PP NewsBrief: 2021-06-16

We need to begin to reclaim control over the institutions which have such oversized roles in our lives. As you read this people work tirelessly to see to it that you are dumb and docile. Let's stop them.

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Attorney General Garland to double staff to protect voting rights, targets new election laws in Republican-led states for scrutiny

"“So far this year, at least 14 states have passed new laws that make it harder to vote,” Garland said in a speech on Friday. “Some jurisdictions, based on disinformation, have utilized abnormal post-election audit methodologies that may put the integrity of the voting process at risk and undermine public confidence in our democracy.”

...

The attorney general suggested that the Department of Justice (DOJ) may sue states over their election reforms. “We are scrutinizing new laws that seek to curb voter access, and where we see violations, we will not hesitate to act,” Garland said.

The DOJ also will scrutinize current laws and practices to determine whether they discriminate against non-white voters, Garland said. For instance, he said, non-white voters have to wait longer in voter lines in some jurisdictions.

“There are many things that are open to debate in America, but the right of all eligible citizens to vote is not one of them,” Garland said. “The right to vote is a cornerstone of our democracy – the right from which all other rights ultimately flow.”"

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America the Outlier

"Democrats and much of the media are pushing to make permanent the extraordinary, pandemic-driven measures to relax voting rules during the 2020 elections—warning anew of racist voter “suppression” otherwise. Yet democracies in Europe and elsewhere tell a different story—of the benefits of stricter voter ID requirements after hard lessons learned.

A database on voting rules worldwide compiled by the Crime Prevention Research Center, which I run, shows that election integrity measures are widely accepted globally, and have often been adopted by countries after they’ve experienced fraud under looser voting regimes.

Of 47 nations surveyed in Europe—a place where, on other matters, American progressives often look to with envy—all but one country requires a government-issued photo voter ID to vote. The exception is the U.K., and even there voter IDs are mandatory in Northern Ireland for all elections and in parts of England for local elections. Moreover, Boris Johnson’s government recently introduced legislation to have the rest of the country follow suit.

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Seventy-four percent of European countries entirely ban absentee voting for citizens who reside domestically. Another six percent limit it to those hospitalized or in the military, and they require third-party verification and a photo voter ID. Another 15 percent require a photo ID for absentee voting.

Similarly, government-issued photo IDs are required to vote by 33 nations in the 37-member Organistion for Economic Co-operation and Development (which has considerable European overlap). Only the U.K., Japan, New Zealand, and Australia currently do not require IDs....

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There were a few exceptions to developed countries’ general avoidance of emergency voting measures during the pandemic. Poland allowed mail-in ballots for everyone last year as a one-time measure, as did two cities in Russia, but Poland’s rushed plan played out so poorly it dissuaded other countries from following suit. France made more limited exceptions, temporarily allowing sick or at-risk individuals to vote absentee.

In some countries, even driver’s licenses aren’t considered authoritative enough forms of voter identity verification. The Czech Republic and Russia require passports or military-issued IDs and others use national identity cards. Others go even further: Colombia and Mexico each require a biometric ID to cast a ballot.

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In Northern Ireland, where a bitter sectarian conflict extends to hardball electoral machinations, voter fraud has been described as “widespread and systemic” on all sides. Both Conservative and Labour governments instituted reforms to quell it. In 1985, the U.K. started requiring identification before ballots could be issued. This proved insufficient. A 1998 Select Committee on Northern Ireland report found that medical cards used as IDs after the 1985 law could be “easily forged or applied for fraudulently,” thus allowing non-existent people to vote. By 2002, the Labour government made voter identification cards much more difficult to forge, and used the more secure ID and other rules to prevent people from registering to vote multiple times. These anti-fraud provisions led to an immediate 11 percent reduction in total registrations—a suggestion to Labour of the extent of earlier fraud.

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On the mainland, France banned mail-in voting in 1975 because of massive fraud in the island region of Corsica, where postal ballots were stolen or bought and others were cast in the names of dead people.

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American progressives might take heed of a Mexican election stolen from voters on the Left in part due to lax voting requirements facilitating fraud. The 1988 loss of Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, the leading leftist presidential candidate, to Carlos Salinas de Gortari of the long-governing Institutional Revolutionary Party has long been considered a result of electoral chicanery, later even acknowledged by the president at the time, Miguel de la Madrid.

And as a result of that fraud, Mexico in 1991 mandated voter photo IDs with biometric information, banned absentee ballots, and required in-person voter registration. Despite making registration much more difficult and banning absentee ballots, voter participation rates rose after Mexico implemented the new rules. In the three presidential elections following the 1991 reforms, an average of 68 percent of the eligible citizens voted, compared with only 59 percent in the three elections prior to the rule changes. Seemingly, as people gained faith in the electoral process, they became more likely to vote.

Ultimately, Mexico in 2006 would revert to permitting absentee voting, but limited it to those living abroad who requested a ballot at least six months in advance. Claims of voting irregularities have occasionally arisen in later years, but they focus on vote buying, not impersonating others, or having nonexistent people voting.

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The case of Mexico undermines the idea that stricter voting rules lead to vote suppression, and so does some of the evidence from America. A number of states have in recent years instituted photo and non-photo ID measures, and found no statistically significant change in voter participation rates. Other evidence suggests that black and minority voter registration rates increased faster than whites after states implemented voter ID requirements for registration."

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Yet Another Media Tale -- Trump Tear-Gassed Protesters For a Church Photo Op -- Collapses

"For more than a year, it has been consecrated media fact that former President Donald Trump and his White House, on June 1 of last year, directed the U.S. Park Police to use tear gas against peaceful Lafayette Park protesters, all to enable a Trump photo-op in front of St. John's Church. That this happened was never presented as a possibility or likelihood but as indisputable truth. And it provoked weeks of unmitigated media outrage, presented as one of the most egregious assaults on the democratic order in decades.

This tale was so pervasive in the media landscape that it would be impossible for any one article to compile all the examples....

