The US Empire Will Be Defeated By The US Empire

"Whatever ends up collapsing the US empire is far less likely to come from Russia or China than from the US empire itself."
Now this is perhaps the most accurate statement ever made on the subject of "end of empire".
Historians should go back to all the empires before this now disgraced empire came into effect and analyse the reasons for the gradual decline in past centuries. This one is only 75 years young but on the downhill swing at such a pace that it will lose the advantages of past empires who were able to adjust to the slower pace and not get hurt. Britain's empire has been managed over time, now in its final death throes.

I have enough confidence in the different populations in all the different countries to think that they will wake to the reasons for the lack of food, high cost of heating for families, electricity shortages, reduction in manufacturing as a result, unemployment figures like never before and deaths through created virus strains to be able to clearly see the prime mover for all those ills.
A now sad country who has a leader who needs world power to stay alive while at the same time trying to inflict his values on the rest of the world, clearly not falling into line as expected and as each week passes, seeing the USA for what it has become. An uncontrolled bully boy.
Any empire that uses sanctions against countries who do not bow to their dictates, who are prepared to kill 20 million men women and children to satisfy their lust for power, has little to recommend it and cannot, given the passing of time, command respect from any source including their own citizens. This takes time however, particularly when the political options of both political entities are so similar, so totally corrupt. To give a low priority as an example to the protection of so many killed through gun laws by allowing weapons to be purchased by 18 year olds to then go on a rampage and kill so many as we saw recently and almost in the same breath, another days later.

Pride goes before a fall.
Our nation turned itself into a subservient vassal state of the global elites and societal experimentation a long time ago. The empire was never ours to hold.
They always felt that need to destroy our republic so no example of systemic evolutionary change would be an example to others to do the same.
The end goal would be as always through centuries, destruction of our social construct, stripping our resources, our true values, our faith in humanity.
In return the idealogues with the already landed and priviledged royals, united with the new aristocracy, the corporate subservients, would together give us all promises, to save ourselves from ourselves. Isms will replace dialogue. Scientism would replace biological life. Socialist totalitarianism would replace reason.
I do not consent. By whatever means necessary, this republic cannot be destroyed from the top without the full consent of the governed. As I have said to the Executive, for he as others in my lifetime have abused the offices and have been derelict in their duties, "I will fight you." I, will not consent.

I don't buy into the universal "luv" narrative where all sins are apparently the same, and are forgivable and forgiven - usually with a wave of the hand and eyes turned heavenward. But hostility must have a legitimate, credible basis: it must be rooted in reality and have a point. The hostility directed toward Russia and China don't fit those requirements: they are simply malicious and calculated to turn back on the sources and corrode and devour them, slowly or with speed. The US and West are now in the position of harming or even destroying themselves, and are robot walking in the wrong direction. Agreed.

The US Empire Will Be Defeated By The US Empire
Caitlin Johnstone
Jun 4, 2022

Empire managers: Putin invaded Ukraine!
Public: Oh no! What should we do about it?
Empire managers: Greatly increase military spending, work to weaken Russia, and censor dissenting opinions.
Public: Wait, aren’t those things you’ve always wanted to do anyway?
Empire managers: Hush.

Russian propaganda poses a much smaller threat to the western world than the various government agendas that are being rolled out under the justification of fighting Russian propaganda.

Fuel prices are soaring in part because of an economic war the US empire willfully initiated in response to a proxy war the US empire deliberately provoked and westerners are being trained to look at their shrinking bank accounts and yell "Damn you, Putin!"

Only by massive amounts of propaganda would people consent to unprecedented acts of economic warfare which directly hurt them and benefit them in no way shape or form.

As the world slides closer to nuclear war it would be cool if Americans could take a break from a debate about gun laws that will with absolute certainty lead nowhere and seriously discuss whether they want their government waging a rapidly escalating proxy war against Russia.

The spectrum of acceptable debate on US foreign policy ranges from (A) war hawks who insist the US has never done anything wrong to (B) "progressives" who say the US is basically a good faith actor who just makes well-intentioned oopsie poopsie mistakes but should still definitely keep arming Ukraine. Position (B) is the furthest you're allowed to go away from "the US never does anything wrong" in mainstream discourse. It includes Bernie Sanders' foreign policy advisor, who smears and dismisses leftists who say the US is acting in a malignant way in Ukraine.

No voice at all is ever given to the (in my opinion correct) position that the US is a tyrannical regime whose immense body count is explained not by accidents but by the desire to dominate the world at any cost. The elimination of this position from the debate is by design.

Sure noble wars can be fought in theory and have been fought in practice. It's just that you've got swamp water for brains if you believe that's what the US is doing.

Never attribute to conspiracy what can be adequately explained by the inevitable corruption and tyranny of status quo capitalism.

Whatever ends up collapsing the US empire is far less likely to come from Russia or China than from the US empire itself.

A big part of the western nervousness about China revolves around the fact that we're about to be surpassed by an ancient civilization of non-white people who are indigenous to their land and have never been truly conquered and colonized by Europeans.

If you don't respect the way China has been able to pull so many of its people out of extreme poverty, and don't get why such actions would cause such unified support for their government, it's simply because you lack an adequate understanding of the anguish of extreme poverty.

I've met some cute kids in my time but nobody's as adorable as westerners who talk about Chinese people being propagandized.

The Chinese government exerts a lot of power over its population, but it also takes responsibility for the way it uses that power. The USA's rulers exert a comparable amount of power over its population, but they never take any responsibility for what they do with it.

Can't believe Mohammed bin Salman is sullying Saudi Arabia's name by meeting with the president of the United States.

Putin should try staging a few mass beheadings and dismembering a Washington Post reporter with a bone saw to get on America's good side.

Many empire apologists aren't actually defending the empire, they're just defending against the suggestion that everything they believe about their nation, their media, their government and their world, is a lie.

The most impressive feat of engineering this century has been of the ‘social’ variety: funneling mainstream political attention into agendas which don't inconvenience the powerful in the information age where the ravages of capitalism and imperialism are right there to be seen in plain sight.

The social engineering necessary to keep politically inclined people fixated on agendas that either won't lead anywhere or which trouble the powerful in no way, even as we entered an unprecedented age of information access, is one of the most awe-inspiring human achievements in history.

Empire Managers Want To Control Our Thoughts

In this article, Australian freelance journalist Caitlin Johnstone presented 10 recent examples of propaganda tactics employed by the US govt to manipulate public opinions to achieve their intended objectives.

Ten Times Empire Managers Showed Us That They Want To Control Our Thoughts
Caitlin Johnstone
May 29, 2022

The single most overlooked and under-appreciated aspect of our society is the fact that immensely powerful people are continuously working to manipulate the thoughts we think about the world. Whether you call it propaganda, psyops, perception management or public relations, it's a real thing that happens constantly, and it happens to all of us.

And its consequences shape our entire world.

This should be at the forefront of our attention when examining news, trends and ideas, but it hardly ever gets mentioned. This is because the mass-scale psychological manipulation is succeeding. Propaganda only works if you don't know it's happening.

To be clear, I am not talking about some kind of wacky unsubstantiated conspiracy theory here. I am talking about a conspiracy fact. That we are propagandized by people with authority over us is not seriously in dispute by any well-informed good faith actor and has been extensively described and documented for many years.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34LGPIXvU5M

More than this, the managers of the US-centralized empire which dominates the west and so much of the rest of the world have straightforwardly shown us that they propagandize us and want to propagandize us more. They have shown us with their actions, and they have at times come right out and told us with their words.

