lewrockwell--2020-05-06--Will COVID-19 Accelerate the Dollar’s Extinction?

An economic truth I revisit periodically is that every fiat currency ( a medium of exchange without intrinsic value or without backing by a commodity with intrinsic value , such as gold ) will eventually became worthless .
The oldest fiat currency still in circulation , the British Pound Sterling , dates from 1694 .
Since then , an additional 774 fiat currencies have been created .
About one-quarter of them are still around , but most no longer exist .
They failed due to hyperinflation , war , politics , monetary reform , or a combination of these factors @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 99.5 % of its original value relative to gold .
One example of a failed fiat currency you ’ ve probably heard about is the old German mark .
In 1914 , when World War I began , the mark was worth about $ 4.20 .
As we know , things didn ’ t go well for Germany in World War I .
By the time Germany capitulated in 1918 , the mark had lost nearly 50 % of its value .
It fell from 4.2 to 7.9 marks per dollar .
But @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the end of 1919 , the mark-dollar exchange rate fell to 48 to 1 .
By the first half of 1921 , it was 90 to 1 .
By the end of 1922 , it was 7,400 to 1 .
In early 1922 , you could buy a loaf of bread for 160 marks .
But by the end of 1923 , that same loaf cost 200 billion marks .
Meanwhile , the USD to mark exchange rate fell to 4.21 trillion to 1 .
When Money Dies : The N ... Adam @ @ @ @ @ @ @ New $ 10.08 Yet , leading German economists of the day insisted there was no inflation .
They argued there was actually a shortage of circulating currency .
And to deal with the shortage , the printing presses ran 24 hours a day to produce more paper money .
The dollar , which is just another fiat currency , will eventually follow a similar path .
It ’ s already lost almost 99 % of its value relative to gold since its creation in 1792 .
Still , the dollar ’ s role @ @ @ @ @ @ @ currency ” has been remarkably resilient for the last 75 years , despite a $ 24 trillion federal deficit now growing at a rate of $ 4 trillion annually , $ 200 trillion in unfunded obligations , and a central bank holding nearly $ 7 trillion of increasingly dodgy assets .
The dollar ’ s pre-eminent status came about as a result of a 1944 conference in Bretton Woods , New Hampshire .
At the meeting , a group of finance ministers and other high-ranking officials from 44 countries declared that henceforth , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ gold.
” It was a logical choice back then .
In 1944 , America had the world ’ s largest industrial capacity and unlike most other countries participating in the conference , hadn ’ t been devastated in either world war .
The dollar was already the world ’ s most popular currency ; declaring it to be “ good as gold ” was a logical – but also fateful – step .
The Bretton Woods system declared that nations could no longer demand gold from their trading partners to settle debts , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for gold from the US Treasury at a fixed price of $ 35 per ounce .
Beyond Blockchain : The ... Townsend , Erik Best Price : $ 23.95 Buy New $ 24.95 Unfortunately for the rest of the world , Uncle Sam couldn ’ t abide by this deal .
By the 1960s , deficit spending to finance the Vietnam War and the “ War on Poverty ” spurred inflation .
Central banks accumulated more and more dollars and started to demand that the Treasury redeem them for gold at $ 35 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ US gold reserves , in 1971 , President Nixon suspended the dollar ’ s convertibility into gold .
You might think this would have ended the dollar ’ s free ride .
But it actually entrenched its status .
Without a mechanism for central banks to exchange dollars for gold , they were forced to accumulate dollars .
Because so many global transactions were settled in dollars , businesses in every country needed to exchange local currency into dollars to pay debts and transact business .
The domination of the dollar is so @ @ @ @ @ @ @ global currency reserves held by central banks are dollar denominated .
More than one-third of global GDP comes from countries that have adopted the dollar as either an official ( e.g.
, Ecuador ) or parallel ( e.g.
, Panama ) currency .
And nearly 90 countries keep the dollar in a tight trading range with their local currency ( e.g.
, Hong Kong ) .
And , just like the old German mark a century ago , economists today talk about a “ dollar shortage.
” With dollar superiority apparently entrenched , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have found ways to weaponize the dollar ’ s reserve currency status against Uncle Sam ’ s enemies .
Thus , one of the ways the US enforces sanctions against its long list of enemies is by locking adversaries out of the global dollar clearing system .
Uncle Sam also penalizes countries and foreign businesses that trade with their list of enemies .
For instance , in 2017 Treasury Secretary Mnuchin warned China it would face being cut off from the dollar clearing system if it failed to adhere to UN sanctions against @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Treasury imposed a $ 1.3 billion penalty against French bank Société Générale S.A. for violating trade sanctions against Cuba .
Yet , Uncle Sam denies that it uses the dollar as a weapon .
The Price of Tomorrow : ... Booth , Jeff Best Price : $ 21.14 Buy New $ 18.95 Not surprisingly , countries targeted by dollar sanctions don ’ t like it .
That effort has taken on new urgency as Uncle Sam turns on the money spigot to fight the economic side effects of COVID-19 .
No foreign central @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the greenback goes the way of the old German mark .
Russia and China have agreed to increase trade using their own national currencies .
The EU has developed a global payments system designed to allow EU companies to do business with Iranian companies without exposing themselves to US sanctions .
As well , over 40 central banks are considering the introduction of blockchain-based digital currencies that would avoid dollar clearing delays and US sanctions .
The most recent pronouncement calling for a dollar replacement came last week from Shanghai Gold Exchange ( @ @ @ @ @ @ @ proposes a new super-sovereign currency to that would replace the greenback .
In a thinly veiled swipe at US efforts to weaponize the dollar , Wang says the new currency would be designed to ensure that no one country can freeze the international assets of another country .
It ’ s anyone ’ s guess if these efforts to dethrone the dollar will be successful , or when .
But one thing is for sure .
The dollar is fated to join the long list of fiat currencies that have been debased out @ @ @ @ @ @ @ process .
On the dollar ’ s way out , you ’ ll see inflation , higher taxes , negative interest rates , bail-ins , and exchange controls .
It ’ s only a matter of time .
Make sure you ’ re ready when it comes .
Protecting your assets ( and yourself ) against any threat – from the government , the IRS or a frivolous lawsuit – is something The Nestmann Group has helped more than 15,000 Americans do over the last 30 years .
The Best of Mark Nestmann

