Tag: finance

Authored by Cynthia Chung via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

“Western Europe has only 20 to 30 more years of democracy left in it; after that it will slide, engineless and rudderless, under the surrounding sea of dictatorship, and whether the dictation comes from a politburo or a junta will not make that much difference.”

– Willy Brandt (German Federal Chancellor, right before he stepped down in 1974)

Believe it or not, but the dystopic view that democracy is dead is by no measure a new idea. However, what might disturb you is where this design, in its contemporary form, really germinated from.

The idea that democracy is in a crisis and needs to be replaced with a new form of “governance” did not originate from the outcries of an oppressed people demanding their rights to a decent life. We are not presently seeing an organic, grassroots process in reforming how government, that is, democracy will be “improved” upon. Rather, what we are seeing is a controlled disintegration of the very thing we think we are trying to uphold, and this destruction has been in the works for over 45 years.

It is no coincidence that Samuel P. Huntington is very fond of the Willy Brandt quote “prophesising” the end of democracy (which was used at the beginning of both his books ‘The Crisis of Democracy’ and ‘Disaffected Democracies’), that is after all his purpose in life…to see to it that that prophecy comes true.

In this paper I will go through how the Henry Kissinger crew successfully purged the last significant remnants of decency within the CIA and reshaped the government structure into the Deep State that we see it grotesquely throbbing as today.

In this story, we will see how those prominent figureheads who prophesise the “end of democracy” have been the very orchestrators of its destruction.

The First Purge of American Intelligence: The Dismantling of the OSS

On March 4th 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt would be elected President of the United States, which would become a twelve year presidency, ending only due to his passing away. Roosevelt was an anti-imperialist who actively, and successfully, organised towards abolishing imperialism throughout the world.

The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was established by Roosevelt on June 13th 1942, under the direction of William J. Donovan, as a wartime intelligence agency. Its purpose was to collect and analyze strategic information required by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and to conduct special operations not assigned to other agencies.

Contrary to how we think of American foreign intelligence today, the raison d’être of the OSS was to genuinely win the war (WWII) quickly and with the least amount of loss.

However, FDR would pass away on April 12th 1945, and the OSS would be dismantled a mere five months after FDR’s passing and two weeks after the official end of WWII.

On Sept 20th 1945, Truman infamously ordered the shutdown of the OSS, referring to it as a potential Gestapo , however, not with the intention to disband all foreign intelligence capabilities. The OSS would be replaced under the new banner of CIA, on Sept 18th 1947, and more importantly as a contingent to the National Security Council which was created on the same day. Refer to my paper on this.

Many respectable and patriotic intelligence officers of repute, who were loyal to FDR’s vision, were also thrown out of the intelligence community with the disbanding of the OSS.

In August 1949, the Soviet Union tested its first atomic bomb, several years before the 1953 date forecast by the CIA. As a response, the Joint Intelligence Committee submitted an estimate of the nature of the nuclear threat from the Soviets. JIC-502 claimed that once the Soviets had 200 atomic bombs, they could launch a surprise attack and defeat the U.S.

These assertions were made without analysis of Soviet capabilities to actually deliver the weapons, let alone produce them at that rate. The estimates did not even attempt to analyze Soviet strategic intentions.

JIC-502, titled “Implications of Soviet Possession of Atomic Weapons” and drafted Jan 20th 1950, turned out not to be an intelligence report at all but rather a sales pitch, claiming that a nuclear-armed Soviet Union had introduced the notion that “a tremendous military advantage would be gained by the power that struck first and succeeded in carrying through an effective surprise attack.”

It was JIC-502 which would be the first to put forward a justification for the preventive first strike concept, supported by a massive military buildup under the pretence of pre-emptive war.

NSC-68 would be drafted the same year, declaring that the U.S. was in the moral equivalent of war with the Soviet Union and called for a massive military buildup to be completed by 1954 dubbed the “year of maximum danger”, the year JIC-502 claimed the Soviets would achieve military superiority and be able to launch war against the U.S. This proposed military buildup would increase the defense budget from $10 billion to $40 billion from 1950-53.

During this same period another security doctrine was drafted, titled “NSC-75: A Report to the NSC by the Executive Secretary on British Military Commitments”. The report concluded that if the British Empire collapsed, and Britain could no longer carry out these deployments, in defending the “free world” against the Soviets, the U.S. would not be able to carry out its current foreign policy, including NSC-68.

It was thus concluded in the report that it would be more cost-effective to aid Britain in saving its Empire!

If you were ever wondering why the CIA was constantly found paired with British Intelligence, starting from its very inception, in a series of coups in countries they had no reason to be in, now you know why.