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At a June 2 Press Conference, then-Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) proclaimed with anger: “last night I watched as President Trump, having gassed peaceful protesters just so he could do this photo op, then he went on to teargas priests who were helping protesters in Lafayette Park.” Speaking on MSNBC's Morning Joe, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi exclaimed: “What is this, a banana republic?,” when asked about NBC News’ report that “security forces used tear gas and flash-bangs against a crowd of peaceful demonstrators to clear the area for the president.”

There were some denials of this narrative at the time, largely confined to right-wing media. ABC News mocked “hosts on Fox News, one of the president's preferred news media outlets, [who] have spent the days since the controversial photo op shifting defenses to fit the president's narrative.” Meanwhile, The Federalist's Mollie Hemingway — in an article retweeted by Trump as a "must read” — cited sources to assert that the entire media narrative was false because force was to clear the Park not to enable Trump's photo op but rather “because [protesters] had climbed on top of a structure in Lafayette Park that had been burned the prior night” and the Park Police decided to build a barrier to protect it.

But as usual, the self-proclaimed Superior Liberal Truth Squad instantly declared them to be lying. The Washington Post's "fact-checker,” Phillip Bump, mocked denials from Trump supporters and right-wing reporters such as Hemingway, proclaiming that a recent statement from the Park Police “brings the debate to a close,” as it proves “the deployment of security forces using weapons and irritants to clear a peaceful protest so that the president could have a photo op.”

All of this came crashing down on their heads on Wednesday afternoon. The independent Inspector General of the Interior Department, Mark Lee Greenblatt, issued his office's findings after a long investigation into “the actions of the U.S. Park Police (USPP) to disperse protesters in and around Lafayette Park in Washington, DC, on June 1, 2020.”...

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The IG's conclusion could not be clearer: the media narrative was false from start to finish. Namely, he said, “the evidence did not support a finding that the [U.S. Park Police] cleared the park on June 1, 2020, so that then President Trump could enter the park.” Instead — exactly as Hemingway's widely-mocked-by-liberal-outlets article reported — “the evidence we reviewed showed that the USPP cleared the park to allow a contractor to safely install anti-scale fencing in response to destruction of Federal property and injury to officers that occurred on May 30 and May 31.” Crucially, “the evidence established that relevant USPP officials had made those decisions and had begun implementing the operational plan several hours before they knew of a potential Presidential visit to the park, which occurred later that day."

The detailed IG report elaborated on the timeline even more extensively. It was “on the morning of June 1” when “the Secret Service procured anti-scale fencing to establish a more secure perimeter around Lafayette Park that was to be delivered and installed that same day.” The agencies had “determined that it was necessary to clear protesters from the area in and around the park to enable the contractor’s employees to safely install the fence.” Indeed, “we found that by approximately 10 a.m. on June 1, the USPP had already begun developing a plan to clear protesters from the area to enable the contractor to safely install the anti-scale fence” — many hours before Trump decided to go.

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Beyond that, planning for that operation began at least two days before Trump decided to visit the church. “The fencing contractor told us and emails we reviewed confirmed that on May 30, the assistant division chief of the Secret Service's Procurement Division discussed with the contractor how quickly the contractor could deliver anti-scale fencing to Lafayette Park,” the Report found.

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Over and over we see the central truth: the corporate outlets that most loudly and shrilly denounce “disinformation” — to the point of demanding online censorship and de-platforming in the name of combating it — are, in fact, the ones who spread disinformation most frequently and destructively. It is hard to count how many times they have spread major fake stories in the Trump years. For that reason, they have nobody but themselves to blame for the utter collapse in trust and faith on the part of the public, which has rightfully concluded they cannot and should not be believed."

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Behavior, Not Racism, Explains Racial Differences in Medical Outcomes

"The American Medical Association released a statement on May 11 acknowledging that “racism is a public health threat.” A recent Boston Review article, “An Antiracist Agenda for Medicine,” concurred, making the case that racial health outcome discrepancies are evidence of systemic racism.

To support their claim, physicians Bram Wispelwey and Michelle Morse analyzed 10 years of data from Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts. Looking specifically at patients with heart failure, Wispelwey and Morse found that black and Hispanic patients were more likely to be admitted to the general medicine service, while white patients were more likely to be admitted to the cardiology service. Patients admitted to the cardiology service are given private rooms, better amenities, and greater access to cardiologists. Their study found the discrepancy was still not accounted for when controlling for insurance status or socioeconomic status, so therefore it must be the result of systemic racism.

Wispelwey and Morse’s prescribed solution is medical reparations. Diversity trainings are not enough; fighting systemic racism requires “a proactively antiracist agenda for medicine.” They lay out two elements for providing reparations. The first is providing financial support to all black, indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) and race-centric health institutions. The second is following a “healing” program that entails acknowledging that their hospital is racist, redressing their wrongs by offering preferential admission to cardiology services to black and Hispanic patients, and creating closure by continuing to pursue these discriminatory policies until the local BIPOC community agrees that equity has been achieved.

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Within the article itself, the authors share a follow-up study they performed at the same hospital that found white patients were significantly more likely to advocate on their own behalf, for example, by asking to be placed specifically in the cardiology service. What’s more, Wispelwey and Morse say they found no evidence black patients who spoke up for themselves were denied service or treated differently from white patients. The authors conclude that “systemic racism” causes white people to feel more comfortable asking for better care. But that is not systemic racism; rather, demanding better care is a personal choice . . . and a smart one.

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Yet another study analyzed data from 1,200 U.S. hospitals and found no meaningful difference in the quality of care based upon either race or socioeconomic status. Authors Nicholas S. Downing, Changqin Wang, and Aakriti Gupta could not identify any specific hospital-controlled variable that explained health disparities, leading them to conclude that any differences in mortality or readmissions rates must be the result of external variables.

Looking at both the original study highlighted in the Boston Review article, as well as multiple other studies addressing similar questions, it becomes clear that racism at the hospital level simply cannot explain why health outcome disparities exist.

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Medical decision-making authority should reside with the doctors who are working in the clinical setting. Offering preferential treatment based upon race is not only blatantly racist policy but it also violates the autonomy of medical professionals to make decisions that will most benefit their patients. Even Wispelwey and Morse admit they could find no evidence of personal racism among Brigham and Women’s doctors, which is why they must lay the blame at the feet of “systemic racism.”

