Watchdog: US Aid to Venezuela Was Used to Push Regime Change

A report from the US Agency for International Development’s (USAID) watchdog found that aid allocated for Venezuela in 2019 was used as part of the Trump administration’s failed regime change effort.

In January 2019, the US and many of its allies recognized Juan Guaido as the interim president of Venezuela in an attempt to unseat Nicolas Maduro. As part of this policy, USAID started coordinating aid deliveries with Guaido.

The report from USAID’s Inspector General reads: “In January and February 2019, the US Government identified USAID’s humanitarian assistance for Venezuelans as also serving as a key tool to elevate support to the Venezuelan Interim Government and increase pressure on the Maduro regime.”

In February 2019, USAID sent 368 tons of aid worth $2 million to the Colombia-Venezuela border and the Caribbean island of Curacao. A media frenzy ensued as the Trump administration tried to force the Venezuelan government to accept the aid.

Since the US was calling for Maduro to be overthrown, he did not allow the trucks carrying the aid to enter the country from Colombia and stopped them at the border. One truck was set on fire, which US media outlets initially blamed on Venezuelan forces. But it turned out the blaze was started by a molotov cocktail thrown from the Colombian side of the border.

The Inspector General’s report makes it even more apparent that the attempt to ram the aid into Venezuela was merely a political stunt. For example, the aid was dramatically delivered to Colombia in giant Air Force C-17 cargo planes when there were cheaper commercial delivery options available.

The report also found that the aid package included ready-to-use supplemental food even though USAID said this type of commodity was not necessary after determining the nutritional status of Venezuelan children. Ultimately, only eight out of the 360 tons allocated for Venezuela made it into the country. The rest was delivered inside Colombia or shipped to Somalia.

Under direction from Guaido, USAID also minimized funding to the UN agencies that already had infrastructure set up in Venezuela to deliver aid. A Venezuelan non-governmental organization, which wasn’t named in the report, was awarded funding because it had US-aligned interests.

The Trump administration’s regime change effort came with a failed coup attempt and a brutal sanctions regime that has had a devastating impact on Venezuela’s civilian population. President Biden has continued the policy, continues to recognize Guaido, and appears to have no interest in giving Venezuela sanctions relief.

Reprinted with permission from Antiwar.com.

from Watchdog: US Aid to Venezuela Was Used to Push Regime Change

The Astounding Number of Coronavirus Vaccine Adverse Event Reports

Reports of adverse events related to experimental coronavirus vaccines are coming in at an astounding clip. Hmm. How can that be when many politicians and people in the media are repeatedly proclaiming that the vaccines — some of which are not vaccines under the normal meaning of the term — are safe and that everyone should take them? Here is a Friday update at Twitter from reporter Alex Berenson regarding the continuing flood of reports submitted to the United States government’s Vaccine...

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from Peace and Prosperity http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/peace-and-prosperity/2021/april/30/the-astounding-number-of-coronavirus-vaccine-adverse-event-reports/

'(bleep) The Mask Order' With Guest Pho Chan

Libertarian artist, educator, and philosopher Pho Chan joins today's Liberty Report to explain how the statists can best be challenged with music and humor. How to connect with a younger generation now seemingly attracted to socialism and authoritarianism? Chan has a few ideas. Watch today's Liberty Report:



from '(bleep) The Mask Order' With Guest Pho Chan

The US Congress Turns on Itself: Censuring and Threats of Expulsion Proliferating

Mark Twain once wrote that “It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.” Some developments over the past several weeks would certainly support that judgement if one regards a country’s legislative body as a mechanism intended to benefit the public that it is elected to serve. The hypocrisy of America’s two major parties is something to behold, with corruption at a level that is rarely attained in most third world countries.

Recently there have been some appalling cases that underline how far the American Congress has separated itself from any tangible national interest if one excludes getting rich and reelected, in whichever order one seeks to go about that. One of the best at getting rich and reelected in spite of not having two brain cells to rub together is the esteemed Maxine Waters of California, who has starred in her recent attempt to inspire an angry mob to get more “confrontational” if the murder trial of Minneapolis policeman Derek Chauvin were to go the wrong way through a failure to convict.

Now bear in mind that we Americans live in a no-fault no-accountability society, where no one is guilty of anything unless he or she is caught red handed and has no protectors in place to deny that anything at all happened. As Maxine has plenty of defenders because she is black, a woman and, most of all, a Democrat, it should have been expected that in her case a call to riot by a congressman would be treated as a non-event, and so it proved when the GOP made a feeble attempt to censure her for her behavior.

As Maxine represents part of California, her appearance in Minnesota was little more than race baiting with a threat of violence thrown in. Attempts to characterize it as free speech on her part ignore the fact that she is a government official, paid for generously by the taxpayer, and a call to violence by one part of the citizenry directed against both the legal system and another constituency cannot be considered acceptable. It is indeed impeachable.

One has to wonder who paid for Waters’ Minnesota trip and marvel at her audacity when she asked for and received an armed police escort for her own safety as she traveled to and from the airport. Perhaps her calls to de-fund the police were on hold until after she completed her travels. It is also important to realize that due to the seniority afforded by her 29 years in office she is, in spite of her lack of anything describable as patriotism of even integrity, part of the House Democratic leadership. She’s Chief Majority Whip, has been the chairperson of the House Black Caucus, and is the ranking member on the House Financial Services Committee. Never before has anyone attained so much having so little to offer.

But the story does not end there, which is where the true mendacity of the US Congress comes to the surface. When the Republicans rightly attempted to censure Waters it was inevitable that the recent impeachment of President Donald Trump for the use of incendiary language when addressing a crowd at the Capitol on January 6th would come up, but the Democratic Party leadership was having none of that. The Hill reports that shortly before the Waters censure vote, rather than accepting that the two offenses were of a kind, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer instead delivered a threat, warning the Republican leadership that forcing a roll call on censuring Waters would make it more difficult to justify not taking similar action targeting Republican members of Congress. “This makes it harder, however, not to proceed on numerous [similar] resolutions on my side of the aisle” he said.

So the game is on under new rules. The leadership of the Democratic and Republican Parties have declared that they will impose punishment, including censure, suspension and even expulsion, on House and Senate members who defy the consensus on appropriate behavior, which itself has become heavily politicized.

The first Republican who is likely to feel the wrath of the Democratic controlled Congress is Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia. Representative Jimmy Gomez of California has already circulated a draft letter renewing his earlier effort to expel her from Congress. Gomez cited Greene for her alleged promotion of violence against other members of Congress. In his letter he included her promotion of “Anglo-Saxon political traditions” as yet another justification for her expulsion from Congress. The “Dear Colleague” letter begins with “[E]veryone – including House Republican leadership – knew this stunt was nothing more than an effort to promote white supremacy in the United States Congress.” He, of course, also claimed that she was engaged in the “brazen promotion of anti-Semitism and racism.” Somehow the anti-Semitism tag always seems to make it into these documents.

Gomez’s expulsion resolution already has 72 Democratic co-sponsors. House Democrats as well as 11 Republicans had already voted in February to strip Greene of her committee assignments over her alleged past endorsements of violence against Democrats and embrace of conspiracy theories to include suggesting that some mass shootings have been staged.

Greene, for her part, has tit for tat submitted a resolution to expel Waters based on her encouraging supporters to harass Trump administration officials when they made public appearances in 2018 while also saying a year earlier that she would “go and take Trump out tonight. “This is nothing new from Maxine Waters. She has been inciting violence and terrorism for the last 29 years,” Greene said in a statement.

