Category: zerohedge

Submitted by South Front,

At the beginning of May, the time of spring cleaning in central Syria may have arrived.

The Russian Aerospace Forces carried out a series of airstrikes on ISIS hideouts in the region, and specifically the Jebel Bishri region located along the administrative border between Raqqa and Deir Ezzor, the Hama-Aleppo-Raqqa triangle and other parts of the region.

These strikes took place in anticipation of a large-scale operation that the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) will carry out with Russian support.

Several units from the SAA 5th Corps, 11th Division and the 25th Special Forces Division, known as the Tiger Forces, will take part in the operation. Syrian troops will move from Hama and Raqqa simultaneously.

ISIS has ramped up its activities in the last several weeks. The Amaq News Agency even shared footage of terrorists going about their daily chores in Homs. Likely to show that being a terrorist isn’t so bad and there’s some sort of normality to the entire scenario.

In the northern part of Syria, despite no ISIS, chaos is ever present. Not least thanks to Turkey’s crusade on the Kurdish groups in the region.

On May 2nd, a child was reportedly killed when at least 12 rockets landed in Afrin city center and nearby farms. The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which control a strip of land to the south of Afrin, was blamed for the deadly rocket attack.

On the previous day, six artillery shells hit Afrin city. No human losses were reported, Turkish forces responded by shelling two nearby towns held by the SDF.

Several units of the SAA and the Russian Military Police are present in the SDF-held pocket south of Afrin.

On April 30th, the Russian Aerospace Forces targeted militants preparing to attack Turkish forces in the northern region. Militants near the town of Shuarghat al-Arz in northern Aleppo and Khurbat al-Ruzz in northern Raqqa were targeted with several FOTAB 100-80 flash bombs.

On the same day, nearby, in Greater Idlib, militants of the al-Fateh al-Mubeen Operations Room, that’s led by al-Qaeda-affiliated Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, attacked Syrian army positons near the town of Kafr Nabl in the southern part of the province.

The militants targeted SAA troops with heavy machine guns, and a battle tank was struck by an anti-tank guided missile.

According to the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the SAA responded to the attack by pounding militants’ positions in the towns of Kansafra and Fatterah.

The “moderate opposition” in Idlib wastes no chance to remind of itself by violating the ceasefire regime in the countryside and shell SAA units and positions.

Former US national security adviser Henry Kissinger has warned that strains between Washington and Beijing pose “the biggest problem” for the world, and a failure to improve them risks a “cold war” between the world’s two largest economies.

“It’s the biggest problem for America; it’s the biggest problem for the world. Because if we can’t solve that, then the risk is that all over the world a kind of cold war will develop between China and the United States,” Kissinger told the McCain Institute’s Sedona Forum on global issues.

The 97-year-old veteran diplomat warned rather ominously that while nuclear weapons were already large enough to damage the entire globe during the Cold War, advances in nuclear technology and artificial intelligence – where China and the United States are both leaders – have multiplied the doomsday threat.

“For the first time in human history, humanity has the capacity to extinguish itself in a finite period of time,” Kissinger said.

“We have developed the technology of a power that is beyond what anybody imagined even 70 years ago.”

“And now, to the nuclear issue is added the high tech issue, which in the field of artificial intelligence, in its essence is based on the fact that man becomes a partner of machines and that machines can develop their own judgement,” he said.

“So in a military conflict between high-tech powers, it’s of colossal significance.”

The Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union during the decades after World War II was more one-dimensional, focused on nuclear weapons competition, said Kissinger, one of the leading strategic thinkers of the past six decades.

“The Soviet Union had no economic capacity. They had military technological capacity,” he said.

“(They) didn’t have developmental technological capacity as China does. China is a huge economic power in addition to being a significant military power.”

Kissinger said US policy toward China must take a two-pronged approach: standing firm on US principles to demand China’s respect, while maintaining a constant dialogue and finding areas of cooperation.

“I’m not saying that diplomacy will always lead to beneficial results,” he said.

“This is the complex task we have… Nobody has succeeded in doing it completely,” he said.

Watch the full interview below:

Authored by Alex Wu via The Epoch Times,

Members of European Parliament have vowed to reject the EU-China Investment Agreement that was awaiting ratification over China’s human rights abuses and sanctions by the ruling communist party.

More than 30 MEPs took the floor on April 28 to denounce China for demanding that the EU stop criticism of its human rights record, saying they won’t ratify the China investment deal unless human rights are addressed first. Some have said outright that they want the deal thrown out.

The comments were made during the European Parliament’s first meeting regarding the Chinese communist regime’s counter-sanctions against EU representatives and entities who sanctioned several Chinese communist officials over human rights abuses against Uyghurs and other minorities in Xinjiang in late March.

But the counter-sanctions imperiled the likelihood of the investment deal being ratified.

French MEP Emmanuel Maurel told parliament of the CCP’s sanctions, “If we want to show, once and for all, that the EU is not just a supermarket but rather has principles … we have to come up with some tangible action, and that means we need to reject the investment agreement.”

Vice-Chair of the EU Parliament’s Subcommittee on Human Rights and German MEP Hannah Neumann said, “This is a regime arbitrarily shooting a shotgun targeting our freedom of expression, our freedom of research, and our rights as members of parliament.”