The U.S. had gone from an explicit mission to end imperialism worldwide under Roosevelt, to actively supporting and upholding British colonies and vassal states under Truman!

This was all done under the pretence of protecting the “free world” from the evil boogeymen Soviets, whom Churchill decided to be labelled such in his Iron Curtain Speech. And thus, the interests of the British Empire were safeguarded by an abiding American stooge, as long as the narrative that all Russians were villains was believed.

Interestingly, the CIA was not on board with the pre-emptive war strategy, as defined by JIC-502. In February 1950 the CIA responded in ORE 91-49, stating:

“It is always possible…that the USSR would initiate a war if it should estimate that a Western attack was impending. [However], It is not yet possible to estimate with any precision the effects of Soviet possession of the Atomic Bomb upon the probability of war. The implications of atomic warfare, either militarily or psychologically, have not yet been fully appraised.” (emphasis added)

In other words, the CIA was stating that JIC-502’s frantic lunacy in demanding a military buildup and first strike capability against the Soviets was groundless. That there was no data to support such a claim, and thus such a response would be a reckless and dangerous one.

It became evident to those who wished to push through these permanent war policies that the CIA was going to need “stronger” leadership.

At least, this was the argument made by the Dulles-Jackson-Correa Report which called for a strong CIA Director in the wake of the Cold War. Though Walter Bedell Smith, who would become CIA Director from 1950-53, did much to reorganise the CIA away from the pre-emptive war mongering, it was ultimately Allen Dulles who would take the CIA throne.

It should not come as a surprise that Dulles had himself in mind the whole time when he was talking about the stuff that was needed for a “strong” CIA Director… however, he was not referring to a strong mind, but rather a strong stomach.

Dulles would act as Director of the CIA from 1953-61, until he was fired by President Kennedy (along with the Deputy Director and Deputy Director for Plans), all three were caught essentially committing treason during the Bay of Pigs fiasco, refer to my paper on this.

McCone would replace Dulles as CIA Director and would attempt to clear the CIA of its Dulles loyalists in the Bay of Pigs incident; unfortunately it would not be enough.

During Dulles’ term as CIA Director, he did nothing less than entrench America’s role in exacting permanent warfare across the world against “communist insurgents”, with the never-ending Indochina wars lasting for over 35 years.

Though Bedell Smith would only be CIA Director for three years, he would succeed, along with Donovan (founder of the OSS) to create the most strategically important departments within the CIA: the Office of National Estimates (ONE).

Smith sought potential candidates for this new branch from those who had been thrown out of the intelligence community when Truman disbanded the OSS. Many of these “retired” intelligence officers had served in the OSS’ original Research and Analysis Branch; including William Langer and Sherman Kent who both played crucial roles in the running of ONE. Both Langer and Kent were reputable historians.

It was recognised that there was a crisis in competent intelligence gathering and analysis that would in turn be used to shape reckless war mongering policies such as JIC-502, NSC-68 and NSC-75. As Kent would state, there were those in the CIA who were “seeking power through sacrificing the truth.”

The formation of ONE was to be a major pushback on this type of groupthink within the intelligence community.

Kent would comment on the issue of the agency’s security screening (McCarthyism was in full swing at the time) stating:

“When an intelligence staff has been screened through [too finely], its members will be as alike as tiles on a bathroom floor – and about as capable of meaningful and original thought.”

In summary, since the death of FDR there was a somewhat open battle between members of the intelligence community, which could be categorised as FDR loyalists vs Churchill loyalists (1). Although there was an attempt to expunge the most notable intelligence officers who remained anti-imperial, Bedell Smith was successful in bringing these men back in, under the reorganised department ONE, who would in turn be a form of sane leadership within the CIA.

Unfortunately, the NSC did not share these views and there would be a second purge of the last remnants of true American patriots.

The Second Purge of American Intelligence: The Deep State is Born

From the moment Kissinger assumed the post of National Security Advisor to Nixon, he set out to centralize all intelligence estimates, diplomatic initiatives, and covert operations over figuratively and sometimes literal dead bodies of members of the CIA, Joint Chiefs of Staff, State Department and Congress.

According to John Ranelagh in his book The Agency: The Rise and Decline of the CIA:

“Very early in the Nixon administration, it became clear that the President wanted Henry Kissinger to run intelligence for him and that the NSC staff in the White House under Kissinger would control the intelligence community. This was the beginning of a shift of power away from the CIA to a new center: the growing NSC staff.”