Despite the current wave of lawmakers introducing measures to formally sanction each other, it seldom occurs that the House actually takes such a drastic step. Only 23 lawmakers have been censured in the House’s history and only five were expelled, mostly for actual criminal behavior. Nevertheless, the new environment condoning punishment of colleagues in Congress is only just gaining momentum and the Democrats clearly have the whip hand with their control of both houses of Congress and the presidency. To be sure, free speech is the most important liberty guaranteed in the Bill of Rights of the Constitution of the United States, but the right of legislators to call on citizens to break the law up to and including the destruction of that very government that pays them and gives them their status has to be challenged. Say what they will when they are out of office, but when they take that oath of loyalty to the constitution it means that they are pledged to support all of those structures and safeguards that that foundational document has established.

Reprinted with permission from Strategic Culture Foundation.

from The US Congress Turns on Itself: Censuring and Threats of Expulsion Proliferating

A Grim Reaper Speaks

President Biden’s first speech to Congress last night hit all the pandemic hot buttons. Even though most members of Congress are vaccinated, all of the 200 attendees in the Capitol were required to wear masks and “socially distance.” The Hill reports that the “ imagery will underscore how the pandemic is still gripping the nation despite the availability of vaccines and hope for inching back toward a semblance of normalcy.”

But the speech looked as sparsely attended as a Biden campaign rally or perhaps a Saturday morning Kiwanis breakfast in Hogstooth, Arkansas. As Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) quipped, “If Biden is going to take credit for vaccines and defeating the virus, why is he speaking to a practically empty chamber with everyone except him wearing a mask?”

A Washington Post headline aptly summarized Biden’s message last night: “Government is good.” Biden portrayed himself as the heroic conqueror of Covid and quoted a nurse who told him: “Every [vaccination] shot is giving a dose of hope.” Shots had a redemptive effect in part because people were terrified after Biden repeatedly vastly exaggerated the number of Covid fatalities during his presidential campaign. Biden got a two-fer: first he fanned irrational fears to win the presidency, and then he got credit when dread subsided thanks in part to a vaccine program propelled by the Trump administration. 

Like an astute career politician, Biden found other fears to fan. He told Congress, “One hundred days ago, America’s house was on fire.” Biden described the January 6 clash at the Capitol between Trump supporters and police as “the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War” that was “an existential crisis—a test of whether our democracy could survive.” Biden rhapsodized: “We have stared into an abyss of insurrection and autocracy.” As a recent Inspector General report concluded, Capitol Police and other officials did a dreadful job of preparing for and responding to angry protestors, some of whom became violent and damaged property. Biden’s attempt to exploit that ruckus to railroad a domestic terrorism law through Congress seems to be faltering. 

The only unifying thread in Biden’s spiel was that it was written by the same White House speechwriting team. Biden boasted that the economy would grow by 6% this year – but insisted that a massive new jobs program was necessary. Biden claimed that extending schooling would greatly benefit children at the same time that his administration continues to undermine parents’ efforts to get public schools reopened five days a week. 

Biden talked of crises being opportunities, and he is working hard to see how many more trillions of dollars of government spending he can squeeze out of the Covid emergency. A Washington Post headline captured the administration’s presumptions: “Biden’s big bet: That he can remake economy with no bad side effects” such as “less incentive to work.” But the extension of bonus payments for unemployment recipients is already whipsawing the labor market as employers find no applicants. There are plenty of warning signs that inflation could be readying to rocket. It is unclear if Biden’s team assumes that federal debt can be piled up forever with no consequence or merely with no catastrophes until after the next election. 

After rattling off a long wish list of vast expansions of handouts and other programs, Biden assured listeners everything could be financed “without increasing deficits.” Biden portrayed tax boosts on “corporate America and the wealthiest 1% of Americans,” along with closing “loopholes,” as a cornucopia to finance all of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s fantasies. But the real windfall may be from Biden’s plan to vastly increase the IRS budget to set agents loose squeezing affluent people and corporations across the nation. As Slate reported, “Biden wants to fund a massive upgrade to the American welfare state by making the IRS great at audits again.” IRS crackdowns will be in lieu of reforming the tax code to make it less mind-boggling if not hellishly confusing. A Politico headline summarized the speech: “Biden embraces his inner Robin Hood.” Biden never explained how forcibly transferring money from private owners to the federal treasury would magically create “millions of jobs.” 

Biden is capitalizing on public opinion which seems to have become increasingly oblivious to government failures. In 2015, 47 percent of Americans thought government should do more to solve problems. By last summer, that number had leaped to 57%. The poll showed only “39 percent said government is doing too many things best left to businesses and individuals.” With “cancel culture” run amok these days, perhaps the most surprising victim is all recollections of past political abuses and government failures in US history. 

Instead, boundless faith in rulers – at least progressive ones – is the order of the day. A 2017 tweet by Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) perfectly captured the spirit of Biden’s expansive proposals: “There is no anxiety or sadness or fear you feel right now that cannot be cured by political action.” Biden portrayed government spending as a panacea for practically anything that ails America. In a pitch for more spending for the National Institutes for Health, Biden declared, “Let’s end cancer as we know it. It’s within our power … to do it!” Congressional Democrats applauded almost as fervently as they had a dozen years earlier when President Barack Obama announced that he was launching “a new effort… seeking a cure for cancer in our time.”

Biden portrayed his presidency thus far as a resurrection of political faith: “In our first 100 Days together, we have acted to restore the people’s faith in our democracy to deliver… real results people can see and feel in their own lives.” He stressed that his Americans Families Plan Puts “up to $7,200 in your pocket” – reminiscent of Biden’s earlier boasting about the Covid stimulus checks shotgunned out. Handouts legitimize democracy and somehow prove that our system is better than any other form of government. But Biden’s derisive comments on autocratic regimes last night did not deter him from issuing a blizzard of executive order decrees in his first months in office. 

Biden wrapped up his long speech with an FDR theme: “It’s time we remembered that We the People are the government. You and I. Not some force in a distant capital. Not some powerful force we have no control over.” But the Capitol where Biden spoke was walled off by fences and surrounded by thousands of National Guard troops. Until recently, those fences were topped by razor wire that made the “Temple of Democracy” look like a Beirut bunker. For Biden’s speech, roads were closed and few people were allowed to get anywhere near the president or his entourage. But at least commoners were permitted to watch the television broadcast of the Great Leader boasting how he had saved them. 

Reprinted with permission from American Institute for Economic Research.

from A Grim Reaper Speaks

CDC Changes Its Tune On Masks, But Media Propaganda Continues

The CDC announced this week that people who have been fully vaccinated can now go outside without masks on. Meanwhile in many of the open states people have been outside all along without masks. The Texas Rangers baseball team played its opener to a full stadium of mostly unmasked people. Meanwhile the mainstream media continues to obfuscate and propagandize over the "embarrassing" successes of "free" states like Texas and Florida, still quoting "experts" who have been wrong over and over. Watch today's Liberty Report:



from CDC Changes Its Tune On Masks, But Media Propaganda Continues

Deep Corruption: Is The System Falling Apart?

