Month: September 2021

Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,

All it takes is one free place to change the dynamic between the public and an authoritarian regime. Just one.

This week has been an extremely busy news cycle and there is a lot to cover, so along with my normal weekly analysis on one major topic, I am going to start writing shorter synopsis articles on developing news items happening in real time. I think everyone has noticed a marked and aggressive shift in the vaccine passport agenda being railroaded into existence by the Biden Administration and governments around the world. Remember when they all said that they were never going to demand forced vaccinations and that the passports were a “conspiracy theory”? Well guess what? We “conspiracy theorists” were right yet again.

It used to be that we would predict a particular agenda or event and it would take a couple years to unfold. These days we make predictions and all it takes is a few weeks or a few months for them to happen. This suggests to me that the establishment and the globalists are on a specific timeline and that for whatever reason they MUST get 100% vaccination and the passports in place soon. I believe we have less than a year left before we see them attempt full bore medical tyranny in the US on a scale similar to what is happening right now in Australia, or perhaps worse.

I continue to suspect that the reason for this sudden dive into totalitarianism is because there is something wrong with the vaccines themselves and if there are tens of millions or hundreds of millions of unvaccinated people left, then these people will act as a control group. That is to say, they will act as proof that the vaccines are not safe if things go awry. The establishment can’t allow that.

As I have noted in past articles, the average vaccine is tested for 10-15 YEARS before it is released for use on human beings. This is to ensure that there are no damaging health side effects that might not become visible until months or years after the initial jab. A particular danger is the development of autoimmune disorders and infertility associated with mRNA and spike protein technology. These debilitating ailments might not be noticed for a couple of years after a population has been given the experimental vax. It has already been about a year since the covid vaccines were introduced by emergency authorization, so time is running short for the globalists.

The bottom line is, there has been ZERO long term testing of the covid mRNA vaccines. At least none that has ever been revealed to the public. There is NO SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE that the covid vaccines are safe in the long term, they were developed and released within months of the covid outbreak. Yet, the establishment seems hell bent on forcing 100% of people to take these untested vaccines against their better judgment. It has been almost a century since we last saw government tyranny on this level, but this time it is almost all governments around the world acting in unison to implement mass controls on the public, instead of just a handful of nations.

The Biden Administration and its corporate partners are now implementing a blitzkrieg against the American citizenry. Biden’s vaccine executive orders are creating a culture of “paper’s please” fascism among larger businesses and Big Box retailers. He has recently announced that part of the mandates will include fines against businesses that refuse to enforce proof of vaccination on their employees. These fines will range from $70,000 to $700,000, which could destroy a medium sized company if they actually had to pay.

Medical personnel, primarily in leftist blue states, are now being fired from their positions because they have refused to comply with the vax. This is leaving massive gaps in medical response in places like New York. The unelected governor of New York, Kathy Hochul, claims she has the right to give herself dictatorial powers through executive order, and that these powers include deploying National Guard troops to take over medical duties. If you are familiar with the sordid history of VA hospitals, then you know that you do not want around 90% of military doctors operating on you in any capacity.

Hochul is also raising eyebrows with a recent speech to a church audience in Brooklyn where she claimed that all the “smart people” have taken the vaccines and that the covid jabs are a “gift from God.” Her assertion was that if you defy the vaccine mandates, then you are ignoring God.

This sounds rather familiar. Authoritarians often have a habit of declaring divine providence to justify their oppressive actions. Even Hitler did this, at least initially, holding state sponsored Passion plays and asserting that the Third Reich was the hand of God, until after they had secured an empire and then Hitler attacked Christianity. These types of people tend to use religion as a tool to get what they want and then they dump it in the gutter when they are finished with it.

Keep in mind that none of these mandates are actual “laws”. None of them have been voted on by a legislature or the American people. They are color of law violations of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and should be defied at every opportunity.

And let’s not forget about Biden’s latest actions which seek to punish US troops that refuse the vaccines with dishonorable discharge. I’m not sure if Biden knows that a dishonorable discharge generally requires a trial by court martial in the military, or maybe this is what he actually wants for every single person that will not take the vax. In any case, the goal here is to terrify military members into submission and into accepting illegal orders. And yes, demanding that a soldier act as a lab rat for an experimental vaccine with no long term data to prove its safety is an illegal order.