Kissinger would use the Watergate scandal, where the CIA was caught by Congress directly implicated in treasonous activities, as the impetus needed to form a new CIA, a secret branch away from the scrutiny of Congress.

In 1978, Kissinger would launch the Intelligence Reorganization and Reform Act, which essentially worked to “clean house” of the intelligence community.

In 1982, under the direction of Kissinger, President Reagan would sign NSDD 77 under Cold War duress, which would launch Project Democracy, a sardonic name for a Trojan Horse.

NSDD 77 allowed Project Democracy the reins over “covert action on a broad scale” as well as overt public actions later to be associated with the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). The directive ordered the CIA to stay out of both the overt and covert part of Project Democracy, thus giving free reign to the Kissingerian “NSC apparatus”.

Almost one year later, the uninformed and naïve Congress passed the NED Act in Oct 1983, and effectively signed off on wrapping duct tape around their heads.

The structure of the NED essentially functions as a private CIA political operations arm of an invisible, secret government beyond accountability and beyond the reach of the law.

Those who still had a degree of humanity as members of the intelligence community, and had survived the Kissinger purge, were simply kept in the dark about the cloak and dagger operations of the secret government branch.

As for the department ONE, they would be disbanded in 1973 (the year Kissinger became Secretary of State) and replaced with a “group of experts” that would later form the National Intelligence Council in 1979. This would be the last purge of sane patriotic leadership within the intelligence community, left to the hyenas and jackals to run from thenceforth.

In a 1991 interview, then NED President David Ignatius arrogantly stated “a lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA…The biggest difference is that when such activities are done overtly, the flap potential is close to zero. Openness is its own protection”.

The Real “Crisis of Democracy”

The Trilateral Commission was founded in the wake of Watergate and oil crisis of 1973. It was formed under the pretence of addressing the “crisis of democracy” and calling for a reshaping of political systems in order to form a more “stable” international order and “cooperative” relations among regions.

Its formation would be organised by Britain’s hand in America, the Council on Foreign Relations, (aka: the offspring of the Royal Institute for International Affairs, the leading think tank for the British Crown).

Project Democracy would originate out of a Trilateral Commission meeting on May 31st, 1975 in Kyoto Japan, where the Trilateral Commission’s “Task Force on the Governability of Democracies” findings were delivered. The project was overseen by Trilateral Commission Director Zbigniew Brzezinski and its members James Schlesinger (former CIA Director) and Samuel P. Huntington.

It would mark the beginning of the end, introducing the policy, or more aptly “ideology”, for the need to instigate a “controlled disintegration of society.”

The Trilateral Commission is a non-governmental body, its members include elected and non-elected officials scattered throughout the world, ironically coming together to discuss how to address the “crisis of democracy” in the most undemocratic process possible. It is an organisation meant to uphold the “interests” of its members, regardless of who the people voted in.

You see, by the 1970s democracy was obviously broken, and someone had to put things back in order, right?

This elite grouping of people decided that this approach would be the best for all democracies and just like that, it was brought into official policy across the western hemisphere.

On Nov 9th, 1978, Trilateral Commission member Paul Volcker (Federal Reserve Chairman from 1979-1987) would affirm at a lecture delivered at Warwick University in England: “A controlled disintegration in the world economy is a legitimate object for the 1980s.” This is also the ideology that has shaped Milton Friedman’s “Shock Therapy”.

By the time of Jimmy Carter’s Administration, the majority of the government was being run by members of the Trilateral Commission. But who runs the Trilateral Commission?

Well, keeping in mind that this whole operation is run as an “open conspiracy”, in May 1981, Henry Kissinger who replaced Brzezinski as the head of the Trilateral Commission gave a speech at Chatham House describing his term as Secretary of State:

“[The British] became a participant in internal American deliberations, to a degree probably never practiced between sovereign nations…In my White House incarnation then, I kept the British Foreign Office better informed and more closely engaged than I did the American Department…It was symptomatic.” (emphasis added).

In his speech, Kissinger outlined the conflicting ideologies between Churchill and Roosevelt, and concluded with his support for the British worldview as the more superior of the two.

Looks like the Churchill loyalists have won.

Controlled Disintegration: And We All Fall Down

In 1975 the CFR launched a public study of global policy titled the 1980’s Project. The general theme was “controlled disintegration” of the world economy, and the report did not attempt to hide the famine, social chaos, and death its policy would bring upon most of the world’s population.

The study explained that the world financial and economic system needed a complete overhaul according to which key sectors such as energy, credit allocation and food would be placed under the direction of a single global administration. The objective of this reorganization would be the replacement of nation states.

However, before this could occur, nation states would have to falter, or at least give off the impression of faltering.