Here are just a few of those times.

1. Operation Mockingbird

Let's start with maybe the best-known example. In 1977 Carl Bernstein published an article titled "The CIA and the Media" reporting that the CIA had covertly infiltrated America's most influential news outlets and had over 400 reporters who it considered assets in a program known as Operation Mockingbird.

It was a major scandal, and rightly so. The news media are meant to report truthfully about what happens in the world, not manipulate public perception to suit the agendas of spooks and warmongers.

But it only got worse from there.

2. Intelligence operatives now just openly working in the media

Nowadays the CIA collaboration happens right out in the open, and people are too propagandized to even recognize this as scandalous. Immensely influential outlets like The New York Times uncritically pass on CIA disinfo which is then spun as fact by cable news pundits. The Washington Post has consistently refused to disclose the fact that its sole owner has been a CIA contractor when reporting on US intelligence agencies as per standard journalistic protocol. Mass media outlets now openly employ intelligence agency veterans like John Brennan, James Clapper, Chuck Rosenberg, Michael Hayden, Frank Figliuzzi, Fran Townsend, Stephen Hall, Samantha Vinograd, Andrew McCabe, Josh Campbell, Asha Rangappa, Phil Mudd, James Gagliano, Jeremy Bash, Susan Hennessey, Ned Price, Rick Francona, Michael Morell, John McLaughlin, John Sipher, Thomas Bossert, Clint Watts, James Baker, Mike Baker, Daniel Hoffman, David Preiss, Evelyn Farkas, Mike Rogers and Malcolm Nance, as are known CIA assets like NBC's Ken Dilanian, as are CIA interns like Anderson Cooper and CIA applicants like Tucker Carlson.

Operation Mockingbird was the CIA doing something to the media. What we are seeing now is the CIA openly acting as the media. Any meaningful separation between the CIA and the news media, indeed even any pretence of separation, has been dropped.

3. Richard Stengel's CFR remarks on propaganda

Former US State Department official and Time Magazine editor Richard Stengel expressed full-throated support for the use of propaganda on both foreign and domestic audiences during a 2018 event organized by the supremely influential think tank Council on Foreign Relations.

“Basically every country creates their own narrative story,” Stengel said. "My old job at the State Department was what people used to joke as the chief propagandist. I’m not against propaganda. Every country does it, and they have to do it to their own population. And I don’t necessarily think it’s that awful.”

Interestingly, years earlier during his time at the US State Department under the Obama administration Stengel actually provided his own definition of what precisely he means by the word "propaganda", and it's not nearly as innocuous as he made it sound for his CFR audience.

"Propaganda is the deliberate dissemination of information that you know to be false or misleading in order to influence an audience," Stengel wrote in 2014.

Those are two mighty interesting positions for an empire manager to hold at the same time, especially one who just served on the presidential transition team of the current president.

4. US officials telling the press they're circulating disinfo about Russia to win an information war against Putin

Last month NBC News released a report citing multiple anonymous US officials who said the Biden administration has been rapidly pushing out "intelligence" about Russia's plans in Ukraine that is "low-confidence" or "based more on analysis than hard evidence", or even just plain false, in order to fight an information war against Putin.

The report says that toward this end the US government has deliberately circulated false or poorly evidenced claims about impending chemical weapons attacks, about Russian plans to orchestrate a false flag attack in the Donbass to justify an invasion, about Putin's advisors misinforming him, and about Russia seeking arms supplies from China.

So they lied. They may hold that they lied for a noble reason, but they lied. They knowingly circulated information they had no reason to believe was true, and that lie was amplified by all the most influential media outlets in the western world.

That this happened while the mass media is continually churning out reports warning the public about the dangers of "disinformation" is an irony that was lost on almost everybody.

5. Senators telling Silicon Valley representatives it's their job to manipulate public thought to prevent dissent

In 2017 representatives from Google, Facebook and Twitter were called before the Senate Judiciary Committee and told they must “quell information rebellions” and were instructed to come up with a mission statement expressing their commitment to “prevent the fomenting of discord” on their platforms.

“We all must act now on the social media battlefield to quell information rebellions that can quickly lead to violent confrontations and easily transform us into the Divided States of America,” the tech giants were told by think tanker and former FBI agent Clint Watts, who added, “Stopping the false information artillery barrage landing on social media users comes only when those outlets distributing bogus stories are silenced — silence the guns and the barrage will end.”

When monopolistic billionaire corporations are faced with demands from a legislative body that could easily make their lives a lot harder and a lot less profitable by taking action, up to and including major antitrust cases, they are being made an offer they can't refuse. This was made abundantly clear by Senator Dianne Feinstein during the 2017 hearings in her threat to intervene if those corporations failed to curtail the spread of unauthorized information online.

"You have to be the ones who do something about it — or we will,” Feinstein told the online platforms.

6. The Department of Homeland Security's "Disinformation Governance Board"

The Department of Homeland Security's hotly controversial Disinformation Governance Board, which critics have not-unfairly labeled a government-run Ministry of Truth, has "paused" its operations pending a review in light of public outcry. That review will be headed by corrupt imperial swamp monsters Michael Chertoff and Jamie Gorelick, of all people.

No government entity has any business appointing itself the authority to sort information from disinformation on behalf of the public, because government entities are not impartial and omniscient deities who can be entrusted to serve the public as objective arbiters of absolute reality. They would with absolute certainty wind up drawing distinctions between information, misinformation and disinformation in whatever way serves their interests, regardless of what's true, exactly as any authoritarian regime would do.

Whatever happens with that review we may be sure that the board's mission will continue, either under its current name or under some other more carefully disguised iteration. The empire is expressing far too much enthusiasm for greater and greater control over public thought to just let this one slip past.

7. The Smith–Mundt Modernization Act of 2012

In December of 2012 the US congress passed a revision of the Smith-Mundt Act as part of the 2013 NDAA which critics said ended restrictions that were put in place to prevent the government from propagandizing US citizens.

The legislation was first highlighted in a BuzzFeed News article by journalist Michael Hastings, who the following year would die in a rather suspicious car wreck while reportedly working on a major story.

“It removes the protection for Americans,” an unnamed Pentagon official told Hastings. “It removes oversight from the people who want to put out this information. There are no checks and balances. No one knows if the information is accurate, partially accurate, or entirely false.”

Hastings' report sparked online controversy, with many agreeing with his analysis of what would become known as the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012 and others saying concerns were unfounded. Either way, with all that's happened over the last ten years, it's clear now that Americans were right to be worried about a dramatic escalation in domestic propaganda.

8. Reagan's Psychological Operations

The late Robert Parry wrote numerous articles for Consortium News about the Reagan administration's operations of mass-scale psychological manipulation, which related directly to Parry's extensive work on the Iran-Contra affair during that time.

Parry described how Reagan and his neocon goons were obsessed with countering the public war-weariness and distrust of US interventionism which followed the Vietnam War in order to gain more consent for the depraved agendas the administration was working to roll out in Latin America. Central to this goal of consent-manufacturing, which the White House called "public diplomacy" in public and "perception management" in private, was a particularly odious-sounding spook named Walter Raymond Jr.

In an article titled "The Victory of 'Perception Management'," Parry wrote the following:

    During his Iran-Contra deposition, Raymond explained the need for this propaganda structure, saying: “We were not configured effectively to deal with the war of ideas.”