It’s hard to say yet what the real stats are, but recent polling suggests that at least 30% of the US military plans to refuse the vaccinations, including many members of special operations units.

All of this over a virus with a tiny median death rate of 0.26%? Just to force people to take a vaccine that has been proven completely ineffective in countries like Israel where vaccination rates are high? When over 60% of people hospitalized with covid are fully vaccinated, then what is the point of the vaccines? It makes no sense unless the purpose was always tyranny and not public safety. So, where does this leave us?

There are larger scale solutions to this problem, there are peaceful short term solutions, and there are more violent long term solutions. I will be discussing the violent options in my next article, but for now I think the best path forward is for red states and maybe even red counties is to offer safe haven or “asylum” to people who are under attack from these mandates.

Red states could, hypothetically, give financial protection to businesses that refuse to comply with federal mandates and refuse to pay the fines. If thousands or tens of thousands of companies simply ignore the passports and the fines, what is Biden going to do about it? Well, he would have to send people form a federal agency, maybe the IRS, to collect by force. If states and communities stand in their way then there is nothing Biden can do to hurt businesses that believe in freedom.

There is supposedly a shortage of experienced medical staff across the country right now, yet states like New York are firing up to one-third of their hospital workforce. Why not take advantage of their stupidity and offer these trained professionals jobs in red states or red counties? If these people know they have a safe place to go, then this might help give them the courage to continue their resistance.

Finally, I think it’s a no-brainer that red states should offer help for military personnel that are facing discharge for vax refusal. A fight is coming, make no mistake, and free states need as many trained combat veterans on our side as we can get. Being dishonorably discharged makes future employment difficult in many career fields, and we can help these men and women to live normal lives if they make a stand. States like Kansas are already taking steps to make this happen.

Conservative states and communities are going to have to step in, take risks and draw a line in the sand right here and now. We can stop this nightmare from gaining any further ground, but we have to act. I and many others are willing to help defend any business or any person that will not comply with the mandates, and state representative can send the same message to Biden by creating safe havens for free people. We need to continue to make it clear that we will not comply.

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The last 18 months haven’t exactly been a lazy boat ride for the people of NYC. COVID and a wave of hurricanes have taken their toll, and to top it all off, rostitutes and drug dealers re-emerge in to the city’s streets while surging violent crime and on-again, off-again protests have left the NYPD defunded and disillusioned.

Underlying it all is the growing sense that the Big Apple is no longer “safe” for regular people. And as if a daytime shooting in crowded Times Square wasn’t enough, now diners need to worry about being steamrolled by a preoccupied city worker while trying to enjoy a meal in one of the outdoor dining sheds that have become commonplace across America’s city’s (and particularly New York) since the pandemic began.

According to Gothamist, a Department of Sanitation truck plowed into an outdoor dining shed, dragging it and the diners inside about ten feet before it finally came to a stop. Shocking footage shared by Gothamist captures the aftermath. Fortunately, the two people inside the shed weren’t badly injured during the incident, according to the NYPD.

A manager at the Greenwich Village restaurant Bar 6, described the incident as shocking.

“It was shocking, definitely felt like an earthquake, seeing a structure drag across the street,” said Anna Socolof, a manager at Bar Six. “I was worried for the safety of our customers, and also for the safety of everyone involved.”

Socolof complained to Gothamist that the bar had previously warned a local newspaper about “just such a possibility”

But police played down the incident, telling the press that nobody was injured and no summons were issued to the driver.

“Sanitation Workers have an incredibly difficult job keeping our streets clean,” DSNY spokesperson Joshua Goodman said. “We are relieved that no one was hurt in this incident, and will be conducting a full investigation.”

As more garbage piles up in the city, and reports of rat infestations soar, the overburdened DSNY might find it increasingly difficult to successfully keep the city’s streets tidy while not pancaking pedestrians.