So long as doctors are continuing to treat their charges fairly on an individual basis, race-based health equity policy will only serve to harm patients...."

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Colo. gun regulation bills slated to become law

"A series of strict gun measures in Colorado are about to be written into law. Recent reports detailed the three measures recently passed in the Centennial State, which include allowing localities to regulate firearms, expand background checks and create an “Office of Gun Violence Protection.”

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One of the bills will require the Colorado Bureau of Investigation to deny approval of a firearm transfer to someone who has been convicted of certain misdemeanor offenses within the last five years. These offenses include third-degree assault, sexual assault, child abuse and hate crimes.

The new measures will also shorten deadlines for reviews the bureau is required to complete. Rep. Judy Amabile (D-Colo.) argued if the bills were already in place, the Boulder shooting could have been avoided. She explained how the gunman would not have been able to make the firearm purchase in the first place due to his third-degree assault charge from 2018.

A handful of counties have voiced their opposition to the bills with some sheriffs having already announced they would not enforce laws that infringe on citizen’s rights."

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US education secretary promises to defend transgender athletes’ ‘civil rights’ in sports

"US Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona has said the Biden administration will “act” to protect the rights of transgender students banned from participating in school sports outside their biological gender in states like Florida.

“I do believe in local control. I do believe in state control, but we do have a responsibility to protect the civil rights of students. And if we feel the civil rights are being violated, we will act,” Cardona told ESPN.

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“It’s their right as a student to participate in these activities. And we know sports does more than just put ribbons on the first-, second- and third-place winner,” he said. “We know that it provides opportunities for students to become a part of a team, to learn a lot about themselves, to set goals and reach them, and to challenge themselves. Athletics provides that in our K-12 systems and in our colleges, and all students deserve an opportunity to engage in that.”

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The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) put out a statement distancing itself from DeSantis and any bans on transgender athletes, and promising to not hold events in states that enact such bans.

“You can’t be cowed by these organizations, particularly by woke corporations, from doing the right thing,” DeSantis said in response."

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EU drugs regulator lists another rare blood condition as possible AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine side effect

"The EMA’s addition of the very rare syndrome to its list of potential side effects for the AstraZeneca Covid-19 jab comes as the regulator also examines reports of heart inflammation in recipients of the vaccine.

Capillary leak syndrome is a condition that causes fluid to leak out of blood vessels and could cause very low blood pressure, leading to pain, nausea and tiredness or, in the worst case, kidney failure and strokes.

The agency said that the safety committee carried out an in-depth review of six reported cases of the condition among recipients of the AstraZeneca vaccine, over 78 million doses of which have been administered within the EU and UK by the end of May.

“Most of the cases occurred in women and within four days of vaccination,” the EMA said. “Three of those affected had a history of capillary leak syndrome and one of them subsequently died.”

Following its decision, the EMA has told AstraZeneca that it must add capillary leak syndrome to the labeling of its Covid-19 vaccine, called Vaxzevria. The regulator also warned individuals with a history of the illness to not receive the shot. The European safety committee has been examining reports into the risk of the condition in people who received the vaccine since April amid an investigation into concerns about potential links between the jab and blood clotting."

I'd be fine with all these "but they had a preexisting condition" arguments in defense of vaccines had the same arguments been welcomed with open arms when aimed at the death count of Covid.

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The Fauci E-Mails

"The following is an excerpt from the ICAN website that highlights some of the more controversial emails from Dr. Fauci that include topics such as the origins of COVID-19, the severity of the virus being played up when privately he was comparing it to severe seasonal flu, how masks will largely be appropriate for someone who is infected and email correspondences between Dr. Fauci and the CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg.

--February 7, 2020 (000189) – Fauci sent an internal NIAID communication reflecting that it was unlikely that the SARS-CoV-2 virus originated in a wet market.

--February 16, 2020 (000447) – Fauci tells a CBS reporter that if the mortality turns out to be 0.2% to 0.4%, then SARS-CoV-2 should be treated as a severe seasonal flu. But when the case fatality rate was later revised to between 0.2% and 0.4% by the CDC, Fauci continued to act as if the virus was something far more dangerous.

--February 23, 2020 (000257) – Fauci states, “Transmission is definitely by respiratory droplet” and that “Children have a very low rate of infection.”

--February 22, 2020 (000274-277) – Fauci confirms that “The vast majority of people outside of China do not need to wear a mask. A mask is more appropriate for someone who is infected than for people trying to protect against infection.”

--February 27, 2020 (000649) – Fauci tells Morgan Fairchild to inform her followers to be ready for “social distancing, teleworking, temporary closure of schools, etc.”

--February 28, 2020 (001059) – Fauci giving a personal update to Mark Zuckerberg regarding developing a COVID-19 vaccine, including telling Zuckerberg that “We may need help with resources” and that if there is a delay in the development timeline, he just told Zuckerberg about, “I will contact you.”

--March 1, 2020 (000922) – CBS’s Chief Medical Correspondent, seeking to please Fauci, emails Fauci a link to his segment which he appears to repeat what Fauci has told him, including that face masks “may give some partial protection by catching droplets containing virus but the virus is so tiny the virus can go right through it or around it” and describing the origin of the virus as “jumping from animals to people.” Fauci responds with “Outstanding!!” apparently pleased that CBS pushed Fauci’s narrative that the virus was a natural jump from bats to humans.

--March 1, 2020 (000937) – Despite media reports, Fauci makes it crystal clear he was not being muzzled by the White House.

--March 17, 2020 (001537) – The next day, it does not appear Fauci intends to change his tune of pushing everyone, even healthy people with low risk of the virus, to give up all civil liberties and remain prisoners in their home, as reflecting in an email exchange between Fauci and Mark Zuckerberg, in which they share mobile numbers and plan to coordinate efforts to get people to comply with Fauci’s messaging, including social distancing for everyone, but the details of their plan are not included in the email exchange.

--March 31, 2020 (001816) – Fauci receives a summary from his agency of the studies regarding how effective masks are to preventing the virus, and the conclusion is as follows: “Bottom line: generally, there were no differences in ILI/URI/or flu rates when masks were used.”