    One reason for this shortcoming was that federal law forbade taxpayers’ money from being spent on domestic propaganda or grassroots lobbying to pressure congressional representatives. Of course, every president and his team had vast resources to make their case in public, but by tradition and law, they were restricted to speeches, testimony and one-on-one persuasion of lawmakers.

    But things were about to change. In a Jan. 13, 1983, memo, NSC Advisor Clark foresaw the need for non-governmental money to advance this cause. “We will develop a scenario for obtaining private funding,” Clark wrote. (Just five days later, President Reagan personally welcomed media magnate Rupert Murdoch into the Oval Office for a private meeting, according to records on file at the Reagan library.)

    As administration officials reached out to wealthy supporters, lines against domestic propaganda soon were crossed as the operation took aim not only at foreign audiences but at U.S. public opinion, the press and congressional Democrats who opposed funding the Nicaraguan Contras.

9. Canadian military leaders using Covid regulations as an opportunity to test out psyop techniques on civilians

Last year Ottawa Citizen reported that the Canadian military used the Covid outbreak as an excuse to test actual military psyop techniques on its own civilian population under the pretense of assuring compliance with pandemic restrictions.

Some excerpts:

    “Canadian military leaders saw the pandemic as a unique opportunity to test out propaganda techniques on an unsuspecting public, a newly released Canadian Forces report concludes.”

    “The plan devised by the Canadian Joint Operations Command, also known as CJOC, relied on propaganda techniques similar to those employed during the Afghanistan war. The campaign called for ‘shaping’ and ‘exploiting’ information. CJOC claimed the information operations scheme was needed to head off civil disobedience by Canadians during the coronavirus pandemic and to bolster government messages about the pandemic.”

    “A separate initiative, not linked to the CJOC plan, but overseen by Canadian Forces intelligence officers, culled information from public social media accounts in Ontario. Data was also compiled on peaceful Black Lives Matter gatherings and BLM leaders.”

    “’This is really a learning opportunity for all of us and a chance to start getting information operations into our (CAF-DND) routine,’ the rear admiral stated.”

    “Yet another review centred on the Canadian Forces public affairs branch and its activities. Last year, the branch launched a controversial plan that would have allowed military public affairs officers to use propaganda to change attitudes and behaviours of Canadians as well as to collect and analyze information from public social media accounts.”

    “The plan would have seen staff move from traditional government methods of communicating with the public to a more aggressive strategy of using information warfare and influence tactics on Canadians.”

So empire managers are not just employing mass-scale psychological operations on the public, they’re testing them and learning from them.

10. The US government funding "independent" media in Ukraine

Lastly, there's the fact that the infamous $40 billion proxy war package sent to Ukraine includes funds allocated to "Counter Russian disinformation and propaganda narratives, promote accountability for Russian human rights violation, and support activists, journalists, and independent media to defend freedom of expression."

So information warfare. The US government is funding information warfare to manipulate public perception of this war and running cover for those manipulations by calling them activism, journalism, and independent media.

Given that the mainstream western press have been uncritically reporting even the most outlandish stories coming out of Ukraine without a shred of evidence, we can expect this government-funded propaganda to spread throughout the western world.

World Health Organization’s Orwellian Pandemic Treaty

The World Health Organization has started drafting a global pandemic treaty on pandemic preparedness that would grant it absolute power over global biosecurity, such as the power to implement digital identities/vaccine passports, mandatory vaccinations, travel restrictions, standardized medical care and more.

Everything you need to know about the World Health Organization’s Orwellian Pandemic Treaty

By The Exposé on May 13, 2022

By Dr J Mercola

The globalists that brought us the wildly exaggerated COVID pandemic in an effort to cement a biosecurity grid into place is now hard at work on the next phase of this New World Order.

The World Health Organization has started drafting a global pandemic treaty on pandemic preparedness that would grant it absolute power over global biosecurity, such as the power to implement digital identities/vaccine passports, mandatory vaccinations, travel restrictions, standardized medical care and more.

In “The Corbett Report”^1,2 above, independent journalist James Corbett reviews what this treaty is, how it will change the global landscape and strip you of some of your most basic rights and freedoms. Make no mistake, the WHO pandemic treaty is a direct attack on the sovereignty of its member states, as well as a direct attack on your bodily autonomy.

A Backdoor to Global Governance

As noted by anti-extremism activist Maajid Nawaz in an April 28, 2022, Twitter post,³ the “WHO pandemic treaty serves as a backdoor to global empire.”

COVID-19, while potentially deadly to certain vulnerable groups, simply isn’t a valid justification for handing over more power to the WHO, especially in light of its many inexplicable “mistakes” in this and previous pandemics.

As just one example, the WHO didn’t publicly admit SARS-CoV-2 was airborne until the end of December 2021,⁴ yet scientists knew the virus was airborne within weeks of the pandemic being declared.⁵ The WHO also ignored early advice about airborne transmission.⁶

So, it seems clear that the effort to now hand over more power to the WHO is about something other than them being the most qualified to make health decisions that benefit and protect everyone.

It seems far more likely that the WHO is being installed as a de facto governing body for the global Deep State.⁷ Through the WHO, under the guise of biosecurity, the globalist cabal who seek to own everything and control everyone, will then be able to implement their wishes across the whole world in one fell swoop.

With this treaty in place, all member nations will be subject to the WHO’s dictates. If the WHO says every person on the planet needs to have a vaccine passport and digital identity to ensure vaccination compliance, then that’s what every country will be forced to implement, even if the people have rejected such plans using local democratic processes.

As noted by Corbett, these negotiations are already well underway,⁸ and the treaty is expected to be fully implemented in 2024 — that is, unless the people of the world wake up to what’s happening and beat back this monstrosity.

WHO Likely Seeking to Monopolize Health Care Worldwide

Under the guise of a global pandemic, the WHO, the World Economic Forum (WEF) and all its installed leaders in government and private business, were able to roll out a plan that had already been decades in the making. The pandemic was a perfect cover.

In the name of keeping everyone “safe” from infection, the globalists justified unprecedented attacks on democracy, civil liberties and personal freedoms, including the right to choose your own medical treatment.

Now, the WHO is gearing up to make its pandemic leadership permanent, extend it into the health care systems of every nation, and eventually implement a universal or “socialist-like” health care system as part of The Great Reset.

While this is not currently being discussed, there’s every reason to suspect that this is part of the plan. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has previously stated that his “central priority” as director-general of the WHO is to push the world toward universal health coverage.⁹

And, considering the WHO changed its definition of “pandemic” to “a worldwide epidemic of a disease,”¹⁰ without the original specificity of severe illness that causes high morbidity,^11,12 just about anything could be made to fit the pandemic criterion. The whole premise behind this pandemic treaty is that “shared threat requires shared response.” But a given threat is almost never equally shared across regions.

Take COVID-19 for example. Not only is the risk of COVID not the same for people in New York City and the outback of Australia, it’s not even the same for all the people in those areas, as COVID is highly dependent on age and underlying health conditions.

The WHO insists that the remedy is the same for everyone everywhere, yet the risks vary widely from nation to nation, region to region, person to person. They intend to eliminate individualized medicine and provide blanket rulings for how a given threat is to be addressed. Without doubt, this can only result in needless suffering, not to mention the loss of individual freedom.

How the WHO Has Wielded Previous Pandemic Instruments

To give us an idea of how the WHO might end up misusing this new proposed international “instrument” on pandemic prevention, preparedness and response, we can look at the International Health Regulations (IHR),¹³ which the U.S. signed on to in 2005.