Authored by M.Roberts via AmericanThinker.com,

As a member of the U.S. government’s security apparatus, I have witnessed a level of groupthink that would shock even the most accredited academics associated with the leading internationalist think tanks.  As the professional class of international relations thinkers and their elitist dopamine peddlers in mainstream media continue launching their crusade against the so-called threat of populism, the people are again being actively pushed out of foreign and domestic policy. 

The boogieman-version of populism that is being thrust upon cable news viewers is not entirely accurate.  This misconstrued definition in the modern American lexicon purports that populism is synonymous with authoritarian strongmen who intend to push nativist policies inherently referred to as racist. 

But at its core, populism is concerned with the people and attending to the ordinary citizens of a nation, regardless of race and ethnicity, by giving them a voice in their respective societies.  The authoritarian context has been married to the term through a series of foreign demagogues who have utilized the façade of populist policies to gain momentum for their own political gains.  There is no shortage of names on the list of offenders, and there is no real purpose to go through them but to highlight that this concept has been hijacked by the global internationalist class as a window to achieve their own personal gain. Most ironically, the left has decided to label modern conservatism as a breeding ground for populist ideas; and I believe this to be a badge of honor that conservatives must take up with pride.  Clearly, leftist elitists still believe that their globalist-centered policies have created positive change by trying to remake the world in their own image.  Let us take a brief moment to review the fruits of the left’s endeavors.

From the time of the United States’ unipolar moment in the 1990s until the present, the idea of globalization and U.S. economic and militaristic dominance became synonymous and interchangeable terms.  The elitists hoped to create supply chain diversity and free markets which, in turn, forced societies to live more harmoniously as they were all interconnected.  We can see that the only real positive change had eventually benefitted the corporate class who now had free reign in shaping the rules of the road and playing by their own rules.  The common people were left behind, failing to adapt to the vertical integration of society that came with globalization.  No longer were the Democrats concerned about projecting the idea that they were fighting on behalf of the working class.  No longer were they concerned about First Amendment issues.  In fact, the Democrats, who purported to be the party of anti-trust, had ultimately facilitated the growth of tech oligarchies into unimaginable monopolistic empires that censored First Amendment protected speech as a result of their incessant desires to obtain capital for their re-election campaigns.  Again, the people were left out of these conversations entirely.

In parallel with a recent public awakening on America’s domestic policy pivots, we are seeing a seismic shift in public sentiment toward internationalist and globalist views of how America should act abroad.  We constantly hear from the think-tank class that domestic policy is foreign policy, and vice versa.  If that were true, then we would see an American foreign policy focused on American citizens’ interests.  We are constantly reminded that it is in America’s interest to be embroiled in Middle East conflicts and powerplays in Eurasia with a declining power that have no social and economic value for the average U.S. citizen.  We know these are empty statements, and even outright lies, as global lenders and the military-industrial complex became the primary benefactors from these entanglements.  So, what can be done? Part of the answer lies in the fact that the public cannot, and will not, be able to stay silent on their political beliefs much longer with the advent of new media outperforming legacy media.  The public is starved for honest journalists, real domestic initiatives that empower and employ the population with growth potential, and a foreign policy that is focused on the citizenry’s interests. 

A logical solution to enacting positive change is to encourage the next generations to apply for government positions.  The permanent bureaucracy of government is arguably the most influential power structure that dominates our way of life.  The bureaucracy is charged with collecting your taxes, protecting you from crime, providing health benefits, and so on.  Even more, these individuals are not elected by you.  They are hired as you are within your respective lines of work.  They are meant to be accountable to you as public servants.  However, this bloated class of bureaucrats has become the most sclerotic, yet authoritative, entity that serves the outdated goals of the internationalists.  We often elect new leaders who vow for change and then become excited at the prospect of a shift in policy with a new incoming administration.  This age-old tale is retold, in different forms, every four years with no real shift in policies at the levels of government that matter.  We can thank the unelected permanent bureaucracy for this continual inaction, as they are beholden to the ideologies that have gained them their respective power in the halls of their workplaces.  If we are to change the way that government works for the people, we must encourage the future to invest in government service.

