grievance is exacerbated by the fact Biden arranged for a “massive ‘election protection program,’ which includes former Attorney General Eric Holder and hundreds of other lawyers” One wants to think a former Attorney General has some understanding of the Constitution and its various provisions. (FOX News October 25th, 2020).
On October 29th, 2020 the organization factcheck.org spoke with T.J. Ducklo, the National Press Secretary, Biden for President, who stated “The President of the United States has already demonstrated he’s willing to lie and manipulate our country’s democratic process to help himself politically, which is why we have assembled the most robust and sophisticated team in presidential campaign history to confront voter suppression and fight voter fraud however it may present itself. The American people will decide the outcome of this election on November 3rd through a free and fair election, as they always have” (factcheck.org October 29th, 2020)
Given a demonstrated concern over the manipulation of the democratic process leading to the creation of the “most robust and sophisticated team in presidential campaign historyto confront voter suppression and fight voter fraud however it may present itself,” it seems reasonable to assume that this “robust and sophisticated team” would be sensitive to the enumerated violations of the Constitution. If you choose to believe FOX News and T.J. Ducklo, Biden had the assistance of a former A.G. and “hundreds of other lawyers” to achieve this worthy goal. With that amount of legal horsepower, it is difficult to understand how they overlooked such egregious violations of Constitutional law “however it may present itself.”
It will be argued the persons attending the Mall and the Capitol on January 6th, 2021, participated in an assembly joined for the express right to petition the Government for a redress of grievance. This assertion is proved by the fact that immediately before entering upon the grounds of the Capitol the grievers did attend a rally convened by the 45th President of the United States. That the President of the United States is bound by an oath which demands:
“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
That the President of the United States, one Donald J. Trump was, on January 6th, 2021, lawfully executing his responsibility to preserve, protect, and defend, the U.S. Constitution.
That the President has been regularly described in the media as a traitor and ass-clown, as a bombastic narcissistic psychopathic tool of Putin, and as a bedwetter. Regardless of this concerted public disrespect, on January 6th, 2021 the President was faithfully executing his duty to the best of his ability despite public scorn and rejection by the nation, the vicious slander and disapprobation of the press, abandonment by the courts, the repellent attacks of the Bidenists, and the cowardice of elected members of the Republican party.
The orange ass-clown was, on January 6th, 2021, the sole office holder of the US government acting to protect, and defend, the Constitution of the United States of America.
Counsel will then seek to introduce Title 18 U.S. Code § 2385 – Advocating overthrow of Government which states that:
Whoever knowingly or willfully advocates, abets, advises, or teaches the duty, necessity, desirability, or propriety of overthrowing or destroying the government of the United States or the government of any State, Territory, District or Possession thereof, or the government of any political subdivision therein, by force or violence, or by the assassination of any officer of any such government; or
Whoever, with intent to cause the overthrow or destruction of any such government, prints, publishes, edits, issues, circulates, sells, distributes, or publicly displays any written or printed matter advocating, advising, or teaching the duty, necessity, desirability, or propriety of overthrowing or destroying any government in the United States by force or violence, or attempts to do so; or
Whoever organizes or helps or attempts to organize any society, group, or assembly of persons who teach, advocate, or encourage the overthrow or destruction of any such government by force or violence; or becomes or is a member of, or affiliates with, any such society, group, or assembly of persons, knowing the purposes thereof—
Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both, and shall be ineligible for employment by the United States or any department or agency thereof, for the five years next following his conviction.
Counsel will then seek to address the definition of “force” and raise the question “Does the unlawful sanction and persecution of citizens of the United States of America for the lawful attempt to seek redress for grievance constitute the use of “force?” Does the denial of First Amendment rights by corporate entities domiciled in the United States of America constitute “force?” Does the termination of employment, or the threat of termination of employment for political speech, or the exercise of First Amendment rights, constitute “force?” Does placing persons on a no-fly list and denying them common carrier services for the fact of their political views constitute “force?” Does the conduct of the Speaker of the House acting to impeach a sitting President of the United States of America for the lawful exercise of his duties to the best of his ability constitute “force?” Does incitement on the part of the President elect to sanction citizens for their political speech, or views, constitute “force?” Does the summary execution of a U.S. citizen veteran by an anonymous agent of the state, without notice or warning, for the exercise of her First Amendment rights constitute “force?” The jury will be asked to render a decision on these questions.
I just listened to Trey Gowdy and a few others GOP big-shots condemn the “terrible violations of the law” committed by the protestors today and I take my hat off to these folks: they are truly world class hypocrites.
When cops and mayors refuse to protect the innocent, the rule of law is doing great!
When the letter soup agencies spend millions on a typical witch hunt, the rule of law is doing great!
When the First Amendment is being destroyed by Big Tech, the rule of law is doing great!
When the corporate legacy ziomedia brazenly silences the President, and simply does not report on crucial events, the rule of law is doing great!
When elections are stolen, the rule of law is doing great!
When courts refuse to enforce the law, the rule of law is doing great!
When the Supreme Court refuses to defend the Constitution, the rule of law is doing great!
But when the people, literally, those whom the elected officials are supposed to represent, demonstrate all day peacefully and then a few, not necessarily even Trump supporters (false flags are very easy to organize with crowds!), storm the halls of Congress, then the GOP bigshots take to the air and lament the “tragedy” of the law being violated.
No country and no regime can stand on such truly galactic levels of doublethink, hypocrisy and cowardice.
This is the beginning of the end of this regime.
My thoughts tonight are with the “deplorables”. In the prophetic words of George Orwell:
“If there was hope, it must lie in the proles, because only there, in those swarming disregarded masses, eighty-five percent of the population of Oceania, could the force to destroy the Party ever be generated. The Party could not be overthrown from within. Its enemies, if it had any enemies, had no way of coming together or even of identifying one another. Even if the legendary Brotherhood existed, as just possibly it might, it was inconceivable that its members could ever assemble in larger numbers than twos and threes. Rebellion meant a look in the eyes, an inflection of the voice; at the most, an occasional whispered word. But the proles, if only they could somehow become conscious of their own strength, would have no need to conspire. They need only to rise up and shake themselves like a horse shaking off flies. If they chose they could blow the Party to pieces tomorrow morning. Surely sooner or later it must occur to them to do it.”
Orwell’s “proles” are our “deplorables”. And for all the self-evident weaknesses and delusions, they are the only ones left, literally, and they will have to be the soil from which the liberation of the USA will have to begin.
Okay, this time it does look like it’s over. Mitch McConnell congratulated Biden and Harris, thereby signifying the official surrender of the GOP (which, let’s be honest here, never really was ready to fight for Trump). Vladimir Putin also sent his congratulations in the following way: (official Russian statement)
Congratulations to Joseph R. Biden on winning US presidential election
Vladimir Putin sent a message to Joseph R. Biden congratulating him on his victory in the presidential election in the United States of America.
December 15, 2020
In his message, Vladimir Putin wished the President-elect every success and expressed confidence that Russia and the United States, which bear special responsibility for global security and stability, can, despite their differences, effectively contribute to solving many problems and meeting challenges that the world is facing today.
The President of Russia noted that with this in mind, Russian-American cooperation, based on the principles of equality and mutual respect, would meet the interests of both nations and the entire international community.
“For my part, I am ready for interaction and contacts with you,” Russia’s Head of State stressed.
Russian journos were quick to notice that unlike previous congratulation messages to Obama and Trump, this one did not express any kind of hopes. I can only agree. Frankly, the Russians have been sending signals about this for a long time, even Lavrov seems to have flushed the “collective West” down to the toilet of Kremlin political priorities: the Russians clearly consider the western leaders as collectively brain dead (the nonsense around Navalnyi really did not help, of course).
What comes next will be both dangerous and ugly. Why?
Well, for one thing, the election was stolen, even if the SCOTUS has in essence declared that 1) those who contested this outcome had no valid reason to complain and 2) that the SCOTUS does not care what the US Constitution says. This total betrayal by seven out of nine SC Justices sealed the fate of the USA. The rule of law in this country is over, dead.
Second, there will be resistance to what many US Americans will see – correctly – as an illegitimate regime which came to power by criminal means and a 4 year long color revolution.
Third, just as any other political regime, the power of the US Executive branch rests on two fundamental pillars (just one of them is not enough):
A social consensus
The exclusive control of the legal means of violence
Not only will there be a large proportion of the population which will be convinced that the election was stolen (what a beautiful, if dangerous, karma at work: after 4 years of Dems saying “not my President”, they themselves will now hear that same mantra for the next four years), but I also believe that a lot of folks in law enforcement will feel that the White House is against them (correctly) and will refuse to take any risks for that White House. Remember that even the elite special units of the KGB refused twice (in 1991 and in 1993) to storm the Russian Parliament. Do you expect their US counterparts to act differently and engage in a potential bloodbath on behalf of the two cop-hating clowns in the White House who, we all know, will backstab and betray them?
Ask yourself: would you obey orders coming out of this White House?
Fourth, folks – now comes the era of total, unapologetic, and truly stratospheric incompetence. No, I don’t just mean Biden (even though he is clearly senile) or Harris (a call girl who made it into politics “horizontally”), but I mean the freak show which the next Administration appears to shaping up to be (even Psaki is coming back!!!).
Last, but not least, these are angry, frustrated, narcissistic and profoundly evil people (Peter Strzok types) . Yeah, I know, that also describes the likes of Bolton or Pompeo, but at least these two freaks had comparatively saner folks, like Mattis or even Trump himself, to keep them in check. That is now over.
The really scary thing is that now that they won, the US legacy ziomedia and the Big IT corporations are not just allies of the Deep State and the Dems anymore, but their accomplices. That is crucial because that means that they are now all linked with a mutual survival pact.
Since the Dems have now total control of the Federal level (Executive, Legislative, Judiciary and media), the resistance will now move “down” to the state and local level. Expect this struggle to get very ugly fast as the highly ideological Dems will now show their (totally fake) love for blacks, homosexuals and feminists (that is their vague notion of “diversity”!) while waging a crusade against the majority of the people of the USA and, especially, the First and Second Amendments (which, like it or not, were considered as the cornerstones of the Constitution by the Founding Fathers, hence their number 1 and 2 positions!).
And let’s not kid ourselves – there are plenty of freaks and idiots in Trump’s camp too – and they will likely do a lot of dumb and dangerous things which will only further justify the regime in DC to crack down on all the “deplorables” imaginable. Expect all sorts of false flags, fake terror attacks and, most dangerous of all, carefully groomed “sacrificial victims” including, possibly, folks in/near the White House.
Still, it would be wrong and naive to think that all Trump supporters are only Trumptards: there are still A LOT of truly patriotic US Americans who see Trump for what he is (a cowardly and spineless narcissist), but who also understand that what just happens is not the end of the “Orange Menace” but the end of the USA as we knew them until now. In fact, a Hegelian analysis of history would very strongly suggest that any Biden/Harris Administration will face such huge challenges and contradictions that from the day Biden/Harris are officially sworn in on – it will all go downhill from there, and pretty fast.
Millions of US Americans will now have to choose between the oath of office they gave and obedience to a regime which they will know has ZERO legitimacy. I don’t envy them (I never took the US citizenship, so I never had to give any oaths).
We are about to enter a transition period which will probably last more than a decade, possibly two. Paradoxically, I am rather optimistic that whatever state(s) and regime eventually emerges at the end of this process will be a much better one than any other in this generation’s memory, mainly because what will emerge at the is either one, or several, successor states, but not an empire. Good riddance! Finally!
But I do fear the dangers of the transition period we are about to begin: history teaches that these “transition” periods can be worse than full scale wars.
I am too young to remember that (I was 2 days old exactly), but a lot of very wise US Americans have told me that the murder of President Kennedy was the first big blow delivered to the United States. I think that the next blow for the USA were the totally illegal and illegitimate wars of aggression against the Serbian nation and against Iraq. Though these wars were presented to us as “victories” – they were anything but. Crucially, the utter lawlessness behind these aggressions also ushered in the next blow for the USA, I am speaking of 9/11 of course. The theft of the 2020 election is, in my opinion, the last and truly mortal blow to this country (you could say that the “chicken of illegality” have come home to roost).
Notice that the four events listed above all have one thing in common: most people, at least the ones still capable of thought, realize that they were all covered up with lies, lies and more lies. Of all these lies, the easiest to demonstrate would, of course, be 9/11, which is paradoxical since in spite of the fact that the 9/11 lies were truly debunked “beyond reasonable doubt” by hard, scientific data, they were also completely ignored by ALL the political elites (including, of course, Giuliani and Trump himself!). In other words, 9/11 was the “glue” which brought together all the US elites, even the pretend-outsiders with “swamp draining” pretensions.
Frankly, I am saddened by what I am observing. I can hardly be called an optimist by nature, but I still held some, residual, hope that judges, especially SC Justices, would refuse to dishonor themselves (and forever ruin their legacy) and would at the very least hear the case on its merits. My wiser friends had no such illusions and they warned me. I guess that being a grateful guest in this country (which has treated me and my family extremely well), I cannot but wish its people well and hope that, somehow, the good and honest people of this country would prevail. Now I understand that, just like in Russia in February 1917, August 1991 and October 1993, what the US need is a new generation of patriots, not blind flag-waving xenophobic imbeciles, but sober-minded and yet idealistic patriots who will understand that to love one’s country is not enough, you have to be ready to really fight, fight hard, for it. Of course, the US staple ideology of individualism and its toxic and dogmatic beliefs in the “virtues” of capitalism will have to die first. No worries – in time, they will, that is what inevitably comes next in such collapses (just like Russians have rejected Marxist ideological dogmas). But now is not the time for this conversation, much more must happen before it can take place.