She told Parliament that human rights need to be addressed before moving forward with the investment deal, adding “I am not willing to let a foreign country dictate to me how to do my job.”

German Greens MEP Reinhard Bütikofer, Chair of the European Parliament’s China Delegation, who was targeted by Beijing’s sanction list, said that if the sanctions Beijing has imposed on the EU parliament are not lifted, the “EU-China Comprehensive Agreement on Investment, or ‘CAI’, is in the deep freeze as far as the European Parliament is concerned.”

He said the sanctions marked “a new height of China’s aggressive claim to power.”

“Instead, we will put pressure to use new instruments to better protect our economy against unfair Chinese practices, be it in access to procurement markets, the fight against illegal subsidies, or against products made using forced labour,” he added, according to a statement.

Maria Arena, a MEP from Belgium, added, “If pro-democracy rights in Hong Kong or Taiwan cannot be discussed in this parliament, then nothing can be discussed in this parliament.”

Five leading EU MEPs whose votes are needed to ratify the EU-China investment deal were included in the sanctions.

Focus on Trade, Not Human Rights: Beijing

Meanwhile, Chinese leaders have continued trying to push for the deal, calling the EU to focus on trade and not human rights.

Xi Jinping on April 16 urged the EU to ratify the investment deal in a video conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron ahead of the world leaders’ summit on climate issues.

On April 20, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang met with business leaders from major EU countries in Chengdu’s China-EU center to seek support for the investment deal.

Then, on April 28, in a virtual meeting for the sixth German-Chinese government consultations, Li told German Chancellor Angela Merkel that Germany should focus on trade and not China’s “internal affairs” that include human rights issues, Politico reported.

The EU-China investment agreement has been championed in the EU by German Chancellor Angela Merkel for its promise to open up more sectors of the Chinese economy to EU investment and benefits for European carmakers manufacturing out of China. French President Emmanuel Macron has supported Merkel’s efforts, despite several EU country’s objections.

The agreement was signed last December after seven years of negotiations but it must be ratified by EU Parliament to take effect.

Merkel is stepping down in September and her SPD has slumped in recent election polls, with the opposition Greens party enjoying a polling lead.

The Greens recently said in statement: “Trade is a powerful lever to defend and strengthen human rights and fundamental democratic values. Unfortunately, the EU-China investment agreement, hastily concluded by the German government at the end of last year, contradicts this very goal.”

Macron is also facing strong backlash against the CAI domestically ahead of next year’s presidential election.

The EU on April 24 also took action to condemn the Chinese regime’s aggression in South China Sea that it said was endangering regional peace.

On April 21, EU President Ursula von der Leyen had also said in “progress report” on China that “fundamental divergences” between the EU and China about “economic systems and managing globalization, democracy and human rights, or on how to deal with third countries” were becoming a reality that are “set to remain for the foreseeable future and must not be brushed under the carpet.”

Bank of America equity strategist Haim Israel recently told clients by 2030, Europe will generate about 85% of its electricity from renewable sources. Solar and wind have stolen the spotlight in the green energy transition. But there’s one Scottish company called Orbital Marine Power (OMP) that is creating a lot of buzz in tidal turbines. 

A 680-tonne floating tidal turbine will provide power for more than 2000 homes. https://t.co/UDqZSdi1ra pic.twitter.com/p8p5FBOVsF

— STV News (@STVNews) April 22, 2021

OMP has designed the world’s most powerful Tidal Turbine, called Orbital O2, measuring 236ft-long and weighing 680 tons. The tidal turbine was assembled at the port of Dundee in the United Kingdom over the last 18 months. 

Orbital O2 has been towed to the Orkney Islands, where it will undergo commissioning before being connected to the European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC). The 2MW tidal turbine will produce enough electricity to power more than 2,000 homes. 

Tidal turbines are essentially an underwater version of wind turbines, operating the same way. Instead of wind turning the turbine, the propellers turn with tidal shifts and generate power. 

 Here’s how it works:

As climate transition to a low-carbon economy heats up, Israel provides BofA clients with a chart explaining net-zero emissions targets for the US, China, and Europe. So far, the US doesn’t have specific data, but China is around 2060, and Europe is 2050. 

Countries worldwide are racing to deploy renewable energy, such as hydrogen, wind, solar, battery, nuclear, and now tidal. 

… and how attainable are the net-zero targets really? 

Well, as Europe admits, it can’t go net-zero without natural gas… 

Authored by Con Coughlin via The Gatestone Institute,

China is making a deliberate attempt to create divisions within the elite “Five Eyes” intelligence-sharing alliance by forging closer relations with the left-wing government of New Zealand premier Jacinda Ardern.

The Five Eyes alliance, comprising the US, Canada, Britain, Australia and New Zealand, dates back to the Second World War, when a number of key allies decided to share intelligence in their bid to defeat Nazi Germany and Japan.

Today, maintaining intelligence-sharing cooperation between the five Anglophone nations is deemed essential to combating the threat posed by autocratic states, such as Russia and Communist China.

The survival of the alliance in its current form, though, is under threat after Ms Ardern’s administration announced that it was making improved trade relations with Beijing its priority, rather than maintaining its support for Five Eyes.