From media to government to military to the "non-profit" sector, corruption seems to be tearing the United States apart. The media lies, the "watchers" are not being watched, billions of dollars are being transferred to the wealthy elites. Is the system falling apart at the seams?Watch today's Liberty Report:

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Fauci Flip-Flops Again! 'Ditch The Outdoor Masks'

After warning repeatedly of new waves and dark days, President Biden's chief Covid advisor Dr. Fauci has again flip-flopped. No longer is it "science" to wear masks outside, he says, after urging outdoor mask-wearing just months ago. Why Fauci's change of heart? Watch today's Liberty Report:

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Portland Mayor Condemns Anarchists But Stops Short Of Condemning Antifa

Last year, I testified in the Senate on Antifa and the growing anti-free speech movement in the United States. I specifically disagreed with the statement of House Judiciary Committee Chair Jerry Nadler that Antifa (and its involvement in violent protests) is a “myth.” What was most striking about that hearing was the refusal of Democratic members to condemn Antifa’s activities or recognize the scope of anarchist violence even as riots raged in Portland, Oregon and other cities. Indeed, Sen....

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The Ukraine Crisis Can Be An Opportunity

The trouble with leading a great power is that, from time to time, the president is obliged to act like the leader of a great power. If ever there was a time for sound presidential leadership, it’s now. With no appreciation for the endlessly renewable force of national self-preservation that animates Moscow’s maneuvers in Ukraine, President Biden’s insulting remarks and hostile sanctions have plunged the United States into a deeper, more dangerous confrontation with Russia in Ukraine, a region...

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Police Problems? Embrace Liberty!

Many Americans saw former policeman Derek Chauvin’s conviction on all counts last week as affirming the principle that no one is above the law. Many others were concerned that the jury was scared that anything less than a full conviction would result in riots, and even violence against themselves and their families. Was the jury’s verdict influenced by politicians and media figures who were calling for the jury to deliver the “right” verdict? Attempts to intimidate juries are just as offensive...

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Segregation is Back at Major League Baseball Games

Segregation is making a comeback at professional baseball games. Now the segregation is based on vaccination status instead of the old basis of race. Scottie Andrew and Homero De la Fuente wrote Saturday at CNN that three California Major League Baseball teams — the Los Angeles Dodgers, the San Diego Padres, and the San Francisco Giants — have set aside special sections of their stadiums for people who can prove they are two weeks past taking the full regimen of experimental coronavirus...

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from Peace and Prosperity http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/peace-and-prosperity/2021/april/26/segregation-is-back-at-major-league-baseball-games/

Lori (Paul) Pyeatt Requiescat in pace

Lori, sister-in-law Peggy, and Paula Deist. November 2019. RPI Donor Summit. It is with deep sadness that I announce the passing of our beloved friend and colleague, Lori (Paul) Pyeatt. Lori was one of the bravest people I have known, facing down her illness and brawling with it fearlessly rather than surrendering. She was strong like a stone and she gave all of us a great example of how to live our lives in difficult circumstances. She remained tough for the benefit of what mattered to her...

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from Peace and Prosperity http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/peace-and-prosperity/2021/april/26/lori-paul-pyeatt-requiescat-in-pace/

Guinea Pigs on Campus

When I was in college, there was a place called Pharmaco in the same city as my university. At Pharmaco students could earn thousands of dollars for doing little. Here is how it worked. Agree to take some experimental pharmaceutical and to be monitored some, and answer some questions, regarding how you feel. In return, receive a payment. Some students took Pharmaco up on its lucrative offer. Many other students worked for months at regular jobs to earn the same amount of money, even...

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from Peace and Prosperity http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/peace-and-prosperity/2021/april/23/guinea-pigs-on-campus/

A School for Spooks: The London University Department Churning Out NATO Spies

LONDON — Last week, MintPress exposed how the supposedly independent investigative collective Bellingcat is, in fact, funded by a CIA cutout organization and filled with former spies and state intelligence operatives. However, one part of the story that has remained untold until now is Bellingcat’s close ties to the Department of War Studies at King’s College London, an institution with deep links to the British security state and one that trains a large number of British, American and European...

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Defund The Police? No Difference Between The Two Parties? -- Ask The Co-Hosts!

Dr. Paul's two co-hosts, Daniel McAdams & Chris Rossini answer viewer questions on today's Ron Paul Liberty Report!

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The Failure of Imperial College Modeling Is Far Worse than We Knew

A fascinating exchange played out in the UK’s House of Lords on June 2, 2020. Neil Ferguson, the physicist at Imperial College London who created the main epidemiology model behind the lockdowns, faced his first serious questioning about the predictive performance of his work. Ferguson predicted catastrophic death tolls back on March 16, 2020 unless governments around the world adopted his preferred suite of nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to ward off the pandemic. Most countries...

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Norfolk Police Officer Fired For Making Anonymous Donation To Kyle Rittenhouse

Sgt. William Kelly, the second highest-ranking official in the Norfolk Police Department’s internal affairs division, has been fired for making an anonymous donation to the defense fund for Kyle Rittenhouse. The donation (revealed after a security breach of the Christian crowdfunding site GiveSendGo was accompanied by a note saying that Rittenhouse did “nothing wrong.” Despite the obvious attack on free speech and associational rights, there has been little concern raised in the media or by...

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Careening Toward Catastrophe: Why Is Washington Pouring Gas On The Russia/Ukraine Fire?

Yesterday the Senate Foreign Relations approved a massive $300 million per year in military aid to Ukraine, even as the conflict in eastern Ukraine looks set to blow apart. The Biden Administration is packed with anti-Russia fanatical hawks. This week an apparent US-backed coup attempt on Russia's ally Belarus was broken up. Does Washington believe Russia will bend to its will? What's the next step? Former CIA officer Phil Giraldi joins today's Liberty Report with his analysis:

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Texas Ended Lockdowns and Mask Mandates. Now Locked-Down States Are Where Covid Is Growing Most

Early last month, Texas governor Greg Abbott announced he would end the state’s mask mandate and allow most businesses to function at 100 percent capacity. The response from the corporate media and the Left was predictable. California governor Gavin Newsom declared the move “absolutely reckless.” Beto O’Rourke called the GOP a “cult of death.” Joe Biden called the move “Neanderthal thinking.” Keith Olbermann insisted, “Texas has decided to join the side of the virus” and suggested Texans...

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Searching For Truth In A Time Of Deceit - With Guest Gary Heavin

Things are moving fast. Great reset. Build back better. Cancel culture. Media power. Big tech. How can we search for truth in what appears to be a time of deception? RPI Board Member, filmmaker, and philanthropist Gary Heavin joins today's program. Watch today's Liberty Report:



from Searching For Truth In A Time Of Deceit - With Guest Gary Heavin

Who's to Blame for Normalizing One-Man Rule?

Who’s to blame for normalizing one-man rule?

If there is one thing the American system of government was designed to prevent, it is the tyranny that results when a single person, like a king, has the power to both write and enforce the law.

So, what explains the fact that Nevada has now entered a second year of one-man rule, with Governor Sisolak continuing to wield the powers of both the legislative and executive branches simultaneously, in plain violation of the Nevada Constitution?

The answer lies in the unsettling truth that it is ultimately public opinion, rather than written constitutions, that determine the scope of government power.

Unfortunately, those with the most power to shape public opinion—the corporate press and public health officials—have determined that unilateral rule by executive decree, unimpeded by any conception of individual freedom, is necessary to respond to the coronavirus.

Former Baltimore health commissioner Dr. Leana Wen made this viewpoint explicit during a recent CNN segment. Wen argued that the government should continue withholding basic freedoms like the right to travel and earn a living until enough people get vaccinated. Such freedoms are “carrots” that the government should use to compel certain behaviors, Wen explained. Only after they have complied with the government’s terms should the people have their rights restored to them, according to Wen. 