An economic truth I revisit periodically is that every fiat currency (a medium of exchange without intrinsic value or without backing by a commodity with intrinsic value, such as gold) will eventually became worthless.
The oldest fiat currency still in circulation, the British Pound Sterling, dates from 1694. Since then, an additional 774 fiat currencies have been created. About one-quarter of them are still around, but most no longer exist. They failed due to hyperinflation, war, politics, monetary reform, or a combination of these factors. And the pound has lost about 99.5% of its original value relative to gold.
One example of a failed fiat currency you’ve probably heard about is the old German mark. In 1914, when World War I began, the mark was worth about $4.20. As we know, things didn’t go well for Germany in World War I. By the time Germany capitulated in 1918, the mark had lost nearly 50% of its value. It fell from 4.2 to 7.9 marks per dollar.
But that was only the beginning. By the end of 1919, the mark-dollar exchange rate fell to 48 to 1. By the first half of 1921, it was 90 to 1. By the end of 1922, it was 7,400 to 1. In early 1922, you could buy a loaf of bread for 160 marks. But by the end of 1923, that same loaf cost 200 billion marks. Meanwhile, the USD to mark exchange rate fell to 4.21 trillion to 1. When Money Dies: The N... Adam Fergusson Best Price: $1.97 Buy New $10.08 (as of 10:10 UTC - Details)
Yet, leading German economists of the day insisted there was no inflation. They argued there was actually a shortage of circulating currency. And to deal with the shortage, the printing presses ran 24 hours a day to produce more paper money.
The dollar, which is just another fiat currency, will eventually follow a similar path. It’s already lost almost 99% of its value relative to gold since its creation in 1792.
Still, the dollar’s role as the world’s “reserve currency” has been remarkably resilient for the last 75 years, despite a $24 trillion federal deficit now growing at a rate of $4 trillion annually, $200 trillion in unfunded obligations, and a central bank holding nearly $7 trillion of increasingly dodgy assets.
The dollar’s pre-eminent status came about as a result of a 1944 conference in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire. At the meeting, a group of finance ministers and other high-ranking officials from 44 countries declared that henceforth, the dollar would be “good as gold.”
It was a logical choice back then. In 1944, America had the world’s largest industrial capacity and unlike most other countries participating in the conference, hadn’t been devastated in either world war. The dollar was already the world’s most popular currency; declaring it to be “good as gold” was a logical – but also fateful – step.
The Bretton Woods system declared that nations could no longer demand gold from their trading partners to settle debts, but central banks could exchange their dollars for gold from the US Treasury at a fixed price of $35 per ounce.
Beyond Blockchain: The... Townsend, Erik Best Price: $23.95 Buy New $24.95 (as of 03:36 UTC - Details) Unfortunately for the rest of the world, Uncle Sam couldn’t abide by this deal. By the 1960s, deficit spending to finance the Vietnam War and the “War on Poverty” spurred inflation. Central banks accumulated more and more dollars and started to demand that the Treasury redeem them for gold at $35 per ounce. To avoid depletion of US gold reserves, in 1971, President Nixon suspended the dollar’s convertibility into gold.
You might think this would have ended the dollar’s free ride. But it actually entrenched its status. Without a mechanism for central banks to exchange dollars for gold, they were forced to accumulate dollars. Because so many global transactions were settled in dollars, businesses in every country needed to exchange local currency into dollars to pay debts and transact business.
The domination of the dollar is so complete that more than 60% of global currency reserves held by central banks are dollar denominated. More than one-third of global GDP comes from countries that have adopted the dollar as either an official (e.g., Ecuador) or parallel (e.g., Panama) currency. And nearly 90 countries keep the dollar in a tight trading range with their local currency (e.g., Hong Kong). And, just like the old German mark a century ago, economists today talk about a “dollar shortage.”
With dollar superiority apparently entrenched, it’s understandable that American politicians have found ways to weaponize the dollar’s reserve currency status against Uncle Sam’s enemies. Thus, one of the ways the US enforces sanctions against its long list of enemies is by locking adversaries out of the global dollar clearing system.
Uncle Sam also penalizes countries and foreign businesses that trade with their list of enemies. For instance, in 2017 Treasury Secretary Mnuchin warned China it would face being cut off from the dollar clearing system if it failed to adhere to UN sanctions against North Korea. In 2018, the Treasury imposed a $1.3 billion penalty against French bank Société Générale S.A. for violating trade sanctions against Cuba. Yet, Uncle Sam denies that it uses the dollar as a weapon.
The Price of Tomorrow:... Booth, Jeff Best Price: $21.14 Buy New $18.95 (as of 03:36 UTC - Details) Not surprisingly, countries targeted by dollar sanctions don’t like it. That effort has taken on new urgency as Uncle Sam turns on the money spigot to fight the economic side effects of COVID-19. No foreign central bank wants to be holding dollars when the greenback goes the way of the old German mark.
Russia and China have agreed to increase trade using their own national currencies. The EU has developed a global payments system designed to allow EU companies to do business with Iranian companies without exposing themselves to US sanctions. As well, over 40 central banks are considering the introduction of blockchain-based digital currencies that would avoid dollar clearing delays and US sanctions.
The most recent pronouncement calling for a dollar replacement came last week from Shanghai Gold Exchange (SGE) President Wang Zhenying. Wang proposes a new super-sovereign currency to that would replace the greenback. In a thinly veiled swipe at US efforts to weaponize the dollar, Wang says the new currency would be designed to ensure that no one country can freeze the international assets of another country.
It’s anyone’s guess if these efforts to dethrone the dollar will be successful, or when. But one thing is for sure. The dollar is fated to join the long list of fiat currencies that have been debased out of existence.
COVID-19 will accelerate that process. On the dollar’s way out, you’ll see inflation, higher taxes, negative interest rates, bail-ins, and exchange controls.
It’s only a matter of time. Make sure you’re ready when it comes.
Protecting your assets (and yourself) against any threat – from the government, the IRS or a frivolous lawsuit – is something The Nestmann Group has helped more than 15,000 Americans do over the last 30 years.
Reprinted with permission from Nestmann.com.
The Best of Mark Nestmann


lewrockwell--2020-05-06--Technofascism: Digital Book Burning in a Totalitarian Age