Announcing the decision to seek improved trade ties with Beijing earlier this month, Nanaia Mahuta, New Zealand’s foreign minister, declared that her country was “uncomfortable” with the Five Eyes alliance pressuring China over its appalling human rights record, and wanted instead to pursue its own bilateral relationship.

Ms Mahuta, 50, was responding to a decision taken last year by the defence ministers of Britain, America, Canada, Australia and New Zealand to endorse an expanded role for the alliance, with a public commitment not only to meet shared security challenges but “to advance their shared values of democracy, freedom and respect for human rights”.

In this context, the alliance has issued communiqués criticising China’s brutal suppression of the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong, as well as Beijing’s repression of its Uyghur Muslim minority.

The statement prompted a fierce response from Beijing, which warned the alliance against involving itself in Hong Kong’s affairs.

Zhao Lijian, the spokesman for China’s foreign minister, said:

“No matter if they have five eyes or ten eyes, as soon as they dare to harm China’s sovereignty, security or development interests, they should be careful lest their eyes be poked blind.”

On the other hand, China praised Ms Mahuta and played up possible cracks in the Five Eyes’ bond. The Global Times, a Communist Party mouthpiece, wrote:

“In sharp contrast with Australia, which tied itself to the U.S.’ chariot, New Zealand has maintained a relatively independent approach on foreign policies, paving the way for the country to pursue policies that benefit its own economy and citizens.”

Despite signing up to the new Five Eyes diplomatic initiative, New Zealand, which relies heavily on its trade links with Beijing, has now decided that it no longer wants to support the Five Eyes initiative, and wants instead to pursue its own dialogue with China’s communist rulers.

“It’s a matter that we have raised with Five Eyes partners, that we are uncomfortable with expanding the remit of the Five Eyes relationship, that we would much rather prefer looking for multilateral opportunities to express our interests on a number of issues,” explained Ms Mahuta in address to the New Zealand China Council on April 19.

New Zealand’s naive approach to the threat posed by Beijing not only poses a threat to the future of the alliance itself. There is a distinct possibility that Wellington could find itself being expelled from the alliance over its pro-Beijing stance.

New Zealand, whose geographical location makes it an ideal listening post for the Pacific region, has long been regarded as the weak link in the alliance. In 2003, its access to intelligence was down-graded after Helen Clark, the country’s then left-wing Labour prime minister, opposed the Iraq war.

The restrictions placed on New Zealand were eventually lifted when Barack Obama became president. The country, however, now faces having its status reviewed again, especially as its latest effort to cosy up to Beijing has infuriated neighbouring Australia, which is in the midst of an increasingly bitter trade war with Beijing.

As a senior Western intelligence official recently commented about New Zealand’s continued membership of the alliance, the country was now “on the edge of viability as a member” of the alliance because of its “supine” attitude to China and its “compromised political system”.

New Zealand’s socialist government may believe that it is a good idea to throw in their lot with China’s communist rulers. But by doing so, they risk sacrificing their future to domination by China’s despots.

Authored by Conrad Black, op-ed via The Epoch Times,

The only way to make any sense of the fierce crosscurrents sweeping over American political life now is to watch two trends that are only slightly connected.

First is the continuing great national sense of relief that the chaos and pandemonium of the Trump era is over.

There are not nightly cascades of provocative and frequently outrageous tweets and the days are not filled with confrontations in which the president’s enemies assault him like picadors, and he rises to every challenge like a compulsive single combat warrior.

To Trump’s scores of millions of admirers, he was merely returning fire from those who attacked him unfairly. To Trump’s enemies, his opponents were only doing their duty to assist in retarding the progress and hastening the departure of the Great Ogre.

To the independent voters, a beleaguered minority in the Trump era, it was Trump’s America, regardless of blame, and to the majority of Americans, the indignity inflicted upon the presidency and the strain of the constant din of needless and often witless combat became insufferable and had to end, whatever the policy consequences.

At its most acidulous, this was the Trump-hate vote, more benignly, it was the Trump-abatement vote. But the majority of people, including probably a majority of Trump voters, didn’t like it and simply could not stand the tumult of the Trump presidency.

Even thoughtful Americans who do not have confidence in Joe Biden and don’t approve of most of what he is doing, are still deeply grateful to be relieved of the nerve-racking cacophony of the Trump presidency.

This is what is chiefly supporting the Biden honeymoon 100 days into his presidency. Most of the polls remain politicized, inaccurate, and largely unprofessional, as they were in the late presidential election of ineradicable and horrifying memory (and result).

But the average of them seems to give this president approximately a 53 percent approval rating to about 42 percent negative. This is a solid and respectable result and a better showing than President Trump had any point in his term.

Though given that he was the subject of a completely unprecedented consistency and intensity of media and celebrity assault, his performance in the almost uniformly nasty and stacked polls entitles him to a special achievement award for carrying nearly 48 percent of the vote and probably forcing the Democrats to steal the Electoral College with harvested ballots in Georgia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and for producing so taut a political crisis that the Supreme Court ducked it (in the Texas challenge supported by 18 other states), assumedly under the mistaken assumption that that would spare them the threatened effort to pack the high court.

This total, the anti-Trump share of the honeymoon approval rate, as in all presidential honeymoons, is slowly declining. But it is also more vulnerable than other presidential honeymoon poll results, because it is not really based on any enthusiasm for Biden, but rather on the passage of something that has gone and is not threatening to return imminently.