Bottom line: the EU is going down the drain, and so are the USA (the Empire itself, has been dead for a while, even of many/most people do not realize this yet). Conversely, I would argue that Russia and China have won, not quite the war, but a crucial battle (think Stalingrad or Kursk). Any attack, economic or military, launched by the collective West against these two countries will fail. The Dem “geostrategic experts” will blame Russia and Putin personally, while the GOP “geostrategic experts” will blame China and Xi personally. That is why they all are, collectively, losers of the worst possible kind!
Things will only begin to really change when a new generation of US leaders will begin look at themselves and at their own responsibility for the catastrophe which has now happened.
Sadly, right now I can only advise everybody fill yourself with a lot patience.
There seems to be a quasi consensus that Trump will not prevail and that Biden and Harris will get into the White House no matter what. To my surprise, even the Russian media seems to be considering that the Trump presidency is over.
Yet, I am not so sure at all.
Why?
Because at this point in time, I think that it would fair to conclude that anybody actually willing to look at what has been revealed by this election will have to agree that this election was stolen, rigged, falsified – chose your expression – and that going to the courts to challenge this obscene miscarriage of the democratic process is a fundamental civil right and something which any democrat (small “d”) should support.
And yet, because we live in a media-created pseudo-reality in which absolutely crucial things like the rule of law seem to have become secondary to ideological imperatives, no matter how extreme, there are those who simply refuse to see the obvious. Yes, the 9/11 false flag trained the western societies well and many now simply lack the lucidity and courage to face reality.
Courts, however, are bound by the rule of law, at least in theory, and don’t have the luxury to simply pretend like crucial evidence presented to them simply does not exist.
True, the lower, state, courts are unlikely to resist the pressure put upon them to come up with the “right” conclusions, but never say never – all it takes is one single principled judge and Trump or, more accurately, the Giuliani team, might get the break they need. Still, it is pretty obvious that Giuliani’s real hopes are with the Supreme Court. This makes sense, local judges are much easy to influence and sway than Supreme Court Justices who are unassailable and who realize that they will make history, the only question being is: how till they go down in history books, as a “profile in courage” or as impotent cowards who betrayed their oath?
I will say that I am, to put it mildly, not impressed by Trump’s demeanor during these crucial days: he completely ceded the narrative to his opponents (a couple of incoherent and poorly phrased “tweets” do not qualify). True, Trump never displayed the qualities of a real leader, so this is hardly surprising.
Giuliani, however, is a tough SOB and he seems to be determined to take this fight right up to the Supreme Court. This is why I believe that it is very dangerous to make any assumptions about what the Justices might or might not do. Is it possible that even the Supreme Court justices would betray their oath and cave in to the Dem’s pressure? Yes, I suppose so. Concepts such as truth, honor, integrity, courage and heroism are very much out of fashion in the modern world, especially in the US. This is why the traditionally hallowed term “hero” is applied left and right to every bureaucrat or civil servant simply doing his/her job: real heroes are long gone.
Then consider this: if the SC sides with Trump and overturns the hundred of thousands of illegal votes, the US will be immediately plunged into an orgy of chaos and violence, all of it encouraged and coordinated by the legacy corporate ziomedia à la CNN. The thugs of Antifa/BLM will immediately engage in Kristallnacht-like rampages in “protest” against the “racist system”. Their main target? White, Christian, males, of course!
Some justices might even feel torn between standing up for what is both legal and moral and the practical considerations of the consequences of an adjudication in Trump’s favor. Their oath ought to be their guiding principles, but considering how often the SC voted along party/ideological lines in the past, I am not very confident that the Justices will strictly do the only legally and morally right thing: uphold the law and vote their conscience.
Finally, whatever we may think of the election itself, it is obvious that the US elites have created the appearance of a fait accompli, hence the kind of nonsense like, say, Biden and his “Office of the President Elect”. It is therefore reasonable to assume that even if the Supreme Court fully sides with the Trump campaign, the US elites will never accept this. They will try to find a way to impeach, legally or otherwise, those Justices who voted “wrong”.
I think that there is also another consideration which we have to remain aware of: Trump’s entire presidency is been one long and never ending prostitution of the United States to the desires and whims of Netanyahu and his gang of thugs. True, as Israel Shamir pointed out, the Israelis failed to deliver anything in return to Trump. And yet, as Philip Giraldi recently explained, Trump is still very much Israel’s prostitute, which is why there are an increasing number of Israeli experts (see here and here) who believe that Trump might strike at Iran as a “farewell” present to the Israelis.
Is that really possible? Could Trump really do something so crazy?
You betcha he could!
One one hand, I have always maintained that Trump is the Zionists’ “disposable president”, meaning a one term president who will do everything the Likudniks want of him and who will then be jettisoned and replaced by a truly “kosher president” like Biden/Harris. On the other hand, however, there is the precedent of the US meekly taking the Iranian missile attacks in retaliation for the murder of General Soleimani which seems to indicate that the Pentagon just does not have the stomach for a full-scale war against Iran.
So which will it be?
Nobody knows. The only thing we can be sure of is that we are certainly entering very dangerous times.
Those who hope that a Biden/Harris presidency might be better are deeply deluded.
Why?
Because, as many have already pointed this out, even if Trump is ejected from the White House, “Trumpism”, as an ideology, is here to stay. Even if you believe that Biden/Harris beat Trump in a fair election, surely must you still realize that there are tens of millions of Americans who feel that the election was stolen and that Biden/Harris are usurpers.
Personally, I take a very dim view of “Trumpism”, but whatever its (many) flaws, this ideology, however vague, has “redpilled” millions of Americans who now realize that they are living in a fake democracy or, to use a Russian expression, “democracy” in the US only means “power of the Democrats”. Simply put: we can call them “1%ers” or the “US Nomenklatura” or the “deep state” or whatever other term which comes to mind, but the bottom line is obvious: the US is not a democracy or a republic, it is a dictatorship of the few over the many, the “best democracy money can buy” and a system based not on one man one vote, but one dollar one vote. Whether they realize it or not, most Americans are serfs of an occupying parasitic regime which sees them solely as a (cheap) commodity.
These ideas used to be corralled into what the Ziomedia liked to call the “extremist fringe” but now millions of Americans are becoming aware of this reality, CNN & Co notwithstanding. Put the Biden/Harris ticket into the White House and millions of people will go into some kind of “resistance mode” – whether that be political activism, civil resistance, local/state insubordination to the Federal power or even armed resistance.
One of the top priorities of the Dems in power will be to crack down, hard, on the First and Second Amendments to the US Constitution. Right there we can expect a lot of local/regional/state resistance because, unlike their ruling “elites” (i.e. masters), most Americans passionately care for what are really the cornerstones of the US political system. Yes, there is a reason why the Founding Fathers placed the First Amendment in first position and the Second one right after!
The Dems will castrate the First Amendment through their control of all the major Internet platforms (YouTube, Google, FaceBook, Twitter, Amazon, etc.) and, since this will not be government censorship, at least technically, but decisions of the private sector, even the ACLU will have nothing to say about this.
The Second Amendment will be trickier to deal with, because there is no private or non-governmental institution which can do to the Second Amendment what big tech companies have done to the First one. However, all it takes is a few well-orchestrated “shootings” or any armed refusal to be disarmed, and the label “domestic terrorist” will be swiftly applied to those who dared to resist Uncle Shmuel.
Again – we are about to enter an extremely dangerous period, both inside the US and on the international front.
Trump’s handlers must realize that the AngloZionist Empire is already finished and that all that’s left is an agonizing United States. The same probably goes for the Biden/Harris handlers. Hence both parties have a huge interest in, first, creating some crisis which can distract from what is really going on and, second, in using whatever power they still have to “fire their last shells” before the ammo box goes empty.
Conclusion: too many variables to call it
The truth is that absolutely anything can happen next. There are simply way too many variables to try to make a prediction. Will Trump attack Iran? I want to believe that this ship has sailed, but I will never say never to something as evil and stupid as an attack on Iran. However, under pretty much any scenario, we can be pretty sure that come January there will be a power vacuum in the Executive and roughly half of all Americans will consider that the election has been stolen. That kind of power vacuum, or even a duopoly, is very dangerous and typically results in even more chaos and violence. Eventually, some kind of “tough” regime comes to power. But this is a threat that we can discuss further down the road.
The Jewish News Syndicate has published another essay demonstrating the incorrigible Jewish hypocrisy and narcissism over free speech — they applaud the recent Facebook censorship of “Holocaust deniers” based solely on the spurious presumption that anyone who wants to know the full truth about what did and did not happen in World War II must necessarily be motivated solely by an irrational, blind hatred of Jews:
…The Internet is the best thing that ever happened to extremists. Prior to its development, denizens of the fever swamps of the far-right and the far-left were limited in their ability to communicate with each other or to publicize their beliefs.
Marginal groups were effectively silenced in an era when print, radio and television outlets were closed to them because major publishing entities acted as gatekeepers that effectively shut them out of the public square. While the Internet opened up new opportunities for communication for every conceivable niche and interest group, and thereby democratized publishing, it also provided a way for hate groups to connect and gave them a megaphone with which to make their toxic messages better known.
That was enabled because Facebook and Twitter were allowed by an obscure legal provision to avoid accountability for what they allowed to be published on their sites. Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act allowed an “interactive computer service” to be exempt from the normal perils of publishing—i.e., being held accountable for what was put on their sites. This both protected free speech on the Internet and allowed those responsible for what were thought of as bulletin boards for users, rather than publishing outlets to function without tackling the impossible task of monitoring what their customers were doing. Although the development of social media was far in the future at that point, Section 230 was the law that enabled Facebook and Twitter to eventually dominate modern communications.
In the view of those who are concerned about the spread of hate, that was all well and good when it was just a matter of providing billions of people the ability to post pictures and updates about their lives. Eventually, however, the notion of Zuckerberg, whose current wealth is estimated at $111 billion, enriching himself by enabling Holocaust deniers was seen as intolerable. They felt the same way about Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, who is only worth a piddling $4.9 billion…
Of course the original 1996 Communications Decency Act had less to do with “freedom of speech” on the internet per se — it was about protecting children from all the freely available Jewish-produced pornography that was beginning flood into every home in America.
But let’s not forget that it was Jews who have always defended the proliferation of pornography as a form of “free speech” — a complete twisting of the intent of the First Amendment.
And the Section 230 clause that was added to the CDA was a common sense law that made ISPs legally immune for what user’s posted on their websites — without that indemnity, the internet would collapse.
But Section 230 took away the Jews’ go-to tool to silence voices they didn’t like — sue the publisher — make the publication of certain opinions a prohibitive economic liability — the terrible power of the Jewish purse.
Jews view opinions they don’t like in the same way that Christians view pornography — radically different worldviews.
They are demanding their “right” to censor content that offends them –and pedophilia doesn’t offend them but your opinion probably does.
Oh, they are all for “freedom of speech” and “democracy” as long as they own all the publishing houses and television stations — and “count all the votes.”
To do that end, they need to effectively de-claw Section 230 — and by doing so, they can regain their pre-internet monopoly as the sole “gatekeepers” of all opinions and information– and they are doing just that.
US President Donald Trump on Thursday shared a letter on Twitter that referred to the peaceful protesters who were forcibly dispersed from a park near the White House on Monday evening as “terrorists.”
The letter from veteran attorney and former Trump lawyer John Dowd appears to be addressed to former Secretary of War James Mattis and rebuts Mattis’ Wednesday statement castigating Trump’s response to the nationwide protests after the death of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer.
“The phony protesters near Lafayette were not peaceful and are not real,” Dowd’s letter claimed, without citing any evidence. “They are terrorists using idle hate filled students to burn and destroy. They were abusing and disrespecting the police when the police were preparing the area for the 1900 curfew.”
Trump’s decision to share the letter and its shocking description of Americans exercising their constitutional rights comes as he continues to lean into his strongman approach to the ongoing demonstrations. On Monday, he declared himself “your President of law and order” as the peaceful protesters just outside the White House gates were dispersed with gas, flash bangs and rubber bullets, apparently so he could visit a nearby church.
He remained at the boarded-up building, brandishing a Bible for the cameras, for only a matter of minutes before returning to the White House.
The letter drew condemnation from the Modern Military Association of America, a nonprofit organization.
“Donald Trump just crossed a very serious line that demands swift and forceful condemnation by every Member of Congress,” said the group’s interim executive director, Air Force veteran Jennifer Dane. “Promoting a letter that labels American citizens peacefully exercising their First Amendment rights as ‘terrorists’ is an egregious breach of his oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. Now more than ever, it is absolutely crucial that Trump be held accountable for his reckless actions.”
The episode followed nearly a week of protests across the country that at times have turned violent over the death of Floyd, a 46-year-old African American man who died while in police custody in Minneapolis.
In response to the President’s approach, Mattis released a statement Wednesday cautioning that the US “must reject any thinking of our cities as a ‘battlespace’ that our uniformed military is called upon to ‘dominate.’ “
“At home, we should use our military only when requested to do so, on very rare occasions, by state governors. Militarizing our response, as we witnessed in Washington, D.C., sets up a conflict – a false conflict – between the military and civilian society,” Mattis wrote.