The failure of the nation state is not a natural phenomenon but rather is the outcome of a fascist coup; involving a banker’s dictatorship, economic looting and permanent warfare (the Cold War never ended) to hinder national industrial growth.

Among the most effective strategies towards this end has been color revolutions, which just so happens to be the NED’s specialty practice and has included, to name a few, the nations of Yugoslavia, Georgia, Iraq, Lebanon, Burma, Iran, Egypt, Yemen, Ukraine and the ongoing Hong Kong protests.

Wherever this strategy has unfolded, the target state is told by the international community that it has no right to intervene and is told to stand by as its nation is ransacked by locusts and its government ‘reorganised’.

With the final purge of American intelligence and the formation of a secret government, rendering anything resembling a democratic process obsolete, unless someone can restart the engine fast, we will soon be confronted by Willy Brandt’s prophecy of finding ourselves rudderless, under a surrounding sea of dictatorship.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, nearly one-third of the U.S. workforce, and half of all “information workers”, are able to work from home. Though the number of people working partially or fully remote has been on the rise for years now, the COVID-19 pandemic may have pressed the fast-forward button on this trend.

With millions of people taking part in this work-from-home experiment, Visual Capitalist’s Nick Routley notes that it’s worth asking the question – how do people and companies actually feel about working from home?

The Flex Life

It’s no secret that people value freedom of choice. A whopping 98% of people would like to have the option to work remotely for the rest of their careers.

Aside from working in sweatpants, what are the things people like about working from home?

A flexible schedule, the ability to work from any location, and no more commuting were the top reported benefits.

Of course, not everything is positive about working from home. Here are some of the challenges people face as they work remotely.

The top issue faced by remote workers was “unplugging” from work. Without the clear-cut change of location and defined office hours, many people had a tougher time clearly dividing their personal and professional time.

As well, the lack of person-to-person communication can be a challenge for some people. In fact, one-third of people were concerned that the full extent of their professional efforts wouldn’t be appreciated because of a lack of in-office contact.

For the majority of people, having tough conversations via phone or teleconferencing software was actually viewed as a positive development.

Barriers to Implementing a Remote Work Policy

Despite the popularity of remote and flexible working, not every company has embraced the concept. Here are some of the reasons why.

While there can be technical or security-related reasons behind remote work resistance, a major barrier is simple resistance to change. Over 50% of companies that didn’t have a flexible or remote workplace policy cited “longstanding company policy” as the reason. In other words, that is just the way things have always worked.

Here are the reservations managers have with remote work:

Managers are worried that productivity and focus will be diminished if people are working in more informal locations, such as home or a cafe. Also, if people aren’t working in the same physical location, managers feel that team cohesiveness and company culture could suffer.

On the flip side, the cost savings associated with remote work may win over many companies. Research has found that typical employer can save about $11,000 per year for every person who works remotely half of the time. As well, switching to virtual meets in some instances can also be a significant cost savings.

Flexibility: The Ultimate Perk?

Location flexibility isn’t just a way to keep current employees happy. Companies that don’t embrace flexible working may find themselves at a disadvantage when recruiting new talent. Nearly two-thirds of candidates say that having a choice of work location is a key consideration in choosing an employer.

Lockdown measures have highlighted the value of workplace flexibility – particularly for people with kids. A total of 86% of parents now want to work flexibly, compared to 46% pre-coronavirus.

As the economy slowly begins to reopen, it remains to be seen whether or not COVID-19 accelerated inevitable trends in workplace culture. If so, taking Zoom calls in sweatpants may become the new normal for millions of workers.

Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

The elites are doing their best to cut the food supply chains in order to weaponized food.  At the end of the day, if they succeed, you will be trading your freedom for a small morsel of food.

The L.A. Times reported that “coronavirus outbreaks” at 60 food processing plants will be the cause of the supply chains breaking, and an inability to get food to store shelves. Prepare for a food shortage, as it looks like they will attempt to use hunger and food as a weapon in this game for your mind.

It’s a grim reality that’s playing out across the country as COVID-19 spreads beyond the meat processing plants that have captured the national spotlight. At least 60 food-processing facilities outside the meatpacking industry have seen outbreaks, with more than 1,000 workers diagnosed with the virus, according to a new study from Environmental Working Group. –L.A. Times

This is the horrible reality of participation in centralization and not being able to be self-reliant. The New World Order doesn’t care if you starve, it cares only that you bow down and consent to a life of enslavement. And they are weaponizing the food system and using COVID-19 as an excuse.