The U.S. government has a funny way of listening to outside advice: it does not.  The bureaucracy is stuck in their assessments of the world within the context of their 1990s sense of idealism.  Analytical frameworks surrounding foreign policy and national security priorities often do not account for the people’s benefit.  If the think-tankers were correct about the synergy of foreign and domestic policy, then we would see a foreign policy that benefitted working-class people of all colors and creeds. 

• The GOP must break away from their reactionary inklings of clinging singularly onto cultural war issues and pursue a strategy of ensuring the American public that the party supports their best interests, economically and socially. 

• On the flip side, the Democrats have completely abandoned the notion of even considering the working-class voter in policy implementation, which presents an even greater advantage for GOP strategists to show voters the state’s obvious neglect. 

What other choice do we have as a people but to make a change from inside the apparatus?  Encouraging young individuals to embark on a life of government service may not be easy, as the pay does not attract the attention that a silicon-valley tech giant might offer.  However, joining this system may yield the most consequential benefit for society: true representation within our government.

*  *  *

M. Roberts is a government security official who wishes to remain anonymous for obvious reasons.

Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

The International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor is seeking approval to resume an investigation into alleged war crimes in Afghanistan but will “deprioritize” investigating suspected crimes by the US and its allies.

Karim Khan, who took over as ICC prosecutor in June, said he would focus on Taliban and ISIS-K, citing recent allegations. ISIS-K took credit for the August 26th suicide attack at the Kabul airport that killed over 100 Afghan civilians and 13 US troops.

Khan’s reasoning is that the ICC has limited resources, and the Taliban and ISIS-K are responsible for more recent alleged crimes. But the last known US airstrike in Afghanistan took place on August 29th, and it killed 10 civilians, including seven children.

According to Al Jazeera: 

A lawyer for alleged victims of US torture in Afghanistan was “stunned” after Khan announced he would “deprioritize” the investigation into American forces, a probe that has long enraged Washington.

There were other instances in the final weeks of the US war in Afghanistan of civilians being killed by US airstrikes. In early August, US airstrikes in Lashkar Gah killed destroyed a health clinic and a school, killing at least 20 civilians.

In 2020, the ICC moved forward with an investigation into alleged US war crimes in Afghanistan. The Trump administration reacted by slapping sanctions on ICC officials, which were lifted by the Biden administration in April. The investigation was on hold as the now-defunct US-backed Afghan government was promising to do the investigation on its own.

Is this the same ICC which wanted to investigate US war crimes in Afghanistan but then desisted when threatened by the US? https://t.co/AIcYPiaxHy

— asad abukhalil أسعد أبو خليل (@asadabukhalil) September 29, 2021

While the Biden administration has lifted ICC sanctions, it has come out in opposition to the court’s decision to investigate alleged Israeli war crimes in Gaza. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the ICC is “unfairly” targeting Israel even though the ICC said it will also investigate claims made against Hamas.

It may seem like ancient history now, but back in January the great WallStreetBets short squeeze was all the rage, having sent heavily shorted meme stocks like GME and AMC to unprecedented heights as millions of retail daytraders used their Robinhood account to pile on and buy in wave after seemingly endless wave in the process crushing reputable hedge funds such as Melvin Capital which needed multi-billion capital infusions to avoid being margin called to death. That wave, however, came to an abrupt end on January 28 when Robinhood took the unprecedented action to “render the financial system inaccessible” to millions of customers and investors, as a recently filed class-action lawsuit claims, when it went into sell-only made as the retail brokerage found itself short on regulatory capital as a result of the unprecedented buying tsunami, and imposed temporary bans on purchases of 13 heavily shorted stocks in the process ending the epic momentum wave and allowing a fresh round of short sellers – which the lawsuit claims included such financial scions such as Citadel – to generate material profits.

The fact that Citadel also happens to be Robinhood’s biggest customer and pays the retail brokerage hundreds of millions to frontrun retail orders placed on the Robinhood brokerage in the form of Payment for Orderflow, only added to the complexity and reflexivity of the situation.