Wen’s viewpoint—that Americans only have the rights and freedoms the government permits them to have—is now the prevailing orthodoxy among the corporate press, as their coverage of the covid-related lockdowns makes clear.

What Bill of Rights?

Governors who favor lockdowns are seldom challenged about the constitutionality of their actions but instead receive frequent praise from the media and public health officials, even amid disastrous outcomes. Governor Andrew Cuomo was held up as a role model for implementing crushing lockdowns even as his own deadly policy choices contributed to New York having the nation’s second-highest death rate.

Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer implemented arguably the harshest and most absurd lockdown of any state, which included things as idiotic as banning the sale of home improvement supplies. While these restrictions did nothing to stop covid—Michigan’s fatality rate is higher than those of most states—there would be no press pushback for her egregious overreach. Erring in favor of state power and aggression, at the expense of human liberty, ensured that Whitmer would receive remarkably positive coverage, which even included a glowing profile piece from the New York Times.

Meanwhile, New Jersey governor Phil Murphy openly admitted to ignoring the Bill of Rights and giving no consideration whatsoever to individual liberty when he decided to lock the state down. What would have once been considered politically disqualifying was now met with a yawn from the press, who had by that point pivoted from serving as a check on power to providing cover for the most powerful officials America has ever seen.

Those Who Resist Lockdowns and Seek to Abide by the Constitution Must Be Destroyed

Conversely, those who sought to abide by the constitutional rules and respect the freedoms of their citizens were viciously pillared by the press and public health officials. South Dakota governor Kristi Noem was labeled “reckless” and a science “denier” because she sought to balance public health, economic well-being and liberty, as her state constitution requires.

In Texas, the corporate press gleefully laundered the smears hurled at Governor Greg Abbott after he announced that he was reopening their state last month. The media coverage never once mentioned the constitutionality of an extended lockdown, but instead focused exclusively on the dire predictions made by numerous prolockdown politicians and public health officials—all of whom asserted that Governor Abbott’s decision would lead to more cases and deaths. In reality, the exact opposite happened, with new infections down 70 percent one month after the state officially reopened.

A recent Washington Post story highlights just how little facts matter to the press when it comes to disseminating the prolockdown narrative. After a handful of states saw a spike in their covid numbers, the paper blamed “a broad loosening of public health measures” for the increase. There was just one problem with that claim—the increase they were referencing occurred almost entirely in states that kept their restrictions in place. Meanwhile, out of the eighteen states that did loosen their restrictions, seventeen reported declining case numbers. It appears that the “lockdowns are good, and freedom is bad” narrative will not be disputed by the facts, no matter how contradictory they may be.

It is Florida governor Ron DeSantis, however, that offers the clearest example of the media’s obsession with discrediting those who resisted lockdowns. There is more than a thousandfold difference in covid-19 mortality between the oldest and youngest, which explains why those age sixty-five and over account for more than 80 percent of all covid deaths. In other words, if you can protect that demographic, there is no crisis. 

Yet, for simply making the commonsense decision to vaccinate the most at-risk first, Governor DeSantis was subjected to vicious media attacks. NBC News, for example, accused the governor of “playing politics” because he chose to vaccinate the elderly first, suggesting that he did so only because senior citizens are “one of Florida’s most potent voting blocs.”

The nearly twelve hundred–word article offers no evidence whatsoever to support this claim. It also does not once mention the relative risk covid poses to the elderly, which confirms that NBC’s intent was always to slander rather than inform. 

As it became increasingly clear that Florida’s light-touch approach was superior to the lockdowns favored by the media, their smears would only become more unhinged. CBS 60 Minutes, for example, is convinced that a prior campaign donation is the only reason DeSantis chose the grocery store Publix to distribute Florida’s vaccines. When DeSantis explained the real reason Publix was chosen — which includes the fact that 90 percent of Florida seniors live within a mile and a half of their stores—CBS edited the footage to prevent the public from hearing that. The slanderous segment was so outrageous that the head of Florida’s Emergency Management Division—self-identified progressive and former Democratic legislator Jared Moskowitz—publicly condemned it. Dave Kerner, the Democratic mayor of Palm Beach County, likewise slammed CBS, calling their report “intentionally false.”

But crazy, evidence-free allegations that rely on doctored footage aren’t the only way the corporate press misleads the public in order to bolster support for their preferred policies; sins of omission can do the trick too.

Shh … If We Don’t Mention It, Maybe They Will All Just Forget!

Governor Sisolak currently asserts the power to single-handedly both write and enforce the law and has made clear that he will continue doing so for as long as he sees fit. This unprecedented arrangement is expressly prohibited by the Nevada Constitution, which bars the governor from exercising “any” legislative function, let alone all of them. As the Nevada Supreme Court previously explained, this means that even if the legislature wanted to give its lawmaking power to the governor, it would be “powerless” to do so.

Yet when was the last time you read a news report that asked Governor Sisolak to justify his indefinite emergency powers? What about merely asking for what it would take to bring an end to this so-called state of emergency? Or perhaps asking why the governor feels compelled to misrepresent the law in his executive orders?

Asking questions like these is the essence of journalism, which is supposed to function as a check on the powerful, after all. That they are still not being asked—some four hundred days after the “state of emergency” first began, with hospitalizations down to roughly three hundred in a state of 3 million and vaccines readily available for all—is journalistic failure of the highest order. It is no surprise that the governor was not eager to give his kingly powers back after “15 days to slow the spread,” of course. But the normalization of endless one-man rule would not have happened without the cooperation of the press, who endorsed rather than questioned this unprecedented and unconstitutional power grab.

Not Even Judges Are Safe

The press obviously cannot come out and expressly advocate for a policy of lockdowns and one-man rule, of course. Doing so would risk the very thing that allows them to shape public opinion so effectively—the perception that they are independent and neutral arbiters of fact. They can, however, move public opinion in their preferred direction through other, more effective means. One way this is done is by simply removing the constitutional issues from the conversation. Another is to reframe efforts to abide by the Constitution as dangerous actions that will lead to more death.

The opening paragraph of a recent Associated Press story shows how it is done:

The Wisconsin Supreme Court struck down Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ statewide mask mandate on Wednesday [March 31, 2021], stripping the governor of one of his last remaining tools to curb the spread of the coronavirus as the state stands on the precipice of another surge in infections.

Wisconsin’s Emergency Powers Act expressly states that the governor must receive legislative approval to extend an emergency beyond sixty days. As the governor did not receive the required legislative approval after sixty days, the Wisconsin Supreme Court upheld the law and ended the state of emergency. But because the Associated Press disagrees with the outcome of that ruling, they did not describe it as the straightforward legal analysis it was, but instead framed it as a potentially deadly policy choice. (“stripping the governor of one of his last remaining tools to curb the spread of the coronavirus as the state stands on the precipice of another surge in infections.”) I suppose the honest description — “enforcing the Legislature’s sixty-day limit on the governor’s ability to unilaterally make the law”—runs the risk of getting readers to think about that pesky Constitution and separation of powers thing!

It is worth mentioning that the court’s ruling did not prevent Wisconsin from enacting a mask mandate or even extending the state of emergency. It only required that such actions be done in a constitutionally permissible way, as Justice Rebecca Bradley explained in her concurring opinion:

Because the Wisconsin Legislature never extended Governor Evers’ declared state of emergency, it ended on May 11, 2020. Any exercise of executive power in the name of the COVID-19 pandemic beyond that date is unlawful unless the people consent, through their elected representatives in the legislature.