The food shortages will come, and like the coronavirus panic, this has been manufactured by the elitists who want to control us. Is this what it’s going to take to get the rest of people to realize they’ve been controlled and enslaved by the very government who said they just want to keep them safe?

Safety has always been the rallying cry of tyrants and that is no different now.  People all over the world are waking up to what the power-hungry elitists and politicians have done to us for decades, but many are still sleeping. Will it take these orchestrated food shortages to wake them up? Or will they continue down a path of slavery with no hope? –SHTFPlan

Take the time to learn self-reliance right now and store some food.  It’s difficult to say when this will fully roll out, but it most definitely in their plans. Perhaps it’ll happen around the time of the faked “second wave” to really cause as much fear and panic as possible, which means expect it by this autumn.

Obedience to the government won’t save you. Preparedness might.

Farmers are coming out saying they have been told to “quit farming,” and are being forced to dump milk, kill chickens, and turn vegetable crops under. Why? Isn’t it obvious? To scare the public into accepting dependency on the government so they will remain in a constant state of fear and enslavement. But there’s a way out. If food shortages are coming, there is a way to prepare.

Prepping For The Upcoming Government-Induced Food Shortages

It was on June 8 that New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern declared of the country “we are ready now” to return to normalcy after it became COVID-19 free.

New Zealand has since gone eight days with no known cases and 24 days without new cases; however, that’s come to an end as on Tuesday two new infections were reported. 

It’s sure to evoke controversy given that in this instance a pair of travelers were allowed to break quarantine early.

Reuters reports, “It took just eight days for New Zealand to lose its COVID-free status when two women who had been given permission to leave quarantine early after arriving from abroad tested positive for the coronavirus, authorities said on Tuesday.”

Previously the country’s leaders and health authorities touted they had become the first country to ‘effectively eliminate’ COVID-19 through stringent measures, including stay at home orders that were in effect by late March, locked-down borders, and a strict two week quarantine observance for anyone who had traveled outside the country.

In the instance of the pair of new cases, quarantine was broken early, and aggressive testing measures have returned for local population areas they were in contact with. Reuters reports based on local authorities “the two women were given compassionate exemptions, as they were traveling from the U.K. to visit a dying parent in Wellington.” 

Apparently one women even had symptoms and yet was still allowed to forego the full quarantine period:

One of the women exhibited symptoms consistent with COVID-19 before being released early but attributed them to a pre-existing condition. When they returned to quarantine, they both tested positive.

The prime minister vowed a full investigation as fresh controversy erupts over health authorities clearly dropping the ball in this case.

“Vigorous testing is now taking place across those who were in the quarantine facility at the same time, and those who may have had any, even the remotest chance of contact (with the women),” Ardern said in a statement posted to social media.

It’s unclear to what extent lockdown measures may return to parts of New Zealand, or if others have been infected while the pair were outside quarantine. In total New Zealand has had 1,156 confirmed cases, including 22 deaths. Geography has certainly helped the nation, along with the inbound quarantine measures for anyone who had been abroad.

Recall too that during the early months of coronavirus spreading in the West, wealthy Americans attempted to get into New Zealand while they still could, often taking private jets to luxury ‘doomsday’ shelters in the South Pacific paradise prepped for just such a purpose. 

Authored by J.Christian Adamas via The Gatestone Institute,

Never before in the history of the country has the election process system been under greater attack. In the wake of the Coronavirus pandemic, heavily funded organizations and lawyers with fat trust deposits have been seeking to undo how we elect the President, Congress and state officials.

Like the rioters in the streets of American cities, they are taking advantage of a crisis to try to fundamentally transform American institutions.

They are seeking to throw out state laws designed to protect the integrity of American elections.

The first target of the election transformation was Congress. Soon after the pandemic reached our shores, House Democrats passed emergency legislation that would have federalized election process rules.

The Constitution decentralizes how we run elections because decentralization promotes individual liberty. When elections are decentralized, no single malevolent actor can manipulate or control the outcome.

During both the Bush and Obama administrations, I worked in the Voting Section at the United States Department of Justice. I witnessed firsthand how federal bureaucrats could manipulate, coerce and threaten state officials who did not conform to the bureaucrat’s sensibilities about how elections should be run.

Naturally the federal government has a role in ensuring that elections are conducted in a way that complies with federal laws and the Constitution. For example, the 15th Amendment and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 do not allow discrimination on the basis of race.

But apart from these limited federal carve-outs, the Constitution vests states with the power to run their own elections and set the qualifications to vote.

The bill that passed the House would have mandated automatic vote by mail in every state. It would have mandated same-day voter registration as well as weeks of early voting. It would have banished voter photo identification laws. It would have legalized vote harvesting in every state. Other proposals in Congress would have allowed mail ballots to be counted even if they were not postmarked by election day.