The last time we saw anything of this kind was in the first year of President Nixon as the antiwar and race riots of the late Lyndon Johnson era faded, and in the Ford and early Carter years, when there was no longer any reason to think of Watergate.

The second indicator of political opinion is the independent policy areas where the new administration’s performance is measured. Here, the sands are running out in the hour-clock for the Biden administration’s attempt to smoke far-left legislation through on the threadbare flying carpet of anti-Trumpism.

The vulnerability of President Biden’s position is underscored by the fact that apart from his handling of the coronavirus and related problems, the majority disapprove of his performance in all other areas, most markedly the southern border and immigration, but also including the economy, foreign policy, and law and order and public security.

Approximately 90 percent of Americans believe that there should be a border and a process to entering the country; over 80 percent unconditionally oppose violent demonstrations and riots, the overwhelming majority support adequate police protection, if with more sophisticated rules in armed confrontations, and there is little enthusiasm for increased taxes or profligate spending.

The principal anti-Trump television networks seem to have lost about 50 percent of their viewers and the public clearly is not much interested in an indefinite continuation of mudslinging and defamation against the former president, either as a substitute for the new administration presenting and executing its policies, or for the national political media restoring a substantial element of professional reporting where for the previous four years it had self-righteously substituted Trump-hate.

It is of the nature of polling that unpleasant memories of former presidents recede and the prestigious fact of them having been presidents and in many cases the highlights of their presidencies remain comparatively well fixed in the public mind.

Herbert Hoover and Richard Nixon were generally reviled when they left office, but after some years they came again to be recognized as outstanding figures of American public life. President Trump was not generally a quick learner in the art of public relations while he was president, but it must be said that he has played his hand skillfully these last three months.

The initial post-inaugural efforts to torment him endlessly, portray him as an advocate of insurrection and to suborn and extort evidence against him in all manner of ubiquitously alleged imminent proceedings while pretending there was some comparison to be made between Jan. 6 and 9/11, has been a complete failure.

All the headlines and television news introductions that the Trump mob had killed capitol police officer Brian Sicknick have been exposed as pure fabrication, a campaign of outright lies. All the allegations against the Trump campaign organization of incitement of the vandalism at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 have proved to be unfounded.

And throughout these three months the former president has issued press releases without hyperbole and has given relatively few interviews and only one major speech and on every occasion he has been judicious.

Joe Biden does well with the public as an apparently amiable personality, and he probably deserves credit for at least bringing to serious consideration a far more radically left agenda than the public would approve of, in a way that has not squandered the general perception of him as a likable person.

But we are almost at the point where this administration’s attempt to revolutionize American elections by practically abolishing any verification process for ballots and turning election day into a weeks-long orgy of ballot-harvesting, while packing the Senate and the Supreme Court and gagging congressional minorities, will collide with public opposition to all of these measures.

In those circumstances, the Supreme Court, its attempt at appeasement of the Democrats by abdicating as head of a co-equal third branch of government having failed, might also reassert the legitimacy of the Constitution.

A turning in the road is almost at hand.

According to simulations conducted by leading space agencies, Earth lacks the technology to stop a massive asteroid from wiping out Europe, according to the Independent.

The week-long exercise led by Nasa concluded that catastrophe would be unavoidable, even given six months to prepare.

The hypothetical impact scenario, which took place during a planetary defence conference hosted by the United Nations, proved that governments are woefully unprepared for this kind of disaster. -Independent

“If confronted with the scenario in real life, we would not be able to launch any spacecraft on such short notice with current capabilities,” said the participants.

According to the report, the only thing humanity could do in such an event is to evacuate the area before the asteroid hit – though the scenario’s impact zone was across a large swath of North Africa and Europe.

“Each time we participate in exercises of this nature, we learn more about who the key players are in a disaster event, and who needs to know what information and when,” said NASA Planetary Defense Officer, Lindley Johnson.

“These exercises ultimately help the planetary defence community communicate with each other and with our governments to ensure we are all coordinated should a potential impact threat be identified in the future.”

Responding to the news of the failure, SpaceX boss Elon Musk said the lack of solution was “one of many reasons why we need larger and more advanced rockets”.

 

SpaceX recently secured a $2.89 billion contract with Nasa to develop its next-generation Starship spacecraft, which is being built to transport people and cargo around the Solar System.

According to SpaceX, Starship combined with its Super Heavy rocket booster will be “the world’s most powerful launch vehicle ever developed,” and could theoretically alter the trajectory of an Earth-bound asteroid.

Meanwhile, NASA is already working on technology to deflect asteroids – and will launch a test mission of its Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) system later this year before reaching the asteroid Dimorphos next autumn. The test aims to change the orbit of the asteroid in the hopes of proving that such a system would be a viable defense against near-Earth objects (NEO) in the future.

“DART will be the first test for planetary defence, and the data returned after it impacts Dimorphos will help scientists better understand one way we might mitigate a potentially hazardous NEO discovered in the future,” said DART program executive, Andrea Riley. “While the asteroid DART impacts poses no threat to Earth, it is in a perfect location for us to perform this test of the technology before it may actually be needed.”

At present, NASA is discovering around 30 new NEOs per week, on top of the roughly 25,000 the agency is currently tracking.