Although the AP did not cite a single word from Justice Bradley’s opinion, they did want readers to know that she once received a campaign donation from someone tangentially related to one of the plaintiffs in this case—because ruling that 360 days is longer than sixty days can only be explained by corruption.

Conclusion

The media coverage of covid is remarkably similar to the coverage of former President Trump. The traditional aim of being an impartial source of news has been replaced by the advocacy deemed necessary to confront such an existential threat. At some point, the premise that lockdowns and one-man rule are the only sensible response to COVID was adopted,1 and ever since then, the press has abused its power to push that narrative aggressively.

Consequently, trust in the media has appropriately fallen to an all-time low. And while it is good that more people are waking up to the agenda-driven nature of these organizations, the decline of journalism is terrible for society.

As should be painfully apparent by now, a written constitution alone will not restrain an overreaching government that has the backing and support of the media.  That it would function as an additional check on state power is, after all, what made a free and open press so important to the Framers that they afforded it First Amendment protection. And it is during times of crisis that an adversarial press is needed most—as that is when state power is most likely to expand to a level previously unthinkable, only to then become normalized shortly thereafter.

If the press wishes to regain the trust of the people, they should embrace the values that made the profession so revered in the first place. Adopting an adversarial role toward government, rather than being its biggest cheerleader, would be a good place to start.

1.The most shocking part about the press’s blind support for lockdowns is how little evidence there is to support them as effective policy. It’s not as if lockdowns are a cost-free choice that eliminates covid. The one thing that is known for certain is that lockdowns cause widespread death and destruction. The costs are so clearly irrefutable that even the most prolockdown advocates are unwilling to try to justify lockdowns on a cost-benefit analysis, and instead rely on the decidedly unscientific approach of pretending that reducing covid transmission is the only aspect of public health that matters. While it is unsurprising that government bureaucrats were so myopic, for the press to not consider all the competing evidence around them reflects a level of groupthink that is difficult to overstate. 

Reprinted with permission from Mises.org.

from Who's to Blame for Normalizing One-Man Rule?

The Terrorist Haven Fallacy on Afghanistan

Interventionists are saying that US forces need to stay in Afghanistan because otherwise that country will, once again, become a “haven” for anti-American terrorists.

They still just don’t get it. It never ceases to amaze me how blind and obtuse interventionists can be.

Anti-American terrorism is not like the flu or like Covid-19. It doesn’t just spread around the world like an infection or a virus.

Moreover, the 9/11 attacks didn’t occur because the terrorists hated America for its “freedom and values.” They weren’t motivated by anger and rage over Elvis Presley or any other rock and roller. They weren’t motivated by hatred for Billy Graham or any other Christian evangelist.

The 9/11 attacks and all the other anti-American terrorist attacks were rooted in anger and hatred over US interventionism abroad, specifically in the Middle East. Interventionism is the cause of anti-American terrorism. That’s what interventionists still just don’t get.

There were terrorist attacks on American targets before 9/11. There was the attack on the World Trade Center in 1993, which was no different in principle than the 9/11 attacks eight years later. There was also the attack on the USS Cole, an imperial warship refueling in Yemen’s Aden harbor when it was attacked. There were the attacks on the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

All of these terrorist attacks, including the 9/11 attacks, had one thing in common: They were motivated by anger and hatred for the US government’s interventionist foreign policy. For that matter, so were other instances of anti-American terrorism, such as the Fort Hood killing and the Detroit would-be bomber.

For more than 30 years, the US national-security establishment had relied on Russia and the rest of the Soviet Union, along with Red China, North Korea, North Vietnam, Cuba, and the threat of “godless communism,” to justify its existence. The last thing the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA ever expected was that the Cold War would end and that it would lose its official communist enemies.

Then the Soviet Union suddenly and unexpected declared an end to the Cold War, exited West Germany and Eastern Europe, and dismantled. Suddenly, the justification for having converted the federal government from a limited-government republic to a national-national-security state in 1947 disintegrated.

That’s when US officials decided to go into the Middle East with its interventionist foreign policy. They intervened in the Persian Gulf War, killing countless Iraqis. They intentionally destroyed Iraq’s water and sewage treatment plants with the intent to spread infections and illnesses among the Iraqi populace. They imposed one of the most brutal systems of sanctions in history on the Iraqi people. The sanctions killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children. The US ambassador to the UN, Madeleine Albright, declared that the deaths of half-a-million Iraqi children from the sanctions were “worth it.” US troops were stationed near Islamic holy lands, knowing full well how that would be received my Muslims. There was also the unconditional support given to the Israeli government.

All that is what produced the deep anger and rage against the United States that manifested itself in anti-American terrorist attacks. It was interventionism, not hatred for America’s “freedom and values,” that motivated the 9/11 attacks as well as the anti-American terrorist attacks before and after the 9/11 attacks.

Thus, there is a simple solution for anti-American terrorism: Simply end US foreign interventionism. Then the supposed threat of Afghanistan serving as a “haven” for anti-American terrorism disappears.

This is what interventionists just don’t get. They want the US to continue intervening in Afghanistan and elsewhere (e.g., Iraq and Syria) to stop anti-American terrorism. They don’t understand that it is the interventionism that they are advocating that produces the anti-American terrorism. They don’t understand that that is what makes their “war on terrorism” a perpetual war, one that continues to expand the power of the national-security establishment and to enrich the pockets of its ever-growing army of contractors and sub-contractors.

Ending American interventionism would bring an end to anti-American terrorism, which would bring an end to the perpetual “war on terrorism.” But even that’s not enough because it is clear that for the national-security establishment, its Cold War against Russia and China never ended. To finally, once and for all, end the Cold War, it is necessary to dismantle America’s disastrous experiment as a national-security state and restore a limited-government republic to our land. That’s a key to getting our nation back on the right road — the road to liberty, peace, prosperity, and harmony with the people of the world.

Reprinted with permission from Future of Freedom Foundation.

from The Terrorist Haven Fallacy on Afghanistan

Media Lies Exposed: Officer Sicknick And The False 'Insurrection' Narrative

Yesterday's final report by Washington, DC's chief medical examiner that Capitol Hill Police Officer Brian Sicknick did not die from being beaten with a fire extinguisher - a claim echoed throughout the mainstream media - but rather died from "natural causes" the day after the January 6th melee at the Capitol has destroyed the MSM narrative that an armed and deadly insurrection had taken place. Will the media apologize for lying repeatedly for months? Will they be held to account for their lies? What is truth? Today on the Liberty Report:



from Media Lies Exposed: Officer Sicknick And The False 'Insurrection' Narrative

The Media Lied Repeatedly About Officer Brian Sicknick's Death. And They Just Got Caught.

It was crucial for liberal sectors of the media to invent and disseminate a harrowing lie about how Officer Brian Sicknick died. That is because he is the only one they could claim was killed by pro-Trump protesters at the January 6 riot at the Capitol.

So The New York Times on January 8 published an emotionally gut-wrenching but complete fiction that never had any evidence — that Officer Sicknick's skull was savagely bashed in with a fire extinguisher by a pro-Trump mob until he died — and, just like the now-discredited Russian bounty story also unveiled by that same paper, cable outlets and other media platforms repeated this lie over and over in the most emotionally manipulative way possible. Just watch a part of what they did and how:



As I detailed over and over when examining this story, there were so many reasons to doubt this storyline from the start. Nobody on the record claimed it happened. The autopsy found no blunt trauma to the head. Sicknick's own family kept urging the press to stop spreading this story because he called them the night of January 6 and told them he was fine — obviously inconsistent with the media's claim that he died by having his skull bashed in — and his own mother kept saying that she believed he died of a stroke.