The IHR is what empowered the WHO to declare a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC).¹⁴ This is a special legal category that allows the WHO to initiate certain contracts and procedures, including drug and vaccine contracts.

As noted by Corbett, the IHR allows the unelected director-general of the WHO to simply declare a PHEIC and, suddenly, all member states have to dance to his tune. It basically grants the WHO dictatorial powers over health policy.

PHEICs have included the phony H1N1 swine flu pandemic in 2009, the inconsequential Zika outbreak in 2016, the overhyped Ebola outbreak in 2019, and, of course, the massively exaggerated COVID pandemic in 2020. All of these PHEICs were poorly handled and the WHO was criticized as inept and corrupt¹⁵ in their wake.

So, to summarize, through the IHR, the WHO has already been significantly empowered to dictate global health policy with regard to pandemics, and they used that power to bamboozle the nations of the world into spending billions of dollars on countermeasures, especially drugs and vaccines, that didn’t work very well.

In that sense, the WHO is really just another wealth-transfer instrument. The WHO’s Big Pharma collaborators make billions on the taxpayers’ dime, while the people of the world are left to suffer the consequences of fast-tracked vaccines. Its handling of the COVID pandemic in particular has been unprecedentedly bad, as they were behind the withholding of early treatment with safe medicines worldwide.

As noted by ivermectin advocate Dr. Tess Lawrie,¹⁶ the WHO has also claimed the mRNA shots as safe as conventional vaccines, which is nowhere near the truth. Most all available data prove they are the most dangerous drugs ever created. Why would anyone expect the WHO to become less corrupt if given even more power and control?

IHR Amendments May Also Restrict Rights and Freedoms

Now, the IHR overrode and superseded the U.S. Constitution from the start, but in January 2022, the U.S. also submitted regulatory amendments¹⁷ that will give the WHO even more power to restrict your rights and freedoms.

May 22 through 28, 2022, the World Health Assembly will gather and vote on these amendments to the IHR and, if passed, they will be enacted into international law. These submitted amendments are in addition to the WHO pandemic treaty currently under discussion. As reported by Health Policy Watch, February 23, 2022:¹⁸

“Washington wants to fast track a series of nitty-gritty, but far-reaching changes in the existing International Health Regulations that govern WHO and member state emergency alert and response — for consideration at this year’s World Health Assembly, 22-28 May.

The U.S. proposal¹⁹ for major IHR rule changes, obtained by Health Policy Watch, has been a topic of discussion in a series of closed-door meetings of WHO member states, which are considering ways to reform the existing IHR, as well as advancing a whole new WHO convention or other international instrument²⁰ on pandemic prevention and response …

The U.S. is expected to lead a parallel track of tightly-paced ‘informal’ member state negotiations to reach consensus on an IHR reform resolution for approval at this year’s 75th WHA [World Health Assembly] …”

The “new WHO convention or other international instrument” mentioned here refers to the WHO treaty currently under discussion. An intergovernmental negotiating body (INB) was established as a subdivision of the World Health Assembly in December 2021,²¹ for the purpose of drafting and negotiating this new pandemic treaty. And, as mentioned, this INB has begun that work.

However, as noted by Corbett, this is only the second time in the WHO’s history that an INB has been established. The first one was the INB of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control,²² 22 years ago. So, this is not a well-established process, and it’s hard to predict how it will play out.

Bill Gates Builds GERM Team for the WHO

Another clue about what the WHO intends to do with more power comes from its primary funder, Bill Gates. Gates recently announced he’s building a pandemic response team for the WHO, which he would like to be called the “Global Epidemic Response & Mobilization” or GERM Team.

This team will be made up of thousands of disease experts under WHO’s purview, and will monitor nations and “decide when they need to suspend civil liberties, force populations to wear masks and close borders,” The Counter Signal reports.²³

Of course, Gates is also the largest funder of the WHO (when you combine the donations from both his foundation and GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance). This and other relationships speak volumes about the corruption still ruling the WHO. At the end of the day, Gates is basically paying the WHO to dictate to the world what they must do to make Gates a ton of money. As noted by The Counter Signal:²⁴

“Gates’ announcement of the GERM team coincides with the World Health Organization’s drafting of a global pandemic treaty … In the future, the pandemic treaty will not only ensure that member states abide by International Health Regulations but will also put the WHO in the driver’s seat, so to speak. Member states, including the US and Canada, will take their orders directly from the organization. As Conservative MP Leslyn Lewis explains:

‘The treaty includes 190 countries and would be legally binding. The treaty defines and classifies what is considered a pandemic, and this could consist of broad classifications, including an increase in cancers, heart conditions, strokes, etc. If a pandemic is declared, the WHO takes over the global health management of the pandemic.

Of even more concern, if this treaty is enshrined, the WHO would be in full control over what gets called a pandemic. They could dictate how our doctors can respond, which drugs can and can’t be used, or which vaccines are approved. We would end up with a one-size-fits-all approach for the entire world … A one-size-fits-all response to a health crisis doesn’t even work across Canada, let alone the entire globe’ …

It isn’t unreasonable to assume that the GERM team, as a new branch of the WHO, would oversee making sure member states comply with the pandemic treaty after the draft is finalized and member states sign-on.

The next question, then, is how the WHO and Bill Gates would be able to monitor every individual in every country to determine whether enough people are sick to justify locking a region down.

To this end, the WHO has contracted German-based Deutsche Telekom subsidiary T-Systems to develop a global vaccine passport system,²⁵ with plans to link every person on the planet to a QR code digital ID … Thus, there will be one pandemic treaty, one GERM team, one global vaccine passport, and one World Health Organization to monitor every person on the planet.”

Under WHO Control, Vaccine Passports Are a Given

Indeed, while countries around the world have scrubbed their COVID measures and backed away from vaccine passports, the WHO is still moving ahead with a global vaccine passport program.²⁶

So, if the WHO is given the authority to dictate biosecurity rules for the world, you can bet they’ll insist on vaccine passports with built-in digital identity and readiness for a centralized programmable central bank digital currency (CBDC). As reported by the Western Standard:²⁷

“The WHO fully intends to provide support to its 194 member states to facilitate the implementation of the digital verification technology for countries’ national and regional verification of vaccine status.

‘COVID-19 affects everyone. Countries will therefore only emerge from the pandemic together. Vaccination certificates that are tamper-proof and digitally verifiable build trust. WHO is therefore supporting member states in building national and regional trust networks and verification technology.

The WHO’s gateway service also serves as a bridge between regional systems. It can also be used as part of future vaccination campaigns and home-based records,’ said Garrett Mehl, unit head of the WHO’s Department of Digital Health and Innovation, on Deutsche Telekom’s website.”

Can We Stop the International Pandemic Treaty?

The question now is, can we stop this “international pandemic instrument” that the WHO is seeking? With short notice, the WHO announced it would accept public comment on the treaty for a total of five days.²⁸ The World Council for Health (WCH) was among the few that acted quickly enough to submit a comment in opposition of the treaty. Lawrie delivered the WCH’s submission.²⁹

The proposal to take control of pandemics at a central WHO level is untenable and threatens a global society … It is foolhardy to even suggest that a ‘one size fits all’ response to a pandemic crisis across geographic zones characterized by hugely different parameters, could possibly be covered by a central bureaucratic process — the need for local decision making is of prime importance. ~ Robert Clancy, Ph.D.