What the bills would actually do is foment chaos. The election would not be decided on election day. Millions of mail ballots would keep appearing, keep rolling in, until there were enough votes to make the difference. If there was a dispute, lawyers would steal the show, subjecting America to weeks of post-election court contests to force a particular outcome.

Making all of this even worse are the hundreds of millions of dollars that leftist foundations dedicate to this process fight. There is money for media outlets to publish stories that voter fraud is a myth. They even lend struggling newspapers foundation-funded “reporters” to work for free, as long as they publish stories saying voter fraud is a myth.

Of course, there is money for lawyers. When the House election transformation bill failed in the Senate– largely thanks to Majority Leader McConnell and Appropriations Chairman Richard Shelby (R-AL) — those trying to transform the elections rushed to the courts. The bill would have nationalized vote by mail, banned voter ID, and mandated that every state offer a month of early voting and allow same-day registration.

Across the country there are dozens of lawsuits trying to force states to abandon state election integrity procedures. My organization has been involved in a number of them, and it is quite an eye-opener. In Virginia, for example, the League of Women Voters sued the state to force the end of the witness requirement on absentee ballots. They argued that finding a witness would be a violation of federal voting rights.

Unbelievably, Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring capitulated and surrendered. The purported adversaries decided to enter into a collusive consent decree, tossing out the law.

Remember, the duly elected legislature of Virginia — both the House and Senate — passed a witness requirement and an elected governor signed the bill. The agreement between the plaintiffs and defendants in the case of League of Women Voters of Virginia vs. Virginia State Board of Elections erased the democratic will of the people of Virginia manifested in law.

This story is repeating itself all over the United States. Lawsuit after lawsuit is being filed to cancel state election integrity laws. One case in Texas actually claims the stamp you put on your absentee ballot is the same as a Jim Crow era poll tax.

All of this diminishes the real fight for civil rights that occurred a half century ago.

Lawyers are trying to accomplish in courts what could not be accomplished in Congress. Judges are being used as substitutes for the will of the people. People who seemingly would like to be able to manipulate election results are forum-shopping for the most sympathetic courts. And in some places, the plaintiffs and defendants are in agreement that state election laws should be struck down without contested litigation. The case is filed, and the states surrender.

When I attended law school, this is not what they taught. Laws, at least we were told, represented the will of the people. They were to be respected. Lawyers, particularly lawyers for a state attorney general, are under an ethical obligation to defend a law, even if they did not agree with it.

Yet in one hearing I attended in the Virginia litigation, the federal judge asked the Virginia Attorney General if they ever intended to file any pleading in court to contest the case. The lawyer hemmed and hawed. The answer should have been yes. Instead it was a successful attempt to obscure the answer.

Virginia’s only response was a white flag.

So now the same people who support the lawsuits around the country are still trying to move elections to an all-mail election. This would put the fate of the election into the hands of the same people who regularly deliver to you and your neighbor’s mail.

Vote by mail might sound good, until you look at the data. The federal election assistance commission keeps tabs. Their data show that 28 million ballots mailed since 2012 simply vanished. They were sent out, but never came back and were counted. Some say they are in landfills, others figure they are in file cabinets. The truth is, we do not know. All we know is that the mail ballots never accomplished what they were intended to accomplish.

It gets worse. Hundreds of thousands came back but had defects that prevented them from being counted. The voters who sent these ballots probably do not even know that their ballot was not counted after they sent it back.

Mail voting also destroys the transparency of our elections. Observers from each side are unable to watch the process. Mail ballots are uniquely vulnerable to fraud because they are voted behind closed doors where third parties regularly attempt to influence the process. Senior citizens already enjoy rights to request an absentee ballot in every state.

It surprises people to learn that in the middle of an Ebola epidemic in 2014, Liberia conducted an in-person national election. Ebola had a fatality rate of 46%, yet people still came into polling places and voted in person. The solutions were simple — sanitization protocols, distancing, disinfectant on surfaces.

Putting the Presidency into the hands of the United States Postal Service would be a serious mistake. Some factions, however, do not care about mistakes. They care more about transforming an election system so they can transform a nation.

*  *  *

J. Christian Adams is President of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, at 501(c)(3) law firm devoted entirely to election integrity. He served on President Trump’s election integrity advisory commission and in the Voting Section at the United States Department of Justice.