We are fast becoming a nation—nay , a world—of book burners .
While on paper , we are technically free to speak—at least according to the U.S. Constitution—in reality , however , we are only as free to speak as the government and its corporate partners such as Facebook , Google or YouTube may allow .
That ’ s not a whole lot of freedom .
Especially if you ’ re inclined to voice opinions that may be construed as conspiratorial or dangerous .
Take David Icke , for example .
1984 ( Signet Classics ) George Orwell Best Price @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Icke , a popular commentator and author often labeled a conspiracy theorist by his detractors , recently had his Facebook page and YouTube channel ( owned by Google ) deleted for violating site policies by “ spreading coronavirus disinformation.
” The Centre for Countering Digital Hate , which has been vocal about calling for Icke ’ s de-platforming , is also pushing for the removal of all other sites and individuals who promote Icke ’ s content in an effort to supposedly “ save lives.
” Translation : the CCDH evidently believes the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ itself and must be protected from dangerous ideas .
This is the goosestepping Nanny State trying to protect us from ourselves .
In the long run , this “ safety ” control ( the censorship and shadowbanning of anyone who challenges a mainstream narrative ) will be far worse than merely allowing people to think for themselves .
Journalist Matt Taibbi gets its : “ The people who want to add a censorship regime to a health crisis are more dangerous and more stupid by leaps and bounds than a president who tells @ @ @ @ @ @ @ censors are not acting in our best interests to protect us from dangerous , disinformation campaigns about COVID-19 , a virus whose source and behavior continue to elude medical officials .
They ’ re laying the groundwork now , with Icke as an easy target , to preempt any “ dangerous ” ideas that might challenge the power elite ’ s stranglehold over our lives .
This is how freedom dies .
It doesn ’ t matter what disinformation Icke may or may not have been spreading about COVID-19 .
That ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Johnstone recognizes , the censorship of David Icke by these internet media giants has nothing to do with Icke : “ What matters is that we ’ re seeing a consistent and accelerating pattern of powerful plutocratic institutions collaborating with the US-centralized empire to control what ideas people around the world are permitted to share with each other , and it ’ s a very unsafe trajectory.
” Shrinking the Technosp ... Orlov , Dmitry Best Price : $ 5.59 Buy New $ 9.50 Welcome to the age of technofascism .
Technofascism , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by technological behemoths ( both corporate and governmental ) working in tandem .
As journalist Chet Bowers explains , “ Technofascism ’ s level of efficiency and totalitarian potential can easily lead to repressive systems that will not tolerate dissent.
” The internet , hailed as a super-information highway , is increasingly becoming the police state ’ s secret weapon .
This “ policing of the mind : is exactly the danger author Jim Keith warned about when he predicted that “ information and communication sources are gradually being linked together into a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for unheralded control of hat will be broadcast , what will be said , and ultimately what will be thought.
” Eventually , as George Orwell predicted , telling the truth will become a revolutionary act .
We ’ re almost at that point now .
What you are witnessing is the modern-day equivalent of book burning which involves doing away with dangerous ideas—legitimate or not—and the people who espouse them .
Today , the forces of political correctness , working in conjunction with corporate and government agencies , have managed to replace @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ Free speech for me but not for thee ” is how my good friend and free speech purist Nat Hentoff used to sum up this double standard .
This is about much more than free speech , however .
This is about repression and control .
With every passing day , we ’ re being moved further down the road towards a totalitarian society characterized by government censorship , violence , corruption , hypocrisy and intolerance , all packaged for our supposed benefit in the Orwellian doublespeak of national security , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The reasons for such censorship vary widely from political correctness , safety concerns and bullying to national security and hate crimes but the end result remains the same : the complete eradication of what Benjamin Franklin referred to as the “ principal pillar of a free government.
” Brave New World Aldous Huxley Best Price : $ 1.00 Buy New $ 6.99 The upshot of all of this editing , parsing , banning and silencing is the emergence of a new language , what George Orwell referred to as Newspeak , which places @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hands of the totalitarian state .
Under such a system , language becomes a weapon to change the way people think by changing the words they use .
In totalitarian regimes—a.k.a .
police states—where conformity and compliance are enforced at the end of a loaded gun , the government dictates what words can and can not be used .
In countries where the police state hides behind a benevolent mask and disguises itself as tolerance , the citizens censor themselves , policing their words and thoughts to conform to the dictates of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ or placed under surveillance .
Even when the motives behind this rigidly calibrated reorientation of societal language appear well-intentioned—discouraging racism , condemning violence , denouncing discrimination and hatred—inevitably , the end result is the same : intolerance , indoctrination and infantilism .
It ’ s political correctness disguised as tolerance , civility and love , but what it really amounts to is the chilling of free speech and the demonizing of viewpoints that run counter to the cultural elite .
The police state could not ask for a better citizenry than one that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and policing : this is how you turn a nation of free people into extensions of the omniscient , omnipotent , omnipresent police state , and in the process turn a citizenry against each other .
Tread cautiously : Orwell ’ s 1984 , which depicts the ominous rise of ubiquitous technology , fascism and totalitarianism , has become an operation manual for the omnipresent , modern-day surveillance state .
1984 portrays a global society of total control in which people are not allowed to have thoughts that in any way disagree with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ personal freedom , and advanced technology has become the driving force behind a surveillance-driven society .
Snitches and cameras are everywhere .
People are subject to the Thought Police , who deal with anyone guilty of thought crimes .
The government , or “ Party , ” is headed by Big Brother who appears on posters everywhere with the words : “ Big Brother is watching you.
” We have arrived , way ahead of schedule , into the dystopian future dreamed up by not only Orwell but also such fiction writers as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ K. Dick .
Much like Orwell ’ s Big Brother in 1984 , the government and its corporate spies now watch our every move .
Much like Huxley ’ s A Brave New World , we are churning out a society of watchers who “ have their liberties taken away from them , but … rather enjoy it , because they [ are ] distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing.
” Much like Atwood ’ s The Handmaid ’ s Tale , the populace is now taught to “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to understand that they have no real rights but will be protected up to a point if they conform , and to think so poorly of themselves that they will accept their assigned fate and not rebel or run away.
” And in keeping with Philip K. Dick ’ s darkly prophetic vision of a dystopian police state—which became the basis for Steven Spielberg ’ s futuristic thriller Minority Report—we are now trapped in a world in which the government is all-seeing , all-knowing and all-powerful , and if you dare to step @ @ @ @ @ @ @ teams and pre-crime units will crack a few skulls to bring the populace under control .
What once seemed futuristic no longer occupies the realm of science fiction .
Incredibly , as the various nascent technologies employed and shared by the government and corporations alike—facial recognition , iris scanners , massive databases , behavior prediction software , and so on—are incorporated into a complex , interwoven cyber network aimed at tracking our movements , predicting our thoughts and controlling our behavior , the dystopian visions of past writers is fast becoming our reality @ @ @ @ @ @ @ characterized by widespread surveillance , behavior prediction technologies , data mining , fusion centers , driverless cars , voice-controlled homes , facial recognition systems , cybugs and drones , and predictive policing ( pre-crime ) aimed at capturing would-be criminals before they can do any damage .
Surveillance cameras are everywhere .
Government agents listen in on our telephone calls and read our emails .
And privacy and bodily integrity have been utterly eviscerated .
We are increasingly ruled by multi-corporations wedded to the police state .
What many fail to realize is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
It can not .
Thus , the increasingly complex security needs of the massive federal government , especially in the areas of defense , surveillance and data management , have been met within the corporate sector , which has shown itself to be a powerful ally that both depends on and feeds the growth of governmental overreach .
In fact , Big Tech wedded to Big Government has become Big Brother , and we are now ruled by the Corporate Elite whose tentacles have spread worldwide .
Battlefield America : T ... @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 10.95 Buy New $ 18.80 The government now has at its disposal technological arsenals so sophisticated and invasive as to render any constitutional protections null and void .
Spearheaded by the NSA , which has shown itself to care little to nothing for constitutional limits or privacy , the “ security/industrial complex ” —a marriage of government , military and corporate interests aimed at keeping Americans under constant surveillance—has come to dominate the government and our lives .
There is no shortage of motives fueling the convergence of mega-corporations and government .
But @ @ @ @ @ @ @ We the people , ” of course .
Not just we Americans , but people the world over .
We have entered into a global state of tyranny .
Where we stand now is at the juncture of OldSpeak ( where words have meanings , and ideas can be dangerous ) and Newspeak ( where only that which is “ safe ” and “ accepted ” by the majority is permitted ) .
The power elite has made their intentions clear : they will pursue and prosecute any and all words , thoughts @ @ @ @ @ @ @ This is the final link in the police state chain .
Americans have been conditioned to accept routine incursions on their privacy rights .
In fact , the addiction to screen devices—especially cell phones—has created a hive effect where the populace not only watched but is controlled by AI bots .
However , at one time , the idea of a total surveillance state tracking one ’ s every move would have been abhorrent to most Americans .
That all changed with the 9/11 attacks .
As professor Jeffrey Rosen observes , “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Americans would voluntarily agree to live their lives under the gaze of a network of biometric surveillance cameras , peering at them in government buildings , shopping malls , subways and stadiums , would have seemed unthinkable , a dystopian fantasy of a society that had surrendered privacy and anonymity.
” Having been reduced to a cowering citizenry—mute in the face of elected officials who refuse to represent us , helpless in the face of police brutality , powerless in the face of militarized tactics and technology that treat us like enemy combatants @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the face of government surveillance that sees and hears all—we have nowhere left to go .
We have , so to speak , gone from being a nation where privacy is king to one where nothing is safe from the prying eyes of government .
A Government of Wolves ... John W. Whitehead Best Price : $ 2.06 Buy New $ 10.42 In search of so-called terrorists and extremists hiding amongst us—the proverbial “ needle in a haystack , ” as one official termed it—the Corporate State has taken to monitoring all aspects @ @ @ @ @ @ @ calls and emails to Internet activity and credit card transactions .
This data is being fed through fusion centers across the country , which work with the Department of Homeland Security to make threat assessments on every citizen , including school children .
Wherever you go and whatever you do , you are now being watched , especially if you leave behind an electronic footprint .
When you use your cell phone , you leave a record of when the call was placed , who you called , how long it lasted and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
When you use your ATM card , you leave a record of where and when you used the card .
There is even a video camera at most locations equipped with facial recognition software .
When you use a cell phone or drive a car enabled with GPS , you can be tracked by satellite .
Such information is shared with government agents , including local police .
And all of this once-private information about your consumer habits , your whereabouts and your activities is now being fed to the U.S. government @ @ @ @ @ @ @ when it comes to tracking our movements , from electronic wiretapping devices , traffic cameras and biometrics to radio-frequency identification cards , satellites and Internet surveillance .
Speech recognition technology now makes it possible for the government to carry out massive eavesdropping by way of sophisticated computer systems .
Phone calls can be monitored , the audio converted to text files and stored in computer databases indefinitely .
And if any “ threatening ” words are detected—no matter how inane or silly—the record can be flagged and assigned to a government agent for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , again working with private corporations , monitor your Internet content .
Users are profiled and tracked in order to identify , target and even prosecute them .
In such a climate , everyone is a suspect .
And you ’ re guilty until you can prove yourself innocent .
Here ’ s what a lot of people fail to understand , however : it ’ s not just what you say or do that is being monitored , but how you think that is being tracked and targeted .
We ’ ve @ @ @ @ @ @ @ state and federal level with hate crime legislation that cracks down on so-called “ hateful ” thoughts and expression , encourages self-censoring and reduces free debate on various subject matter .
Say hello to the new Thought Police .
Total Internet surveillance by the Corporate State , as omnipresent as God , is used by the government to predict and , more importantly , control the populace , and it ’ s not as far-fetched as you might think .
For example , the NSA has designed an artificial intelligence system that can @ @ @ @ @ @ @ nutshell , the NSA feeds vast amounts of the information it collects to a computer system known as Aquaint ( the acronym stands for Advanced QUestion Answering for INTelligence ) , which the computer then uses to detect patterns and predict behavior .
No information is sacred or spared .
Everything from cell phone recordings and logs , to emails , to text messages , to personal information posted on social networking sites , to credit card statements , to library circulation records , to credit card histories , etc.
, is collected @ @ @ @ @ @ @ its agents .
Thus , what we are witnessing , in the so-called name of security and efficiency , is the creation of a new class system comprised of the watched ( average Americans such as you and me ) and the watchers ( government bureaucrats , technicians and private corporations ) .
Clearly , the age of privacy is at an end .
So where does that leave us ?
We now find ourselves in the unenviable position of being monitored , managed and controlled by our technology , which answers not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ corporate rulers .
This is the fact-is-stranger-than-fiction lesson that is being pounded into us on a daily basis .
It won ’ t be long before we find ourselves looking back on the past with longing , back to an age where we could speak to whom we wanted , buy what we wanted , think what we wanted without those thoughts , words and activities being tracked , processed and stored by corporate giants such as Google , sold to government agencies such as the NSA and CIA , and used against @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of futuristic technologies .
To be an individual today , to not conform , to have even a shred of privacy , and to live beyond the reach of the government ’ s roaming eyes and technological spies , one must not only be a rebel but rebel .
Even when you rebel and take your stand , there is rarely a happy ending awaiting you .
You are rendered an outlaw .
So how do you survive this global surveillance state ?
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America : @ @ @ @ @ @ @ we ’ re running out of options .
We ’ ll soon have to choose between self-indulgence ( the bread-and-circus distractions offered up by the news media , politicians , sports conglomerates , entertainment industry , etc . )
and self-preservation in the form of renewed vigilance about threats to our freedoms and active engagement in self-governance .
Yet as Aldous Huxley acknowledged in Brave New World Revisited : “ Only the vigilant can maintain their liberties , and only those who are constantly and intelligently on the spot can hope to govern @ @ @ @ @ @ @ society , most of whose members spend a great part of their time , not on the spot , not here and now and in their calculable future , but somewhere else , in the irrelevant other worlds of sport and soap opera , of mythology and metaphysical fantasy , will find it hard to resist the encroachments of those would manipulate and control it.
” Which brings me back to this technofascist tyranny being meted out on David Icke and all those like him who dare to voice ideas that diverge from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ deem to be acceptable .
The problem as I see it is that we ’ ve allowed ourselves to be persuaded that we need someone else to think and speak for us .
And we ’ ve allowed ourselves to become so timid in the face of offensive words and ideas that we ’ ve bought into the idea that we need the government to shield us from that which is ugly or upsetting or mean .
The result is a society in which we ’ ve stopped debating among ourselves , stopped @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that we can fix our own problems and resolve our own differences .
In short , we have reduced ourselves to a largely silent , passive , polarized populace incapable of working through our own problems and reliant on the government to protect us from our fears .
In this way , we have become our worst enemy .
You want to reclaim some of the ground we ’ re fast losing to the techno-tyrants ?
Start by thinking for yourself .
If that means reading the “ dangerous ” ideas being floated @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the world—or the John Whiteheads for that matter—and then deciding for yourself what is true , so be it .
As Orwell concluded , “ Freedom is the right to say two plus two make four.
” The Best of John W. Whitehead