The President has repeatedly defended his response to the protests and even tweeted later Thursday evening that he didn’t have a problem with the National Guard helicopter that was seen flying low over protesters in Washington on Monday night.
The District of Columbia National Guard is investigating the matter and an inquiry has also been requested by Secretary of War Mark Esper.
“The problem is not the very talented, low-flying helicopter pilots wanting to save our city, the problem is the arsonists, looters, criminals, and anarchists, wanting to destroy it [and our Country]!” Trump tweeted.
The helicopter had a “stated mission” in part to “deter” criminal activity including rioting and looting by keeping a presence overhead, according to a defense official who has direct knowledge of the orders the crew was given. The official declined to be identified because the Washington National Guard is now investigating whether flights were conducted appropriately.
The Lakota UH-72 was also supposed to also deter “unlawful assembly,” provide medical evacuation from the crowd if needed and provide surveillance to command and control for force protection, the official said.
The investigation, the official said, is focusing on how those orders resulted in the low-level flights, which sent debris flying and intimidated civilians, the official said.
In an effort to stem the torrent of ‘false’ cures and conspiracy theories about COVID-19, Facebook announced it would begin informing users globally who have liked, commented on, or shared “harmful” misinformation about the coronavirus, that the content they reacted to was incorrect and pointing them in the direction of what Facebook considers to be a ‘reliable’ source. The reliable source? The World Health Organization. Here’s the distinctly noninformative WHO Covid 19 website .
I don’t know what caused Covid 19 to become our disease du jour. Was it a bat? A natural or laboratory mutation? Not only do I not know, but I don’t believe that Facebook, or the WHO know either. Why not let theories abound? Perhaps free speech means that we trust the people to evaluate the source and sort out the facts for themselves.
The general rule in the US is that no publisher has an obligation to print any particular view: that rule dates from when ‘publisher’ meant print and print was inexpensive. The founders intentionally strove to open a ‘marketplace of ideas,’ a ‘public square’ with pamphleteers and speeches. Published content was restricted only by the threat of litigation over libel or defamation which requires publishing material known (or should have known) to be false.
Exceptions to the general rule came about when publishing was through a limited medium regulated by the government. When television stations were a limited resource obtained through government licensing of the few channels, the government imposed free speech requirements including an equal time rule, requiring television stations to present both sides of an issue. The rule was dropped, considered unnecessary only when television began to offer a plethora of stations.
So now we get to Facebook( youtube, twitter, etc.). Which is it most like, television or freely available printing?
For many years, including the time that these major platforms became monopolies, the internet depended on cable service which due to the physical nature of cable was a limited resource for which the government issued licenses to certain cable companies. In 1965 , the FCC established rules for cable systems and the Supreme Court affirmed the FCC’s jurisdiction over cable. I believe that Facebook is also subject to regulation as a monopoly as the government has authority to interfere with monopolies, particularly when they are successful (which is, admittedly another issue) ask AT&T.
But Facebook wants it both ways. They don’t admit liability for defamatory statements published on their site. They argue that they behave simply as a platform, a means of transmission. But they also reserve the right to censor content by restricting or deleting material they deem incorrect. So which is it? If they have the power to censor what we see why shouldn’t they be liable for the content?
This censoring of free speech applies broadly. Google favors some content over others in its search engine, Youtube has been on a tear not only deleting videos but replacing videos with others that express an alternative view. See where they plan to ban holocaust ‘denial’ (revisionist in any way) videos and offer wikipedia instead. Further they intend to offer the banned videos to researchers and NGOs “looking to understand hate in order to combat it,” thereby providing content only to a restricted class of their own choosing. Twitter inserts a page when a ‘controversial’ link is clicked warning the user that the link has been identified as malware although Twitter admits that malware warnings are posted based on content.
What is it that compels these platforms to come down on both sides of the free speech issue? After all, by editing content Facebook becomes more like a publisher and less like a mere platform. Facebook does so because it regularly gets brought before Congress to explain free speech congress doesn’t like. Facebook also defers to European countries that regulate speech.
Facebook argues that internet companies aren’t governments and they can restrict what they like. That’s why they don’t follow the First Amendment and instead enforce more restrictive rules in response to criticism of their content. See, for ex., The New Yorker on the ‘free speech excuse.’
I believe that major platforms have become the public square. Yet we allow Facebook to restrict our speech and they do so effectively. As owners of the public square they are uniquely positioned to and do silence dissenters. Platforms take down posts that don’t fit their ‘standards, and they do so swiftly. Perhaps before we allow Facebook to be the arbitrator of free speech, we should rethink the present day meaning of a marketplace of ideas.
Once again, SouthFront faced an unprecedented censorship.
On April 30, our Facebook page with about 100,000 subscribers was deleted without any notifications or an option to appeal the decision:
On May 1, YouTube terminated SouthFront’s channels with approximately 170,000 subscribers. The main YouTube channel in English had over 152,000 subscribers, 1,900 uploaded videos and about 60,000,000 views.
This happened despite the fact that our YouTube channels had zero active strikes. We cover conflicts in the Middle East. This is a sensitive topic. Therefore, we strictly follow YouTube’s Community Guidelines and comply with the Terms of Service. There was no so-called “coronavirus conspiracy” content on our YouTube channels.
SouthFront’s YouTube channels were terminated without any warning. All that we got was a single automated email regarding the termination ofour inactive channel in Farsi “SouthFront Farsi” that included several translations of our war reports. However, even this email provides no details regarding the decision and just claims that “SouthFront Farsi” violated YouTube’s Terms of Service without any elaboration.
For over 5 years of our work, SouthFront repeatedly faced attempts to censor our coverage, analysis and videos. However, the current blatant and illegal ban of our activity is an unprecedented case.
The explanation may be that US authorities ordered YouTube and Facebook to cleanse the media sphere of sources of objective coverage and analysis on the Middle East region as a part of the ongoing preparations for a war with Iran.
We think that the current situation deserves attention of the international public, including the journalistic community beyond individual ambitions of separate media organizations and journalists.
We ask you to cover this situation and, if you have an opportunity, to provide us with informational or juridical help.
First, the fact that the AngloZionist controlled media wants to silence SouthFront is a sign of how effective SouthFront’s work has been. They can wear that as a badge of honor.
Second, I don’t believe that there is anything that should/could be done. The First Amendment only applies to situation in which the state silences somebody, not when corporations do it.
Third, I strongly believe that we all (those in overt resistance to the Empire)should never become dependent on the good-will or decency of AngloZionist controlled media/hosting outlets. Expect no decency or mercy from these people, they are servants of Satan, quite literally!
Please try to help SouthFront either financially or by lending them a helping hand. These are good people, doing an important job and, unlike so many others, they have always repaid us with their faithful support and friendship.
By helping SouthFront you help all of us, including the entire Saker Community!
The coronavirus and related financial crisis ravaging America have revealed the country to be the dysfunctional, borderline failed state that it is. America’s dysfunction is broad in scope but almost entirely traceable to one common origin: the oligarch takeover of the economy, media, healthcare and political system. I have already reported on the first three of these , and here I will dissect what’s so fundamentally wrong with the political system.
Prior to having its attention diverted by the virus, the rest of the world looked on in disbelief as the circus-like US presidential primaries traipsed from state to state. Looking at the cast, one must wonder if this is really the best America has to offer. There was practically nothing of substance separating the candidates, with the sole exception of much-needed healthcare reform, a step advanced by a couple of candidates who were promptly branded by both parties as “socialists.” Meanwhile, emerging from the pack was none other than Joe Biden, a corporate stooge if there ever was one, whose history of corruption has been swept under the rug but whose dementia is becoming increasingly hard to conceal.
Nonplussed? You should be, because this is not democracy. It essentially amounts to a scripted talent show aimed at creating the impression that the American people have a democratic choice. The endless campaigning – often in disarmingly charming milieus such as rural Iowa diners – and numerous “debates” underscore the illusion of choice. But it is in fact the lack of real choice that necessitates such ostentatious pageantry.
In reality, the Democratic and Republican parties share almost identical positions on all major political questions. Neither challenges America’s hegemonic foreign policy and the war machine that imposes it; neither takes meaningful action to rein in the unrestrained oligarch crony capitalism or address the rigged financial markets; and both completely reject reforming the out-of-control healthcare system (with the exception of the few “socialists,” who are also smeared as “Russian assets”). The latest example of how in lockstep both parties march is the $2 trillion coronavirus stimulus bill, in essence just another corporate bailout. But such close alignment on the issues of true importance should come as no surprise: this “duopoly” is in fact owned lock, stock and barrel by the financial oligarchs.
In lieu of discussing the issues of true substance, the overseers of this duopoly have imposed over the public discourse an agenda that creates the appearance of an acrimonious political divide but conveniently skirts addressing the inner workings of the system. Heading up this faux agenda are climate change and the culture war, both of which encompass a myriad of sub-issues that serve to distract Americans from the insidious corporate takeover. Much as a mime pretends to be trapped in a phone booth, the two parties feign contention over these issues in what amounts to carefully staged political theater.
That America is not a real democracy but an oligarchy masquerading as one becomes even more clear when one lifts the hood on the election system, which I do in this report by providing comprehensive evidence that the system has been rigged in such a way as to institutionalize the two-party monopoly and reinforce the financial elite’s grip over it.
The three lynchpins of this ironclad grip are (1) the corrupting power of money, which has been institutionalized through campaign finance laws that have been manipulated by the Supreme Court; (2) the ballot access laws, which refer to the pre-screening rules that determine which parties and candidates can be officially registered to stand for election; and (3) the enormous bias of the oligarch-owned, propaganda-spewing media.
I will not address the media bias in this report – it should be self-evident to anyone who has followed American politics in recent years. It is sufficient to recall the blatantly partisan media attacks against Donald Trump over the last four years, which were based on statements ripped from context and exaggerated, interviews with sham experts, distorted facts, and entirely fabricated stories, not least of which was the giant hoax and nauseatingly fact-free Russiagate narrative. More recently, we have seen how the same media hyenas gave similar treatment to Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders but a free pass to the establishment’s Joe Biden. It is important to realize how the ownership of American media has been totally concentrated in the hands of the oligarchy, which I documented in the above-referenced report, The Oligarch Takeover of US Media. Such an extreme concentration of media ownership makes it easy to control the narrative and wage a totalitarian information war on opponents, both domestic and foreign.
In in this report, I will concentrate on the two other major distortions: campaign finance and ballot access, after which I will briefly list the other factors that have combined to totally discredit what used to be a democratic process.
“Money is Speech” – When money talks people listen
The republic was not exactly set up as a true democracy to start with. In the beginning, voting was restricted to property-owning white men. Only late in the 19th century and after one of the bloodiest civil wars in world history, did all men get the right of vote (in theory, but not fully to this day, as we shall see). Women got the right only in 1920. Contrary to the claims of actor Morgan Freeman in a 2017 propaganda video, American history “for 241 years of democracy” has certainly not been “a shining example to the world.” (Note 1).
Early efforts to push back against the robber barons who corrupted the political system with their wealth started with the Tillman Act of 1907, which – although ultimately unsuccessful – aimed to prohibit corporations and interstate banks from making direct financial contributions to federal candidates. Campaign finance restrictions that at least had the appearance of being effective were not enacted until 1971, when, in the wake of the Watergate scandal, Congress passed the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA). However, the oligarchs soon mounted a counterattack to have key provisions of the law nullified on supposed constitutional grounds. This reached the Supreme Court, an institution whose pliability in the face of corporate interests belies its fastidiously independent veneer. In Buckley v. Valeo (1976), the Court did uphold limits on individual contributions but, crucially, removed the caps on how much a campaign could spend and also the cap on so-called “independent expenditures,” which is money spent by ostensibly third-party corporations formally in favor of a particular candidate or against an opponent. The fig leaf is that these independent expenditures are made to look as if they are not in any way coordinated with the candidate or the candidate’s committee or party, although in reality of course they always are.
In Buckley v. Valeo, the Court invented the absurd theory that money equals speech, and therefore a limitation on how much money could be used for these independent expenditures was supposedly an unconstitutional infringement of First Amendment protections of free speech. (More about this absurdity below).
In 2010, a new concentrated attack on campaign finance restrictions emerged when the oligarchy’s pocket courts further proceeded to remove the remaining obstacles for the super-rich to buy American elections. In Citizens United v. FEC, the Supreme Court struck down, again on extremely dubious free speech grounds, the rules that had prohibited corporations from funding election campaigns under the flimsy condition that the money be officially structured as uncoordinated independent expenditures. Only two months later, in Speechnow.org v. FEC, the Federal Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (the Deep State court par excellence) ruled that contributions to groups that only make independent expenditures could not be limited, either in size or source.
The super-rich have always dominated the funding of political campaigns – either directly with their money, or through the media they own, or by their shadowy non-profits – but these rulings finally obliterated a century of campaign finance laws and opened the spigots for unlimited political corruption by oligarch special interests, thus removing essentially all barriers to controlling every aspect of the electoral system. These decisions also led to the rise of the notorious Super PACs, the giant slush funds that can raise unlimited amounts of corporate funding – money that is often used on either abusive mudslinging ads aimed at opponents or for whitewashing the preferred candidates. But, of course, there is absolutely no coordination with the candidates themselves. (Trust us).
For more details on US campaign finance laws, please see the Appendix to this report.
Congress is the 5% serving the 0.1%
The number one precondition for American electoral success is either being rich yourself or being financed by the super-rich and their corporations. Usually both prerequisites need to be in place, especially for the higher offices. In no other country in the world does money play such an outsized role in politics.