--April 2, 2020 (001778) – Fauci and Bill Gates have a phone call where they agreed to a “collaborative” and “synergistic approach to COVID-19 on the part of NIAID/NIH, BARDS and the BMGF (Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation).” It is concerning that one private person, Bill Gates, and his organization, BMGF, can exert that much behind-the-scenes influence on decisions that will impact the civil rights of all Americans during the pandemic.

--April 8, 2020 (002351-2352) – Fauci rejects most requests for calls but accepts without any questions a request to arrange a call with the CEO of Lilly, a major pharmaceutical company.

--April 16, 2020 (002142) – Fauci advises that even in the health care setting, the mask policy should remain “voluntary.”"

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Federal judge halts Biden’s debt-relief program for NON-WHITE farmers in case challenging constitutionality of race-based benefits

"A federal judge in Wisconsin has issued a restraining order freezing the Biden administration's loan-forgiveness program for non-white farmers, pending a ruling on whether basing benefits on skin color is constitutional.

US District Court Judge William Griesbach granted the temporary restraining order on Thursday in Milwaukee, suspending and jeopardizing a program touted by the Washington Post as “the most significant legislation for black farmers since the Civil Rights Act” of 1964.

The $4 billion initiative – championed as part of President Joe Biden’s racial-equity push – was included in the Covid-19 relief package that was enacted in March, although it didn’t relate directly to the pandemic. The program paid off as much as 120% of loan balances held by farmers and ranchers – as long as they were black, Hispanic, or of some other non-white identity – to help undo alleged systemic racism in agriculture.

The Wisconsin case, which the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty (WILL) filed on behalf of 12 white farmers, is one of at least five lawsuits filed against the Biden administration to challenge the constitutionality of giving debt relief only to farmers of certain ethnicities.

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One of the plaintiffs, Wisconsin dairy farmer Adam Faust, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that “there should be absolutely no federal dollars going anywhere based on race.”

Griesbach was appointed to the bench by President George W. Bush in 2002. His order follows a similar ruling in a case involving a Tennessee restaurant owner who was denied Covid-19 financial aid because he was a white male. Late last month, an appellate court granted a temporary injunction against the Biden administration’s $29 billion relief program for non-white and female restaurant owners."

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An Ideal Rule for the Age of Rage? Critics May Be Making the Best Argument For Keeping The Filibuster

"Biden has trolled Manchin and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) in public speeches, denouncing both as those “two members of the Senate who vote more with my Republican friends.” In reality, Manchin and Sinema have voted 100 percent with Biden so far, more than such liberal icons as Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) or Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). That’s why the Washington Post gave Biden three more “Pinocchios” to add to his growing collection.

However, both Manchin and Sinema support preserving the Senate’s filibuster rule, and they are portrayed in the press as fighting for what is being called a “Jim Crow relic.” One reporter asked Sinema how she would respond to what critics are calling a “choice between the filibuster and democracy,” while the Los Angeles Times ran a column titled, “What’s the matter with Kyrsten Sinema?”

In truth, the filibuster is no more racist than any other procedural rule. The irony is that, despite its abusive use in the past, this is arguably the most compelling time for a filibuster rule.

While Democrats and the media have painted anyone supporting the filibuster as anti-democratic, even racist, they overwhelmingly supported the rule when Democrats were in the Senate minority. As a senator, Biden denounced any termination of the filibuster as “disastrous” and declared: “God save us from that fate … [since it] would change this fundamental understanding and unbroken practice of what the Senate is all about.”

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) previously warned the Senate that it was “on the precipice” of a constitutional crisis as “the checks and balances which have been at the core of this republic are about to be evaporated” by a proposed elimination of the filibuster. Likewise, then-Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) denounced those seeking to eradicate the filibuster as trying to change “the rules in the middle of the game so that they can make all the decisions while the other party is told to sit down and keep quiet.” He added: “If the majority chooses to end the filibuster and if they choose to change the rules and put an end to democratic debate, then the fighting and the bitterness and the gridlock will only become worse.”

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It does not matter that Democrats have used this now racist and undemocratic rule hundreds of times, including filibustering bills 327 times just last year.

In reality, the rule did not originate as a racist device. Indeed, as I have previously written, it is more a “relic” of the Julius Caesar era than the Jim Crow era. In ancient Rome, the filibuster was used to force the Roman senate to hear dissenting voices; Cato the Younger used it to oppose Julius Caesar’s return to Rome and to denounce rampant corruption. It was viewed as protecting minority viewpoints in senate proceedings. In the United States, it can be traced to a procedural argument by former Vice President Aaron Burr to get rid of an automatic end to debate on bills in the early 1800s. It was not created in or for the Jim Crow era — and Cato the Younger was not the junior senator from Alabama.

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Democrats, media figures and activists are aware of the hypocrisy over the filibuster rule and its long defense by Democrats as a positive democratic device. That is why there is a concerted effort to portray support for the filibuster as racist. It is a familiar pattern in silencing an opposing view: Frame the rule as racist, and dismiss the consensus arguments accepted just a few years ago in defense of the rule. You then pass bills on straight party line votes in the name of national unity.

The filibuster has gone through historic controversies through the centuries, from opposing Caesar to opposing civil rights. But as a consensus-forcing rule, its time may have arrived, to the chagrin of many."

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Germany introduces new digital Covid-19 immunity certificate

"Germany has unveiled a new digital immunity certificate that will be available alongside the paper ones already in use. The digital version is expected to make it easier for people to prove their Covid-19 vaccination status.

The new certificate, dubbed ‘CovPass’, was presented by Health Minister Jens Spahn on Thursday. It will become available to the public starting next week.

“The point is to get this paper into the device,” Spahn said during a news conference, showing reporters an analog vaccination certificate and a smartphone displaying its digital form. The new pass is expected to be significantly more convenient to use, and people will be easily able to prove their immunity status, according to the minister.

“For those whose job it is to check, like in restaurants or in retail, there’s an app that makes it possible to read and verify the relevant certificates,” he stated.