But the gruesome story of Sicknick's “murder” was too valuable to allow any questioning. It was weaponized over and over to depict the pro-Trump mob not as just violent but barbaric and murderous, because if Sicknick weren't murdered by them, then nobody was (without Sicknick, the only ones killed were four pro-Trump supporters: two who died of a heart attack, one from an amphetamine overdose, and the other, Ashli Babbitt, who was shot point blank in the neck by Capitol Police despite being unarmed). So crucial was this fairy tale about Sicknick that it made its way into the official record of President Trump's impeachment trial in the Senate, and they had Joe Biden himself recite from the script, even as clear facts mounted proving it was untrue.


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Because of its centrality to the media narrative and agenda, anyone who tried to point out the serious factual deficiencies in this story — in other words, people trying to be journalists — were smeared by Democratic Party loyalists who pretend to be journalists as "Sicknick Truthers,” white nationalist sympathizers, and supporters of insurrection.

For the crime of trying to determine the factual truth of what happened, my character was constantly impugned by these propagandistic worms, as was anyone else's who tried to tell the truth about Sicknick's tragic death. Because one of the first people to highlight the journalistic truth here was former Trump official Darren Beattie of Revolver News and one of the few people on television willing to host doubts about the official story was Tucker Carlson, any doubts about the false Sicknick story — no matter how well-grounded in truth, facts, reason and evidence — were cast as fascism and white supremacy, and those raising questions smeared as "truthers”: the usual dreary liberal insults for trying to coerce people into submitting to their lies:


(bigger)

Because the truth usually prevails, at least ultimately, their lies, yet again, all came crashing down on their heads on Monday. The District of Columbia’s chief medical examiner earlier this morning issued his official ruling in the Sicknick case, and it was so definitive that The Washington Post — one of the media outlets that had pushed the multiple falsehoods — did not even bother to try to mask or mitigate the stark conclusion it revealed:



The first line tells much of the story: “Capitol Police officer Brian D. Sicknick suffered two strokes and died of natural causes a day after he confronted rioters at the Jan. 6 insurrection, the District’s chief medical examiner has ruled.” Using understatement, the paper added: “The ruling, released Monday, likely will make it difficult for prosecutors to pursue homicide charges in the officer’s death.”

Fair Use Excerpt. Read the whole article here.

from The Media Lied Repeatedly About Officer Brian Sicknick's Death. And They Just Got Caught.

Sens. Warren and Durbin: End Solitary Confinement of US Capitol ‘Insurrection’ Defendants

Good for Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Dick Durbin (D-IL) for standing up against the widespread use of physically and emotionally devastating solitary confinement in prisons and jails across America. In particular, the two senators are criticizing that people charged for involvement in the so-called January 6 United States Capitol insurrection are being routinely subjected to solitary confinement in jail while they await their trials. Kyle Cheney, Andrew Desiderio, and Josh Gerstein...

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from Peace and Prosperity http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/peace-and-prosperity/2021/april/20/sens-warren-and-durbin-end-solitary-confinement-of-us-capitol-insurrection-defendants/

Maxine Waters: Inciting Actual Insurrection?

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) was fond of accusing former President Trump of inciting insurrection with his speech on January 6th. However over the weekend Waters flew to Minneapolis and encouraged already violent street protesters to continue and even become "more confrontational if a jury does not hand down a murder charge against police officer Derek Chauvin who is accused of causing the death of George Floyd last May. Is this incitement to violence and possibly insurrection? Today on the Liberty Report:



from Maxine Waters: Inciting Actual Insurrection?

Zero Mainstream Coverage Today of the Foiled, US-Backed Plot to Assassinate Belarus President Lukashenko

In his last book “War with Russia?” my friend and colleague Steve Cohen wrote about the flagrant censorship of news being carried on by The New York Times in support of its Russia-bashing editorial policies. Said Cohen, the newspaper’s century old slogan of “All the News That’s Fit to Print” has been turned into “All the News that Fits” when it comes to coverage of Russia.

But the problem goes far deeper than the professional malpractice of one leading newspaper in America. The censorship of news carried by mainstream media by US authorities covers not only the domestic press but also the mainstream of Allied countries. News blackouts are imposed when something ugly arises implicating the United States in violation of international norms of state behavior for which the State Department has no ready explanation or white wash.

This very situation seems to have arisen over the weekend, when news broke in Moscow over the arrest of two conspirators plotting a coup d’état in Minsk, to be carried out by the Belarus armed forces tentatively during the 9 May parade celebrating victory over fascist Germany in the Second World War.

Other leading English-speaking papers such as The Guardian and The Financial Times have front page reports on Alexei Navalny’s near death condition in a prison camp but not a word about Belarus. Ditto the Frankfurter Allgemeine and Le Figaro. Curious, n’est-ce pas? Warum? Let’s look into the story in its full dimension.

Last night’s News of the Week program hosted by Dimitry Kiselyov, Russia’s top manager of state news programming, began with a 20 minute report on the extraordinary arrest of two conspirators plotting armed rebellion entailing the murder of Lukashenko and his family, abolition of the post of President, installation of a Committee of Concord such as previously had been headed by the opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya.

But these were not empty allegations. The arrests followed on a meeting by the two conspirators with Belarus military officers held in a downtown Moscow restaurant which was filmed from start to finish by the Russian state security agency, the FSB. Lengthy segments of recordings from their meeting and discussion of their treasonous plans were aired on the Kiselyov program. Moreover, the accused are not some unknown pawns such as the British presented to the world press when they released their accusations against Russia over the Skripal poisoning. No, one of the two arrested was the former press secretary of Lukashenko, a person who would have had all the contacts necessary to organize such a rebellion. The other plotter has dual US-Belarus citizenship and was well known as a fighter against Lukashenko’s rule.

The two were turned over to the Belarus KGB for interrogation in Minsk. Surely further information about the links of the plotters to Ukraine, to Poland and to the United States will come out in the next few days.

What we have here is “very likely” (to use current Anglo-American political jargon) involvement of the United States in yet another regime change operation. The revolution from below in Belarus led by Tikhanovskaya with support from Poland and Lithuania failed. The anti-Lukashenko street demonstrations led to nothing. And now Plan B, a putsch from above, was being organized to achieve the objective of removing Lukashenko both politically and physically. We have not seen such openly murderous plans with “likely” US backing since John Kennedy’s days when the assassination of Fidel Castro was the hot game in D.C.

On the same “very likely” logic, I permit myself to take this all back to the door of the US Under Secretary of State for Policy Victoria Nuland. The links to Warsaw and Kiev that appear present are all in line with what she was doing to precipitate the Maidan in 2013 and violent overthrow of the sitting President in Kiev amidst attempts to murder him as he made his escape to Russian territory in February 2014.

From all of the foregoing, it looks as though US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s pledge several weeks ago that the US would no longer pursue “orange revolutions” was either an out and out lie or made without his knowing that control of foreign policy no longer is in his hands, but is being carried out by his nominal subordinate, Mme Nuland. No wonder that the US has ordered “stop the presses” on this story until it can put together some plausible response.