In an April 26, 2022, update on Substack, Lawrie wrote:³⁰

“Despite the lack of notice, many grassroots organizations did what they could to spread the word and the World Council for Health’s #stopthetreaty campaign reached an astonishing 415 million people. Many of you made written submissions expressing your concerns. So many of you in fact, that I hear the WHO’s website crashed on the last day.”

One person who missed the deadline was professor Robert Clancy, a leading clinical immunologist in Canada. He sent the comment he would have wanted to submit to Lawrie, who included it in her post:³¹

“The proposal to take control of pandemics at a central WHO level is untenable and threatens a global society. I am in receipt of the World Council for Health response, and the superbly summarized view by Dr. Tess Lawrie. These concerns reflect the ‘across the board’ view of most Australian doctors …

The failure to understand the restrictions of systemic vaccination for mucosal infection and the dangers of accumulated suppression that follows mindless booster programs, and failure to interrogate the massive databases regarding adverse events of genetic vaccines are but two of the serious mistakes perpetuated by the WHO …

It is foolhardy to even suggest that a ‘one size fits all’ response to a pandemic crisis across geographic zones characterized by hugely different parameters, could possibly be covered by a central bureaucratic process — the need for local decision making is of prime importance.

The rule of science and the rule of the doctor-patient relationship must determine any response to a pandemic, and current experience where the rule of the narrative has so distorted disease outcomes — supported by the WHO — must make very clear the foolishness of rewarding incompetence and corruption with even greater powers.

I write this as the most experienced Clinical Immunologist in Australia, and a leading research scientist in Mucosal Immunology with a focus on ‘host-parasite relationship.’ Professor Robert Clancy AM FRS(N) MB BS BSc(Med) PhD DSc FRACP FRCP(A) FRCP(C)”

Make Your Voice Heard in June

While many, like Clancy, didn’t get a chance to participate, the WHO has announced it will allow for two more days of public comment, June 16 and 17, 2022. As noted by Lawrie:³²

“Please also be aware of the proposed amendments to the International Health Regulations, to be voted on this May at the World Health Assembly.

Like the pandemic treaty, this is another move to seize greater powers and override the sovereign laws of individual nations. Some say this is more significant than the pandemic treaty: if voted in, it means the loss of our sovereignty from this November. James Roguski has written extensively about this on his Substack.³³

There seems to be a concerted effort by the WHO and its controllers to attack our sovereignty from all angles. It is important we make it clear that we do not recognize the WHO as an authority over us and that we will not tolerate this abuse of power.

We are sovereign and will not be bound by the undertakings of corrupt officials who pretend to act on our behalf when signing away the inherent rights of the World’s People. They do not act for us and we will not be bound.”

I encourage you to make plans to have your voice heard June 16 and 17, 2022. Unfortunately, the WHO has not yet released any submission details. Your best bet right now is to sign up for the WCH’s newsletter. The last time, they issued links and instructions on how to submit your comment, and are sure to do the same for the June submission window. You can subscribe at the bottom of this page, or on the WCH’s home page.

To block the IHR amendments at the May 2022 World Health Assembly, we need to flood our respective delegations with opposition. A list of U.S. delegates can be found in Roguski’s Substack article, “Speaking Truth to Power.”

For contact information for other nations’ delegates, I would suggest contacting the regional office and ask for a list (see “Regions” in the blue section at the bottom of the World Health Assembly’s webpage). It’s also possible that the WCH will publish guidance on it, so be sure to sign up for their newsletter.

• ¹ The Corbett Report April 27, 2022
• ² Transcript of The Corbett Report
• ³ Twitter Maajid Nawaz April 28, 2022
• ⁴ World Health Organization, Coronavirus disease (COVID-19): How is it transmitted? December 23, 2021
• ⁵ J Hosp Infect. 2021 Apr; 110: 89–96
• ⁶ Nature April 6, 2022
• ⁷ Heysatyamevjayate WordPress March 20, 2022
• ⁸ America Out Loud February 18, 2022
• ⁹ National Review June 14, 2017
• ¹⁰ Wayback Machine, WHO Pandemic Preparedness captured September 2, 2009 (PDF)
• ¹¹ The BMJ 2010;340:c2912
• ¹² Wayback Machine, WHO Pandemic Preparedness captured May 1, 2009 (PDF)
• ^13, 14 CDC International Health Regulations
• ¹⁵ Corbett Report April 13, 2010
• ^16, 28, 29 Tess Lawrie Substack April 13, 2022
• ^17, 18 Health Policy Watch February 23, 2022
• ¹⁹ WHO Proposal for Amendments to the International Health Regulations January 20, 2022
• ^20, 21 WHO Proposed Method of Work February 21, 2022
• ²² INB of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control
• ^23, 24 The Counter Signal May 2, 2022
• ^25, 27 Western Standard March 2, 2022
• ²⁶ Off-Guardian March 1, 2022
• ^30, 31, 32 Tess Lawrie Substack April 26, 2022
• ³³ James Roguski Substack March 31, 2022
  

Big Tech Monopoly Power is Vital to National Security!

When the U.S. security state announces that Big Tech's centralized censorship power must be preserved, we should ask what this reveals about whom this regime serves.

Former Intelligence Officials, Citing Russia, Say Big Tech Monopoly Power is Vital to National Security

Glenn Greenwald
Substack, Apr 21, 2022

A group of former intelligence and national security officials on Monday issued a jointly signed letter warning that pending legislative attempts to restrict or break up the power of Big Tech monopolies — Facebook, Google, and Amazon — would jeopardize national security because, they argue, their centralized censorship power is crucial to advancing U.S. foreign policy. The majority of this letter
is devoted to repeatedly invoking the grave threat allegedly posed to the U.S. by Russia as illustrated by the invasion of Ukraine, and it repeatedly points to the dangers of Putin and the Kremlin to justify the need to preserve Big Tech's power in its maximalist form. Any attempts to restrict Big Tech's monopolistic power would therefore undermine the U.S. fight against Moscow.

While one of their central claims is that Big Tech monopoly power is necessary to combat (i.e., censor) “foreign disinformation,” several of these officials are themselves leading disinformation agents: many were the same former intelligence officials who signed the now-infamous-and-debunked pre-election letter fraudulently claiming that the authentic Hunter Biden emails had the "hallmarks” of Russia disinformation (former Obama Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former Obama CIA Director Michael Morrell, former Obama CIA/Pentagon chief Leon Panetta). Others who signed this new letter have strong financial ties to the Big Tech corporations whose power they are defending in the name of national security (Morrell, Panetta, former Bush National Security Adviser Fran Townsend).

The ostensible purpose of the letter is to warn of the national security dangers from two different bipartisan bills — one pending in the Senate, the other in the House — that would prohibit Big Tech monopolies from using their vertical power to "discriminate” against competitors (the way Google, for instance, uses its search engine business to bury the videos of competitors to its YouTube property, such as Rumble, or the way Google and Apple use their stores and Amazon uses its domination over hosting services to destroy competitors).

One bill in the Senate is co-sponsored by Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA), and has attracted ample support in both parties, as has a similar House bill co-sponsored by House Antitrust Committee Chair David Cicilline (D-RI) and ranking member Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO). The amount of bipartisan support each bill has garnered — and the widespread animosity toward Big Tech reflected by this Congressional support — has shocked Google, Amazon, Apple, and Facebook lobbyists, who are accustomed to getting their way in Washington with lavish donations to the key politicians in each party.