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The new certificates are not meant to be a replacement for the paper vaccination booklets already in use. While these will remain the main document for immunity status, the digital pass is designed more for convenience and will be able to be used for future travel in Europe.

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The EU-valid certificates may come in both paper and digital forms, but they must have a QR code so authorities can easily access a person’s data. The certificates are expected to include information on whether someone has been fully vaccinated with shots approved by the European Medicines Agency (EMA), and whether they contracted coronavirus previously or have tested negative for the disease."

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Eisenhower rejected military chiefs’ demand for nuclear war on China, classified account of ’58 Taiwan Strait crisis reveals

"A previously censored account of the 1958 Taiwan Strait crisis that was sponsored by the Pentagon has been published in full by the leaker of the Pentagon Papers, Daniel Ellsberg. The report provides a hair-raising portrait of a reckless US military leadership relentlessly pressing President Dwight Eisenhower for the authority to carry out nuclear attacks on communist China.

After holding the still-classified version of the account in his possession for fifty years, Ellsberg said he decided to release it because of the growing threat of US war with China over Taiwan, and the danger that such a conflict could escalate into a nuclear exchange.

A May 22 New York Times report on the account offered only general details of the role the US Joint Chiefs of Staff played in the run-up to the 1958 Taiwan crisis. However, it is now clear from the original highly classified documents as well as other evidence now available that from the beginning, the Joint Chiefs aimed first and foremost to exploit the tensions to carry out nuclear strikes against Chinese nuclear military targets deep in highly-populated areas.

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Quemoy and Matsu, the two main offshore islands occupied by Nationalist troops, were less than five miles from the mainland and had been used by Chiang’s forces as bases to mount unsuccessful commando raids inside the mainland. And Chiang, who was still committed to reconquering the mainland China with the ostensible support of the United States, had stationed a third of his 350,000-man army on those two islands.

In May 1958, the Joint Chiefs adopted a new plan (OPS PLAN 25-58), ostensibly for the defense of the offshore islands. In fact, the plan provided a basis for attacking China with atomic weapons.

It was to begin with a brief preliminary “Phase I”, which it called “patrol and reconnaissance” and was said to be already underway. “Phase II”, which would have been triggered by a Chinese attack on the offshore islands, would involve US air forces wiping out the attacking forces.

But the new plan envisioned a possible third phase, in which the Strategic Air Command and forces under the command of the US Pacific Command would carry out strategic attacks with 10 to 15 kiloton tactical nuclear weapons “to destroy the war-making capability” of China.

According to the account authored by Halperin, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Air Force Gen. Nathan Twining, told State Department officials in an August meeting that the third phase would require nuclear strikes on Chinese bases as far north as Shanghai.

The Joint Chiefs played down the threat to civilian casualties from such tactical atomic weapons, emphasizing that an airburst of tactical atomic explosions would generate little radioactive fallout. But the account indicates that they provided no concrete information on expected civilian casualties.

Given the fact that both the Chinese gun emplacements across the Taiwan Strait and a key airbase serving the Chinese military forces in any conflict over the offshore islands would have been located close to significant population centers, such atomic explosions would have certainly caused civilian casualties on a massive scale.

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The Joint Chiefs also assumed that China would respond to the US use of atomic weapons by retaliating with atomic weapons, which the Joint Chiefs presumed would be made available to the Chinese government by the Soviet Union.

The Halperin report recounts that Twining told State Department officials that the bombing of the intended targets with tactical nuclear weapons “almost certainly would involve nuclear retaliation against Taiwan and possibly against Okinawa….”...

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Despite the acceptance of the likelihood that it would lead to nuclear retaliation by China, JCS Chairman Twining expressed no hesitation about the plan, asserting that in order to defend the offshore islands, “the consequences had to be accepted”.

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The Joint Chiefs’ plan betrayed the military chiefs’ hope of removing the power of decision over nuclear war from the hands of the president. It said the plan would be put into operation when “dictated by appropriate U.S. authority” – implying that it would not necessarily be decided by the president.

In his own memoirs, Eisenhower recalled with some bitterness how, during the 1958 crisis, he was “continuously pressured — almost hounded — by Chiang [Chinese nationalist Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek] on one side and by our own military on other requesting delegation of authority for immediate action on Formosa [Taiwan] or the offshore islands….” He did not refer, however, to the efforts by the Joint Chiefs efforts to gain advance authorization for the use nuclear weapons on the Chinese mainland.

The wording of the JCS plan was changed to read “when authorized by the President” at Eisenhower’s insistence to provide that only conventional means could be used at least initially for defense of the islands, while leaving open the possibility of using tactical nuclear weapons if that failed.

But the Joint Chiefs were not finished. In a paper presented to Eisenhower on September 6, the chiefs proposed that they be authorized to “oppose any major attack on Taiwan and attack mainland bases with all CINPAC force that can be brought to bear” in the event of “an emergency arising from an attack on Taiwan and the offshore islands moving so rapidly that it would not permit consultations with the President…”

Further, they asked for the authority to respond to a “major landing attack on offshore islands,” by “[u]se of atomic weapons and U.S. air attack in support of [Chinese Nationalist] Air Force…as necessary, only as approved by the President.” Eisenhower approved the paper with those qualifiers.

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In pre-Cold War Washington, the US Navy served as the primary bureaucratic ally of the Kuomintang regime. The relationship was forged when Chiang provided the Navy with the home base for its 7th Fleet at Tsingtao in Northern China.

Navy brass in the Pacific had urged unconditional support for Chiang’s regime during the civil war with the Communists and derided as “pinkies” those State Department officials – beginning with Secretary George C. Marshall – who entertained any doubts about the Kuomintang leader.

By 1958, the Air Force was so strongly committed to its role as an exclusively nuclear-weapons delivery organization that it insisted on being able to able to using nuclear weapons in any war it fought in the Pacific region.

The account of the crisis reveals that, when the Air Force Commander in the Pacific, Gen. Lawrence S. Kuter, learned of Eisenhower’s decision to defend the offshore islands with conventional weapons, he relayed the message to Gen. John Gerhart, the Air Force Deputy Chief of Staff. Shockingly, Gerhart responded that the Air Force “could not agree in principle” to the use of SAC forces for such non-nuclear operations.