“Those who created this country chose freedom. With all of its dangers. And do you know the riskiest part of that choice they made? They actually believed that we could be trusted to make up our own minds in the whirl of differing ideas. That we could be trusted to remain free, even when there were very, very seductive voices—taking advantage of our freedom of speech—who were trying to turn this country into the kind of place where the government could tell you what you can and cannot do.”—Nat Hentoff
We are fast becoming a nation—nay, a world—of book burners.
While on paper, we are technically free to speak—at least according to the U.S. Constitution—in reality, however, we are only as free to speak as the government and its corporate partners such as Facebook, Google or YouTube may allow.
That’s not a whole lot of freedom. Especially if you’re inclined to voice opinions that may be construed as conspiratorial or dangerous.
Take David Icke, for example. 1984 (Signet Classics) George Orwell Best Price: $1.49 Buy New $3.58 (as of 10:53 UTC - Details)
Icke, a popular commentator and author often labeled a conspiracy theorist by his detractors, recently had his Facebook page and YouTube channel (owned by Google) deleted for violating site policies by “spreading coronavirus disinformation.”
The Centre for Countering Digital Hate, which has been vocal about calling for Icke’s de-platforming, is also pushing for the removal of all other sites and individuals who promote Icke’s content in an effort to supposedly “save lives.”
Translation: the CCDH evidently believes the public is too dumb to think for itself and must be protected from dangerous ideas.
This is the goosestepping Nanny State trying to protect us from ourselves.
In the long run, this “safety” control (the censorship and shadowbanning of anyone who challenges a mainstream narrative) will be far worse than merely allowing people to think for themselves.
Journalist Matt Taibbi gets its: “The people who want to add a censorship regime to a health crisis are more dangerous and more stupid by leaps and bounds than a president who tells people to inject disinfectant.”
Don’t fall for the propaganda.
These internet censors are not acting in our best interests to protect us from dangerous, disinformation campaigns about COVID-19, a virus whose source and behavior continue to elude medical officials. They’re laying the groundwork now, with Icke as an easy target, to preempt any “dangerous” ideas that might challenge the power elite’s stranglehold over our lives.
This is how freedom dies.
It doesn’t matter what disinformation Icke may or may not have been spreading about COVID-19. That’s not the issue.
As commentator Caitlin Johnstone recognizes, the censorship of David Icke by these internet media giants has nothing to do with Icke: “What matters is that we’re seeing a consistent and accelerating pattern of powerful plutocratic institutions collaborating with the US-centralized empire to control what ideas people around the world are permitted to share with each other, and it’s a very unsafe trajectory.” Shrinking the Technosp... Orlov, Dmitry Best Price: $5.59 Buy New $9.50 (as of 01:20 UTC - Details)
Welcome to the age of technofascism.
Technofascism, clothed in tyrannical self-righteousness, is powered by technological behemoths (both corporate and governmental) working in tandem. As journalist Chet Bowers explains, “Technofascism’s level of efficiency and totalitarian potential can easily lead to repressive systems that will not tolerate dissent.”
The internet, hailed as a super-information highway, is increasingly becoming the police state’s secret weapon. This “policing of the mind: is exactly the danger author Jim Keith warned about when he predicted that “information and communication sources are gradually being linked together into a single computerized network, providing an opportunity for unheralded control of hat will be broadcast, what will be said, and ultimately what will be thought.”
It’s a slippery slope from censoring so-called illegitimate ideas to silencing truth.
Eventually, as George Orwell predicted, telling the truth will become a revolutionary act.
We’re almost at that point now.
What you are witnessing is the modern-day equivalent of book burning which involves doing away with dangerous ideas—legitimate or not—and the people who espouse them.
Today, the forces of political correctness, working in conjunction with corporate and government agencies, have managed to replace actual book burning with intellectual book burning.
“Free speech for me but not for thee” is how my good friend and free speech purist Nat Hentoff used to sum up this double standard.
This is about much more than free speech, however. This is about repression and control.
With every passing day, we’re being moved further down the road towards a totalitarian society characterized by government censorship, violence, corruption, hypocrisy and intolerance, all packaged for our supposed benefit in the Orwellian doublespeak of national security, tolerance and so-called “government speech.”
The reasons for such censorship vary widely from political correctness, safety concerns and bullying to national security and hate crimes but the end result remains the same: the complete eradication of what Benjamin Franklin referred to as the “principal pillar of a free government.” Brave New World Aldous Huxley Best Price: $1.00 Buy New $6.99 (as of 05:15 UTC - Details)
The upshot of all of this editing, parsing, banning and silencing is the emergence of a new language, what George Orwell referred to as Newspeak, which places the power to control language in the hands of the totalitarian state.
Under such a system, language becomes a weapon to change the way people think by changing the words they use.
The end result is control.
In totalitarian regimes—a.k.a. police states—where conformity and compliance are enforced at the end of a loaded gun, the government dictates what words can and cannot be used.
In countries where the police state hides behind a benevolent mask and disguises itself as tolerance, the citizens censor themselves, policing their words and thoughts to conform to the dictates of the mass mind lest they find themselves ostracized or placed under surveillance.
Even when the motives behind this rigidly calibrated reorientation of societal language appear well-intentioned—discouraging racism, condemning violence, denouncing discrimination and hatred—inevitably, the end result is the same: intolerance, indoctrination and infantilism.
It’s political correctness disguised as tolerance, civility and love, but what it really amounts to is the chilling of free speech and the demonizing of viewpoints that run counter to the cultural elite.
The police state could not ask for a better citizenry than one that carries out its own censorship, spying and policing: this is how you turn a nation of free people into extensions of the omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent police state, and in the process turn a citizenry against each other.
Tread cautiously: Orwell’s 1984, which depicts the ominous rise of ubiquitous technology, fascism and totalitarianism, has become an operation manual for the omnipresent, modern-day surveillance state.
1984 portrays a global society of total control in which people are not allowed to have thoughts that in any way disagree with the corporate state. There is no personal freedom, and advanced technology has become the driving force behind a surveillance-driven society. Snitches and cameras are everywhere. People are subject to the Thought Police, who deal with anyone guilty of thought crimes. The government, or “Party,” is headed by Big Brother who appears on posters everywhere with the words: “Big Brother is watching you.”
We have arrived, way ahead of schedule, into the dystopian future dreamed up by not only Orwell but also such fiction writers as Aldous Huxley, Margaret Atwood and Philip K. Dick.
Much like Orwell’s Big Brother in 1984, the government and its corporate spies now watch our every move. Much like Huxley’s A Brave New World, we are churning out a society of watchers who “have their liberties taken away from them, but … rather enjoy it, because they [are] distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing.” Much like Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, the populace is now taught to “know their place and their duties, to understand that they have no real rights but will be protected up to a point if they conform, and to think so poorly of themselves that they will accept their assigned fate and not rebel or run away.”
And in keeping with Philip K. Dick’s darkly prophetic vision of a dystopian police state—which became the basis for Steven Spielberg’s futuristic thriller Minority Report—we are now trapped in a world in which the government is all-seeing, all-knowing and all-powerful, and if you dare to step out of line, dark-clad police SWAT teams and pre-crime units will crack a few skulls to bring the populace under control.
What once seemed futuristic no longer occupies the realm of science fiction.
Incredibly, as the various nascent technologies employed and shared by the government and corporations alike—facial recognition, iris scanners, massive databases, behavior prediction software, and so on—are incorporated into a complex, interwoven cyber network aimed at tracking our movements, predicting our thoughts and controlling our behavior, the dystopian visions of past writers is fast becoming our reality.
In fact, our world is characterized by widespread surveillance, behavior prediction technologies, data mining, fusion centers, driverless cars, voice-controlled homes, facial recognition systems, cybugs and drones, and predictive policing (pre-crime) aimed at capturing would-be criminals before they can do any damage. Surveillance cameras are everywhere. Government agents listen in on our telephone calls and read our emails. And privacy and bodily integrity have been utterly eviscerated.
We are increasingly ruled by multi-corporations wedded to the police state.
What many fail to realize is that the government is not operating alone. It cannot.
The government requires an accomplice.