Or, they could just call Bruce Willis…

Authored (somewhat satirically) by CJ Hopkins via The Consent Factory,

One of the hallmarks of totalitarian systems is the criminalization of dissent.

Not just the stigmatization of dissent or the demonization of dissent, but the formal criminalization of dissent, and any other type of opposition to the official ideology of the totalitarian system. Global capitalism has been inching its way toward this step for quite some time, and now, apparently, it is ready to take it.

Germany has been leading the way. For over a year, anyone questioning or protesting the “Covid emergency measures” or the official Covid-19 narrative has been demonized by the government and the media, and, sadly, but not completely unexpectedly, the majority of the German public. And now such dissent is officially “extremism.”

Yes, that’s right, in “New Normal” Germany, if you dissent from the official state ideology, you are now officially a dangerous “extremist.” The German Intelligence agency (the “BfV”) has even invented a new category of “extremists” in order to allow themselves to legally monitor anyone suspected of being “anti-democratic and/or delegitimizing the state in a way that endangers security,” like … you know, non-violently protesting, or speaking out against, or criticizing, or satirizing, the so-called “New Normal.”

Naturally, I’m a little worried, as I have engaged in most of these “extremist” activities. My thoughtcrimes are just sitting there on the Internet waiting to be scrutinized by the BfV. They’re probably Google-translating this column right now, compiling a list of all the people reading it, and their Facebook friends and Twitter followers, and professional associates, and family members, and anyone any of the aforementioned people have potentially met with, or casually mentioned, who might have engaged in similar thoughtcrimes.

You probably think I’m joking, don’t you? I’m not joking. Not even slightly.

The Federal Office for Protection of the Constitution (“Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz”) is actively monitoring anyone questioning or challenging the official “New Normal” ideology … the “Covid Deniers,” the “conspiracy theorists,” the “anti-vaxxers,” the dreaded “Querdenkers” (i.e., people who “think outside the box”), and anyone else they feel like monitoring who has refused to join the Covidian Cult. We’re now official enemies of the state, no different than any other “terrorists” … or, OK, technically, a little different.

As The New York Times reported last week (German Intelligence Puts Coronavirus Deniers Under Surveillance), “the danger from coronavirus deniers and conspiracy theorists does not fit the mold posed by the usual politically driven groups, including those on the far left and right, or by Islamic extremists.” Still, according to the German Interior Ministry, we diabolical “Covid deniers,” “conspiracy theorists,” and “anti-vaxxers” have “targeted the state itself, its leaders, businesses, the press, and globalism,” and have “attacked police officers” and “defied civil authorities.”

Moreover, back in August of 2020, in a dress rehearsal for the “Storming of the Capitol,” “Covid-denying” insurrectionists “scaled the steps of Parliament” (i.e., the Reichstag). Naturally, The Times neglects to mention that this so-called “Storming of the Reichstag” was performed by a small sub-group of protesters to whom the German authorities had granted a permit to assemble (apart from the main demonstration, which was massive and completely peaceful) on the steps of the Reichstag, which the German police had, for some reason, left totally unguarded. In light of the background of the person the German authorities issued this “Steps-of-the-Reichstag” protest permit to — a known former-NPD functionary, in other words, a neo-Nazi — well, the whole thing seemed a bit questionable to me … but what do I know? I’m just a “conspiracy theorist.”

According to Al Jazeera, the German Interior Ministry explained that these querdenking “extremists encourage supporters to ignore official orders and challenge the state monopoly on the use of force.” Seriously, can you imagine anything more dangerous? Mindlessly following orders and complying with the state’s monopoly on the use of force are the very cornerstones of modern democracy … or some sort of political system, anyway.

But, see, there I go, again “being anti-democratic” and “delegitimizing the state,” not to mention “relativizing the Holocaust” (also a criminal offense in Germany) by comparing one totalitarian system to another, as I have done repeatedly on social media, and in a column I published in November of 2020, when the parliament passed the “Infection Protection Act,” which bears no comparison whatsoever to the “Enabling Act of 1933.”

This isn’t just a German story, of course. As I reported in a column in February, The “New Normal” War on Domestic Terror is a global war, and it’s just getting started. According to a Department of Homeland Security “National Terrorism Advisory System Bulletin” (and the “liberal” corporate-media propaganda machine), “democracy” remains under imminent threat from these “ideologically-motivated violent extremists with objections to the exercise of governmental authority” and other such “grievances fueled by false narratives” including “anger over Covid-19 restrictions.”

These Covid-denying “violent extremists” have apparently joined forces with the “white-supremacist, Russia-backed, Trump-loving “Putin-Nazis” that terrorized “democracy” for the past four years, and almost overthrew the US government by sauntering around inside the US Capitol Building without permission, scuffling with police, attacking furniture, and generally acting rude and unruly. No, they didn’t actually kill anyone, as the corporate media all reported they did, but trespassing in a government building and putting your feet up on politicians’ desks is pretty much exactly the same as “terrorism.”

Or whatever. It’s not like the truth actually matters, not when you are whipping up mass hysteria over imaginary “Russian assets,” “white-supremacist militias,” “Covid-denying extremists,” “anti-vax terrrorists,” and “apocalyptic plagues.” When you’re rolling out a new official ideology — a pathologized-totalitarian ideology — and criminalizing all dissent, the point is not to appear to be factual. The point is just to terrorize the shit out of people.