...

It turned out that the Chinese never intended full-scale war over the offshore islands. Instead they sought to mount a blockade of resupply to the islands through artillery barrages, and when the US military provided armed escorts for the ships carrying out the resupply, they were careful to avoid hitting American ships.

As the Halperin report observed, once the Chinese recognized that a blockade could not prevent the resupply, they settled for symbolic artillery attacks on Quemoy, which were limited to every other day.

It was the eagerness of the Joint Chiefs for a nuclear war against China, rather than the policy of communist China, that presented the most serious threat to American security.

Although the circumstances surrounding the U.S.-China conflict over Taiwan have changed dramatically since that stage of the Cold War, the 1958 Taiwan crisis provides a sobering lesson as the US military gears up for a new military confrontation with China."

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Time cover fawns over Biden in ‘macho staring match’ with Putin ahead of face-to-face meeting

"A new Time Magazine cover showing President Joe Biden locked in an icy staring match with his Russian counterpart has been mocked as an over-the-top display of machismo, producing a number of parodies online.

Titling the issue “Taking on Putin,” Time released the cover on Friday, just days before a summit between the two leaders set for June 16 in Switzerland. The magazine features an illustration of a stone-faced Biden decked out in aviation shades, with Putin reflected in their lenses.

The cover soon drew ridicule from observers online, with journalist Glenn Greenwald saying it is not only “adolescent,” but highlights a serious failing of the American corporate press.

“The US media constantly depicts complex relations between countries as some adolescent competition about which president can be more macho and stare down the other one, like 12-year-olds playing a staring game,” he said, adding: “Putin shaking when he sees Biden's aviator glasses.”

...

Ahead of the June 16 summit, Biden has signaled he would get tough with the Russian leader, saying, vaguely, that he would “let him know what I want him to know” earlier this week. That followed previous remarks in an interview with ABC, in which Biden agreed with the contention that Putin is a “killer,” and recalled how he once told him bluntly that “I don’t think you have a soul.”

While Putin told NBC in an exclusive interview aired on Friday that Biden’s harsh words were mere “Hollywood macho,” he suggested he could work with him, saying that, in contrast to ex-president Donald Trump, Biden would not act on “impulse.” He nonetheless praised Trump as a “colorful” and “talented individual.”

“He didn't come from the US establishment. He had not been part of big-time politics before, and some like it, some don’t like it but that is a fact,” Putin said, comparing the two American leaders. “So, as far as harsh rhetoric, I think that this is an expression of overall US culture.”"

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After Breakout Year, Moderna on Track to Generate $15B+ in 2022 Thanks to More Demand, Higher Prices: Analysts

"Moderna is hard at work ramping up production of its mRNA COVID-19 vaccine, which is projected to reap over $19 billion for the company by year’s end. But given that the pandemic is easing in parts of the world, what’s less certain is how 2022 will play out.

After a breakout year, Moderna sees strong reason to believe 2021 won’t be a one-off boom year. That’s thanks to the predicted need for booster shots and additional supply deals coupled with stronger pricing power, Jefferies analysts wrote to clients Thursday following a conversation with CEO Stéphane Bancel.

The Jefferies team thinks Moderna could drive $15 billion in 2022 revenues, with an upper limit of $30 billion. Where the company lands will depend on how the pandemic progresses, fear of infection and whether the company can produce future products, like a combo shot against COVID and the flu.

Plus, it’s possible that Moderna could start charging more per dose given its high efficacy, reliable manufacturing and absence of serious side effects that have plagued other vaccine developers, the analysts said.

...

Pandemic shots aren’t the only sales prospects Moderna has in its back pocket, Jefferies said. The mRNA developer is also working on a shot for seasonal influenza, with initial results anticipated by the end of the year."

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The Colonial Pipeline hack, the Russians, & Bitcoin – here's what actually happened

"A DOJ warrant from Monday morning gives us much more detail about how the government actually secured the bitcoin funds. They did so by obtaining a warrant on a bitcoin wallet or exchange that had servers in Northern California. Yes, you read that correctly. The entity responsible for the ransomware attack did not in fact have custody over their bitcoin. Instead, they were using a custodian for their funds. It is unclear whether this account with servers in the United States is an FBI wallet or the affiliate’s wallet, but the major error in bitcoin 101 custody remains the surprising issue. Using a custodian for your funds instead of maintaining possession of them is a very basic error, especially for an allegedly sophisticated hacking gang. Given that bitcoin transactions are publicly available, it was easy for the feds to track the funds transferred from Colonial to this outfit, as Colonial’s initial transfer to the bitcoin wallet is public information. All they had to do was “follow the money,” which strangely made its way into a U.S. based custodial address.

The latest events surrounding the Colonial Pipeline drama simply do not square with the narratives coming out of the Biden Administration and its stenographers in the corporate press. We were told this much-hyped hacking group of alleged Russians posed a serious threat to our entire critical infrastructure, yet in the same breath happened to have committed a laughably amateurish bitcoin custody faux pas that allowed for the feds to easily take back possession of the affiliate funds.

...

In the end, the Russians and Bitcoin are not the antagonist actors in this story, though the DOJ seems more than happy to promulgate both of these narratives. Once the feds were able to identify a bitcoin “hot wallet” (as opposed to an offline bitcoin wallet that is controlled by the hackers themselves) was connected to online servers, it became a routine process to seize the funds through legal channels.

There’s also the possibility that the feds identified an individual or group in the affiliate organization responsible for contracting the ransomware attack due to some kind of sting operation. Once identified, the FBI may have proceeded to require these entities to send their funds into a bitcoin wallet in Northern California that is controlled by the FBI.

Anyway, the real issue here is how easily this could have all been avoided. It shows how horrifically poor our infrastructure is protected in this nation, to the point where a cheap ransomware attack by unnamed actors can result in a nationwide energy crisis. The story has nothing to do with U.S. adversaries and digital currencies, but of unbelievable incompetence and neglect on the part of Colonial and our overall security apparatus. It's called *critical* infrastructure for a reason."