Thus, the increasingly complex security needs of the massive federal government, especially in the areas of defense, surveillance and data management, have been met within the corporate sector, which has shown itself to be a powerful ally that both depends on and feeds the growth of governmental overreach.
In fact, Big Tech wedded to Big Government has become Big Brother, and we are now ruled by the Corporate Elite whose tentacles have spread worldwide. Battlefield America: T... John W. Whitehead Best Price: $10.95 Buy New $18.80 (as of 10:15 UTC - Details)
The government now has at its disposal technological arsenals so sophisticated and invasive as to render any constitutional protections null and void. Spearheaded by the NSA, which has shown itself to care little to nothing for constitutional limits or privacy, the “security/industrial complex”—a marriage of government, military and corporate interests aimed at keeping Americans under constant surveillance—has come to dominate the government and our lives.
Money, power, control.
There is no shortage of motives fueling the convergence of mega-corporations and government. But who is paying the price?
“We the people,” of course. Not just we Americans, but people the world over.
We have entered into a global state of tyranny.
Where we stand now is at the juncture of OldSpeak (where words have meanings, and ideas can be dangerous) and Newspeak (where only that which is “safe” and “accepted” by the majority is permitted). The power elite has made their intentions clear: they will pursue and prosecute any and all words, thoughts and expressions that challenge their authority.
This is the final link in the police state chain.
Americans have been conditioned to accept routine incursions on their privacy rights. In fact, the addiction to screen devices—especially cell phones—has created a hive effect where the populace not only watched but is controlled by AI bots. However, at one time, the idea of a total surveillance state tracking one’s every move would have been abhorrent to most Americans. That all changed with the 9/11 attacks. As professor Jeffrey Rosen observes, “Before Sept. 11, the idea that Americans would voluntarily agree to live their lives under the gaze of a network of biometric surveillance cameras, peering at them in government buildings, shopping malls, subways and stadiums, would have seemed unthinkable, a dystopian fantasy of a society that had surrendered privacy and anonymity.”
Having been reduced to a cowering citizenry—mute in the face of elected officials who refuse to represent us, helpless in the face of police brutality, powerless in the face of militarized tactics and technology that treat us like enemy combatants on a battlefield, and naked in the face of government surveillance that sees and hears all—we have nowhere left to go.
We have, so to speak, gone from being a nation where privacy is king to one where nothing is safe from the prying eyes of government. A Government of Wolves... John W. Whitehead Best Price: $2.06 Buy New $10.42 (as of 01:25 UTC - Details)
In search of so-called terrorists and extremists hiding amongst us—the proverbial “needle in a haystack,” as one official termed it—the Corporate State has taken to monitoring all aspects of our lives, from cell phone calls and emails to Internet activity and credit card transactions. This data is being fed through fusion centers across the country, which work with the Department of Homeland Security to make threat assessments on every citizen, including school children.
Wherever you go and whatever you do, you are now being watched, especially if you leave behind an electronic footprint.
When you use your cell phone, you leave a record of when the call was placed, who you called, how long it lasted and even where you were at the time. When you use your ATM card, you leave a record of where and when you used the card. There is even a video camera at most locations equipped with facial recognition software. When you use a cell phone or drive a car enabled with GPS, you can be tracked by satellite. Such information is shared with government agents, including local police. And all of this once-private information about your consumer habits, your whereabouts and your activities is now being fed to the U.S. government.
The government has nearly inexhaustible resources when it comes to tracking our movements, from electronic wiretapping devices, traffic cameras and biometrics to radio-frequency identification cards, satellites and Internet surveillance.
Speech recognition technology now makes it possible for the government to carry out massive eavesdropping by way of sophisticated computer systems. Phone calls can be monitored, the audio converted to text files and stored in computer databases indefinitely. And if any “threatening” words are detected—no matter how inane or silly—the record can be flagged and assigned to a government agent for further investigation. Federal and state governments, again working with private corporations, monitor your Internet content. Users are profiled and tracked in order to identify, target and even prosecute them.
In such a climate, everyone is a suspect. And you’re guilty until you can prove yourself innocent.
Here’s what a lot of people fail to understand, however: it’s not just what you say or do that is being monitored, but how you think that is being tracked and targeted.
We’ve already seen this play out on the state and federal level with hate crime legislation that cracks down on so-called “hateful” thoughts and expression, encourages self-censoring and reduces free debate on various subject matter.
Say hello to the new Thought Police.
Total Internet surveillance by the Corporate State, as omnipresent as God, is used by the government to predict and, more importantly, control the populace, and it’s not as far-fetched as you might think. For example, the NSA has designed an artificial intelligence system that can anticipate your every move. In a nutshell, the NSA feeds vast amounts of the information it collects to a computer system known as Aquaint (the acronym stands for Advanced QUestion Answering for INTelligence), which the computer then uses to detect patterns and predict behavior.
No information is sacred or spared.
Everything from cell phone recordings and logs, to emails, to text messages, to personal information posted on social networking sites, to credit card statements, to library circulation records, to credit card histories, etc., is collected by the NSA and shared freely with its agents.
Thus, what we are witnessing, in the so-called name of security and efficiency, is the creation of a new class system comprised of the watched (average Americans such as you and me) and the watchers (government bureaucrats, technicians and private corporations).
Clearly, the age of privacy is at an end.
So where does that leave us?
We now find ourselves in the unenviable position of being monitored, managed and controlled by our technology, which answers not to us but to our government and corporate rulers. This is the fact-is-stranger-than-fiction lesson that is being pounded into us on a daily basis.
It won’t be long before we find ourselves looking back on the past with longing, back to an age where we could speak to whom we wanted, buy what we wanted, think what we wanted without those thoughts, words and activities being tracked, processed and stored by corporate giants such as Google, sold to government agencies such as the NSA and CIA, and used against us by militarized police with their army of futuristic technologies.
To be an individual today, to not conform, to have even a shred of privacy, and to live beyond the reach of the government’s roaming eyes and technological spies, one must not only be a rebel but rebel.
Even when you rebel and take your stand, there is rarely a happy ending awaiting you. You are rendered an outlaw.
So how do you survive this global surveillance state?
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, we’re running out of options.
We’ll soon have to choose between self-indulgence (the bread-and-circus distractions offered up by the news media, politicians, sports conglomerates, entertainment industry, etc.) and self-preservation in the form of renewed vigilance about threats to our freedoms and active engagement in self-governance.
Yet as Aldous Huxley acknowledged in Brave New World Revisited: “Only the vigilant can maintain their liberties, and only those who are constantly and intelligently on the spot can hope to govern themselves effectively by democratic procedures. A society, most of whose members spend a great part of their time, not on the spot, not here and now and in their calculable future, but somewhere else, in the irrelevant other worlds of sport and soap opera, of mythology and metaphysical fantasy, will find it hard to resist the encroachments of those would manipulate and control it.”
Which brings me back to this technofascist tyranny being meted out on David Icke and all those like him who dare to voice ideas that diverge from what the government and its corporate controllers deem to be acceptable.
The problem as I see it is that we’ve allowed ourselves to be persuaded that we need someone else to think and speak for us. And we’ve allowed ourselves to become so timid in the face of offensive words and ideas that we’ve bought into the idea that we need the government to shield us from that which is ugly or upsetting or mean.
The result is a society in which we’ve stopped debating among ourselves, stopped thinking for ourselves, and stopped believing that we can fix our own problems and resolve our own differences.
In short, we have reduced ourselves to a largely silent, passive, polarized populace incapable of working through our own problems and reliant on the government to protect us from our fears.
In this way, we have become our worst enemy.
You want to reclaim some of the ground we’re fast losing to the techno-tyrants?
Start by thinking for yourself. If that means reading the “dangerous” ideas being floated out there by the David Ickes of the world—or the John Whiteheads for that matter—and then deciding for yourself what is true, so be it.
As Orwell concluded, “Freedom is the right to say two plus two make four.”
The Best of John W. Whitehead