As Hermann Goering famously explained regarding how to lead a country to war (and the principle holds true for any big transition, like the one we are experiencing currently):

“[T]he people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.”

Go back and read those quotes from the German Interior Ministry and the DHS again slowly. The message they are sending is unmistakeably clear. It might not seem all that new, but it is. Yes, they have been telling us “we are being attacked” and denouncing critics, protesters, and dissidents for twenty years (i.e., since the War on Terror was launched in 2001, and for the last four years in their War on Populism), but this is a whole new level of it … a fusion of official narratives and their respective official enemies into a singular, aggregate official narrative in which dissent will no longer be permitted.

Instead, it will be criminalized, or it will be pathologized.

Seriously, go back and read those quotes again. Global capitalist governments and their corporate media mouthpieces are telling us, in no uncertain terms, that “objection to their authority” will no longer be tolerated, nor will dissent from their official narratives. Such dissent will be deemed “dangerous” and above all “false.” It will not be engaged with or rationally debated. It will be erased from public view. There will be an inviolable, official “reality.” Any deviation from official “reality” or defiance of the “civil authorities” will be labelled “extremism,” and dealt with accordingly.

This is the essence of totalitarianism, the establishment of an inviolable official ideology and the criminalization of dissent. And that is what is happening, right now. A new official ideology is being established. Not a state ideology. A global ideology. The “New Normal” is that official ideology. Technically, it is an official post-ideology, an official “reality,” an axiomatic “fact,” which only “criminals” and “psychopaths” would deny or challenge.

I’ll be digging deeper into “New Normal” ideology and “pathologized totalitarianism” in my future columns, and … sorry, they probably won’t be very funny. For now I’ll leave you with two more quotes. The emphasis is mine, as ever.

Here’s California State Senator Richard Pan, author of an op-ed in the Washington Post: “Anti-vax extremism is akin to domestic terrorism,” quoted in the Los Angeles Times:

“These extremists have not yet been held accountable, so they continue to escalate violence against the body public … We must now summon the political will to demand that domestic terrorists face consequences for their words and actions. Our democracy and our lives depend on it … They’ve been building alliances with white supremacists, conspiracy theorists and [others] on the far right …”

And here’s Peter Hotez in Nature magazine:

“The United Nations and the highest levels of governments must take direct, even confrontational, approaches with Russia, and move to dismantle anti-vaccine groups in the United States. Efforts must expand into the realm of cyber security, law enforcement, public education and international relations. A high-level inter-agency task force reporting to the UN secretary-general could assess the full impact of anti-vaccine aggression, and propose tough, balanced measures. The task force should include experts who have tackled complex global threats such as terrorism, cyber attacks and nuclear armament, because anti-science is now approaching similar levels of peril. It is becoming increasingly clear that advancing immunization requires a counter-offensive.”

We’ll be hearing a lot more rhetoric like this as this new, more totalitarian structure of global capitalism gradually develops. Probably a good idea to listen carefully, and assume they mean exactly what they say.

In the latest from their ongoing and increasingly nasty geopolitical row, China is accusing Australia giving a “free pass” to terror-sympathizers over accusations that Aussie politicians are backing Uighur activists and providing external support to Muslim fundamentalists in Xinjiang. 

This latest diplomatic fight started when as news.au.com describes Chinese state media “seized on an article, published by fringe political group the Australian Citizens Party, criticizing local politicians’ support for the East Turkistan Australian Association (ETAA), a Uyghur advocacy group. The article claimed the ETAA supported terror groups in Xinjiang.”

It was specifically Australia’s Defense Minister Andrew Hastie and independent Senator Rex Patrick who were called out by Chinese media for supporting the ETAA activists, which Canberra later called “disinformation”.

China’s foreign ministry was quick to respond fiercely, pointing the finger Australian officials for “colluding with terrorists” and warning Canberra will surely be “burned” by the Uyghur groups it’s backing. Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin additionally described “lies and smears” which target Xinjiang and China broadly.

“As some Western media are awash with lies and smears targeting Xinjiang, such objective and rational voices shows that justice will eventually prevail,” Wenbin said. “We urge certain Australian politicians not to stand on the wrong side of history and to stop endorsing anti-China separatist activities and terrorist organizations to avoid getting burned itself.”

Apparently the Australian political advocacy group which is at the center of the controversy does not have a wide following or much prominence in the Australian media landscape, yet as has happened with other countries and with similarly related issues, China seized upon the article in question to make it somehow representative of Australia’s official stance. 

Beijing was particularly angered at the article’s language describing Xinjiang as “currently under the brutal occupation of the Chinese Communist Government.”

The aforementioned Senator Patrick in return charged that Beijing was merely seizing on “disinformation” and that the whole row is “not immediately helpful” in terms of improving the plight of China’s Muslim minority community.

“The focus of my attention has been to support those members of the Uyghur community in Adelaide and across Australia whose families are suffering the Chinese Communist Party directed genocide and oppression in Xinjiang,” the Australian politician said in a statement.