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) has released new data showing that the collective number of nuclear warheads has fallen slightly from 13,865 in early 2019 to 13,400 in January 2020. That decrease, as Statista’s Niall McCarthy notes, has occurred at a time of heightened global tension and SIPRI reported that the nine states possessing nuclear warheads are actively modernizing their stockpiles. For example, China is developing a triad involving land, sea and aerial delivery systems, Russia is pursuing the development of hypersonic weapons and both India and Pakistan are slowly increasing the size and diversity of their nuclear forces.

You will find more infographics at Statista

Russia and the U.S. possess more than 90 percent of the world’s nuclear warheads and the recent decline in the global inventory can be attributed to the retirement and dismantlement of weapons in both countries. That is primarily due to the 2010 New START Treaty which is set to expire early next year unless both parties agree to extend it. Negotiations have made no progress, primarily due to the U.S. government insisting China joins any future arms reduction agreement, a move Beijing has ruled out.

In January of 2020, Russia had 6,375 nuclear warheads with 1,570 operationally deployed with the total number falling by 125 compared with early 2019. The U.S. has 385 fewer weapons than last year and it currently has around 5,800 in total with 1,750 deployed operationally. China has the third-highest number with 320, a figure that grew by 30 over the past 12 months. France and the UK round off the top five with 290 and 215 nuclear weapons, respectively.

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

A post that appeared on the subreddit for the Seattle ‘CHAZ’ autonomous zone that has been taken over by left-wing extremists suggests rounding up all the white people and organizing them into forced work brigades.

That’s right. Some of the very same people protesting against racism and slavery want to enslave people based on their skin color.

So progressive!

The discussion appears to be focused around identifying potential ‘white supremacists’ who are trying to infiltrate CHAZ, a 6 block area of downtown Seattle occupied by Antifa and BLM supporters after the police force fled their precinct.

The area now seems to have been renamed ‘CHOP’ after some of the occupiers wanted to send a message to anyone who resisted that their fate would resemble what happened during the French Revolution when adversaries were beheaded.

I don’t want this ever to end. pic.twitter.com/IMyq8dFcSZ

— Garby Jooman (@GarbyJooman2020) June 15, 2020

“I can help keep a lookout for them, how do they look like?” asks one CHAZ occupier. “What are the signs to identify them? I would think going up to ask them is dangerous.”

“Anyone that is white,” says a respondent.

“I genuinely don’t understand why we don’t just round up all the white people in CHAZ and put them to work tending the crops, and other such tasks,” responds another CHAZ militant.

“Thing would be far more efficient with a large workforce and it would act as a way of keeping the white menace under control. We can have an armed supervisor to watch over them as they work so there’s no risk of any racist backlash.”

Stalin would have been proud!

It was previously revealed that BLM occupiers were demanding white people each hand over $10 to their CHAZ comrades as a form of reparations.

As we highlight in the video below, CHAZ has quickly descended into the chaos and violent anarchy we all fully expected, although the media still ludicrously describes it as peaceful and friendly.

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Western researchers have discovered a mysterious exoplanet less than twice the size of Earth orbiting around a distant Sun-like star that could support life, making it the closest analog to the Earth-Sun system.

The discovery of the exoplanet KOI-456.04 orbiting the star Kepler-160 — was made by researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Germany and the US. The findings were published in Astronomy & Astrophysics, under the title “Transit least-squares survey III. A 1.9 R⊕ transit candidate in the habitable zone of Kepler-160…:” 

“The star Kepler-160 is probably orbited by a planet less than twice the size of the Earth with a star-planet distance that could permit planetary surface temperatures conducive to life. The newly discovered exoplanet, which was found by a team of scientists led by the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Göttingen, is more than just another potentially habitable world.

One of the key properties making it resemble the Sun-Earth system more than any other previously known world, is its Sun-like host star. Most of the Earth-like exoplanets known so far are in orbit around a faint red dwarf star emitting their energy mostly as infrared radiation rather than as visible light.

The light shed on KOI-456.04 by its Sun-like host star, however, is very much like the daylight seen on our home planet. Moreover, the orbital period of KOI-456.04 around its Sun-like star is almost identical to an Earth year,” read a statement from MPS. 

What makes the KOI-456.04 discovery really interesting is that the plant is orbiting the star Kepler-160 at a comparable distance as Earth’s from the Sun — suggesting life could exist. This is a mirror image and the most similar to the Earth-Sun system of any exoplanetary system discovered so far. 

The exoplanet is three thousand light-years from Earth and has yet to be officially confirmed — MPS said the probability of it being a real planet is 85%. 

“It cannot currently be ruled out completely that KOI-456.04 is, in fact, a statistical fluke or a systematic measurement error instead of a genuine planet. The team estimates the chances of a planetary nature of KOI-456.04 to be about 85% pro planet,” MPS said.