This letter by former national security officials is, in one sense, an act of desperation. The bills have received the support of the key committees with jurisdiction over antitrust and Big Tech. In the Senate, five conservative Republican Committee members who have been outspoken critics of Big Tech power — Grassley, Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Ted Cruz (R-TX), Josh Hawley (R-MI), Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) — joined with Democrats to ensure the passage of one bill out of the Judiciary Committee by a 16-6 vote, with a companion bill passing that Committee with the support of 20 of twenty-two Senators. As The Intercept's Sara Sirota and Ryan Grim report: “Both bills have Big Tech reeling” since “a floor vote would likely be a blowout for Big Tech.”

The extreme animus harbored by large parts of the left and right toward Big Tech make it very difficult for any lawmaker to go on record in opposition to these proposed bills if they are forced to publicly take a position in a floor vote. Many Senators with financial ties to Big Tech — including the two California Senate Democrats who represent Silicon Valley and are recipients of their largesse (Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Alex Padilla) — have expressed reservations about these reform efforts and have refused to co-sponsor the bill, yet still voted YES when forced to vote in Committee. This shows that public pressure to rein in Big Tech is becoming too large to enable Silicon Valley to force lawmakers to ignore their constituents’ wishes with lobbyist donations. These politicians will work behind the scenes to kill efforts to rein in Big Tech, but will not vote against such efforts if forced to take a public position.

As a result, Big Tech's last hope is to keep the bill from reaching the floor where Senators would be forced to go on record, a goal they hope will be advanced by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York due to his close ties to Silicon Valley. “Both [Schumer's] children are on the payroll of companies the proposals would seek to rein in,” reported The New York Post: “Jessica Schumer is a registered lobbyist at Amazon, according to New York state records. Alison Schumer works at Facebook as a product marketing manager.” Despite that, Schumer claimed to The Intercept that he supports both bills and will vote in favor of them, even though he has engaged in maneuvers to impede the bills from getting a full floor vote.

This is where these former intelligence and national security officials come in. While these former CIA, Homeland Security and Pentagon operatives have little sway in the Senate Judiciary and House Antitrust Committees, they command great loyalty from Congressional national security committees. Those committees, created to exert oversight of the U.S. intelligence and military agencies, are notoriously captive to the U.S. National Security State. The ostensible purpose of this new letter is to insist that Big Tech monopoly power is vital to U.S. national security — because it is necessary for them to censor “disinformation” from the internet, especially now with the grave Russian threat reflected by the war in Ukraine — and they thus demand that the anti-Big-Tech bills first be reviewed not only by the Judiciary and Antitrust Committees, but also the national security committees where they wield power and influence, which have traditionally played no role in regulating the technology sector:

    We call on the congressional committees with national security jurisdiction – including the Armed Services Committees, Intelligence Committees, and Homeland Security Committees in both the House and Senate – to conduct a review of any legislation that could hinder America’s key technology companies in the fight against cyber and national security risks emanating from Russia’s and China’s growing digital authoritarianism.

Why would these former national security and intelligence officials be so devoted to preserving the unfettered power of Big Tech to control and censor the internet? One obvious explanation is the standard one that always runs Washington: several of them have a financial interest in serving Big Tech's agenda.

Unsurprisingly, Apple CEO Tim Cook has himself pushed the claim that undermining Big Tech's power in any way would threaten U.S national security. And there is now an army of well-compensated-by-Silicon-Valley former national security officials echoing his message. A well-researched Politico article from September — headlined: “12 former security officials who warned against antitrust crackdown have tech ties” — detailed how many of these former officials who invoke national security claims to protect Big Tech are on the take from the key tech monopolies:

    The warning last week from a dozen former national security leaders was stark: An antitrust crackdown on Silicon Valley could threaten the nation’s economy and “cede U.S. tech leadership to China.”

    But the group was united by more than their histories of holding senior defense and intelligence roles in the Trump, Obama and George W. Bush administrations: All 12 have ties to major tech companies, either from working with them directly or serving with organizations that get money from them, according to a POLITICO analysis….

    Seven of the 12, including Panetta, hold roles at Beacon Global Strategies, a public relations firm that according to a person familiar with the matter counts Google as a client…Five of the former officials, including former director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency Robert Cardillo and former National Security Agency deputy director Richard Ledgett, serve as advisory board members at Beacon. Panetta and Michael Morell, a former acting CIA director under President Barack Obama, are senior counselors for the firm….

    Frances Townsend, who was a counterterrorism and homeland security adviser to President George W. Bush, is on the national security advisory board for American Edge, a Facebook-funded group that opposes changes to strengthen antitrust laws….Townsend is also on the board of directors of the Atlantic Council, which counts Facebook and Google as funders; the board of trustees for Center for Strategic and International Studies, which counts Apple and Google as funders; and the board of directors of the Council on Foreign Relations, which receives money from Microsoft and counts Facebook and Google in its highest membership category.

As Rep. Buck, the Colorado House Republican who favors reform, put it: “It is not surprising that individuals who receive money from Big Tech are defending Big Tech. At the end of the day, Big Tech is harming U.S. competition and innovation through anti-competitive practices.” In other words, these former intelligence officials are exploiting their national security credentials to protect an industry in which they have a deep financial interest.

The view that preservation of Big Tech is vital for national security is by no means a unanimous view even in that world. Retired Gen. Wesley Clark and others have vehemently argued that this claim is a “myth.” As veteran internet security expert Bruce Schneier observed: “These bills will encourage competition, prevent monopolist extortion, and guarantee users a new right to digital self-determination.” But the National Security State has enough True Believers combined with paid shills to make it appear as if Americans should be desperate to preserve and protect Big Tech's power because this power is crucial to keeping America safe and, particularly, fighting Russia.

There are indeed valid and rational reasons for these officials to view Big Tech monopoly power as a vital weapon in advancing their national security agenda. As I documented last week when reporting on the unprecedented censorship regime imposed in the West regarding the war in Ukraine, Big Tech censorship of political speech is not random. Domestically, it is virtually always devoted to silencing any meaningful dissent from liberal orthodoxy or official pieties on key political controversies. But in terms of foreign policy, the censorship patterns of tech monopolies virtually always align with U.S. foreign policy, and for understandable reasons: Big Tech and the U.S. security state are in a virtually complete union, with all sorts of overlapping, mutual financial interests:

    Note that this censorship regime is completely one-sided and, as usual, entirely aligned with U.S. foreign policy. Western news outlets and social media platforms have been flooded with pro-Ukrainian propaganda and outright lies from the start of the war. A New York Times article from early March put it very delicately in its headline: “Fact and Mythmaking Blend in Ukraine’s Information War.” Axios was similarly understated in recognizing this fact: “Ukraine misinformation is spreading — and not just from Russia.”

Members of the U.S. Congress have gleefully spread fabrications that went viral to millions of people, with no action from censorship-happy Silicon Valley corporations. That is not a surprise: all participants in war use disinformation and propaganda to manipulate public opinion in their favor, and that certainly includes all direct and proxy-war belligerents in the war in Ukraine.

    Yet there is little to no censorship — either by Western states or by Silicon Valley monopolies — of pro-Ukrainian disinformation, propaganda and lies. The censorship goes only in one direction: to silence any voices deemed “pro-Russian,” regardless of whether they spread disinformation….Their crime, like the crime of so many other banished accounts, was not disinformation but skepticism about the US/NATO propaganda campaign. Put another way, it is not “disinformation" but rather viewpoint-error that is targeted for silencing. One can spread as many lies and as much disinformation as one wants provided that it is designed to advance the NATO agenda in Ukraine (just as one is free to spread disinformation provided that its purpose is to strengthen the Democratic Party, which wields its majoritarian power in Washington to demand greater censorship and commands the support of most of Silicon Valley). But what one cannot do is question the NATO/Ukrainian propaganda framework without running a very substantial risk of banishment.