In the meantime, the same news program delivered the Kremlin’s response to the Czech action over the weekend to expel 18 diplomats from the Russian embassy in Prague over allegations that Russia was involved in blowing up an arms depot near the capital back in 2014, an event which previously the Czech authorities had blamed on the owners-managers of the depot. Per the Kremlin, these new and absurd Czech charges of Russia’s nefarious activities were agreed with Washington to direct attention away from the pending story about US involvement in plans to murder the Belarus head of state.

Are we headed to World War III? If the war machinery today were like what existed in August 1914, the answer would be unquestionably yes. It is our good fortune that until someone on either side of the East-West divide pushes the Red Button, there are ways back from the abyss. However, we are still heading in the wrong direction, towards the abyss, and the United States is the prime mover.

Reprinted with permission from GilbertDoctorow.com.

from Zero Mainstream Coverage Today of the Foiled, US-Backed Plot to Assassinate Belarus President Lukashenko

Why Can’t We ‘Just March Out’ Of Afghanistan?

Last week President Biden announced a “full” US withdrawal from Afghanistan – the longest war in US history – by the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attack on the United States. While this announcement is to be welcomed, the delayed US withdrawal may result in Americans and Afghans dying needlessly for good PR optics back home. We all remember how many Americans died after President Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” stunt in Iraq.

The war has been a disaster from day one. So why wait to end it?

The previous Trump Administration had negotiated an agreement for the US to be out of Afghanistan by the first of May, but in its obsession with tossing out anything associated with Trump, President Biden will continue to keep US troops in harm’s way in this pointless war.

The Taliban have kept their end of the “Doha Agreement” signed under then-President Trump: no Americans have been killed in Afghanistan for more than a year. However, the US side under President Biden will formally violate the Agreement by keeping US troops in-country after May 1st. The Taliban has announced that it will hold the US “liable” for remaining in-country after the agreed-upon departure date. That means more Americans may be killed.

The outcome of the war will not be altered in the slightest by keeping US troops in Afghanistan four additional months. The withdrawal is already announced and no one paying attention expects the corrupt US-backed Kabul government to survive. It is another Saigon moment, proving that the intellectually bankrupt US foreign policy and military established has learned absolutely nothing from history. So if another American is killed, who is going to explain to the grieving family why their loved one had to remain in harm’s way for a good 9/11 photo-op?

A recent article in the Military Times lays out the massive disaster of the US two-decade war on Afghanistan: more than two trillion dollars spent – much of it going to fund crooked practices in Afghanistan and here at home. And even worse, the Cost of War Project has estimated that a quarter of a million people have been killed in the war.

We do applaud President Biden’s decision to ignore the demands of all the neocons who have flocked to support his Administration, but as is most often the case, when it comes to Washington you have to really read the fine print when something sounds too good to be true. In this case, the fine print is that the US will not actually be leaving Afghanistan at all. As a recent article in The Grayzone points out, the Afghan war will continue with US special forces, CIA paramilitaries, and guns-for-hire taking the place of US soldiers. The war is not going to end, it’s just going to be “privatized.”

My philosophy has always been simple: we just marched in, so we can just march out. As we have learned recently, that is exactly what President Trump tried to do in the final days of his presidency, only to get cold feed after his military and national security “experts” told him it was a terrible idea. When the history of the Trump Administration is written, it will sadly be filled with stories of Trumps’ excellent instincts tossed aside by his inability to demand that those working for him follow his orders. It’s tragic.

We need to be completely out of Afghanistan. Yesterday.

from Why Can’t We ‘Just March Out’ Of Afghanistan?

Anthony Fauci, Enemy of Freedom

Anthony Fauci, now in his second presidential administration as chief coronavirus fearmonger and coronavirus crackdown champion, offered in a Sunday interview some explanation for his continuing promotion of draconian government restrictions and pressure for everyone to take experimental vaccines, all in the name of countering coronavirus that does not pose a significant risk of major health problems or death for most people. Freedom just seems not to make sense, suggests the United States government’s highest paid bureaucrat, while tyranny, in contrast, does.

Interviewed Sunday at CNN by Dana Bash, Fauci said the following in regard to people who oppose coronavirus restrictions and choose not to take any of the US government funded and pushed vaccines: “it just almost doesn’t make any sense” that people “on the one hand want to be relieved of the restrictions, but on the other hand they don’t want to get vaccinated.” Further, Fauci calls opposing the restrictions while choosing not to take one of the experimental coronavirus vaccines, some of which are not even vaccines under the normal meaning of the term, “always paradoxical” because vaccines are needed to bring down coronavirus case numbers “to the point where you would not have to have those public health restrictions.”

When freedom was more respected in the past and threats, including ones greater than coronavirus, came and went, such “health restrictions” as Fauci lauds were not imposed. The fact that such restrictions have existed in America over the last year-plus in the name of countering coronavirus is a sign of the abandonment of respecting freedom, with the aid of fearmongers like Fauci.

As in the past, freedom stands in opposition to tyrannical government. Out of the coronavirus panic, tyranny gained the upper hand.

What Fauci is saying in the interview is that one type of tyranny — coronavirus crackdown — can only be eliminated if another tyranny is accepted — people giving up their own control over their medical care by acceding to pressure to take the shots even though they do not believe doing so is the right health decision for them.

Fauci thus leverages one form of tyranny to advance an additional form of tyranny.

Either people take the shots or they keep, mostly figuratively, being hit by clubs. That sums up Fauci’s take on the continuing crackdown and people who wish to follow their own course in regard to the experimental coronavirus vaccines.

In Fauci’s suggesting he can’t make sense of freedom, he is really declaring he is an enemy of freedom.



from Anthony Fauci, Enemy of Freedom

RPI's Daniel McAdams: 'Biden's Neocons Thrilled By New Russia Sanctions'

RPI Director Daniel McAdams appeared on RT America to discuss the dysfunction of Biden's foreign policy team and the incomprehensibility of hitting Russia with another round of sanctions just two days after the US president initiated a phone call with his Russian counterpart to invite him to a joint summit:



from RPI's Daniel McAdams: 'Biden's Neocons Thrilled By New Russia Sanctions'

If Johnson & Johnson Coronavirus Vaccine Shots Are Halted Because of Blood Clots, Why Have Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech Shots Not Also Been Halted?

When the United States government’s Food and Drug Administration earlier this week called for temporarily halting the giving of Johnson & Johnson’s experimental coronavirus vaccine shots because of the developing of blood clots in people who have received the shots, I asked if we were seeing an example of regulatory favoritism for the new mRNA technology shots over more traditional vaccine shots such as the Johnson & Johnson shots. The question arises because the US government is still...

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from http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/peace-and-prosperity/2021/april/17/if-johnson-johnson-coronavirus-vaccine-shots-are-halted-because-of-blood-clots-why-have-moderna-and-pfizer-biontech-shots-not-also-been-halted/

Anthony Fauci and his faux science sow more seeds of fear

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the White House’s go-to for all things coronavirus, said on Sunday on national news that even those who’ve been vaccinated should not gather indoors, or eat indoors, or remove their masks — or basically, in essence, do anything that involves being and breathing around others.

This guy will have Americans walking on pins and needles, living in fear, forever — if we let him.

His so-called supporting science is about as solid as tossing a coin. Heads, stay at home; tails, don’t go outside. Heads, wear a face mask; tails, wear two face masks.

MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan asked him, “What is the message to vaccinated and unvaccinated Americans as to what they should and should not be doing right now? For example, eating and drinking indoors in restaurants and bars — is that OK now?”

And Fauci’s answer?

Nope.