Authored by Glenn Greenwald via greenwald.substack.com

One of the primary plagues of corporate journalism, which I have documented more times than I can count, just reared its ugly head again to deceive millions of people with fake news. When one large news outlet publishes a false story based on whispers from anonymous security state agents with the CIA or FBI, other news outlets quickly purport that they have “independently confirmed” the false story, in order to bolster its credibility (oh, it must be true since other outlets have also confirmed it).

This is an obvious scam — they have not “independently confirmed” anything but rather merely acted as servants to the same lying security state agents who planted the original false story — but they do it over and over, creating the deceitful perception that a fake story has been “confirmed” by multiple outlets, thus bolstering its credibility in the public mind. It was the favored tactic for spreading debunked Russiagate frauds and is still used. One of the most vivid examples occurred in December, 2017, when CNN falsely reported what it hyped as “a major bombshell”: that Donald Trump, Jr. had advance access to the WikiLeaks archive. Within an hour, NBC News’ Ken Dilanian and CBS News both claimed they had “independently confirmed” this fairy tale. When it turned out that it was a complete lie, all based on a false date on an email to Trump Jr., these outlets embarrassingly corrected it hours later and then simply moved on as if it never happened, never explaining how multiple outlets could possibly have all “independently confirmed” the same blatant falsehood.

On Thursday night, The Washington Post, citing anonymous sources (of course), claimed that the FBI gave a “defensive briefing” to Rudy Giuliani in 2019, before he traveled to Ukraine, that he was being targeted by a Russian disinformation campaign to hurt Joe Biden’s candidacy, yet he ignored the FBI’s warnings and went anyway. The Post also claimed that the right-wing news outlet OANN was similarly briefed. The claim about Giuliani not only predictably ricocheted all over social media and cable news — where, as usual, it was uncritically treated as Truth — but it was shortly thereafter “independently confirmed” by both NBC News’ de facto CIA spokesman Ken Dilanian along with The New York Times.

What was the problem with this story? It was totally false. The FBI never briefed Giuliani on any such thing. As a result, The Washington Post had to append this “correction” — meaning a retraction — to the top of its viral story:

At first, The New York Times attempted to quietly change the story to delete the false claims without noting they were doing so. But upon being pressured, they finally faced up to what they did and posted their own retraction at the very bottom of the story that reads: “Correction: An earlier version of this article misstated whether Rudolph W. Giuliani received a formal warning from the F.B.I. about Russian disinformation. Mr. Giuliani did not receive such a so-called defensive briefing.” In their self-glorifying jargon, the Paper of Record did not spread Fake News — perish the thought — but merely “misstated” the truth. Meanwhile, NBC News, at the top of its false story, posted this explanation for why Dilanian got the story completely wrong:

An earlier version of this article included an incorrect report that Rudolph Giuliani had received a defensive briefing from the FBI in 2019 warning him that he was being targeted by a Russian influence operation. The report was based on a source familiar with the matter, but a second source now says the briefing was only prepared for Giuliani and not delivered to him, in part over concerns it might complicate the criminal investigation of Giuliani. As a result, the premise and headline of the article below have been changed to reflect the corrected information.

This credibility carnage was so glaring that even CNN acknowledged that “the corrections are black eyes to the newsrooms which have aggressively reported on Giuliani’s contacts with Ukrainians in his attempts to dig up dirt on then-presidential candidate Joe Biden.” But there have been so many similar “black eyes” like this one, indeed far worse ones, over the last five years, and they never change anything that causes these “black eyes” because they want to do this: spreading disinformation is their function. Indeed, as I have asked almost every time these debacles happen: how is it possible that these same outlets keep “confirming” one another’s false stories?

And the answer is obvious: they all serve as mouthpieces for the same propagandists and disinformation agents of the CIA, FBI and other security state agencies. In this capacity, they dutifully write down and vouch for what they are told by those agencies to publish without any investigative scrutiny or confirmation. The most amazing part of it all is that when they try to malign independent journalists for not doing “real reporting” — real reporting like these corporate outlets do — this is what they mean by real reporting: getting a call from the CIA or FBI and being told what to say. And that is why they so often mislead and deceive the public with blatant disinformation in unison.

It is hard to overstate how far and wide this false story about the FBI’s briefing to Giuliani spread, how many millions of people it deceived. The two liberal cable outlets, MSNBC and CNN, instantly convened panels to analyze the grave implications of this revelation, accusing Giuliani of knowingly spreading Russian disinformation (by which they meant, as usual, truthful information that reflects poorly on Democratic Party leaders) even though he was told not to keep doing so by the FBI.

As usual, the MSNBC program of Nicolle Wallace — who has magically transformed from a disinformation agent for the Bush/Cheney White House into an identical disinformation agent but now for the DNC — was one of the leaders in spreading this lie. She brought on former FBI agent and current MSNBC analyst Clint Watts to do just that (just as Wallace dramatized how Brian Sicknick died by falsely claiming that “they beat a Capitol Police Officer to death with a fire extinguisher” and repeatedly glorified Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) as a great and truthful leader on COVID):

This is all par for the course. But in this case, dozens of journalists for NBC News, MSNBC, CNN and The Washington Post — the very outlets that purported to “confirm” the false story — as well as activists and scholars who purport to combat “disinformation,” spread it all over Twitter and, days later, have left it up, even knowing the story is false, while not even telling their followers that the story was false and has been retracted.