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Is a “Climate Lockdown” on the horizon?

"In short: an economist who works for the WHO has written a report concerning “climate lockdowns”, which has been published by both a Gates+Soros backed NGO AND a group representing almost every bank, oil company and tech giant on the planet.

Whatever it says, it clearly has the approval of the people who run the world.

...

The text of the report itself is actually quite craftily constructed. It doesn’t outright argue for climate lockdowns, but instead discusses ways “we” can prevent them.

"As COVID-19 spread […] governments introduced lockdowns in order to prevent a public-health emergency from spinning out of control. In the near future, the world may need to resort to lockdowns again – this time to tackle a climate emergency […] To avoid such a scenario, we must overhaul our economic structures and do capitalism differently."

This cleverly creates a veneer of arguing against them, whilst actually pushing the a priori assumptions that any so-called “climate lockdowns” would a) be necessary and b) be effective. Neither of which has ever been established.

...

So, what exactly is a “climate lockdown”? And what would it entail?

The author is pretty clear:

"Under a “climate lockdown,” governments would limit private-vehicle use, ban consumption of red meat, and impose extreme energy-saving measures, while fossil-fuel companies would have to stop drilling."

There you have it. A “climate lockdown” means no more red meat, the government setting limits on how and when people use their private vehicles and further (unspecified) “extreme energy-saving measures”. It would likely include previously suggested bans on air travel, too.

...

As for forcing fossil fuel companies to stop drilling, that is drenched in the sort of ignorance of practicality that only exists in the academic world. Supposing we can switch to entirely rely on renewables for energy, we still wouldn’t be able to stop drilling for fossil fuels.

Oil isn’t just used as fuel, it’s also needed to lubricate engines and manufacture chemicals and plastics. Plastics used in the manufacture of wind turbines and solar panels, for example.

Coal isn’t just needed for power stations, but also to make steel. Steel which is vital to pretty much everything humans do in the modern world.

It reminds me of a Victoria Wood sketch from the 1980s, where an upper-middle class woman remarks, upon meeting a coal miner, “I suppose we don’t really need coal, now we’ve got electricity.”

A lot of post-fossil utopian ideas are sold this way, to people who are comfortably removed from the way the world actually works. This mirrors the supposed “recovery” the environment experienced during lockdown, a mythic creation selling a silver lining of house arrest to people who think that because they’re having their annual budget meetings over Zoom, somehow China stopped manufacturing 900 million tonnes of steel a year, and the US military doesn’t produce more pollution than 140 different countries combined.

...

So, the “climate lockdown” is a mix of dystopian social control, and impractical nonsense likely designed to sell an agenda. But don’t worry, we don’t have to do this. There is a way to avoid these extreme measures, the author says so:

"To avoid such a scenario, we must overhaul our economic structures and do capitalism differently […] Addressing this triple crisis requires reorienting corporate governance, finance, policy, and energy systems toward a green economic transformation […] Far more is needed to achieve a green and sustainable recovery […] we want to transform the future of work, transit, and energy use."

“Overhaul”? “reorienting”? “transformation”?

Seems like we’re looking at a new-built society. A “reset”, if you will, and given the desired scope, you could even call it a “great reset”, I suppose.

...

The whole article is not an argument, so much as an ultimatum. A gun held to the public’s collective head. “Obviously we don’t want to lock you up inside your homes, force you to eat processed soy cubes and take away your cars,” they’re telling us, “but we might have to, if you don’t take our advice.”

Will there be “climate lockdowns” in the future? I wouldn’t be surprised. But right now – rather than being seriously mooted – they are fulfilling a different role. A frightening hypothetical – A threat used to bully the public into accepting the hardline globalist reforms that make up the “great reset”."

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‘Self-Spreading’ Vaccines Pose Multiple Risks to Society — Including the End of Informed Consent

"Although some of the uninjected tell pollsters they plan to eventually get the vaccine, a solid minority remains committed to never doing so. The same pattern appears to hold true globally: Roughly one-third of adults worldwide said they will not take a COVID shot.

While social and behavioral science researchers apply “soft science” techniques in an attempt to maneuver vaccine confidence into more acquiescent territory, bench scientists have a different option potentially waiting in the wings — genetically engineered vaccines that “move through populations in the same way as communicable diseases,” spreading on their own “from host to host.”

...

In theory, self-spreading vaccines (also referred to as self-disseminating or autonomous) can be designed to be either transferable (“restricted to a single round of transmission”) or transmissible (“capable of indefinite transmission).”

Vaccine scientists concede transmissible vaccines “are still not mainstream, but the revolution in genome engineering poises them to become so.”

The makers of self-disseminating vaccines use recombinant vector technology to build genetic material from a target pathogen onto the “chassis” of a viral vector deemed “benign,” “innocuous” or “avirulent.” This is similar to the viral vector approach used to produce the Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca COVID vaccines.

For Johns Hopkins, the appeal of vaccines that are intentionally engineered to be self-disseminating seems obvious. The university’s Center for Health Security made its case explicit in a 2018 report, “Technologies to Address Global Catastrophic Biological Risks.” The report stated, “These vaccines could dramatically increase vaccine coverage in human …  populations without requiring each individual to be inoculated.”

...

As the university’s Center for Health Security briefly acknowledged in its report, self-disseminating vaccines would essentially make it impossible for “those to whom the vaccine subsequently spreads” to provide informed consent at all.

...

...the past year’s coronavirus hype has helped reinforce the popular perception that wildlife populations represent a menacing cauldron of latent viral threats — requiring only the right set of circumstances to spring into humanity-endangering action.

Parlaying the COVID moment into a convenient scientific opportunity, researchers suggest that the purported “failure to contain the SARS-Cov-2 pandemic” furnishes a rationale for accelerating the rollout of self-disseminating vaccines. As some journalists have phrased the question du jour, “Wouldn’t it be great if wild animals could be inoculated against the various diseases they host so that those microbes never get a chance to spread to humans?”

...