Practically all US presidents have been millionaires in present day value and most of them multimillionaires. (Note 2). Interestingly, though, while Bill Clinton and Barack Obama were not millionaires when taking office, they miraculously became so after leaving the White House. This came through windfall profits from book deals and speeches to Wall Street bankers. The same happened with Hillary Clinton. (Note 3). Obama even rather quite shamelessly booked those millions while still in office. This stream of easy money is tantamount to payment for services rendered for being a loyal servant to the Deep State (the same Deep State that installed him in the first place). It also shows future inhabitants of top positions that obedience is quite lucrative. (Note 4.)
If we look at the current members of Congress – the 100 senators and 450 members of the House – 200 are millionaires and that does not even include the value of their primary residences. Including that asset would put the figure at close to 500, or a whopping 90%. (Note 5). And that is even before considering the assets formally held by spouses, in trusts or offshore. The net worth of the average congressman is at least five times the US median. (Note 6). Interestingly, most appear to mysteriously get richer while actually serving in Congress. Moreover, the wealth increase tends to be disproportionate to what could be accumulated based on their salaries. In brief, Congress is the 5% serving the 0.1%.
During the 2015-16 election cycle, presidential candidates spent $1.5 billion, congressional candidates $1.6 billion, political parties $1.6 billion, and political action committees (PACs) raised and spent $4 billion. The “independent expenditures” of Super PACs amounted to $1.6 billion. (Note 7).
Clearly, had President Trump not been a billionaire he would never have had a shot at the presidency. This time around, Mike Bloomberg, the world’s tenth richest man and the consummate corporate insider, made a stunningly explicit bid to buy the Democratic nomination, spending over half a billion dollars on campaign ads in only a couple of months. Even before facing a single voter, Bloomberg, a preposterous choice to lead the Democrats, was given credibility as a serious candidate and was able to avail himself of a large platform from which to spread his message. That Bloomberg, with his billions and his establishment-approved policies, still managed to fail so spectacularly was a news item in and of itself, causing a lot of head-scratching among the pundits. He is the exception that proves the rule. (Note 8).
Practically all of the top Democrat candidates – except Bernie Sanders – were heavily funded by billionaires, as shown in the infographic below.
For candidates who don’t happen to already be fantastically wealthy, campaign financing from big donor corporations and the top 1% is decisive. This is why congressmen tend to spend about 40% of their time soliciting campaign contributions, as former congressional staffer Mike Lofgren revealed in his bestselling book, The Deep State: The Fall of the Constitution and the Rise of a Shadow Government. (Note 9). Lofgren says outright that in “practice, the American political system allows only two political parties, which are wholly dependent on corporations and wealthy individuals to fund the most expensive campaigns in the world.” (Note 10).
The Democratic Party is a corporation by its own admission
Emblematic of the scam that US elections are was the Democratic Party’s admission to being a corporation.
In a trial against the DNC for the alleged rigging of the 2016 primaries in favor of Hillary Clinton and against Bernie Sanders, the DNC’s attorneys asserted that the party has every right to favor one candidate or another, notwithstanding party rules that state otherwise, because the party is a private corporation and is therefore free to change its rules as it sees fit. Unsurprisingly, the court accepted this claim. (Note 11).
In actually democratic countries, meanwhile, parties are obligated to adhere to fair and transparent statutory legal procedures in their operations. (Besides, even a corporation would have a fiduciary duty to follow the rules it has proclaimed).
Ballot access restrictions
That money has corrupted the system should hardly come as a surprise, but what is less apparent at first glance is how political competition is obstructed by a massive bulwark of byzantine regulations – the ballot access laws – that are designed to protect the deeply ensconced two-party duopoly.
The dominance of the two parties has not come about as a result of voters’ sympathies as expressed in natural democratic competition, but rather through devious manipulation of laws for the aim of securing monopolies for the establishment parties. Each state has enacted its own laws for determining the procedures for parties and candidates to be officially registered to run for office. Rather than attempting to level the playing field, these laws guarantee automatic ballot access to the monopoly parties while barring the door to rivals who could potentially threaten the absolute power of the oligarchs that these parties represent.
While the Democratic and Republican parties get on the ballot automatically, challengers must attempt to file separately in each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia. Ballot access laws are determined by each state separately, and different rules apply for presidential, congressional, state and local elections. Presidential candidates from non-monopoly parties have to petition for ballot access in each state. This means navigating absurdly cumbersome procedures in each state separately and, among other things, having to collect some 1.5 million signatures nationwide. Furthermore, the rules and timing are different in every state, making it very difficult to overcome each state’s barrage of obstacles while meeting all of the deadlines.
In those states where a third party is unable to overcome the filing hurdles, voters are denied the opportunity to vote against the oligarchy. And of course a vicious cycle takes hold: because it is practically impossible to get on the ballot in all states, third-party candidates who are not on the ballet everywhere are seen as lacking national appeal, making them less attractive to voters (and, of course, this reinforces the difficulty of getting on the ballot in the future). Voters are loath to “waste their votes” on candidates who are deemed not to have a winning chance, an impression solidified by the lack of media coverage for such candidates.
Most states also apply rules requiring that a party meet a certain vote threshold in a recent election in order to keep its ballot status for the next election. For example, in Alabama a party needs to garner 20% in a state-wide election to retain ballot access. Such thresholds are set so high that they form an automatic party liquidation guillotine: few third parties ever make it on to the ballet and almost none make it regularly. This means that no momentum is ever achieved and the process of reforming the party and relaunching attempts to make the ballot must be done every few years. For would-be third-party activists it’s a hopeless proposition.
Such arbitrary restrictions and onerous obstacles toward even standing for election is practically unheard of anywhere else. Such a system doesn’t exist anywhere in the free world and may be bewildering for those accustomed to thinking of America as a beacon of democracy. The restrictiveness of America’s “democracy” is more appropriately compared to any number of “third-world” countries in which either only one party is allowed (such as North Korea) or where opposition parties exist but are cast to the far periphery of the political system. America certainly falls squarely in this category, but its innovation is to scrupulously maintain the façade of democratic processes, which essentially amount to carefully staged sparring, mostly over irrelevant issues, for the sake of maintaining the illusion of political plurality.
The restrictive ballot access laws also greatly diminish democratic competition in state legislative elections. In 2012, about one-third of all state House and Senate candidates ran unopposed – quite similar to how it was back in the USSR. (Note 12).
Examples of how the oligarch-owned monopoly parties are favored
The ballot access laws vary enormously from state to state, both in terms of the nature and severity of the requirements. North Carolina, with a population of about 9.8 million, requires almost 90,000 signatures. (Note 13). Oklahoma requires a petition signed by voters equal to 5% of the vote cast in the previous election. An independent presidential candidate, or the presidential candidate of a non-qualified party, may get on the ballot with a petition representing 3% of the last presidential vote. To remain qualified for the next election, a party must garner at least 2% of the total vote in the gubernatorial election.
In Nebraska, the rigged rules fast-track parties that received at least 5% of the vote in a statewide race. Nevada has doubled down on the election rigging by demanding that a party achieve 10% in the preceding general election for Congress.
Another example of egregious hurdles is Maryland’s requirement that an independent candidate collect four times as many signatures as a major-party candidate. In Florida, an independent presidential candidate needs 110,000 signatures, while Texas requires independent candidates to collect signatures equaling 1% of the previous presidential vote.
Georgia gives automatic ballot access to a political party whose candidate received at least 20% of the votes cast in the previous gubernatorial election or whose candidate in the last presidential election received at least 20%.
Kentucky uses a three-tiered system for ballot access based on the results of the previous presidential election. Only parties whose candidate for president achieved at least 20% of the popular vote are considered “political parties,” whereas those getting between 2% and 20% get the status of “political organization,” and those with less than 2% of the vote are deemed a “political group.” These classifications then determine the hurdles that must be overcome to get onto the next ballot. Clearly, parties that can’t even be classified as parties struggle to make headway.
Pennsylvania extends the “political party” status to a party that manages at least 2% in the most recent election, but after a two-year grace period a party must meet the outrageous threshold of having voter enrollment of no less than 15% of the state’s total party enrollment.
Et cetera and so on and so forth. Some states have been more innovative than others in putting in place a system that suppresses democratic choice.
Follow the links below for a closer look at all of the restrictive ballot access rules:
Only billionaires can attempt to overcome the hurdles – and even then often in vain
Only a well-established national movement – or a billionaire – could put together an organization that could even theoretically overcome the filing hurdles in all 50 states. This system of obstruction of the democratic process has worked precisely as intended: with the sole exception of billionaire Ross Perot, there has not been a single viable candidate outside of the monopoly parties.
In the 2016 election, while the Democratic and Republican parties were automatically on the ballot in all 50 states, the only other party that managed to get ballot access in all states was the Libertarian Party. The Green Party, which is a viable and increasingly popular alternative in many other countries, was left off the ballot in six states. The Constitution Party made it on to the ballot in just 24 states.
The billionaire Ross Perot ran in 1992 as an independent and in 1996 representing the Reform Party, which was set up specifically for his campaign. However, because the party had difficulty navigating the restrictive ballot laws, he was forced to run as an independent in some states. In 1992, he received 18.9% of the popular vote, making him the most successful third-party presidential candidate in terms of the popular vote since Theodore Roosevelt in the 1912 election.
You can collect all the signatures you want, but it won’t help
It was estimated that in the 2016 election an independent candidate would have needed to collect a staggering 880,000 valid signatures to meet the thresholds in all states combined. (Note 14). But because the monopoly parties regularly challenge the legitimacy of the signatures that are collected, opposition parties must collect double that amount to stay above the thresholds. This is because there is a very real and proven risk that as many as half of the signatures can be declared invalid on absurd technicalities that are concocted following legal harassment by the monopoly parties. For example, signing “Bill” instead of “William” or leaving out a middle initial are among the many pretenses for signatures being disqualified. (Note 15).
Not only must candidates collect a prohibitive amount of signatures, but whoever ventures to do so should also be ready for a protracted legal battle to defend against endless litigation instigated by an army of attorneys that the monopoly parties can summon in order to obstruct third parties and independents in their efforts to register. The establishment lawyers, aided by corrupt state officials, go to great lengths to challenge the accuracy of candidate filings and often reject the authenticity of signatures on whatever flimsy or fabricated grounds they can find. (Note 16).
A case in point is the outrageous treatment that independent candidate Ralph Nader was subjected to in his 2004 presidential bid. (Note 17). After Nader’s campaign had managed to gather and file the needed signatures in all 50 states, the Democratic Party and its stooges mounted a campaign to challenge all of Nader’s filings. They ended up filing 29 complaints in 19 states against Nader’s campaign with the aim to get Nader stricken from the ballot. And, sure enough, they succeeded in taking him off the ballot in Pennsylvania, Oregon, Missouri, Virginia, Ohio and several other states. Pennsylvania’s measures aimed at keeping independent candidates out included, in addition to the punitively high number of required signatures, a prohibition on people from out-of-state collecting signatures on behalf of a candidate and the requirement that every signature sheet be separately notarized. In Pennsylvania, a lawyer for the Democratic Party successfully invalidated – for ridiculous reasons – the authenticity of over 30,000 of Nader’s signatures. (Note 18). For Pennsylvania Democrats it was not enough, though, to simply take Nader off the ballot, they also proceeded to present him with a large bill for lawyers’ fees as a punishment for having had the audacity to encroach on the duopoly’s turf. Nader then became the first candidate in American history to be penalized, with a legal bill totaling $81,102, just for the crime of attempting to run for public office. (Note 19).
This later unfolded into a giant corruption scandal, which ultimately put members of both duopoly parties behind bars. It emerged that the Democratic Party had illegally enlisted an army of state officials to participate in the concentrated attack on Nader’s campaign. Not only were they working at taxpayers’ expense, but they even received about $2.3 million in government bonuses for their subversive activities. But, remarkably, even as it was proved that Nader’s petitions were challenged via illegal means, his $81,000 bill for the legal fees of his inquisitors stood. And no lessons were gleaned from the affair. Two years after Nader’s failed bid, Pennsylvania’s Green Party tried to run Carl Romanelli for US Senate against Democrat Bob Casey and Republican Rick Santorum. Romanelli managed to collect more than 100,000 signatures (more than the formally required 67,000), but he too ended up being challenged and knocked off the ballot. And, again, the Democratic Party’s legal fees were billed to Romanelli as the losing party. Since then in Pennsylvania numerous other independent candidates have been equally destroyed through various means.
With the path to the presidency littered with the bones of brutally snuffed out third-party bids, both Democrat-cum-Republican Donald Trump and Democrat-cum-Republican-then-independent-and-Democrat again Michael Bloomberg understood that working within one of the two parties – and using their massive financial resources – was a far more promising strategy than mounting a quixotic third-party bid. But the flip-flopping history of party affiliation of those billionaire tycoons clearly shows how the two parties are essentially interchangeable electioneering tools for the elite and that neither party is overly concerned with ideology or convictions.
The Constitution is not to blame
The morass of elections laws is often defended on the premise that it should be the prerogative of the individual states to set their own laws even for federal elections. However, Article I, Section 4 of the United States Constitution says that, while election laws are primarily set by state legislatures, Congress has the power to alter them as it sees fit. And indeed, Congress has done so by enacting uniform nationwide campaign spending laws – those very laws that were undermined by the Supreme Court’s nationwide rulings. In 1967, Congress also passed a law that mandated single-member districts across the country, which demonstrates that the Constitution and federal structure of the United States are not actually obstacles to conducting democratic reform of the ballot access laws, if only there were the will to democratize the country.