    It is unsurprising that Silicon Valley monopolies exercise their censorship power in full alignment with the foreign policy interests of the U.S. Government. Many of the key tech monopolies — such as Google and Amazon — routinely seek and obtain highly lucrative contracts with the U.S. security state, including both the CIA and NSA. Their top executives enjoy very close relationships with top Democratic Party officials. And Congressional Democrats have repeatedly hauled tech executives before their various Committees to explicitly threaten them with legal and regulatory reprisals if they do not censor more in accordance with the policy goals and political interests of that party.

Needless to say, the U.S. security state wants to maintain a stranglehold on political discourse in the U.S. and the world more broadly. They want to be able to impose propagandistic narratives without challenge and advocate for militarism without dissent. To accomplish that, they need a small handful of corporations which are subservient to them to hold in their hands as much concentrated power over the internet as possible.

If a free and fair competitive market were to arise whereby social media platforms more devoted to free speech could fairly compete with Google and Facebook— as the various pending bills in Congress are partially designed to foster — then that new diversity of influence, that diffusion of power, would genuinely threaten the ability of the CIA and the Pentagon and the White House to police political discourse and suppress dissent from their policies and assertions. By contrast, by maintaining all power in the hands of the small coterie of tech monopolies which control the internet and which have long proven their loyalty to the U.S. security state, the ability of the U.S. national security state to maintain a closed propaganda system around questions of war and militarism is guaranteed.

In this new letter, these national security operatives barely bother to hide their intention to exploit the strong animosity toward Russia that they have cultivated, and the accompanying intense emotions from the ubiquitous, unprecedented media coverage of the war in Ukraine, to prop up their goals. Over and over, they cite the grave Russian threat — a theme they have been disseminating and manufacturing since the Russiagate fraud of 2016 — to manipulate Americans to support the preservation of Big Tech's concentrated power, and to imply that anyone seeking to limit Big Tech power or make the market more competitive is a threat to U.S. national security:

    This is a pivotal moment in modern history. There is a battle brewing between authoritarianism and democracy, and the former is using all the tools at its disposal, including a broad disinformation campaign and the threat of cyber-attacks, to bring about a change in the global order. We must confront these global challenges. . . . U.S. technology platforms have given the world the chance to see the real story of the Russian military’s horrific human rights abuses in Ukraine. . . . At the same time, President Putin and his regime have sought to twist facts in order to show Russia as a liberator instead of an aggressor. . . .

    The Russian government is seeking to alter the information landscape by blocking Russian citizens from receiving content that would show the true facts on the ground. .. . . . Indeed, it is telling that among the Kremlin’s first actions of the war was blocking U.S. platforms in Russia. Putin knows that U.S. digital platforms can provide Russian citizens valuable views and facts about the war that he tries to distort through lies and disinformation. U.S. technology platforms have already taken concrete steps to shine a light on Russia’s actions to brutalize Ukraine. . . . Providing timely and accurate on-the-ground information – and disrupting the scourge of disinformation from Russian state media – is essential for allowing the world (including the Russian people) to see the human toll of Russia’s aggression. . . . [T]he United States is facing an extraordinary threat from Russian cyber-attacks . . .

    In the face of these growing threats, U.S. policymakers must not inadvertently hamper the ability of U.S. technology platforms to counter increasing disinformation and cybersecurity risks, particularly as the West continues to rely on the scale and reach of these firms to push back on the Kremlin . . . . Russia’s invasion of Ukraine marks the start of a new chapter in global history, one in which the ideals of democracy will be put to the test. The United States will need to rely on the power of its technology sector to ensure that the safety of its citizens and the narrative of events continues to be shaped by facts, not by foreign adversaries.

It is hardly controversial or novel to observe that the U.S. security state always wants and needs a hated foreign enemy precisely because it allows them to claim whatever powers and whatever budgets they want in the name of stopping that foreign villain. And every war and every new enemy ushers in new authoritarian powers and the trampling of civil liberties: both the First War on Terror, justified by 9/11, and the New Domestic War on Terror, justified by 1/6, should have taught us that lesson permanently. Usually, though, U.S. security state propagandists are a bit more subtle about how they manipulate anger and fear of foreign villains to manipulate public opinion for their own authoritarian ends.

Perhaps because of their current desperation about the support these bills have attracted, they are now just nakedly and shamelessly trying to channel the anger and hatred that they have successfully stoked toward Russia to demand that Big Tech not be weakened, regulated or restricted in any way. The cynical exploitation could hardly be more overt: if you hate Putin the way any loyal and patriotic American should, then you must devote yourself to full preservation of the power of Google, Facebook, Apple, and Amazon.

It should go without saying that these life-long security state operatives do not care in the slightest about the dangers of "disinformation.” Indeed — as evidenced by the fact that most of them generated one Russiagate fraud after the next during...

US Interfered in 81 Foreign Elections!

Ask an average American who makes a habit of following government-mouthpiece corporate media about interference in national elections and you’ll likely elicit a nebulous response concerning Russian hackers and a plan to install Donald Trump in the White House — but you probably won’t hear a single syllable pertaining to United States government’s actual attempts to do the same.

Government’s Own Data Shows US Interfered in 81 Foreign Elections

by Claire Bernish
Mintpress
March 22nd, 2017

On Monday, FBI Director James Comey confirmed for the first time publicly that the bureau is officially investigating hotly contentious allegations of Russian meddling in the U.S. election — but, even if proven true, such geopolitical escapades better characterize the routine behavior of accuser than of accused.

“The F.B.I., as part of our counterintelligence effort, is investigating the Russian government’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 president election,” the director announced, adding the bureau would conduct a probe to discern whether Trump’s associates had contact with Russian officials.

Despite that the U.S. has hypocritically exerted influence over foreign elections in all corners of the globe — in fact, it has arrogantly done so a whopping 81 times between 1946 and 2000, alone (https://academic.oup.com/isq/article-abstract/60/2/189/1750842/When-the-Great-Power-Gets-a-Vote-The-Effects-of) — with just one-third of those operations undertaken overtly.

For months, mainstream media parroted murky accusations hurled by politicians — keen to point a finger of blame for the apparently stultifying victory of a former reality television host on someone — that The Russians had somehow surreptitiously undermined the election-centric foundation of American Democracy.

While that has yet to prove true, this new Red Scare constitutes a duplicitous attempt by the pot to call the kettle … an election meddler.

Researcher Dov Levin of Carnegie Mellon University’s Institute for Politics and Strategy — an expert on the topic at hand — discussed (http://www.npr.org/2016/12/22/506625913/database-tracks-history-of-u-s-meddling-in-foreign-elections) the lengthy but incomplete list of times the U.S. government has interfered in other nations’ elections with NPR’s Ari Shapiro.

Listen to the NPR segment below:

Asked for examples where this tampering tangibly altered results, Levin stated,

"One example of that was our intervention in Serbia, Yugoslavia in the 2000 election there. Slobodan Milosevic was running for re-election, and we didn’t want him to stay in power there due to his tendency, you know, to disrupt the Balkans and his human rights violations.

So we intervened in various ways for the opposition candidate, Vojislav Kostunica. And we gave funding to the opposition, and we gave them training and campaigning aide. And according to my estimate, that assistance was crucial in enabling the opposition to win."