We discussed this episode in great detail back in February in “Exposing The Robinhood Scam: Here’s How Much Citadel Paid To Robinhood To Buy Your Orders“ in which we said “Frankly, we’ve had it with the constant stream of lies from Robinhood and neverending bullshit from the company’s CEO, Vlad Tenev.” And while we laid out all the lies we had observed from both Robinhood’s CEO and Citadel, including Citadel’s threats to sue us into oblivion for alleging they frontrun their own customers only for FINRA to accuse Citadel of doing just that (resulting blessed silence from Citadel’s lawyers as far as we are concerned), the best summary of the entire January farce belonged to Michael Burry who on February said in a since deleted tweet that “The #mainstreetrevolution is a myth. Zero commissions and gamified apps were designed to feed flows to the two most influential WS trading houses. A few HFs got hurt, but if retail is moving toward more trading and away from fundamentals, WS owns that game. #Stonks by design.” Jeffrey Gundlach also piled on.

To be clear, the name change would reflect Robinhood robbing the little guy, nothing else.

— Jeffrey Gundlach (@TruthGundlach) February 10, 2021

Still, memories fade, and Robinhood’s dismal abdication of its fiduciary responsibilities was mostly forgotten especially after the company – which for a brief moment in late January was insolvent and urgently needed billions in rescue funding – went public and now has a market cap of over $37 billion.

Yet not everybody forgot and a recent filing in a class action lawsuit filed in April in the Southern District of Florida (case 21-md-02989), revealed that a lot of what Robinhood and Citadel called conspiracy theories, was in fact true, culminating earlier this week when the top trending hashtag on twitter was #KenGriffenLied.

#1 Trending on Twitter is #KenGriffinLied pic.twitter.com/0SMlyjwfya

— Wolf of My Street🏡 (@Ryan__Rigg) September 27, 2021

Remarkably, the latest populist uprising against Citadel and Robinhood (incidentally, the same venue where most of those who slam Robinhood on social media also trade), prompted the two financial firm to respond to the renewed criticism of their actions during January’s meme-stock frenzy. As we reported on Monday, Citadel – whose founder Ken Griffin testified about the episode during a February congressional hearing and claimed there was no back and forth between his firm and Robinhood – fired off a series of tweets late Monday denying allegations that it pressured Robinhood to restrict trading. Apparently having gotten under Citadel’s skin, the defensive tweets continued late on Tuesday when the HFT-heavy internalizer first mocked conspiracy theorists saying that “there are those who still refuse to believe an American landed on the moon. Internet conspiracies and Twitter mobs try to ignore the facts, but the fact is that Citadel Securities was the pre-eminent market maker to the retail brokerage community in January 2021” before stating that “Citadel Securities never requested, intimated, agreed or otherwise sought to limit or to restrict the trading of such securities. On January 27th, we executed an astonishing 7.4 billion shares on behalf of retail investors.”

On January 27th, numerous retail brokerage firms imposed restrictions on the trading of certain “meme stocks” due to capital constraints, liquidity concerns and other commercial reasons.

— Citadel Securities (@citsecurities) September 28, 2021

We’re proud of the important role we have long played in making US financial markets fair, transparent, resilient, and the envy of the world.

— Citadel Securities (@citsecurities) September 28, 2021

At the same time, Robinhood said in an emailed statement Tuesday that the lawsuit paints “a false narrative of collusion” with Citadel Securities.

Ken Griffin added a statement of his own on Tuesday: “It must frustrate the conspiracy theorists to no end that Vlad and I have never texted, called or met each other. But I must say, kudos to Vlad and his team at Robinhood for their remarkable success story.” Of course Griffin will be delighted by Robinhood’s success in enticing tens of millions of Gen-Z Americans to daytrade: after all frontrunning their orderflow (for which it generously paid Robinhood) is what allowed Citadel Securites to record its best year ever in 2020.

In fact, when Griffin was congratulating Robinhood, he was really toasting to the success of Citadel Securities – which is perhaps best known for being the biggest buyers of Robinhood stock and option orderflow (which remains a perfectly legal strategy for Wall Street exchanges) with the intent of “price improvement” – in a year that was defined by economic pain and despair for many, but will go down as the most profitable for Wall Street firms in history. It will also allow Ken to add several more massive mansions to his already staggering collection.