Richard Winger, in his article “How Ballot Access Laws Affect the U.S. Party System,” demonstrated that the Supreme Court has been a conniving partner in letting states tighten their ballot access laws with practically no limits. Although the Court has from time to time made a token gesture some excesses in the ballot restrictions, such instances have never managed to set a precedent for curbing undemocratic practice. Winger writes that the Court’s ballot access decisions, taken together, have actually had the effect of increasing the severity of the laws, rather than ameliorating them. (Note 20).
Winger’s article also gives a lucid account of the history of these restrictive rules and how the screws have been gradually tightened.
There is nothing good in the supposed stability that a two-party system brings
Winger writes: “In a normal two-party system, there are still significant third parties. In the United States, there were significant third parties before 1930, but there have not been any since then. The reason there are no longer any significant third parties is because the ballot access laws have become severe.” (Note 21).
Apologists for the US two-party system argue that governments are typically more stable in two-party systems, because viewpoints on the fringes of societal discourse are supposedly neutralized. Wikipedia, for example, hilariously writes: “First-past-the-post minimizes the influence of third parties and thus arguably keeps out extremists.” (Note 22).
However, a US-style managed two-party system protected by rigged laws and court rulings provides as much stability as the USSR one-party system did, all while destroying political competition and depriving the system of the flexibility and mechanisms to adapt to new realities. A two-party system lacks any safety valves to let steam out, meaning the problems just pile up until the pressure is such that the whole system implodes. This has now happened with the US economy, a circumstance for which the rigid two-party system deserves heavy blame. The economic catastrophe in the US is in plain sight for anyone to see, same with the US healthcare debacle, but it is the rotten political monopoly of the corporate elite that has so steadfastly prevented the real issues from being addressed.
What is interesting – and underscores the undemocratic nature of the system – is that surveys consistently show that independents easily outnumber both Democrats and Republicans and that voters overwhelmingly would want to have another choice. (Note 23). In fact, 43% of Americans identify as politically independent. (Note 24).
More problems have piled up to destroy US democracy
In addition to the three main issues discussed above, I will briefly list a number of additional problems that contribute to the huge democracy deficiency in the United States.
(4) The US does not have a proportional voting system, which would force the monopoly parties to be alert to the real needs of society and which would guarantee political representation for competing ideas. Instead, plurality voting is practiced, which means there is a system of single-member districts where the winner takes all even if it does not achieve a majority of votes (first past the pole). In some states, the system is modified with a runoff between the two candidates who got most votes in the first round. A truly democratic system would require a proportional distribution of seats based on party totals.
Some of the election systems are truly absurd. A good example is California’s so-called “top-two” primary system, in which all candidates from all parties must participate in a primary, while the top two vote-getters – even if from the same party – move on to the general election. That really shows that the sham two-party system is, in reality, a one-party system.
(5) The problem with the single-member voting districts has been exacerbated by the practice of gerrymandering, which refers to the system of manipulatively redrawing the boundaries of electoral constituencies. This is done to establish an unfair advantage for one of the monopoly parties or for certain favored candidates within a party. In either case, the effect is to diminish competition.
(6) Large parts of the electorate have been disenfranchised, that is, unconstitutionally deprived of their right to vote. Every state except Maine and Vermont prevents inmates from voting while in prison for a felony. Once released from prison, voter eligibility varies widely by state. A few states – mostly Southern states with large black populations – permanently deny the right to vote to all ex-convicts. That is nothing short of an extra-judiciary punishment, which is designed to prevent the poor and most oppressed sectors of US society from participating in the electoral process.
Over the last half century, the number of disenfranchised individuals has increased dramatically along with the rise in the inmate populations, from an estimated 1.17 million in 1976 to 6.1 million today. (Note 25). Nationally, 13% of the African-American population (an even higher percentage in some states) are now denied the right to vote because of felony convictions. (Note 26).
How capricious the system is can be seen from a case in Alabama, where a man was blocked from voting because he owed the state $4. (Note 27).
(7) Another absurd feature of the American election system is voter registration. In order to retain the right to vote, American voters must register in advance. In a true democracy, it is the obligation of the government to ensure that all citizens have easy and equal access to voting. It is the government’s duty to put in place a system for registering voters and not mandate that voters undergo cumbersome procedures. In democratic countries – like Russia – a voter is automatically enrolled based on residence. It is the obligation of the government to ensure that all citizens are entered in electoral rolls. Usually, this is done through the requirement that each individual provide his or her address to the authorities. But the US voter registration system is a totally arbitrary process that is frequently used to prevent – again – the poor and oppressed from voting. But sometimes the arbitrariness of this works the other way: voter registration laws are sometimes made so lax that non-citizen immigrants can unconstitutionally vote. This is the case, for example, in California, which does not require proof of citizenship for voter registration.
It gets more absurd from the point of view of a democracy when we consider that, when registering a voter, a party affiliation – Democrat, Republican or independent – must be indicated. The inability to conceal one’s political preferences means that there is no voting secrecy in the US. And this is public data for anybody to see, for example, a potential employer.
Altogether, there are 31 states (plus the District of Columbia) that indicate a party when registering voters. In aggregate, 40% of all voters in party registration states are Democrats, 29% are Republicans, and 28% are independents. Nationally, the Democratic advantage in the party registration states approaches 12 million. (Note 28).
(8) After voter registration, there is the problem of voter identification at the poll station. For example, California has no law requiring that voters present photo identification, although sometimes it ends up being required anyway. But when voters do need to identify themselves they can provide any one of the following as proof: a California identification number, the last four digits of their social security number, a copy of a recent utility bill, a sample ballot booklet sent from the county election office, a student ID or a driver’s license. Of course, a passport can also be presented, but why bother when a utility bill is enough.
(9) Interference in politics and elections by law enforcement and intelligence agencies under the control of the US Deep State. Even with practically all aspects of the electoral system totally rigged in favor of the two monopoly parties, the establishment has lately been having problems with ensuring the desired election outcomes and therefore has resorted to openly employing their administrative resources in the State Department, law enforcement (DOJ, FBI) and intelligence agencies (CIA and the other 16 sisters) to interfere in elections. Most blatantly this has occurred in connection with the events subsumed under the Russiagate witch hunt. While cynically levying false accusations at Russia for meddling in the US elections, these agencies were actually engaged in this mendacious – not to mention treasonous – activity themselves. (Note 29).
(10) Finally, in winding up this discussion of the distortions in the American political system, I would be remiss if I did not mention a particularly lurid piece of American Kabuki theater – the public debates among the candidates. Whereas in more democratic countries debates are usually open to all candidates who meet a reasonable minimum threshold in America the show is reserved exclusively for duopoly candidates. The debates themselves are mostly platforms for empty clichés, prepared one-line zingers and vacuous rallying cries about the greatness of the country. The show is carefully managed in such a way as to keep meaningful issues from being addressed, thus preventing any challenge to the agenda of the establishment.
When televised presidential election debates started in 1976, the organizer was the nonpartisan League of Women Voters. However, the LWV withdrew in 1988 in protest of the major-party candidates attempts to dictate nearly every aspect of how the debates were conducted. (Note 30). In the statement announcing its withdrawal, the LWV prophetically stated that “the demands of the two campaign organizations would perpetrate a fraud on the American voter.” This allowed the duopoly to seize full control of the debates through a vehicle called the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD), which since its inception has been headed by former chairs of the national committees of the two major parties. In order to exclude third-party candidates, a rule was instituted that to qualify for a debate candidates must garner at least 15% in opinion polls and must be on the ballot in a certain number of states, which in itself is extremely hard, as we saw above.
Ross Perot is the only third-party candidate to have crashed the party of CPD-organized debates, having found his way onto the stage during his 1992 presidential run. The CPD itself was against Perot’s inclusion, but both major party candidates, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, were convinced that Perot would do more damage to the other one and therefore wanted him included. As it turned out, it was Bush who miscalculated with that gamble. (Note 31).
At a 2000 presidential debate, meanwhile, Green Party candidate Ralph Nader was not even allowed to sit in the audience – much less participate – even though he had a ticket to be a spectator.
Typically for America, the CPD presidential debates are also a great platform for corporate sponsors, who display their advertisement during the show. Tobacco giant Phillip Morris was a major sponsor in 1992 and 1996, while Anheuser-Busch sponsored presidential debates in 1996, 2000, 2004, 2008 and 2012.
The way the Democratic Party has been rigging its primary debates – in an already familiar pattern – provides further insight into how the debate shenanigans work. In this recent primary season, the DNC actually changed the rules in order to exclude the undesired Tulsi Gabbard, who had committed the mortal sin of expressing views that questioned establishment orthodoxy. (Note 32). This came after the DNC earlier changed a different set of qualification rules so as to let Michael Bloomberg, who was not even on the ballot in the first primary states, buy his way onto the debate stage. (Note 33).Jon Hellevig
Some international comparison
The extreme disparity of the burdens placed on new parties versus the old established parties in the US has no parallel in any other democratic nation in the world. (Note 34). A research project conducted jointly by Harvard University and the University of Sydney ranked the United States worst in the West for fair elections. (Note 35).
The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) – which is about the only international organization allowed to monitor US elections – has frequently criticized the US for its restrictive ballot access laws and other serious shortcomings. (Note 36).
Concluding remarks – RIP democracy
I have earlier written an essay on how I view the essence of democracy, which appeared as Book II “On Democratic Competition” in my philosophy book All is Arthttp://www.hellevig.net/allisart.pdf (Note 37). I regard true democracy as a function of societal competition, or more precisely, the competition for regulating power relations in society.
It thus follows that democratic competition must be fair and conducted on equal terms for all participants, that is, all citizens. Democratic competition is the cumulative result of complex interrelations in all spheres of social life, and it is largely the overall condition of a society that fosters or hinders such competition. The quality of a democracy – whether it is an authentic one or it is badly compromised – is a function of all these conditions in their infinite variances.
For it to be fair and conducted on equal terms, this competition must be free from monopolistic forces that prevent all members of society from participating on equal terms. As we saw from the analysis of what counts as the democratic system in the US, all of the major components affecting the democratic processes have been consolidated in the hands of the plutocracy. The oligarchs have essentially privatized the political system and are able to exert disproportionate and usually decisive influence on outcomes that should be open-ended. Having bought the state legislatures, the oligarchs have enacted self-serving ballot access laws. With their money, they totally control all election-related avenues for mass communication, including the televised debates. They own the media, which denies 99% of the population a platform for their opinions and effectively filters out all alternate views.
Freedom of speech should be seen not only as a right to voice one’s opinions in the local bar but as entailing equal access to the means of communication, i.e. the media. Of course, this is not the case, which means there is not a level playing field for democratic competition – and this means no real democracy. The oligarch takeover of the US media has meant that huge censorship and propaganda machines have replaced what should be open and free discourse. The absence of true competition in the media has meant that not just is there no real freedom of speech but that the media has issued to itself a license to lie with impunity while sanctimoniously proclaiming the existence of a free press.
Elections should be considered only as the culmination of democratic competition when all other necessary conditions in a society are in place. But where such conditions for a democratic choice are absent, it can actually be more harmful for democracy (the sovereign power of the people) to carry on voting at the polls in what amounts to sham elections. To do is to perpetuate the system and implicitly provide one’s consent to the falsehood. What the US political elite is trying to sell us is that democracy means nothing more than periodically conducting elections between nearly identical oligarch-owned parties. In other words, we are to believe that as long as the form remains the substance can be cast aside. But if measured by that standard, even the USSR was democratic – once in a while people were dutifully summoned to the polls to confirm the absolute power of the monopolist.
As I have defined democracy, it must be seen and analyzed as a social practice, a phenomenon brought about by people’s interactions in all their myriad forms. This understanding of democracy as a social practice has not been properly appreciated. Scholars have tended to define democracy through formal and legalistic criteria, such as the existence of certain institutions and certain formal supposed legal safeguards of those systems (a system of courts, periodic elections, etc.). But as long as scholars do not move beyond those concepts to analyze what the institutions actually stand for, they fail to detect – or fail to admit – the obvious deficiencies of democracy in countries in which these formal criteria are met but where the democratic processes have seriously eroded. This is particularly pertinent in countries – such as the US – where much effort has been expended to maintain the illusion of democracy. My aim has been to bring about the understanding needed tackle this question by looking at the constituent phenomena of the social practice of democracy.
Today, precious little real democracy remains in the countries that boast of being democratic. The concept of “democracy” has been totally detached from the actual reality and is being maintained as a ritual symbol. Now utterly devoid of content, the word is incanted as a charm to instill the feeling among American and European regime subjects that they belong to a good and virtuous society and that they are empowered to influence the course of that society.
The indoctrinated classes speak of liberal democracy (by which they mean Western democracy), which they imagine to be a representative government put in power by free and pluralistic elections. The fantasy extends to a belief that the system is based on a separation of powers among a legislature, executive and judiciary. Of course, this is no longer the case: these branches operate in unison and the plutocracy presides over them all. Other incantations include the “rule of law”, “open society”, “Western values”, “human rights” and “market economy.” All of these are hollow shells of ideas that in our day and time mostly serve the purpose of virtue-signaling. The reality is that Western societies have turned into full-fledged repressive surveillance and propaganda states, in which any features of an open society were long ago eradicated. There is absolutely no market economy, but rather a totally monopolized crony capitalist system in which, as we are seeing now, corporate interests are bailed out at the first sign of trouble.