“It’s still not OK for the simple reason that the level of infection, the dynamics of infection in the community, are still really disturbingly high,” said, Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. “Like just yesterday there were close to 80,000 new infections, and we’ve been hanging around 60,000, 70,000, 75,000.”

So? So what?

Infections are meaningless.

Case counts are meaningless.

The only thing that really matters is the number of recoveries and the number of fatalities, in context of the number of total case positives. And on that — on that percentage — on that statistic — the coronavirus has been rocking the recovery rate for months. Depending on which source is cited, the coronavirus has between 95% and 99% recovery rates.

That was without widespread vaccinations.

Now, with vaccines rolled out left and right, and more and more Americans getting vaccinated, and more and more Americans doing what the government told Americans to do — to wear face masks, to get vaccinated, to socially distance, to stay out of school, even — now, Fauci wants to suggest it’s all for naught?

“So,” he said, “if you’re not vaccinated, please get vaccinated as soon as the vaccine becomes available to you, and if you are vaccinated, please remember that you still have to be careful and not get involved in crowded situations, particularly indoors where people are not wearing masks. And for the time being, until we show definitely that a person who’s vaccinated does not get this subclinical infection and can spread to others, you should also continue to wear a mask.”

Subclinical infection? Disturbingly high infections? Dynamics of infection?

Fauci and his made-up scientific terminology has done enough harm to the American people in terms of generating needless fear to strip individual liberties.

It’s time to stop listening to him. It’s actually well past time to stop listening to him.

Fauci’s faux science is simply destroying America from the inside, crippling freedoms and cowering Americans in the corner. It will only continue so long as Americans let him continue.

Reprinted with author's permission from Washington Times.

from Anthony Fauci and his faux science sow more seeds of fear

Shock and Awe Is a State of Mind: Millions of Deaths Have Not Made Americans Safer

That the United States likes to use expressions like “shock and awe” or “maximum pressure” would rather suggest that there is a psychopath working in the White House basement whose full-time job is to come up with pithy one-liners to somehow euphemize government bad behavior. The expressions hardly mean anything in and of themselves apart from “tough talk” but they do serve as an alternative to having to admit in plain language to the killing of millions of people since the Global War on Terror began in 2001. “Millions?” one might skeptically ask. Yes, millions if one includes all those killed directly or indirectly as a result of the wars. Direct victims of the violence number at least 157,000 in Afghanistan, 182,000 in Iraq, 400,000 in Syria and 25,000 in Libya. And if you want to go back a few years three million Vietnamese died in 1964-1975 while 2.5 million civilians were killed in Korea. And even in the “Good War” World War 2 there were unnecessary incidents to include the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that killed 105,000, the firebombing of Tokyo adding another 97,000, and the firebombing of Hamburg and Dresden that together killed 45,000.

An estimated ten million more civilians have been displaced from their homes since 2001, creating refugee crises in both Europe and the Americas, while trillions of dollars have also been wasted or “misplaced” by the geniuses at the Pentagon and in Congress. And some might reasonably argue that the violence taking place all around the world has also been internalized in the US, with mass murders surfacing in the news media every few days. Some argue that the United States has nearly always been at war since its founding, which would be true, but it is also correct to note that the nature of America’s lethal engagement with the rest of the world has changed in the past twenty years. Old wars were fought to expand territory and trade or to acquire colonies for the same purpose, meaning they were intended to increase one’s power and wealth. Since 9/11, however, the wars are being fought seemingly without any real identifiable objective while also inflicting significant losses in relative wealth and power on the United States.

The fundamental problem is that the United States is being led by a political and financial elite that has completely bought into a radical view that Americans have a “manifest destiny” to create an international order that is both plausibly democratic and rules-based that would as the theory goes benefit everyone. This is, of course, nonsense as the United States itself is becoming increasingly totalitarian while it also nurtures in its bosom anti-democratic states like Saudi Arabia and Israel.

The elite that might be blamed for many of the missteps of the past twenty years includes both liberals and conservatives, all of whom for one reason or another embrace America’s mission. There is, for example, little to differentiate the world views of Donald Trump appointees Mike Pompeo and John Bolton from those of the current foreign policy incumbent Tony Blinken, as all three men believe that the use of force is the completely acceptable ultimate response to recalcitrant nations and leaders.

Blinken shares the very same trait visible in Pompeo and Bolton, that they actually radiate a sense of moral superiority while implementing policies that result in the pointless deaths of tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands and even millions of innocents. They occupy the bully pulpit as they sanctimoniously call for action regarding their “noble cause” of making the rest of the world both look like America while also deferring to Washington for direction and guidance.

Tony Blinken is not surprisingly a protégé of Bill Clinton’s former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who famously cackled that “it was worth it” when asked about the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children due to US enforced sanctions on food and medicine. Somehow it seems that whenever one turns over a rock in the Democratic Party up pops someone connected with the Clintons. Blinken recently produced and tweeted out a bizarre video that attempts to explain the real “humanity” behind the current Syrian policy, which he helped to define and initiate working closely with Joe Biden while serving under President Barack Obama. It is a sanctions-plus military intervention construct that has, inevitably, resulted in the deaths and the displacements into Europe and the Middle East. The policy was from the beginning clearly intended to bring about “regime change” in Damascus even though the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad in no way threatened the United States.

Blinken tweeted: “When I think of the suffering of the Syrian people, including Syrian children, I think of my own two children. How could we not take action to help them? Our common humanity demands it. Shame on us if we don’t. We have to find a way to do something to take action to help people.” Blinken fails to mention that the blood of the Syrian children is largely on his hands, particularly as the US and Israel effectively turned loose and otherwise supported the terrorist and separatist groups that killed so many Syrian civilians while also destroying entire towns, religious centers and many irreplaceable relics of the country’s history.

So Blinken is really a good guy, thinking about his own kids while mourning the deaths of so many Syrian boys and girls? No. If he really wanted to help those children, he would have announced that US troops will be withdrawn from Syria immediately. He would have lifted sanctions on the country so that it can begin serious reconstruction, together with restoring access to food and needed medicines. He did nothing of the sort and clearly is fully on board with the agenda set over the past ten years by the neocons and their Israeli masters plus the “democracy promotion” at all costs wing in his own party.

And the real problem is that Syria is not alone. Blinken and his cohorts are also encouraging Ukraine’s irredentism which is close to bringing on a war with Russia while also poking China over Taiwan. And then there is also Venezuela which appears to need a regime change and the perennial problem with Iran. And Afghanistan? Blinken should realize that all the deaths of the children that so concern him could be avoided if he and those pulling his strings would adopt a more modest agenda and stay at home. We have enough problems in the United States, but then again, the hubris which has created a pointless foreign policy would likely be channeled to drive still more of the destructive impulses that are turning the country into a collective of hostile enclaves.

Reprinted with permission from Strategic Culture Foundation.

from Shock and Awe Is a State of Mind: Millions of Deaths Have Not Made Americans Safer

White House Won’t Say If Special Forces Will Leave Afghanistan Under Biden’s Withdrawal Plan

After President Biden formally announced his plan to withdraw from Afghanistan by September 11th, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was asked if special operations soldiers would remain in the country under the plan, which she declined to answer. “I’m obviously not going to get into operational specifics from the podium,” Psaki said when asked if the removal of combat troops by September 11th will include withdrawing Special Forces. “I will say that we may — we will have what is...

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from Peace and Prosperity http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/peace-and-prosperity/2021/april/15/white-house-won-t-say-if-special-forces-will-leave-afghanistan-under-biden-s-withdrawal-plan/