In any case, while we would love to take Ken Griffin on his word that nothing illegal took place, we will leave that to the discovery process. In the latest lawsuit, plaintiffs allege that Citadel Securities amassed a substantial short position in GameStop and other stocks that exploded in value, and that the market-maker pressured Robinhood to stop customers from purchasing those shares, which the online brokerage did on Jan. 28.

In fact, it appears we already know that Griffin lied: according to the complaint filed Sept. 22 in federal court in Miami, senior executives at both Citadel Securities and Robinhood had “numerous communications with each other that indicate that Citadel applied pressure on Robinhood.”

BREAKING (2/3) 🚨

See the following images for better context of what is going on.

The link to the actual document is in the 3rd part of this thread. pic.twitter.com/FtnyhVBXws

— Antonio Martinez (@AntonioTheMexi) September 25, 2021

According to the plantiffs who managed to obtain internal chat transcripts, on January 27 the day before the restrictions were implemented, high level employees of Citadel and Robinhood had numerous communications with each other, contrary to what Ken Griffin told Congress. Furthermore, the plaintiffs allege that Citadel applied pressure on Robinhood to throttle (and eventually block) purchases in the heavily shorted names.

The plaintiffs also argue that Citadel Securities stood to gain from stopping the short squeeze by purchasing new shorts positions at the peak of the squeeze and then profiting from the decrease in share prices as the buying momentum fizzled. As the next chat session between an unnamed Robinhood employee and Jim Swartwout, President and COO of Robinhood, indicates, on Jan 27 – after being told that several “very large” firms are having really bad nights, he had just had a conversation with Citadel which was “unbelievable” and revealed a “total mess.”

Perhaps Swartwout can testify for the record just what this “unbelievable” conversation he had just had with Citadel was all about.

So on to the infamous January 28 when shortly before Robinhood announced it would implement the dreaded PCO or “position closing only” policy which the plaintiffs allege was designed to artificially suppress the prices of Suspended Stocks – despite indicating that “we are too big for them to actually shut us down” referring to Tenev’s allegation that the NSCC was the one seeking the trading halt – we read from yet another internal chat that at least one Robinhood employee correctly predicted that “we are going to get crucified… for pco’ing.”

Curiously, someone else had a similar bad feeling about the PCO: Citadel. According to the lawsuit, “former Citadel Securities Senior Vice President, in an internal chat with Citadel Securities Head of Execution Services, on January 28, 2021, at 1:48pm UTC, ““Robinhood moving the following EQUITY positions to CLOSING ONLY: AMC, GME, NOK, BB, NAKD, KOSS, EXPR, BBBY all PCO.” Citadel acknowledged, “this may cause some big moves.” (Emphasis added.) When asked about options at 1:55 p.m. UTC, Citadel stated, “options moving too . . . closing only in all symbols.”

But while the nuances of who knew in advance, or who demanded, or who profited from the “code red” the PCO, and whether Citadel pressured and stood to profit from said PCO, will eventually be decided upon by the judge, one thing is a flashing red light that Gary Gensler and the SEC should immediately follow up on.

On page 4 of the MDL amended complaint (docket 21-2989) we read that ahead of the PCO, “Robinhood  knew  at  the  highest  levels  of  the  company  that  its  risk  management  system was strained to the breaking point during the week of January 25th. Robinhood Securities President and COO, James (Jim) Swartwout, who Tenev points to as making the ultimate call to PCO, says in an internal chat on January  26, 2021, “I sold my AMC today. FYI  –  tomorrow morning we are moving GME to 100% – so you are aware.”

Now, while the “we are moving GME to 100%” may refer to Robinhood demanding 100% margin on GME stock as of Jan 27 as the firm realized it didn’t have nearly enough client margin to satisfy regulatory requirements, the preceding fragment, “I sold my AMC today” can mean just one thing: Swartwout sold all his AMC stock on January 26, two days before the firm blocked tens of millions of clients from being able to buy it, in the process triggering a price collapse.

It wasn’t until February 5, or one week later, that Robinhood would remove all restrictions in the trading of the meme stocks.