Scholars claim that liberal democracy supposedly is based on the principles of classical liberalism. Nothing could be further from the truth. But, their most pathetic theory is the so-called “democratic peace theory.” This fantasy posits that these “liberal democracies” are hesitant to engage in armed conflict with other democracies. Several factors have been promoted as justifying the democratic peace theory, one more hilarious than the other:
Democratic leaders are forced to accept culpability for war losses to a voting public;
Publicly accountable statespeople are inclined to establish diplomatic institutions for resolving international tensions;
Democracies are not inclined to view countries with adjacent policy and governing doctrine as hostile;
Democracies tend to possess greater public wealth than other states, and therefore eschew war to preserve infrastructure and resources.
(List derived from Wikipedia).
Let’s imagine that to be true, then what explains that these Western countries have been ready and raring to incessantly wage wars of aggression against the rest of the world, the countries they define as not belonging to the club of democracies? Moreover, these Western “liberal democracies” do not go to war with each other, because they are all essentially occupied subjects of the United States.
In my book, I describe the conditions for an ideal, true democracy. But that does not mean that I think that such a democracy is possible; on the contrary, nothing of the sort can ever actually exist. Any open society will be attacked by oligarchs, who will try to subjugate it under their rule – and most often they succeed. This is true both domestically in their own countries and abroad. The US-based oligarchs and their helpers in Europe have over the last century assaulted every single nation on the planet. No country should ever leave itself vulnerable to such aggression. Each should devise a sovereign system of governance that is fair and based on real justice (social, economic, and moral) without playing the fool’s game of so-called Western “liberal democracy.” China has set a good example of this.
NOTES COME AFTER APPENDIX
APPENDIX
CAMPPAIGN FINANCE LAWS, SMOKE AND MIRRORS
The US is obsessed with campaign finance regulations, which are structured so that if anything is restricted by one rule, it is allowed by another. There’s a Russian adage that perfectly describes the essence of the US campaign finance laws: “If it is forbidden, but you very much want it, then go ahead.”
Below is a summary of the campaign finance laws governing federal elections.
Candidates are free to use their personal funds for campaign purposes without any limits, but accepting campaign contributions from others is restricted – unless you use any number of the gaping loopholes available to circumvent the restrictions. An individual person can contribute only $2,000 directly to a candidate, per election. But whereas donations to individual candidates are limited to that relatively small amount, the backdoor is wide open. Individuals can donate as much as $777,600 per year to party committees, while if a spouse is included, a family contribution can reach $1,555,200 per year. These limits are reported as they stand after having been generously increased tenfold in 2014 in a drive to allow ever larger sway over the elections for the super-rich. According to oligarch shills, this enormous money would not be fatal for democracy, because it is “only allowed to go to special accounts earmarked for specific purposes, such as party headquarters maintenance, recount preparations and presidential conventions” and that the “money cannot legally be used for other purposes.” (Note 38).
One of the backdoors designed for circumventing campaign finance restrictions is for a lobbyist to assist a congressman in amassing campaign finance by arranging fundraisers, assembling PACs, and seeking donations from other clients. Yet more effective than gathering hard money (direct contributions to a candidate) is to work with soft money campaign finance. Soft money is the real hardcore of campaign finance. Soft money exploits the loophole in federal campaign finance and spending laws that exempts contributions made for general party-building rather than – ostensibly – for a specific candidate. This is a form of political money laundering, because the state party committees send the soft money up to the national party headquarters, which then can spend the money at its discretion without restrictions. (Note 39).
In addition to contributions given directly to candidates (candidate committees) and parties, individuals can contribute to a variety of political action committees (PAC). The limit for individual contributions to these are $5,000. Connected PACs can be set up by corporations, non-profits, labor unions, trade groups, or health organizations. These PACs are allowed to accept contributions only from managers and shareholders or members in the case of unions and non-profit organizations. The sponsor of a Connected PAC may absorb all the administrative costs of operating the PAC and its fundraising activities. A slightly other form is the Non-Connected PAC, which must bear its own administrative costs. PACs can give $5,000 to a candidate committee per election (primary, general or special). They can also give up to $15,000 annually to any national party committee, and $5,000 annually to any other PAC.
Another vehicle designed to circumvent the original campaign finance restrictions is something called a Leadership PAC. These are PACs set up by elected officials and parties that make “independent expenditures.” If the expenditure is supposedly not coordinated with the candidate, there is no limit to how much can be spent on that candidate’s campaign. Leadership PACs are non-connected PACs, meaning they can accept donations from individuals and other PACs – so there’s another backdoor wide open. A leadership PAC sponsored by an elected official cannot use funds to support that official’s own campaign, but no worries, it may fund travel, administrative expenses, consultants, polling, and “other non-campaign expenses,” as they call them.
Move one level up on the ladder of campaign finance schemes and you encounter the “independent expenditure committees,” commonly known as Super PACs. These are campaign finance vehicles that masquerade as third-party groups allowed to advocate for or against any candidate or issues, “as long as there is no coordination, consultation or request by any campaign or candidate.” That’s a fig leaf, if ever there was one. Everybody knows that coordinating is exactly what they do.
Tired of dabbling in a few thousand dollars, the heavy hitters have embraced these Super PACs. These represent the ultimate invention in free-for-all campaign finance, as they can raise unlimited amounts of funds, with the additional beauty that corporations, too, may invest as much as they want. While traditional PACs can donate directly to a candidate’s campaign fund, the Super PACs are not allowed to make direct contributions to candidates or parties and must ostensibly limit themselves to political spending independently of the campaigns. They are allowed to pay for ads supporting their favorite candidate and discrediting the opponents as long as they “act independently” and “do not coordinate” with the official campaign of the candidate they support. So according to the legal legend, Super PACs are independent from candidates, but obviously the reality is that their directors have close personal connections to the candidate and the campaign they support. (Note 40).
Super PACs are the ultimate dens of the political spin doctors, where nasty and abusive mudslinging ads attacking the opponents of the candidates that they are whitewashing are devised.
In addition to hard and soft money, the American campaign corruption menu includes darkmoney. Dark money refers to political spending by nonprofit organizations (referred to as 501(c) organizations). These are allowed to raise unlimited amounts from corporations and individuals, and to spend these unlimited amounts any way they wish. They call it dark money because that’s exactly what it is: the identity of the donors and of the campaigns, candidates and other possible recipients of the money, as well as the amounts raised and spent, are exempt from disclosure requirements. The flooding of elections with dark money was made possible by the US Supreme Court’s decision in Buckley v. Valeo. (More on this below).
Dark money syndicates are distinct from Super PACs. Both can raise and spend unlimited sums of money, but super PACs must disclose their donors, while dark money syndicates don’t have to do that and must not (ostensibly) have politics as their primary purpose. This is no problem for the US oligarchs, as they simply set up both types of entities to get the best of both worlds. This way corporations and individuals can donate as much as they want to the nonprofit, which isn’t required to publicly disclose funders. The nonprofit could then donate as much as it wanted to the Super-PAC, which lists the nonprofit’s donation but not the original contributors.” (Note 41).
Money is speech. Really?
The Super PACs were in essence generated by two highly questionable judicial decisions. In January 2010, the Supreme Court established in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission that the government may not prohibit corporations from making independent expenditures for political purposes. Only two months later, in Speechnow.org v. FEC, the Federal Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled that contributions to groups that only make independent expenditures could not be limited in either size or source.
The super-rich have always been dominate in funding political campaigns – directly with their money, through the media they own and by their shadowy nonprofits – but these decisions finally obliterated a century of campaign finance laws and opened the spigots for unlimited political corruption by oligarch special interests in order to give them absolute dominance and free rein for total political propaganda.
The Supreme Court’s extraordinary maneuver to further rig the campaign finance laws in favor of the super-rich was based on two questionable legal theories that took root in the mid-1970s. One held that money is speech and the other that corporations are people. (Note 42). These fabricated legal principles were needed in order to create the framework for the politically motivated claim that a restriction on the amount of money that the super-rich can use for buying elections supposedly meant an infringement on First Amendment protected freedom of speech. Then, because free speech, like any other human right, can only belong to people, the court declared that corporations are people. In the case that established these doctrines, Justice Anthony Kennedy, in the majority opinion, defended this juridical fraud by arguing that that limits on using corporate funds for campaigns were supposedly a “classic example of censorship.”
The perverted “money is speech” doctrine first appeared in a 1976 decision, Buckley v. Valeo, which invalidated some campaign-finance reforms that had come out of the Watergate drama. (Note 43). The Supreme Court then concluded that most limits on campaign expenditures, and some limits on donations, are unconstitutional because money is in itself speech and the “quantity of expression”– the amounts of money – can’t be limited. (sic! – or should we say sick!) What the Supreme Court did is to declare that corporations should have a First Amendment right to spend limitless amounts to meddle in US elections.
Obviously, the legal construction of a corporation means that it has some features of a person, mainly the right to register the title for assets and enter into agreements – which is why they are called legal persons – but the extension of corporate personhood to protection of free speech is an extraordinary invention.
The US Supreme Court, the guarantor of oligarch rule
Obviously, these court decisions are totally politically motivated and aimed at securing the super-rich’s overwhelming control over the US government. The US Supreme Court is not an independent arbiter of justice but rather a club of servants for the elite few. The appointment of a Supreme Court judge is an entirely political process. A candidate is nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. Considering that the presidents and the senators all are totally dependent on oligarch finance, oligarch media and of all the structures of the oligarch Deep State, the Supreme Court justices unsurprisingly serve the same interests. Considering that the Constitution does not set any qualification criteria for Supreme Court judges, better independent judicial protection would be achieved if the judges were appointed by lottery among all serving US judges.
This political process of appointment of judges essentially nullifies the constitutional principle of separation of powers, which holds that the three branches of government – executive, legislative, judicial – are kept independent from each other. With the politicized court the constitutionally intended checks and balances between the branches of power have essentially been wiped out.
These campaign finance shenanigans are part of an endless stream of rulings that show that the Supreme Court is following a political agenda favoring the already rich rather than administering justice. As David Kairys wrote: “At its core, this line of cases is about dominance of the political and electoral system by wealthy people and corporations and about legitimizing a political and electoral system that is unrepresentative, money-driven, corrupt, outmoded, and dysfunctional. Wealthy people and corporate managers shouldn’t dominate politics or have more and better speech rights than the rest of us. That seems like an obvious truth. And yet the Supreme Court’s recent decisions move us away from it.” (Note 44). All Court decisions in these matters (and not only these) have been heavily biased towards enabling the richest one percent to buy outsized influence of the US government. (Note 45). It is obvious beyond any doubt that the money-is-speech theory is nothing but a rhetorical device used exclusively to solidify this trend and to provide First Amendment protection for all money that wealthy people and businesses want to spend on election interference. (Note 46).
The oligarch shill Roger Pilon, in a speech to the libertarian stink tank Cato Institute, said that “the Court has said that regulations of political contributions and expenditures will be upheld only if they achieve a compelling governmental interest by the least restrictive means.” (Note 47). See, compelling governmental interest is the question. With “governmental interest,” we must mean the interest of the government as a custodian of the people, that is, the people’s interest. Then the question really is what more compelling reason could there possibly be to restrict this falsely advertised “free speech” than guaranteeing an equal value to everyone’s vote. Government precisely has a compelling interest in fostering equal participation in the election processes and stopping the corrosion of democratic ideals that results when election costs spiral out of control and only the super-wealthy have influence.(Note 48).
The Supreme Court has been extremely choosy in implementing its newfound love for free speech
It is also clear that the Supreme Court has been extremely choosy in implementing its free speech policy. When it comes to forms of speech other than the dollars drowning the voices of the people, the government and the corrupted courts have had no qualms about passing laws and judicial resolutions that run roughshod over free speech. (Note 49).
More generally, the Court has not employed its free speech theories uniformly, but only when they suit their agenda. (Note 50). In the last few decades, the Supreme Court has limited speech rights for demonstrators, students, and whistleblowers. It has restricted speech at shopping malls and transit terminals. Taken as a whole the establishment’s pocket court’s First Amendment jurisprudence has enlarged the speech rights available to wealthy people and corporations and restricted the speech rights available to people of ordinary means and to dissenters. (Note 51).
The Court has in particular developed as so-called “secondary effects” doctrine, according to which the government is allowed to restrict speech if other purposes justify it. (Note 52). Thus, if the Court in reality believed its fabricated money-is-speech theory, then it would have good reason to conclude that this money-speech may legally be restricted in order to uphold the democratic principle of equal participation in elections, for which purpose it is necessary to restrict the ability of the super-rich to buy the elections wholesale. (Note 53).
It is also telling that when the Court struck down campaign finance limits by reference to this money-is-speech doctrine, it did not go all the way. What it did was to allow unlimited election campaign finance for corporations. That’s free speech, the Court opined. But at the same time, it upheld other restrictions on campaign finance. In particular, it reasoned that the restrictions on the amounts individuals could contribute to campaigns and other direct contributions (as opposed to the fictitious “independent expenditures”) were justified to avoid corruption. So, miraculously there was no problem with the same free speech principles in restricting the freedom of money-speech of the actual humans for whose protection the First Amendment was actually enacted. Essentially, corporations were given unlimited free speech protections that were denied to actual people. This just goes to show how politically expedient the court rulings are and how flimsy and inconsistent the arguments in support of them are. There is no justice, only rules that the powers that be put in place based on their judgments of how far they can go in a given situation.