lewrockwell--2020-05-06--How Michael Flynn Became Target Zero in Obama’s Russia Collusion Plot

If there was any doubt that Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn was Target Zero in the Russia Collision conspiracy or that President Barack Obama was an active co-conspirator , presidential counselor Kellyanne Conway put those doubts to bed last week .
“ I would remind everybody that President Obama told President-elect Trump he had two things to worry about : North Korea and Michael Flynn , ” Conway said last Thursday on Fox ’ s America Newsroom .
“ Folks , that ’ s just weird on its face , ” Conway continued , as if folks needed to be told @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a nuclear-capable dictator in North Korea , and you got ta worry about a general of 37 years who served in… the Obama administration.
” Conway ’ s comments came in the wake of the unnerving revelation that FBI higher-ups actively plotted to drive Flynn , the designated national security adviser , from the Trump White House .
Conviction Machine : St ... Powell , Sidney Best Price : $ 23.00 Buy New $ 19.55 “ What ’ s our goal ?
Truth/Admission or to get him to lie , so we can @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” wrote an FBI official , believed to be former FBI counterintelligence director Bill Priestap .
“ If we get him to admit to breaking the Logan Act , give facts to DOJ & have them decide .
Or , if he initially lies , then we present him [ redacted ] & he admits it , document for DOJ , & let them decide how to address it.
” This revelation shocked even Bush confidantes into outrage .
“ On what planet is it ever acceptable for FBI agents to discuss how @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ?
” tweeted Ari Fleischer , former Bush White House spokesman .
“ Comey and his top officials were out of control.
” Lost in the hubbub was the question of why it was Flynn who so concerned Barack Obama .
The more general answer is that Flynn was the one Obama appointee not afraid to speak his mind .
Appointed to head the Defense Intelligence Agency in April 2012 by Obama , Flynn was forced out two years later for , well , speaking his mind .
Although news reports at the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Flynn ’ s departure , a leaked email from retired Gen. Colin Powell in September 2016 spoke to the sentiments of Obama insiders : “ I asked why Flynn got fired .
Abusive with staff , didn ’ t listen , worked against policy , bad management , etc .
He has been and was right-wing nutty every [ sic ] since.
” Three Felonies A Day : ... Harvey Silverglate Best Price : $ 21.20 Buy New $ 24.28 Flynn , of course , did not get to be a lieutenant general @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
He abruptly became bad and abusive by not being an Obama sycophant , especially on Islamic issues .
Nor did Flynn become a target of the Russia collusion conspirators for his presumed right-wing nuttiness .
Flynn almost assuredly became Target Zero for his willingness to expose and undo what Obama considered his signature foreign policy achievement , the Iran nuclear deal .
Obama may have suspected that the deal was fatally flawed , but there was one thing he knew , namely that the deal was built on a framework of lies @ @ @ @ @ @ @ we talk to is 27 years old , and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns , ” the oddly incautious Obama foreign policy adviser Ben Rhodes boasted of the Iran con job .
“ We created an echo chamber .
They were saying things that validated what we had given them to say.
” The Spider : Stefan A .
... Lokhova , Svetlana Buy New $ 26.42 Flynn , by contrast , was saying things that invalidated the Rhodes talking points .
In March 2015 , while Obama @ @ @ @ @ @ @ media the deal ’ s imagined virtues , Flynn was sharing some inconvenient truths .
“ Iran is also a country with ballistic missiles , cyber capabilities .
They are also still a state-sponsor of terrorism , ” Flynn told Chris Wallace on Fox News .
“ And here we are dealing with them as though we ’ re going to give them a carte blanche — I know it will be some number of years to have a nuclear capability .
Give me a break !
” Had Flynn remained a nutty @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the Obama crowd could have ignored him .
When Flynn moved into Trump ’ s inner circle , he morphed from nuisance to threat .
On February 26 , 2016 , the conspirators began their sabotage campaign against Flynn with an article in Yahoo News .
The article led the with the seemingly shocking revelation that Trump was “ receiving foreign policy advice from a former U.S. military intelligence chief who wants the United States to work more closely with Russia .
”

If there was any doubt that Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn was Target Zero in the Russia Collision conspiracy or that President Barack Obama was an active co-conspirator, presidential counselor Kellyanne Conway put those doubts to bed last week.
“I would remind everybody that President Obama told President-elect Trump he had two things to worry about: North Korea and Michael Flynn,” Conway said last Thursday on Fox’s America Newsroom.
“Folks, that’s just weird on its face,” Conway continued, as if folks needed to be told. “You gotta worry about a nuclear-capable dictator in North Korea, and you gotta worry about a general of 37 years who served in… the Obama administration.”
Conway’s comments came in the wake of the unnerving revelation that FBI higher-ups actively plotted to drive Flynn, the designated national security adviser, from the Trump White House.
Conviction Machine: St... Powell, Sidney Best Price: $23.00 Buy New $19.55 (as of 03:46 UTC - Details) “What’s our goal? Truth/Admission or to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired?” wrote an FBI official, believed to be former FBI counterintelligence director Bill Priestap. “If we get him to admit to breaking the Logan Act, give facts to DOJ & have them decide. Or, if he initially lies, then we present him [redacted] & he admits it, document for DOJ, & let them decide how to address it.”
This revelation shocked even Bush confidantes into outrage. “On what planet is it ever acceptable for FBI agents to discuss how or if they can get someone fired?” tweeted Ari Fleischer, former Bush White House spokesman. “Comey and his top officials were out of control.”
Lost in the hubbub was the question of why it was Flynn who so concerned Barack Obama. The more general answer is that Flynn was the one Obama appointee not afraid to speak his mind. Appointed to head the Defense Intelligence Agency in April 2012 by Obama, Flynn was forced out two years later for, well, speaking his mind.
Although news reports at the time were circumspect about the reasons for Flynn’s departure, a leaked email from retired Gen. Colin Powell in September 2016 spoke to the sentiments of Obama insiders: “I asked why Flynn got fired. Abusive with staff, didn’t listen, worked against policy, bad management, etc. He has been and was right-wing nutty every [sic] since.” Three Felonies A Day: ... Harvey Silverglate Best Price: $21.20 Buy New $24.28 (as of 03:46 UTC - Details)
Flynn, of course, did not get to be a lieutenant general by being a bad and abusive manager. He abruptly became bad and abusive by not being an Obama sycophant, especially on Islamic issues. Nor did Flynn become a target of the Russia collusion conspirators for his presumed right-wing nuttiness.
Flynn almost assuredly became Target Zero for his willingness to expose and undo what Obama considered his signature foreign policy achievement, the Iran nuclear deal. Obama may have suspected that the deal was fatally flawed, but there was one thing he knew, namely that the deal was built on a framework of lies and deceptions.
“The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns,” the oddly incautious Obama foreign policy adviser Ben Rhodes boasted of the Iran con job. “We created an echo chamber. They were saying things that validated what we had given them to say.”
The Spider: Stefan A. ... Lokhova, Svetlana Buy New $26.42 (as of 03:46 UTC - Details) Flynn, by contrast, was saying things that invalidated the Rhodes talking points. In March 2015, while Obama’s people were selling a swooning media the deal’s imagined virtues, Flynn was sharing some inconvenient truths.
“Iran is also a country with ballistic missiles, cyber capabilities. They are also still a state-sponsor of terrorism,” Flynn told Chris Wallace on Fox News. “And here we are dealing with them as though we’re going to give them a carte blanche — I know it will be some number of years to have a nuclear capability. Give me a break!”
Had Flynn remained a nutty outlier restricted to the conservative news ghetto, the Obama crowd could have ignored him. When Flynn moved into Trump’s inner circle, he morphed from nuisance to threat.
On February 26, 2016, the conspirators began their sabotage campaign against Flynn with an article in Yahoo News. The article led the with the seemingly shocking revelation that Trump was “receiving foreign policy advice from a former U.S. military intelligence chief who wants the United States to work more closely with Russia.”
Read the Whole Article


lewrockwell--2020-05-06--The Global Political Project Imposed on the Occasion of Covid-19

The inept reactions of European governments to Covid-19 were dictated by former advisers to Donald Rumsfeld and George W. Bush .
Contrary to public rhetoric , they make no medical claims .
Far from responding to the reality of the epidemic , they aim to transform European societies in order to integrate them into their political and financial project .
Regardless of whether the Covid-19 epidemic is natural or has been provoked , it offers an opportunity for a transnational group to suddenly impose its political project without discussion or even exposure .
Within a few weeks we have seen @ @ @ @ @ @ @ prohibiting people from leaving their homes , participating in meetings and demonstrations , under threat of fines or imprisonment .
Compulsory schooling for under-16s has been provisionally abolished .
Millions of workers have been deprived of employment and automatically placed out of work .
Hundreds of thousands of businesses have been forced to close down and will no longer be able to reopen .
American Conspiracies ... Cirignano , Douglas Best Price : $ 5.04 Buy New $ 13.75 Without preparation , governments encouraged companies to telework .
All communications via the Internet @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
This means that the “ Five Eyes ” ( Australia/Canada/New Zealand/United Kingdom/USA ) have in their archives the means to unlock the secrets of almost all European manufacturers .
For that , it is already too late .
None of the societal transformations have a medical justification .
No epidemiology book in the world has discussed , let alone advocated , “ mandatory generalized containment ” to fight an epidemic .
The political leaders of the European Union Member States have been stunned by delirious mathematical projections of a mass murder in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ were then comforted by the ready-made solutions of a powerful pressure group whose members they had met at the Davos Economic Forum and the Munich Security Conferences [ 2 ] .
Compulsory generalized containment ” had been conceived fifteen years earlier , within the Bush administration , not as a public health tool , but to militarize US society in the event of a bio-terrorist attack .
And it is indeed this project that is applied today in Europe .
The initial plan , conceived more than 20 years ago around the head @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Donald Rumsfeld , planned to adapt the United States to the global financialisation of the economy .
It was a question of reorganising the planet by dividing the tasks of each person geographically .
Areas not yet integrated into the global economy would be deprived of a state and become mere reservoirs of raw materials ; developed areas ( including the European Union , Russia and China ) would be responsible for production ; and the United States alone would provide the world ’ s arms and police industry .
To do this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ think-tank , the American Enterprise Institute , the “ Project for a New American Century ” .
The latter announced a rather crude part of its programme , but only part of it ; that intended to convince major donors to support Gorge W. Bush ’ s election campaign .
On September 11 at 10 a.m. , when two airliners crashed into the World Trade Center in New York , the “ Continuity of Government ” ( CoG ) programme was declared , although the situation was not at all as foreseen in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to a military base .
Members of Congress and their teams were taken to a huge bunker 40 kilometers from Washington .
And the top-secret Continuity Government , of which Rumsfeld was a member , assumed power until the end of the day .
Taking advantage of the emotional shock of that day , this group passed a voluminous anti-terrorism code drafted long in advance , the USA Patriot Act ; created a vast domestic surveillance system , the Homeland Security Department ; reoriented the mission of the armed forces according to the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ) ; and began the “ Endless War .
It is in the world they shaped that we have been living in a nightmare for the past two decades .
Eyes in the Sky : The S ... Holland Michel , Arthur Best Price : $ 11.75 Buy New $ 15.95 If we are not careful , the current group , of which Dr. Richard Hatchett is the visible element , will take this agenda from the United States to the European Union .
It will impose over time a mobile phone tracking @ @ @ @ @ @ @ will ruin certain economies in order to transfer their production power to the arms industry ; and finally it will convince us that China is responsible for the epidemic and must be contained ( Containment ) .
If we are not careful , the NATO we thought was brain dead will reorganise .
It will expand into the Pacific with Australia joining as a trading partner [ 3 ] .
If we are not careful , public schooling will be replaced by home schooling .
Our children will become uncritical parrots , knowing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ new world being prepared for EU Europeans , the big media will no longer be financed by the oil industry , but by Big Pharma .
They will convince us that all the measures taken have been the right ones .
Search engines will rate the credibility of the non-compliant media on the headlines of the signatories of their articles , not on the quality of their reasoning .
There is still time to react .
[ 3 ] “ NATO Wants to Become the Atlantic-Pacific Alliance ” , Thierry Meyssan , Voltaire @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The Best of Thierry Meyssan