Which brings us to the question posed by Dave Portnoy, whose long-running feud with Vlad Tenev is well-known: did “The President of Robinhood sold all his AMC right before they restricted trading.“

Is this real? The President of Robinhood sold all his AMC right before they restricted trading. Where is this from? @vladtenev ? https://t.co/EtI9Xc0Z9x

— Dave Portnoy (@stoolpresidente) September 29, 2021

We conclude with one tangent: every time Citadel is cornered and asked if they are frontrunning retail orderflow, they immediately change the subject and explain how they are making the market more efficient and saving investors so much money in commissions. Of course, what they don’t explain is how and why they end up making far more than the money they kick back to the brokerage for lost commissions. Here’s the answer:

This, for lack of a better word, is frontrunning pure and simple. But because frontrunning is illegal if only when peasants do it, and sounds so much more sophisticated and noble when it is framed as “high frequently trading” and “payment for oderflow”, the market will remain broken because the corrupt, bought and paid for SEC will never dare to explain to ordinary Americans what a giant crime scene our markets have become. It’s also why nothing will ever change, and after all these lawsuits are settled, Citadel and Robinhood will be order to pay a few million dollars in settlement fees and life in the corrupt world of capital markets will go on as usual.

 

It took a full week after a New York Times visual investigation for the Pentagon to very belatedly admit its “tragic mistake” in a drone strike which killed 10 civilians, including 7 children. In total this was three weeks after the attack itself. Prior to that, military leaders had held firmly to the narrative that the Aug.29 airstrike stopped an “ISIS-K terrorist” – despite the narrative fast unraveling, yet they continued to talk about “confidence” in the intelligence. 

A not so little detail emerged in Wednesday’s Senate hearing of top commanders: the narrative has now dramatically shifted to the Pentagon having known “within hours” that innocent civilians had been taken out in the botched attack, which in the end targeted a local humanitarian aid worker. Yet a Pentagon statement on the day of the attack said, “We are assessing the possibilities of civilian casualties, though we have no indications at this time” – which clearly downplayed the possibility civilian deaths and left it in doubt. 

The confirmation (and contradiction) of just what US military leaders knew and when they knew it came after Mississippi Republican Rep. Trent Kelley pressed top brass on the issue during Wednesday’s hearing. 

“Well, so, we knew the strike hit civilians within four or five hours after the strike occurred, and U.S. Central Command released a press release saying that,” CENTCOM Commander Gen. Kenneth “Frank” McKenzie said. “We did not know, though, that the target of the strike was in fact in error, a mistake, until sometime later. It took us a few days to run that down.” Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley agreed it was the “same thing” for him. 

Recall that Milley had previously hailed the operation as a “righteous strike”. But The Washington Examiner is now pointing out that the latest testimony confirms the Pentagon spin and outright falsehoods: 

But it is not true that CENTCOM issued a press release confirming the airstrike hit civilians.

CENTCOM spokesman Capt. Bill Urban released an initial statement on Aug. 29 saying, “U.S. military forces conducted a self-defense unmanned over-the-horizon airstrike today on a vehicle in Kabul, eliminating an imminent ISIS-K threat to Hamad Karzai International airport. We are confident we successfully hit the target.” Urban added, “We are assessing the possibilities of civilian casualties, though we have no indications at this time.”

And more:

Later that day, the CENTCOM spokesman released an “UPDATE,” in which he said, “We are aware of reports of civilian casualties following our strike on a vehicle in Kabul today,” claiming that “a large amount of explosive material inside” the car “may have caused additional casualties.” He added, “It is unclear what may have happened, and we are investigating further. We would be deeply saddened by any potential loss of innocent life.” The statement did not confirm civilian injuries or deaths.

Again, the generals have now testified they knew within hours.

Top general says US military was aware within hours that Kabul drone strike killed civilians, but Pentagon took weeks to fully acknowledge it https://t.co/wYvgA0a7Cu via @businessinsider

— John Haltiwanger (@jchaltiwanger) September 29, 2021

So the Pentagon knew about the confirmed deaths “within hours” but continued to keep casting doubt on civilian deaths and holding the possibility at a distance, likely hoping reports of the deaths would get buried, or would remain ambiguous accusations – as the language of their early press releases suggest (with words like “unclear” and “may have happened” and the “potential” of civilian deaths based on being “aware of reports”). 