15. Bennett, James T. Stifling Political Competition: How Government Has Rigged the System to Benefit Demopublicans and Exclude Third Parties (Studies in Public Choice) (2008).
More American conservatives, frustrated with liberalism and its radical cultural experiments, are joining a rising movement that aims to redraw several state lines. Are such desperate efforts the harbinger of worse things to come?
Native Oregonian and diehard conservative Mike McCarter lives his life according to the simple rule: ‘if you can’t beat the Liberals, leave them.’ But McCarter has no plans to uproot himself from his home state. Instead, he wants southern Oregon to be absorbed into neighboring Idaho.
As leader of the so-called “Move Oregon’s Border for a Greater Idaho” movement, McCarter and other disgruntled Republicans envision a chunk of their Pacific Northwest state seceding to Idaho, where the state legislature is controlled by Republicans, and Governor Brad Little is also a red-blooded Republican. Oregon, meanwhile, is under Democratic control, led by Democratic Gov. Kate Brown.
Conservatives over the years have watched in silent horror as their state has steadily become more liberal-leaning. Ronald Reagan was the last Republican to win Oregon back in 1984. Idaho, meanwhile, has been a GOP stronghold for much longer. The last Democratic presidential candidate to win the state was Lyndon B. Johnson back in 1964.
The current strife, however, goes much deeper than simply the political alignment of the two states.
Conservative Oregonians might be able to live under Democratic rule if it were not for a raft of intensely divisive actions, including the approval of drivers licenses for illegal aliens, turning a blind eye to Antifa, the radical and frequently violent left-wing group, while declaring Portland, the most populous city in the state, a ‘sanctuary city’ for undocumented migrants.
Just last year, about a dozen Republican legislators reportedly sought refuge in Idaho rather than be forced to vote on a greenhouse gas-emissions bill. Gov. Kate Brown went so far as to authorize the Oregon State Police to haul the Republican senators back to the Capitol building so that a vote on the legislation could take place.
The situation came to head when the Oregon State Republicans launched a petition to oust Governor Brown, accusing her of being unduly focused on “special interests and politically-motivated agendas,” as opposed to the “will of the voters.”
The initiative fell just short of the necessary 280,050 signatures.
Mayor Ted Wheeler
✔
@tedwheeler
This is an unconscionable consideration by a President who is once again calling into question the moral bearings of our nation. Every human deserves to be treated with dignity. We strongly denounce the cruel efforts of this administration to retaliate against sanctuary cities. https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1116742280919044096 …
Donald J. Trump
✔
@realDonaldTrump
Due to the fact that Democrats are unwilling to change our very dangerous immigration laws, we are indeed, as reported, giving strong considerations to placing Illegal Immigrants in Sanctuary Cities only….
The situation in Oregon appears as a microcosm for the political climate across the country as a whole. A recent Pew survey revealed a chasm separating the two main political groupings nationwide. Conservatives are about 30% more inclined to agree that it is important to live in a racially homogenous community (77% vs. 48%). At the same time, 42% of right-leaning Americans say it is important to live in a community where most people share their religious views. Just 25% Democrats shared that opinion.
Since the ‘fight’ option appears to be a lost cause for many conservatives in Oregon, ‘flight’ looks to be the only available alternative.
“Rural counties have become increasingly outraged by laws coming out of the Oregon Legislature that threaten our livelihoods, our industries, our wallet, our gun rights, and our values,” McCarter said in a news release. “We tried voting those legislators out, but rural Oregon is outnumbered and our voices are now ignored. This [petition of secession] is our last resort.”
Idaho to the rescue?
In a bid to redraw the Oregon-Idaho border along ideological lines, the Greater Idaho movement has already secured approval from at least three Oregon counties – Josephine, Douglas and Umatilla – to start the secession process. The group needs to collect about 2,400 signatures from Josephine County and about 3,000 from Douglas County for the initiative to appear on the November 2 ballot.
The last time the border between US states was redrawn occurred in 1961 between Minnesota and North Dakota, a move involving a mere 20 acres of land that had nothing to do with partisan politics.
Meanwhile, across the country, West Virginia Governor, Jim Justice, said he would welcome “with open arms” any Virginia counties that wished to secede.
“If you’re not truly happy where you are, we stand with open arms to take you from Virginia or anywhere where you may be,” the West Virginia Governor told a press conference last month. “We stand strongly behind the Second Amendment, and we stand strongly for the unborn.”
The invitation comes after dozens of conservative counties in Virginia have declared themselves “sanctuaries” for the Second Amendment as Democratic state legislators, including Gov. Ralph Northam, have promised to impose tough gun laws. The radical reversal has prompted a showdown between dozens of local towns and districts and state officials.
In January, a Virginia sheriff touched a nerve when he told local legislators that he would not “enforce an unconstitutional law.”
On January 20, an estimated 22,000 gun rights supporters and local militia members, many carrying semiautomatic rifles, ascended on Virginia’s Capitol to demonstrate their opposition to gun restrictions.
At the same time, Virginia has also taken great strides in dismantling years of Republican-mandated requirements on abortions, including the removal of a 24-hour waiting period before the termination of a fetus, as well as requirements for ultrasound and counseling.
Justice extended his secession invitation alongside Jerry Falwell Jr., president of Liberty University, a Christian university in Lynchburg, Virginia. Falwell expressed support for the idea. “What’s happening in Virginia right now is a tragedy in the making,” he said.
Are these calls for secession at opposite sides of the country the rumblings of looming political strife down the road? After all, the chances for these initiatives passing state and federal legislators remains very doubtful, yet the frustration and anger that have brought them to life will not go away anytime soon. Indeed, it will only fester and infect the body politic until some sort of solution to accommodate America’s two radically different political ideologies is found. Whether the two sides can achieve that goal without resorting to violence is the real question.
Two days ago at the ADL conference Jewish Zionist comedian Sacha Baron Cohen criticised the internet and social media companies for allowing freedom of speech. This grotesque character who has made a career of marginalising oppressed minorities by depicting stereotypical characters and then ridiculing them is now calling on social media to adopt gag orders and to move us further into an Orwellian realm.
Galvanized by the support it received from the Jewish comedian, the ADL is now demanding that 10 social media accounts “should be removed immediately.”
For one reason or another I am included on the list. I need not mention that I have never been charged with any crime let alone a hate crime. I’ve never once been questioned by a single law enforcement body anywhere in the world. This does not stop the ADL from writing of me: “Gilad Atzmon is an anti-Semitic author and musician who describes himself as an ‘ex-Israeli’ and an ‘ex-Jew.’
I am indeed an ex Israeli and ex Jew and I am also a musician. However, I deny the accusation of anti-Semitism, I have never criticized Jews, or anyone else for the matter, as ‘a people,’ as ‘a race,’ as ‘a biology’ or as ‘an ethnicity.’ In fact, for my entire life I have opposed all forms of racism and this includes Jewish racism. I do criticise Jewish identitarian politics and some aspects of Jewish culture and ideology. I grew up in Israel and as far as I can remember, in the Jewish state, criticism of culture, ideology and politics is considered a perfectly kosher activity.
The ADL says of me that I am an “outspoken promoter of classic anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.” This is an absurd lie as I have repeatedly argued that there are no Jewish conspiracies since it is all done in the open: from Epstein’s Lolita Express, to Israeli war crimes, to advocacy of Zioncon global conflicts and plans for an ‘New American Century.’ The UK chief rabbi’s call for Brits to turn their backs on their opposition party is not exactly a conspiratorial clandestine move, it is actually mainstream news in Britain this morning. There are no Jewish conspiracies, what happens takes place in front of our eyes but we cannot discuss it because Jewish power, as I define it, is the power to suppress criticism of Jewish power.
From then on, what the ADL says about me is somewhat accurate. He is “a fierce critic of Jewish identity.” I am.
“He has written that ‘Jewish ideological, political, and cultural discourse is…foreign to universalism and ideas of true equality.’ My exact words can be found here. What I say is “We must find a way to admit to ourselves that the Jewish ideological, political and cultural discourse is a tribal discourse: it is foreign to universalism and ideas of true equality.” Here the ADL is engaged in a rather obvious attempt to deceive. In my original text, being ‘foreign to universalism and true equality’ elucidates the notion of tribal discourse. You may wonder why the ADL acts in a duplicitous manner.
The ADL complains that “although Atzmon frequently attacks Zionism, he has also argued that Zionism itself was originally a ‘universalist and humanist’ movement which was ‘hijacked by Judaism.’ In fact, this is exactly what I argue and I wonder, where exactly is the ‘crime?’ The battle between ‘the Israeli’ and ‘the Jew’ was at the centre of the Israeli political debate in the last election. Am I guilty of identifying the core of Israel’s identity crisis a decade before anyone else?
Finally the ADL complains that I say of Israel that it is a “tyranny inspired by a deep Talmudic intolerance.” I am afraid that the Israeli National Bill is the materialisation of the above. I think I remember that the ADL’s Abe Foxman also wasn’t pleased with Israel’s National Bill for pretty much the same reasons. Is the ADL going to ask to delete his twitter account?
Sooner or later we will have to examine the question whether the relentless attack by Jewish institutions on freedom of speech, 1st amendments and the core Western ethos has been ‘good for the Jews.’
My battle for truth and freedom involves some expensive legal and security services. I hope that you will consider committing to a monthly donation in whatever amount you can give. Regular contributions will enable me to avoid being pushed against a wall and to stay on top of the endless harassment by Zionist operators attempting to silence me and others.
Government that actually serves the interests of the people who are governed has two essential characteristics: first, it must be transparent in terms of how it debates and develops policies and second, it has to be accountable when it fails in its mandate and ceases to be responsive to the needs of the electorate. Over the past twenty years one might reasonably argue that Washington has become less a “of the people, by the people and for the people” and increasingly a model of how special interests can use money to corrupt government. The recent story about how serial pedophile Jeffrey Epstein avoided any serious punishment by virtue of his wealth and his political connections, including to both ex-president Bill Clinton and to current chief executive Donald Trump, demonstrates how even the most despicable criminals can avoid being brought to justice.
This erosion of what one might describe as republican virtue has been exacerbated by a simultaneous weakening of the US Constitution’s Bill of Rights, which was intended to serve as a guarantee of individual liberties while also serving as a bulwark against government overreach. In recent cases in the United States, a young man had his admission to Harvard revoked over comments posted online when he was fifteen that were considered racist, while a young woman was stripped of a beauty contest title because she refused to don a hijab at a college event and then wrote online about her experience. In both cases, freedom of speech guaranteed by the First Amendment was ruled to be inadmissible by the relevant authorities.
Be that as it may, governmental lack of transparency and accountability is a more serious matter when the government itself becomes a serial manipulator of the truth as it seeks to protect itself from criticism. Reports that the Central Intelligence Agency (C.I.A.) is seeking legislation that will expand government ability to declare it a crime to reveal the identities of undercover intelligence agents will inevitably lead to major abuse when some clever bureaucrat realizes that the new rule can also be used to hide people and cover up malfeasance.
A law to protect intelligence officers already exists. It was passed in 1982 and is referred to as the Intelligence Identities Protection Act (I.I.P.A.). It criminalizes the naming of any C.I.A. officer under cover who has served overseas in the past five years. The new legislation would make the ban on exposure perpetual and would also include Agency sources or agents whose work is classified as well as actual C.I.A. staff employees who exclusively or predominantly work in the United States rather than overseas.
The revised legislation is attached to defense and intelligence bills currently being considered by Congress. If it is passed into law, its expanded range of criminal penalties could be employed to silence whistle blowers inside the Agency who become aware of illegal activity and it might also be directed against journalists that the whistleblowers might contact to tell their story.
The Agency has justified the legislation by claiming in a document obtained by The New York Times that “hundreds of covert officers [serving in the United States] have had their identity and covert affiliation disclosed without authorization… C.I.A. officers place themselves in harm’s way in order to carry out C.I.A.’s mission regardless of where they are based. Protecting officers’ identities from foreign adversaries is critical.”
Some Congressmen are disturbed by the perpetual nature of the identification ban while also believing that the proposed legislation is too broad in general. Senator Ron Wyden expressed had reservations over how the C.I.A. provision would apply indefinitely.
“I am not yet convinced this expansion is necessary and am concerned that it will be employed to avoid accountability,” he wrote.
Agency insiders have suggested that the new law is in part a response to increasing leaks of classified information by government employees. It is also a warning shot fired at journalists in the wake of the impending prosecution of Julian Assange of WikiLeaks under the seldom used Espionage Act of 1918. Covert identities legislation is less broad that the Espionage Act, which is precisely why it is attractive. It permits prosecution and punishment solely because someone either has revealed a “covert” name or is suspected of having done so.
But up until now, government prosecutors have only used the 1982 identities law twice. The first time was a 1985 case involving a C.I.A. clerk in Ghana and the second time was the 2012 case of John Kiriakou, a former C.I.A. officer who pleaded guilty to providing a reporter with the name of an under-cover case officer who participated in the agency’s illegal overseas interrogations. Kiriakou has always claimed that he had not in fact named anyone, in spite of his plea, which was agreed to as a plea bargain. The covert officer in question had already been identified in the media.