Levin reiterated the more blatant methods with which the U.S. asserts dominance — through the overt coups or all-out regime changes branding the nation a notorious interventionist — are not among the list of the 80-plus attempts to manipulate the electoral outcome.

As for the issue of pot versus kettle, Levin explained that — although Russia and other powerful nations indisputably employ similar tactics — the United States has been quite prodigious in its effort.

Well, for my dataset, the United States is the most common user of this technique. Russia or the Soviet Union since 1945 has used it half as much. My estimate has been 36 cases between 1946 to 2000. We know also that the Chinese have used this technique and the Venezuelans when the late Hugo Chavez was still in power in Venezuela and other countries.

As sanctimoniously as U.S. politicians cry foul about The Russians, it would behoove the new McCarthyites to reflect on the nation’s sticky imperialist fingerprints around the globe — like that time in 1996, when the United States undertook an extensive, secret operation to ensure the presidency of Boris Yeltsin.

That is, of course, former President Boris Yeltsin — of the Russian Federation (http://thefreethoughtproject.com/us-rigging-russia-election-cia-struggles/).

= = =
Database Tracks History of U.S. Meddling In Foreign Elections
NPR, Dec 22, 2016

NPR's Ari Shapiro talks to Carnegie Mellon University researcher Dov Levin about his historical database that tracks U.S. involvement in meddling with foreign elections over the years.

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

This is hardly the first time a country has tried to influence the outcome of another country's election. The U.S. has done it, too, by one expert's count, more than 80 times worldwide between 1946 and 2000. That expert is Dov Levin of Carnegie Mellon University. I asked him to tell me about one election where U.S. intervention likely made a difference in the outcome.

DOV LEVIN: One example of that was our intervention in Serbia, Yugoslavia in the 2000 election there. Slobodan Milosevic was running for re-election, and we didn't want him to stay in power there due to his tendency, you know, to disrupts the Balkans and his human rights violations.

So we intervened in various ways for the opposition candidate, Vojislav Kostunica. And we gave funding to the opposition, and we gave them training and campaigning aide. And according to my estimate, that assistance was crucial in enabling the opposition to win.

SHAPIRO: How often are these interventions public versus covert?

LEVIN: Well, it's - basically there's about - one-third of them are public, and two-third of them are covert. In other words, they're not known to the voters in the target before the election.

SHAPIRO: Your count does not include coups, attempts at regime change. It sounds like depending on the definitions, the tally could actually be much higher.

LEVIN: Well, you're right. I don't count and discount covert coup d'etats like the United States did in Iran in 1953 or in Guatemala in 1954. I only took when the United States is trying directly to influence an election for one of the sides. Other types of interventions - I don't discuss. But if we would include those, then of course the number could be larger, yeah.

SHAPIRO: How often do other countries like Russia, for example, try to alter the outcome of elections as compared to the United States?

LEVIN: Well, for my dataset, the United States is the most common user of this technique. Russia or the Soviet Union since 1945 has used it half as much. My estimate has been 36 cases between 1946 to 2000. We know also that the Chinese have used this technique and the Venezuelans when the late Hugo Chavez was still in power in Venezuela and other countries.

SHAPIRO: The U.S. is arguably more vocal than any other country about trying to promote democracy and democratic values around the world. Does this strike you as conflicting with that message?

LEVIN: It depends upon if we are assisting pro-democratic side - could be like in the case of Slobodan Milosevic that I talked about earlier. I believe that that could be helpful for democracy. If it helps less-nicer candidates or parties, then naturally it can be less helpful.

SHAPIRO: Obviously your examination of 20th century attempts to influence elections does not involve hacking because computers were not widespread until recently.

LEVIN: Yeah.

SHAPIRO: In your view, is technology - the way that we saw in the November election - dramatically changing the game? Or is this just the latest evolution of an effort that has always used whatever tools are available?

LEVIN: I would say it's more the latter. I mean the Russians or the Soviets before infrequently did these type of intervention, just, you know, without the cyber-hacking tools - you know, the old style people meeting in the park in secret giving out and getting information and things like that, so to speak.

SHAPIRO: Dov Levin is with the Institute for Politics and Strategy at Carnegie Mellon University. Thanks for joining us.

LEVIN: Thank you very much.

The Richest People In The World in 2022

Today, the 10 richest people in the world control $1.3 trillion in wealth.

These Are The Richest People In The World in 2022
by Tyler Durden
Zero Hedge, Apr 03, 2022

As Visual Capitalist's Dorothy Neufeld (https://www.visualcapitalist.com/richest-people-in-the-world-2022/) details below, this scale of wealth is equal to approximately 1.4% of the world economy, Amazon’s entire market cap, or spending $1 million a day for 3,000 years. In fact, it’s double the amount seen just two years ago ($663 billion).

As billionaire wealth accumulates at a remarkable speed, we feature a snapshot of the world’s richest in 2022, based on data from the Forbes Real-Time Billionaires List (https://www.forbes.com/real-time-billionaires/#b772a383d788).

Top 10 Richest People in the World

Elon Musk, with a fortune of $212 billion, is the richest person on the planet.

Tesla delivered nearly one million vehicles globally in 2021. Despite facing a computer chip shortage, Tesla deliveries rose 87% year-over-year. Musk, who is also CEO and chief engineer of SpaceX, plans to send the largest rocket ever built into orbit in 2022. It spans 119 meters tall.

Here are the richest people in the world, based on data as of March 14, 2022:

With a net worth of $168 billion, Jeff Bezos falls in second place. Bezos is the only billionaire in the top 10 to see a decline in wealth (-$9 billion) over the year. Since last March, Amazon shares have risen just 3% in light of weaker earnings and lagging retail performance.

Most notably, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta (formerly Facebook) fell off the top 10 for the first time since 2016. Meta shares plunged after reporting the first-ever drop in global daily active users since 2004.

Growth Rates of the Top 10 Overall

Among the 10 richest people in the world, here’s who saw their wealth rise the fastest:

Musk saw his fortune rise more than any other in this top 10 list. In 2021, Tesla became a trillion-dollar company for the first time, and Musk’s wealth jumped by 29% over the past year.

Crypto Billionaires in 2022

At least 10 people worldwide have seen their wealth climb into the billions thanks to the stratospheric rise of cryptocurrencies.

Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of the FTX crypto derivatives exchange, is at the top, with a jaw-dropping $24 billion net worth. Bankman-Fried launched the exchange in 2019 when he was 27.

FTX now has one million users and a $32 billion valuation.

Following Bankman-Fried is Brian Armstrong, the co-founder of cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase. It is the second-largest cryptocurrency exchange globally after Binance.

Also on the list are co-founders of Gemini cryptocurrency exchange Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, each with a net worth of $4 billion. Like their rival, Mark Zuckerberg, they have their sights on building a metaverse.

Larger Shifts

Will billionaire wealth continue to accumulate at record rates? If the invasion of Ukraine presses on, it will likely have broader structural outcomes.

Some argue that war is a great leveler, a force that has reduced wealth inequality, as seen in the aftermath of WWII. Others suggest that it increases wealth divergence, especially when the war is financed by public debt. Often, costs have become inflated due to war, putting pressure on low and middle-income households.

Whether or not the war will have lasting effects on wealth distribution is an open question, however, if the pandemic serves as any precedent, the effects will be far from predictable.

The Basic Principles of War Propaganda

Arthur Ponsonby's ten commandments of war propaganda as summarized by Anne Morelli in her 2001 book "The basic principles of war propaganda".

More details on each commandment at this wiki link