It’s easy to conclude that had The New York Times not conducted its own detailed investigation, which included photos and video from on the ground, the Pentagon and Biden administration never would have been “caught” – and never would have admitted anything. 

Authored by Dinesh D’Souza, op-ed via The Epoch Times,

Caste systems are not merely unjust; they are also ugly to behold. Commenting to me once on India’s caste system, when I was a child, my father said, “People in this country still use the word ‘untouchable,’ which is if you think about it a very unlovely term.”

While India’s caste system persists despite being outlawed, America traditionally has not had a caste system.

Until now.

We can see emerging, right here in America, a sharp divide between progressive elites and ordinary citizens.

This divide can be seen in multiple areas.

Progressive elites have high walls protecting their homes, even as they declare that “walls don’t work.”

They have private security, even as they insist Americans don’t need guns to protect themselves.

They somehow elude accountability even when they break the same laws that get ordinary citizens into major trouble.

Nowhere, however, is the new American caste system more evident than with COVID-19.

Did you see Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) at the Met gala? The publicity focused on her “Tax the Rich” dress, but just as notable was the video, released by Vogue magazine, of AOC in full Cinderella mode, flanked by multiple attendants, straightening out her hair, fixing her dress, holding up the long train, adjusting her heels. They were all masked; she was not.

This was hardly an isolated case. Shortly before the Met gala, the Obamas held a massive party to celebrate Obama’s 60th birthday. Again, the guests that included political leaders, business moguls, and Hollywood celebrities were all unmasked. The chefs, the servers, the valets, and the other staff were all masked. An upper caste and a lower caste, both playing their roles in Obama’s large tent.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, also just had a birthday, and video showed a small, unventilated room in which Jayapal and her maskless friends all partied together. It was the same story with San Francisco mayor London Breed, who violated her own mask mandate while partying at a club. “I was feeling the spirit,” she explained, “and I wasn’t thinking about a mask.”

The Emmys, too, featured clip after clip of unmasked actors, producers, and directors walking the press photo line, and only when they crossed over to the other side could you see all the staff and attendants, masked of course, taking them back to their seats. Asked about this double standard, LA County’s  Health Department put out a statement saying that mask “exceptions are made for film, television and music productions,” because “persons appearing on the show are considered performers.” The virus, evidently, has no interest in infecting “performers.”

To understand what’s going on in its widest significance, consider the true meaning of the famous phrase in the Declaration of Independence: “All men are created equal.” What does this phrase mean? At one level, certainly, it means that we enjoy equality of rights. The Constitution goes on to specify not merely equality of rights but also equal treatment under the law.

This concept of equality of rights should not, as Abraham Lincoln emphasized, be confused with equality of outcomes. Human beings are obviously unequal in height, in speed, in beauty, in intelligence, even in moral character. An equal start in the race does not mean, obviously, that all individuals or even all groups must hit the finishing tape at the same time.

Yet at the same time there’s a broader meaning to the equality provision that goes beyond rights. We are not merely equal as human beings, we are “created” equal. This means that we are equally the children of God, and it follows from this that God loves us equally and therefore there’s an equal dignity in persons that derives, ultimately, from the fact that they’re created by a transcendent God.

How does this equal dignity play out in American life? It simply means that someone—say Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates—might have more money than you or me, but they are not better than you or me. In America, we have maids but not servants, and in many restaurants we call even the waiter “Sir,” as if he were a knight. The political philosopher Irving Kristol once said there’s no restaurant in America to which a CEO could go in the absolute assurance that he would not also find his secretary dining there.

So the Declaration of Independence affirms a social equality that is the very antithesis of a caste system. Yet precisely what our founding documents reject, the progressive elite, mostly made up of Democrats, is attempting to create for the first time in America a society divided into an elite upper caste and a mass lower caste, with separate rules applying to each group, in accordance with their caste status.

It’s unlovely. It’s downright ugly. It’s also immoral. And it’s certainly un-American.