John Kiriakou also observes how the I.I.P.A. has been inevitably applied selectively. He describes how “These two minor prosecutions aside, very few revelations of C.I.A. identities have ever led to court cases. Former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage famously leaked Valerie Plame’s name to two syndicated columnists. He was never charged with a crime. Former C.I.A. Director David Petraeusleaked the names of 10 covert C.I.A. operatives to his adulterous girlfriend, apparently in an attempt to impress her, and was never charged. Former C.I.A. Director Leon Panetta revealed the name of the covert SEAL Team member who killed Osama bin Laden. He apologized and was not prosecuted.”
Kiriakou also explains how the “…implementation of this law is a joke. The C.I.A. doesn’t care when an operative’s identity is revealed — unless they don’t like the politics of the person making the revelation. If they cared, half of the C.I.A. leadership would be in prison. What they do care about, though, is protecting those employees who commit crimes at the behest of the White House or the C.I.A. leadership.” He goes on to describe how some of those involved in the Agency torture program were placed under cover precisely for that reason, to protect them from prosecution for war crimes.
Even team player Joe Biden, when a Senator, voted against the I.I.P.A., explaining in an op-ed in The Christian Science Monitor in 1982 that,
“The language (the I.I.P.A.) employs is so broadly drawn that it would subject to prosecution not only the malicious publicizing of agents’ names, but also the efforts of legitimate journalists to expose any corruption, malfeasance, or ineptitude occurring in American intelligence agencies.”
And that was with the much weaker 1982 version of the bill.
The new legislation is an intelligence agency dream, a get out of jail card that has no expiry date. And if one wants to know how dangerous it is, consider for a moment that if it turns out that serial pedophile Jeffrey Epstein was indeed a C.I.A. covert source, which is quite possible, he would be covered and would be able to walk away free on procedural grounds.
*
Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
Philip Giraldi is a former CIA counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer and a columnist and television commentator. He is also the executive director of the Council for the National Interest. Other articles by Giraldi can be found on the website of the Unz Review.
We all know that the Neocons are by far the largest and most influential group of sponsors of US wars of aggression. They are the ones who lobbied the hardest for the invasion of Iraq, and they are the ones which for decades have tried every possible dirty trick to lure the US into acts of aggression against Iran. In fact, in terms of international law, the Neocons could be seen as a gang of international war criminals. Why? Because, as I have already pointed out several times, according to the fundamental positions of the Nuremberg Tribunal, the worst crime possible is not genocide or any other crime against humanity. The worst possible crime is the crime of *aggression* because, according to the experts who set up the Nuremberg Tribunal, the crime of aggression “contains” all the other crimes (by the way, the International Criminal Court takes the same position). In the words of the chief American prosecutor at Nuremberg, Robert H. Jackson, “to initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.” By that definition, every single US President would be a war criminal (at least as far as I know; if you can think of a US President who did not commit the crime of aggression – including against Native Americans! – please let me know). As for the Neocons, they could be fairly characterized as a “criminal conspiracy to commit the crime of aggression.” In a sane world, that would make them international pariahs on par with the al-Qaeda crazies (who, whether they realize it or not, were federated by the US Neocons and are still their hired guns not so much against the West but mostly against all the other (non-Takfiri) forms of Islam, primarily Hezbollah and Iran). In fact, while most are still afraid to say so publicly, I believe that there is a growing realization amongst political analysts that the Neocons are a dangerous international gang of warmongering thugs.
What is, however, less known is that inside the US, the Neocons and their allies have been a prime force to dismantle the Bill of Rights, especially the First and Second Amendments.
Today, I want to give a simple yet telling example of how this kind of stuff is quietly happening with very little opposition. And for that example, I will use the US state in which I am currently living, Florida.
Check out this stunning sequence of events:
On April 11th the FL House unanimously (114-0) passed a House Bill 741 which would define anti-Semitism as:
“A certain perception of the Jewish people, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jewish people.”
“Rhetorical and physical manifestations of anti-Semitism directed toward a person, his or her property, or toward Jewish community institutions or religious facilities.”
The bill also provides many examples of “anti-Semitism,” including:
Calling for, aiding, or justifying the killing or harming of Jews, often in the name of a radical ideology or an extremist view of religion.
Accusing Jews as a people or the State of Israel of inventing or exaggerating the Holocaust.
Accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel, or the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interest of their own nations.
The bill also provides that examples of anti-Semitism related to Israel include:
Applying a double standard to Israel by requiring behavior of Israel that is not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation, or focusing peace or human rights investigations only on Israel.
Delegitimizing Israel by denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination and denying Israel the right to exist.
On April 29th Governor DeSantis and the Florida Cabinet met in Jerusalem (not a joke!) to proclaim their support for “the Jewish state” (sic) and declare that DeSantis will be the most pro-Israel governor in “America” (sic). The fact that holding that meeting abroad is a violation of Florida law did not bother anybody (except The Florida First Amendment Foundation which filed a lawsuit against this outrage). Neither did the fact that Israel is the last openly and officially racist state on our planet. Sadly, Florida is hardly an exception, two dozen other states (including Texas) have passed similar laws.
The tiny little fig-leaf covering the real anti-civil-rights nature of such laws is the cop-out that such laws do not technically violate the First Amendment since they “only” apply to schools (FL) or that they do not ban free speech as such, but “only” allow for disinvestment from corporations and individuals who dare to profess the “wrong” point of view about Israel (TX).
This is, of course, utter nonsense.
Since the Neocons cannot openly come out and declare “let’s abolish the First Amendment”, they use what I would call a “legislative death by a thousand cuts” meaning that rather than openly repealing the First Amendment, they simply neuter it by imposing innumerable small limitations, regulations, interpretations, restrictions, etc. etc. etc (by the way, that is how the US elites are currently also trying to dismantle the Second Amendment).
As somebody who studied in the USA and obtained two diplomas here (1986-1991), I can attest that before 9/11 US schools and campuses were a wonderful Petri dish for all sorts of opinions and ideas, including very controversial ones. The freedom of speech on US colleges was total, and it was understood and expected that all opinions and ideas were to compete on their intrinsic merits and not carefully parsed for any sign of crimethink. This has now totally changed: with a few exceptions, most US schools (including many colleges!) have now become ideologically monolithic, and the only possible opinion is total hatred for Trump and unconditional support for the Clinton gang.
The most toxic aspect of these freedom-crushing laws is that they are deliberately directed at the young because the ruling plutocracy fully appreciates the fact that young people are far easier to mold ideologically, to indoctrinate. Add to this that the bulk of the US “educational” system (along with the US corporate media) is designed to actually stupidify students and make them compliant (the exact opposite of what “education” is supposed to achieve) since all that is required from 90+% of the US population are just the basic skill-sets needed to serve their overlords and ruling elites (the remaining top 10% of schools are mostly reserved for the children of the ruling US nomenklatura such as doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc.).
There is another aspect of this slo-mo deconstruction of civil rights in the USA which I think is extremely important to point out: I believe that the absolutely outrageous nature of such laws is not only a side-effect of the infinite arrogance of the Neocons but also a deliberate mind-manipulation technique. By being so “in your face” with their ideological arrogance, the Neocons are forcing everybody observing the laws into one of two camps: first, those who meekly accept whatever the Neocons want, and those who dare to resist. The first group then becomes an accomplice, a bystander, who by silence acquiesces, while the second group becomes a target to be silenced, by whatever means necessary. The similarities in other circumstances are apparent: 9/11, MH-17, Skripal, fictional gas attacks in Syria, etc. The rulers of the Empire demand that everybody endorse a narrative which is self-evidently false thereby creating a very accurate tool to measure the degree of political subservience of every person asked whether the official version is true or not.
In this context, it is quite amazing to see that very few people dare to openly question why and how a foreign power acquired such total control over a supposed superpower. There are, of course, many courageous individuals who dare to question all this (the names of Cynthia McKinney, Ron Unz, Philip Giraldi, Paul Craig Roberts, Catherine Austin-Fitts, Bonnie Faulkner and many others come to mind), but their courageous voices are drowned by an CAT5 hurricane of pro-Zionist propaganda. And, of course, when all else fails, the vapid and nonsensical accusation of “anti-Semitism” is used to discredit anybody whose arguments cannot be simply dismissed. Finally, the US deep-state has been very successful in its covert support for all kinds of genuinely racist movements, personalities and media outlets as a means to discredit (by supposed association) anybody critical of Israel or of Zionism. The exact same technique was used to discredit the 9/11 Truth movement which has been negatively affected on a grass-roots level by all sorts of plain stupid theories (nukes, Russian missiles, directed energy weapons, etc.) which helped to “dissolve” the serious and rigorously scientific studies of what really happened on 9/11.
One of the most devastating consequences of this Zio-compatible political orthodoxy in the USA has been that no US politician has successfully challenged the total control of the Zionist Occupation Government (ZOG – a much-discredited term, yet a totally accurate one, in my opinion). Cynthia McKinney tried, and we all know what happened to her. Even more chilling is the fact that even people like Ron Paul, Dennis Kucinich, Ralph Nader or Tulsi Gabbard clearly decided to stay away from this issue, lest they be demonized and removed from any position of power like Cynthia McKinney was.
This is all entirely deliberate. Just check the language used by HB 741 which clearly and repetitively conflates any rejection or condemnation of Zionism (which is an ideology) with the hatred of Jews (as a religion, ethnicity or race; FWIW, I personally think of Jews as a tribe, not a race or ethnicity). This conflation is the cornerstone of Zionist power in the West, and this is why any discussion of it is considered as an impeachable evidence of racist crimethink).
Still, those who, like myself, live in the USA are comparatively better off than any European dissidents since in most EU countries (and in Russia, by the way) there are already plenty of laws banning specific forms of free speech including even the so-called “Holocaust denial” and the (vaguely worded) ban on “hate speech”: there is no First Amendment in Europe and the ban on some forms of free speech has always been present in Europe (the French philosopher Alain Soral is now risking a year in jail for various “thought-crimes”. I will write about his plight in the near future).
Conclusion: in so many ways, Russians and Americans have the same problem!
Once we make the decision to call things by their proper names, it becomes evident what the problem is, of the USA: the USA is not a genuinely free or sovereign country, but an “occupied territory” ruled by a transnational gang of thugs whose ideology is as racist, messianic and as hateful as it gets (Zionism); I would, therefore, suggest that a perfect US “liberation slogan” might be “restore full sovereignty to the people”. Russia, I believe, has the same problem, albeit to a lesser degree (the most significant difference is that there are still many patriots in Russia who are willing to speak up against this state of affairs, but without falling into the trap of endorsing racist views). Fundamentally, I think that it would be fair to say that both Russia and the USA are struggling to free themselves from the yoke of a trans-national gang of thugs whose goal is world domination, literally (if you are naïve enough to believe that Zionism is “just” the advocacy of a Jewish homeland and a relocation of any threatened Jews to “Eretz Yisrael” you are totally mistaken, see why here).
Furthermore, both Russia and the USA also suffer from the internal oppression of a ruling class, which is corrupt to the core and profoundly contemptuous of everybody else. And while these people are not united under one leader or organization, and while they don’t have to have secret coordinating meetings, they have such a commonality of interests that they will always and instinctively act in concert. I know that this is not a cool thing to say in 2019, but for all his other mistakes, Karl Marx was quite correct in his realization that class struggles are what defines the structure of most societies and that class consciousness often determines how those in power act.
So, whatever we choose to call them (Neocons, Zionists, Atlantic Integrationists, 5th columnists, etc.), these labels are all situational, and we all know who we are dealing with here and how these people operate. And to those who would (inevitably) accuse us of some kind of crypto-racism we would simply reply with the words of a very famous Jew, Saint Paul, who said: “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places” (Eph. 6:12). Besides, blaming Jews for Zionism is about as logical as blaming Russians for Bolshevism, Germans for National Socialism or blaming US Americans for imperialism: this is both counter-factual and profoundly immoral. But, not to worry, the Pope has already declared that Christians have to ask for pardon for “19 centuries of Christian anti-Judaism”! I suppose that soon the Latins will declare Saint Paul an “optional saint” (like they did with Saint Nicholas). In fact, judging by the Pope’s obsession with denouncing anti-Semitism, we can safely assume that soon such notorious “anti-Semites” like Saint Paul, Saint Cyprian of Carthage, Saint Gregory of Nyssa, Saint Ephrem the Syrian, Saint Ambrose of Milan, Saint Justin Martyr and many others will soon be made “optional”. At the end of the day, I fully expect these folks to make Christ Himself “optional,” again for His anti-Semitism (especially in the Gospels of Saint Matthew and Saint John which will surely be “corrected” in the near future).
Russians and US Americans live in very different societies with very different histories. Yet I believe that rather than futilely hoping that Russia will one day become a backer of the (deep-state sponsored and therefore truly racist) Alt-Right, it would be far more realistic and productive to hope that all the people of Russia and the USA, irrespective of their race, ethnicity or religion, join forces to struggle to recover their sovereignty over their country. It does not matter what ideology the trans-national plutocracy happens to advocate as long as the rest of us realize that true sovereignty is the counter-poison which will restore our freedoms and stop wars of aggression (which only the ruling elites benefit from). Today the Neocons are enemy #1 for the US. The Russian 5th columnists are the enemy #1 for Russia. Showing how they work towards the same goals is, I believe, one of the first things which those who resist these thugs must achieve. Paraphrasing Marx, I would suggest this slogan: “sovereignists of all countries – unite!”.
On April 29th Governor DeSantis and the Florida Cabinet met in Jerusalem (
UPROOTED PALESTINIANS: SALAM ALQUDS ALAYKUM 