At least officially, the primary focus of self-spreading vaccine research has thus far been on wildlife populations. Although the practice of direct wildlife vaccination (for example, against rabies) has been around since the 1960s, it is the longstanding efforts to develop sterilizing vaccines in wildlife (euphemistically called “immunocontraception”), as well as recent advances in genetic engineering, that “have provided a foundation for transmissible-vaccine research.”

...

According to Johns Hopkins and others, another major challenge is the “not insignificant risk of the vaccine virus reverting to wild-type virulence,” creating an opportunity for the vaccines to propagate disease rather than prevent it.

In fact, the world is already familiar with this phenomenon in the form of oral polio vaccines. Though not “intentionally designed that way,” oral polio vaccines are considered “a little bit transmissible” and are acknowledged to cause polio.

Hopkins’ researchers pointedly characterized the reversion challenge as “both a medical risk and a public perception risk.” Another Catch-22 articulated in the university’s report is that while reversion risks could perhaps be lessened by engineering the vaccines to be more “weakly transmissible,” this could defeat the purpose of getting vaccines to “go” on their own.

On the other hand, the two scientists who are most strongly promoting transmissible vaccines argue that “even … where reversion is frequent, [their] performance will often substantially exceed that of conventional, directly administered vaccines.”

These same authors have also developed models suggesting that starting the transmissible ball rolling with direct vaccination of newborns could be particularly impactful.

In September 2020, two researchers writing in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists agreed that self-spreading vaccines may have significant downsides and could “entail serious risks,” particularly given that scientists lose control of their creation once released....

...

...the Bulletin authors drew readers’ attention to immunocontraception efforts in animals as well as an infamous example of “weaponized biology” against humans in apartheid-era South Africa, called Project Coast, which sought — reportedly unsuccessfully — to develop an “infertility ‘vaccine’ to be used on black women without their knowledge.”

...

Techno-thriller author Michael Crichton predicted in 2002 that with the advent of nanotechnology and other technological innovations, the pace of evolutionary change was likely to be “extremely rapid.” Crichton cautioned, “human beings have a poor record of addressing the hazards of new technologies as they arrive.”"

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Will the Pandemic Promote Political Power in Perpetuity?

"“It’s like we created another industry in our state. The amount of money is staggering,” Andrew Schaufele, director of Maryland’s Bureau of Revenue Estimates, happily declared last week. The Biden stimulus plan is deluging governments across America with hundreds of billions of dollars of extra revenue that will allow politicians to stretch their power in ways that vex citizens long after the pandemic is over.

One year ago writing for AIER, I asked, “Will the Political Class Be Held Liable For What They’ve Done?” Lockdowns at that point had already destroyed more than ten million jobs without thwarting the virus – a debacle that “should be a permanent black mark against the political class and the experts who sanctified each and every sacrifice.” No such luck. The article warned that “sovereign immunity… almost guarantees that no politician will face any personal liability for their shutdown dictates.”

The political class is coming out of the pandemic with far more power and prerogatives. Biden’s stimulus windfalls for lockdown governors is like giving $100,000 bounties to drunk drivers who crashed their cars. Government employees have been the ultimate privileged class during Covid-19, collecting full paychecks almost everywhere while many of them stayed home and did little or no work.

Maryland will receive between $55 billion to $60 billion in federal stimulus funds – equal to “11 percent of the state’s entire economy.” The Maryland legislature “celebrated” by giving bonuses to government employees and by funding many new programs. Many other states have similarly used federal windfalls to launch new initiatives.

...

Throughout history, rulers have used cash to buy submission. “Money is my most important ammunition in this war,” said Gen. David Petraeus, the supreme U.S. commander in Iraq. Presidents and members of Congress have long relied on “money as a weapon system” to buy votes or undermine resistance to Washington.

Government restrictions almost always follow government handouts. In 1942, the Supreme Court ruled, “It is hardly lack of due process for the government to regulate that which it subsidizes.” Because the Roosevelt administration had decided to drive up wheat prices, the Secretary of Agriculture acquired veto power over the use of every acre of cropland in the nation. In 1991, in a case involving federal subsidies, Chief Justice William Rehnquist declared that “when the Government appropriates public funds to establish a program, it is entitled to define the limits of that program.”

Every subsidy creates a power vacuum that will eventually be filled by bureaucratic or political ambition. The more things are financed by subsidies, the more activities become dependent on bureaucratic approval and political manipulation. To depend on government subsidies means either to be currently restricted – or to be only one Federal Register notice away from being restricted. Subsidies are the modern method of humane conquest: slow political coups d’etat over one swath of American life after another. The only way to assume that subsidies are compatible with individual liberty is to assume that politicians and bureaucrats do not like power.

...

Post-pandemic policies are far more perilous because few Americans yet recognize how badly their rulers failed them...."

One thing to note is that business seems perfectly capable of taking government money while maintaining autonomy. Maybe #WeThePeople need to to attempt the same?

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YouTube suspends Senator Ron Johnson for Covid-19 ‘misinformation’

"Johnson was suspended from posting new content to his channel for one week, apparently because of a video in which he discussed alternative Covid-19 treatments. A YouTube spokesman told The Hill on Friday that the offending video, which was removed from the platform, violated its policy against speech encouraging people to use Hydroxychloroquine or Ivermectin to treat or prevent the virus.

“YouTube's arrogant Covid censorship continues,” Johnson said on Twitter. “How many lives will be lost as a result? How many lives could have been saved with a free exchange of medical ideas? This suppression of speech should concern every American.”

...

Johnson said his YouTube suspension showed that major social media platforms have accumulated too much “unaccountable power.” The suspension puts Johnson at risk of stiffer penalties if he's ruled to have committed additional violations of YouTube's rules within the next 90 days. A second strike will result in a two-week uploading ban, while a third strike would mean permanent removal from the platform.

...

Big Tech platforms similarly banned Trump-backed speculation that Covid-19 may have leaked from China's Wuhan Institute of Virology. But in recent weeks, the lab-origin theory has gained mainstream attention. Even the Washington Post, which had previously mocked and dismissed the lab-leak speculation, said late last month that the theory “suddenly became credible.” On May 26, Facebook stopped censoring posts claiming that the virus was man-made or manufactured."