The inept reactions of European governments to Covid-19 were dictated by former advisers to Donald Rumsfeld and George W. Bush. Contrary to public rhetoric, they make no medical claims. Far from responding to the reality of the epidemic, they aim to transform European societies in order to integrate them into their political and financial project.
Regardless of whether the Covid-19 epidemic is natural or has been provoked, it offers an opportunity for a transnational group to suddenly impose its political project without discussion or even exposure.
Within a few weeks we have seen so-called democratic states suspend fundamental freedoms: prohibiting people from leaving their homes, participating in meetings and demonstrations, under threat of fines or imprisonment. Compulsory schooling for under-16s has been provisionally abolished. Millions of workers have been deprived of employment and automatically placed out of work. Hundreds of thousands of businesses have been forced to close down and will no longer be able to reopen.
American Conspiracies ... Cirignano, Douglas Best Price: $5.04 Buy New $13.75 (as of 03:36 UTC - Details) Without preparation, governments encouraged companies to telework. All communications via the Internet were immediately recorded by the Echelon system. This means that the “Five Eyes” (Australia/Canada/New Zealand/United Kingdom/USA) have in their archives the means to unlock the secrets of almost all European manufacturers. For that, it is already too late.
None of the societal transformations have a medical justification. No epidemiology book in the world has discussed, let alone advocated, “mandatory generalized containment” to fight an epidemic.
The political leaders of the European Union Member States have been stunned by delirious mathematical projections of a mass murder in their own countries [1] They were then comforted by the ready-made solutions of a powerful pressure group whose members they had met at the Davos Economic Forum and the Munich Security Conferences [2].
Compulsory generalized containment” had been conceived fifteen years earlier, within the Bush administration, not as a public health tool, but to militarize US society in the event of a bio-terrorist attack. And it is indeed this project that is applied today in Europe.
The initial plan, conceived more than 20 years ago around the head of the pharmaceutical laboratory Gilead Science, Donald Rumsfeld, planned to adapt the United States to the global financialisation of the economy. It was a question of reorganising the planet by dividing the tasks of each person geographically. Areas not yet integrated into the global economy would be deprived of a state and become mere reservoirs of raw materials; developed areas (including the European Union, Russia and China) would be responsible for production; and the United States alone would provide the world’s arms and police industry.
To do this, a group was created within a think-tank, the American Enterprise Institute, the “Project for a New American Century”. The latter announced a rather crude part of its programme, but only part of it; that intended to convince major donors to support Gorge W. Bush’s election campaign. On September 11 at 10 a.m., when two airliners crashed into the World Trade Center in New York, the “Continuity of Government” (CoG) programme was declared, although the situation was not at all as foreseen in the texts. President Bush was taken to a military base. Members of Congress and their teams were taken to a huge bunker 40 kilometers from Washington. And the top-secret Continuity Government, of which Rumsfeld was a member, assumed power until the end of the day.
Taking advantage of the emotional shock of that day, this group passed a voluminous anti-terrorism code drafted long in advance, the USA Patriot Act; created a vast domestic surveillance system, the Homeland Security Department; reoriented the mission of the armed forces according to the global division of labor (Cebrowski Doctrine); and began the “Endless War. It is in the world they shaped that we have been living in a nightmare for the past two decades. Eyes in the Sky: The S... Holland Michel, Arthur Best Price: $11.75 Buy New $15.95 (as of 02:58 UTC - Details)
If we are not careful, the current group, of which Dr. Richard Hatchett is the visible element, will take this agenda from the United States to the European Union. It will impose over time a mobile phone tracking application to monitor our contacts; it will ruin certain economies in order to transfer their production power to the arms industry; and finally it will convince us that China is responsible for the epidemic and must be contained (Containment).
If we are not careful, the NATO we thought was brain dead will reorganise. It will expand into the Pacific with Australia joining as a trading partner [3].
If we are not careful, public schooling will be replaced by home schooling. Our children will become uncritical parrots, knowing everything but understanding nothing.
In the new world being prepared for EU Europeans, the big media will no longer be financed by the oil industry, but by Big Pharma. They will convince us that all the measures taken have been the right ones. Search engines will rate the credibility of the non-compliant media on the headlines of the signatories of their articles, not on the quality of their reasoning.
There is still time to react.
—
[1] “Covid-19: Neil Ferguson, the Liberal Lyssenko”, Thierry Meyssan, Voltaire Network, April 20, 2020.
[2] “Covid-19 and The Red Dawn Emails”, Thierry Meyssan, Voltaire Network, April 20, 2020.
[3] “NATO Wants to Become the Atlantic-Pacific Alliance”, Thierry Meyssan, Voltaire Network, December 12, 2019.
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Get Russian

Dissent is Russian , or haven ’ t you heard ?
Conspiracy theories are Russian .
War and Peace ( Vintage ... Tolstoy , Leo Best Price : $ 4.23 Buy New $ 7.56 It ’ s Russian to tell the truth .
Truth is Russian in an empire of lies .
If truth is Russian , I don ’ t want to be Australian .
If truth is Russian , you can call me Svetlana .
If truth is Russian , then I will ascend to the clouds kicking my feet out in front of me with my bum @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Stallone was the bad guy in Rocky IV ” until my voice is hoarse .
If truth is Russian , then let ’ s all get Russian .
Get as Russian as possible .
Get so Russian it hurts .
Get so Russian they write Palmer Report articles about you .
Get so Russian that Rachel Maddow spits your name like it ’ s poison .
Get so Russian that Putin calls you and says tone it down .
Get so Russian that Khabib Nurmagomedov has nightmares about fighting you .
Anna Karenina @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Buy New $ 8.00 Camus said “ The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely Russian that your very existence is an act of rebellion , ” or something like that .
Fold your arms and get low on the dance floor .
Thanks for reading !
The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for my website , which will get you an email notification for everything I publish @ @ @ @ @ @ @ so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around , liking me on Facebook , following my antics onTwitter , checking out my podcast on either Youtube , soundcloud , Apple podcasts or Spotify , following me on Steemit , throwing some money into my hat on Patreon or Paypal , purchasing some of my sweet merchandise , buying my books Rogue Nation : Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone and Woke : A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers .
For more info on who I am , where I stand , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ do with this platform , click here .
Everyone , racist platforms excluded , has my permission to republish , use or translate any part of this work ( or anything else I ’ ve written ) in any way they like free of charge .

Dissent is Russian, or haven’t you heard?
Dissent is Russian.
Peace activism is Russian.
Exposing war crimes is Russian.
Inconveniencing Democrats is Russian.
Tara Reade? Russian.
Julian Assange? Russian.
Jill Stein? Russian.
Tulsi Gabbard? Russian.
Russia? You bet your sweet ass that’s Russian.
Conspiracy theories are Russian. War and Peace (Vintage... Tolstoy, Leo Best Price: $4.23 Buy New $7.56 (as of 03:05 UTC - Details)
Alternative media are Russian.
It’s Russian to ask questions.
It’s Russian to reveal objective facts.
It’s Russian to tell the truth.
Truth is Russian in an empire of lies.
If truth is Russian, I don’t want to be Australian.
If truth is Russian, you can call me Svetlana.
If truth is Russian, then I will ascend to the clouds
by climbing a Tolstoy novel,
kicking my feet out in front of me
with my bum low to the ground
balancing a bottle of vodka atop a fur hat
whilst shouting “Stallone was the bad guy in Rocky IV”
until my voice is hoarse.
If truth is Russian, then let’s all get Russian.
Get as Russian as possible.
Get aggressively Russian.
Get offensively Russian.
Get Russianly Russian.
Get so Russian it hurts.
Get so Russian they write Palmer Report articles about you.
Get so Russian that Rachel Maddow spits your name like it’s poison.
Get so Russian that Putin calls you and says tone it down.
Get so Russian that Khabib Nurmagomedov has nightmares about fighting you. Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy Best Price: $1.59 Buy New $8.00 (as of 03:50 UTC - Details)
Camus said “The only way to deal with an unfree world
is to become so absolutely Russian
that your very existence is an act of rebellion,”
or something like that.
So get Russian, baby.
Fold your arms and get low on the dance floor.
Get low, shorty,
get low, low, low.
Get low,
get low,
and get Russian.
Thanks for reading! The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for my website, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following my antics onTwitter, checking out my podcast on either Youtube, soundcloud, Apple podcasts or Spotify, following me on Steemit, throwing some money into my hat on Patreon or Paypal, purchasing some of my sweet merchandise, buying my books Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone and Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge.
Bitcoin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2


lewrockwell--2020-05-06--How Long Can Biden Stay in His Basement?