In preparation for writing this article, I spent the day notifying close to a dozen of these media luminaries that their false tweet remained up and asked whether they intend to take it down and/or correct the false tweet. Only one — NBC White House Correspondent Geoff Bennett — responded. He did so by blocking me on Twitter, while leaving the false tweet up, uncorrected. Put another way, this NBC News journalist is well aware that he lied to close to 200,000 followers when he falsely told them that “Rudy Giuliani and Sen. Ron Johnson were warned in late 2019 that they were targets of a Russian operation intended to damage Joe Biden politically” — a story (as it pertains to Giuliani) which even his own outlet has retracted — but simply refuses to note that it was false or to remove the false posting. This NBC News reporter is knowingly spreading Fake News all over Twitter.

The number of journalists with major outlets who spread this fake news and never corrected it is too high to comprehensively chronicle. But even when you tell them that the story they spread is false and that they never corrected it or deleted the false tweet, they just leave it up anyway: knowingly spreading lies.

Basically as an experiment to measure how willing they are to knowingly lie even when caught, I sent a large number of them inquiries similar to the one I sent to NBC’s Bennett. With the exception of NBC‘s Bennett — who blocked me but left up the lying claim — virtually all just left their false tweets up with no notation to the people they lied to that the story was retracted. Here, for instance, are my similar interactions with Washington Post reporter Dan Zak, frequent Russia analyst for CNN and The Daily Beast Michael Weiss, CNN‘s Senior Global Affairs analyst Bianna Golodryga, and Bloomberg columnist Tim O’Brien, all of whom spread this story and have left it up uncorrected:

Here is just a random sampling of five more people or sites who spread this lie all over the internet and refuse to take it down or tell their followers the tweet was false: MSNBC‘s ex-FBI agent Clint Watts, Washington Post reporter Greg Jaffe, Center for American Progress’ Max Bergmann who runs the liberal think tank’s “Moscow Project,” Nina Jankowicz: who says she “studies disinformation”(!) for the Wilson Center, and the liberal “news” site Raw Story:

Meanwhile, MSNBC‘s Chris Hayes’ show, All In, has left up its tweet with the false story and refuses to take it down (though, after I shamed them for it, they finally noted in a subsequent tweet an hour or so ago that the story was retracted), while MSNBC‘s viral tweet with the false story also remains up:

Perhaps the most extraordinary example is The Washington Post‘s Glenn Kessler. He is held out by that paper as its official “fact-checker”: the person responsible for decreeing what is true and what is false. Not only did he post the fake claim about Giuliani’s briefing, and not only did he never delete it or note that it was false even after his own paper retracted it and even after I advised him of this, but — just two days ago! — he endorsed a denunciation by CNN‘s Jake Tapper of an RNC official who tweeted out a story that turned out to be false (namely, that DHS was providing copies of Kamala Harris’ book to migrant children).

“Says quite a bit that this tweet is still up even after the story was proven a lie,” the CNN anchor reasonably said. Yet while Kessler endorsed that lecture, he himself did exactly the same thing: let stand a retracted story without removing the tweet or telling his audience that it was false:

As I indicated, this is just a small sampling of journalists and activists who spread this false story and simply left the lie standing and uncorrected even after being advised. The list of shame also includes MSNBC’s second-favorite neocon (after Bill Kristol) Jennifer Rubin of The Washington Post. And while the false articles from the three outlets went viral, the tweets and other notations addressing the retractions were noted by only a tiny fraction who spread the original claim.

Every journalist, even the most honest and careful, will get things wrong sometimes, and trustworthy journalists issue prompt corrections when they do. That behavior should be trust-building. But when media outlets continue to use the same reckless and deceitful tactics — such as claiming to have “independently confirmed” one another’s false stories when they have merely served as stenographers for the same anonymous security state agents while “confirming” nothing — that strongly suggests a complete indifference to the truth and, even more so, a willingness to serve as disinformation agents for various official factions. And when a journalist spreads a false story and knows they have done so, but still refuses to correct it or remove it — as is the case for many of the above examples — then they are just tawdry liars who should be driven out of journalism. But they are not driven out and will not be because the reality is that their job is to spread disinformation as long as it is in servitude to the right factions (the CIA, FBI and DNC) and against those who are ideologically disfavored.

Again we see the core truth of U.S. corporate journalism. The outlets that most vocally claim to condemn disinformation and fake news — to the point of agitating in favor of corporate and online censorship of their critics and competitors in the name of combating it — are the most prolific, aggressive and destructive disseminators of disinformation. Their refusal to remove the fake news here even after I explicitly notified them of it just makes this latest example a particularly vivid one.

Update, May 3, 2021, 20:20 pm. ET: Subsequent to publication of this article, The Washington Post‘s Glenn Kessler posted a correction to Twitter:

I deleted this tweet since @washingtonpost corrected the article and the headline is no longer valid. Just saw an article by @ggreenwald that brought it to my attention. Sorry, Glenn, have not looked at my notifications today so missed your tweet. Thanks! https://t.co/QQy4grhNDt pic.twitter.com/kKVngu1nI8

— Glenn Kessler (@GlennKesslerWP) May 4, 2021

This is not hard to do. It’s what anyone with even minimal journalistic integrity would do. It is astonishing and grotesque how many of them simply refuse.