While KOI-456.01 is still considered a planetary candidate, the probabilities are high, according to the research, that this is the real deal. 

As for other Earth-like planets, we noted earlier this year that NASA exoplanet astronomers detected bio-signatures of a planet that could support habitable conditions to potentially promote life.

Instead of Mars, Elon Musk has to think outside of this solar system if he wants to continue wowing investors. 

Authored by Ron Paul via The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity,

Just a week or so ago the mainstream media and thousands representing the “medical community” told us we must throw out the “stay-at-home” orders and go to the streets to protest the death of George Floyd at the hands of the police. The Covid-19 virus will not bother people who are protesting this injustice, they said. The virus only attacks people leaving their homes to protest the stay-at-home orders.

Now, after thousands of businesses – many of them black-owned – have been reduced to rubble and innocent people in the inner cities no longer have anywhere to shop for the basic necessities of life, the mainstream media has backed off of its non-stop coverage of the protests. Suddenly last week they all simultaneously embraced a new fear story to terrify the masses: a “second wave” of coronavirus was among us. It was targeting those states that dared to “open up” their economies and begin a return to relatively normal lives.

Texas, Florida, and California were singled out to scare the rest of the country into thinking that if you dare leave your homes you will catch coronavirus and die. There was a “spike” in coronavirus “cases” they claimed. Funny, just a month or so ago they were demanding that we massively increase testing, which would produce just that “spike” in coronavirus cases they are now using to scare authorities into reinstating the incredibly destructive stay-at-home orders.

In the county here in Texas that includes Houston, the young judge who somehow seized the power to shut down the third largest city in the United States warns us that she may again shut down Fort Bend County to fight this “second wave” of cases. She even threatened to again pour millions of dollars into a “field hospital” at a Houston football stadium that did not see a single patient in the “first wave” of coronavirus. It’s hard not to wonder which politically-connected companies are reaping millions in contracts for an obviously un-needed hospital. Thousands of hospital beds in Houston are vacant, while cancer patients have been refused their screenings and desperately needed treatments.

As former Congressman David Stockman points out, the actual coronavirus numbers do not in any way support the media assertion that a “second wave” of infection is cresting over Texas. Stockman informs us that in Texas the “reported infected case rate of 256 per 100,000 is just 10 percent  of the real ‘hot spot’ rate of 2,477 per 100,000 in the five boroughs of New York City; and its mortality rate of 6.2 per 100,000 population is just 3 percent of New York City’s 196 per 100,000 rate.”

There are no “hot spots” in Texas. It’s just more media hype.

It’s funny that they don’t dare mention Georgia, which has also opened its economy and has seen no “spike” at all.

The same people who were demanding more testing are now screaming that we must shut the economy down again because these tests – which are notoriously unreliable – are showing more coronavirus cases. This is a disease that 99.9 percent of the people who are infected with survive! But 40 million people out of work and the thousands of lives that will end due to the shutdown are never mentioned.

There is something else going on here and it is in no way related to public health.

Previously is was only in the realm of speculation whether the White House would actually move forward with recent confirmed “discussions” over resumption of live nuclear testing, which hasn’t been done in nearly thirty years, since the close of the Cold War and implementation of arms reduction treaties. 

But now the Senate Armed Services Committee has just brought the US closer to resumption of testing, and appears to be moving forward with giving President Trump the option of pulling the trigger if the decision is made. 

On Monday multiple reports confirmed that under an amendment by hawkish Republican Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, $10 million is to be set aside in preparation for live nuclear testing. 

The Hill reports the money would be used if needed to “carry out projects related to reducing the time required to execute a nuclear test if necessary,” according to the proposed measure, which was approved in a 14-13 vote related to a markup of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) last week.

Per The Hill, the funds will be made available related to the Department of Energy and Department of Defense’s nuclear programs “if necessary” — which appears to be the big operative if in question.

In May a senior Trump admin official told The Washington Post the idea of a US test is “very much an ongoing conversation.”

But internal White House discussions have reportedly resulted in severe pushback though Trump is said to favor new tests.

Critics cite global proliferation concerns, also as multiple weapons treaties with Russia have lately collapsed after US pullout (such as the INF, Open Skies, and now even New START is said to be in danger), as well as the potential door opening to a new dangerous ‘nuclear arms race’ with China and Russia.

Proponents are open to new tests, however, based on the belief that US “rapid test” could provide much needed leverage in jump-starting arms negotiations with Russia and China for a White House conceived new trilateral arms control deal.