Where Barack Obama achieved notoriety for “ leading from behind , ” Joe Biden , these last two months , has been leading from the basement .
And , one must add , doing so quite successfully .
Since his rout of Bernie Sanders on Super Tuesday , Biden has led President Donald Trump in every national poll and , lately , opened up a lead in Michigan , Wisconsin , Pennsylvania and Florida .
One poll has him tied with Trump in Texas .
Last week , however , reality intruded .
Biden was forced to defend himself against @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that , as a senator in 1993 , he had groped and assaulted her inside the Capitol complex .
Why did Biden go public ?
Sandworm : A New Era of ... Greenberg , Andy Best Price : $ 15.62 Buy New $ 19.29 Because witnesses were coming forward to say Reade told them of Biden ’ s misconduct years ago , and major media outlets began to give the charge credibility by moving the allegation onto Page One .
Media allies were signaling that they could not forever give Biden a pass @ @ @ @ @ @ @ speak to the charges .
Which is what Biden did Friday as he told MSNBC ’ s Mika Brzezinski : “ This never happened … and it ’ s as simple as that.
” With that flat denial , Biden put his credibility on the line — in defense of his character .
For one can not equate what Reade claims Biden did with the reputation he has built over half a century as a decent and honorable man .
Biden now has to persuade the nation this woman is deluded , wildly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lying .
If “ nothing happened , ” Biden must explain how well he knew Reade and why she left a plum job in the office of a U.S. senator after only nine months .
This is not a matter any presidential candidate wants to discuss while conducting his campaign .
But this is only the beginning of Biden ’ s problems — and of his party ’ s problems with Biden .
With four months left before his nomination in Milwaukee , and six months before the November election , there are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Biden ’ s performance in the debates and primaries , and since , that he has lost the ability to articulate issues clearly and cogently , or to complete complex thoughts .
The worry is that he is suffering from mental decline and could be destroyed by Trump in a presidential debate .
Biden forgets , mumbles , misspeaks , loses his train of thought and appears , at times , confused .
Moreover , Biden is no spring chicken .
He would take office at 78 , one year older than Ronald @ @ @ @ @ @ @ when he left office .
Biden has also signaled , by his references to being a “ bridge ” president , that he will be serving only the single term that would end in 2025 with him having celebrated his 82nd birthday .
“ I view myself as a transition candidate , ” Biden conceded last week .
This makes his vice presidential choice crucial .
For that individual would not only become president instantly should something happen to a President Biden , but he or she would also become the leader of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ nominee in 2024 , and possibly president .
Who will Biden select as America ’ s future leader , after him ?
First rule : No white men need apply .
Biden has ruled them out .
Indeed , no male candidate of any race or ethnicity need apply .
The vice presidential nomination has been set aside for a woman .
A woman of color ?
Not necessarily .
Permanent Record Snowden , Edward Best Price : $ 8.52 Buy New $ 9.85 But here Biden has another problem .
It was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ South Carolina that rescued Biden ’ s failing candidacy and propelled him to his Super Tuesday triumph three days later .
Should Biden choose Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar as his running mate in a party that celebrates diversity above all , that all-white ticket would dismay and conceivably enrage the political elites of the black and Hispanic communities in the Democratic coalition .
If he chooses Sen. Elizabeth Warren , that ticket would also be all white .
Moreover , it would point to a Democratic Party future far to the left of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for Joe Biden because he was the last man standing athwart the forced march to the left of democratic socialist Bernie Sanders .
If Biden chooses an African American like Stacey Abrams , who lost the Georgia governor ’ s race in 2018 , or Sen. Kamala Harris , who did poorly in the primaries and savaged Biden for his opposing forced busing to integrate public schools in the 1970s , would Democrats welcome either as the party ’ s designated future leader ?
Michelle Obama , as Biden wistfully says , would @ @ @ @ @ @ @ former first lady is unavailable .
And while Biden is mulling over his choice in his basement , Republicans will be attacking his character , credibility and mental competence .
Before the fall campaign begins , they will have soiled his candidacy good .
“ It has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried , ” said Winston Churchill , after the British gave him “ The Order of the Boot ” in 1945 .
Campaign 2020 may show us @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The Best of Patrick J. Buchanan

Shop all books by Pat Buchanan
Where Barack Obama achieved notoriety for “leading from behind,” Joe Biden, these last two months, has been leading from the basement.
And, one must add, doing so quite successfully.
Since his rout of Bernie Sanders on Super Tuesday, Biden has led President Donald Trump in every national poll and, lately, opened up a lead in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Florida. One poll has him tied with Trump in Texas.
Last week, however, reality intruded. Biden was forced to defend himself against the lurid charge of ex-aide Tara Reade that, as a senator in 1993, he had groped and assaulted her inside the Capitol complex.
Why did Biden go public? Sandworm: A New Era of... Greenberg, Andy Best Price: $15.62 Buy New $19.29 (as of 03:49 UTC - Details)
Because witnesses were coming forward to say Reade told them of Biden’s misconduct years ago, and major media outlets began to give the charge credibility by moving the allegation onto Page One.
Media allies were signaling that they could not forever give Biden a pass on this, and he had to speak to the charges. Which is what Biden did Friday as he told MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski:
“This never happened … and it’s as simple as that.”
With that flat denial, Biden put his credibility on the line — in defense of his character. For one cannot equate what Reade claims Biden did with the reputation he has built over half a century as a decent and honorable man. Biden now has to persuade the nation this woman is deluded, wildly exaggerating, misremembering — or is deliberately lying.
If “nothing happened,” Biden must explain how well he knew Reade and why she left a plum job in the office of a U.S. senator after only nine months.
This is not a matter any presidential candidate wants to discuss while conducting his campaign. But this is only the beginning of Biden’s problems — and of his party’s problems with Biden.
With four months left before his nomination in Milwaukee, and six months before the November election, there are still among Democrats gnawing concerns based on Biden’s performance in the debates and primaries, and since, that he has lost the ability to articulate issues clearly and cogently, or to complete complex thoughts.
The worry is that he is suffering from mental decline and could be destroyed by Trump in a presidential debate. Biden forgets, mumbles, misspeaks, loses his train of thought and appears, at times, confused.
Moreover, Biden is no spring chicken. He would take office at 78, one year older than Ronald Reagan, our oldest president, was when he left office.
Biden has also signaled, by his references to being a “bridge” president, that he will be serving only the single term that would end in 2025 with him having celebrated his 82nd birthday.
“I view myself as a transition candidate,” Biden conceded last week.
This makes his vice presidential choice crucial. For that individual would not only become president instantly should something happen to a President Biden, but he or she would also become the leader of the Democratic Party, the probable presidential nominee in 2024, and possibly president.
Who will Biden select as America’s future leader, after him?
First rule: No white men need apply. Biden has ruled them out.
Indeed, no male candidate of any race or ethnicity need apply. The vice presidential nomination has been set aside for a woman.
A woman of color? Not necessarily. Permanent Record Snowden, Edward Best Price: $8.52 Buy New $9.85 (as of 07:25 UTC - Details)
But here Biden has another problem. It was a huge turnout among African Americans in South Carolina that rescued Biden’s failing candidacy and propelled him to his Super Tuesday triumph three days later.
Should Biden choose Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar as his running mate in a party that celebrates diversity above all, that all-white ticket would dismay and conceivably enrage the political elites of the black and Hispanic communities in the Democratic coalition.
If he chooses Sen. Elizabeth Warren, that ticket would also be all white. Moreover, it would point to a Democratic Party future far to the left of the constituencies that turned out in panic for Joe Biden because he was the last man standing athwart the forced march to the left of democratic socialist Bernie Sanders.
If Biden chooses an African American like Stacey Abrams, who lost the Georgia governor’s race in 2018, or Sen. Kamala Harris, who did poorly in the primaries and savaged Biden for his opposing forced busing to integrate public schools in the 1970s, would Democrats welcome either as the party’s designated future leader?
Michelle Obama, as Biden wistfully says, would fit the bill perfectly.
But the former first lady is unavailable. And while Biden is mulling over his choice in his basement, Republicans will be attacking his character, credibility and mental competence. Before the fall campaign begins, they will have soiled his candidacy good.
“It has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried,” said Winston Churchill, after the British gave him “The Order of the Boot” in 1945.
Campaign 2020 may show us our own democracy at its worst.
The Best of Patrick J. Buchanan